It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 168

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Starting point is 00:02:16 Every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hi everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's me, James, today, and I am very lucky to be joined by Azad, who is fighting in Myanmar, in Chinland specifically, with the AIF. Welcome to the show, Zad. Thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me on. Of course. Yeah, this has been a project that, like, I've been following from afar for some time.

Starting point is 00:02:53 Maybe several months now, I think. But for listeners who have not been following, can you explain very briefly the role of the AIF in the struggle in Myanmar? Yeah, sure. Getting right into it. Yeah. First, I like to give a little bit of a spiel about like the context of the AIF. Maybe for people who aren't so familiar. Yeah. In Burma, already for decades, there have been some kind of established precedent of, we can say foreign volunteers of some kind, or you know, ex-military foreign volunteers of some kind, or you know, ex-military personnel, or you know, somebody who is somehow drawn to the conflict. There has already been the precedent for some decades of people coming in a very limited capacity and helping with this group or that group, but it mostly has been participation

Starting point is 00:03:36 of two big characteristics. The first characteristic is that of course it's been an individual basis, like whoever individual had this idea, they organized it themselves, they handled it themselves, with the exception of like the Free Banner Rangers, but I wouldn't classify them as like, you know, foreign fighters or anything. They do very, very good work, but... Yeah, slightly different role. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:57 The people who did this kind of stuff were mostly coming as individuals, you know, kind of on their own prerogative. And secondly, they were overwhelmingly, we can say, non-political or, you know, kind of on their own prerogative. And secondly, they were overwhelmingly, we can say, non-political or, you know, ex-military guys from Western nations or, you know, from neighboring countries who were somehow drawn to the conflict and wanted to use their skills in that kind of light. The AIF, on the other hand, is absolutely by no means like the foreign fighter organization in Myanmar

Starting point is 00:04:25 or it's not like the foreign battalion or that's also not what the goal and the mission is. It specifically came about after 2023 2024 there were slowly more internationals in the country, internationalists we can say, who were here on a much more, albeit at the beginning individual, it was the same where people were organizing their own ways, organizing their own routes and connections, but with a much more different perspective of this kind of more intentional anti-fascist internationalist perspective, which bled over into the name. So kind of as a result of, no, discussions between me and some other people who were here, and also some other people outside the country. The idea to set up a formation or an organization

Starting point is 00:05:09 like this was floated and of course after talking with like local partners and local comrades who anyway were involved with on the ground there was a lot of enthusiasm on both sides both from people outside the country both from people inside the country. So kind of within that context, the idea to take a step forward in a more organized, explicitly consistent, yeah, to use a polite word, consistent perspective for internationalism in Myanmar, that was kind of the goal. Yeah. And if people aren't familiar, it's the Anti-Fascist Internationalist Front, right? The AIF has a really cool logo

Starting point is 00:05:45 with the peacock tail and the three arrows and the white star and a red background. I really appreciate your logo. So yeah, I think people will like, when they talk about the conflict in Myanmar, they will be like, oh, why is there not more internationalism? Why is there not more international volunteers? Something that you and I have spoken about before is that this has always been an international conflict, right? And it's always been an anti-fascist conflict as well. Do you want to explain that to people who, because I think sometimes it's easy for people to fall into these orientalist or somewhat colonialist constructions of the conflict there.

Starting point is 00:06:27 And I think you and I both agree that those are not the lens through which we should view it. Yeah, I mean, of course, the history of, let's just use a big term, the history of conflict in Burma is of course very deep and very complex and has a thousand different ethnic and political branches that you can go down. But if we're really focusing in on this post-coup situation, which even though it has its roots and its context in, of course, the pre-coup with the existing ethnic resistance organizations and the democracy movement, if we're really looking at the conflict post-2021 coup, fundamentally, it is not any one nation's struggle.

Starting point is 00:07:05 It is not anyone's people's struggle. It is not even like a national struggle of Brno, we can say. It is fundamentally a fight against fascism. It is an anti-fascist people's revolution where after, of course, the coup and after these initial stages of protest and uprising, the people were faced by a choice of do we accept dictatorship? Do we go back and do we live like normal, do we accept fascism, do we live under fascism, or do we prepare to sacrifice everything to fight against fascism? And that was the fundamental calculation in that. So insofar as it's a

Starting point is 00:07:41 fight against fascism, that makes it an internationalist struggle in itself. I mean, without even going on too much about how anyways the so-called nation of Burma is dozens and dozens and dozens of different ethnicities and religions and cultures, which, I mean, if you aren't thinking in the traditional nation-state sense of internationalism and more thinking in the kind of brotherhood of cultures and traditions, then yeah, of course, without the flashy foreigners coming, it's already an internationalist struggle against fascism. But I think, on a more intentional level, the dictatorship represents fundamentally the same fascism that exists all over the world, fundamentally state oppression. So yeah, in that regard, it's very much an international struggle

Starting point is 00:08:25 Yeah, and something we've spoken about before is like the the links of the inspiration I guess that comes from the internationalist struggle in North and East Syria and Rojava and how That's very much in like a source of inspiration for young people in Myanmar. I've spoken to tons of them even inspiration for young people in Myanmar. I've spoken to tons of them, even two years ago, especially young women there, right? Looking at the women's revolution in Rojava and seeing like that this was a possibility, that this was something like on the horizon that they could strive for. Do you want to explain like your own perceptions of that and experience of it? Yeah, sure. Well, first, you know, not to overstate things.

Starting point is 00:09:05 Well, of course, Rojava is a big inspiration, I think, not just for the people here in Myanmar, but truly like a beacon of hope in general. Yeah. You know, a little biased having spent time in Rojava, as you also have. I think, how can we say? I'll give a bit of context. In 2023, I think this message went out from the KMDF to

Starting point is 00:09:31 The forces in Rojava and I was there at the time. So was I Really what? Yeah. Yeah, I was there to say we were there. We were both there at the same time Everyone started hitting me up for book recommendations. It's like October. I didn't know that. Yeah, okay right after October 7th, I think Okay, anyways, so yeah when this came out like some friends sent this to me and was like, hey, can you translate this? And I like, not only me when I saw it, but also all the friends in the leadership and, you know, all of the comrades there were like very, one surprised, but also very excited and very happy to kind of see a message like this. And I think also when the message was returned, you know, some of the friends from the leadership, you know, recorded this video message and sent it back. It was very much like a very pleasant, happy surprise for everyone involved.

Starting point is 00:10:17 And it really showed the degree to which fundamentally we are fighting the same struggles, even though, you know, maybe, you know, materially, we're're not talking about like guns going from one place to the other. Fundamentally, we're comrades on the same very, very long frontline. Now, I think what that looks like locally, especially, I'm happy that you mentioned, like, specifically the women's situation. You know, I myself sometimes, when I'm giving training here, I like to show videos from certain parts of Kurdistan where they're very effective, we can say. And of course, that naturally includes the very, very heavy participation of the women's guerrilla units as well as the men's guerrilla units. And specifically here in Myanmar, we see a very difficult situation in the revolution in regards to the position of women. It's a very new revolution. Lots of these people are, it's a very new revolution.

Starting point is 00:11:05 Lots of these people are, you know, a couple years ago they were just in, we can say, liberal society. They weren't in any kind of, you know, maybe at best activist context, but it's not like these people had a strong revolutionary platform and then they said, okay, let's launch a revolution against the dictatorship. It was a natural evolution from protest to resistance to revolution, no? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:27 So because of that, the same social structures that existed in liberal society were in a large part transplanted into resistance organizations, which means that yeah, of course, thousands and thousands of women from all over the country have traveled to these camps, you know, have prepared and have readied themselves to fight against the dictatorship, but in a lot of ways they're still facing off against, you know, the patriarchy that is inherent in all of our modern society. So I think Rojava in so much is like, I think anybody can take Rojava as an inspiration. If there is anybody who more so than anybody else can take as an inspiration,

Starting point is 00:12:05 it is women and youth, as that is of course like the revolutionary focus of the entire paradigm of the Rojava Revolution. So I won't say that it's like, you know, like the leading inspiration for the people of Myanmar or something, but definitely the people who have interacted with it or interfaced with it in some capacity, be it official or unofficial, of course, I've gotten a lot of inspiration from that. And us as internationalists, both me as well as some other people here, you know, having had that in-person experience with their job of revolution, of course for us is eternal inspiration. Yeah, and it's a really beautiful thing to see, like you said, just to see people like...

Starting point is 00:12:40 When we think about alliances in conflict, right, if we look at the extremely interactional way that the United States enters into those alliances in conflict, if we look at the extremely interactional way that the United States enters into those alliances, it's willing to allow the people of Rojava to die for it in the battle against ISIS or Daesh, but it's not willing to stand by them when they're being bombed by Turkey. You and I have both seen. But to see something that instead begins with genuine solidarity and admiration. One thing I really liked was when the KNDF replied to the video that came from Rojava,

Starting point is 00:13:13 they said that they still had a lot to learn, especially with regards to gender. And like, it's so rare to see revolutionary movements admitting their faults, especially during the struggle, right? During the moment of revolution. And that's something that I've been so impressed with in Myanmar for a long time, is their willingness to look out at the world and see things that they think are better and adopt them or to at least consider them. It's a thing in Rojava too. Some of the, one of the friends in Rajabha said

Starting point is 00:13:45 that they were excited to learn more about Myanmar because they hadn't worked everything out, and that they thought that there might be some solutions that they could learn from there. And so it's really special to see that solidarity that comes from a very genuine place, and not just rhetorical. There are people such as yourself who have made the journey to fight on behalf of the revolution in Myanmar. But it's really a special thing. It's really a wonderful thing to see, especially with the world seemingly getting more and more isolated and more and more nationalist as opposed to internationalist.

Starting point is 00:14:19 It's a really beautiful time for it to happen too. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, not to make the podcast, you know, a democratic and federalism ideology lesson or something, but yeah, I think insofar as the revolution in Rojava considers itself a force on the side of democratic modernity, I think it's important to understand that they really mean it. Like they really do see the conflicts that we're facing today against the capitalist system, against capitalist modernity. They really do see it in this all-encompassing light that

Starting point is 00:14:52 even though something is happening all the way over here in Myanmar and that maybe you could only tangentially connect to what's happening over there, they really do believe it when they say we are comrades in this same struggle. And that's why the solidarity is so beautiful to see, because it's that real solidarity. It's not just like, you know, pandering to some internationalist kind of sentiment. Yeah, no, it's very real. And it has a very genuine basis in sharing more than common interests, I will say. So for people who are not as familiar with the struggle where you are, which is in Chin

Starting point is 00:15:37 Land, would you explain a little bit of, I mean, obviously we can and we will at some point explain a little bit more of the history of Chinland, because I think it's very important and it sometimes gets marginalized from even narrative of the revolution. But can you explain like the groups and the struggle as it has been since 2021? In many ways, Chinland is where the revolution, the armed revolution began, right? So can you explain how we get to a place today where in recent weeks we've seen massive victories in Chinland. Yeah so as you know the political situation at least between the groups is somewhat complicated so I'll try my best to like

Starting point is 00:16:15 most fairly but also somehow accurately describe. Yeah. I'll start from the history we can say as you described in and around Mindat at the time of these protests this was kind of like the catalyst and one of the first places I'll start from the history, we can say. As you described, in and around Mindat, at the time of these protests, this was kind of like the catalyst and one of the first places that actual armed resistance to this dictatorship started. And that wasn't armed resistance like with guns or something, that was armed resistance like with the shotguns, like double-barreled shotguns from India, muzzle-loading traditional hunting rifles and air guns and things like this, and with that kind of weaponry they were going and attacking police stations and checkpoints.

Starting point is 00:16:50 So it really was a sign for everyone, like, not only the bravery of the people that are willing to do something like that, but the willingness and the risk that these people are able to take and the seriousness of their opposition to the dictatorship that, look, this isn't just a protest anymore, even we have only sticks and stones, we will dismantle this dictatorship. Yeah. So yeah, that was a very inspiring early period. And I think even before the involvement of some of the bigger ethnic armed organizations,

Starting point is 00:17:19 there were already local CDFs, which stands for Chinatland Defense Force, which is kind of just like PDF. It's a moniker that a lot of groups share. There were a lot of different PDFs and CDFs popping up just in the days following the coup in Chinland. So yeah, like from the very beginning there was the the precedent in the history of revolution there. Now these towns that were the beginning of the revolution have now been seized. So Mindat, as of last month, was taken by the Chin Brotherhood Alliance, as well as, you know seized. So, Mindat, as of last month, was taken by the Qin Brotherhood Alliance, as well as, you know, CDF, Mindat, and Alliance partners.

Starting point is 00:17:50 So, the progress has definitely been made. The current landscape looks a little bit like this in Qin State. There's two big blocks, we can say. One block is the Qin Brotherhood, and one block is the Qinland Council. At first, there was only one block called the ICNCC, which stands for Interim Chin National Coordinating Council or Committee. I always forget the last C. I have to remember it at the same time as you. And that was like the political big umbrella organization. And there was the CJDC, which is the Military Big Umbrella Organization. That stands for Chin-Lin Joint Defense Council or Committee again, last C always in big use.

Starting point is 00:18:29 So yeah, for a long time it was everyone including one of the you know very old ethnic resistance organizations the CNA, CNF, the Chin National Army, Chin National Front was kind of involved in this one big umbrella organization and everywhere there was resistance against dictatorship and on some level cooperation both with Chin groups as well as with the NUG. In 2023, political events occurred and as we can say politely, a disagreement in the political future of Chinland separated into two groups with CNA, CNF withdrawing from the CJDC and forming their Chinlund Council. And the groups that kind of subscribed to that vision and subscribed to that path, they joined the new Chinlund Council. And all of the groups that remained

Starting point is 00:19:19 in the CJDC and the ICNCC continued to hold on to the ICNCC as a kind of platform and umbrella organization for the people in Chin State that didn't want to subscribe to this new path and then Chin Brotherhood was formed as the new practical military alliance of those people who remained we can say. And since then in only one year, I mean both sides have had have had very incredible victories. No, Chinland Council has able to, in the north of Chin State, liberate Chekha and Tunzong town. And then of course, in the south of Chin State, Chinlun has been able to take Matupi and Kanpelet

Starting point is 00:19:53 and Mindat. So definitely victories all around. But yeah, I'll stop myself before I comment too much more on that. Yeah, but victories that would have been unimaginable three years ago. I mean, we're almost exactly three years from the beginning of the revolution. Four years. Yeah, 2025, God. Yeah, four years from the beginning of the revolution.

Starting point is 00:20:14 When as you say, like those videos, that was when I first became aware of the post-coup resistance was seeing videos online of people with those traditional muzzle loading hunting rifles, taking on police checkpoints or attempting to organize an armed resistance and those little air guns with the made of the blue plumbing pipe. It was incredible, just the bravery of the people and their commitment and their willingness to risk their lives and sometimes lose their lives. Because as one revolutionary doctor told me a few years ago, he said like, my grandparents died for democracy and my parents' generation died for it. And we don't think another generation should have to die

Starting point is 00:20:56 for it. So like, we're all prepared to go down fighting for this, which I thought, you know, was really impactful. And then he was right that their willingness to risk their lives and to be so brave is unparalleled. And the revolution wouldn't have got to where it's got to. But it's such a beautiful thing that it has. I wonder like, it's a crucial time for the revolution now, right? Like the revolution is as successful's ever been. We're reaching the fifth year. Can you explain like the role of the AIF within the broader revolution? Because I think people get really confused by all the acronyms and it can be easy to think that these groups... And it's an alphabet secret. I'm writing a book about this and Spain and like I've spent most of the last week just trying to write the dictionary of acronyms that goes in the back of the book. But like, can you explain, these aren't groups that are necessarily, sometimes they are opposed to each other, have different visions for the future, but now about like the history of the Communist Party of Burma and that history goes from like, you know, the 30s all the way to the 90s. Yeah, and every single page has at least ten different acronyms and it's absolutely insane. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:15 Yeah about the AIF, the Anti-Fascist Internationalist Front, which I'm hoping everyone just recognizes as AIF because it's kind of a mouthful. Our just recognizes as AIF because it's kind of a mouthful. Our perspective so far has been that especially as foreigners, I mean especially as like foreign foreigners, you know like western foreigners, we really want to avoid as much as possible the perception of we're coming here, we've got military experience or we've got this knowledge or we've got that knowledge and now it's time for us to tell you what to do or now it's time for us to train or something like that. Yeah, I would say our perspective is much more closer to the perspective of the international structures in Rojava.

Starting point is 00:22:54 Our goal is recognizing that this enemy, the SAC dictatorship, the SAC junta, is fundamentally a fascist anti-human enemy. That makes it also our struggle. And so not in some kind of like presumptive way or not in some kind of like imposing way, but in a very genuine and organic manner, we want to come here and implement ourselves into the revolution. Now, we have some friends who are coming who maybe have previous experience with this or with that. And in their capacity, of course, they give training because the people here have, the comrades have been overwhelmingly receptive to training like this.

Starting point is 00:23:30 You know, there's been no pride or no like, oh, we don't need the help. Yeah, quite contrarily, everyone at all stages, even the NUG is saying, I'm not talking about us, I'm just talking about publicly, you know, to everyone is saying, whatever help we can get, we appreciate it. Yeah. But, you know, we're not just bringing people who are, you know, Rojava veterans or veterans of some conflict where they can come and give training. Fundamentally, it's an anti-fascist conflict, which means even people without experience are able to come and not only participate in the revolution, but in a less transactory way, not to say like, oh, I have something and I will give it in the revolution, but in a less transactory way, not to say like, oh, I have something and I will give it to the revolution.

Starting point is 00:24:07 And the most important way is to come and to learn from the revolution. Exactly, as you said, even a revolution like Rojava, which has decades and decades of history and tradition and culture and ideology and is steeped in this, yeah, I would say, you know, one of the most powerful, prominent revolutions of our time, is still able to say a revolution like this, of course, we can learn from it. We need to learn from revolutions of our time, is still able to say a revolution like this, of course we can learn from it, we need to learn from the struggles of our comrades there, we need to learn from the developments happening in this revolution. Our perspective in AIF is very much the same, where, yeah, okay, maybe we have some limited material things we can contribute,

Starting point is 00:24:38 but ultimately it's about organically participating in this revolution which is against fascism and in our own ways to take the lessons of this revolution to take the fundamental meaning of this revolution and be able to translate it for ourselves and for of course the future works which are ahead of us shall we say. Yeah I remember when I was much much younger talking to a veteran of the international group and anarchist veteran, no, it was from the international brigade, to correct myself. And I asked him to explain anti-fascism to me. And he said that for him, like when someone devalues humanity, like the junta does in

Starting point is 00:25:18 Burma, like the Francoist did in Spain, right? Like Assad did in Syria. It debases his own humanity and like anyone who attacks humanity in that way is attacking him and all humanity and therefore it's a responsibility of all humanity to defend humanity, to defend compassion and kindness. Absolutely. Yeah, I think what you're doing in Myanmar is part of that desire to defend humanity against, inhumanity against whatever

Starting point is 00:25:45 you would want to call it. What are the struggles that the revolution faces? I know you guys have recently been doing a fundraising campaign, for example, and the revolution is almost unique in its complete lack of solidarity from the states of the world, right? There is not a state that is backing this revolution It is entirely the force of the people of Myanmar So can you explain some of the struggles within the revolution perhaps because of that? Yeah, I mean as much as some people

Starting point is 00:26:18 You know like to say CIA or something like this is involved Of course the reality is that you know, I've heard the term crowdfunded revolution. I think it's incredibly accurate. Because in the AIF we recently did a fundraiser for vehicles and equipment and things like this, but that's on our scale. On the scale of these organizations, I mean, they are fundraising from the diaspora millions and millions of dollars to be able to wage this resistance.

Starting point is 00:26:44 And of course, even like local people who themselves maybe don't have a lot are giving everything they can or are anyway acting anyway they can or doing anything they can to help the revolution. So we can say overwhelmingly it is a popular resistance. Even I would go so far as to say it is fundamentally a people's resistance against the dictatorship that of course represents itself in a lot of different organizations, but these organizations enjoy the like 95% support of the people against the junta, you know, yeah So yeah in that regard the challenge of course is always

Starting point is 00:27:19 Resources and always the strength of the enemy. No, we're still going up against jet fighters helicopters mortars artillery Yeah, youars, artillery. Yeah. You know, they have a lot of ammo, us not so much. So, there's like lots of these practical problems. I think the, how can we say, cynical kind of, as you mentioned earlier, Western outlook has been to paint this struggle kind of in, oh, it's a tribal struggle. There's all these different groups.

Starting point is 00:27:44 They're all fighting for their own area. What's going to happen after they win? Now, I disagree with that assessment. Obviously, I think, you know, yourself as you're familiar with the conflict, I think it's much deeper than that. And even across these many different identities and cultures, there's very deep, very real coordination and cooperation where I don't think it's just like chaotic. But on the other hand, that is a, you know, not to give the cynics credit, that is a question which going forward will politically very much be on the agenda because I mean, now as you're seeing, most of the country is no longer in the junta's control. And the parts that are in the junta's control are contested.

Starting point is 00:28:21 And then you have the tiny sliver of land, which they can say they somehow without any kind of, you know, contested, and then you have the tiniest sliver of land which they can say they somehow without any kind of, you know, contestation control. So very soon the onus will be on revolutionary forces to answer that question, okay, how are we going to consolidate? How are we going to transfer these wins on the battlefield into something that is more permanent and more lasting? And I think, you know, already as you're seeing in Chin State that I can speak of and that people are seeing in elsewhere that I can't speak of because I don't know.

Starting point is 00:28:51 There are definitely frictions, you know, I'm not going to say it's perfect. Everyone is smiling, everyone is working together and there's frictions that will have to be worked through. But fundamentally, I think the trajectory as it currently is, is positive for the resistance, we can say. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, we were talking to someone yesterday in another part of Myanmar, and I was saying, you know, I'm going to come visit you hopefully soon.

Starting point is 00:29:14 And he was saying like, oh, you'll love it. Like, just to be in the liberated zone is so special. Talk to us about like liberated Chinland, right? Mindat's just been liberated. Large areas have been under the control or semi-control of a dictatorial regime that has been extremely oppressive to the Chin people for decades. How are people receiving their liberty? How are they governing themselves or attempting to take care of one another in these liberated spaces?

Starting point is 00:29:43 Sure. Well, I think the first thing I'll say is maybe to contrast to other parts of Myanmar, we've been relatively lucky in Chin State in that even, you know, for some years already, the junta due to the mountainous nature of Chin State has anyway been reduced to the cities for years. Like all of their checkpoints, all of their like external places, the last of those were cleared in 2023 and most of them anyway in 2022 were gone. So by landmass, even before these towns were seized, the Junta controlled, if you were to add up all of the area that they actually

Starting point is 00:30:16 physically control in Chin State, maybe a couple square kilometers, you know, just the area of like their bases and something like that. So because of the nature of Chin State, they never had the, of course, they did these atrocities and massacres and things like this, but on the kind of like, you know, fascist dictatorship level of oppression, since after the revolution, they had not really had the opportunity to impose themselves too much. They were the ones kind of cowering in their corner. Yeah. But I think especially after these towns are being seized now, you know, take Rikodar, which is the border town on India, or take Mindanao-Murtupi, these towns that have just

Starting point is 00:30:51 been recently seized. These are towns which people are wanting to live their lives. I mean, Shinsead has always been autonomous, even in British rule, in colonial rule. It was just labeled as unadministered, you know? And there was a very rich democratic tradition, or how can we say, maybe not democratic in the traditional sense, but tradition of self-rule and autonomy in Chin State. And the removal of the junta from these areas is allowing those relationships to much more naturally flourish. And I think the aspiration of a lot of people, both abroad as well as internally displaced from Chin State, is to return to those places where there's been fighting and to continue their lives as normal.

Starting point is 00:31:31 Which I think finally, now that not just in Chin State, but all over the country, we're slowly seeing these alternative systems of, you know, let's not call them like communist or revolutionary or anything, but fundamentally they are alternative to the state administration system. Yeah, and I think that narrative that you pushed back on already, and we've seen it from so many, every think tank, every analyst, every so-called expert has said the EROs will only fight for their territory when they've reached the limits of what they consider to be their ethnic homeland, they will stop.

Starting point is 00:32:04 And that hasn't happened, right? It's not happened anywhere. But the fact that even if it did, right, or even if some of these yellows have visions for the future, which is not as liberatory as maybe you and I would like, the fact that there are parts of Myanmar that are free now and that where people can live their lives as they wish will never change and that will mean that those places are always there for people to go to. And like I'm sure lots of people you're fighting with and alongside have come to Chinland, right? Like not all of them will be, would have spent their whole lives there. They'll have come there from but my majority cities maybe, is that correct Look, like, not to give any specifics, so I'll just make a very broad term to

Starting point is 00:32:49 exaggerate the fact you can say that I have met somebody from almost every single group in Myanmar, in Chin State. Yeah. Now that's just to say that's not to like, you know, be shocking or something. That's just to highlight the level of interconnectedness, logistically, materially, militarily. Yo, even if it's just someone sending someone to say hi from somewhere, you know? Yeah. It's not like, oh, everyone's in their corners fighting. I mean, I promise you, there are soldiers here which are giving their lives for the towns in Chin State, which maybe they never even thought about Chin State before this revolution, you know?

Starting point is 00:33:22 They're coming from opposite sides of the country. Yeah, absolutely. It's fundamentally a fight against the dictatorship. It's not the fight to liberate Chinland or to liberate Kareni or something like this. Yeah. I remember speaking to Mandalay PDF a while ago and they were saying to me like, they were really scared when they first left the cities because they'd been told that like wild people lived in the mountains. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:33:44 And that like, now we're wild people. told that like wild people lived in the mountains. Now we're wild people, we like the wild people. But yeah, this narrative, I mean, James C. Scott talks about this, right, in the art of not being governed, this idea that these mountains were never really places that were amenable to state control. And that now they're places where people can go to avoid it. But it's also important that this revolution extends beyond the mountains and into the cities and that people living there don't have to live under the boot heel of a dictatorial state, which is what's happening, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:34:21 People will be listening to this, I'm sure, and thinking, this is laudable, this is incredible. And A, they'll be shocked that they haven't heard about this, maybe, especially if they're newer listeners. And I do want to say that you can go back and listen to our other coverage on Myanmar. There is a lot. But in terms of conflicts, conflict is always messy messy and war is never inherently a beautiful thing. Beautiful things can happen in wars, but we rarely see wars where there is so much good on one side and so much evil on the other.

Starting point is 00:34:54 And why do you think that the, especially the Western media has largely overlooked the conflict in Myanmar? That's a good question. I will say just on a very base level without getting into any kind of like, you know, pondering or something like that, I've spoken with a few journalists and, you know, before anything, before we even talk about politics or something, there is just the material calculation that these outlets are making. From what I understand, from what I have heard, people don't care.

Starting point is 00:35:21 Now that's really unfortunate, but like these like big networks, you know, CNN, whatever, I have to make the calculation of the people they send and the risks to send them and the actual exposure that these news articles will get. From what I understand, from conversations that I've had with some people that are involved in these networks, right now there is not, on the executive board level, there's just not a lot of push to cover Myanmar. And that's really unfortunate. And I think one really bad side effect of that is whenever there's a tragedy, the media

Starting point is 00:35:52 is there. Yeah. You know, like whenever there's some massacre or whenever there's some, you know, intertribal conflict or whenever there's something bad to report about, or maybe, you know, on a good day, the really big like a win like in last year that we saw you know yeah Okay, yeah for these big things that Western media will be there But I think even from recording these very like click baity eye-catching things It seems like they're not getting the exposure that they want to get out of this content

Starting point is 00:36:17 Which is putting them off of covering the you know in our opinion much more meaningful Wall to wall content that exists, I mean, every day in Myanmar. Yeah. It seems like this Western eye is only interested in the suffering, we can say, which is really unfortunate. But, you know, even if the media is not paying attention, we can say, for better or worse, the governments are paying attention.

Starting point is 00:36:39 Absolutely. I mean, almost like hawks, you can say, there are every single regional government, as well as foreign governments, of course, keeping a very close eye on the situation, circling, looking at developments. I mean, China, especially, you know, being very involved in the process. Yeah. So yeah, while unfortunately the kind of liberal media eye is not so much, you know, giving Myanmar the coverage that it deserves as a popular revolution, the powers at be are definitely watching its progression, we can say.

Starting point is 00:37:07 Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, it offers an alternative for the world that like, it's distinct even from Rajahva, like the the building of a revolutionary movement. Like you said, the crowdfunded revolution, the revolution that like entirely, I mean, at points armed itself using guns it downloaded off the internet. You know, it offers, sometimes I think when I'm thinking about my background in studying anarchists in Spain and like obviously I've looked a lot at the past, but it gives me a vision of the future.

Starting point is 00:37:38 Like, and it's only in covering the small parts of the revolution that make it truly a revolution that we can see that. Like, you have an Instagram and on there you're posting about training. Sometimes when you're doing the trainings and there are women who are coming to train, you know, with rifles to be, I was going to say marks people, I guess. Like, I don't know, people marks women, sniper. Yeah, okay. Yeah, only US military guys are weird about calling things snipers. Yeah, they're snipers. Yeah, okay. Yeah, only US military guys are weird about calling things snipers. Yeah, they're snipers. Yeah, okay. Yeah, let's do that. Okay.

Starting point is 00:38:09 In the moment that they receive that training and become, like, efficient with their weapons, like a revolution happens for that woman. And it's only through, like, following those little revolutions that happen every day that make up a big revolution that we truly understand it. And I'm sure that's something that you're seeing on a daily or weekly basis, right? Like people's worlds opening up and their horizons changing because of the revolution. Well, listen, absolutely. Now, of course, as leftists involved or interested in this revolution, studying it, whether you're a socialist, whether you're anarch in this revolution, studying it, whether you're a socialist, whether you're anarchist, whether you're communist, whether you're upoist, however you like to describe yourself, whatever flavor you are, without pontificating too much, I

Starting point is 00:38:54 think fundamentally this revolution is a symbol of hope that it can be done. Now, I'll give an example. From conversations that I've had with the comrades that have been involved in this revolution since it was just a protest movement in the streets, one thing that I've heard a lot is that at the beginning of the revolution, when it switched, you know, when the police were firing bullets into the crowds, and when people made this decision that, okay, now we have no choice but armed resistance, we have no choice but to fight the dictatorship, when that calculus was made, when that decision was made, it was not made based on the kind of analysis of the situation that they could even win. It was not even like, okay, we're going to do this and we have this strategy of guerrilla war and then we'll do this, this and this and then we'll achieve the victory.

Starting point is 00:39:40 The calculation that was made was a moral calculation. It was saying we have the choice, we can go back to our life, we can accept this oppression, we can give up this struggle for democracy that we've been waging in one form or another, or we can make the decision to fight even if we won't win. It's the moral imperative to resist dictatorship. And I think what this revolution is showing, not just for the people who themselves were surprised at their capability and were themselves surprised at what they could accomplish when they actually stepped up and fought and

Starting point is 00:40:11 sacrificed for revolution. Fundamentally, it's a message to everyone. It says, look, these people at the beginning were going at checkpoints with like double barrels and air rifles, and at the end, now they are like threatening to overthrow what was previously assumed to be one of the most powerful militaries in southeastern Asia. I mean now like everyone jokes on the Tomahaw because they're obviously garbage now, but like at the time that wasn't the analysis, you know?

Starting point is 00:40:36 It would be the same as saying like, oh, you know, we're going to overthrow the USA or something like that. It was fundamentally, people didn't even envision the victory, but on the moral principle to resist, they've resisted. And from that moral position, they were able to materialize the victory that they had previously not even imagined. So, you know, for me, that's what I take away. There's no books, there's no ideological books here that you can study and understand the underpinnings of the revolution. You know, there's no classes that you can go to that the PDF teaches you about what the revolutionary paradigm is.

Starting point is 00:41:09 Fundamentally, it's a fight of the people against oppression and against dictatorship. And while of course there's some strengths and some weaknesses that we face in the revolution, ultimately, in the same way as Rojava, in the same place as other places in the world, it's a beacon of hope for democratic people who envision themselves fighting on the side of freedom and the symbol that actually, yeah, you can win. Yeah, it's given me so much hope. Like at a time, the last few years when we've all desperately needed something good to happen, like something good is happening.

Starting point is 00:41:39 Incredibly good. Through the, yeah, like it's breathtaking, like I went in 2022 during the first year of the revolution and I was shopping around this story for months, right? I knew these guys who were doing the 3D printing and I went to every major outlet. I was like, this is the story that's going to make people care and no one bought it until eventually Coolzone did and here I am. But like even 2021, 22 talking to those guys, I was like, they might all die. It's still been worth it for them, but they might all be gone in a year.

Starting point is 00:42:12 I'm unfortunately familiar with that from my line of work, but like to see it succeed, it's so like incredible. Obviously war is terrible and terrible things have happened in the war, but like it's such a beautiful thing to see people refuse to accept tyranny and just through the tenacity of their refusal to create liberated spaces and to now threaten to topple, like you say, one of what had previously been a feared army in the region. Like it continues to amaze me every day, every time I see people dancing in front of

Starting point is 00:42:46 a captured military headquarters. It's just such a remarkable revolution. If people wish to be in solidarity, if they wish to follow the AIF, if they want to learn more about the AIF, where can they do that? Are there places online or are there ways that they can support you aside from obviously like being part of the struggle? Like how can they help you? Yeah, me personally, my information platform is mostly on Instagram where I post updates

Starting point is 00:43:15 about, you know, either insights about what's going on or news updates or something like that. And that's azad underscore a FAA on Instagram. Spell out a side for the non Kurdish speakers. Yeah. A Z A D A Z A D if you will. Yeah. Underscore a f a on Instagram.

Starting point is 00:43:33 The AIF also has an Instagram for like official posts. It's AIF Myanmar. In general about the AIF, especially at this early stages, right now we're involved in some front lines in Western Myanmar. And so because of that, we don't really have a lot of information Especially at this early stages. Right now we're involved in some front lines in Western Myanmar and so because of that we don't really have a lot of information presence out right now. But in the coming weeks, in the coming months definitely when things get published, when more things like that come out, they will come out from kind of the existing distribution circles

Starting point is 00:43:58 that have been going around like Libcom, there has been like statements going out, as well as Instagram, PR things like that. Yeah. And recently we just completed a fundraiser. Our goal was $10,000 for the vehicles and the equipment that we will needed to get started. Yeah. For listeners who don't know, maybe, yeah, maybe they're not aware. This only started in October of last year. So we're still in the stages of consolidating and getting our equipment.

Starting point is 00:44:24 We set the goal for $10,000 and we exceeded it. We raised over $13,000 for that. Nice. So yeah, we're very happy to say that, but in the future, of course, there will always be more opportunities. As you know, revolution is very expensive. So yeah, on all fundraising platforms,

Starting point is 00:44:39 we have PayPal, Cash App, and Venmo, and all of those are AIF Myanmar. And yeah, in the future, hopefully, we will have more news both about what's happening in Myanmar, both how we specifically are involved, as well as just very exciting footage, we can say. We hope to share soon. Yeah, that'll be great to see. And I hope you'll come back and join us again and maybe we can delve into a little bit more of the history of the revolution and the revolution in Chinland specifically, because I think these are things that we need to cover

Starting point is 00:45:08 more and I'd love to give people a place to learn about them. Yeah, absolutely. Great, thank you so much. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest episode is with Bill Gates. This is a world where somebody can have over a hundred billion dollars. What is that? These fortunes are almost illegitimate unless in a very smart way given back. One of the biggest names in business tech and philanthropy. Exploring and investing in innovative solutions to some of the world's toughest problems. Bill Gates.

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Starting point is 00:47:01 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Snakes, zombies, sharks, heights, speaking in public, the list of fears is endless. But while you're clutching your blanket in the dark, wondering if that sound in the hall was actually a footstep, the real danger is in your hand when you're behind the wheel. And while you might think a great white shark is scary, what's really

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Starting point is 00:48:46 Hello, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I am once again your occasional host, Molly Conker, and I'm joined today by Spencer Sunshine, the author of Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, the Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege. It's available now in paperback. I have my paperback copy from Rutledge Press. So Spencer, I guess let's get right into it. What is Siege and why should we still be talking about it?

Starting point is 00:49:12 Well, unfortunately, we should still be talking about it because it's still influential. It was a book originally published in 1993, but that is an edited version of newsletters published in the 80s by a fellow named James Mason, who was a lifelong neo-Nazi. He joined the American Nazi Party at age 14 in 1966. He is still an active ideological believer in national socialism. It's a book that in it, he makes the argument

Starting point is 00:49:40 that any kind of normal legal political activity was pointless for neo-Nazis to engage in, and like forming organizations, holding marches, making the traditional propaganda, trying to build up parties, even guerrilla warfare at the end of it, he becomes very cynical about. And he says through what are essentially dramatic random acts of violence, of terrorism or murder. He even goes into praising serial killers like Joseph Paul Franklin. We can destabilize the government and society. And after this, neo-Nazis can come to power. This has become a very influential idea.

Starting point is 00:50:19 More recently, he was rediscovered. It was a pretty obscure. The newsletters were very unpopular. He never made more than 100 copies. The original book had a print run of a thousand. So it was a sort of obscure text. It was known amongst neo-Nazi circles for some unusual reasons. It became mixed up with some countercultural figures. And that was actually what made it more well known. But it was revived in 2015. It was found by these younger aspiring terrorists, let's say, at the time around a message board

Starting point is 00:50:49 called Iron March. It became the Bible of the Atomoffin Division, this neo-Nazi group that its members and associates killed five people. And out of that, everyone in the Atomoffin Division had to read Siege, which became the hashtag. And out of that grew this whole sort of network first of groups, and now really of totally decentralized propaganda channels on Telegram, Dubterragram, promoting these same ideas. And so it's become very influential today. It gets named in terrorist manifestos. The school shooter, I think it was in Nashville, Tennessee, that

Starting point is 00:51:26 just happened. He makes a reference to people who are into siege in his writings. And more and more, I've documented before him at least 12 murders that were either by the Atomwaffen Division, by people inspired by siege culture, or by people directly linked to a pterogram. So if we want to look at the main text animating neo-Nazi terrorism today, which is now spread around the globe, there's groups in Latin America, there's groups in Eastern and Western Europe, it's even influencing groups in the

Starting point is 00:51:52 Middle East or people in the Middle East that are called accelerationists. They want to accelerate the collapse of things. And if there's a single ideological text today that's influential in this scene, it is by easily James Mason's siege. And what I particularly am enjoying about the book, and I just told you before we started recording, I haven't finished it yet. What I'm enjoying about this book is so, you know, you're saying that James Mason started writing this in the 80s, right? But nobody was reading it.

Starting point is 00:52:20 It was very sort of niche. It wasn't popular even within its own niche. He was not a popular man. He had a lot of beefs with other leaders in the movement. It's rediscovered in the 2010s. It's big on Iron March. It's the animating force behind Adam Waffen. And so all of a sudden in the last 10 years, people like us, you know, researchers of the far right mainstream journalists,

Starting point is 00:52:38 people are talking about Siege. They're talking about Mason. But this, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is the only book sort of tracing it back to its root. James Mason did not come into existence in 2015 on the pages of Iron March, right? They sort of dug back up this writing that was at that point 30 years old. But this book, I mean, it's an incredible work of research, but it's also sort of a picaresque, right? It follows James Mason through decades of Nazi history, right? He wasn't just a guy who wrote a newsletter, he was a guy

Starting point is 00:53:11 who was in a lot of rooms. He knew a lot of people. So through the lens of James Mason's life, you can follow the origins of the modern neo-Nazi movement back to the sort of splinters and sects and rival personalities of the 70s, right? That you can't understand modern neo-Nazi organizing if you don't know the history that goes back to the 60s and 70s. Well, thank you for getting that. I had someone write a review, and it was an interesting view from the viewpoint of literary criticism. And he's like, well, this is one of these books about a book. It's not. And I'm like, yeah, it kind of is. But it's really, and I started, after I started writing this, which has an unusual origin, or just maybe it is a usual origin, like the first half is about neo-Naziism in the 1970s, which is incredibly undocumented.

Starting point is 00:53:57 There's a huge problem with documentation about the far right in general before 2015. Probably more books have come out in the last 10 years about the far right in general before 2015. Probably more books have come out in the last 10 years about the far right in the U.S. before 2015 than came out before. And certainly about neo-Nazis who are almost always, when they are written about American neo-Nazis, it's usually in the history of the white supremacist movement and there's no differentiation made between them. And I would say the national socialists are quite different from other white supremacists for a variety of different reasons So there is no book about neo-naziism in the 1970s in the u.s At all, there are only two documents I can really name and they're both written by national socialists

Starting point is 00:54:37 Actually one in Australia and won the head of the new order which used to be the American Nazi Party It's actually not bad. It's an eight-part series by Martin Kirk. So the first half is really reconstructing what happened in the 1970s, because this is what Siege is coming out of. Siege is an answer to the questions that faced neo-Nazis in the 1970s. And then the second half of the book is even, I would say, less about Mason. It's about these four countercultural figures who discovered Mason, helped publish him, and eventually created, published and disseminated Siege itself. And part of that is I was just around the scene these people were part of in the 1990s. Like, I saw one of them Boyd Rice play. I had many mutual friends with another, the publisher Adam Parfri of Feral House. So, like, I was, like like right around what these people were doing as part

Starting point is 00:55:25 of the 90s counterculture. So I became very interested in that because these people always denied their background, you know, or left it off or something. And I found just so many smoking guns in this. And so I will say how this started is right after Charlottesville, they unite the right rally at Charlottesville. You say these things and then you just give the name of the thing and people are like, wait a minute, that at Charlottesville, you say these things and then you just give the name of the thing and people are like, wait a minute, that's like where I live, you know? It is where I live.

Starting point is 00:55:49 We're more than that. You know, I was in Seattle, I was like, oh, I was at Seattle referring to this 1999 demonstration, and I'm like, people here weren't even necessarily born then and just saying at Seattle doesn't mean anything. So after Unite the Right, there was a spike in popularity in Siege and the hashtag read siege because it looked like the rally followed what he said. And he said, no one

Starting point is 00:56:10 in American society will allow neo-Nazis to succeed. And a lot of people don't know this, but what happened at the initial rally is that it wasn't the street fighting people might be familiar with. Even that's fading from memory was before it was supposed to start and when it was supposed to start at noon The police had been standing a block away and letting everything unfold marched in and forced everyone out meaning the rally never happened Nobody ever gave a speech Nobody gave a speech as as we know the car attack happened like an hour or two later I got a look at a timeline of that's all I gar now, right? 130, yeah. Yeah, that sounds right.

Starting point is 00:56:46 And the book is co-dedicated to Heather Hare. I just want to point out. So it seemed to coincide with what Mason said. He's like, you can't do legal work. You have to do a terrorism, right? And so there was a spike in interest in it. And Adam Woffin had been doing more and more. Adam Woffin, people are committing murders, strange murders.

Starting point is 00:57:04 They're all very strange murders, which I think speaks to a lot of the personalities who are involved in this and other forms of violence, even in more structured political movements. I think it does attract, tends to attract fringe people, except at certain times where people are intentionally using it as a strategy as part of a bigger mass movement. Anyway, these are questions for terrorism studies. And so there was this spike of interest in it. So I was going to write a short article for a think tank I used to be associated with, which I will not name because I had such a bad experience with them.

Starting point is 00:57:33 And it was going to be an article. I couldn't get the facts to line up. As I said, there's terrible scholarship about this period. And so I used this very sophisticated research tool called Google. And through that, I found that Mason's Papers, there's a huge collection of Mason's Papers at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. So I decided I'd go there.

Starting point is 00:57:54 I thought I'd just straighten these things out. There were some documents I needed, some very obscure fanzines and stuff. It'd be the end of the day. I got there. Well, first I discovered it's not easy to get to Lawrence, Kansas. You have to fly into an airport. And then I think I took an Uber for like an hour. It was like one bus a day or something. Anyway, I got there and started poking at the papers. It was 60 boxes of his correspondence. He had letters incoming and outgoing since the

Starting point is 00:58:18 early 1960s. As you mentioned, he was an insider to the neo-Nazi movement. So it was with all these people. He had kept carbon copies of his outgoing letters. It was a unique slice of national socialist life in the United States. Never seen an archive like it. People didn't keep their papers because they were doing illegal activities. The government sees them and has them in a warehouse somewhere or whatever. This is even in the pre-internet. I can only do this because it was pre-internet and there were paper copies of stuff.

Starting point is 00:58:44 Of the age where I grew up doing all research on paper and in archives. I quickly found out what I had and there were two things. One, as I said, was that there was this whole story of American neo-Nazism of when the American Nazi party splinters, it's then called the National Socialist White People's Party, in the 1970s and all these groups come out of it, many of which we know parts of, like William Pierce, who wrote the Turner Diaries and the Skokie Incident, which is parodying the Blues Brothers. Some people don't know this.

Starting point is 00:59:12 Just so Paul Franklin shooting and paralyzing us, the publisher, Larry Flint and some other things. And I was like, oh, these are all people who came out of one thing, the splintering of the party. And I realized that there basically was a terrorist wing that came out of the splintering. And people knew Mason and people knew Pierce, but there was like a couple other groups or people, but people didn't put it together that they were all like

Starting point is 00:59:35 the most radical wing of these splinter groups. So there was that story. And then as I mentioned, there was a second story about these counter-cultural people who had always denied that they were involved in national socialism or the level of it. It was just a joke. All these things that we hear today, almost word for word. Until I found all their letters to James Mason and they're adorned with swastikas and 8 8s and they're helping him. They had, they reveal the extent that they helped him. And

Starting point is 00:59:59 the funny thing is a lot of this stuff was actually available and out in the open, it was in published books, but it was like little pieces of flakes of gold scattered around everything. I started picking them up because I realized you could put them together. And so one article turned out it was supposed to be one article and then it turns to two articles and I sat down to write it and turned it into a book. And then five years later I finally had the manuscript done. Then took another year at the publishers and then it came out last year

Starting point is 01:00:25 So it's been seven years of work and I've been going around doing talks I did 17 talks in support of the book and as many podcasts and stuff So I'm still the book is still part of my life as much as I would like to sort of put it down But thank you for having me on the podcast. This is not as great They have me on the podcast not against no great that you have me on the podcast. Not against, no diss against you. No shade, no shade. I'm so jealous of your trip to Kansas to see the archives. I only recently, a year or two, discovered that his papers existed in those archives.

Starting point is 01:00:56 So I wrote to the archivist and I said, are any of these digitized? I would love to see them. And they're like, we've only digitized one box. And they sent me a couple of scans, but most of it has not been digitized So you have to go to Kansas if you want to read this old pedophile Nazis letters to Charles Manson Well, I do have thousands of pictures I took of this correspondence So yeah, if you request a digital copies, they won't tell you what they've digitized And so it's it's's like you know trying to like

Starting point is 01:01:25 randomly throw darts or something if you get the right file they have them i know i was like i was begging and pleading i was like please just like any letters you have with bob hite i just i just want the bob hite letters but i can give you the bob hite letters i would love those i think they'll they'll digitize stuff for for a price though oh i sure. I'm sure if I pay for it, they would do me the favor. But that's the thing is that there's so much interconnection here because these stories always get told episodically, right? Like the story of James Mason and Adam Waffen,

Starting point is 01:01:55 the story of William Luther Pierce, the story of the founding of the National Socialist Movement, but nobody takes those pieces and slots them together because they interlock. They all interlock, they all interlock. Right? And so this idea of the lone wolf, I mean, I guess James Mason's life's work is to perpetuate and motivate the lone wolf,

Starting point is 01:02:14 but is it really a lone wolf if he's training them? Well, the lone wolf question is a long question. A lot of people know Metzger moved to the lone wolf strategy after a war was sued by the SPLC and collapsed, but Mason was advocating this beforehand and was very tight with Metzger. So there is actually a book describing what you've said, putting the pieces together, and it's called Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Counter-Cultural Vagance. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:02:39 Which you can buy today. I mean, like I said, it's the only book that I know of that fits these pieces together. No, it is the only book. Actually, I've been in contact with James Mason and he said one radio interview, it's not the first of its kind, but it's the best of its kind. High praise from the book's Nazi pedophile subject. Why did he donate his papers to the library? Because like you said, most people are not, not only not preserving these items, where they're not preserving them at all because they know what they've done is illegal or embarrassing to everyone involved, and they're intentionally destroying the evidence of these

Starting point is 01:03:24 kinds of communications, but he not only saved them, but he wanted to make sure we could read them. Did you talk to him at all about why he did that? Well, he sold them. He was a Wheeler dealer in especially American Nazi Party memorabilia. You know, he sold furniture on the side like antiques, go antiquing. And he, if you've seen pictures of his apartment, it's filled with Nazi knickknacks, right? He's got a knife collection. It looks like it looks like the area nation's booth at the Tulsa gun show. It looks like my apartment but like in the in the inverse and fewer plants. So he was a collector. So he was already, my understanding is he was already selling

Starting point is 01:04:05 George Lincoln Rockwell memorabilia or whatever papers and such to Kansas. They have this collection there called the Wilcox collection of anti-extremist stuff. This guy Laird Wilcox had been an early student for democratic society before they took the like Marxist turn and then decided that the left and the right were the same, like in the 70s or something, and started collecting all this material. So they were probably the biggest collection of far-right material. And as I said at the time, libraries weren't collecting it and people weren't writing about it.

Starting point is 01:04:36 They were like, oh, these are just a bunch of kooks and wing nuts. They're not important. And some of this is because, like as I say in the book, the first neo-Nazi mass murder wasn't until the late 70s. Like it was what we know as neo-Naziism today really only emerged in the 70s is one of my arguments in the book. So the papers were there because he sold them. The second thing is he is unique, I think not unique, but very uncommon because he is an unabashed neo-Nazi. He does not try to hide it.

Starting point is 01:05:05 He is not like the NSM, which is actually a party he co-founded, shockingly, but left over as they turned. Because originally, he was to promote violence. And then as it turned to a more traditional Hollywood Nazi party, he left. But it's the same one that was at Charlottesville, and Jeff Scoop was the head of. I actually taught Jeff Scoop about how the party was founded.

Starting point is 01:05:24 That was very interesting. I interviewed him for the book. Another one of those dishonest actors. Bill and Jeff Scoop was the head of, I actually taught Jeff Scoop about how the party was founded. That was very interesting. I interviewed him for the book. Another one of those dishonest actors. The guy who had made him the head of the party, who was actually the second head, Herrington. Cliff Herrington. Clifford Herrington did not give him the truthful account of the party's founding. Herrington claimed he was a co-founder and he wasn't, and he claimed a different date.

Starting point is 01:05:43 This is one reason I spent so much time on stuff. Also that I found all these things had been printed that were wrong by scholars and others that were. And it wasn't their fault. They were taken. It was harder to get these documents, especially when a group is moving. And so Harrington claimed he had been a co-founder in 1974 or whatever, but he was lying. Mason was one of the co-founders and not him. He only became the head in the 80s. But he was lying. Mason was one of the co-founders and not him.

Starting point is 01:06:05 He only became the head in the 80s. So this is some of the stuff I found. Anyway, I was going to say the NSM at one point go, we're not neo-Nazis, we're national socialists. I was like, get the fuck out of here. Like, really? Like, come on, your flag is a swastika on it. Oh, I mean, this is absurd.

Starting point is 01:06:24 But people will do that, right? It's like the dead parents skit in Monty Python, if people know this. And so, but Mason is stands out because he's always been very upfront about his views. He's very proud of them. He's not ashamed. And if this embarrassed other people, they didn't belong. He's as he told to me, they didn't believe in the one true religion. So I asked him about these counterculture figures who have denied they were ever involved in this stuff. At the time, he was convinced they were national socialists, and he was like, well, they believed in something else other than the one true faith. I think that's the

Starting point is 01:06:54 word he used. So yeah, he has nothing to hide. He's very open about it, very open about promoting terrorism. As you know, maybe some of the listeners do, young neo-Nazis go to his apartment and he tutors them. They take pictures with him. This included Sam Woodward, who murdered a young gay Jewish man, Blaise Bernstein, recently sentenced to life in prison. There's pictures of Woodward in Mason's apartment. So yeah, I mean, he wants, he wants, he's proud of his lineage and he wants it documented. And I know I did him a favor by writing a book about his movement. I mean, they don't have the intellectuals and the resources to and the trained people to write historical books. And I did a pretty straight up book, even Mason was like, I kept waiting to read the smear, I kept waiting for the

Starting point is 01:07:37 smear. There was no smear. I was like, yeah, I just wrote it as a history book. And so in a way, I've given them insight into their history, which wouldn't exist otherwise. So this stuff is always a double edged sword when you cover, as you know, when you cover fascist groups. They want the publicity by and large. I was told sometimes at the SPLC, like groups contact them and they're like, cover us, give us coverage. Sending them their press releases. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think someone like Mason, I guess he doesn't see the smear because like you said, he's proud of himself. So this is I think is an honest appraisal of his legacy.

Starting point is 01:08:13 And most people would see that as a smear, but he's proud of it. Well, it's not a smear. I don't need to say anything bad about him. He's there promoting Nazi terrorism. What's the point of like, you know, denouncing this or something? I mean, whereas I think someone like Pierce, I think sometimes when people write honestly about Pierce, I mean, obviously he's been dead for 25 years, but he resisted the characterization that he was inciting terrorism, even though he like Mason very much was.

Starting point is 01:08:41 Oh, well, Pierce is just a liar. I mean, all these guys. Exactly. That's what I mean. But I think a book like this about Pierce, I think he would not have enjoyed. Whereas Mason is at least honest about his legacy. You know, there is a terrible book about Pierce by one of the sycophants who is a professor, actually.

Starting point is 01:08:58 Robert S. Griffin. And that, again, that is one of those dishonest histories. I think we were talking before we started recording that the problem with archival research, trying to write a history of these movements is they are dishonest actors. And so Robert S. Griffin, he wrote, what is it, The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds. Yes. Is that what it's called?

Starting point is 01:09:18 He went into it, you know, saying like, I'm going to write this neutral appraisal of this figure of the movement about William Luther Pierce. And over the weeks that he spent on the compound to write it, he spent time with Pierce on the compound in Hillsborough became radicalized and is a Nazi now. He's still alive. I mean, he could take issue with that characterization if he wants, but yes, if I'm sure you've read the book, it's not neutral. It is a hagiography of Pierce. Yeah. There's actually a book by Pierce's son too. Um, which is interesting. I have read that. It's quite good. Well, unfortunately a lot of it's copy pasted, but um,

Starting point is 01:09:53 I think his insight into his relationship with his father is very unique. It is called, um, the sins of my father by Kelvin Pierce. I mean, that's a window you don't often get, although I guess now we do also have the Klansman son by Don Black's daughter. Black's daughter or son? She has transitioned. Oh, I did not know that. Well, Mazel Tov. Yeah, I remember reading their work before Trump, and they actually wrote one of the most moving resignations from the movement that I've read, very much taking, you know, being accountable, even though they were raised in it. I feel like children raised in this are not like as accountable as adults are, right?

Starting point is 01:10:29 Especially like they were in college at the time, but it was like a true interesting working through it. And I felt like heartfelt apology for it. And yeah, actually, this is a fun fact. You may know a member of the Aryan Nationalists Action, ANA, this this is a fun fact, you may know a member of the Aryan Nationalists Action ANA, this terrorist is a bank robbing group from the 80s, I think became the first person to transition gender from Donna Langen. Donna Langen was known as Pretty Boy Pedro when she was the head of the Aryan Republican

Starting point is 01:11:01 Army as a bank robbery gang out of Elohim City. Yeah, she was the first person to win a battle with the federal government to transition in federal prison. To get surgery. Yeah. And just recently, actually, there was a filing in her case. She's trying to get the way the case is titled in the court records. It's still Peter Langan, her dead name. And the judge denied her petition to retitle the case. But she has transitioned as and is in a women's prison. Is she in Texas? Oh gosh, I could look up in the BOP where she is. Texas bans prisoners from changing their names. She is in FMC Carswell. Yep, that is in Dallas. In Fort Worth, Texas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why. That's why. So she's still in the BOP system

Starting point is 01:11:44 under her dead name, but she was allowed to physically transition. So that's, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's why. That's why. So she's still in the BOP system under her dead name, but she, she was allowed to physically transition. So that's again, just a strange twist of history, right? That, um, the person who won that legal battle for us was a Nazi bank robber. Well, she has also long repudiated those politics. So I think she's been the only person to have surgery, trans person to have surgery who was imprisoned at the time. Cause I think that was recently and only person to have surgery, trans person to have surgery, who was imprisoned at the time. Because I think that was recently, and then everything,

Starting point is 01:12:09 you know, everything. They changed, I know that they slowed down their trans policies, waiting to see the results of the election. So, for a strange reason, I know actually a bunch of the stuff about trans people in prison, so anyway. No, I mean, it's a remarkable, a remarkable history.

Starting point is 01:12:25 Yeah, yeah. So you started writing this book after Unite the Right because there was this renewed interest in Siege. I mean, I guess what has the experience been like, you know, over the course of spending the last six years of your life working on this, realizing that it is only becoming more relevant and not less.

Starting point is 01:12:43 Well, the problem is, is like, for people like us who watch the far right, like our work is only important or people are only interested in it when there is a big upswing in it. Like that's when people are interested and that's when it is more important. So on one hand, it's good that I didn't spend five years

Starting point is 01:13:00 and then no one remembered what Siege was and it was just a blip. I mean, that's good for me, but I'll have to say what's good for me is bad for society. And so, I mean, I think it would have been an important work of history regardless, but I guess as you're working on it, realizing that the body count is only growing. Yeah, it's, it's, I don't know, I don't really, you know, what do you say about

Starting point is 01:13:20 that? I call these people empty people spreading emptiness. Like, it's hard for me even to get mad at the more aggressive neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Like, often they're young and I just see like sad young people who can't deal with their problems engaged in like hurting other people who are often not so different than them. You know, I mean, there's a trans man who was in Adam often, you know, like, they're... Tyler Parker Depepe, yeah. Numerous stories of people being, you know, of not white descent,

Starting point is 01:13:55 either they're hiding that they're not or they're a mixed race descent, and they're sort of passing as white, of being Jewish, of being queer, all this stuff. The movement's filled with these people. Sometimes it's the people are even like, how many straight white men are there in the movement? Like, and it's just sad. You're like, I see you're being attracted to this because you're so alienated or you're so your identity is so shaky that you are attracted to this idea

Starting point is 01:14:20 of a firm strong identity. And I mean, sometimes people forget fascism in Italy and Germany arose in basically the last two countries that arose and solidified in Europe. Like, those were countries that wasn't clear what Italy was going to be. There's such differences between the North and the South. There's no reason, like, it was unclear originally whether Germany was going to be Austria, too, you know. And so, it's a way part of fascism is shoring up that national identity, which was very fragmented. And it works the same, I think, with people's identities. And one of the one of the things that attracts people to neo-Naziism, I think, is this strong affirmation of an identity and people with mixed identities or conflicted about it or filled with self-loathing

Starting point is 01:15:02 are drawn to this for that reason. One of the many reasons people get drawn to these things. And they recruit so young. I mean, I think in the book, you're talking about, you know, all the way back to James Mason's origins, that he became interested in the Nazi party as a 14 year old. Joined it, joined it at 14. So he's, he's a child, right, getting into this movement. And now that he is an old man, he is in turn indoctrinating children, right? Getting into this movement. And now that he is an old man, he is in turn indoctrinating children, right? The Atomwaffen members are very young, I guess were, Atomwaffen technically doesn't exist anymore,

Starting point is 01:15:34 but most of the young men who spilled blood for Atomwaffen were 20 years old, 19 years old. And you know, someone pointed out the founder of the Feuerker Creek division, when he founded it was 12. He was arrested when he was 13 or 14, but he founded it at 12. And which tragic, obviously tragic, heartbreaking, disgusting. But imagine being one of the adults who was in that group and finding out that your Fuhrer

Starting point is 01:16:03 was 12? I grew up in the South in an extremely Protestant area at the height of that, like, 80s, fundamentalist Christian right thing. And there were, I knew about, these are kind of an older thing, child preachers. Have you ever heard of child preachers? This was a big thing during the... Yeah, they speak in tongues and they sort of parrot the cadence of the way adults speak. But if you listen carefully, they're not saying anything. They've memorized the way that adults give these barn-burning, you know, adult Protestants, evangelicals give these barn-burning sermons, but they don't necessarily understand what they're saying.

Starting point is 01:16:42 And so, I mean, I think it's pretty common. People, adults will do this. They don't necessarily believe in what they're saying. And so, I mean, I think it's pretty common. People, adults will do this. They don't necessarily believe in what they're saying. Maybe they understand it a little better. I think there's a bunch of post-structuralist academics who don't even understand what they're saying, but that can happen too. And so I think people like, well, I don't know.

Starting point is 01:16:58 I was a pretty smart 12-year-old. Maybe I would understand it better, but you just need somebody repeating it. It's the slogans and the narratives have already been formed by others. You're not necessarily innovating on it as long as you can repeat the dogma. Does it really matter who's saying it? Does it matter if the person is gay or Jewish? And I mean, the Estonian 12-year-old was not a one-off.

Starting point is 01:17:20 In the Ethan Melzer case a year or two ago, Ethan Melzer was a US Army private who was trying to set up his unit in Turkey to be attacked by Middle Eastern terrorist groups. And the person he was communicating with online, sort of goading him into these acts, was a child. It was a child. He was the Order of Nine Angles though, right? He was ONA. He wasn't a neo-Nazi, right? I always try to distinguish.

Starting point is 01:17:42 There's some O9As who are not. He was at the bleed point of an atom often splinter group and ONA. He was involved with rape often Oh was he yeah, the lineage of these groups is so messy I think some of them don't even understand the ideological lineage of the sect they've ended up in but But yeah, Melzer Melzer was at that sort of bleed point where Adam Waffen was Becoming ONA, but I think what we're seeing now and definitely in these last two school shootings in the last month And Melzer was at that sort of bleed point where Adam Waffen was becoming Ona. But I think what we're seeing now, and definitely in these last two school shootings in the last month, is a syncretic murder cult. The guy who just did the Nashville one was black, but if you start looking at both of

Starting point is 01:18:17 their manifestos, they're referring to all different kinds of things, some of whom are white supremacists and neo-Nazis, many of whom aren't, just other school shooters, and they don't seem to have a real ideological necessarily connection to some of this, the political stuff. It's just become- Nihilism. And O9A, they are founded by neo-Nazi, and many of them are neo-Nazis, as I was going to say. They're not, they don't have to be, and all the people aren't, even if you were supposed

Starting point is 01:18:43 to be. They aren't have to be and all the people are it even if you were supposed to be there Are they aren't all and so we're just getting through these Various online forums on telegram and elsewhere. Sometimes they just spread over all kinds of the different platforms We're getting just this syncretic mix of these things and this is one one of the things that made oh 9a and siege culture a parallel of Mason's ideas, because Mason's not a Satanist, and in fact, he's recently denounced Order of Nine Angles. And when he was around Satanists, they were atheist Satanists around the Church of Satan. That when you start saying, hey, we need to commit random murders in this goal of destroying

Starting point is 01:19:21 the supposed Jewish controlled society so there could be a white Aryan revolution. Like it doesn't matter if you have a really political reason or if you're thinking that these heretical acts will destroy somehow the consensus reality, you're just trying to goad people into these violent random acts of terrorism and more random murders. Right. And the end result is the same. Your thinking is the same and the end result is the same. So they start cross-pollinating and then what's the difference between the school shooter

Starting point is 01:19:48 cults, you know, and now we have groups like the maniac murder cult who are ostensibly political, ostensibly neo-Nazi and Order of Nine Angles, but in reality are just like, go attack old people from behind. I mean, it's just pathetic stuff. Go, you you know beat up homeless people and and stab them. It's like at some point I often say this in my speeches as it's become more and more real is like everything blends together in our society. I think you know you start with like school shooters and it's

Starting point is 01:20:18 hard to distinguish them from like apolitical mass shooters and from political mass shooters right? At one point it just becomes this one thing that's like all mixed together because we're having in the United States, we're having these constant attacks and constant, often the body count is very high. Like what becomes the difference anymore? Does it really matter? Like the Allen, Texas guy who was a Latino neo-Nazi who killed a bunch of people in an outlet mall This is really a neo-Nazi action Like he was like clearly if we look you look at his stuff or an article called Nazis of color about this dynamic

Starting point is 01:20:54 But was his action how was his action necessarily any different than like a school shooting or whatever? I just like you know, it's just like he's going somewhere and killing random people. Like, what is this about? So I think we're seeing this syncretic murder cult is really, I know other people have different ways of posing this that is sprawling out on different online platforms and appealing to very young alienated people, probably whose whole lives are online.

Starting point is 01:21:21 I think especially younger people who went through COVID, Zoomers, and I guess people younger than that would be Generation Alpha. Spend more time online than any other generation. Obviously they must. And this becomes, especially when they're much younger, the horizon of their world. Right? And if they're incels and they're not really connected to other people, they're not connected to their family. Like it just, it just drives these impulses more and more. And they don't have the maturity to look outside of it

Starting point is 01:21:46 or to think about the repercussions of it, or think of having the empathy to think about how it's gonna affect other people and their families. ["Siege of the Dead"] And so when it comes to Siege, what would you say its current role in this sort of evolving syncretic murder culture that we have is? Is Siege's legacy now just that its ideological lineage lives on in sort of the pterogram milieu or is it still itself influential?

Starting point is 01:22:23 Well, some of this is a question of ideas. I think sometimes siege acts as a symbol. People can gesture that their neo-Nazi is a serious neo-Nazi 450 page tone. They didn't read it. They didn't all read it. Yeah, I know read siege. It's like, how many of you have read siege?

Starting point is 01:22:43 And I found out doing the work that there's like an edited 100 page version and then there's like a little pocket version and then someone even made the ten tenants of siege There's this spark notes murder calls. Well, Adam Wofford division apparently had a test on siege to get in I'm like, I know these people didn't write they're like a like a lot of very disturbed or, you know, people who aren't gonna like, it's a boring text. I mean, I read it twice and like… I've read portions, but I'm not gonna sit here and say I read the whole book. It's 450 pages. Man, I read every newsletter and the book and it's, yes, no, no. So, it acts as a

Starting point is 01:23:19 symbol to be like, look, we have a serious intellectual thing. How many Christians have read the Bible? Let's be really serious. I think that, yeah, I think that's the right analogy, right? That it is a foundational text, but they're not all sitting down and digesting or even understanding it. Yeah. I mean, how many communists have read Das Kapital? Even just Volume 1, which I have, I would like to say I have, actually. Is it more or less boring than Siege? It's more intellectual. And so, there's that, and there's also like the conclusions are there Right. The whole argument is developed in siege, but you really just need to take the conclusions

Starting point is 01:23:54 Which is you can't do any political work. It's hopeless You need to go out and commit dramatic acts of violence to help inspire people and And then maybe afterwards there'll be some Aryan, blah, blah, blah. Frankly, that's all you need to know about it. Because that's what it advocates. You just need the praxis that it concludes. And most activists aren't intellectuals. Like I always say, a movement can have three slogans.

Starting point is 01:24:21 And what you need to do on the left, you need to make sure those are the right slogans pointing in the right direction. Because somebody who flows into activism, who's young, who doesn't matter if they're young, doesn't have a background in politics, is going to take the thing seriously that you say. And you can only say so many things to people. Political movements are stupid. I mean, this is why we are the 99% was great. It was great. Wasn't true. I mean, half of Americans are like it, you know, support the Republicans. But like, it's like one thing and then the person can think about those things.

Starting point is 01:24:49 They're not going to have complicated ideas. So what is, what is, what are the slogans that come out of something? What are the basic, what does it boil down to the things you're saying? And people have inherited that from Siege or inherited it secondhand, you know, because Terrogram is very well versed in what siege is about. I mean, Adam often had to read it. So they were more, I think, into it as a text. And then as it's gone out, you know, pterogram people, the pterogram collective certainly knew what was in it and stuff. And so people are being affected by it even if they don't know, even if they haven't read it, even if they don't know that's the origin of those ideas. Right, so pterogram is directly downstream of siege, right? So, siege was a newsletter that became a book. People read the book, and the people who read that book

Starting point is 01:25:33 turned it back into a zine, right? So, it's sort of... Oh, to some level. Right, it's moving through its phases, and now it's regressing back into sort of mimetic zine form. But people who join these movements who want something more intellectual, because everyone who joins a religious or political movement, some people want a more rigorous, they're like, well, what's the reason for this? Well, I have these questions. How do you answer them? What is, why are we doing this? Want more rigorous, some people want a more rigorous background,

Starting point is 01:26:00 can turn to siege and as they get older will turn to siege or move out of it they're like what were the ideas behind this why why did we have these ideas and I think that's it's normal I mean there are all kinds of weird intellectual groundings for white supremacists a lot of it is theology which is sort of curious and I I kind of concluded at some point that you just needed something complicated because they couldn't use race science anymore and there weren't people who developed social science, other than someone like Alon DeBenoist, who's saying something much more complicated than most white supremacists are.

Starting point is 01:26:32 And so like theology just allowed something intellectual for people to chew on. You know what I mean? Like, like people are real smart, who are very analytical, want something to chew on with the ideas, whether it really changes their practice or not. And I think there has to be something that serves that need. And so I guess wrapping up, because this is supposed to keep these daily shows short, what is the takeaway that you want people to come away from this book with, I guess, especially in this political moment? I think there's two things. The book has two things. One, I just want to have people have

Starting point is 01:27:03 a better understanding of neo-Nazism in the US and how things. One, I just want to have people have a better understanding of neo-Nazism in the US and how it developed. It's just one big blur, it's part of other things, and I see it as a distinct strain, and I want people to have just a better understanding of that political movement's origins, which is maybe a more scholarly thing. And I am, my next book, I hope, if I can get a contract,

Starting point is 01:27:22 is to write a history of national socialism in America, because again, there's not a single book that describes that, which is very strange. Certainly not a history post-war and there may be a pre-war one, but not one that puts it all together. So there's a lot of ignorance about this movement. And the second part about the cultural actors is about the danger of taking a radical cultural movement and to use impulses like transgression and turn them into the very toxic politics, into terrorist politics at the end of the day. I had a discussion on Blue Sky. It was amazing. You could see it wasn't Twitter. I had a useful discussion on Blue Sky and where I learned something. It was just fabulous. And it was this woman posted that she was like, essentially, in Matzah, I read it, in

Starting point is 01:28:05 the 20th century, there was always this assumption that transgressive art, avant-garde art, was implicitly progressive. Sometimes it was ideological, but even when it wasn't, even when it had some dodgy elements, the impulse of it led to progressive, left-leaning politics. And it's very, the transgression was progressive. And I mean, these guys I'm looking at are working in the 80s. And you see it now, we've all seen it with 4chan, like that was never, that isn't true.

Starting point is 01:28:34 And that was never true. It's never true. Right. I mean, those of us in the punk scene in the 80s and 90s, it could see this, even if we certainly didn't put it that way, with like skinheads in particular, it was contested terrain where people were trying to take this subculture and pull it

Starting point is 01:28:48 to the left and right. There were so many Nazis, but there were anti-fascist skinheads too. Sharps. Sharps to some extent. Sharps were, a lot of them are right-wing nationalists. They just weren't Nazis. This is a common. There was groups like Rash, Red and Anarchist skinheads who still exist, but there was a contested terrain where people were trying to pull it in different directions. This is still the case in neo-folk, in heathen religious circles. And that's sort of, there's an implication, which I don't think I can only put it into

Starting point is 01:29:16 words now, that the transgressive elements of these subcultures didn't necessarily go one way or the other, and it was something you'd have to fight over. Like they could go in any direction. And I think it was clear on 4chan early on, I once was mentioned very early on on 4chan, and someone chimed in, and they're like, leave him alone, he's my friend. And I'm like, which of my friends are on 4chan?

Starting point is 01:29:37 And defending me, but like, 4chan didn't have to end up the way it did, you know? The earlier internet culture wasn't like this. It was progressive or libertarian or a more decent libertarian reading of libertarianism than we have now. So that's the second part. I mean, other than these guys, if you ever were in the industrial or neo folk scene and you heard about there's Nazis, I have all of the receipt in detail in the book. If that's of interest to you. Yeah, Boyd Rice will tell you he never meant it, but I've read some of the primary documents

Starting point is 01:30:08 that lead me to believe otherwise. Yeah, and I made a video of him creatively entitled Boyd Rice Neo-Nazi Collaborator. And I know you're like, Spencer, what are you really getting at here? And I show the letters and stuff. And just if you're not familiar with these figures, I know a lot of people, they were very obscure movements at the time. And you know, people are not familiar with them,. I know a lot of people. They were very obscure movements at the time, and people are not familiar with them, but I think are familiar enough with this idea of a super radical cultural movement about

Starting point is 01:30:33 step-by-step I show how it can move into fully politicized, a transgressive movement can move into a fully politicized, super toxic neo-Nazism that is espousing terrorism. And that this is something that we always have to watch out for in our own religious movements and our own cultural movements, in occult circles. I just did a podcast with some, you know, occult-style esoteric podcasts, and I was talking about Satanists who become Nazis.

Starting point is 01:30:58 Satanists are sort of, I would say, split these days, but there's definitely a Nazi, you know, piece in there, a very visible one. And so some of it's just about these things. That's an important takeaway too, that, you know, in any subculture, especially this sort of transgressive subcultures, like, you know, counterculture music and art and, you know, occult spaces. If you have a magical practice that you engage in, people who engage in, you know, practice pagan faiths. In all of these subcultures, you need to call out these bad actors early and often.

Starting point is 01:31:29 Push back, don't let them bully you, and push them out of your spaces. Absolutely. And Nazis ruin everything. They intentionally go into all these spaces. And sometimes don't intentionally. Actually, this was a comment on Stormfront I learned from, talking about Nazis and the animal rights movement. And they're like, Spencer doesn't understand. We're not infiltrating these movements. We're just vegans. We're just also Nazis. But we're not vegans because we're Nazis. We're not coming here from some other reason. Well, you can't let them sit with you either way. Well, this is a funny story. I don't know if you have time, but I heard this story from a friend of mine that they

Starting point is 01:32:08 were in a vegan group in Southern California, I think, and they had an unofficial party like a barbecue. It was people from the group, you know, from the group doing it. People brought their partners. It wasn't an official group function, but this one member of the group brought her husband, who was Kevin McDonald. Oh. And they were vegetarians or vegans.

Starting point is 01:32:27 And people were like, holy fuck. And he was like, I mean, I feel a little sympathetic to him. He's like, hey man, I don't know. I'm just, I'm a vegetarian or whatever. I'm here with my wife. She's going to a party. Like. No, you're not allowed to have friends.

Starting point is 01:32:39 You're not allowed to have friends. You're not allowed to have hobbies. You can't be here. Yeah, but he's like, I'm not here to recruit anyone. I'm here. You know what I mean? The barbecue is over when the race scientist shows up. Well, this became a big discussion in the group about whether to push him out or not.

Starting point is 01:32:55 But you have to do these things. And if you even if you don't want to, they're my friend or everyone's welcome or whatever, what is going to end up happening if you don't push the Nazi out is that. More Nazis show up. Well, if it's a single person, people are gonna start leaving, people of color are gonna leave, Jews are gonna leave, LGBTQ plus people are gonna leave,

Starting point is 01:33:14 and you're gonna end up defending this one person, losing many more. So even just on your own enlightened self-interest, if you wanna keep your group together, and I've seen this again and again and again, and then they're like, you're defending a Nazi, so you're one too. So yeah, I've seen this again and again and again, and then they're like you're defending a Nazi So you're one too. So yeah, you got to kick these people out even just for practical reasons I have a very low bar for people these days and I try to I try to appeal

Starting point is 01:33:35 I try to appeal to the base of reasons sometimes with people, you know well if you would like to learn more about how a couple of guys in the counterculture movement in the 80s are responsible for the publication of the book that serves as the Bible for Modern Nazi Terrorism, you can pick up a copy of Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Counterculture Fascism, the Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege by Spencer Sunshine from Rutledge Press. It's available, I think, wherever books are sold. I bought my copy directly from the publisher, Rutledge Press is available. I think wherever books are sold. I bought my copy directly from the publisher, Rootledge Press.

Starting point is 01:34:06 I think it was only $27, you know, a bargain and a steal. So pick up a copy of that. And where else can people find your work Spencer? Thank you for now that you mentioned that I am on all of the, all of the socials usually at transform six, seven, eight, nine, uh, have a webpage if you want to, if you have an RSS feed, if someone said this recently, they're like, it's actually one of the better ways to keep track of people is like, there's this is your followers, zillion people. Anyway, Spencer sunshine.com.

Starting point is 01:34:33 Also, if you'd like to support anti-fascist research and get a warm fuzzy feeling, you should sign up for my Patreon for as little as $2 a month that you can help me out with the rent and get some exclusive content. So, yep. Well, hell yeah. Thank you so much for joining us today. Yeah. Thanks for having me on the show. It's been great. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest episode is with Bill Gates. This is a world where somebody can have over a hundred billion dollars. What is that? These fortunes are almost illegitimate unless in a very smart way given back.

Starting point is 01:35:24 One of the biggest names in business tech and philanthropy. Exploring and investing in innovative solutions to some of the world's toughest problems. Bill Gates. Starting with Microsoft where I had monomaniacal focus, giving up weekends and vacation. It wasn't some big sacrifice. I loved it. I've always underestimated how incredible my father was. He would say, hey, I'm sorry I worked so hard. And I'd say, no, no, that was fine.

Starting point is 01:35:49 I feel lucky that he lived as long as he did. It brings tears to my eyes because he was incredible. Do you remember one of the final conversations you had with him? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. John Stewart is back at The Daily Show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports

Starting point is 01:36:21 and more. Joined by the sharp voices of the shows, correspondents, and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

Starting point is 01:36:39 or wherever you get your podcasts. wherever you get your podcasts. Snakes, zombies, sharks, heights. Speaking in public, the list of fears is endless. But while you're clutching your blanket in the dark, wondering if that sound in the hall was actually a footstep, the real danger is in your hand when you're behind the wheel. While you might think a Great White Shark is scary, what's really terrifying and even deadly is distracted driving.

Starting point is 01:37:11 Eyes forward, don't drive distracted. Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? Go slower? I met Santi at a luau party in October. I'm Santi. Damien. Oh, it was bizarre The guy just disappeared one day Santi has been missing ever since

Starting point is 01:37:31 The hookup. What is that? I'm solving a mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now like no matter how hard I try all roads lead to the hookup You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to lead to the hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to- Yeah, that's a word for it. This is such terrible representation, I'm so sorry.

Starting point is 01:37:54 Poppers? These aren't just any poppers. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. No, not my psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either. Listen to The Hookup, starting February 14th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Welcome to IKATAPIT here, a podcast where the singular it is seemingly irrelevant now because everything is happening all of the time.

Starting point is 01:38:27 I'm your host Mia Wong. And one of the many, many, many chaotic things that has been going on over the last two weeks since Trump took power has been a bunch of funding freezes to the the US federal government grant system. And I think to a lot of people that doesn't sound like an enormously big deal but that is unbelievably catastrophic for like I would go so far to say is like the survival of the human species for reasons they will get to in a second but unbelievably bad for the

Starting point is 01:38:59 quality of life of everyone on earth and to get a sense of exactly what this kind of stuff does, what these funding freezes do and what the sort of threat, particularly to the future of American science is. I have brought in two people who are intimately familiar with this. Arju von Sales, who's a surgeon and professor of medicine and friend of the show. Yeah, come on. Yeah, definitely. I don't know why I had such a hesitant friend of the show.

Starting point is 01:39:27 Because it wasn't in my notes. That was ad-living it. But yeah, friend of the show, Kamehona, who is a gas-show entorologist and the host of the podcast, House of Pods, and both of you two. Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you so much for having us. Yeah, thank you. I'm excited to be here for your most Persian episode ever. HAHAHAHA! Pretty sure. Thank you. I'm excited to be here for your most Persian episode ever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty sure.

Starting point is 01:39:48 We may have done episodes of like, that were like about Iran. Yeah. That were like, this is as Persian as it gets. Two Persian doctors talking about Trump is about as Persian as it gets. And you're not, you're not overselling it. This is a large scale attack on the healthcare infrastructure of the United States on a massive level

Starting point is 01:40:09 so you're not lying it is a serious serious issue not just for us but for the whole world yeah and one of the places I want to start I think is with because it was happening I think in NSF NIH a bit before this happened but the OPM the Office of Personnel Management sent out this memo last week that was a... It was nominally a response to this very weird Trump executive order that's him being like every single program that has to do with civil rights, which is like... So my description is anything that has to do with civil rights at all, like, gone.

Starting point is 01:40:42 His description of it is like DEI and woke, so like anything that has to do with civil rights at all like gone. His description of it is like DEI and woke. So like anything that has to do with queer people, anything that has to do with like racial inequality and they were supposed to like go through and review every single like government grant program for anything and- But don't forget he also included the gender ideology, which is a meaningless phrase and the green new deal is all part of it Yeah, yep. Yep. You know and this is part of the raft of executive orders It was particularly the anti-trans executive orders

Starting point is 01:41:12 but OPM's response to this ganalfos personnel management response was to just freeze literally every single grant program in the country and this was everything from Pell grants and like work study for college students to like food aid for single mothers to my personal favorite And I don't know why this never made it into the press because I'm apparently the only one who went through and read the list But one of the things that he froze funding for was security patrols for nuclear weapons manufacturing sites So like we almost like Yeah, why is that included it was because literally what happened was they found a list of every single grant that like anyone does like and any like program that gives out grants and they froze all of them and so like another one of Them that when I when I said this is like this is a threat to all life on earth

Starting point is 01:41:58 I was not I was not joking here one of the other ones was defunding one of the very important like international nuclear non-proliferation organizations like specifically the one that's there to make sure that like random people don't get like enriched uranium or like obtain nuclear weapons so like we we dodged a like giant nuke sized bullet when when like most of these programs got their money back after a judge was like well you obviously can't do this this is so unbelievably illegal that it's astounding like The Constitution like very blatantly says that the power of the purse is Congress not the president like stop Yeah, but I would just want to clarify for the people listening here that it wasn't just grants specifically

Starting point is 01:42:40 It was like all federal assistance Yeah, one of the things that was very confusing and chaotic was this question of does this mean snap is gone? Does this mean wick is gone? What about head start? What about meals on wheels? I mean there are Tons of federal assistance programs out there and they had only made an exception for social security and Medicare Yeah in the memo, but not medicaid And what happened the next day, but the Medicaid portal went down, right? Yeah, it is. It's chaotic, too, because like all the programs you just named were on the list of like programs that they were putting a freeze on, but then it wasn't clear what was going to happen with them. And right. And it's still not. Right. Yeah, we just

Starting point is 01:43:21 have a judge. We have we found one judge with a backbone in the entire country so far, and he said, no, you cannot. Yeah. Yeah, I am surprised actually that Trump hasn't gone out on the attack. Maybe I just missed it, like attacking that judge, you know? But it is, I mean, what's so confusing to me is, you know, I get it, at least in some part

Starting point is 01:43:40 of their weird internal, terrible logic, transphobic logic. I get why they're doing some of the things they're doing, but then some of them don't even make sense within their own whack internal logic. Like when they scrub, for example, the CDC for all the terms that they didn't like, gender terms, transgender terms, things like that. They also scrub things like following maternal morbidity or opioid use, things that don't at least on the surface even fit with their attacks on woke ideology. So it seems like it's a complete mess to me what's happening. And what's terrifying about it is not just that it's a mess,

Starting point is 01:44:24 but it is happening. I mean, they are doing it, they are pushing it, even though they clearly don't even seem to really know what they're doing, or even have a great sense internally of what they're doing. I think that's the danger of this right now is that this is revenge, right? They're lashing out in sort of in pure anger and pure hatred. And they have been given control of an apparatus that they don't understand at all, right? Like that's how you get defunding nuclear police. That's how you get them defunding

Starting point is 01:44:50 like the Barry Goldwater Memorial Grant thing that gives money to kids for writing essays about Barry Goldwater. They don't understand what the state is and what it does. And they're just trying to take the whole thing apart. And they're just trying to sort of rampage their way through it. And it means that we're in this situation now We're like for a long time the the line on like trans rights was like

Starting point is 01:45:09 Well, you should defend trans rights because they're gonna come for you next and that's no longer true What is actually happening here is in order to kill us there? They are willing to kill every they're willing to let all of you die in nuclear fire Yeah, you know, it's specifically in order to hurt us, right? That's the sort of line we're at where, you know, all of these sort of complicated systems and all of these sort of complicated funding mechanisms are just getting lit on fire by people

Starting point is 01:45:35 who don't understand what they're doing and don't care. Right, just out of spite or something. For sure out of spite and hate. But I wanna just take a step back and think about the fact that all of this is happening because of two versus three executive orders, depending how you think about it. But they're literally executive orders. They're not laws in the book. Congress did not pass anything. It's like this elderly man woke up and said, hey, let's get rid of DEI and DEIA. For example, those are the terms they use exactly without saying what DEI is or what DEIA is. And then just, I feel that we need to pause for a moment on the A, DEIA, and they

Starting point is 01:46:14 spell out, you know, A is for accessible. Wiping out everything related to accessibility is directly in violation of the ADA and makes no sense and is cool and all of that, but also just like legally it makes no kind of sense unless they are going to go after the ADA, which I am guessing is part of their plan to the extent that there is a plan. But the two key executive orders here are the sex and gender one that's defending, quote unquote defending women, that basically dictates that sex must be only male and female, thereby erasing intersex people completely. And that there's really either essentially saying there's no such thing as gender and that the only gender that they see are willing to recognize are male and female, thereby erasing trans folks, intersex people, non-binary folks, etc. gender, queer,

Starting point is 01:47:02 gender fluid, all of those people. So for them to go into like the CDC data sets, take them offline so that they can binarize whatever is there, eliminate, I'm assuming, I don't know that this is the time, but I'm assuming that that's what they're doing, taking any sex that's not male or female out of there and then removing gender as a variable because they've said that no grant funding should go to any assessment of gender period. So that's when you're talking to me about like how they're willing to throw everyone under the bus just to pursue this transphobic agenda about what you're talking about. They're willing to take huge plots of information off of the internet so people can no longer research or

Starting point is 01:47:41 position anyone else can no longer access this information just to make sure That there is no hint or reference to anyone who is transgender that seems to be Like the key thing that they're trying to do with all of this So they have thrown the entire government into chaos and the lives of millions of people into chaos All to remove the t In lgbt. Yeah, and and the stuff that're doing, like the destruction of this research data, the way that it's been just taken down and destroyed. Little parts of it have come back up after the sort of backlash, but what they're doing

Starting point is 01:48:16 is staging a digital version of the Nazis burning all of the books at the Institute for Sexual Research. That's explicitly what they're doing. It's literally the same stuff. Like it is research on queerness and trans people that they are lighting on fire. Yep, 100%. And you know who else lights research

Starting point is 01:48:34 on queer and trans people on fire? It's the sponsors of this show, it's the products and services, yeah. That's the way you get those big bucks. That's how you do it. That's professional broadcasting And we are back So I want to move from that to kind of the next phase after we got out of the sort of OPM

Starting point is 01:49:07 Like suspending everything phase, which has been this kind of this uncertainty around a whole bunch of the other funding agencies for science, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health. Can you talk a bit about what's been going on with grants there before we move into like how this whole process works? Yeah, so the first sign that something was materially going to change after these executive orders, as I recall, I'm living with along with everyone else and what is time, but the first thing that I recall is the study section being canceled. The study sections are meetings where scientists come together, they each will have read various grant proposals

Starting point is 01:49:47 and scored them on a number of different dimensions. And then they come together and discuss, they don't discuss all of them, by the way, they only discuss the ones that have, that seem to have the most merit. And then out of those, they make recommendations for which ones they believe should get funded. So these are a critical part of the process

Starting point is 01:50:07 by which the government gives out funds for research. If these meetings do not happen, people's grants are not getting evaluated, assessed and recommended for funding. That means they're not getting the funding. That means they're not hiring people or they're having to fire people they already had in or lay off people they already had in their lab.

Starting point is 01:50:24 They're not able to continue the important work that they're doing. They may lose their job. Like really truly people can lose their job because they were not able to secure enough funding to support themselves and their labs. So these are really, really important meetings. And those have been canceled for both the NSF and the NIH for at least the last couple of weeks. And as of yesterday, I saw Dr. Megan Ray said that her or not maybe not her, but that study sections were canceled yesterday that were due to happen today. So there had been some communication around perhaps the freeze of those activities ending on February 1st today that we're recording is February 3rd and those study sections for today were cancelled.

Starting point is 01:51:06 On the other hand, NSF, which is obviously a separate organization, has informally, I've heard, decided that they're going to resume from study sections although they haven't resumed yet. And if I could add, just to be totally clear with your listeners, these are incredibly important organizations for discovery of new medical breakthroughs and for pushing science forward. For the NIH, for example, the NIH is a big part of the reason we have mRNA vaccines now. They were the ones helping to promote that research for decades before we were able to turn them into vaccines. And it's because of a lot of what they did that we're able to do that.

Starting point is 01:51:45 When we're looking for new breakthroughs, we're looking for something where a patient comes to us and they're like, isn't there anything? We've tried everything. Isn't there anything that we could at least try or some trial that we could be involved in? That's where we find these things. These are the things that we're talking about,

Starting point is 01:52:02 these really important healthcare infrastructure that we're talking about, these really important health care infrastructure that that we're discussing. Yeah, and you know, between NIH and National Science Foundation and you know, Department of Energy is having a similar thing to this. Because Department of Energy funds all like high energy physics research. So all of your sort of like particle accelerator or stuff like that. It's not just sort of like the national labs, for example, that they get funding from these places,

Starting point is 01:52:26 although national labs are like, you get your funding from grants like everyone else. But, I mean, this is all the way down to the level of like undergrads and college chemistry labs. Like they are getting paid out of these grants from National Science Foundation, from the National Institutes for Health. Like all of these institutions from National Science Foundation from the National Institutes For health like all of these all of these institutions pay out everything and it's like this is the basis of How all science almost all science like there's some private sector stuff

Starting point is 01:52:55 But the thing is like the the giant private like Bell Labs, right? Like your your old-school giant private sector. Here's our giant R&D thing Like that's all kind of gone so you know like the only people who are getting funded by this are like weird startup guys and it's like okay look look look what they've invented in the last like 15 years it's like cryptocurrency NFTs which is cryptocurrency again Theranos don't forget yeah Theranos the metaverse Juicero like they're doing great It's a really great and people would be like only invented a eyes like no

Starting point is 01:53:28 National labs were you were using those a algorithms like a decade and a half ago. It's like yeah the gender of a ball, okay? We're not here to get it to be complaining about generative AI go go go go listen to edge. It's Ron's Like Here is that a lot of scientific and medical breakthroughs have come from labs and from researchers who have been funded by the NSF and the NIH. And I will just say, as an academic, these are certainly the kind of premier funding opportunities that we have. Like it also was really critical in the careers of researchers to be able to show that their

Starting point is 01:54:09 work is worthy of this kind of funding. And that's part of why I was saying people's job, yes, the people we pay off of our grants, but also people like me, our job can be really dependent on whether we get this funding or not. And it's a generational thing too too because the students also need this funding And so people people who are undergrads particularly people who are like doctoral students like their research, right? Like the the stuff that they're doing while they're in graduate school like getting PhD so they can become scientists That's all also like funded by these grants and if that stuff goes away

Starting point is 01:54:41 Like it's not just that you're obliterating this generation of science Like you're kneecapping the next like three generations of scientists, right? Because each one of them down the line suddenly doesn't have the research experience that they're supposed to have exactly Yeah, right And also who would want to go into science if it's gonna be like yeah, right if they're just gonna be like some random person Who goes into the White House and goes never mind, we're not doing that anymore. Who wants to be exposed to those kinds of wins? A lot of the smartest doctors and scientists I know, they tend to be risk averse people. I mean, there's a lot of people at the CDC that could try to maybe sue for, you know,

Starting point is 01:55:21 for not being able to use the terms that they want to use and study the things they want to study. And they might even, I use and study the things they wanna study. They might even, I don't know, maybe they could win. I don't usually talk to a lawyer about that. Seems unlikely, because they're not private sector. But to them, they're not going to, because they're living paycheck to paycheck, too, some of these people that are in the lower levels.

Starting point is 01:55:38 People that aren't making a ton of money, they have livelihoods that they're trying to maintain. They're not gonna try and rock the boat when it comes to these things. It's putting them in a really tenuous position already. They're already worried about their next grant or their next, however they're going to fund their labs. Yeah, and I just want to highlight that postdocs, I think, are particularly vulnerable because

Starting point is 01:56:00 they are often like the NSF-free has actually demonstrated this very well there they aren't like as Poppet said like they're definitely often moving paycheck to paycheck and what the NSF freeze did was that it made it so folks could not get their next paycheck because we were this was happening at the end of the month right so it was delaying people getting their next paycheck and in particular I'm talking about postdoc yes it can affect graduate students as well but a lot of postdoc funding, like one of the grants that I have actually, we work directly with postdoctoral and some predoctoral, but many postdoctoral training

Starting point is 01:56:33 programs that fund postdoc. And to the extent that any of those grants are put on hold, that is threatening the income of people who really don't have buffer, who cannot afford to not get paid. And also, you know, and this is another aspect of this too, I really doubt they understand this, but you know, there's also a lot of postdocs who are not from the US, right? They're who are your international students, international students who are just coming, you know, coming in from other countries. And those people, if you suddenly don't have a grant,

Starting point is 01:57:06 you don't have a job, and that is really, really bad for your immigration status. Like that is enough to get you kicked out of the US. And this is the thing that's constantly leveraged in sort of labor organizing, right? Or like one of the threats that universities will make. Usually they do it implicitly. Sometimes they'll just go out and say, very legally, we'll be like, okay, if you this

Starting point is 01:57:27 postdoc or like you this grad student, like tries to like join this union, like your legal status in the US is going to be compromised. But that's another sort of risk from this is like those people's ability to stay in the US and not get deported basically. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And then we talk about bringing in, you know, I know there's a lot of internal debate right now between the Republican Party on, you know, bringing in people to work these jobs and bringing in these minds, but this is a clear example of where the United States has excelled in the past. We've been able

Starting point is 01:58:03 to bring in great minds from all over the world to help us work on research and to help us come to work in these labs. I mean, you go to like UCSF and Stanford and you see these people working these labs on important stuff. And that's another like, that's something we're going to lose and I hope we don't lose it permanently. I hope it's not, you know, something like you say will last generations worth of damage, but it's hard to see how it won't at this point. Yeah, I was just looking up, I 100% agree and to your point about how much of the science and even other amazing things that are done in the country are done by immigrants.

Starting point is 01:58:40 I think it's over just over a third of Nobel laureates from the United States Yeah, the United States, you know, and it's sort of a nationalist thing, right? But like for 99% of the time for better like the US has been very very good at absorbing other country scientists when you know this like we Gotta be you know Okay So like it's hard to take too much credit for it because we also took a bunch of scientists from the nots like from the actual Nazis but we also expect a bunch of very famous US scientists like were in the US because they were fleeing the rise of the Nazis and you know like we are looking at a

Starting point is 01:59:15 situation where we are going to be the opposite of this we're like our scientists are going to be fleeing everywhere else because our government is being run by these people. Yeah. And I wanted to highlight, I think that's literally all really great points about the effect of not getting the funding and who it trickles down to. But I also wanted to highlight that there's two different kind of ways that the funding can be withheld. The one is just that review process and not actually reviewing grants, right?

Starting point is 01:59:43 So like I personally submitted a proposal in the fall. Who knows if when that will get discussed. There are people in that kind of position where they maybe were dependent on or really hoping to get like funding this round and now they they don't know if or when that proposal will get reviewed. Of course, you never know if you're going to get funded, but to not even have a chance at review is an unanticipated barrier. Then on the other side, there to not even have a chance at review is an unanticipated barrier. Then on the other side, there's people who have been funded and are in the position that I'm in, which is not knowing whether I'm going to receive the next payment. Because the NIH, so I have a five-year grant, and we are currently in year three.

Starting point is 02:00:22 Every year you have to submit a status update on your project and then they determine based on lots of different things, including what budget they are given from Congress, how much of the funds that they had originally projected they'll be able to give to you. And there are, as you can imagine, a lot of people who are doing work that's related to health disparities, health equity, women's health,

Starting point is 02:00:44 LGBTQ health, LGBTQ health, et cetera, who now do not know if our work falls under quote unquote DEI or DEIA or gender ideology or all these vague terms that the administration is using. And so we actually don't know whether, like for me, I don't know if I'm going to get my next set of funds in July. So I was in the process of interviewing to hire someone to join my lab. And I genuinely don't know whether I should hire someone knowing that I may lose funds in five months, or do I just try to make do without?

Starting point is 02:01:18 And then that's a job that no one gets. And if you play that out over the 300,000 people who are funded in various ways by the NIH, you start to understand the scope of damage that's being done here. Can you tell people what your current grant is? Because I think that is pertinent to this conversation. Yes, yes. Yes, you're right. Okay. So my grant is called Ending Sexual Harassment Teaching of Principle Investigators of the Q acronym, E-STOP. Yes, you're right. Okay, so my grant is called ending sexual harassment teaching of principal investigators I've a cute acronym e stop. So our goal is to try to help people

Starting point is 02:01:51 intervene when there is sexual harassment with the Ultimate goal decreasing the amount of sexual harassment that's that's happening in biomedical research Oh, they they don't they don't want you to do with that like oh no Oh, they don't want you to do that. Like, oh no. Right, because one of the great, terrible ironies of this whole thing is that their argument is that they're doing a lot of this to protect women. The sanctity of women or whatever. This is, you know, I am hopeful that I am wrong for you. I hope that this is not the case, but I could see them very easily saying that this somehow fits under woke ideology. And even though it's something clearly that is designed to help, not just women, but a lot of women could benefit from this, you know?

Starting point is 02:02:37 Yeah. Yeah. And to your point, like, everyone is at risk for experiencing sexual harassment. It's just that the majority of folks who experience it are women or sexual and gender minorities. And so, yeah, it's really, obviously, as you can imagine, been thinking a lot about how they are interpreting these words that they're using and whether sexual harassment, which by the way, is a form of discrimination, like is that DEI, is stopping discrimination DEI?

Starting point is 02:03:04 I don't know. Probably, like who knows? Well, you know, quickly if I may, I can go over this. There was this email that was dispersed from the CDC about terms that were no longer gonna be used, that were gonna be scrubbed from the CDC's databases. And they included words like gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non-binary, non-binary, they use both.

Starting point is 02:03:31 Yeah, one with the hyphen and one without the hyphen. Assigned male at birth, assigned female at birth, biologically male or biologically female. So anything that terms like that they're gonna scrub. Wait, let me, can I just clarify that? Because actually it's even worse, yeah, I think, than what you just described. Because what they actually said in that email, as I understand it, is that they, there's all these researchers who work at the CDC. So they said, if you have submitted a manuscript for publication to any scientific or medical journal that has any of these words in it, you must retract that manuscript.

Starting point is 02:04:05 So it's even much, much broader than just what's on the CDC's website. It's any work that anyone employed by the CDC has done, any research I just said that they've done, that they are in the process of publishing, they have been asked to rescind that work so that they can remove these god-awful words, right, that are actually words that god-awful words, I'm writing that, that are actually words

Starting point is 02:04:25 that are used routinely in science, but they can no longer have them in their manuscripts. And how nonsensical would their manuscripts be without these words? I mean, it's, yeah, it's terrible. The other thing that blows my mind about this is how incredibly inefficient, maybe that's the point, is how ridiculous it's gonna be.

Starting point is 02:04:44 Who's gonna be doing this? Who's gonna be looking over this? To my knowledge, there's only been one political pointy in regards to this, and that's at the CDC. It's Susan Monera, the acting director there at the CDC. And it's all gonna go through that one person? Every study is gonna go through that one person? It makes no sense.

Starting point is 02:05:04 I don't even understand how it's gonna be Enforced it's a ridiculous thing It I'm sure they're gonna try to make some examples out of people but how are they even enforced this? We're gonna find out with your grant, I guess Yeah, I think the bleak thing about Specifically the fact that it's these study retractions and it's just you know This attempt to ban anyone from doing any research, right? Is that like the the problem for them with medical research about trans people is that everyone who's doing this who isn't a like

Starting point is 02:05:33 unbelievably rabid anti-trans person from the beginning you know looks at everything that they want to do to trans people and goes this is going to kill unbelievable numbers of us and I think like part of what they're doing here is they're trying to before any of this stuff would come out they're trying to stop scientific apparatus from revealing the fact that they are trying to wipe us out and that's yeah unbelievably bleak thing to live through I guess Yeah unbelievably bleak thing to live through, I guess. Yeah. I'm so sorry. It sucks.

Starting point is 02:06:09 I mean, honestly, I wish I could say something more. It's really terrible. I will say this, like, genuinely, because it never happens. Obviously, the best thing you can do for trans people is, like, something that involves the fall of the regime. Like, the second best thing is, like is like hire us because no one does it. And we can't no one can get jobs. Right. And but like the third minimum thing after like money or like housing is like

Starting point is 02:06:35 like check in on the trans people in your life because nobody actually ever does it. And it means a lot. And it's not going to like stop the wrath of the state. But like, I don't know all people feel less alone This is this has been the via trans public service announcement. It's now over. I Think that's great advice in other friend of the show Margaret killjoy And she also said you know when you hire People you hire trans people put them front of house make it visible

Starting point is 02:07:03 And then when you go and you frequent these places, let them know that's part of why you do it. Like, I like that you guys are doing this. I'm here to support that. I mean, because we're talking about money, we're talking about people's livelihoods are at stake. And we have to show that these are people that are not only employable,

Starting point is 02:07:21 but could benefit your business. Yeah, honestly, I don't know what to say about it either, aside from everything that they're doing is atrocious. It is a scientific, it is inhumane. It will harm people. Yeah, people are gonna die. People probably have already died. If you're trans and you're listening to this fucking,

Starting point is 02:07:43 don't die, think about how good it's going to be to get a piss on these people's graves in like eight years. It's gonna fight It is it is I agree is in dad to our Gavans point it is dumb on every metric I can't think of a single metric in that that these actions are not hurtful and gonna harm us in the long run To close this out This is something that I think is very important because no one in the US apparently seems to understand this at all How does the grant process actually work? And what is it? Because, you know, this process is the difference between you like having clean

Starting point is 02:08:30 water to drink. And like that study that was going to determine if your water is clean or not not happening. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, first thing I will say is that the word grant applies to lots and lots of different opportunities. And there are grants as small as like $1,000 or $5,000 and grants as large as multimillion dollars. And the processes actually are, I mean, they're analogous, but they can be pretty different because as you can imagine for a smaller grant, the amount of work that you have to do to earn that grant generally is a little bit less. But I can speak in the most detail to the NIH review

Starting point is 02:09:05 process and specifically to these grants that they call R01. These are like kind of their fanciest grants that go to individual researchers with their team, but it's led by an individual researcher often. And the way this works is, first of all, I want folks to understand it takes a year from the time that you apply until the time that you get money can take up to a full calendar year. And so you put in an immense amount of effort. So I'll use myself as an example, I apply for a grant in October, huge amount of effort, I don't know how many hours leading up to that grant submission. And then I just sit and wait for months, months and months

Starting point is 02:09:43 before there's even a study section, if study section happens. And then after that, it's still a couple more months before I might get information. It depends. Of course, there's some variability there. But it's a long, long process is what I'm trying to say. And the way the process starts is often

Starting point is 02:10:00 you will send what's called a letter of interest to the agency that you're applying to. So as you said earlier, it's the National Institutes of Health. So every institute has its own notice of funding opportunities or NOFOs that are like, here's what we're actually asking people to submit for at this point in time.

Starting point is 02:10:17 And then people will send a letter of interest to the program officer. Each grant mechanism will have its own program officer and you will send a letter of interest, maybe you get some feedback, and then you move forward to the actual grant itself. And I just wanna say that it is more work than probably anything else I've ever done except maybe my dissertation.

Starting point is 02:10:36 And so it's a huge amount of work. The R01 includes, for example, a one-page specific aims page, which is you have the entirety of the study somehow magically summarized in one page with your three aims. And if that doesn't get the reviewers' attention and if they don't think it's compelling and interesting and important, that may be the end.

Starting point is 02:10:56 You may have done all the rest of the work and they may only read that. And then you have a 12-page, these are single-spaced pages, single-sp space pages, half inch margin, 12 page research strategy. I don't know how many thousands of words that is, but I'm just telling you 12 single space pages is a lot of text about your research. And it's like one of these puzzles where it has to be exactly right. And you have these figures and you have to get them exactly the right size and the exact right place on the page with the legend

Starting point is 02:11:26 and everything so that it all magically fits in these 12 pages. Because if you don't do it right, they will literally reject your grant for formatting problems. And so you may have spent months writing this grant, and because you had the wrong font size or the wrong margin, that they can literally choose not to even read it. And then you're then having to wait

Starting point is 02:11:46 till either six months later if there's another opportunity or sometimes a full year later before you can try again. Also it's worth noting you also have to like do a bunch of science like if it was just you must do 12 you must write 12 pages of stuff and format it it would probably be okay but like you also have to do science like both for it and also while you're doing it It's incredibly hard to get these when someone gets a grant We all celebrate it for them because we're all so excited because we know it's not easy so what's funny about that is the Republicans make it seem like all you have to do is put in a couple terms like You know non-binary and you automatically get a grant they have like no idea how like

Starting point is 02:12:27 Challenging it is no it's like the only thing that could even potentially work like that is to say say whatever you're doing is cancer research Like that's the actual thing right like so sometimes you could like defraud the DOD by telling them like whatever research You're doing is camouflaged like it's not it's not, it's, even that is like, it makes it like 1% more likely that your endless hours of work. Yeah, I wish I could just write woke ideology on these two 12 pages and then like get a grant. But yeah, to your point, you have to, part of what's in those 12 pages

Starting point is 02:12:58 is what is the work that you've done that builds up to the work that you're proposing to do. And that's the whole section called preliminary studies. And what's in there varies depending on like what kind of research you're doing. If you're doing animal research, it might be various animal models that you've tested different things on that demonstrate, for example, that you are able to work with the specific animal model that you're proposing to you in this study and that you have the specific methodological skills for whichever type of say cellular analysis or whatever it is that you're doing, that you have those skills, that you have the specific methodological skills for whichever type of, say, cellular analysis or whatever it is that you're doing, that you have those skills, that you have the equipment,

Starting point is 02:13:30 that you're able to actually carry out that research. Because part of what they're evaluating is, can the person who's proposing to do this work actually do the work? The last thing they want to do is give you millions of dollars and have you fall flat on your face because you don't have the skills that are needed. So you have these pages, part of those pages, like often a page, two, three pages about what you have done to prepare for the work that you're proposing. And a lot of times to your point,

Starting point is 02:13:55 that work may or may not be funded. You may have to, if you're like at an academic institution, you might be using your startup funds, you might be trying to get smaller foundation grants or something to be able to do that work so that you can prove to the funding agency that you're able to do it. And then in addition to this 12 page thing, there are a bunch of additional documents that are required.

Starting point is 02:14:15 Like there's currently, this will probably change, but currently there is like a diversity plan. There is a how are you going to treat participants who are women and minorities. There is like an age document. There's a page are you going to treat participants who are women and minorities? There's like an age document. There's a page about resources and facilities. There's all these additional documents, which again, all have their own specific

Starting point is 02:14:31 formatting requirements. There's a project narrative, which is shorter, and then a project summary, which is longer, I think, where I could have those backwards. But anyway, so it's all these additional pages. It's not just the specific aims when just to reach your strategy. It's all of this plus the budget

Starting point is 02:14:43 and the budget justification. And like, you could just go on. But I think you start to understand that there are many, many files that go into a single grant application and it represents often months of work for an individual and their collaborators. And if you have, for example, another institution you're collaborating with, they all have to do a bunch of this paperwork as well. And there's a contract between the two and all this is done just to have a chance at getting funded Yeah, and you know the the disruptions to the funding system the disruptions to The studies the disruption to just the payout means that like all of this work that you're doing You know you have no idea whether

Starting point is 02:15:22 Whether like again all of this in some cases unpaid labor that you have been doing for months and whether, whether like, again, all of this, in some cases, unpaid labor that you have been doing for months and months and months, like, could just not happen. And also, like, it's worth noting to you, like, you also have to like, when you're figuring out what you're going to be doing next, like, working out whether or not your grant even has a chance of getting approved, like that it like is something that is that is it that is a long term decision that determines like what, like, you know, what colleges you go to, like what institutions you end up at, like all of that kind of stuff something that is that is it that is a long term decision that determines like what like you know what colleges you go to like what institutions you end up at like all of that kind of stuff and like that thing being all the stuff being up in the air and for people who run labs

Starting point is 02:15:53 yeah trying to figure out like can you so i don't personally work with graduate students but a lot of people do so can you afford to bring in and sponsor another support another graduate student can you afford the support of another postdoc? These are all long-term decisions. These aren't just like, okay, I'm going to hire some for two months until I find out the next thing. It's like you want to commit to people, especially trainees. So it makes it very difficult for people who run labs to make those decisions to bring people in because we don't wanna let people down. And so I think the kind of intuitive

Starting point is 02:16:27 and natural consequences that people will bring in fewer people because that's less risky than bringing in more people and then having to either cut their funding or let them go or whatever later on when you don't get the resources that you need. And I wanna just point out that institutions here have a major role to play. And not all institutions, and by that I mean higher education institutions, and not all of them are equally resource, obviously. But we all know that there

Starting point is 02:16:54 are quite a few in this country that have massive endowments. And so what is the plan there? And what is the support for the folks at their institutions. And I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to oversimplify what is in fact a very challenging issue, but it would be nice, it would be fantastic if some of these institutions came out and said we understand that this is a very challenging time, we remain committed to supporting the work of our faculty, our graduate students, our postdocs, etc. and we will fund anyone whose funding is withdrawn or withheld, let's just say.

Starting point is 02:17:29 It'd be nice if some of these very important, prestigious academic institutions showed maybe at least the same backbone as Costco. Yeah. That's all I ask. OK, two, I want to highlight two. It's very early in this game, but Brown did come out, I think it was yesterday or sometime over the weekend, stating clearly that they remain

Starting point is 02:17:51 committed to their values of academic freedom, right? So that's the way to say it, right? Like, we support our staff and employees and students, faculty, doing whatever work they think is important. I think that that was their roundabout way of saying, we're not abandoning the principles of DEI, but who knows? But that's what they said. But Princeton actually put out their annual report on DEI at Princeton. And I forget the exact wording, and I don't have it in front of me, but their president talked about how important it is to Support people from different backgrounds, etc. So that's two that are trying to do something. Yeah, I remain hopeful I remain. Yeah, also I got I got to put in my word a Costco hate here Which is they're currently screwing over their unions. So I thought they resolved it I thought they actually gave them the no they didn't they didn't the pay no increase. Oh, yeah, it's not resolved yet Yeah, I thought the hot dog was still 150 though. So that's important for me Read Jamie Loftus's book raw dog. I'm a doctor. I can't do that by law. Yeah

Starting point is 02:18:55 But even the NFL came out today and said that they're not gonna end their DEI programs any time NFL known for being I know right? and their DEI programs in E5 too. NFL, known for being strong supporters of DEI. Well, I mean, that is a thing though, right? If you want to understand why the NFL is doing that, like look at who the current heads of the NFL Players Association are and like who their past heads for the last decade have been,

Starting point is 02:19:17 and that will give you an indication of like why it's like that, so. Yeah, Mia follows football pretty closely. I can tell unfortunately Also, I kind of owe the NFL Players Association because they did they they did put out a statement in support of our unionization drive so Yeah, it was first week Well, I do want to say one more thing about the grant process, which is that often? People are submitting the same grant over and over and over because the funding rates are so low. And so often they will submit it the

Starting point is 02:19:54 first time, get feedback, make changes, resubmit later. And again, as I pointed out, it's not like this is a rolling submission process where any day of the week you can submit. I think for most mechanism, again, there's gonna be some variability from institute to institute, but at most twice a year. So like if they reject it, hopefully they give you feedback. By the way, sometimes you don't even get feedback because if you weren't one of the top grant applications, you don't even get discussed, so you may not get feedback.

Starting point is 02:20:22 But let's say you get feedback, then you try again, then maybe you try again and then maybe you try again. So sometimes it can take many cycles of this entire terrible process before you get funded once. And so to Kave's point about efficiency, I mean, if you think about it that way, it's extremely inefficient system. But the point I just wanted to make is that people work really, really hard to get these grants. And for some of the folks right now who are kind of in limbo waiting for study sections to review, this might be their third or fourth submission of something. And they were really hoping this was going to be the chance because at some point you can't keep pursuing unless you have some other independent income. Like often at some point you cannot keep pursuing a specific line of research.

Starting point is 02:21:06 So you have to think about what breakthrough is being put on hold or will never be identified because of all of this, because someone might have been waiting and maybe they can't wait for however long it takes to resolve this freeze. And maybe they end up switching their career path into something completely different.

Starting point is 02:21:24 And I'll just say like even on a smaller scale, I had a grant that a colleague and I submitted several years back that got funded. That was a very competitive grant. It was not a federal grant. It was a foundation. Very competitive. And we were delighted. We were, I mean, just thrilled to get funded.

Starting point is 02:21:38 And then we could not in the end take the grant. We did not do the work of the grant because he ended up not being able to find an appointment that was going to work for him in academia. So he went to industry. And so that work never got done. To this day, that work has not been done. I would love for it to be done. But those are the types of consequences that we're talking about when we're looking at like what's happening with these funds and the delay of distributing the funds and the chances that funds will be revoked from people. They really change the course of not just individual lives, but of science. Yeah. And I mean, like the most visual example I could think about this was I knew some people

Starting point is 02:22:14 who wanted to work in a coronavirus lab in 2019 and couldn't do it because they didn't their PI didn't have funding for work on a coronavirus thing. It's like, oh, it would have been useful if they'd you'd they'd gotten that grant So I think this is a decent enough place to wrap up I do I do have one thing that I want to plug which is something you were talking about earlier Which is putting which is these institutions like coming out and backing their scientists, right? And that's that's a thing that you can do you can put pressure on these institutions to do the right thing And so I it might be over by now And that's a thing that you can do. You can put pressure on these institutions to do the right thing.

Starting point is 02:22:45 And so it might be over by now, but like literally as we were recording this, there was a protest going on at NYU's hospital. Yeah, Langone. Because they've cut off care to trans youth. They cut off gender affirming care. Yeah. And so, you know, you can do this. The people who actually run these systems and, you know, you can do this, the people who actually run these systems and,

Starting point is 02:23:06 you know, and the entire federal government, right? What's the people running the federal government are relying on everyone just sort of sitting there being shocked, not knowing what to do and doing nothing. And you know, you can go show up to the administrators, the offices of the administrators of these places and you can confront them and you could be like, okay, you're you're either right here right now, you're going to be a coward and you're gonna go along with this or you're going to go back your own people.

Starting point is 02:23:29 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's something that you could do right now. And I just wanna add, we didn't talk about this earlier, but when we talked about the CDC and everything that's been removed, one thing that's relevant to that is that there's an office for research on women's health. It's the only resource dedicated to women's health

Starting point is 02:23:43 in the entire National Institutes of Health. We do have a National Institute of women's health. It's the only resource dedicated to women's health in the entire National Institutes of Health. We do have a National Institute of Children's Health. We do not have a National Institute of Women's Health. We have an office for research on women's health. We love the U.S. government. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it gets worse. So the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which is like, I would say one of the most prestigious kind of academic organizations that

Starting point is 02:24:04 existed, a review of funding for women's health research at the NIH, and they put out a report in December. It's pretty scathing if you read it. And they shared that from 2013 to 2023, Research for Women's Health was like 8.8% of the entire NIH budget. As a reminder, women are half of the population. Jesus Christ. And they called for almost $16 billion of additional funding to go to women's health research in the coming five years and the creation of an Institute for Women's Health. But what happened last week with almost everything on the website for the Office of Research for Women's Health was deleted. Jesus Christ.

Starting point is 02:24:44 It's gone. So their funding and opportunities page is gone. Their bios about their staff are gone. Their updates on advances in medicine for women over the last 25 years gone. Their pages on maternal morbidity and mortality gone. The importance of including women and minorities in clinical trials gone. Their page on health equity gone. You get the picture. So all of that, except for just a very bare minimum landing

Starting point is 02:25:07 page and a link to the office of, I forget the official name of the office, but that's an office that works on autoimmune diseases. Like everything else is gone. And so I did create a script if anybody wants to call their member of Congress. I have a script for that and the CDC pages that people can use in terms of

Starting point is 02:25:25 actions. That's something I think that is about as real as it gets for us at this point. And I think that the more we are emphatic in our messaging that none of this is okay, that we demand to have these resources back online, and that we demand to continue funding research on health disparities for all the different groups affected. I think the better the chances that that actually happens. So that's out there if anybody wants that. Yeah, well, we'll put links to that in the description. Also I'm going to put it a personal plug to call your congressperson to yell at them about

Starting point is 02:25:57 all of the anti-trans stuff because they're they're legitimately in a flux point right now where the party is slipping back and forward between Just being like yeah Whatever will pass a defense bill that like ban chance people from the military and we're gonna stop things from happening And so this is the thing that can go either way and getting yelled at by their constituents legitimately does help with this So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, do that do that too when you're caught while you're calling with the CDC multiple things different calls even Yeah, you might just want to put them on speed dial and make it, you know, on your drive. If you go into work, maybe every day

Starting point is 02:26:30 on the drive, you're just calling, hi, here's the issue of the day, because there is no shortage of issues that we need to be communicating about. Yep, yep, yep. So speaking of things in bios, where can people find you to for stuff that you want to promote the way you do, etc, etc? I mean, I'm on all the things, even the terrible thing, which is most of them are terrible. But I'm on TikTok. If you just put my first name, usually I'll come up. TikTok, Instagram, Twitter. I know, I know.

Starting point is 02:26:58 And Blue Sky. And I'm not the only one I don't really do is Facebook. You're too cool for that. Oh, I have a sub stack. That's where the script is. Now I'm not too cool for Facebook. I'm just too lazy for Facebook. I mean, I mean, listen, if you're on these things, you're not too cool for anything.

Starting point is 02:27:16 That's the really cool kids are in on any of these things. Yeah. You can find me at on blue sky at KavehMD. And more importantly, you can listen to my podcast, The House of Pod. It's a relatively fun, informal look at medicine. We try to make healthcare more relatable. You know, sometimes we'll take an aim at medical quackery

Starting point is 02:27:40 or grifts and that sort of thing. I think your listeners will like it. Our guests range from doctors like Peter Hotez or Argovan here to musicians like Portugal the Man or a lot of the Cool Zone family that you all know and love, Prop and Robert and hopefully Mia Soon. So find it anywhere you get your podcasts, the House of of pod Yeah, and you can find all of the we've talked about like a Staggering number of the other shows that we do in this one

Starting point is 02:28:13 but yeah, you can you can find our other shows where there are podcasts and I'm so bad at plugging these things you think it's my living but no can't do it so you're out of debt absolute failure But yeah, thank you to both for coming on and I hope you get your grant because fuck that like Christ oh Thank you. Well if I if I don't get my funding renewed this summer. I will I will let you know maybe we can talk about it Yeah, yeah, I'm down. We'll start a podcast.

Starting point is 02:28:47 Yeah, this is a big good outfit here. Go harass your legislatures, your local administrators for universities, your local police department. I make sure they do not bad stuff and do good things. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest episode is with Bill Gates. This is a world where somebody can have over a hundred billion dollars. What is that? These fortunes are almost illegitimate unless in a very smart way given back.

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Starting point is 02:32:20 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi everyone and welcome to It Could Happen Here. Today it's me, James, and I'm joined by Nevdon Jamgotian. We're here to talk about Azerbaijan, Armenia, and the increasingly genocidal rhetoric from Azerbaijan. But I want to start off, Nevden, we're talking about COP 2024, I guess. Can you explain, like I think people will be sort of somewhat familiar with these series of climate conferences, but this one was held in Azerbaijan, right? And can you explain a little bit about, you've specialized in like these greenwashing, sportswashing,

Starting point is 02:33:04 various other sort of forms of laundering legitimacy, right? I'd love for you to start off there and explain how this particular conference was used as a means of laundering legitimacy for what is a like a genocidal project. COP29, which was just concluded in Azerbaijan, is the deadly serious and vital conversation about climate in the United Nations, which we absolutely need to have. But from the beginning, it was a clown show. And the way Azerbaijan, a petrodictatorship was able to procure this for themselves was at COP28, which was held

Starting point is 02:33:47 in Dubai, another questionable location for the climate conference, where they had a pavilion as reported by Politico EU, where they had a joint advertisement that said Karabakh is the first place to achieve net zero emissions in Azerbaijan. And that was one part of them getting the bid for COP29. The way Azerbaijan was able to achieve net zero emissions in this particular location was they committed a genocide against all the people. If there's no people, there's no climate emissions.

Starting point is 02:34:27 And that's probably not even true, that it's a net zero emissions because they've engaged in so much of the eradication of any trace of Armenians in this place that Armenians have been living for at least 2,500 years. Destruction of buildings, of course, is one of the huge sources of pollution. And they've raised something like four cemeteries, thousands of the monuments, four churches

Starting point is 02:34:55 have demolished, entire neighborhoods have been raised, historical neighborhoods. So it's probably not even net zero. But that was their advertising claim to get the bid. COP29 was originally supposed to be in Europe, but Russia was vetoing every European bid. And Armenia, who Azerbaijan is currently occupying, 215 kilometers of Armenian territory was blocking Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan offered to give up 32 Armenian hostages. So, so we've got a clean side. Then we've got a gangster hostage situation, which they did.

Starting point is 02:35:36 They gave up 32 members of the Armenian military and they made Armenia give up two Azerbaijanis that were held by Armenia because they had gone into Armenia and killed a local security guard trying to steal his car. They probably were lost and they killed this guy and they were trying to escape. But then just one of them had been sent to life imprisonment. But that's what Armenia gave up in exchange. To allow this climate conference to happen. That's correct.

Starting point is 02:36:04 So let's zoom back from this climate conference, right? Like in this, I think it's a really interesting place to start. The site of our genocide is a net zero area, and it's a very bleak vision of the sort of greenwashing future. Let's explain a little bit of the history of the conflict between these two countries and also perhaps more broadly, I think people will probably be familiar with the Armenian genocide if they've listened to this show, but of Armenian people as a subject of discrimination and hatred for centuries, right?

Starting point is 02:36:36 Well, you know, I mean, Armenians are one of the ancient people of that area, Greeks, Jews, Persians, they're one of the people that have kind of stuck it out for a long time in that neighborhood. The Turkic people are more recent visitors to the neighborhood and there's nothing wrong with migration of people. But there's something about populations that have been there for a long time

Starting point is 02:37:02 that really strikes a nerve if we want to be very mild about it. with the Turkic people, Turkey and Azerbaijan, in the sense that they've been engaged in a policy of destroying any remnants of Armenians, including physical people. For at least the 1880s, they've been making them second-class citizens since they came in in the Ottoman Empire. There's this myth of the of a multicultural society, which is interesting. Azerbaijan is also trying to promote, but it really was a second class situation where the minorities in the Ottoman

Starting point is 02:37:38 Empire had a lot of extra taxes and duties and persecution than other people in the area. Yeah. So let's talk about this, this area then specifically this, this area, which would be called depending on who you ask, Artzak or Nagorno Karabakh, right? I think probably it's, I don't know if I haven't looked on Wikipedia, but like what were the more commonly used terms for people wanting to look it up, right? In American English, but let's explain why there is a conflict in this area and then what has happened since I guess we can go from like the fall of the Soviet Union would

Starting point is 02:38:15 be a place to start. Sure. I mean, we talked about earlier, that's the tough thing about talking to our Indians. Like where I would start would be sixth century in the fall of the kingdom of Ratu. But I guess we don't have that much time. So basically, and I do have to put this in there because there's this big Azerbaijani narrative that Armenians are effective people, they're effective presence, and I'll deal with that in a little bit. But you know, it's just been recorded by Greek. I mean, I don't know why I should have to prove our existence, but we do. So anyway, it's recorded history that it's where the Armenian alphabet was invented. These people have been indigenous to the region

Starting point is 02:38:54 for thousands of years. They've got a deep connection with the land. Follow the Soviet Union. Fast forward. The area had been under the territory of the Azerbaijani SSR as an autonomous oblast, as they called it. It had been given to the Azerbaijani SSR because of Stalin, who was the commissioner of minorities. Stalin has this big project to divide the people, the minorities in the Soviet Union to fight each other, which is ramped up in the 1960s when the Soviets start inventing fake history to pit people against each other, which is ramped up in the 1960s when the Soviets start inventing fake history to pit people against each other, which is wild.

Starting point is 02:39:28 But the Soviet Union is crumbling. The people of Artsakh, which is the Armenian indigenous name, Nagorno-Karabakh is generally acceptable as well. That would be the colonial name or the name that the Azeris call the region. They are fed up with not being able to learn their language because of Azerbaijan. They're fed up with not being able to have any of the rights as Soviet citizens because the father of the current dictator of Azerbaijan was ruling Azerbaijan since 1969, and his policy was to try to get as many Armenians to move out of the region as possible. So they're fed up with this and they're like, okay, enough. They legally secede from the Soviet Union. It's allowed in the constitution, which of course infuriates the Azerbaijani SSR.

Starting point is 02:40:18 So there's a bunch of conflicts. There's pogroms that happen against Armenians in cities of Baku and Sungate and at which point they secede fully from the Soviet Union, one of the first areas to do so in 1991. They actually left the Soviet Union before Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan with the Soviet Union's troops invade. There's this bloody mess. It's called Operation Ring where they're killing Armenians in the area. There's this bloody mess. It's called Operation Ring, where they're killing Armenians in the area. There's a war that erupts when everybody secedes. Armenians in Artsakh get the upper hand due to they really cared about it. And also probably because of racism within the Soviet Union, where they trained Armenians a little bit better than they did Azeris.

Starting point is 02:41:05 Union where they trained Armenians a little bit better than they did Azeris. It's a humiliating defeat for Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan has pushed back. Armenia sees about 9% of Azerbaijani territory beyond Artsakh. And that was a stasis until 2020. Yeah. Really. Yeah. Sort of 30 years of... But it was always disputed, right? This area was there, Azerbaijan continued to lay claim to the Aztak region, is that correct? For some reason, it was never recognized by the UN as being a real country, similar to some other places. Why that is, is confusing to me because they did leave earlier than anybody else. It is an ethnic minority that chose to leave the area, but they weren't

Starting point is 02:41:46 considered legitimate by the UN, by Azerbaijan. And secondarily, we have this brutal dictatorship that's held together by ethnic hatred. Really, I cannot overstate how terrible the Aliyev regime is in Azerbaijan. But you know, Armenian forces committed at least one war crime that I'm aware of during that time in a place called Qoljoli where they killed 180 to 600 Azeri civilians. And they've used this event and I think one other to really hold their country together in this pit of broth and broth of hatred. So not until 2020 does that really coalesce, do they become strong as a petro state to take back large portions of the country. Yeah, talking of taking back, I'm going to have to take back

Starting point is 02:42:40 30 seconds everyone's time for an advertising break here. So let's do that and we'll come right back. All right, we're back. One thing I think that might be illustrative to hear is that like in the first Artsak war, Turkish, I guess, irregulars or mercenaries or what you want to call them, people associated with the gray wolves fought on the side of Azerbaijan, right? And keen history understanders will know that there is some history of anti-Armenian sentiment among the gray wolves and then indeed in Turkey as a country. So perhaps this is a good point to talk about as a country. So perhaps this is a good point to talk about the international involvement here, because I think it's very misleading to do this, as we're seeing in Syria right now.

Starting point is 02:43:31 People want to divide the world into blocks, right, with like this sort of Cold War narrative that we have of Russian interests and US interests. And I think this is an excellent example of why that is not necessarily a great way to perceive the world So can you explain the international involvement in in Artsakh and in this ongoing conflict? Which we'll get to it beginning again in 2020. I think in a second in addition to Turkish forces being used in that 2020 war which I guess we'll have to get into a little bit Yeah, they're Syrian mercenaries were used as well. They were put on the front lines as kind of a candidate fodder. They were given something like a $100 bonus that they beheaded a civilian, a $200 bonus

Starting point is 02:44:13 that they beheaded an Armenian soldier there. But of course, Israel is the primary supplier of Azeri weapons and weaponry going so far to test some of their drones on manned Armenian outposts early on before the war started. It's fair to say that Azerbaijan could not have been so successful without the aid of their ally Israel. Israel has been deeply involved in Azerbaijan for a long time. They use Azerbaijan as a listening post against Iran. Israel stages raids from Azerbaijan on Iran and has to do with the ethnic minority on Iran. There's

Starting point is 02:44:51 a lot of Azeris down there. Israel gets something like 40% of its oil from Azerbaijan. Right after the Palestinian genocide started, Israel awarded two contracts to the the state oil company, Socar, in Azerbaijan, that's right adjacent to the Palestinian gas field and the Lebanon oil field, to Socar to explore. It cannot be overstated how complicit these two groups are with each other. They really, really need each other in the region. And the United States also likes Azerbaijan as well. They see it as a friendly Muslim country, the bulwark against Iran as well. Yeah. I think they also have some Turkish drones. Is that right? The Bayakar drones. Absolutely. So let's talk about that 2020 war, because that was a war that relied heavily on these drones, right?

Starting point is 02:45:45 It's a major means of destroying Armenian armor and pushing that offensive. So what happened in 2020 along this disputed border? Well, you know, it's called Mount Nisqaraba. It's an area that's great defensively if you're fighting in a pre-drone world. But, you know, as you've discovered with your Kurdish friends, the drones are amazingly destructive against people hiding in caves, which is what the Armenian response had been. Armenians have been a bit lazy. They've been relying on Russian tanks and weaponry, whereas Azerbaijan is buying from

Starting point is 02:46:23 Israel. tanks and weaponry, where Azerbaijan is buying from Israel, they're buying from all, you know, many, many different sources, which reflects the wealth of Azerbaijan, of course. So in 2020, there's some indication that Aliyev, the dictator of Azerbaijan, had been planning this for a while. He had this playbook called Operation Azeri Smile 2020. The troops move in, they encounter more resistance than they thought, and they get most of the Armenian held territory of Nagorno-Karabakh back.

Starting point is 02:46:57 They're stopped at the last minute, probably by Russian intervention at this time. The Armenia was a member of the Russian alliance at that time, which they're leaving just because Russia has failed to live up to its treaty obligations anyway. And it left a kind of a skeletal state of Artsakh left, which was only supplied by this one road

Starting point is 02:47:20 called the Lachin corridor. That was only one road from Armenia to supply the 120-some thousand Armenians who lived in Artsakh left, which brings us to 2024. Okay. 2023. 2023.

Starting point is 02:47:34 Or... Yeah. Yeah. So, you have this situation where we now have this massive area that's, I guess, occupied. A lot of people began leaving at that time, right, through that Lachin corridor. People didn't feel like they could safely remain there.

Starting point is 02:47:52 I mean, the indigenous people of Artsakh have this profound relationship with the land and the people. I am an icon painter. I was talking to my priest and he was comparing the people there to the elves and the Lord of the Ring. You know, they they whistle to the birds, you know, they just been living with the land for a long time. So there was a drain, but it's not as big as you would have thought just because there's

Starting point is 02:48:18 this intense millennial old connection with the places of Artsakh. So what Azerbaijan did, and this is, I think, unprecedented, is they had a fake ecological protest that stopped the Lachin corridor from supplying food and medicine to the people of Artsakh. So they starved those people, they denied them medicine, people had missed carriages, Azeris were firing at farmers in the field that were trying to collect food.

Starting point is 02:48:52 That went on for nine months. And what stopped it, what Seder Bayad claimed it was a group of ecological protesters who were stopping trucks of food coming into Artsakh for any reason, which you know is enough of a smokescreen for the Western world to really throw up its hands. Yeah, fascinating. So they literally had a blockade of these protesters?

Starting point is 02:49:15 These protesters blocked it. The Russian troops that were the Peacekeepers refused to disperse these protesters. They were these old, approximate kind of looking people wearing fur coats. They were identified on social media as actually being members of the Azeri military. And they had these printed signs that said things like, protect nature, stop pollution. It's very generic. Wildly generic things. Ostensibly, they were against the gold mining operations in Artsakh,

Starting point is 02:49:45 which is nuts because a protest is not allowed in Azerbaijan and B there had been an actual protest against a real gold mine that was owned by the daughters of the dictator and they were brutally shut down before. So anybody who's paying any kind of attention to this knew that it was fictive. But I think the EU in particular needing enough of a smoke screen, not to support these people. EU of course is getting its gas through Azerbaijan. Yeah. Because they've said they don't want it from Russia,

Starting point is 02:50:15 but Russia is just feeding its gas to Azerbaijan. And then Azerbaijan is selling its Azerbaijani gas to the EU. So they were just trying to do that. Yeah. They've just created a pass through and like someone who can live off that rentier income. So let's go to 2023. Okay, what do we see happening in 2023? So the the eco protesters, they kind of run their course. And

Starting point is 02:50:40 then there's a lightning operation. Arts Talks attacked, positions overrun. There's this massive exodus of people, people And then there's a lightning operation. Artsakh's attacked. Position's overrun. There's this massive exodus of people, people who have to leave their houses immediately. The road is blocked. People are dying on this road on the way out, fighting each other just to leave their houses. In 2020, Azerbaijan has said, know, Armenians can come back. We're just taking back our territory. You live here, you can do that. But when Armenians

Starting point is 02:51:10 did, there's this one case of a 69 year old farmer who went back to get his possessions, the Zary troops cut off his head. Jesus. They put it on a dead pig and they put all those images on social media they um raped and tortured anybody that they could find left behind and they turned it into memes on telegrams stickers that were you know something like down like 20 000 times in the five days they were being monitored for this so there was absolutely no question that people could stay behind. Yeah. Zero, so there's no Armenians left. And so there's literally been daily ritual that's been going on for 1,700 years that doesn't go on anymore. And there's a tragedy in that.

Starting point is 02:51:59 Yeah. Yeah. It's been lost. It's hard to quantify the like you know the meaning of that loss I think especially for folks who aren't familiar with people and their culture and their connection to these things. Talking of quantifying things I need to look at the amount of time we got here and pivot again to advertisements. And we're back. So what we see in Artsak, especially in 2023, is a project of ethnic cleansing, right? Genocidal violence, whatever, however you wish to phrase it. I mean, ethnic

Starting point is 02:52:44 cleansing is not a term that has really like a definition in national law, genocide does. It often very much like in this instance, I'm using them to mean one and the same thing. It's the removal of people either through killing them or forcing them to leave or starving them. The International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Lumpkin Institute, Luis Moreno Campo was a founding prosecutor of the ICC, Juan Rastamendez, a special advisor to the secondary general on genocide prevention. They all call it genocide. So we can call it that.

Starting point is 02:53:14 Yeah, we can call it genocide. It'd be fairly safe. Yeah. There have been many genocide of projects in history. What is Azerbaijan's goal with this? Is it the removal of Armenian people with the area such that Azeri people can occupy it? Is it access to the resources that are there? Is it settling a historical score? If you look at a map, there's this idea of panteranism. Is that something that

Starting point is 02:53:39 you're familiar with? Yeah. Can you explain that to listen to or not? you're familiar with? Yeah, can you explain that to listen to or not? Pan-Turanism is this Turkish idea of an ancient Turkish state that stretches from the Bosporus all the way over to Mongolia. And there's one little country in the way that is blocking this empire that should exist according to the pan-Turanus. And this is an old idea, it's a 19th century idea. It's lumping in with every Nazi and race junk scientist idea that you have. But that's the idea.

Starting point is 02:54:16 And the secondary thing is, you know, again, Aliyev is raping his people. He's imprisoning every journalist, he's any scientist. It's really on a level with Turkmenistan or what was happening in Syria or North Korea. And he needs ethnic hate to keep his country together. He's made an ethnic hate theme park. It's not called that, but that's what it is against Armenians. So really really I see it as a consolidation of power He needs an enemy. He needs to move forward, which is why he's threatening to invade Armenia proper next Yeah, and like I think one of the things that like happened with the with the conflict in Arts Act

Starting point is 02:55:00 I'm just I'm thinking about this this pan-turkic stuff because I see it every single day in the replies to my posts on social media. In my case, it's with reference to my time in Kurdistan and in Rojava. Disinformation played a massive role in the 2023 conflict too. I think people who are hearing about this for the first time are at massive risk for finding that some of that different information, right? They hear about this driving tool work today on our podcast and they go to Google it. There's a lot of crap out there, right? So like, can we address that, the role that it's played and continues to play? The load of crap or the panteranism or both? Well, the panteranism generates a lot of crap, right? Like I'm convinced that some of the accounts in my replies are not real human beings. Oh, yeah, that's been a well

Starting point is 02:55:51 established phenomenon, the number of bots that Azerbaijan, to a lesser extent Turkey, because I think Turkey is more secure in its genocidal aspect. whereas Azerbaijan is really, really going for it. You know, so not only the bots in the replies, which just come up no matter what you put in a keyword, there's going to be lots of mentions on your social media, not to mention there's a pretty vicious campaign out there to dox anybody who talks about this, as that's happened to me before, and it's not pretty. Yeah. But also there's this thing called mirror propaganda. I don't know if you've heard of that, but the Azeris will take something that Armenians say like, oh, Armenians should go be able to have

Starting point is 02:56:38 a right to return. So they've shrugged this huge cloud of they'll take actual documents that have been produced by, I don't know, Freedom House, right? Yeah. And then they'll copy the entire document and format things and write of Azeris to return to Western Azerbaijan, which is their new concept. And Western Azerbaijan is the country of Armenia. So they have these maps where they renamed all the towns of Armenia with Azeri names. They claim Armenians only came to the region in 1828 with the Russians, that they're a

Starting point is 02:57:09 fake people. Another tragedy of Artsakh is they're taking these monasteries and places, not only destroying them, but chiseling off ancient inscriptions to prove that Armenians didn't exist there. They've already done this in this other place called Nakhchivan, which is they call it the largest cultural genocide of the 21st century, where they destroyed thousands of medieval monuments and stones with bulljosers and sledgehammers. So they're just wiping them out any record of Armenian. Anything in their claim in Armenia is really, should be called Western Azerbaijan. And anytime Armenians talk about Artsak going back, they're like, well, we, they made cookbooks. They've got a television show about Western Azerbaijan.

Starting point is 02:57:50 It's just, it's what you're laughing and I laughed too, but it's, it's so ugly, so scary, but it's funny too. Yeah. What are these things are in terms of your grandma or what have you been beheaded? Like, yes, it does seem, it does seem obscene and it's so obscene that it's funny, right? But like this is a concerted state project that like it's easy to get caught up in and it's easy to get caught in this disinformation machine. Not just from like, yeah, like a bot in your replies, but from news, like you say, news

Starting point is 02:58:22 outlets or like doctored reports or things that look very convincing. It's search results that go to the top. I mean, you know, and this course started with the Iranian genocide, which of course Turkey and Azerbaijan and Pakistan for some reason, say it was fake. If you search for that, the top results are going to be Armenians are lying. They committed genocide with us and then they'll throw these numbers like, oh yeah, Armenians killed 3 million Turks. Like, what are you talking about?

Starting point is 02:58:48 These are just like, words have meaning, you know, but... Increasingly less and less. Less and less. You know, there's that great Hannah Art line about constant lying is not aimed at making people believe a lie, but ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. And that's what they want. We're an obscure part of the world. This is to say a bunch of shit and people throw up their hands and walk away. Yeah, it's too complicated and so they sort of... Too complicated, right. Yeah. Or, you know, they'll say, oh, it's ancient hatreds. And like, that's bullshit. It's

Starting point is 02:59:19 not ancient hatreds. It's a very modern thing. These are real people who have real understandable issues. You know, like in Gaza, it's like, it's very clear. Yeah. What's going on? Yeah, yeah, I know the difference there is that it has received a lot more coverage and longer attention. So where does this leave us now, right? As of John has just hosted this conference and like, it's important to recognize that this conference is, it's a project of kind of global liberalism, right? Like the COP conference and it conveys legitimacy. And in this case, it's a means of kind of

Starting point is 02:59:56 laundering legitimacy for this Karabakh project, in their case, right? Through the lens of protecting the planet. Where do they go from there? Well, so what makes the dictatorship of Azerbaijan a little bit different from these other dictatorships I mentioned is I think they care about what people think a little bit. They bring in F1 racing, they have Eurovision. They really do these projects because they want to be seen as a legitimate state.

Starting point is 03:00:29 Whereas I think those other than North Korea, they don't do that. No one's going to like us no matter what we do. Yeah, they've given up. They want to play on the international stage. So that's one aspect. Another aspect, it legitimizes themselves to their internal critics. People in Azerbaijan are smart. They know what's going on, but they say, oh, the world is coming to us.

Starting point is 03:00:51 The world accepts us. They must accept the brutal dictatorship that's cracking down on anybody's gay, lesbian, anything. Torture is a feature of this regime. So it legitimized themselves internally. And what they fear, I guess, is people would getting angry that they invade Armenia. So it's just, I think it's that chain. Now we could argue whether that was effective because COP29 was an absolute train wreck for them.

Starting point is 03:01:21 But I'm not sure that matters to them. Matters to the environment. Yeah, I think probably these COP conferences are not gonna be the way we solve our issues with climate change, but that's another conversation. Going forward, what is the status of ATA? What can those people, those people who were able to leave, what does the future hold for them?

Starting point is 03:01:44 Are they sort of refugees in, in, um, menia now? They're, they're refugees are menia. A menia is a poor state, doesn't have the oil reserves. The Azerbaijan just announced that they're increased their military budget by 20%. Jeez. It was already incredibly high. Last time I got statistics, the flights from Ovda, which is the Israeli military insulation

Starting point is 03:02:09 for flying equipment to Azerbaijan, has ramped up. It's higher than it was in 2020 before their invasion, so it's on par for 2023. So that's a pretty clear sign that they're getting all their equipment from Israel. They stopped before cop, so I haven't been able to get data on that since then. Azerbaijan just issued a declaration that parents cannot visit their children in the military. Oh, well.

Starting point is 03:02:38 And that's a bad, bad sign. Yeah. So the question is not if it's when, It is winter. Armenia has a lot of mountains. Those are pretty good to defend. People are figured out, I'm sure you've talked to your friends over Java, they figured out drones a little bit. How to deal with them better. Armenia has reached out to France, who's been helping them a little bit. Azerbaijan says there's some conditions for peace that are insane. You know, like change your constitution is one. Oh, wow. Get rid of all EU observers

Starting point is 03:03:11 is another. Don't get any new weapons. And then give us the what's called this Zangar corridor, which is like this road that goes to their exclave, Natchivan to the west there. And it's just like you can't save No country's going to do that. Oh, and they've got another claim which is they say allow you the UNESCO to visit Armenia to Check out erased Azerbaijani sites, which is just a mere provocanda Insanity because UNESCO is already in Armenia in Armenia asked that of UNESCO for Azerbaijan But yeah, of course, they just copy that right and say well Why don't you do it? Yeah, right which you know, it's not a real thing But anyway, so those are the conditions so it seems probable that Azerbaijan will invade

Starting point is 03:03:58 Possibly in spring because the snow will melt it away possibly now because alias seems like he's very angry that the world kind of paid attention to cop 29 is figuring out that he's a dick and he's ramped up in arrests in his own country he does arrest an entire television station of people that work you know again it's it's more the least press free countries on earth, but I guess we're doing something before that and they'll either take the southern half of Armenia or they'll take All of it because they say Yerevan the capital of Armenians is historically part of Azerbaijan So that's the state where we're at

Starting point is 03:04:44 there and I really think any other perspectives are Wishful thinking and I'm sorry to be so grim about that, but it's I think it's a very real Possibility that this Armenian genocide that it's killed literally, you know countable millions of Armenians since the 1890s and ramped up through 1915 through 1923 and then society a little bit is ongoing and their project will be completed in the next year. Yeah, that's pretty bleak. How can people, they want to be in solidarity, they want to support, like this is something that doesn't get reported on right in the US, even if they just want to learn more. How can they do that?

Starting point is 03:05:22 Where can they go? There is a good site, this has learned for art sock. That's a good site. There's a bunch of Armenian websites that people can go to. May I post some, some links on the show notes? Would that be, that'd be good? Yeah, well absolutely. But as in the show notes, yeah. Yeah. I would be very happy to do that if people want to donate things, but it's similar to Gaza or other places. Like what does awareness do? I guess it could slow things down.

Starting point is 03:05:55 Yeah. But really we just need state actors to respond to this. Armenians get very cynically used in France and in the United States by right-wing politicians who claim that they're protecting Christians, but I don't think that's something that will actually happen. Yeah. I mean, people did the same thing for Assad, right? That he protected Christians in Syria while he murdered and gassed his own people. Exactly.

Starting point is 03:06:21 That's a best of cynical thing and a worst of justification. I mean, what have you seen that's effective in terms of world action for these things with the Kurds or other people? I mean, look, when we talk about how the Kurds have defended themselves from a state project to eliminate them, right? In some areas, they haven't been able to, right? And when they have, it's through their own armed initiative, for the most part, right? They were very fortunate to have the support of the United States. But that was only ever in the battle against ISIS.

Starting point is 03:06:52 It wasn't when genocidal violence, right? This genocidal project in Afrin, where we're seeing it right now in Tal Rafaat, the US didn't stand beside them there, and it's not in its nature to and I think This is a really difficult situation that we find ourselves in all around the world right now We see we've seen this in Africa to write It's not really in the nature of the United States done in this century to intervene Simply for human rights reasons simply, simply because genocide is wrong. We had a person, Samantha Power, who wrote a book on how genocide is wrong and we should

Starting point is 03:07:30 intervene and then what happens when she's in power with Obama and Biden? Does it intervene? Yeah, we draw red lines and then let's side walk over them. Like, it happens all over the world and I think, yeah, we're probably in a post-hegemonic era, but that doesn't mean that people deserve to die because we're in a post hegemonic era. I don't know, when, look, if I look at the other genocide, which I've spent more time with than most genocides, which is the weird thing to say, it's the genocide in Myanmar of the Rohingya people.

Starting point is 03:07:59 They are still facing genocidal violence now, even from anti-hunter groups. But I also see Muslim people in the Karen National Liberation Army. I see them fighting with the KNDF and the way that those people liberated themselves was like from the bottom up. And I think that like, I find some hope in what's happening in Kurdistan and what's happening in Myanmar. And I don't see very much from the community of states so much of the thing that even fucking exists.

Starting point is 03:08:32 I don't really believe that states have a conscience. And I don't think it's in their nature to care about people because people are inherently valuable. But I do think people do. And I do think it is in the nature of people to care. So I guess we have to continue to hope. And there has been some positive statements by your Java regarding Armenians and there's some been a lot of solidarity there. Yes. It was great. You know, Kurds helped commit the first Armenian

Starting point is 03:08:54 genocide and they've apologized. And so I'm seeing a little glimmers of hope in terms of the solidarity of people who see what's right and wrong, who aren't state actors. That's absolutely right. Yeah. One of the things, there's another thing that will be deployed very often, the Kurds are responsible for the Armenian genocide. Kurdish people were part of the Armenian genocide and they will acknowledge that and they've tried to make amends for it.

Starting point is 03:09:18 Yes. Exactly right. And that's all... Yeah. That's great. We're here now. We're not prisoners of our history, but we have to acknowledge it so that we can move from it. Thank you for sharing all that. Yeah, thank you. Is there anything else

Starting point is 03:09:31 that we've failed to address you want to get in quickly before we? I mean, yes, there's thousands of years of stuff. But, you know, visit Armenia, it's still called one of the safest places on Earth. It's been rated as than japan. Oh, wow It's a beautiful place. It's a struggling democracy, but it's the only democracy In the area try to pay attention to the news, you know is as hacky as it seems Right your senator, you know like Yeah, I I just feel wrong saying that but but what else can we do, right? If you're in Britain, the UK is an incredibly egregious supporter of Azerbaijan through

Starting point is 03:10:12 British petroleum. Really you people probably can have the biggest effect because the UK is the biggest enabler of those dirtbags. And thank you for the time. I really appreciate it. And I don't feel like I've done justice to 3,500 years of history, but thank you so much. No, I think that's great.

Starting point is 03:10:35 Is there anywhere people can follow you online if they'd like to? Oh, absolutely not. I'm tired of getting doxxed. Excellent. Yeah, that's probably for the best. I have to say, you know, that's why I paint icons is because it's anonymous, you know. Yeah, very offline.

Starting point is 03:10:52 Yeah, but thank you so much. Great. Thank you. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty and my latest episode is with Bill Gates. This is a world where somebody can have over a hundred billion dollars. What is that? These fortunes are almost illegitimate unless in a very smart way given back. One of the biggest names in business tech and philanthropy.

Starting point is 03:11:33 Exploring and investing in innovative solutions to some of the world's toughest problems. Bill Gates. Starting with Microsoft, where I had monomaniacal focus, giving up weekends and vacation. Wasn't some big sacrifice, I loved it. I've always underestimated how incredible my father was. He would say, hey, I'm sorry I worked so hard.

Starting point is 03:11:54 And I'd say, no, no, that was fine. I feel lucky that he lived as long as he did. It brings tears to my eyes because he was incredible. Do you remember one of the final conversations you had with him? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. John Stewart is back at The Daily Show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition

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Starting point is 03:13:22 Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? Goes lower. I met Santi at a luau party in October. and the Ad Council. mystery through sex and haven't made a private dick joke until now? Like no matter how hard I try, all roads lead to... The hookup. You think it's causing people to turn aggro? I'm gonna rip your arms off and use them to- Yeah, that's a word for it. This is such terrible representation, I'm so sorry. Poppers? These aren't just any poppers. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. No, my psychiatrist didn't laugh at that one either.

Starting point is 03:14:14 Listen to The Hookup starting February 14th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. ["The White House Newsreel Theme"] ["The White House Newsreel Theme"] This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling of our world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This week, we are covering the week of January 29th to February 5th, I'm Garrison Davis, today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans.

Starting point is 03:14:45 This week we are covering the week of January 29th to February 5th, and oh boy has this week felt like a month. I am absolutely exhausted. And let's start, I guess, by talking about what Trump did Tuesday night. He had a press conference with both himself and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce that the United States would quote unquote, take over the Gaza Strip, resulting in quote unquote, long term ownership. Previously on that day, Trump also signed an order pulling out of the United Nations Human Rights Council and cutting off

Starting point is 03:15:22 aid to UNRWA. Let's start with this topic. Hopefully we will have a later episode, maybe next week, covering what's happening in Palestine. But you know, this is, as of right now, the current most development. This is one of the more like crazy things that he's like, like you could see Netanyahu even like in the room clearly finding out about this for the first time Yeah, there was a real. Oh shit. Really vibe I'm not sure how long Trump and Netanyahu have actually had this like entire thing planned That that is a distinct possibility that like this has been Netanyahu's goal for a while and this was like impacted his negotiations with Biden

Starting point is 03:16:08 Like knowing that he wanted this to be like the outcome where the US basically just takes and holds the territory of Gaza as a US territory indefinitely. I think Bibi knew that Trump would give him a positive outcome in any number of ways, right? To include just saying, bomb it off the map. I think it's reasonable to assume that. Well, I mean, something like this was, I think, the obvious outcome as soon as Trump, I mean, from before Trump won, right? Yeah. Netanyahu never had any intention of letting things

Starting point is 03:16:28 go back to the way they were before October 7th, and Trump has a vested interest in giving Netanyahu whatever he wants the most. Like, it's, I don't know, I'm not surprised by it. I guess I'm a little bit like, okay, at least now we know what what they're going to do next. It's in line with the manifest destiny territorial expansion that Trump has been talking about

Starting point is 03:16:51 the past few weeks. Yeah, I mean, Joe Biden laid the groundwork for this by giving like Israel the actual like bombs and materials to to like do the demolition side of this project. And now Trump continues to discuss relocating Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan, while promising to turn Gaza into quote unquote, the Riviera of the Middle East, level it out, create an economic development unquote. He has also said that he's going to again said he's going to withdraw US troops from Syria, which would leave 2000 people in CENTCOM to deploy to Gaza, I guess, if that's what they want to do. Yeah, I mean, I feel like there's no possible way this can go quote-unquote well.

Starting point is 03:17:30 This is going to be a fucking catastrophe. The basic plan here is to do a genocide, and then... Well, this is part of a genocidal operation. Yeah, it's like, this is like, well, we're doing a second larger genocide. This is like the finishing touch. Yeah, but then, you know, on a sort of practical level it's like okay the u.s. couldn't hold Afghanistan right like it like obviously this is this is an easy like a quote unquote easier occupation but it's like this is gonna be a fucking shit like a

Starting point is 03:17:55 nightmare like and I don't know I mean my assumption is that this is gonna be just like if he actually like you know does a deployment of US troops This is going to be hideously unpopular people are going to be coming back in body bags, and it's gonna fucking I don't know. It's going to be a nightmare for everyone involved and Yeah, it's a it's a absolutely terrible idea. I'm more scared that they're gonna get away with it I think I'm more scared that things will go fine for them And this just becomes like an actually stable US territory in the Middle East. There will be significant pushbacks, not the word, right?

Starting point is 03:18:32 There will be guerrilla warfare, right? It's very hard to take and hold significantly large urban areas as the US has found out for 20 years. Whether or not people will accept that, I think they might. I think Trump kind of needs an enemy, you know, and a war and like a quote unquote, you know, he can paint almost anything as a win. And I think people might be more willing than we'd like to think to accept people coming home

Starting point is 03:18:57 in body bags from that. I'm not really sure I think we're actually going to see the kind of troop deployment that people think based on what Trump has said as opposed to expanded support for what the Israelis have already been doing. Which has, which has like done a significant job to depopulate the area as it stands. Like, I think we have to be hesitant to draw too strong a line between the rhetoric and what Trump is actually going to do, which doesn't mean I don't think that it's not very likely that you're going to continue to see mass depopulation in Gaza.

Starting point is 03:19:33 I think it's just that I don't know that I think the only way that happens is something that looks like most of the occupations of the last century have looked like from a US point of view. Yeah. And the new model is this Syria model, right? Like it's a relatively small footprint and then in the local partner force that the IDF pulling security for US contracts and in US money like that. Right. The IDF and a lot of third party corporate PMCs. Yeah. PMCs, you know? Yeah, for sure.

Starting point is 03:20:05 We've got guys champing at the bit to do that. That looks a lot likelier to me than the 10th Mountain Division, you know, occupying large chunks of Gaza. Agreed, yeah. Eric Prince is ready to get in there, sadly. Alright, let's transition to our new segment titled Stinky Musk, which I came up with last night delirious and yes, it's bad. No, I'm not going to fix it.

Starting point is 03:20:28 South African gang does a hostile takeover of the United States. You're hidden today, Garrison. Elon Musk and a gang of overly online Gen Z interns are doing an oligarchic cyber coup of the federal government, starting with the Office of Management and Budget and moving on to USAID, General Services Administration, the Treasury, and as of recording, NOAA, as well as many other agencies, smaller agencies, bigger agencies, that they are infiltrating both physically and digitally. Employees of these agencies have been locked out both physically and digitally as the DOJ

Starting point is 03:21:02 team ransacks various departments and accesses sensitive data with no oversight. And that's like government data about you, possibly in the hands of a literal Nick Fuentes-pilled GROIPER intern. Security officials who tried to resist Musk's seizure of classified materials have been fired and Doge personnel threatened to call the US Marshals to be let into buildings. I have some more info on this as we will as we will go on, but I guess this is this is an okay time just to discuss. Yeah, I think the response to this is one of the more hopeful things going on right now.

Starting point is 03:21:36 And kind of what led me to think that is looking at 2020, looking at the fallout from 2020 and what worked and what didn't, largely what didn't work, and thinking like, okay, well, if we're going to actually get any kind of functional resistance to what's happening, what does that look like? And it doesn't look like the same crews of people doing the same thing that they did four or five years ago, which is why I've got some hope in the fact that you've got a different crowd of people who are radicalizing and taking to the streets.

Starting point is 03:22:09 And, you know, we- Federal employees. Federal employees, right? And you've got a lot of- Or former. Yeah, most of them are still current, but, you know, it's a mix of former and current federal employees.

Starting point is 03:22:20 And these are the people who do a lot of the nuts and bolts stuff at the office of personnel management, office of management budget. Like these are the people who do a lot of the nuts and bolts stuff at the Office of Personnel Management, Office of Management Budget. These are the people who keep things functioning at a ground level. And a lot of them are pissed off in a way that I don't think we have really seen before. And I think there's a potential, and who's to say? Right now we just had a big protest in front of treasury, about a full city block or so of people, many if not the vast majority of whom were federal employees rallying alongside a lot of Democratic members of Congress.

Starting point is 03:22:56 And that doesn't accomplish anything on its own, but it's a potential start to accomplishing something. If you get those people out in the street, it provides, among other things, a lot of cover for everyone else. And it also is the start of, you know, what you might call a reverse January 6th. If January 6th was a bunch of random people

Starting point is 03:23:20 taking and occupying government buildings without any knowledge of what they are, or how things actually function inside of them. The kind of thing that we might be looking at in the near future is the opposite of that. We're a bunch of people who absolutely do know how those organizations and buildings function trying to take and occupy them. That's the feeling I got because I talked to some folks who are at the Treasury protest. One person that I talked to most extensively is a federal contractor who was present in 2017 at the travel ban protests, if you remember those, which is back when Trump announced his first Muslim ban and a bunch of

Starting point is 03:23:58 people started occupying airports and stuff. I was at LAX for that. This person was at some of those protests and it was out in front of Treasury. And the quote that I've got from there was, I was expecting it, it being this protest, the Treasury protest, to feel like the travel ban protests. It didn't. It was a lot angrier than the travel ban protests. The travel ban protests were kind of an in defense of another person sort of anger. And this was narrowly focused anger at a very specific group of people. There were a lot of people yelling and screaming outside of their congressman's offices and the like.

Starting point is 03:24:31 And like, there hasn't been that much disruption compared to what we're going to see, right? Social security payments haven't stopped going out in mass. So if we're seeing something like this at this early stage, I think there's a lot of potential there. And the thing this person brought up repeatedly is like, when we start seeing congressmen kicking indoors is when things are going to get interesting. If that happens, like that's kind of the stage at which there's a lot of potential for this

Starting point is 03:24:57 to turn into something that could actually like cause change. Yeah. Like if you actually start getting government employees who are willing to do more than stand outside of their offices, like who are willing to take direct action to occupy those buildings or stop other people from, and you've seen little bits of that, right? One of the things we did see is as these Doge kids

Starting point is 03:25:18 came along, federal employees refusing them entry, keeping doors locked. Now that was not illegal because these were literally, as it's been described to me by multiple people, just kids showing up demanding entry without any kind of a badge or evidence of who they are, right? Right. When you get people who are willing to escalate from that and refuse entry, that's when we might actually see some things start to seriously shift here. I mean, based on how much of what Musk is doing is just like bypassing Congress and doing

Starting point is 03:25:47 like a very kind of like typical like oligarchic coup. Like he's doing all those steps. And if you look at like what happened in South Korea a few months ago, we are not at the point where congressmen are literally like, you know, climbing over like fences, barricading doors. We're not in South Korea territory yet. But yeah. But like their lawmakers like we're willing to do that and and there is like I think waiting from people to like wait and see if our lawmakers are gonna be willing to do the same to like protect the actual like

Starting point is 03:26:15 Functional aspects of our government. Yeah, and like things are already happening Like we are in some ways kind of already at this point Yeah The you say the website is now like completely, leaving only a note that claims that all personnel have been put on administrative leave, including overseas personnel. This essentially leaves a whole agency shut down, but all done without an act of Congress or even like an overstepping executive order from Trump. It was just the unelected Elon Musk who decided to and carried out the

Starting point is 03:26:46 closure of a government agency, which should actually be criminal. There is statutes that are designed to stop this from happening, just no one's enforcing them because they control almost every aspect of government. Musk has also closed the IRS direct file tax system, which has now forced taxpayers to use third party paid paid services. It's like, he's doing this, like, one by one. I think the weakness that they have right now is that, because they're causing so much chaos, because they're, you're talking about the FBI purge they're trying to do, like, you know, the thing that they're relying on is everyone is just going to let them in

Starting point is 03:27:18 and just let them get walked over. But it's like, okay, the thing about acting this mess outside the law is what guys with guns do you have who You can use to enforce them. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing where it's it's legitimately like if there's serious resistance to them they might start to crumple because The the the reason you work inside of the legal order or you have your own Paramilitaries is so that you can have like the guy with the gun to make you open the door Yeah, and the more people who are willing to just be like, no, fuck you. Like it like force them to actually like find guys with guns who are willing to do this.

Starting point is 03:27:52 The odds are lower that you get a positive shift because people engage directly and aggressively with the cops. Then you have when some sort of like mid-level military functionary is asked to drive a tank over a school teacher. Right? Like historically, if you look at when regimes fall, that happens more often than the waving a flag on top of like a pile of corpses.

Starting point is 03:28:16 Yeah. Right? Like demands are ordered, illegal orders are given to people with guns and they're like, no, I'm not gonna shoot at a bunch of teachers today. That's not the only way this kind of thing happens, but at least like for my money, that's the likeliest positive outcome, right? Yeah, and if you look at the last world historical empire run by incredibly unpopular genitocracy, it was the Soviets and look at how they fell apart. That's that's more or less what happened. Yeah. Yeah, and like it's interesting that if we use a

Starting point is 03:28:45 what happened. Yeah. Yeah. And like, it's interesting that if we use a barbarian definition of the state, like that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, right, that they've dismantled their apparatus for state violence as well. And this could just be like the blunt instrument of apparently offering every federal employee. I know, I've heard that they've tried to un-retire wildland firefighters who accepted their offer of retirement. It was extremely funny. But like it's, it's very, yeah, you're going to what? You're going to retire a bunch of FBI agents or fire them because like Mia said, they are going to need hitters. They're going to need to use coercive force at some point, possibly very soon to get what

Starting point is 03:29:20 they want to do done. And I think when it comes to that, the question is like which hitters? Yeah. Because the FBI and the CIA, I mean, are getting gutted at the moment right now. So you're looking at like- And the NSA. And the NSA, you're looking at local police,

Starting point is 03:29:38 federal protective services, Department of Homeland Security, you know? And the marshals, right? Yeah. These are kind of like the shooters Trump has to play with is Department of Homeland Security, you know? And the marshals, right? These are kind of like the shooters Trump has to play with and the military will remain an open question until the critical moment, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 03:29:53 I mean, FPS is infinitely expandable and is mostly contracted threat. Robin and I have spoken about it before, but that's the one that has a lot of potential to grow. And I think within local, especially sheriff's departments, you've got some people who weren't bat an eyelid in some of those. Oh, no, no, no, absolutely not.

Starting point is 03:30:09 And I do think that like sheriff's departments are kind of what haunt me the most, but that's also, it's not purely a matter of like which agencies and organizations are going to back Trump in this. It's also a matter of geographic location. And in DC at least, he can count on a lot less of those guys because the Capitol police aren't thrilled right now.

Starting point is 03:30:35 Essentially what Elon is doing right now is exactly what he did to Twitter, except to the entire United States of America. And by the end of this process, it still might function on some level, right? Twitter still kind of functions, but it's just worse in every way. It's worse, it doesn't have the quote unquote good features it used to, it's buggy, it's full of Nazis, it's just, it sucks more.

Starting point is 03:31:01 The previous version was already bad and harmful, but the new one is just worse without the aspects that made it semi worthwhile. And like, I'm going to do an episode like next week, like kind of about this like specifically, and how Musk is Twitterifying the entire government using like all of the same tactics, like refusing to pay leases on buildings, installing beds in agency headquarters to make employees sleep there overnight, having teenagers review code of long-standing employees. It's the exact same process. And if you didn't like what happened to Twitter, that process is now happening to the government itself.

Starting point is 03:31:37 I can't wait for the IRS to send me a letter saying my pussy in bio. That will be... Hey. Now you've gotten me back on the Trump train. You know what? I'm piecing out for the day. I'm on board now. Before we close this segment and pivot to ads, I do want to shout out the work that

Starting point is 03:31:55 Wired is doing right now. Oh man, yeah. Wired magazine is doing some fantastic reporting on this. The DC attorney is currently promising to go after individuals who post about Doge employees. They might end up going after some of these WIRED journalists who identified this Gen Z Doge team that is wreaking havoc throughout the government with no oversight. WIRED provided what should be legally required necessary identification of public workers who Musk is trying to keep secret.

Starting point is 03:32:25 The DC attorney and Trump's DOJ is very mad about that. They might end up going after these people. But fantastic work coming out of Wired right now. If you want to keep up to date on Musk's takeover, I strongly recommend checking out their work. I'll post some of those in the sources below. Let's go on a quick ad break and then come back to talk about the continuing kind of fake trade wars and immigration. Sick.

Starting point is 03:33:03 All right, we are back. I'm gonna pivot towards James and Mia to discuss tariffs and immigration. Take it away. Yeah. So on Monday, Trump sort of averted the market collapse that he had set off with his declaration that there are going to be 25% tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico, and also 10% tariff on China. So let's go into like what actually happened. So the tariffs on Mexico and Canada are on hold for a month.

Starting point is 03:33:31 However, the 10% tariff on all Chinese goods did go into effect. And we'll get to more about what that's gonna do in a second. But much more importantly, Trump eliminated the de minimis exception, which allowed like people and companies to ship goods from China that were worth under $800 and not have to go through the formal customs process and you know, pay tariffs on it and also have to spend all of

Starting point is 03:33:55 that time paperwork and shit. And before we get into the sort of devastating effect this is going to have on businesses, I want to make it clear that like regular people in China use this to send things to people in the US. Like that's it. That's a very normal thing. Yeah, that is now really, really difficult. And about a third of YouTube ads are supported by people who run companies that make use of this loophole. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So on the business side, this is actually really interesting because I think it's one of the I mean not the first But I think it's going to be a very very early example of Trump completely fucking a base

Starting point is 03:34:31 That's been very very supportive of him because this is going to liquidate Huge portions of the dropshipping economy, right? Like all of all of the stupid YouTube shirts like all of that stuff is just going to be annihilated Can you explain dropshipping if people aren't familiar, Mia? Just like 10 second version. Yeah, so dropshipping is a thing where you do an order and instead of having like an inventory, normally you'd have a warehouse that has shirts in it. Dropshipping, you don't do that.

Starting point is 03:34:58 You are now the intermediary and you have these manufacturers like print to consumption basically. And you can do this very cheaply and then you can run the entire markup but it works because of how cheap it is to get these like sort of small scale Chinese firms to like make stuff for you. Those people are screwed companies like Temu and Shien are either going to have to just completely eat shit, or they're going to have to figure out a way to move their entire supply line through countries like Vietnam, which is going to be very difficult. I mean, because even getting stuff to the US has been kind of hard for them because

Starting point is 03:35:32 of how the logistics network works. Yeah. And so obviously, like, I don't I don't think most people who listen to this show are that sad about she and and Timo eating shit. But no, it is like a mixed bag because a whole lot of the MLM industry is going to take a header as a result of this. Yeah Yeah, there's some stuff to like fuck them But on the other hand there are a lot of people who are going to eat shit who are not those people and this is there Is a huge like range of industries that are run by very very small businesses

Starting point is 03:36:04 Like range of industries that are run by very very small businesses Like it was even just like an individual person who like makes crafts and sells and those people are also screwed Because they rely on getting the resources in from China And there's a lot of sort of you know if things like like people who build like hand like retro handheld consoles Oh, yeah, and like I don't know like custom airsoft rifles I know JD talked about like there's a whole bunch of industries like that, that are these like small-scale production things that are just screwed. That rely on this stuff. And so the ripples of this specific part of it are going to keep playing out, basically no matter what else happens in this trade war.

Starting point is 03:36:38 Yeah. It's also worth noting that Trump's tariffs on Mexico and Canada aren't gone. They've just been postponed for a month. So there is a real chance that we end up in exactly the same place that we were going into the weekend where no one knows where these tariffs are going to take effect and basically blow a smoking crater in the world economy. And we get another round of the negotiations that James is going to talk about. It's already setting off a really sort of staggering right wing. I mean, not even necessarily right wing,

Starting point is 03:37:06 just like a nationalist backlash in Canada that's kind of been like tearing up this sort of international right-wing Alliance and nationalist because Suddenly Trump's coming after them and now they're they're really mad about it Well and and because Trudeau announced that that he would be targeting, you know, like retaliatory tariffs specifically at red states We now have people calling him dark woke or dark Trudeau You know for very different reasons than they used to call him the actor Alright you're gonna get cancelled if you're not careful Outstanding speaking of getting cancelled what hasn't gotten gotten cancelled is the 10% tariff on all Chinese goods, which is just now in effect.

Starting point is 03:37:48 It's just happening. That's bad. It's going to increase inflation. It's also, it's, you know, it's sort of the opening round of this escalation to a trade war. China has retaliated with tariffs that are not a very big deal on US goods and some product control stuff on product control stuff, on export control stuff on some rare earth minerals,

Starting point is 03:38:08 well actually I don't know if they're rare earth minerals, but like minerals you need for production stuff that isn't a big deal yet but could be. And we were all expecting Chinese tariffs. Having 25% tariffs to Canada was not something I thought was like a looming port. Yeah, I mean, I thought they'd do Mexico, I didn't know about it.

Starting point is 03:38:25 I'm very worried about the offshoring of Chinese labor and the impact that we're having in places like Myanmar, where China has these special economic zones. And it's something we will cover. We obviously have a lot of sources. Yeah, we have Monday. On Monday, we're going to be covering this more.

Starting point is 03:38:39 So I think something that's important to understand about these tariffs is that these tariffs are not economic policy. This is the mistake that all of the capitalists who back Trump Made is that they assumed that just like every other president who's made promises like this like Obama's promise to renegotiate NAFTA They all assumed that because of economic policy They'd be able to just like get Trump to be pro-business and then he wouldn't do it The miscalculation they made is that these are not economic tariffs. These are directly foreign policy geopolitical

Starting point is 03:39:05 tariffs, right? They're international relations are to the deal bullshit. And the goal of it and he's been deploying this against like, I mean, Colombia, Denmark, he's threatening the EU now. He's going to keep doing this with China. The goal of this is to directly use American consumer power as as a weapon of imperialism to make these countries fall into line. Yeah, and now now we'll pass it to James to talk about what he was specifically trying to get out of Mexico and Canada in this round. Yeah. So like we spoke about falling into line there, I think it's probably a good place to start. Like this kind of Trump brinksmanship is very typical of his style, right? Nearly every media outlet, I think, fell for it this time, just like it did in his first term.

Starting point is 03:39:44 Like we got this like this is going to cause a crisis. Trump was very nebulous in his goals for these tariffs. And as almost always, like, he talked a lot about, like, America being treated unfairly, right? He talked about the border and he talked specifically about fentanyl. So I want to begin by talking about fentanyl. Just to be clear, it is true that some fentanyl comes into the USA from Mexico and to a lesser degree also from Canada. The vast majority

Starting point is 03:40:11 of the fentanyl that enters the USA from Mexico, about 80% of the convictions made as a result of that fentanyl entering the USA are made on US citizens, right? And 90% of the fentanyl that is seized is seized at ports of entry. So this idea that there are like Mexican nationals backpacking fentanyl through the desert that exists, but it is not what is bringing the bulk of the fentanyl that is killing the people in this country into this country. There are multiple cases of CBP agents taking bribes to allow the drug into the country. I will link to two of them in the show notes, but know that there are more of them. And given the relatively high bar for CBP agent, anyone in DHS to be investigated, right, we can assume that this is something that happens on at least a semi-regular basis.

Starting point is 03:40:56 So what did Trump do to stop this fentanyl coming into the country? What did he get? He got this promise that Mexico would deploy 10,000 troops to his border. In reality, this isn't much of a concession at all. The Mexican National Guard has been deployed to the border for years. Specifically, it's been deployed at gaps in the US border wall for more than a year. So people will remember our coverage of the open air detention sites in Hacumba and East County San Diego. All of those open-air detention sites correspond to gaps in the border wall where migrants would enter, surrender to border patrol and then be detained in open air. Each of those gaps now has a Mexican National Guard checkpoint in front of it. They're there in conjunction with the INM, the National Institute

Starting point is 03:41:39 of Migration in English. The INM has camps for the migrants who do come there. This is something that Biden obtained in, I think, late 23, early 24. And that's why we aren't seeing open air detention. One of the reasons, the other reason being Biden's asylum ban, we aren't seeing as many people crossing the border. Mexican border towns also tend to be areas where the Mexican military deploys its troops, because often they're places where organized crime occurs due to their proximity to the border and the market for drugs. And the fact that weapons from the US tend to flow into Mexico and that that's where large numbers of weapons for organized crime come

Starting point is 03:42:11 from. For more than a year, I've received press releases from Tijuana constantly talking about new unit arrives, special forces arrives, army arrive, and then they'll have pictures of a parade. Now they never tell us when those units are leaving. They just keep telling us they're coming. So it's very hard to get a sense of actually how many troops are there. But the idea that Mexico is suddenly militarizing its border is kind of farcical. Yeah. And I want to, there's been a lot of sort of cheerleading of shine bombs, sort of like

Starting point is 03:42:39 standing up to the U S and I don't think people in the U S really understands the securitization on the Mexican border. And so something that I'm realizing that I don't think people in the US really understands the securitization on the Mexican border and so something that I'm realizing that I don't think I just assume people knew about this but I don't think I ever made it into the Western press much is that so like a few months ago in October, the Mexican army just like open fire on a convoy of like on a convoy of immigrants and this was this was on the border of Guatemala and just like killed six of them shot 12 other people So like and that like there are massacres like that like not infrequently right like this is not a This is not a Mexico is pro-immigrant like the u.s

Starting point is 03:43:16 Is anti-immigrant thing like part of the part of the reason why Trump can like you know sort of declare victory without getting any Concessions or whatever is because of how murderous the Mexican army's border policy is already. Yeah, and the Mexican leaders have successfully been able to paint themselves as leftists, exclusively being two inches to the left of a further and further right regime in Washington, DC. People can listen to the last episode of my Dali and Gap series for an idea of how Mexico is constantly deporting migrants to its own southern states. I want to talk a little bit about the Canadian concessions very briefly. Again, 10,000 agents

Starting point is 03:43:51 and a border spending that really doesn't change much in terms of what was already becoming a more militarized border. There has actually been a significant flow of migrants from the US to Canada in the last couple of years, specifically of Francophone African people who would take that route. I'm aware of several TikTok influencers. There's one guy I follow in Chad who, he's in Canada now, but he's from Chad. And he makes these videos explaining to Chadian people how to go from Mexico into the US and then move up to Canada obviously where they can speak French and that makes their lives much easier, right? Makes it much easier to not have to learn a language. Trudeau did agree to list cartels as terrorist organizations.

Starting point is 03:44:31 Yeah. That seems to be, from what I can tell, the big move that he made. Yep. Yeah. So it does allow for some economic sanctions, right? If they attempt to use that Canadian border and sort of get around the United States, it's much less significant than a US listing, which we believe is coming. Canada's not going to use it to do covert operations inside Mexico, I don't think. Canada's

Starting point is 03:44:55 not going to be drone striking anyone. But like when Trump listed the Kurds force, he then struck its leader, right? With a drone. I don't think Trudeau is going to be, I don't think Canada is going to be doing that. But nonetheless, that is a concession. And perhaps there is some plan for that, right? It certainly allows for, and I've said this before, the economic sanctioning of people who provide material benefit to those organizations or potentially the arrest of people who provide material benefit to those organizations, which is a large number of businesses in Mexico, which end up being extorted or paying protection money. So we don't know what is going to happen with that, but it's one of the tools that Trump now has to use as another cudgel against it, against Mexico.

Starting point is 03:45:38 The last and perhaps most sinister of all development is this deal that Marco Rubio struck with Bukele in El Salvador. El Salvador has said it will host US citizen criminals and deportees from any nation in its jail system. So I'll just read Bukele's tweet. It's very short. We are willing to take in only convicted criminals, parentheses including convicted US citizens, into our mega prison, Secod, in exchange for a fee. The fee would be relatively low for the US, but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable. If you're not familiar, it means a counter-terrorism confinement center in Spanish.

Starting point is 03:46:16 For people who haven't heard about this, it's the largest prison in the world that Bukele opened in 2023. And it's a terrible place. There are cells of a hundred people in that cell. There are 80 bunks, two toilets and two basins. They are extremely confined. I think they get 6.5 feet of space per person. They get 30 minutes outside a day. They're forced to shave their heads. Their ankles and wrists are chained. People are arbitrarily detained there. Sometimes for things like looking like they might be in a gang. Multiple human rights organizations, including the, well, the State Department is not a human rights organization, sometimes it's the opposite of that. The State Department itself has raised concerns about human rights abuse due to the quote unquote state of

Starting point is 03:46:57 exception which exists in El Salvador, which allows the government to do these things without really any human rights oversight. The US has already seemingly moved some migrants to Guantanamo Bay, to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. Satellite imagery has shown tents going up there. Very few at the current time. They seem to come from Fort Lewis-McChord, which I couldn't work out. But there are tents, I guess, I think it was Washington Post had these satellite images of tents being constructed there. I'm trying to keep an eye on that satellite imagery. Of course, Biden opened the door to outdoor detention. It's not impossible that we will see that again. But this Bukele plan, this plan to send people to El Salvador, especially US citizens, evidently this is unconstitutional. The courts get to

Starting point is 03:47:46 decide how much that matters, right? We don't. But this is deeply concerning. We're all waiting on the courts and we're all deeply concerned. Yeah, well, there you go. One final break and then we'll come back to end and discuss Trump's targeting of teachers in relation to gender ideology. Welcome back. So last week, Trump signed an executive order titled Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 schooling, and part of its focus was to prevent teachers from calling trans students by their names and preferred pronouns, even promising to inflict legal punishment for doing so, basically mandating deadnaming, misgendering, and forcibly

Starting point is 03:48:34 detransitioning students. This order specifically took aim at quote-unquote social transition. This is like the non-medical social aspects of transitioning, like changing gender names, pronouns, you know, what facilities you use, socialization. And like this stuff has historically been, you know, the most common form of transition for minors. It's the easiest to do. You don't even like need your parents' help. But this order blames schools for indoctrinating children in quote radical anti-American ideologies unquote which they include gender ideology as a part of the order tries to mandate a national school bathroom ban restrict participation in school sports and states that within 90 days the Secretary of Education the

Starting point is 03:49:17 Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General shall provide Trump with a quote-unquote ending indoctrination strategy to protect parental rights and eliminate all federal funding that directly or indirectly supports gender ideology indoctrination in K-12 schools including curriculums, teacher education, certification, licensing, employment, and training. To quote from the order, quote, the Attorney General shall coordinate with state attorneys general and local district attorneys in their efforts to enforce the law and file appropriate actions against K through 12 teachers who violate the law by one, sexually exploiting minors, two, unlawfully practicing medicine by offering diagnoses and treatment without the requisite license, and 3. Otherwise unlawfully facilitating in the social transition of a minor."

Starting point is 03:50:09 So basically the goal is to try to make calling a student by their name and pronouns illegal and wrapping this in either with some form of sexual exploitation, practicing medicine without a license, and using those as justifications for making this practice illegal. Now, in response, school districts in Columbus, Ohio, Harrisburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland announced that they would not comply with the order and continue to defend their trans students, according to journalist Aaron Reed. Seattle Public Schools published a statement reaffirming their commitment to protecting LGBTQ students and staff, and later, the California Department of Education pushed

Starting point is 03:50:44 back on the legality of Trump's order. Other blue cities and states have stayed quiet in the week since the order, with teachers and parents calling on places like the New York City public school system to take a stance on if they will stand up for their trans students. So this is one side of the coin right now. The other side is healthcare, which we will close on. Now, in relation to Trump's executive order from his first week entitled, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,

Starting point is 03:51:17 some hospitals have begun complying in advance by cancelling patient appointments for gender-affirming care. Denver Health and University of Colorado Health sacrificed the care of their patients for Trump's promise of continued funding by announcing that they would no longer be offering care, including blockers and hormone replacement therapy for patients 18 and under. The Virginia Commonwealth University and Children's Hospital of Richmond have also ceased providing gender-affirming care to those under 19. This past Monday, thousands of people gathered outside at the NYU Langdon Hospital

Starting point is 03:51:48 in protest of the hospital's choice to proactively comply with Trump's order to restrict health care after the cancellation of two appointments for trans patients under the age of 19. Now, after these protests, which saw thousands of people protesting out in the streets, after this, the New York Attorney General sent a letter to the state healthcare systems saying that the state law requires that hospitals provide gender-affirming care and claimed that the federal funding would not be impacted by an executive order. And like, this really hammers down the point that like, none of these executive orders are self-enforcing. These all require proactive implementation by local actors. Dr. Jeremy Birnbaum was quoted in the New York Times. He's a pediatrician at the state-run

Starting point is 03:52:31 University Hospital of Brooklyn. He was quoted as saying, quote, I am willing to go to jail to continue to provide your care, unquote. And you really can, like, protest hospitals that comply in advance. Same thing with schools Yeah, these are these are targets that can provide actual pressure and there's probably people on staff who are very sympathetic And they just might be too scared to take a stance right now And we have some breaking news as of this morning state Attorney General from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Nevada, Vermont and Wisconsin Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Nevada, Vermont, and Wisconsin released a statement saying that Trump's executive order banning trans healthcare is unlawful and that the hospitals have a duty to provide care.

Starting point is 03:53:14 So this is like the most optimistic thing that we've seen so far. Now obviously these are blue states. This is not going to impact red states who already have these types of bans either in process or, you know, are going to have them down the line. Georgia just put out a trans health care ban this morning for, you know, a bill that'll reach our Senate in the next few weeks. But this is the current situation. Protests seem to have applied a degree of pressure that has gotten states attorney general to actually make a statement on this issue. Yeah, I will say like, so I still teach right a teacher to community college and sometimes

Starting point is 03:53:49 through that we also teach high school students. If you are an educator or someone in healthcare, now is the time to be talking to your union about like how you meet this because like the stronger we are, the better we can confront this. And the only way to confront this is we all need to do it together. These are conversations that we need to be having right now. We do not have time and our unions are a very valuable tool for preserving our rights. Yeah, that's actually part of what I was going to say. I've talked to a few union teachers who are like, yeah, we're going to go do this. We're going to go fight.

Starting point is 03:54:25 So I expect in the next couple of weeks, we're going to see more movement from the teachers' unions. And I think there's, you know, there's an undue, I mean, there's, on the one hand, there is the threat that, you know, these people do want to privatize the education system, right? So there is a chance that this is, you know, trying to draw a backlash out of this is something that they're going to try to use to just completely eliminate like national federal education. But also, you know, this is something we've I want to close this episode on that we've been talking about this whole time. Right.

Starting point is 03:54:55 Is that this this whole coup is being carried out by a bunch of people with laptops and pieces of paper walking up to bureaucrats and the bureaucrats doing what they're being told, right? this is this is not a coup that's working with like an army that is showing up on your street and You can go like find the local Bureaucrats who are the people who are supposed to enforce this stuff and you can protest them and you can put some steel in their Spine and make them and make the administration actually try to do this. It's not that hard and they'll fucking cave. Yes. Yes. That's that's entirely what I was trying to get at earlier. And and you know, it ties into what James was saying is like, this is the time to be making connections across as wide a swath of the country as you can, including like everyone you can get in

Starting point is 03:55:40 touch with who is not someone you would normally organize with. This is a moment of potential and it's during moments of potential that you should be widening the swath of people that you connect to because otherwise there's just no getting through this sort of shit. We will be covering all these topics more in depth in our regular daily episodes. I have a mind boggling, very frustrating episode on Musk and the Trump campaign's promises of abolishing different departments of government, as well as a deep dive on affirmative action and DEI wokeness in the coming weeks. And I'm sure we will all be focusing on different parts of this in our continuing episodes.

Starting point is 03:56:22 But that does it for us today. See you on the other side. Be reported to the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. If What Happened Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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