It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 20

Episode Date: February 5, 2022

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.Join us on 2/17 for a live digital experience of Behind the Bastards (plus Q&A) featuring Robert Evans, Propagand...a, & Sophie Lichterman. If you can't make it, the show will be available for replay until 2/24!Tickets: https://www.momenthouse.com/behindthebastards Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:01:20 an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.
Starting point is 00:01:47 Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.
Starting point is 00:02:22 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. What up? Alright, the show started. Garrison? Hey, we're going to be talking about Canada again.
Starting point is 00:02:42 So, yeah. And to discuss Canada and politics and the happenings here, we have another journalist who writes for, I believe, Anti-Hate Canada and the Canadian
Starting point is 00:02:58 Anti-Hate Network and also Vice, I believe, right? Yeah, I've written for Vice. I'm currently researching full-time. I'm an extremism researcher for, it's a new initiative called the Online Hate Research and Education Project. It's actually partnered with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, and it's under the New Burger Holocaust Education Center, which we might be renaming very soon. I'm very excited for you guys to get into a Twitter fight with James Lindsay.
Starting point is 00:03:23 I'm very excited for you guys to get into a Twitter fight with James Lindsay. Can't wait. So yes, Dan here has joined us to talk about Canada because I've gotten a few messages about this thing that's happening. My mother, who's in Alberta, called me a few days ago to talk about this thing that's happening. So I'm getting a lot of things and it's definitely worth discussing specifically on some of the rhetoric that people are using around this. So I'm actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hand it to Dan to talk about what, like, how did this thing, like, what is it and how did it kind of get started?
Starting point is 00:04:02 Yeah. Uh, well, so Garrison's not alone by the way for anyone not in canada every single person's mother in the entire country has called and asked them about it i just got another message literally right now like literally this second it's got another one moms of canada have been activated moms of canada have been activated but not in exactly the same way that they're being perceived to be. Yeah, not all the ways. So the quote-unquote trucker convoy, which I might get into a little bit later, but I'm kind of like against even calling it a trucker convoy.
Starting point is 00:04:37 Yeah. It was started on January 14th and by a former Wexit party now called the Maverick Party member Tamara Litch and a group of very active far-right grassroots protesters who do a lot of
Starting point is 00:04:55 organizing like this and most of their activities kind of go back to like 2018. Yeah, they go back a decent amount. Yeah, like this, I mean, there's links to people that have been doing it in the 90s in Canada's movement right now, but a non-binding motion against,
Starting point is 00:05:14 I think it's M183 a few years ago, really mobilized people. And it's kind of been more consistent since then of the same groups of people. Yeah, that's what we talked about in our first Canada episodes, about kind of how we got to that point. And now, like, those same people are still kind of behind what's going on right now. So yeah, there's this alleged caravan of truckers,
Starting point is 00:05:35 of all the truckers in Canada going to Ottawa. Statistically, all the truckers in Canada. All the truckers. And so this thing was kind of originally organized by some known far-right figures and the people associated with the Canadian Yellow Vests, which kind of died down. But it didn't die down. It just morphed, right? Morphed into a very strong anti-vax presence in Canada right now.
Starting point is 00:05:58 The anti-vax movement is gaining a lot of popularity in Canada. And it's run by these guys who were doing WEGZT, which is like West Exit. It's like for Alberta and BC to go away from Canada because the rest of Canada is too liberal. So WEGSIT and the LFS have really changed all of their focuses into this anti-vax thing as a way to do
Starting point is 00:06:16 recruiting, and they've prompted this kind of movement of truckers going to Ottawa for a few specific reasons, which I think Dan probably knows a little bit more about than I do. Like I, I know the gist of it, but you,
Starting point is 00:06:28 you, you've been focused on the, on this slightly more than I have. Yeah. I guess the main reason is it works. Like just from the perspective of, of getting attention and being able to get a message out. There's been a lot of traction on this,
Starting point is 00:06:41 that this groups don't normally get. I think the last trucker convoy that was done under this sort of umbrella, it had like nine, I think, was the total amount of like trucks that made it to Ottawa. The last time this was tried to be done, it was basically the same demands and the same reasons. So this one was started on January 14th and it didn't get that much buzz the first couple of days. The original goal was set at a hundred thousand dollars. I don't remember the exact time, but once it hit that pretty fast and it hit the first million pretty fast in ways that like these fundraisers really, really don't like the last big one we saw in Canada that was quite alarming in that fast, capped out at under $400,000. And that was for a barbecue, for a barbecue that got defied protests last year and ended up getting like all
Starting point is 00:07:35 its pad doors shut down. So there's a lot more money now in this one. Yeah, because this, this fundraiser, which was supposed to go like hand in hand with these truckers protesting the vaccine mandates, because they're upset that they're not allowed to truck into these states because they're not vaccinated. So they have decided to all truck into Ottawa as a pseudo-strike-slash-blockade type thing, because they're saying that we're not going to do our jobs and we're going to block off access to these roads until this mandate is removed. access to these roads until this mandate is removed. Now, of course,
Starting point is 00:08:05 the funny thing here is that the mandate to not being allowed to enter the states to do your trucking routes, that's not a mandate by Canada. That's done by... That's the rule in the United States. Because you're entering the United States, the states are actually the ones doing the blockage.
Starting point is 00:08:22 The Canadian government has no control over this. It's not actually the thing. The way to get the message out and support is incredibly effective because something I think like 28%, there was a survey recently of Canadians, are against the mandate, which is like really huge for like Canada's anti-vax movement
Starting point is 00:08:42 to kind of get that like support. And like a lot of people are mobilized too by there's a trend of posting uh it starts on 4chan in 2018 but it's getting revived a lot again now of uh people posting like empty grocery stores uh even a conservative member of parliament recently posted an empty grocery store and asked for people's emails to try to like change the laws uh it turned out to be from the UK. It was a stock photo. And there's been like,
Starting point is 00:09:11 even like the stores themselves have had to come out and make statements being like, no, we're not empty. We have things. Or like we are in the process of restocking. That's happened in the US too, where it's like we're literally emptying that shelf to move stuff to another shelf. So many snowstorms. We've had really bad snowstorms in Ontario in the US too where it's like we're literally emptying that shelf to move stuff to another shelf and you just like took a picture.
Starting point is 00:09:26 We've had really bad snowstorms in Ontario for a lot of the real photos of like empty shelves and it's just like oh no the salads half out and the store would just make a statement and it's like yeah we had two snowstorms a day in a row and our truck arrived a day later. The narrative that they're trying to push is like these
Starting point is 00:09:41 mandates are causing these shortages. And it's working. And the propaganda is working even though it's all on a false premise because first of all it's not like that those aren't that's not causing that and second of all complaining to canada's that's not canada's not the one who's making the restrictions the states is the one that's that blocky from doing this but but it's it's not actually about these issues it's that's not the reason why you're getting all these people driving to Ottawa. Because there is a lot of people. There's not many trucks. But there is a decent amount of people that are going this because it's not actually about these specific issues.
Starting point is 00:10:16 It's this general seething hatred of Trudeau and a generalized grievance that it's gotten this broad support, it's gotten enough financial backing. The fundraiser is over $6 million now. Jesus Christ. It's just what it actually is is an incoherent kind of intention just to go to the capital and cause problems.
Starting point is 00:10:40 Right? That's what they're actually that's what the underlying thing is for a lot of a lot of the of like explaining why it's gotten so picked up some some official demands like have been put out uh and they would be even more confusing like to read than like some of them are a couple of the most recent ones are just very general like stop this divisive nature that our government is imposing kind of thing like i'm parap paraphrasing, but it's really quite bland. Some demands from tangential groups involved, one, they say they won't leave until Trudeau steps down. Others say at one point said until every
Starting point is 00:11:14 politician stepped down. I think that was when before someone kind of pushed in more realistic goals into the movement. But like in terms terms of what they're talking about for the rhetoric surrounding it, we're seeing a lot of rhetoric around the sentence being like, this can be our version of January 6th. But they're saying that in a good way. That's the thing that at least some of the organizers, and then it's being carried out into the generalized rhetoric, is that this should be our own version of this, which is interesting on a few ways.
Starting point is 00:11:49 But, like, also, like, this would not have been said, like, seven months ago, but it's being said now, which means, like, there's been a shift in how January 6th is being viewed. There was this initial, like, really distancing, and now it's, like, it's becoming almost, like like more acceptable to acknowledge that it was maybe a good thing in your eyes and it's like that's an interesting rhetorical shift that that's been going on but then it's also concerning on just like a regular level to be like yeah these people wanted these people are saying they want to do their own january 6th that has obvious like physical implications for all these people trying to drive to ottawa um do either blocking off roads or just like making the government inoperable. Yeah, a co-streamer or a streamer in what's called the Plaid Army.
Starting point is 00:12:33 And now that's sometimes kind of just being rebranded as like Diagonal Network, quote unquote, which we can get into more, but it's going to be sillier. Yeah, they're kind of their own. They're their own issue for later. their own they're their own issue for later yeah they're their own issue but uh it was um uh one of their streamers who is very tangentially connected to like a lot of the um the far-right people that are involved in this protest movement leading up to and in fact pat king who is officially uh one of the organizers of the convoy um until he wasn't And then he was again, that was a whole
Starting point is 00:13:05 dramatic thing for a day. Like he streamed alongside Plaid Army guys before. So someone on Plaid Army said, and I would quote, I would like to see our own January 6th event, see some of those truckers plow right through that 16 foot wall. And on January 24th, that was put up on CTV News made alive. And it's kind of scared a lot of people. I think at that point, former conservative leader Andrew Scheer had already voiced support for the convoy. There have been a lot of other like members of parliament voicing support for the convoy, some of whom really didn't seem to know like what was involved and really just kind of heard like in passing. Oh, it's against these mandates and I oppose these mandates too. And it's like, if it's against
Starting point is 00:13:48 Trudeau, you may as well sign on because it's going to help you. You're going to help your political career. Yeah, it's completely true. So have they actually started blocking roads or is it just a bunch of random people driving down the street? So there's
Starting point is 00:14:04 a few different converging points of the convoy. I would say probably the biggest one, but it's hard to kind of keep track. Started in British Columbia and it's going, so I'm sure not everyone knows the map for Canada. So British Columbia is like our West Coast. That's our California. And Ottawa is close to the West and it's in Ontario, but it's on the border of
Starting point is 00:14:28 Quebec and Ontario. And that's where our parliament is. That's our capital city. So it's coming from every which way, but I think the largest contingent comes from British Columbia and it just basically goes eastward to Ottawa, picking up people along the way. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it Yeah. It's heading in that direction. How do we know about... I know some people have kind of already... Some people have kind of already sort of arrived in Ottawa,
Starting point is 00:14:53 but mostly people are expected to more arrive in the next, like... Well, we're recording this Thursday night, so this episode will probably come out on Monday. People are expected to arrive on Saturday is the day that people are expecting like everybody to be there uh at least that's my understanding of it the convoy itself arrived saturday um there are people like coming from further east uh who are like
Starting point is 00:15:16 staying overnight in town and kind of just showing up the parliament event so like by by all accounts uh the parliament show will probably be a lot bigger than so far. I guess we haven't mentioned numbers yet. Sorry. Numbers nor what they actually really plan on doing once they get there. Because it's been so much talking about why this got started and what's driving motivational factors. But yeah, their goal is to get to a place and do a thing. Yeah, the thing is unclear. That's the unclear part. The thing is mostly unclear.
Starting point is 00:15:46 I have seen discussions about trying to assemble a trucking strike and then blocking off access so that the government's forced to obey their demands or else the country will shut down. Then some people maybe are just kind of doing it
Starting point is 00:16:04 as a one one day protest. It's, it's, it, again, it is, it is, it is pretty unclear, but people are headed to there. What, what is the, what is the numbers at least from where we can see like online and stuff? So their numbers have been the number of 50,000 people. 50,000 trucks. Yeah. 50,000 people became 50,000 trucks. Yeah. 50,000 people became 50,000 trucks, uh, very quickly. Um, and that same number, I think Rogan repeated it. I know Joe Rogan said it. Yeah. Yeah. Joe Rogan said it.
Starting point is 00:16:33 Theo Fleury went on Laura Ingram and repeated the 50,000 number. He said 50,000 truckers, not trucks specifically. Um, as far as I know, Theo Fleury has no official involvement with the convoy and is just a fan and is just repeating some numbers that like organizers themselves have kind of echoed um this is all so complicated for me because this is very troubling in a lot of ways but also i'm a huge fan of the song convoy so this is really devastating please continue it's all right yeah so canada's far-right protest movement has kind of a habit of doing this uh in So this is really devastating. Please continue. for a while, who's kind of the most outspoken person in organizing the current convoy, claimed that 100,000 people were coming to Parliament for what was then like an anti-mask
Starting point is 00:17:30 demonstration. Before the event, that outlook changed to 50,000. And I was actually there, it looked closer to like 200 people. I had friends that had counted like 170 people, so not quite 50,000. For all intents and purposes, the current one will be longer. Reporters doing great journalism along the way have estimated up to like 400 people so far, including I think 15 trucks outside the Bass Pro Shop in Toronto this afternoon was counted. Side note, if nothing else, got to give them points for stopping at Bass Pro in Toronto. It's a pretty sweet Bass Pro. I do love a good Bass Pro Shop. My favorite is was counted side note uh if nothing else got to give them points for stopping at bass pro and toronto it's a pretty sweet bass pro i do love a good bass pro shop my favorite is the one
Starting point is 00:18:09 they built into the giant pyramid yeah oh yeah obviously nashville baby so the the bass pro in toronto if you're ever in town robert it's the only place around that i've been told that sells subsonic 22 rounds so if you're like in the woods, but you don't want to scare your neighbors because the woods aren't that big. Yeah, I used to have some friends and I used to go shooting in a suburban neighborhood with Subsonic 22. Because it's technically...
Starting point is 00:18:37 Well, don't do the Subsonic part. You can definitely... It was legal. Oh, right. Canada doesn't do that. I't do it I don't endorse the might have to cut this part out for regional sharing no leave this all in
Starting point is 00:18:56 just a bunch of words make it nonsense with bleeping please continue yeah so only 15 trucks were counted by CBC at that point. And like videos and stuff have been... Slightly short, yeah. Yeah, there might have been a couple dozen.
Starting point is 00:19:13 Slightly short, but I think by the time, by Saturday, I think there's a decent chance that there might be maybe around 50 trucks to 100 trucks. If there's anything more than like 500, all of the media footage will look like there's 50 000 that's enough trucks absolutely nobody's camera is going to be able to show the extent of them realistically and then yeah once they're there it's unclear what they want to do some people just want to do the fuck shit up thing some people want to carry on the tradition of like what the most of the anti like uh vax anti-mask protests in Canada have been,
Starting point is 00:19:45 which have been pretty big, but it's been mostly standing with signs. So it is really unclear because, again, most of the truckers in Canada probably are not going to be there, nor to necessarily endorse this idea, nor is like, right, because they're pressing the their their initial issue is not even based on an actual like thing so it is i'm not sure how many people are really going to show up because i don't know even how specific it is to an issue um one one just really interest funny interesting thing that i thought about is like with with some of these people um you know talking about you know going to ottawa and not leaving until the mandates are dropped or the entire government resigns.
Starting point is 00:20:28 Like these people who are talking about this like blockage and shortage and stuff are also like the same people who get very angry at indigenous people for blocking off roads and trails for like oil and like pipeline protests. A lot of them, yeah. Some of them are indulged in pretendian stuff. Like Pat King, back in September, kind of went on like a kick where he just let a lot of people believe he was indigenous and claimed so and not correct them. That is weird. bombarded people with information that he was not in fact indigenous and it was all very weird and a lot of people held him to comments in the past where he talked about Anglo-Saxons having the strongest bloodlines
Starting point is 00:21:14 yeah that is Pat King probably deserves his own little deep dive on one of the pods but yeah it is like with all the people talking about blockades and stuff, most of them coming from the western side of Canada, it is, yeah, you're talking about all these things.
Starting point is 00:21:34 There's really big pro-oil sentiments in all of this crowd. Yeah, because a lot of it is connected to financial and political stuff, not necessarily even this vaccine issue. It's been more like a symbol to represent their general kind of upsetness at um at the way at the way things are going for them it is interesting to me so so when i first heard about this my i was i was like oh okay so this is going to be like the chilean truckers and i was like okay well
Starting point is 00:22:03 this is really bad but it's like it's interesting to me like how few people they've been able to mobilize like that's like not a large number of truckers like it's it's tough because they actually get yeah it looks like a lot of like vehicles when you when you see like footage uh photos and videos like like in i'm gonna like a lot of like telegram and facebook groups of just people just like sharing pictures and photos um of the rally of the convoy passing through their town and like it it's like what robert said like it's when it fills up both sides of the camera and you have a wide depth of field it looks huge and it's it's really hard to count uh the money is preposterous uh also side note on on the money um it the funds were frozen
Starting point is 00:22:47 uh a few days ago on the 25th but today one million dollars was released back to them because they gave gofundme a pretty clear plan allegedly according to gofundme for for how they're going to distribute it uh the rest of the it's it's i think it's like 6.7 million now so the rest of the, I think it's like 6.7 million now. So the rest of the 5.7 million I think is still frozen. Okay. It is so much money. Yeah. We should do something like that. They could actually buy truck nuts for 150,000 truckers,
Starting point is 00:23:18 which is the most I've seen them guess truckers are coming. They could buy $20 truck nuts off Amazon for all of them and still have the vast majority of their funds left over yeah but see that would be an act of actual heroism and they're not going to do that yeah the reason why i wanted to talk about this is one to like acknowledge that it's happening right acknowledge the tactics that they're using in terms of trying to go into an urban area and block off uh like trade routes essentially yeah um and then i wanted to talk about like first of all it doesn't matter that like the fact that this is happening is divorced
Starting point is 00:23:51 from any kind of direct cause right because their their actual grievance is false and the grievance doesn't really actually matter it it just need there needed to be some kind of cultural or propaganda push in order for this physical action to happen, and that's been done. It doesn't even need to be coherent. And then escalation. People driving here, doing this thing. And then I know there was this one interview. I forgot on what news channel, but they interviewed this one trucker guy, part of this convey in my hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
Starting point is 00:24:26 part of this con part of this convey in my hometown of saskatoon saskatchewan um and he's he said um i advocate civil war if people don't want to step up we have guns we'll have some we'll stand up and we'll bring them out but like so that's the quote so like in the fact that you're just openly saying i advocate civil war in relation to this movement is like, my goal is, my goal here is being like people fantasize about Canada as being a place to escape, you know, Canada, like Canada is like the other from the States and like,
Starting point is 00:24:53 no, it's the same. Like we are like, you cannot escape away from fascism. There is no really, there's no real away right now in terms of like safe ground. There's no safe ground. It can spread to where you are. And for people living in Canadaada when you have people on the new on like global news saying i
Starting point is 00:25:10 advocate civil war within the context of this of this like um you know convoy movement it is it is an actual thing worth paying attention to it is an actual problem it's it huge. And earlier today, and I might pronounce his name wrong, but Dale Manukadok from CBC Toronto tweeted a story because he, on behalf of CBC, contacted an actual organizer of the convoy. They have different regional organizers and their website lists them all. And it had Pat King. Funny side note, it had Pat King listed as an organizer while their GoFundMe had a statement saying they had no connection to him, which was very funny. But yeah, so CBC Toronto contacted them and the guy responded, enough lies. You quote slave blooded traitor. Evil will get its due in the end.
Starting point is 00:25:59 Slave blooded? Yeah, after. Yeah. After a back. Yeah. Yeah, after a back and forth, a very brief back and forth, and just like a couple of questions the organizer ended with, you know, you tow the line for the global corporate coup taking place under the guise of public health. You can't be that dumb. Traders will swing in time. Oh, boy. Yeah. I do think Americans don't fully understand how much the anti-vax movement is tied to far-right politics within Canada. And it's been like the driving force of far-right politics for the past two years. And it's gotten so much larger. It is a thing. When you have people on camera saying, we want to January 6th, I advocate a civil war, talking about not leaving until the government either resigns
Starting point is 00:26:51 or mandates are dropped, and then threatening physical violence on top of that. Yeah, it is a thing that could happen there. And that's kind of why I wanted to talk about it. Yeah, when I have my mother calling me, dozens of messages from random to talk about it is like yeah when i have my mother calling me dozens of messages from random people like worried about this then yeah it is an issue like i've um it's it's it's not it's not not a thing no it is and the the rhetoric is so universal against uh anyone they perceive to be leftist to that it is really dangerous like
Starting point is 00:27:28 there's been a little bit of talk of like counters in in ottawa um when the numbers are this big like there's no safe way uh for people to to stop that sort of thing especially when all the vehicles are on that side like it's uh it's dangerous there's a lot of violent stuff um even uh like i was uh looking today uh the people's party of canada's they got like five percent of votes in our last election they had a little bit of a scandal uh during our election uh which is the end of last year um where uh a writing director for uh i think it's uh director for uh it's uh it's uh the greater area of london it is elgin middle six london uh so they're they're writing directors so not their member of parliament writing um was revealed to uh post like skull masconazzi memes and memes comparing bernier the leader of his own party
Starting point is 00:28:20 to hitler so like probably not a negative comparison um and he was not fired for it uh but he was fired after it came out that he was being charged for throwing rocks at our prime minister okay that's fine yeah he actually he recently said on a live stream uh he was asked if he was currently on trial and he said yeah i mean as far as i know uh like he's been posting images of like trucks running people over and that's just like one connection to uh to the legitimacy of it all um like i mean the uh the platt army guys the ones who talked about uh driving the truck 16 feet they're also connected with bernier they've had um randy Hillier on their podcast before, who's a sitting politician and a member of provincial parliament, which is kind of like our state Senate equivalent
Starting point is 00:29:09 over here. They've had him on and like there's some like legitimacy to it getting on. And when you just talk about the broad movement in general, a former Conservative Party of Canada leader Andrew Scheer, who had kind of a rocky departure from the party, because he allegedly used campaign funds to pay for his kids' private school, side note. Like, he'd already signed on and endorsed and been interviewed. Aaron O'Toole, the current leader of the Conservative Party, just today actually said he was going to engage with them. Earlier this evening, Sergeant-at-Arms Packeridge McDonald sent an email to our parliamentarians ahead of Saturday's trucker convoy protest. I'm quoting Justin Link's Twitter here. There have been attempts to collect MPs' home addresses. As such, the Sergeant-at-Arms
Starting point is 00:30:03 is advising to avoid the rally and go somewhere safe. That apparently wasn't listened to Aaron O'Toole, who said, I'm going to do it anyways. And Justin Link tweeted later, tomorrow I will be meeting with truckers, O'Toole announces, right after parliamentary security warned MPs to avoid the protests entirely. So it's not great. Yeah. I mean, again, this will probably come out after Saturday, so if we don't talk about this again, then that means it probably... It's good.
Starting point is 00:30:32 I mean, they showed up, they protested, and they kind of dissipated. If we're following this up in a few days with another episode, then that means something bad happened. Yeah. But again, even at this point, it is still worth talking about in terms of like the generally like this is like this is the kind of like the nut of why this is so important
Starting point is 00:30:52 for everybody is what you were saying about like when you've got this many people this many trucks coming from an outside and moving into a city there's very little that can be done against them um like there's not there's not really much of an effective counter other than trying to get another mass of people in cars to confront them. And that's, you know, a potentially dicey situation. So this remains a very powerful tactic. We've seen it used all over the United States too. And it's this idea of like blockading a city, even though this is kind of the earliest step in taking that is,
Starting point is 00:31:26 is this is going to be the last time people try to extend to this logic. Yeah. So that, that's kind of the surrounding cultural reasons and shifts in rhetoric and like applicableness as like an act of like an act of like protest or like, like revolt or insurgency, whatever, whatever team want to use is just interesting.
Starting point is 00:31:46 Cause like a lot of these, the other interesting thing about the States compared to Canada is like in the States, we have like, we have like an actual like far right movement. Like we have like, we have like conservatives when then we have like the far right movement in Canada. The, that distinction is not much of a thing.
Starting point is 00:32:02 A lot of, a lot of, there is, there is some far right figures trying to push stuff forward, absolutely, but a lot of – the space in between conservative and far-right is kind of a little bit more fluid. They are kind of regular conservatives, but they're still getting sucked into saying, I advocate a civil war. Like, that is just a regular conservative dude. He's not a member of any kind of political thing. That is just kind of what this culture on the Western side of Canada really kind of defaults to, almost, when you start going into this kind of like anti-trudeau territory because that's the their their main their main politics is anti-trudeau like that is that is what they are so anything that gets to that point is allowed whether that is conservative or that is like more far right as long as it's anti-trudeau then it's it is a valid politic and that's the distinction in the state that
Starting point is 00:33:00 there's a thing in the canada that i had don't really see as much in the states it's very familiar to me when you talk about how anti-clintonism fed into trumpism like that that is i think a worthwhile comparison to make because there were a lot of american conservatives who could get in bed with anybody if they were staying against hillary or bill um cool stuff well this is all fun i hope to not talk with you about this again dan um but there is a chance there is a chance we will have conversations um if you wouldn't want to after this episode airs if people want to see what happened right because this airs probably monday um and the convoy is set to arrive on sat, where can they find work talking about this? Whether that be like your Twitter feed or if you know if any articles are planned.
Starting point is 00:33:50 Yeah, so I'm planning on live tweeting. I can't make any promises because safety is always a thing. Yeah. And I won't know what it looks like until Saturday happens, but I'm planning on live tweeting. My Twitter is at spineless L. That's the word spineless and then just the
Starting point is 00:34:08 letter L. So yeah, you can check in on his account to see if he has a thread by the time this episode's out. And yeah, that's, that's how you can kind of figure out what happened if you're just listening to this now. And then in the meantime, there'll be a lot of Ottawa media covering it uh if you just want to see the fallout um i imagine the canadian idea network might talk about it more they put out an article today on it uh that covers more
Starting point is 00:34:33 of the the kind of problems that the far right that we talked about today than the most other media will go into they did uh that was a very good article and And then also today, Elon Musk tweeted in support of the Canadian truckers. So just in terms of, let's just, as a good example, I think this situation is a really great way to start thinking about politics and culture. And how they relate to each other and how this type of thing succeeds and how it succeeds. And why this rhetoric is so successful in bringing in so many people in Canada and raising $6 million. Almost $7 million. But anyway, that is
Starting point is 00:35:11 the show. One more plug, Dan, so people know where to find you. I only really am active on Twitter. So again, it's at spineless L. The word spineless as in I don't have a spine, and then the letter L on Twitter. Thank you, Dan.
Starting point is 00:35:29 You don't want to plug your Gitter account? Your Gitter? Wow. Yeah, real Gitter user vibes coming off of Dan. The only social media platform that Joee rogan looked at and said robert's just trying to get me to plug my sock puppet accounts yeah yeah everyone follow his socks this is a fucking op you can follow all my sock puppets at fascist wizard.ca um anyway that is Anyway, that does it for our show. Thank you for listening
Starting point is 00:36:08 and yeah, convoys, Canada can't escape. Excellent. Thank you for having me. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.
Starting point is 00:36:44 Modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.
Starting point is 00:37:34 He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Atian. Elian. Elian. Elian.
Starting point is 00:37:45 Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.
Starting point is 00:38:05 At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.
Starting point is 00:38:48 You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, películas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you.
Starting point is 00:39:13 We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with ch man laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories.
Starting point is 00:39:38 Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the New Year's again! Woo! Yeah, welcome to the year of the tiger. This is a special special Lunar New Year's edition
Starting point is 00:40:10 of It Could Happen Here, a podcast that is today just about, well, it's still about things falling apart and things being rebuilt, but I wanted to specifically, you know, do a special Lunar New Year's episode and spend some time
Starting point is 00:40:26 i think talking about chinese-ness and how what sort of being a part of the chinese diaspora in sort of in the us and canada is like and you know how that how that influences how we organize how what we're afraid of what we're sort of proud of. And with me to talk about this, we have JN, who I think first time ever returning guest. Yeah, who works with Laosan. Hello, JN. Oh, what an honor. Thanks for inviting me back.
Starting point is 00:40:58 Yeah, thank you for coming. And we also have Jane Shi, who is a queer Chinese settler living in unceded traditional and ancestral territories in the Musqueam, Sasquamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations in what is falsely and fakely considered Canada. She is a poet, writer, editor, and an organizer and does many other cool things. Hello, Jane. Welcome to the show. Hello, thank you for having me. Just wanted to share that it's Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh. Yeah, sorry.
Starting point is 00:41:33 Unfortunately, I do not live up north, and so my pronunciations of tribal names are even worse than they are for the tribal names that are around me. So my apologies. No worries, no worries. Yeah. So before we get into a bunch of extremely grim stuff, I wanted to, because this is the,
Starting point is 00:41:55 if you will be listening to, well, okay, unless you're listening to this on Monday night, in which case, congratulations on beating time. But most of you are probably going to be listening to this on Lunar New Year's. And so I wanted to, before, yeah, before everything gets completely dark, I wanted to know what you two's favorite Chinese New Year's food is, because this is like maybe my favorite holiday. It's basically my favorite holiday because in grand Chinese tradition,
Starting point is 00:42:22 it's just an excuse to eat a lot. So yeah, opening the floor up. Yeah, I think you're the expert here, Jane, so feel free to lay down the knowledge. I am not an expert just because I fold
Starting point is 00:42:40 dumplings does not mean I'm an expert. But I mean, I haven't spent like Lunar New Year's with really that many other people in a very long time. So my sense of like breadth of food has really, really narrowed to what is available to me. And really narrowed to what is available to me. And I also have been really struggling with the dumplings that I've been making because of like carpal tunnel issues. But I've been thinking a lot about jellyfish lately.
Starting point is 00:43:20 Like I keep thinking about jellyfish and I keep thinking about like the sesame, anything with sesame in it. Yeah. Like I keep thinking about jellyfish And I keep thinking about Like the sesame Anything with sesame in it Yeah and like Just boiled dumplings I feel like are really Great for me At this particular moment
Starting point is 00:43:37 Yeah my favorite is In Cantonese it's called Ningou which is You stole mine Oh really Yeah is uh in Cantonese it's called Ningou which is you stole mine oh really yeah yeah um and the way my mom used to make it all the time was like
Starting point is 00:43:53 dipping it in an egg first oh cool and so it has this kind of like eggy crust on it which is really really awesome and I've been making that for the past couple years myself where I am. And I can't wait to go to the grocery store and grab some because it's only available around this time.
Starting point is 00:44:13 I guess they don't really produce it any other time. And last time I went to visit my mom, she like loaded my suitcase full of them and I wasn't able to eat them fast enough, unfortunately. And some of them went bad. Oh no, we have a, and some of them went fast. Oh, no! We have one in our refrigerator. I think it was in the freezer, and it's now, I think, in the refrigerator,
Starting point is 00:44:36 and we're all incredibly excited to cut into it on New Year's. Yeah, do you guys do the... Because I know... So we normally have red bean ones. I know there's brown sugar ones or something that are like plain. Wait, I just wanted to check. Like, is it nangal? Yeah. Or at least...
Starting point is 00:44:53 So like the sort of like flower thing that is like shaped like a semicircle? Yeah. Wait. I feel like there's different... Or like an entire circle. Yeah. I feel like there's different... Or an entire circle. We usually cut them into square strips,
Starting point is 00:45:10 but I think that's just a cooking... ease of cooking thing. Yeah, and it usually comes with a date or something on top. Yeah. When it's packaged. That is so interesting, because I feel like
Starting point is 00:45:24 the Nangal that I grew up with doesn't usually have a lot of thing on it. It's kind of like sticky and kind of plain. And I'm just, this is a new thing for me. Yeah. Yeah, the one we usually get just has red beans in it. And then there's like the one date on the top. Oh, I don't know if you're thinking of like Caoou, which is a different type of dish, where it's white rice cakes, and then you can...
Starting point is 00:45:53 It's saucy, and then you put different ingredients in it. Yeah, I think it's a different... Ours are just... They're pretty close to the... It's like a sweet dessert, yeah. Yeah, I think I'm just talking about the regular Ningou. They're pretty close to the... Like a sweet dessert, yeah. I think I'm just talking about the regular Ningal. They're just like... They're basically plain, but there's some red bean stirred into the dough, and then it's just
Starting point is 00:46:16 like the flat brown thing that you fry. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking of. Yeah. Alright, this is... We've now done dessert chat uh honestly much much less grim time than most of the stuff that happens on here and you have all been now subjected to it i go eat chinese new year's food it's great uh yeah so on to things that are somewhat more grim um i think there's there's two big
Starting point is 00:46:50 things i want to talk about that sort of related to like i guess chinese diaspora-ness um i guess we can start with talking a bit about anti-asian violence and police violence because i mean it's like so my sort of into this is that my my someone uh okay so one of the things that's happened in the past about two years was this huge sort of spike in anti-asian violence but then you know part of what happens politically around that was there was this huge attempt to essentially turn anti-asian violence into i guess like the anti-blm like especially in the u.s but i think I think this happened elsewhere too where there was it didn't I don't know it it it worked in some places and didn't work in other places so I went to the
Starting point is 00:47:52 University of Chicago and a few is it a few months ago now maybe just a couple like a month or two ago a uh Asian Chinese international student like got on campus, and this turned into a huge, sort of, like, bring more cops on campus. There was this huge petition that got signed. It was, the people were, like, asking for more security cameras, and asking for more cops, and, like, the UCPD, like, a couple weeks
Starting point is 00:48:18 later, just, like, shot a dude. And so that, there's been, I've been seeing this tension a lot. I was wondering if you two had also, sort of, run into similar stuff stuff and what your thoughts were on it. validation in this weird way that I find really delegitimizes the unique struggles that are here that are different. There are, there's a different kind of police system. There's like the local police, like Vancouver Police Department. But then there's also the RCMP, the Royal Mount Canadian Police, which are in other municipalities.
Starting point is 00:49:14 And the RCMP was created specifically as a tool of settler colonialism to enforce the Indian Act, which is, I guess, the most succinctly way I can put it is segregation of Indigenous peoples from settlers. And there is a lot of displacement of Black communities across Canada, and there was also slavery in Canada, even though we like to pretend that there wasn't. And so against this background, I guess, and ongoing police brutality, whether it's in Wet'suwet'en territories or just the police killing people. There's a lot of mainstream Asian Canadian and Chinese Canadian institutions that are very, very much complicit in the system. Like there is an organization an immigrant chinese canadian organization in vancouver who one of the board members is a cop who is married to a a a uh city counselor and a lot of the discourse that institutions, not people themselves necessarily, but institutions
Starting point is 00:50:49 create around, for example, the revitalization of Chinatown or the preservation of culture is around, oh, there's graffiti in the neighborhood. Chinatown in Vancouver is in the downtown east side which is considered um the poorest post is considered the poorest post-so-cold in Canada and it's like a tight-knit community with a lot of indigenous peoples black people people in poverty struggling against the poisoning massacre um wherein the government is not providing um safe supply and where the police just kind of like are everywhere pointing guns at everyone displacing the tent cities and so when there is an easy not an easy but just like a demonized group of people that um the general public doesn't know enough about um if you walk through the downtown east side and talk to people you would talk to people about their experiences with residential school their experiences with
Starting point is 00:52:00 missing family members experiences with poverty and in the in the broadest terms it's like the way that Chinatown's being gentrified people tend to blame the poor um and there's like this divide and conquer mentality within the Asian diaspora within the Chinese diaspora specifically and so similar to what happened with um Michelle Goh similar to her um there was a South Asian elderly woman who a group of people who lived in the tent city had killed pretending to be cops when they knocked on her door and the count one of the city counselors um in Vancouver was like this we need to stop indulging in these tent cities um meanwhile there's a lot of like marginalized people in these tent cities who, who, who cats, um, who need to live there because it's COVID times and, um, society has abandoned them. So it's like anti-Asian racism
Starting point is 00:53:17 and violence has also the hate, the so-called hate crime thing has so apparently increased. And I don't think that it hasn't increased. It's just that like the way that the media, the way that the institutions within Canada is also jumping onto the police wagon, the police, the hate crime angle, rather than learn from abolitionists, rather. Yeah, this is a long way of putting it. It's like similar, it's similar. And I know a lot of details, yes. Yeah, I mean, I think that, yeah, I think that tracks.
Starting point is 00:53:59 I mean, the targets are slightly different just based on sort of scenarios, but on the sort of local context. But I think that does, yeah, that tracks a lot with what we've been seeing here as i think there's a there's another thing that i don't know so i i really don't like the term like because the the is it the twitter hashtag stop asian hate like i hate that framing of it as sort of hatred not racism but even the sort of the anti-asian violence framing which i've been used a lot i think has problems because you know i mean this is one of the things you're talking about one of the things that i've seen a lot is just you know
Starting point is 00:54:36 anytime like you know there are genuine sort of racism attacks, right? But then there's also just like, I mean, one of the sort of scare things that happened here was it was like a bunch of people's, like a bunch of Chinese restaurants got broken into and robbed. And everyone was like, well, this is anti-Asian violence. And it's like, well, no, like this is just theft. And there's been this sort of like collapsing
Starting point is 00:55:01 of something bad happens to an Asian person with specifically sort of like collapsing of something bad happens to an asian person with specifically sort of like targeted racist attacks and i think that's been well i mean that's been a problem and there's also the secondary problem of you know who even who even gets included in this in the first place like one of the biggest things i've been frustrated about is you know the sort of selective inclusion of south asian people like i there there was there was a shooting at a fedex uh facility last year by a guy who was like very much very far right kind of like pilled online guy and it killed a bunch of seek workers
Starting point is 00:55:42 and it killed a bunch of Sikh workers and there was never there was just nothing like no one talked about as anti-Asian violence but then you know selectively you get inclusion to Southeast Asian people when it's like it's like people get folded
Starting point is 00:55:58 into being Asian when it's like useful to call for more police but then when it's you know not useful for that or when it's you know especially when it's like useful to call for more police but then when it's you know not useful for that or when it's you know especially when it's working class people getting killed there's just sort of nothing and I've been I don't know I've been really
Starting point is 00:56:14 frustrated by this dynamic a lot um yeah Jane I want to know what you think about this too because I have no talks long enough about this yeah I mean you know, wasn't there, there was a hate crime bill that was passed in Congress, right? And it was supposedly, quote unquote,
Starting point is 00:56:32 supposed to be addressing all this, quote unquote, anti-Asian hate stuff. And, you know, the only thing it accomplished was it created like some government organ to like oversee these efforts to address hate crimes and then more funding for the police, right? So I think it was a very kind of direct impact. We could just see how this discourse transformed into exactly what a lot of, you know, organizers had said would happen, which is more funding for the police and not making communities safer, right? So
Starting point is 00:57:03 I think the real conundrum for me, and not making communities safer. Right. So, um, I think the real conundrum for me, and I think that really kind of, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about this and I get, I get kind of frustrated is, um, you know, whenever these, these attacks happen on Asian heritage or Asian identified people, um, the response, I mean, it's, it's a good nature and it's well-meaning and I agree with it, but, you know, the response is always like the telling folks who have been victimized or those who know them, um, that's true. But then I think what I'm struggling with is how to make this message resonate with those folks. Right. Because I think there's a way that in some ways that can alienate them even more and make them even more reaction. Right. on that argument uh they use further instances of violence to spin that argument of like when when people say the answer is not more cops it doesn't make us safer uh the media is able to spin that to say look this isn't working right it's things are actually getting more dangerous uh all the kind of like scaremongering tactics with uh crime statistics and all that stuff which
Starting point is 00:58:23 are usually false anyway so So I think that's what I'm trying to figure out now is like, you know, cause in, in Chinatown, LA where, you know, where I've done some work, there was community meetings with CCD, what's the D stand for? I always forget. Develop. They had some meetings with community folks to kind of like, you know, hear what they wanted to do to address this. And they kind of like, a lot of those organizers had, you know, they're coming from that viewpoint that calling for more cops is not the answer and so some uh of the male they're from the community but they're not they weren't part of the kind of like senior population of chinatown which is you know it's like low-income seniors is kind of like
Starting point is 00:59:17 are the folks that are being pushed out and by developers and all the gentrification happening as well um some of some men were kind of like okay well we should start uh kind of like armed neighborhood watch um and you know i think in in some way that taps into this kind of like we protect us type of uh ethos right it's it's not relying on a state or government or whatever police paramilitary force. But then I think the question that some folks had, I heard the second hand was that, you know, are these people actually from the community and are they actually doing this to address the needs of the folks who are most affected by it, right? And so I think some folks were uncomfortable with the idea that there should be these kind of like street patrols. And so there's just so many different ways to approach this. And I haven't, you know, I'm not laying blame on anyone, but I just haven't seen an effective way to
Starting point is 01:00:21 counteract that call for more police yet. That's a really good point because I feel like in when especially Asian women, people who experience like various forms of sexual violence or street harassment, that sense of unsafety is amplified when we witness other people getting murdered in public spaces. And so I think in a way it's like understandable why people want to grasp for any kind of solution. And also why that kind of trauma can be weaponized or like taken advantage of immediately. Like just because I'm like, who asked for you to be street patrols of Chinatown? Who decided that you make the community safer? Have you consulted the seniors? Have you talked with all of the seniors, all of the elders to ask them, like, how would you feel if I did that?
Starting point is 01:01:41 Like, where is that suggestion coming from? feel if I did that like where is that suggestion coming from and I think that like the other argument is that like mental health resources is an alternative to policing even though um policing and mental health systems are very very very connected. Edward Wong has an article about that in Upping the Anti. And I don't know, I just think that like, there has to be like a way to talk about this without invalidating each other's trauma and invalidating people's survival instincts as well, because I feel like for years, as someone who's done work in the anti-violence sector, it's not that I wanted there to be more policing. It's just that a lot of survivors might be like, hey, I actually do want to use the court system because this person is dangerous. that's like as somebody supporting
Starting point is 01:02:47 a survivor I can't just go no you're wrong less cops right like that's that's not um a compassionate response and it's also not a compassionate response to go hey you're making this like all about yourself and you should like be talking about yourself, and you should, like, be talking about, like, Black and Indigenous people, like, like, like, that's, that's also really insensitive, so it's, like, I feel like there's a way that, there, there is, like, a way to talk about abolition that really needs to respect every really needs to respect every survivor or every like communities like trauma and it's not an easy thing because it's not like our communities have had a good way to respond to trauma like we haven't really like we're still breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma
Starting point is 01:03:43 yeah and i think think this kind of comes back to another sort of difficulty of this whole project because a lot of the sort of the abolitionist framework is about transitioning things towards
Starting point is 01:03:59 community solutions, but what is that even mean when you're dealing with you know this is this is part of the problem with well okay you have armed self-defense groups but you know what happens when inevitably and this is this is just something that happens just you know this is this is this is the nature of security forces right is eventually you're going to get abusers in it and it's like okay well what happens then and what happens when you know like the abusers of people inside the community and and this is compounded i think by this problem of
Starting point is 01:04:32 like what like what even you know the the i i think i think there's there's there's there's a broader problem of like what asianness is and there's a broader problem of what Asian-ness is, and this is also a localized problem of what even is the Chinese community at all, because you're dealing with something that's incredibly fragmented. You're dealing with people who speak different languages. You're dealing with people who've been in these places for, you know, some people have been here for centuries, some people who've been here like two months. for you know some people have been here for centuries some people who've been here like two months and i think that makes it really difficult in a lot of ways to sort of like even even just bring together something that could be a community and i know i know what happens and i know you know there's there's there's lots of different sort of like fragmented There's lots of different fragmented communities, but I think it makes this harder because there isn't a ready-made thing you can turn to and go, okay, well, this is how we're going. This is the group of people, and this is the social sphere, and this is the community that we're going to turn to to deal with this stuff.
Starting point is 01:05:47 There's just this kind of a bunch of amorphous different groups. And then also you have the problem that if you're going to talk about political forces and Asian communities, the business associations are extremely powerful. extremely powerful and you know we have different objectives than they do but they're also like extremely well organized in a way that most other sort of like chinese groups aren't i don't know that that's that's that's been where my thinking has been going on this yeah i think um this there's some resonance with what you're saying and the kind of dynamics that you're identifying and what i've kind of witnessed and experienced in like Hong Kong diaspora organizing, which I think, you know, there's a lot of overlap with that same type of like, you know,
Starting point is 01:06:36 small business organization type of thing that usually dominates Chinatowns across North America, which is the case in LA. And actually CCED spends a lot of time fighting the small business organizations because they are very friendly with developers and they're usually pro-securitization and anti-poor folks and all that kind of stuff. So there is that element where a lot of the times you know you are fighting against people who might have like the same heritages for example um and you know for me personally that's that's very much the case with hong kong diaspora groups right because you know many of them are very conservative uh are right wing, and not only just kind of held personal beliefs,
Starting point is 01:07:26 but advocate a lot for these kind of, you know, these policies and politicians and all these different things that I really can't stand, and I'm aligned against. And, you know, I think it's a lot of folks want to take the kind of pragmatist route of like we'll work with you on things that we where we have points of unity uh otherwise we don't whereas you know i guess some people see me as a little bit more rigid in the sense that like i don't want to work with these folks at all because um i see them as kind of themselves as as a force that is causing more harm than good, especially if with these Hong Kong diaspora groups, the usual mantra is like Hong Kong first,
Starting point is 01:08:11 like everything that we do is serving Hong Kong. And in the diaspora, that usually means kind of like non-partisanship, lobbying Congress, all those different things. And then kind of like completely ignoring or being agnostic of uh local and domestic issues um to oversimplify a little bit so you know i think that's been on my mind a lot i know your question was about chineseness but i guess for me that kind of filters a little bit further down to like what is being a hong konger right yeah it's really difficult to organize with your specific quote-unquote ethnic or diaspora
Starting point is 01:08:56 community when the the meaning of diaspora is not a cohesive community but people's memories of home um it's like a difficult thing to kind of but but your head against because it's like you have your um diversity equity inclusion framework of organizing. And then you have the everyday, like what, what, what these frameworks can't simplify, which is the tensions between your communities. Like I didn't grow up experiencing overt racist violence when I grew up in Richmond. Richmond is an extremely East Asian and Chinese suburb that saw first, not first, but just like at some point, a wave of Hong Kong diaspora because of 1997. And then afterwards, more like mainlanders um and so on the playground somebody was like are you from Taiwan mainland or or Hong Kong and that was when I was like seven and that was my
Starting point is 01:10:16 introduction to what it means to be in diaspora in this particular kind of way and being like, just right. Like in that, in, in that and, and figuring yourself out within that and seeing how there is just an absence of community because of how like these different geopolitical experiences have like separated us um and made it more difficult um like when we filter our parents political beliefs onto each other it's kind of like this awkward thing yeah but but i
Starting point is 01:10:56 think that like um in in trying to contend with that in the, in the present, it's sort of like, we have these older institutions that other people that, that the older generations have built. What new things can we build? What things can we, cause I feel like I'm, I'm really rigid too. I'm like really not great at talking across the aisle. And when I do, it's not, it's not really about anything substantive. It's like, Hey, like, hi, it's good to see, you know, like when you live in a place, you, you don't want to make, like make enemies, but like, it's, it's a really hard thing. Um,
Starting point is 01:11:49 enemies, but it's a really hard thing. And it's even more heartbreaking when you find out slowly that people are just taking advantage of you, right? And I don't know, it's a really difficult thing to organize against when you're like, you all hate me. Great. Love it. This has been Naked App and Here. Join us for part two of this discussion tomorrow, where we go into more detail on the state of the left. In the meantime, you can find us at Happened Here Pod on Twitter and Instagram. And check out The Cool Zone for other shows that we do. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?
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Starting point is 01:13:23 On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.
Starting point is 01:13:43 Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba.
Starting point is 01:13:54 Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?
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Starting point is 01:14:59 and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology.
Starting point is 01:15:30 I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that recognizes that Lunar New Year's is not, in fact, just one day.
Starting point is 01:16:07 And in that spirit, our special New Year's episode is going on for a second day. So, here's the rest of our conversation with JN and JN. You know, the other thing I wanted to sort of touch on, like, this is, I think, kind of diverting off the topic, but I think it's also something that I've been running into a lot, which is that, know you have this kind of like you know you have this kind of bind right because on the one hand you're stuck between you know like a lot of the organizing and sort of in asian communities has all of these problems and then you know okay well you know the other thing that's happening is is the sort of mainstream american left and the mainstream american left i think the canadian left has problem similar problems with this is that like it's a bunch of just like it's a bunch of tankies it's a bunch of people who love the ccp
Starting point is 01:16:54 it's a bunch of just weird genocide deniers and like people who think that every asian person who like doesn't like the government is a caa psyop and i don't know this is something that i've like i mean i've i ran into a lot trying to i mean help people doing kong kong organizing is something i've run into just in like every organized like i've run i've run into this in anarchist spaces too like it's it's just i don't know it it it feels really bad because it's like like you're you're just sort of caught between and i guess this is sort of there's this three-way triangulation right because on the one hand you have this sort of like you you have the the local dynamics with you know the sort of descendants of the the sort of reactionary small business owners you have this you know the the chinese
Starting point is 01:17:46 community also being sort of split in between like pro and anti-ccp factions both of whom have like are absolutely chock full of just fanatical right-wingers it's like well okay it's like the ccp versus the epoch times and it's like i don't want any of them to win. And then you zoom out and you're caught in the middle of this sort of, you're caught in the middle of this sort of, I don't know, I think it's sort of like a Fox geopolitical struggle, but like one of the big sort of ideological conflicts being between both the CCP and the US sort of like using the specter of each other to sort of like disturb their bases. And I don't know, I'm incredibly frustrated by it. I'm incredibly frustrated by the way that these groups have – like the anti-CCP – like the pro-CCP groups have sort of selectively been using anti-Asian violence as, you know, basically making the argument that the importance of anti-Asian violence is that, well, this only happens because people say mean things about the CCP and if no one didn't like the CCP
Starting point is 01:18:52 then there wouldn't be any violence even though anti-Asian violence here predates the existence of a communist party in China by centuries. We invaded China, china like how many times at least twice maybe three i think at least twice and maybe three times like before there was a communist party and so i don't know i i i feel trapped a lot between these dynamics in ways that
Starting point is 01:19:23 are very frustrating and yeah i guess i want to open the floor to talk about that i guess i see it as like co-optation partly um but i i guess i also see it as how power works like Like, I, there's, like, this local paper, and I was researching, sort of, the history of Chinese diaspora one of whom is from um a newer Hong Kong diaspora there was like a whole spat um in the paper about his history and there's the history of like those tensions are like written in the community itself like it's it's it's not a new thing that people argue about what happened on June 4th it's not new that people are really mistrustful of each other and that there are actual, like, government forces that infiltrate and create, like,
Starting point is 01:20:50 basically deny other people's struggles, like, when that government is themselves perpetuating it. And I guess it just is really hard when fellow organizers that you otherwise really like want to get along with are are like uncritical of the state that has oppressed your family because you're just kind of like you're kind of like wait so are we have we had a conversation about this like we clearly haven't talked enough if this is what you believe in and it's just a little bit hard because it's like community building is not assuming that we're in solidarity community building is actually like doing that hard work like what is your community experiencing and what is my community experiencing how are we being like weaponized against each other
Starting point is 01:21:46 like yeah how are these governments like manipulating like communities but that's like really hard when trust has been probably broken like yeah immediately yeah i think you're so right that it's it's really about co-optation and a lot of it like what i've witnessed is really so much about um and this is like like you're saying jane this is a much older dynamic than you know just the past couple years is like uh states being able to use this kind of home and diaspora framework to um demand loyalty through like targeting diaspora people's guilt yeah um and so there's so many like guilty diaspora people i know who are like you know usually from usually from a class perspective right because they had the reason their family had the resources to leave
Starting point is 01:22:39 or uh they were not born in the home country or whatever because of their family background, that type of thing. And they want to subsume that by taking this radical, you know, anti-U.S., anti-Canada stance, which is fine. Like, obviously being anti-U.S. and anti-Canada is a good thing. the thing that's really kind of frustrated me the most is seeing these kind of like radical folks, uh, in North America, um, especially queer folks who are like, they'll take the most reactionary positions against women and queer and, you know, LGBT folks in China, for example, uh, by supporting a state that is, uh, repressing them. Right. So it's, it's such cognitive dissonance to me. Like, I don't understand why these folks can't see, um,
Starting point is 01:23:28 that they're kind of perpetuating this violence in, in the service of this kind of overarching imperative of not ever saying anything bad about China, because it'll help. It'll, it'll bolster the U S propaganda war machine, which is like, there's absolutely a way that, I mean, that
Starting point is 01:23:47 absolutely happens if you do that, uh, uncarefully, right. If you just kind of repeat, um, U.S. media narratives and stuff like that. But I think there's absolutely a way to do both. Right. And, um, to me, the way to do that is to not support the state discourses that demand loyalty from the diaspora, but to actually, you know, it's the grassroots thing, right? It's just kind of like, we support queer folks around the world who are struggling under repression from their governments and that type of thing. And being able to very carefully say that with nuance, to be against both at the same time for example um that's really really difficult right um and people have very kind of vitriolic reactions when you try and do that
Starting point is 01:24:33 um as you know she said up top uh chris so i don't know this this is still the conundrum for me because i i tend to take the more rigid stance against these folks. But I know people who are very kind of, they take a more compassionate stance, which is like, these are newly politicized youth. They're just coming to a lot of these politics and positions. And, you know, being anti-US is better than not being anti-US, is what a lot of folks say. And, you know, I agree to a certain extent, but then it's also like,
Starting point is 01:25:07 if they're being miseducated in these histories, that's okay to a certain point when you're exploring and discovering these things and becoming radicalized. But, you know, like Jane said, there's also these kind of material direct impacts that you have on people that you work with, that you organize with, that are your friends or loved ones. That, you know, that kind of explanation of like, oh,
Starting point is 01:25:31 they're just learning is like, it's insufficient in that kind of individual way because you're still hurting people and threatening people around you. Right. So I think there has to be a balance in like being able to steer folks in, into these like non-stalinist non-statist uh directions even while they're discovering i hate how we're even having to be like steering people into a non-stalinist perspective i'm just like i i'm not horny for stalin i like the thing that pisses me off about this is they're not even Stalinists.
Starting point is 01:26:07 This is the thing that's frustrating. If they were merely 20th century Stalinists, we wouldn't be having this argument. Because 20th century Stalinism is like, well, yeah, okay, 20th century Stalinists are anti-market economy. And it's like, no, they've somehow found a way to take literally the worst aspects of Stalinism and then be like, okay, but what if Stalinism but also capitalism good at the same time? And it's just like, how did you do this? Like, how did you come up with an ideology that like, I don't know. I mean, I think also a thing that's been frustrating to me about this is like it's a way of sort of – it becomes this way of channeling – you know, you have the diaspora guilt on the one hand, then you have just random sort of like white leftists sort of white guilt and and it becomes this way of like channeling that into this sort of fall anti-racism where you know you get you get people who are like actual professional like hacks right like roger day for example being like uh you know doing things like well if you if you if you
Starting point is 01:27:19 criticize the chinese state at all it's xenophobia and like you're directly leading to people getting killed and it's like no that's not how this works and there's this kind of it's it's it's it's this problem of they have this this fundamental inability to see chinese people as people and not a sort of undifferentiated mass that can be sort of rallied behind an ideology and i don't know that's been i think weird to deal with because you know like yeah like you you're always just in in chinese communities like you're always you're just you're just gonna have like you know there's gonna be a few people who are just sort of like pro ccp right-wingers right that's just that's just a sort of default political position but there's there's this way in which you you get this you know people adopting i mean just things that like if you
Starting point is 01:28:30 said this about any like white american for example if you argued that any like a white american making a thousand dollars a year wasn't in poverty or like you just couldn't do it you like you know it's it's literally impossible like you'd be laughed out of the room or you know like you're you would you'd be like ratioed until the cows come home but you can just but everyone and people just say this constantly like this is just a thing that was like well if you look at poverty reduction it's like well chinese china has eliminated uh absolute poverty it's like yeah okay a thousand dollars a year is outside of this now and i think there's these ways in which it becomes hard to to intervene in this stuff because like every every asian person specifically
Starting point is 01:29:13 every chinese person just becomes a sort of token that like you know you just sort of like throw at each other as just like oh well yeah uh here's a chinese person who says the CCP is good it's like well here's another Chinese person who says that it's bad and it's like you never it's like on both sides whether the pro CCP people realize it or not it's their agencies being sort of stripped by them and they've been turned into this sort of
Starting point is 01:29:38 instrumentalized like you know in the same thing that they're also doing to us is that they're turning into sort of these instruments that you can use to like back your own sort of political agenda and this i don't know i like this has gotten me to just i i just don't work with these people anymore like we tried it it was a disaster they screwed us over and so i don't know but but i think that's that's that's a lonely stance in a lot of ways like you know if you take this kind of like hardline position you're not gonna most people even other people who don't support it probably won't follow you there know. It's weird because I find a lot of organizing is really lonely. It's like,
Starting point is 01:30:27 it's, it's not like, like, I want to boast around being like, why aren't you all donating to this? But that's not, that's also guilt, right? That's like projecting guilt onto other people. That's also guilt, right? That's like projecting guilt onto other people. And that's not an effective tool. And I think that like, like, you're so doing it in a little group project, for lack of a better word. But it's sort of like, how do we make this sustainable when it's so lonely? And how do we use the resources that are available to us to not replicate these systems yet again and I guess when it comes to the lefts or progressives in Canada it's like so frustrating because it's like there isn't actually a lot of community outreach to like racialized communities there's no translation there's a lot of like non-profit work that is frankly very draining and co-opted themselves um like it's it's a bunch of social service organizations in a trench coat and a bunch of political organizations that don't work together or talk to each other in a
Starting point is 01:32:09 trench coat. And so I understand why youth would join like leftist, like radical organizing, but it, it's just really heartbreaking when it's your, they end up reading, in reading groups where they're reading historical, or so-called historical texts that erase your histories, like, it's just such a, like, like, reading is great, like, political education is incredible um but I'm like it's hard not to grow resentful when the guy at the top is a university educated white dude and they're reading texts that literally erase your entire family and it's um that like, yeah, for me, it's like, just really personal that way. It's like,
Starting point is 01:33:07 there are people who are suffering in the present and you're reading a text by a white sociologist from the eighties. Like, like not like I'm like, it's not that like, I don't think that we should do that political education. It's just that, like, at a reading group, will you listen to me when I call you out? this work is really lonely especially if you take if you stand up for yourself or you you really kind of stand by your principles it's i think that's so true and um you know not to speak for everyone in lausanne but just my experience has been like you know everyone just everyone hates us yeah like it's you know we get hate from the right we get hate from the left um and from hong kong diaspora from hong kong locals hate from the left. Um, and from Hong Kong to
Starting point is 01:34:05 ask for from Hong Kong locals, like it's, it's just, sometimes it's really hard to see, you know, because we're, we're trying to stay true to our principles, but it's hard to see sometimes, uh, whether there's an impact or whether we're just kind of like in a little echo chamber with 20 other people, you know what I mean? And, um, it's hard to find that balance because I don't want to become more and more pragmatist where I'm just like, all right, well, you know, I'll work with these people, but I don't agree with them on these fundamental issues just on this one campaign or whatever it happens to be. I don't know.
Starting point is 01:34:41 I know that's a part of like building power, quote unquote, like that a lot of certain socialist groups like to do or they really focus on that kind of thing but uh i don't know if it's too much of an academic view to to be like if you're gonna do it that way you're you're changing the outcome already right because you're not addressing these kind of fundamental issues from the start. And I think that view can sometimes lead to a lot of non-starters, where things don't ever get off the ground, because you insist on whatever fundamental principle that you want to stick to,
Starting point is 01:35:21 like anti-nationalism, for example. So yeah, just kind of reiterating and commiserating with you all in the loneliness of that people think that like not working in these sort of united front things is is this like sort of pure ideological position but like you know i mean so when occupy ice was happening right occupy ice wound up being a kind of big friend thing and one of the groups involved with it was the was the party for socialism liberation who are this sort of like very much sort of like the the base the tanky cult like they've there's not a lot of other horrible stuff that we'll talk about at some point but i mean one of the things that happens in occupy ice is that they you know in philadelphia
Starting point is 01:36:05 they they destroy the encampment uh like they they they convince enough people to just leave and do this completely pointless like march they can do a photo op of like people in front of the mayor's office and they do it and the camp collapses because suddenly there's not enough people you know they don't even get a majority of the people but it doesn't matter because they pulled enough people out that you know that the camp couldn't be held against the cops anymore and i think that in some senses is this kind of microcosm of what they of what these people actually do which is that you know these people will never have any actual institutional power right you know they're never going to create their like salinist state or whatever like they're never going to get this
Starting point is 01:36:41 they're never going to hold any power what they can do is there are enough of them they can they can siphon off enough people from actual leftist movements into this sort of just like white room pro-capitalist stuff that they can they can cause movements to collapse and i mean they've done this they did a lot of this during the uprising in 2020 there is a lot of them you know intentionally leading people on pointless marches there's a lot of cooperating with the police and stuff like that. And I think that, you know, it's like having seen that like multiple times, right? I, you know, I, you know, for me, like not working with him is an incredibly pragmatic position because we tried it and they blew it up. But it's this problem, especially, you know, you have people who are radicalized in like 2020 and it's like well yeah i mean i don't know like
Starting point is 01:37:31 a lot of them never saw this stuff right don't know who these people are and their first introduction to the left is this like incredibly well financed uh like media blitz and i think that has consequences both for us as sort of like people on the left doing – like Chinese people on the left doing our own diaspora organizing. And it has consequences for the broader left. And you can see other sort of versions of this, right, where you have a sort of right-wing movement infiltrating leftist spaces and destroying them like they're like there was thing like deep green resistance basically blew up a uh like an anti-lithium protest in the u.s by just like going there and just hammering transphobia constantly and so i don't know i i think there's there's this sort of dilemma because fundamentally they will say a lot of the same things we do, but we have fundamentally different goals.
Starting point is 01:38:30 And that manifests itself on the level of organizing individual campaigns, but it's something that's really hard to get people to see. I think we've lost a lot of movements because of it yeah not to be you know not to pile on the cynicism or anything but i think i i honestly do think uh you know as all this new cold war stuff ramps up which is like completely independent of what a lot of folks like grassroots folks are even thinking or advocating.
Starting point is 01:39:06 It's all just kind of up to the, the two, you know, Chinese and U S governments as they ramp up their own tensions. I think it's really going to start like people are going to start these people who are, you know, tankies or whatever are going to start narrowing our choices further and further,
Starting point is 01:39:25 right? Like, you know, soon, it's going to be anathema to not, you know, take the anti US position. And that's it. You know what I mean? And I think that's really scary. To me, I don't, I, last year, I thought there was still room for intervention, but things are closing so quickly. And my personal opinion is that a lot of these bigger groups like No Cold War and others like Code Pink, they have much more funding than a lot of other groups who are forwarding more nuanced positions. a lot of other groups who are forwarding more nuanced positions. And so, like you were saying, it's just like these media blitzes, these shiny events and all those different things are very appealing to newly radicalized folks, right?
Starting point is 01:40:15 Because they think that this is where the power is and this is where we can actually make a difference. And yeah, to me, things look pretty bleak in the near future. Uh, it just takes one. Yeah. Yeah. I will say,
Starting point is 01:40:30 I think, I think they, they, they made one major mistake, which is that they tried to do the new, the push, the giant, like new cold war with China thing at the exact moment that the U S and
Starting point is 01:40:39 Russia were like heating up and actually, and this left them like kind of off balance because they'd been for the last two years the whole thing's been the u.s is going to accelerate tensions with china u.s is going to accelerate with china and then it turns out that they're not doing that and in fact like they're gearing up for just more proxy war stuff with russia which is the thing they've been doing for the past decade so i think like i don't know like i I think their problem essentially is that they run into reality and there are certain points at which you can
Starting point is 01:41:10 lie a lot, right? But when the lie that you're pushing is about what the mainstream media is going to say, and the mainstream media just pivots and is just completely about something that's entirely unrelated, I think that hurts them. everything that the other problem they have that that makes me hopeful is
Starting point is 01:41:30 that the way their their base is getting split by just the anti-vax grifters because so many of their media people just you know are are just are just full-on grifters and you know and you're you're seeing splits right now in gray zone about like basically between pro and anti-vax factions and i think that also will help us in the long run because you know say say what you want about most leftists and even most tankies like anti-vax is like a bit far even for them and because because, you know, and the other thing is like the, the, it's, it's hard to do anti-vax without beginning to take positions that just like, it's been baked into just sort of anti-Chinese racism in,
Starting point is 01:42:17 in so many ways that like, you can't really like, you know, like you can't simultaneously be pro incrediblyincredibly ccp and then also be talking about how the u.s is trying to implement social credit right you know these are these these positions are just contradictory and i think that's something that plays to our advantage and i think is weakening them to some extent because they've they they tried to have their cake and eat it too, and now they're sort of, I don't know,
Starting point is 01:42:48 their conspiracy theory base is interfering with their left base in ways that I think are helpful for us. It's just so interesting how the anti-vax position is literally rooted in racism and ableism like um there's an article in the conversation called the inherent racism of the anti-vax movement that has like really good history around white settlers being afraid of African medicine. And then there's also just the ableism of assuming that your kid will get autism. If you get vaccinated, that's been a huge thing before the pandemic.
Starting point is 01:43:48 And that was part of how this was effective in the first place and um yeah and obviously the anti-chinese um like uh anti-asian like scapegoating as well but um I guess that also ties into like just how broadly ableist the left is and how like disability justice is not something that a lot of people know about um or care about and it's yeah I don't know It's a huge problem for me as a disabled person. Yeah. I wanted to add really quickly too. I mean, I totally agree with you. And, you know, I think one of the pernicious things that I've noticed though, is like these kind of big, you know, quote unquote, anti-imperialist accounts, like on Instagram, for example, imperialist accounts like on instagram for example um they they take this anti-vax position precisely by saying that it's anti-racist to take that position which is like it sounds that sounds very counterintuitive it's not that does not reflect reality but they will point to instances instances of, you know, anti-Black U.S. medicine, for example, you know, like the Tuskegee
Starting point is 01:45:08 experiments, and then say, this is why we shouldn't trust the U.S. government on any of this, right? Because look what they've done in the past. And it's like, that logic makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways, right? But, you know, they obviously ignore the impacts that, you know, But, you know, they obviously ignore the impacts that, you know, anti-vax and COVID has had on, you know, Black and other POC populations, right? So I think, I don't know if it's exactly, like, I don't know if it is appearing as hypocrisy to those people and then their audiences too, right? Because I think they're able to spin it in this way. Yeah, but I think my argument here is I don't think those are the same bases. I don't think that the majority of the tanky base are people who are anti-vaxxers. And you can see a line of this, right, of one of the big things that they're obsessed with the Cuban healthcare system of like with the cuban health care system right and like cuba's cuba's vaccines you see this stuff from them a lot
Starting point is 01:46:09 and you know and they'll also talk about like yeah like china's doing really well containing i don't think those positions are like i don't think those people are the same people who are also turning around and then talking about how like you know talk doing the kizuki experiments the vaccines are actually like racism thing i think i think there's some overlap between them but but i don't think that those bases line up enough for it to you know not have the effect of just kind of like tearing them apart as their media people flip into into one of the sort of camps and i think the other thing like you know if you look at what's happening with like uh like max blumenthal right now is that he's just like full-on like like he's just full-on touring
Starting point is 01:47:00 with like just straight up right wingers to an extent that even like even people who've been habituated by the sort of like syria false flags stuff into sort of working with right-wingers like you can't look at these people that you know it's just these actually just like republican operatives and be like well okay we're we're on the side of these people and also like support cuba i i just i don't know i i i have i have some faith in these groups being separate and they're being they're being a point of cognitive dissonance where the system breaks down i i guess i i've seen people who have gotten out of tankyism by having to interact with the actual ccp and and that that that gives me hope that there's there's there's a point of cognitive dissonance
Starting point is 01:47:52 at which it falls apart and i don't know i maybe maybe i'm just sort of like hopiumming here but i feel like it's so interesting how like there are a lot of people for whom politics is a parlor game yeah and not their everyday like lived experience like i would not be so like i like if i see my communities struggling um and when people are dying or people are really, like, struggling with intergenerational trauma, I'm not gonna sit here and pontificate and theorize about, like, um, things that don't impact my communities. Um, and yeah, like, the, the angle about class is so important here because it's like a lot of people can't insulate themselves from like the broader communities around them. in the media and your communities are like, Hey, that, that makes no sense. Like if you're actually connected to people, like, like you would hopefully, unless you're just a big asshole, you would hopefully take some accountability for what you're saying. And I, yeah, I just,
Starting point is 01:49:20 I just worry because this pandemic has also like really isolated people. Yeah. Like they, people are not like talking isolated people. Yeah. Like they, people are not like talking to each other and that makes it more easy for people to, to be like, Oh, I'm,
Starting point is 01:49:33 I'm just right. Like, this is my perspective. And I just, yeah, I think about that, the conditions in which we come to certain conclusions, like the conditions under which we become more vulnerable
Starting point is 01:49:46 to culty type things, or, like, oversimplified, like, understandings of history, because, like, I feel like the, the anti-vax, like, not taking the vaccine, being anti-racist is a very, like, uh anti-racist is a very like manipulative like argument because it ignores the fact that these experiments um on black and indigenous people in north america and beyond are like about neglect and are about um deliberately deliberate ongoing genocide and how like it's completely understandable for for people to not trust the government but but like when the vaccine is actually a tool of protecting people like there's not a lot of campaigns other than people who are rooted in disability justice saying, hey, vaccines are here to protect us. And how can we resist the medical industrial complex
Starting point is 01:51:01 enough such that we can make people feel safer taking a vaccine how can we bring people in as opposed to fear-mongering because i think that fear is so powerful it's like once you're afraid you're you're not gonna you're not gonna even look into the research right so i don't know it's for me i just think of all of this as like manipulation and human psychology on a on a like broad social basis because it's like the the stage is a big cult and these little groups are little cults yeah yeah do you two have any other uh things you want to say before we head out happy new year yeah year of the tiger i'm looking forward to retweeting art like actually
Starting point is 01:51:55 okay not january 1st yeah yeah we should i think my okay okay close closing less depressing question yeah what do you think is the etiquette on retweeting by like yeah retweeting like you're the tiger art before the actual before like Luna New Years I've been torn on it because I just I like the art but also
Starting point is 01:52:21 I'm like it's not the years yet I haven't seen any I, but also I'm like, it's not the years yet. I haven't seen any. I guess I'm lucky. I have been either guilty or just not guilty, depending on how you see it. I have retweeted all of the tiger art on January 1st because I did not care. i wanted to see the tigers
Starting point is 01:52:46 um but i hope that i see more tigers like in the coming days because if the tigers aren't coming or if we aren't retweeting it that that is an issue like there needs to be like a second like a like a like a like like an like a second wave of the tiger art um no pressure to all of the artists well all right so if if people want to find you or work that you have that you want people to find uh where where can they do that or if you also do not want them to find you that is completely also valid uh the internet is terrible and a mistake yeah i'm mostly in do not perceive me mode completely valid if you want to check uh out laosan stuff feel free uh laosancollective.com work? My social media is, um, keepakallpoetry. Um, on Instagram, I, uh, am, I have this graphic that I've turned into a sticker and it's, it raises funds for families who were affected by the fires and floods.
Starting point is 01:54:06 It's a sticker that says immunocompromised people are worth protecting. And it went viral multiple times. So I guess I cannot help but be perceived at this point, despite objections. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I got poetry. Yeah, this is what happens when you create things that are i both incredibly politically powerful and also gorgeous so yeah uh be be be cursed with i the reward for good work which is also being perceived
Starting point is 01:54:38 yeah yeah well you can find uh you can find us at happen here pod on twitter and instagram there's the cool zone you can find it yeah go go go go retweet tiger art go throw a brick at your sheriff non-actionable and yeah destroy the American and Chinese states
Starting point is 01:55:00 happy new years Chinese states. Happy New Year's! Welcome, I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology
Starting point is 01:55:24 of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.
Starting point is 01:55:40 I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere.
Starting point is 01:56:27 Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.
Starting point is 01:56:43 Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.
Starting point is 01:57:24 Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, New episodes every Thursday. conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,
Starting point is 01:58:26 where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It could happen here is the podcast that this is about things falling apart and how to maybe unfollow them apart. I'm Robert Evans, your host, and your other hosts are Christopher and Garrison and our producer Sophie. How's everybody doing today? Great. How's everybody feel about war?
Starting point is 01:59:08 Oh. Yeah. Now, if you were to guess, based on your knowledge of history, what generation of war we're in right now, what would y'all guess? I feel like war isn't... It's newer in relation to like human beings like the idea of war i'm guessing like there's been like battles but like the idea of like war i feel like
Starting point is 01:59:35 isn't super old compared to how long there's been humans walking around so i don't know this is maybe i mean i i know the answer but like it's it's like i don't know like it's definitely we definitely passed through like at least a couple of stages and we're at least a couple yeah chris like gotta be at least 12 12 okay at least 12 you are way ahead of william s lynd who spoilers is the guy who came up with the concept of fourth generation war which is what this episode is about, right? One of the things when we talk about things falling apart is the unsettling growth of a number of different hybrid conflicts, Ukraine being the most like blatant modern example, Syria being the deadliest example in our lifetimes. But like these weird hybrid conflicts that are a mix
Starting point is 02:00:25 of shit happening on the internet and like disinformation going out all over the world. You could even think to like what was happening in Bolivia a year or so back and like all those weird accounts that were like based around Langley, Virginia claiming to support the military coup. And you can look at like from the same, this disinformation brought out by like the Russian state that is usually as part of like a conflict, either, you know, they have disinfo operations in Syria, disinfo operations around the conflict in Ukraine that are kind of designed to muddy the issues and detract international support and also to like drum up support within for like in the case of Ukraine, you had like this media blitz against the legitimacy of
Starting point is 02:01:05 the Ukrainian state in favor of like a more like traditionally Russian style of government in the east and like that led to this breakaway republic that was supported by the Russian government and like – so these are like hybrid conflicts is kind of how these are referred to. And there was a guy named William S. Lind who in 1989 wrote a book with a couple of US military analysts. Like he was an analyst for the military. He was not serving in the military. The other guys he wrote this thing with were serving at the time. And they wrote this book kind of trying to – basically what Lind was doing, he was very influenced by our loss in Vietnam.
Starting point is 02:01:50 When I say our here, like the loss of the American state in Vietnam. And he was trying to determine like number one, kind of like find a way to codify and explain the changes that were happening to warfare in this period. He was also influenced by what was happening in Afghanistan, what the Russians were experiencing, and find a way to like move forward and allow the United States to win wars again. That was William S. Lynn's goal. And so he came up with this concept of, or he and some other guys came up with what they called fourth generation warfare. And first generation warfare
Starting point is 02:02:18 is like Napoleonic era warfare. So as Garrison was saying, you may note that he kind of starts his that's pretty late that's pretty late we had a lot of wars before the 1600s or the 1800s yeah there's a lot of stuff that leads up to like i yeah i if i was going to try to categorize different types of warfare that would not be the one i start with well and like the reality of course as we'll talk about like when you start looking at different kinds of warfare is there's wars that look remarkably like the shit going on in afghanistan and ukraine that are occurring like
Starting point is 02:02:48 several thousand years ago um like i mean some of those in like in the same places too like yeah it just like if you wanted to if you wanted to talk about like kind of the modern style of wars that we saw and that we've seen really in the last like 150 years they're not all that dissimilar in a lot of ways from like the kind of conflicts you saw between Rome and Carthage, which are these really like big nation state style conflicts and have a lot of similarities. But William S. Lynn described the first generation of warfare as beginning after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 that ended the 30 years war. And it's the kind of warfare where you have these like big, tightly ordered groups of
Starting point is 02:03:24 men marching towards each other and like firing very inaccurate weapons in mass together, right? This is ended by the era of the machine gun and the semi-automatic rifle or the bolt reaction rifle, I should say. And that leads us to second generation warfare, which is linear fire and movement with heavy reliance on indirect fire. So that's still huge groups of guys charging, but they're not marching in close order. They're not like firing in volleys. And they're supported by heavy artillery, like World War I kind of shit, right? Really, we start to see this in like 1870, and then World War I is kind of the height of this kind of warfare. And over the course of World War I, we merge in, again, this is William S. Lynnn's way we merge from second generation to third generation warfare which is where you've got infiltration tactics to bypass enemy defensive lines and
Starting point is 02:04:10 collapse it which is kind of the germans and their aufdrags tactic and stormtrooper tactics are really kind of uh pioneering that you've got the idea of defense in depth um and so this need to bypass the enemy and like this leads to blitzkrieg and leads to all sorts of shit. And then that kind of starts to collapse and Lin's estimation around Vietnam. And you get what's called fourth generation warfare. I'm actually just going to read a quote from a military history wiki that I thought had a pretty good description of all of this. Fourth generation warfare is normally characterized by a violent non-state actor fighting a state. This fighting can be physically done, such as by modern examples,
Starting point is 02:04:49 Hezbollah or the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ilham. In this realm, the VNSA, these violent non-state actors, use all three levels of fourth generation warfare. These are the physical, actual combat, which is considered the least important, mental, the will to fight, belief in victory, et cetera, and the moral, which is the most important, Lind says, and includes cultural norms, etc. So obviously, I think that this is kind of nonsense. There's a lot of people – so there's a lot of folks – the people who buy into this, and it's very popular on the right, will look at like what's happening in Ukraine. It's a perfect example of fourth generation warfare because you have Russia flooding the zone using Sputnik and a bunch of other kind of media organizations to drum up discord and like anger between East and West in Ukraine and support for potential Russian action at the same time as you have them backing this dictator. And then you have like the
Starting point is 02:05:40 West sort of supporting the people protesting against those dictators and like – so you've got like this digital conflict, this information conflict that eventually leads to fighting on the ground. One of the areas in which I think Lind is really off is talking about like the physical as the least important, especially if you're going to consider Ukraine an example of fourth generation warfare because if the Russian military had not intervened, there would not still be a conflict in Ukraine. The separatists would not still hold land.
Starting point is 02:06:08 And in fact, the separatists were on the edge of getting completely wiped out by the Ukrainian military because they were a bunch of non-state actors with minimal support and minimal weaponry before the Russians moved in brigades of active duty combat troops and armor, including like gigantic fucking missile launchers, which they used to shoot down that Malaysian Airlines flight. Like it's just not, I don't think that what Linda's saying is very, very well describes what's actually going on in the world. But it is important to understand the concept of fourth generation warfare and fifth generation warfare, which we'll talk about in a bit, because it is so useful in the way in which particularly guys like Steve Bannon conceive of conflict because you will
Starting point is 02:06:51 hear the term fourth generation warfare constantly. And it's also something that is used a lot within our military establishment. Now, a lot of people hate it. And within – you can find a lot of papers by dudes writing like analysts who are working for the defense department for the army actively like shitting on lind and talking about how he's at best is kind of like reinvented ideas that have existed in warfare for thousands of years and he's kind of summarized things in a way that that is unneedlessly flattening and like some people will say you basically like ripped up
Starting point is 02:07:21 like added the internet to klauswitz uh and pretended that you'd invented a new style of – or that you defined a new style of conflict. Anyway, that's like an introduction to the idea of fourth-generation warfare, right? And there's a lot of things that he gets. Again, like if you're a history – a military history wonk, which Lind pretends to be, a lot of shit that he gets wrong. pretends to be a lot of shit that he gets wrong. So one of the things that he says, like one of his famous phrases that every military eventually craps in its own mess kit. The idea that like every military that is great
Starting point is 02:07:53 eventually like has a gigantic fuck up because they get too used to doing the same thing, which is true. And he describes it as like, the Prussians did it in 1806, after which they designed and put into service a much more improved model mess kit through the Scharnhorst military reforms. The French did it in 1870, after which they took down from the shelf an old model mesh kit, the mass draft army of the First Republic, and put it back into service.
Starting point is 02:08:16 The Japanese did it in 1945, after which they threw their mesh kit away, swearing they would never eat again. And we did it in Korea, in Vietnam, and now in four new wars. So far, we've had the only military that's just really dumb statement. That's all really historically inaccurate. So, for example, it's true that, like, the Prussians had a great military, which then got its butt kicked by Napoleon, and they had to completely redesign it. And by the time 1870 came around, they were extremely dominant on the battlefield against the French. Number one, he's crediting the military reforms of like tactics and strategy and ignoring things like Krupp inventing an entirely new kind of cannon that was utterly dominant on the battlefield. He's also ignoring the fact that this Prussian army, he's saying like the US is the only army that does the same thing over and over again and fails and keeps on
Starting point is 02:09:02 eating. Well, the Prussian army is the army the Germans took into battle in World War I and II. And spoilers, they didn't learn enough from either of those wars. He also talks about how like the French had their, you know, crapping in the mess kit moment in 1870 after the Franco-Prussian war and they changed their army and it was much better. And I was like, well, they didn't win World War I.
Starting point is 02:09:23 Like they were on the side that won, but if it had been them against Germany, they would have gotten fucking steamrolled. Like it was not going well for them for quite a while, and they lost a whole generation of young men. So maybe – and again, this is like what he's saying is basically we – because we're losing so constantly, the reason that we're losing is not because we are picking bad conflicts. It's not because we're picking to engage in conflicts when we shouldn't at all be engaging in conflicts. It's not because we use military force in like a fundamentally venal and corrupt way in order to benefit a small cabal of military industrial corporations. we don't have good battle doctrine, and that's why we're not winning in these conflicts, which ignores everything about the reality of the conflicts that he's talking about. The problem is not a lack of combat dominance, which is what you were seeing with the Prussians fighting Napoleon. It's what you were seeing with the French fighting the Germans in 1870, right?
Starting point is 02:10:19 In those cases, the Prussians had a massive failure of combat dominance against the French, and the French had a massive failure in combat against the Germans. Their doctrine was just worse. U.S. soldiers are great at getting into gunfights and great at winning gunfights. The problem is not a lack of combat ability. The problem is that there's no way to win the conflicts that we're getting into. They are unwinnable wars uh that were never things that like no amount of change in doctrine would have made afghanistan a success because it was a stupid war yeah like it like if if that were true like coin would have worked and coin yeah no like a
Starting point is 02:10:58 coin counterinsurgency absolutely yeah yeah just complete total and utter failure like enormous numbers of people dead enormous numbers of like people traumatized for generations and the u.s still just lost both wars yeah it's just and and and if you really dig into lind and others like him what they're actually saying when they say that like we need to reform like the way the military works with new battle documents we need to be killing even more people we just didn't kill enough in vietnam like the way the military works with new battle documents, we need to be killing even more people. We just didn't kill enough in Vietnam, like the 5 million we bombed or so. That wasn't enough people. Like that's the reform that he's really talking about.
Starting point is 02:11:33 Is Lin one of those people who like rants about the, like the El Salvadorian option? I'm sure he does. I don't know exactly what he said about El Salvador. He's a fascinating kind of fascist um he is absolutely a fascist he was the director of the center for cultural conservatism at the free congress foundation um he wrote a or he helped to to popularize a declaration of cultural independence by cultural conservatives um which is like these it there's a lot of the seeds of the shit that we're seeing today right
Starting point is 02:12:05 that like american culture institutions are being collapsed because of like liberal decadence and conservatives cultural conservatives should separate themselves and like set up parallel institutions oh so that is where bannon comes in and that's where bannon comes in that's where like fucking andrew torba and gab come and they all advocate this shit yeah because they're all they all adhere to that kind of uh uh yeah like politics has culture uh and and there's downstream yeah and there's some weird differences with lind like he's a huge mass transit and urban rail advocate which i guess i agree with him on like fine every once in a while a bad person does have a good opinion he loves he loves him some fucking city trains and stuff.
Starting point is 02:12:47 But he's also – he was a major factor. He was one of the earliest like prominent conservatives who was like yelling about cultural Marxism in kind of the modern political period. I mean that makes sense because he was real – it sounds like he's real into metapolitics. Yes, he's super into metapolitics. Yeah, so like all of this stuff makes a whole lot of sense if you're – yeah, if you know what meta-politics are, it also kind of explains how he developed the different generations of warfare. Using it through a framework of meta-politics actually really makes that fit. If you believe like Breitbart famously stated that like politics is downstream from culture and if you also believe what Klaus – I think it was Klaus Witz that said that like war is politics by other means then like you can make cultural changes that can cause wars and like yeah like that's a lot like kind of i think the thought process behind lynn yeah because this this really defines what he means by fourth generation warfare of war being handed out
Starting point is 02:13:38 specifically by the culture instead of having it be abstracted to be like people marching towards each other with guns because yeah he's he's putting the he's putting the culture instead of having it be abstracted to be like people marching towards each other with guns because yeah he's he's putting the he's putting the culture kind of back into it yeah and he and he's and he's and it and obviously culture was never not a factor and of course not like every single war has been a major factor like all of this shit he talks about as being characteristic of fourth generation warfare has been happening in one way or another for thousands of years it's not that these things are done in like temporal succession it's like because like a lot of the stuff that makes up fourth generation warfare like the more like guerrilla warfare aspects come way before people
Starting point is 02:14:16 with guns marching towards each other right afghans doing that to alexander the goddamn great before the birth of christ a lot of a lot of this fourth-gen stuff is actually like kind of more similar to what original warfare probably would have been like. Yeah. Which I think to his credit, I think he does actually recognize that at some point in his writing. No, and the thing about this is, well, we can pick at it, and I think there is a lot that's ridiculous in his attitude. It's close enough to the way that reality works that if you're going, if you're thinking about conflict in this framework, you can be very successful.
Starting point is 02:14:50 It's not like an, it's inaccurate in some ways because he's wrongly describing why certain things work, I think is a lot of what he's doing. And he's wrong about winning wars, I'll say that. If the American military were to make fucking Lind the Secretary of Defense and give him total power, like he would keep on losing wars as hard as we've been losing wars for everyone listening to this his lifetime.
Starting point is 02:16:05 They're kind of like the propaganda arms and stuff in order to – the media, for liberatory movements or for like just like what's happening in Ukraine. among the people of a country, it's probably the CIA carrying out some sort of op. That's Lyndon, his people, and people influenced by him have been a big part of pushing that. It's why Steve Bannon is so friendly with some guys on chunks of they call themselves the left and whatnot. It's because there's a lot of ties there. And that is an area in which they've been successful because international support really matters. You know, it's, and I think like the death of internationalism is one of the bigger successes
Starting point is 02:16:35 that like these thinkers have kind of had. But yeah, I don't know. That's a chunk of what I had to say. You guys want to know more about William S. Lind? Because he's... I certainly want to learn more about William S. Lind. William S. Lind, cultural conservative, right? Big on the traditional Christian values of America.
Starting point is 02:16:57 You want to guess who he considers his ideal leader? JFK? No, the House of Hohenzollern. He's a Prussian monarchist. Waitist wait no is he a hegel guy oh my oh yeah yeah i mean i think he is okay everything's clicking if he's into better if he's into better politics he's certainly into hegel and he thinks that the prussian the prussian monarchy was the best government there ever was and was like unfairly crushed by the rest of the world and like should have won world war one and everything would.
Starting point is 02:17:28 And like he's, he's, and so he's, he's very much like a conservative monarchist and a weird kind because like, my God, dude, if you're looking at like monarchs who were like the, the Hohenzollerns had like in the modern era,
Starting point is 02:17:43 like the first Kaiser Wilhelm was broadly competent, but, like, it went to shit as soon as Wilhelm II. And he blames all of World War I on the fucking czars. Like, it's very silly. Like, his ideas of history are, like, very stupid. I have an incredibly silly theory of history based on Hegelgel which is that like every explain hegel for the listeners i know do not this is this is this is the thing okay okay
Starting point is 02:18:15 this this is this is my crank theory of history based on hegel which is that every about 40 years someone attempts to apply hegel someone like takes charge of an incredibly large state and tries to use Hegel to run it. And every single time they don't understand the dialectic and it doesn't work. So this, for example, like if you take this on a very sort of granular level, right, you have Mao.
Starting point is 02:18:38 Mao has no idea what a dialectic is. You can read Mao's work. He has no clue. Like he just doesn't, he doesn't get it he thinks that a dialectic is when one person with a bat hits the other hits the other side and then when you destroy the other side the dialectic is resolved right like that that's not what it is right uh Mao like because of this the entire Chinese revolution just implodes everyone dies it returns to capitalism is a complete failure right you know and and like a lot of
Starting point is 02:19:06 the nazis are very much into hegel they have a again incredibly similar failures the other group people like lind i think is part of this is that all of the people who planned the iraq war were like enormous segelians right but they they they'd gotten to hegel through this weird like they they they'd been doing this they'd be doing these counterinsurgency stuff and so but their counterinsurgency stuff was they read mao and you know so that so they're they're reading Hegel but then they're also reading Hegel through Mao and Mao doesn't understand what's going on either and so when they try to apply the Hegelian dialectic and they're like okay well the end of the end of the end of history the end of the Hegelian dialectic is the United States we were
Starting point is 02:19:39 just going to impose this on Iraq and it catastrophic failure so the moral of the story is do not attempt to apply hagel you will completely annihilate your entire political movement like every every everything everything you love and dream of everything like every ideology you've ever had uh it will it will crumble beneath you and uh yeah you will watch your cities you watch your cities and armies burn that's that's fine because when i start resistance movement, we're just going to be post-canty and object-oriented ontologist terrorists. You guys are just going through a bunch of names
Starting point is 02:20:12 and I'm going to get like 80% of people are just, why the fuck am I hearing about these dead people? The thing I actually wanted to bring up on this is like how 4th and 5th gen, the ideas of 4th and 5th gen get applied onto like more insurrection-based, like, revolts or groups, right? You can see, like, groups like the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front kind of pick and choose elements of the fourth and fifth generation warfare to kind of, to see how their groups formed or were operated.
Starting point is 02:20:47 to see how their groups formed or were operated um and even you could argue that like ted kaczynski was like a fifth generation warfare because he was completely autonomous and the actions okay let's let's introduce the idea of fifth generation because we just talked about fourth generation warfare which was lynn's idea fifth generation warfare is a concept that's come up i believe daniel abbott is his name. And the idea was that like, it's a new type of warfare that like characterizes a lot of conflicts in the modern era, where almost everything is non-kinetic, but it is still military action. So military social engineering, misinformation, cyber attacks, not just like decentralized, but like states actually using organized and often fighting non-state actors who
Starting point is 02:21:25 are using kind of the same doing the same thing yeah yeah and this and a lot of this would involve artificial intelligence fully autonomous system systems not just botnets but like algorithms that can like handle a lot of the quote-unquote fighting um william s lyndh hates the idea of fourth generation fifth generation warfare because he's a narcissist and he doesn't like anyone using other ideas that is out see he misinterpreted the dialectic it keeps going so what i was what i was thinking is like is like a lot of you can apply fifth generation warfare to like these types of groups who are mostly like they they they do some they do some fourth gen tactics in terms of like terrorism right like they they they do some they do some fourth gen tactics in terms of like terrorism right like they they try to make political statements through terrorism
Starting point is 02:22:09 and have terrorism be an influential thing but their demand like you rarely like fifth generation stuff has not been around long enough and no one's really been super successful at it in the past enough time for us like to like recognize that right because you can look at a lot of a lot of like uh instructionary type stuff around like the again i'm just going to use the earth liberation front as an example of like a group that attempted kind of these types of tactics um and they may have succeeded in the physical sense but they did not succeed in like the cultural sense really um so trying to like look at these types of things and how they relate to like specific you know if you're going to use like the ty guzinski example same thing except he's not a group he's just one
Starting point is 02:22:55 person which is kind of more of a fifth gen things he is like fully autonomous whereas i think uh you know stuff like the elf tried to have that kind of militant group dynamic that is more similar to fourth generation warfare so it's like this picking and choosing of trying to do physical action than trying to do cultural action and it's not like the things that have succeeded
Starting point is 02:23:16 let's take for instance the defend the Cascadian forest thing who just got just got the specific action they were working on to protect a specific chunk of the forest, the judge approved their
Starting point is 02:23:32 motion, because they were actually successful, because they did not form this militant thing right now, they were just doing the cultural, and it actually really succeeded. As opposed to just, you know, burning down buildings and stuff to try to get your action forward. So just trying to look at, like, examples of when, like, the goal is kind of the same and certain types succeed, certain types don't.
Starting point is 02:23:56 How that may influence, like, organizing and how to selectively use, like, insurrection. But have it not be, like, a default mode for, like, always your group is better if it like insurrection, but have it not be like a default mode for like always your group is better if it's insurrectionary. Yeah. And I, one of the things that does characterize that I think is useful if we're, because again, I have my criticisms of the value of any of these like phrases as kind of
Starting point is 02:24:22 discrete concepts. But one of the things that I think is useful about the concept of fifth generation warfare that does talk about something that is legitimately new to conflict that has not really existed before the internet is omnipresence. That the conflicts are not limited
Starting point is 02:24:36 in geographical space or in time. And in fact, it's like a constant factor all around you at all times because of the way the information sphere kind of actually functions. You can look at kind of like the mix of street fights and information warfare, doxing and whatnot between fascists and anti-fascists for the last few years. It's omnipresent. It's always going on. And the battle space is kind of potentially everywhere, even though it's fairly rarely kinetic or physical.
Starting point is 02:25:06 And I do think that that's an area in which it is really worth having a new term and kind of defining a new term because that's one of the few things I think that has legitimately changed. The internet has made all of this stuff that's been happening for thousands of years faster. But the thing that it's really created that was not present before is this omnipresence. So I do think that that's really useful when we're focusing on how conflict is different. I would like to kind of think about January 6th within these frameworks, right, of how disinformation and information was used relatively successfully to get a lot of people to actually move towards the more backed by half the state,
Starting point is 02:25:49 not backed by the larger majority. And yeah, it's like a synthesis of the fourth generation and fifth generation ideas, which is why there's a lot of overlap with these terms specifically. But seeing how one leads to another and they're not necessarily
Starting point is 02:26:06 exclusionary yeah i think it's like the result is whether they win or lose right yeah that's that's like that's what makes it a war is is the is the is like you decide afterwards based on the result yeah i mean it kind of yeah that's certainly like how more modern wars happen like with afghanistan it wasn't so much like a clear, like World War I, there's an armistice and like a negotiated end of the war. And at a certain date, it all ends. It was a lot messier. We haven't done that since, we haven't done that for the state.
Starting point is 02:26:35 Like, you know, I've never known the states to do that for my life. No, because if you don't do that, you don't have to admit you lost. Yeah, exactly. Like, right. If you just kind of like leave and shit gets real fucked up um you can just be like for one thing you can say like ah if we'd stayed and spent more money on that war we could have we could have pulled it out um which is one of my like there's a lot of great criticisms of how the biden administration handled things in afghanistan last year a thousand of them but at
Starting point is 02:27:00 the end of the day it's like it was never was never going to be good. Like it was always, it was this horrible war. We were killing way too many people. We weren't achieving anything. And that fact was made really clear by the fact that as soon as we pulled out our guns, everything collapsed. And that was always going to happen. And you can needle around the edges of how we could have, you know, better taken care of people who we'd made promises to or whatever. But at the end of the day, it was always going to be fucked because it was a thing we never should have done. And that's like this idea that Lind has that like, no, if we fix our doctrine, we have
Starting point is 02:27:34 better tactical doctrine. We have better like we have one of his big ideas is he came up with this concept called movement warfare that's been hugely influential in the way the Marine Corps functions. And the idea behind movement warfare is like's been hugely influential in the way the Marine Corps functions. And the idea behind movement warfare is like, you should always have a bias towards action. And Lind is very consciously trying to make this basically the evolution of, of a German tactic called Aufstragstaktik, which is like individual unit tactics basically.
Starting point is 02:28:00 So it like midway through world war one, the Germans start to realize like all these mass wave human charges aren't working great um and we should probably like figure out a way to get around these defenses so they start training what are kind of the prototype of special forces these like stormtroopers whose job is to like sneak in and not be seen and jump into the trenches and like you know with fucking axes and clubs and and automatic handguns and fight in a way that like soldiers had not really fought in a long time. A lot of it was like melee. It was this really, and there were a lot of technical things, how to get around barbed wire, how to not be seen, how to like deal with machine gun nests. And one of the keys to it was like the German
Starting point is 02:28:39 started to retrain their soldiers to where like, you have to have like these individual units of five and 10 men have to have like total autonomy and then unit commanders have to have autonomy and they need to be able to like we'll tell them we need you to be in this this place at this point in time but it's up to you to figure out how to do that because if you're if you've got this one guy who's three miles back giving the commands everyone's just going to get mowed down by machine gun fire it needs to be more nimble um And that's part of why in World War I and in World War II, because the rest of the people fighting the Germans, like even the US, had not caught up to this kind of battle doctrine by the time World War II was over to the extent that the Germans had. And it's part of why there's such
Starting point is 02:29:17 a lopsided casualty ratio in favor of the Germans in that war is they had what is very close to, because all modern combat tactics are based on what the Germans started doing at the end of World War I and had really like nailed down to a science in World War II. And Lind is saying that like we need to extend that and like that's the thing we've gotten too far away from and we need to have – you need to have like this bias towards movement and this – like officers need to be super aggressive and like always pursuing these kinds of kinetic options.
Starting point is 02:29:47 And again, as the Marine Corps battle record will show, this is very effective when you are getting into gunfights. But when was the last time the Marine Corps was on the side of a winning war? Like, again, it doesn't, we can all needle about how to make our troops better at like killing people. But at the end of the day, we're losing wars because we're getting into wars that are not winnable. And that's not something you're going to fix with battle doctrine. And Lee doesn't understand that because he's a fascist.
Starting point is 02:30:16 I think it's just like this is the real like weakness of their politics, which is that it's like, yeah, well, like it's – they're trying – it's like they can't tell the difference between war and like they don't think there's a difference between war and politics right yeah and that means that they think that there's a military solution to every political problem and it's like no there's not and like this is this is how this is why they keep destroying themselves right is that they they you know like like this is what happened to the neocons right i mean the neocons are sort of held on in this kind of rump shell but it's like neoconservatism yeah and how they're just lincoln project yeah but but it's like you know like they don't they don't have like like even the people who used to be their base like aren't their base anymore no like those those people are all moved on because that shit doesn't work yeah yeah yeah and it's it's like maybe they could have
Starting point is 02:31:00 maintained it if they hadn't just like literally blown it apart like trying to conquer iraq and it's like they they all do this they all eventually are like well okay we'll find a military solution to this and it blows up in their face because it turns out that no you can't actually do this i mean i think all this indicates a general progression into the more meta politics idea and and culture as punk's idea is that we're trying to solve all these political problems at least like locally within us you know we're trying to try to do them culturally and choose through them and selectively in other countries right because the more kind of my the idea of like let's just keep entering wars which we're also doing at the same time only for a very very like like very specific regions but i mean the the trend of like, first, you know,
Starting point is 02:31:45 like Trump's not necessarily, like Trump's not really a neocon. He preferred the cultural jamming. Like that was his preferred method. And it got him relatively far in four years. And there's an argument that Lind is a big person who, that he learned a lot from Lind.
Starting point is 02:32:00 Even though I don't think he ever read his books, all the people he surrounded him with were fans of Lind. There's a picture of Trump and Lind together in like a copy of – or at least Trump together with a copy of his book, which is titled The Next Conservatism. I'm going to read a quote at this point from The American Conservative, which Lind has written for that describes this book because it's useful. The next conservatism offers a comprehensive agenda of what Lyndon Wayrich, who's his co-author
Starting point is 02:32:29 on this, call cultural conservatism. While the book aims higher than mere policy, the specifics mentioned are Trumpian, reductions in legal and illegal immigration, an America first trade policy, and robust investments in domestic infrastructure, particularly streetcars and trains. In a less Trumpian vein, it also promotes homeschooling and incorporates some ideas from the new urbanism as part of a broader program called retroculture. Of its connection with Trump, Lind says the book runs parallel to what he has been saying, but he doubts the billionaire's familiarity with its more
Starting point is 02:32:58 philosophical ideas. Now, here's the part that is going to be really unsettling. And this, I think, is what lind may actually be going for rather than any kind of reform in the military to improve its ability to win foreign wars quote in 1994 an article appeared in the marine corps gazette by lind and two of the authors of the 1989 piece where he introduced the concept of fourth generation warfare it ended on a dire note the point is not merely that america's armed forces will find themselves facing non-nation state conflicts and forces overseas. The point is that the same conflicts are coming here.
Starting point is 02:33:30 The next real war we fight is likely to be on American soil. So that's what's going on here. Yep. And that's the thing where bias towards action and increased killing power, if all you're really trying to do is murder everyone who disagrees with you using the military very quickly, well, that might work for you. People should know about this. He has a fucking fiction book called Victoria, which actually, if you go to like TV tropes, there's a TV – it's not just TV tropes anymore, but like there's a trope page for my book After the Revolution, and it's directly compared to Victoria as like they're the opposites of each other because Victoria is like a book about a civil war in the US that these like weird fascist like monarchists win and like it's uh it's pretty fucked up like the problem is that like like like all of these like the northwest is controlled by like uh environmentalist like leaders who get like eaten by these animals like wolves that they reintroduce to the to the society and like
Starting point is 02:34:37 california is so feminist that it's illegal to have sex and make babies oh my god and the south fails because it's it's too multicultural. Oh God. And yeah, like it's all- This is so cringy. So the person who wins the war is like the governor of Maine, who's a retro culture practitioner
Starting point is 02:34:55 and considers himself a subject of the Kaiser. Oh no. I may be getting a couple of details wrong, but not that part. I know it's a fucking nuts. Nuts. So I've only read like little bits of it. Maybe one day I'll get through the whole thing, but what a,
Starting point is 02:35:16 what a sad fuck. That's the thing with all, with all of these like cultural jammers, like they try to put on like war aesthetics but all of them are the nerdiest fuckers he'll ever he's so stupid and i like he's so stupid to be actual wizards all of these guys are so they're so nerdy all of them yeah and like lind everything about him makes sense when you understand that his primary guiding directive is anger over the fact that there's no longer a kaiser um he's he's a loon but also like again he was not lying about
Starting point is 02:35:53 there's a picture of like trump with his fucking book he's not lying that like fucking everybody who was like pilled in that white house knew about lynn's ideas and have been he's been hugely influential and not just among like the american right his books have been found in like al-qaeda hideouts and shit like he's that makes sense though that yeah that that like all of all of that really tracks is because yeah like the barrier between like terrorist action as a part of fourth generation and in some ways fifth generation warfare and then the type of like culture jamming those things go hand in hand like that is like that is the goal of it is is to make it work that way so that doesn't
Starting point is 02:36:30 surprise me that those types of terrorist groups would be reading his books for advice or for like to like figure out how the other side thinks yeah all right well that's probably enough talking about william s lynd for today and cultural and the fourth generation. We'll talk. There's a lot to dig into about how these ideas have influenced chunks of the right and how they're currently still being used for like these omnipresent conflicts that are going on right now. And again, I do think particularly the idea of omnipresence is really useful for understanding modern conflict. I would go so far as to say like crucial. modern conflict i would i would go so far as to say like crucial um so this is necessary background information to people to have for people to have for like some of the other shit
Starting point is 02:37:10 we're going to be continuing to talk in this about in this series as we you know as we talk more about kind of kinetic conflicts or at least building towards kinetic conflicts um but yeah i think this is this is a useful kind of grounding and now i'm going to send uh chris and garrison off to write an episode explaining who hagel is and everything he believed i yeah it's gonna be great you're gonna you're gonna you you will watch me go mad in real time it's gonna be great yeah the other option is i can just read the wikipedia page for hagel with like a really offensive German accent. That's better than reading Hegel.
Starting point is 02:37:48 It actually sounds better. I'm going to go to – I promise you one thing, which is that I will wind up either Russian or Australian by the end. I can't stop that drift. Whenever I start doing – Oh, I am a good German. Yeah, my name is Mr. Hegel. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at HappenHerePod. Or follow at CoolZoneMedia.
Starting point is 02:38:10 We're going to stop that right now. Yeah, we probably should. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter... Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows. Presented by I Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories
Starting point is 02:38:38 inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted
Starting point is 02:38:59 Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.
Starting point is 02:39:27 He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.
Starting point is 02:39:42 Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.
Starting point is 02:40:10 Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships and culture in the new iHeart podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.
Starting point is 02:40:41 Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's cruising confessions sponsored by Gilead now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists
Starting point is 02:41:17 to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 02:41:47 Check out betteroffline.com. Omicron! Great timing. Mm-hmm. I love Omicron. I'm Robert Evans. This is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about Greek numbering schemas.
Starting point is 02:42:15 Garrison, how do you feel about Omicron? This has nothing to do with the topic we're talking about. So, this is an update. A few, probably last week, or earlier this week, we discussed the trucker convoy. We brilliantly scheduled our episode recorded before the truck convoy for after the truck convoy had already done a bunch of things. Yes.
Starting point is 02:42:40 Which was really good. So we recorded to talk about the 50 000 trucks that were that were going to show up at ottawa and thing things did happen maybe not that they did not because like i've been listening some of their claims are like and alex jones is parenting there now that it was like 800 000 to a million truckers and there's 300 000 truckers in all of canada like but it was like it was a lot of people like not to not to downplay what happened so we're going to give an update on what happened there and kind of discuss maybe any ramifications that stuff like this could have going forward but to help with that um we have uh dan who came on uh last time to help discuss
Starting point is 02:43:23 hello thank you for coming on again to talk about the same thing. Thank you for having me. We last less off with you saying that you hope I don't come back on again because that would be a good thing and it would mean that the bad things did not happen. So sorry to be here under such circumstances. Yeah, you want to go over the bad yeah so let's let's briefly do a like a recap of like what this thing was like like why why was it happening and like what was the
Starting point is 02:43:54 idea when we last left canada a bunch of truckers were angry that they had to present evidences evidence of vaccination this spiraled and as I'm understanding it, at some point, them rejecting all public health measures? Yes. Actually, the exact demands are for the federal and provincial governments to, quote, terminate the vaccine passports and all other obligatory vaccine contact tracing programs, to terminate COVID vaccine mandates and, quote, respect the rights of those who wish to remain unvaccinated. And here's where it gets weird. Seize the divisive rhetoric attacking Canadians who disagree with government mandates. Kind of hard to say when that one's fulfilled.
Starting point is 02:44:38 And finally, cease to limit debate through coercive measures with the goal of censoring those who have varying or incorrect opinions that's what the convoy is for i mean do y'all know what a government is evidently i was at some debates in 2020 uh with the state that went a lot uglier than it looks like this one went. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we can talk about that. The standoff has been, well, it's been just that. It's been a standoff in that regard. It seems like they've kind of hooliganed around a bunch of towns
Starting point is 02:45:18 and threatened a homeless shelter if they didn't give them food and left trash everywhere and set up a checkpoint on the border or just a blockade on the border i think is probably more accurate there's been blockades going on and off the border um yeah i think the most noteworthy is uh in alberta and coot right now but i might be pronouncing that wrong and what was the police it was something along the lines of we don't't think there's a policing solution to this problem. Oh, yeah. So you're totally up to date. That happened today. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:45:50 So a little after 2.30 p.m. today, the Ottawa police chief, Peter Slowly, said in a press conference that, quote, there may not be a policing solution to this demonstration. Is it really that easy? Evidently, it's that easy if you wait until the media has had a few days and most of the coverage is just breaking. Bad things still happening. So it's not great. So what was the lead up on sat right because they were they were all they were all the trucks and caravans and stuff were supposed to arrive on
Starting point is 02:46:30 saturday what was the lead up on saturday like and like what what happened on like the actual like first day yeah so saturday was technically the first day actually friday throughout the day uh a lot of people started arriving so the occupation's been uh we're recording now wednesday um it started on friday and uh the main like the largest contingent of the convoy was staying overnight friday night in a nearby town called arm fire uh west of ottawa and they moved in from Armpire to Ottawa on Saturday morning. At the same time people converged from other parts of Canada. To Ottawa's east is Quebec and to Quebec's east are the Maritime Provinces and 3,000 people at least came from Quebec and met with the convoy too on Saturday. Kind of coming in from different parts of the day between Friday night and Saturday afternoon.
Starting point is 02:47:27 And Saturday was kind of the big day, the big party. The main point of contention and the main thing that happened was some major streets are gridlocked by vehicles moving into the city, into the very crowded core of Ottawa, my hometown, and staying stationary on busy roads. Both commercial and residential roads are part of this. Driveways for both businesses and
Starting point is 02:47:49 residences were blocked off. Fire roads are blocked off. Ambulance roads are blocked off. Local businesses that stayed open had to close throughout the day, Saturday largely. Some managed to not, and many who just stayed closed already because they knew what was going to happen and this happened closures uh that happened on saturday are mostly still going on today as i'm speaking to you wednesday night uh closures followed patterns of harassment some alleged assaults which robert mentioned before also happened at a homeless shelter in downtown ottawa and pretty much everyone I've spoken to, I've been in Ottawa visiting, it's my hometown.
Starting point is 02:48:29 And pretty much everyone I've spoken to who lives in the downtown core has had a slew of stories since Saturday of either harassment at work or just harassment walking through the streets. And the worst part of it all is that right now there's not a clear ending in sight. What is it like on the ground there
Starting point is 02:48:43 in terms of, I know there's like kind of like a blockade around the border, but like what else is like around Ottawa? What's like, what like, what, what is, what's it like to walk around in these places? And like, how big is the area that these people are staying at? Like, where are they staying at? Are they all sleeping in their trucks or staying at hotels? What's like, what's like the... It's an excellent question. There's a, there's a mix. So hotels were booked up the week leading up to the weekend as, as the new cycle kind of exploded more and more people called into hotels in Ottawa. A lot of people actually brought tractors. People are also sleeping in their trucks. Of course, if people have like family and stuff staying in
Starting point is 02:49:18 Ottawa, sometimes they're staying with them. It's a mix of everything actually i i know a guy who even his car was like blocked off uh in the parking lot he has to park in because it's downtown he doesn't have street parking or driveway parking like it's in a public lot and he couldn't get his car out uh for over a full day because an rb camper set up near him and just blocked him off. So it's a mix of everything. Starting on Saturday, there's like a lot of partying, a lot of music, a lot of kids. It's gotten a little bit more chaotic and less condensed since then. And also the area is hard to gauge because streets are actually constantly as vehicles move out for one reason or another, streets are kind of being retaken back organically by the city, but then sometimes throughout the day getting retaken again back by the
Starting point is 02:50:11 convoy. So the occupation has been a little fluid on some of the outside streets. Wellington Street, which is the street outside of Parliament in Ottawa, has been consistently occupied, to my knowledge, blocking off kind of, not actually blocking off, but you have to walk past them as a pedestrian to get onto Parliament Hill. So that's where the kind of the core of the action is and everything else spreads out from that. And near hotels, there's a little more action because that's generally where people are staying. How has members of Parliament and local politicians been reacting since Saturday? I know there was some videos of, I think, one of the MPs from Alberta was giving an interview that gained some traction online.
Starting point is 02:50:55 But yeah, just kind of curious how the different government officials are talking about this. I'm actually so glad you asked that because as of today, the divide in members of parliament has actually led to some pretty incredible political ramifications. So last time we spoke, I think Aaron O'Toole had just earlier in the day endorsed the convoy and said he'd be coming down. Aaron O'Toole, for those unaware, is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. He's a real O'Toole. Wow. Whoa. Whoa. Mind blown.
Starting point is 02:51:35 No one could have seen that joke coming. Every Canadian listener just collectively rolled their eyes. Yeah, so Aaron O'Toole had just endorsed the convoy he'd been getting some tough questions about it uh following everything we just talked about and more Aaron O'Toole walked that back uh and said you know he didn't approve of the way that the convoy was acting in Ottawa this led to a swift referendum on his leadership, and earlier today, Aaron O'Toole was voted out as the Conservative Party leader in Canada. And that does have pretty big ramifications. I know I talked about Aaron
Starting point is 02:52:14 O'Toole a decent amount in my previous Canada episodes for Can Happen Here. So yeah, that'll be really interesting to see who what's... do we have any idea of when the new person's going to try to get voted in? Like, when do you think that process is going to happen to fill that spot? I'm actually not sure. I haven't looked up when it's going to happen.
Starting point is 02:52:36 It feels like there's been months before where there's been leaders of the conservative party. The main concern right now for those outside of Conservative politics is because Aaron O'Toole was considered relatively moderate. You talked about in the Fascism Canada episode how Aaron O'Toole kicked out Darren Sloan from the party for being pretty coy on donations from neo-Nazi Paul Fromm on his campaign. Overall, that's a pretty great thing that Aaron O'Toole like kicked him out of the caucus like regardless of other elements of yeah that leadership uh there's worrying that that kind of thought won't be continued forward especially because Sloan was also in the leadership race and Sloan has only gotten further right since then yeah it is just despite Aaron O'Toole's not great aspects, which there are lots of, he did kind of hold back some of the more problematic conservative elements, whether that be, you know, people from his own party, like Derekrick and then also keeping kind of the people's party
Starting point is 02:53:45 stuff at bay um yeah and that will be an interesting kind of power struggle now that will be something to observe i think the thing that concerns me most about all of this is the implication of the implications for this is a tactic We saw a version of this that was more limited in scope and time in Portland in 2020 when this huge Trump caravan rolled through downtown, blocked off big chunks of downtown and like just maced and shot people with paintball guns at random. And it was kind of like I think everyone there was surprised at how many folks they got for it. This is a much more evolved version of the same tactic. And it's kind of stuff we talked about in season one of It Could Happen Here, this idea of like people coming from these conservative majority areas in a place where the vast majority of people are liberal but centralized in the cities
Starting point is 02:54:38 and blocking those cities off or otherwise disrupting their ability to transit, potentially their ability to get things shipped in like food, like their ability to use free movement. And we've seen pieces of this, again, in a bunch of places. In Oregon, during the wildfires, you had these rural communities setting up checkpoints and stuff looking for people from the cities that they could bill as Antifa. And it's this world worrying trend for a couple of reasons. Number one, when you get 10,000, 20,000 people to do something like this, even if the city has hundreds of thousands of people, that's effectively too large a group to police, and
Starting point is 02:55:16 the police don't want to police it anyway. So there's not even really an attempt to stop them. And it's a way in which the vast majority of canada uh at least based on the polling i'm aware of um is is not in support of the causes these guys are backing what is it like 76 percent of the country supports some level of like vaccine mandates um if i'm remembering correctly the last one i read so this is not a popular movement it's not even super popular among the truckers like the actual no most truckers in canada either it doesn't matter how many people in the cities you can get if you can
Starting point is 02:55:48 get 50 60 000 people to do something like this the police won't will not take action and you can negatively impact the lives of a huge number of millions of people before it gets radical right that's when these guys are not coming in with guns with the express plan to eliminate people or trying to specifically block up food. They're just kind of fucking around now. But it's this kind of – it's this thing we've talked about where you have – this is a thing in Canada and the United States. You had liberals kind of outsourcing the protection of society to this group of increasingly heavily armed and radicalized people who are now in a lot of cases fascists. armed and radicalized people who are now, in a lot of cases, fascists. And that means that when there's a problem with a large chunk of people who hate everything you stand for, the people
Starting point is 02:56:33 that you have completely outsourced protection to are all in favor of fucking with you because they hate you. And it's a problem in Oregon. It's going to be a problem in fucking new york city or whatever at some point it's a problem in ottawa um i don't know am i am i off base here am i am i am you're not on base at all and uh like there isn't there isn't anything to to really elaborate on past what you said last time we spoke i think robert you said there's not a whole lot uh was what you said that could really really be done with the vehicle occupation tactic. Unless a lot of people are willing to meet them with an equal force. Which, unfortunately, Ottawa didn't have.
Starting point is 02:57:14 Ottawa is a relatively large city in Canada. There's over a million people that live here. It's also, by landmass, I think the largest city in Canada. Like east to west, it's very spread out. So it's also by land mass i think the largest city in canada like east to west it's very spread out so it's a low population density so even the affected area downtown uh is actually like pretty small in relation to the city itself uh which is pretty unfortunate and like it's not a particularly packed downtown for a large city downtown i am i am curious kind of on the violence aspect. I know there's been an increase in death threats to members of parliament, specifically liberal members of parliament, but specifically liberal members of parliament who are women, who are maybe not white. Right. So I would be curious to see if you have any more kind of information on that side of things and then how violence has popped up in a few places throughout the past week, basically. Yeah, there's been a lot. So, I mean, even if you're going by what's reported, like right now there is by most estimates under a thousand, maybe at most a few thousand very far spread out people as part of the convoy as of yesterday there's 13 active police
Starting point is 02:58:30 investigations the police of the city the city of ottawa said in the uh in a presser we obviously know when there's like 13 active investigations and anything this big there's way more that's not being reported not being investigated um like they took you know like these things are going to 13 is going to be resultful something bad so some of the things that happened robert mentioned before the alleged assault on a houseless person inside of shepherds of good hope uh in which a security guard was also called a racial slur. There was a house that displayed a rainbow flag outside of it that had harassment and poop thrown at it. We need to get 100,000 people together to throw their own poop back at these people.
Starting point is 02:59:19 It's the only way they'll learn. Yeah, fighting fire with fire. That expression, I'm'm sure just emerged from just tossing poop at each other strategy it's meant for this yeah there have been suggestions all of our social media channels on like here's how you can poop in snow banks without getting caught uh businesses have been harassed there's been violence so like what i think maybe some context that isn't always known in ottawa on saturday and until recently dining in in restaurants wasn't allowed we were actually in a relatively
Starting point is 02:59:50 strict lockdown following our overcrowing wave and a lot of people even coming like didn't know that like i spoke to people on saturday who were like hey do you know like when the restaurants around here are open so we can like sit down for a meal and meal? And I was like, there's no sitting down in Ottawa. So what people were doing, they were going inside cafes, like, to Morden's and stuff. And they were just refusing to leave and eating their food there anyways. And if there was no seats, they were just, like, eating in line. It was also minus 28 degrees in Ottawa on Saturday and very, very cold on Sunday. There was an extreme cold weather warning.
Starting point is 03:00:21 So especially when people brought their kids, there was no other options other than like swarm the malls and swarm restaurants. And even then the mall, the main mall downtown, Rideau Center was closed partway throughout the day because it was not a safe place. So I already talked before about routes getting blocked. Also not physical violence, but honking has been keeping people awake. There's been endless honking. If you watch video footage from it, and even in the background right now, I'm coming from Ottawa, like I can hear honking in my background. Some people allegedly parked
Starting point is 03:00:53 and then urinated on the tomb of an unknown soldier, which is, yeah, it's a memorial. Yeah, I mean, a lot of this isn't, political is even the wrong way to describe a lot of what's fun about this for these people. It's that they suck. Yeah, it's just fucking hooliganism. And that's, yeah, it's fucking hooliganism. There's going to be a lot more stories coming out for sure as things progress of stories of harassment, like I've talked to people who have gotten a cat called in the night, people getting violent altercations, street fights, I'm sure are going to break out.
Starting point is 03:01:32 It's kind of at a very tense point right now in Ottawa. We're at that point. We're like, OK, we're seeing some signs like poops getting thrown at the houses. What's going to happen next? Because the police are saying they don't have a plan and the truckers are saying they're not leaving what's it like outside of ottawa across across all the other places where there's like similar activity happening uh they're all looking to us and being concerned from who i'm talking to uh anti-fascists in Alberta are particularly concerned right now with the coup protests. There is ongoing to, it keeps seeing popping up like US-Canada border activities in the same. There's a few attempted convoys by Americans and even before in Europe, there was a few attempted convoys.
Starting point is 03:02:20 Yeah, some got turned away. Some Americans got turned away at the Canadian border because they weren't vaccinated. Some Americans got turned away at the Canadian border because they weren't vaccinated. Yeah. Which is, you know, you'd think because that's the reason they're saying they're protesting, they would have remembered that
Starting point is 03:02:36 and thought maybe that's going to come into play. Yeah, I don't know. There is a certain point where if you get enough people going, it would be interesting to see if people do just try to like drive through the border yeah yeah and i mean there's been people like you look at social media channels a lot of them saying like the borders are blocked right now with thousands of truckers supporting our cause so if you saw that and you believed it and then you went to the board and you're turned away from
Starting point is 03:03:01 getting a vaccine you might thought well i thought i had you know 900 people the same cause as me and we were ready to use force yeah which begs the question well what happens when you do exactly i want to find out yeah that's yeah that's the thing is like if if if they do if they did have what they say they had would they just start doing those things and not even think about it and not even think about like the politics of it they're just doing it to do it yeah i should also mention too we talked last time about um a plaid army slash diagonalon members comments uh that were broadcast on the news about uh doing another quote january 6th uh and it came on the news today was first reported by frank magazine and i think by the canadian anti-h Hate Network that he was arrested on firearms charges in Nova Scotia before coming here.
Starting point is 03:03:49 Worth noting, he was reporting live on InfoWars on the Alex Jones show on Saturday before this came out. And Derek Sloan and Ezra Levant were also on the same program. So I mentioned InfoWars before. That's great. That's what's going on there. Can you see any, like, beyond the conservative leadership, what other kind of political implications are people thinking about in Canada? It's really tense seeing what's going to come for other cities.
Starting point is 03:04:18 Also, Ottawa is expecting a second wave. Some other people in other places that kind of didn't think the first one was going to be a huge success are saying, well, now that it's an occupation, we're coming. And police are even saying there's a second wave. It's a very tense place right now. We don't really know what to do. Community places are taking direct, community members are talking about taking direct action because it's been so long. This isn't something that the city of Ottawa is particularly used to, unfortunately, in my lifetime. And so the ramifications of the future are pretty jarring. But what's alarming is how successful this occupation was with a relatively
Starting point is 03:04:55 small number. I think the highest estimate was 18,000 people into a city of over a million, which isn't really that many when you think about it. But the strategy was very, very effective. over a million, which isn't really that many when you think about it, but the strategy was very, very effective. You think about how many fighters it took for Daesh to take control of Mosul. If there's not resistance, there's only really a few areas of a city that you need to occupy in order to have a great deal of control over what can be done. Yeah, and that's the tough part is they have a lot of control over that small area and residents lives they don't have a lot of control over parliament which yeah yeah what they're protesting for yeah i'm also interested to see has the canadian military said anything about these
Starting point is 03:05:36 protests and the situation so the ottawa police chief in his presser day was asked a lot about that and he's still shying away he's still saying he doesn't think military is the only option uh which if you're an activist on the other side of things and worried about police escalation hurting you in the future yep that might be a good thing to hear yeah yeah and i see you shitty news i'm not convinced that the military would fix the problem i'm not either and also ottawa had other police forces coming to they said uh they're spending eight hundred thousand dollars a day uh initially to just on cost of policing money's worth yeah yeah they also said they've only like bylaws only had 150 tickets since this whole thing started in the occupied zone so it's unclear what a lot of them
Starting point is 03:06:24 did other than you know know, keep up appearances. Like I was walking around, I saw York region police officers walking around with their patches. That's hundreds of kilometers away from Ottawa. So police presence, especially on the weekend, was not low. We had plenty.
Starting point is 03:06:40 They either didn't know what to do, thought it would die later, or a mixture of all the above and there's been talk to uh mixtures of some police officers have not been happy with it but there hasn't been really anything in the news yet because no one's come forward a lot of like tweets of like from reporters saying i have an anonymous source in the auto police that says they wish more actions were taken. Some saying otherwise. It's not really united right now. And yeah, it's scary.
Starting point is 03:07:13 Is there any counter protests being planned for Ottawa? If I knew I'd say so, because by the time this airs, it would have happened. So I think it'd be safe to talk about. But fortunately, I'm not really insure i'm not actually sure of it i might not be the best person to ask okay yeah we're keeping an eye out well the good news is that all men die and so long as men die liberty will never perish right that's good it's an upside that is an upside it's an up it's a positive shot all right well that's gonna do it for us we'll keep an eye on this and um what what results from it because it's all pretty concerning um and worth having having an eye and i'm particularly curious as to just like what kind of direct community responses to this develop, because I think that's going to wind up being the only long term solution.
Starting point is 03:08:09 You know, it's kind of what people saw in Portland that there's a degree to which like the only thing that really works as a response is outnumbering them. And on that note, it might be maybe not the smoothest transition, but there are actually some Ottawa mutual aid funds and advocacy groups that are doing some cool stuff. Buck us up with that. There's too many to list for everyone. Oh, well. But others have compiled lists, and I'm going to point to you there. which stands for Rainbow Ottawa Student Experience, serves 2SLGBTQIA plus post-secondary students on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe territory. They have closed off donations for themselves following a wonderful spike recently. They have a list of Black-led and Black-empowering organizations on their website with donation links and you can reach that at roseottawa.org
Starting point is 03:09:02 donations. There's a cool little Instagram account called Trans is Beautiful OTT. OTT stands for Ottawa, and that's all one word. It's been plugging small fundraisers for queer folk affected by the convoy, including housing support on their Instagram. Again, that's Trans is Beautiful OTT on Instagram. Something we didn't get to talk about,
Starting point is 03:09:22 which is Ram Ranch, ramranch.ca, R-A-M-R-A-N-C-H. A website was set up in the name of Trolling the Convoy Zello Chats and has been doing a fantastic job. There's a whole army of trolls in the trucker Zello Chats, and it's been really entertaining to tune into. They've compiled a list of charities on their website. You can check that out at ram-ranch.ca and clicking on the Rancher's Donation Zone. And yeah. Where can
Starting point is 03:09:52 people find you on the internets? People can find me on the internets. I'm super active on Twitter at spineless L. The word spineless, the letter L. Fantastic. Well, hopefully this gets all resolved, and I don't need to fly up to Canada to go to a protest.
Starting point is 03:10:14 If we do, that'll be fun. I've been wanting to go to Canada for a minute. Yeah, we can take drugs at Tim Hortons. That would be fun. Yeah, oh, God. You know, I haven't vomited in a Tim Hortons bathroom in a long time. Our local McDonald's
Starting point is 03:10:30 that got famous on the internet for a fist fight that someone pulled a raccoon out of their backpack during had to actually stop being 24 hours after the mayor pleaded with them because it was using up too many police resources. That is fascism. That's the best kind of police.
Starting point is 03:10:44 I'm over 190 at 9-1-1 calls in a year. who's using up too many police resources. That is fascism. That's the best kind of place. I'm over 190 at 9-1-1 calls in a year. That's so dope. Oh, God, yeah. I want to set up somewhere on the border in the East Coast a Tim Hortons directly across the street from a Waffle House and just let them fight. Yeah, we do. we do miss that here. That's something you'll have to bring that
Starting point is 03:11:09 over. Bring the Waffle House vibes over. All you need to do is watch a man get stabbed and then spiritually, you're at a Waffle House. And that ties back to the future of the convoy. You're right. Well, that does it for us today, everybody. We will see you later.
Starting point is 03:11:41 Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right.
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