It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 23

Episode Date: February 26, 2022

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal 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. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's got to be nothing new here for you,

but you can make your own decisions. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, along with Garrison and Chris. We are preempting the episode that will be airing after this because of events that happened in Portland, Oregon this weekend. On Saturday the 19th, there was a weekly racial justice march. The march, again, it's occurred every week for a couple of years now. It is ostensibly led by the mother of Patrick Kimmons, who is a Portland, a young black Portland man who was killed by the police a couple of years ago. This is a regular thing as a general rule. You'll see a lot of folks on the right talking about this march is like an Antifa gathering.

This almost never gets any coverage whatsoever because as a general rule, it's just a march where people, you know, protest police violence. It's not something that tends to draw much attention even within Portland. This Saturday, a person who lived in the neighborhood where people were assembling for the march left their home, confronted a group of women who were acting as corkers. Corking is a job at protest protests it's a traffic safety thing it's people on a mix of usually in bikes motorcycles scooters every now and you see like a one wheel and their job is to kind of route traffic around the march in order to keep people from getting hit by cars it is a a safety thing um these folks were confronted by this person, reports on the ground that have been covered in local news from people who were there say that he started out yelling at them,

calling them terrorists. And according to one person who was on the scene within about 90 seconds began firing. He hit and killed one woman and he wounded four others, and he himself was shot by a protester who was nearby, who was, to all, everything we know so far, legally open carrying a rifle. He is the shooter, is in critical condition in the hospital. One of the people who was doing traffic security that night is dead. I believe at least one is still in the hospital. one of the people who was doing traffic security that night is dead um i believe at least one is still in the hospital the others have been released uh that's that's the the actual like that's those are the facts of the situation as they're known the protester who returned fire quickly afterwards turned themselves and their rifle into the police um you know the

police did the stuff that they do in these instances and then released the person who had responded defensively to the shooting. And that's where we are right now. Portland police have been very cagey in saying anything about this. They have framed it as a clash between a homeowner and protesters. One thing we can say based on where this person came out of, it does not appear that they were a homeowner. It looks like they left a – would have been like a rental thing. Not that that particularly matters, but it's interesting the framing that the police are choosing to use here. And yeah, there's fairly little information. As of right now, the name of the shooter has not been released by the police.

Neither has the name of the protester who responded to the gunfire, but we do know, you know, a number of the people who were hit. We know the person who was deceased. Avoid kind of spreading anything more specific than that until there's evidence. There's not yet video of this, although one of the people who was there says they have a GoPro that was taken by the police that may have something. I don't know the extent to which we will get that information. Again, the police have been acting to kind of make this look like a clash rather than what the evidence that like reporters at OPB and the Portland Mercury and even the Times have have found the interviews they've conducted. Portland Mercury and even the Times have found the interviews they've conducted.

It seems fair to say that this was a mass shooting that was stopped by a protester as opposed to what I would call a clash. Yes. But it's obvious Portland police aren't going to want that narrative to come out. Very tellingly, the mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, issued a statement where he talked about the shooting as a piece of the city's ongoing gun crime did not mention the woman who was killed did not mention the injured but expressed his sympathy with the police for being so tired um so you know that's portland yeah i mean it's pretty sick like you shouldn't like it's not like dismissing it by saying it's portland saying like this is like no there's like there's been growing rhetoric from the city and people the past few years that have basically been

encouraging something like this to happen. And now that it has, it is also pretty sick looking at different media framing and police framing talking about it's a homeowner and how it was like a clash, not an outright attack on people. Yeah.

So it's... It's bad.'s it's pretty gross but what we can do right now is support the people who were there to go fund me for for medical expenses and you know mental health effects in the next bit some of the wounded were themselves plugging up the bullet holes of other wounded while they had also been shot because it was a lot of the people doubled as medics or had some sort of medical training. There were medics who were like threatened by police when they arrived on scene for not being willing to stop providing pressure to a gunshot wound. Like a bunch of ugly stuff happened. There's a mix of ugly stuff and like stuff that seems ugly but it's pretty normal like the ambulance did not move in immediately which obviously people on

scene were very angry about that is standard everywhere for like ambulances at active shootings and it's just it i mean it's not pleasant but it's also like they're not ever acting from as much information as the people who were there maybe have i'm not i'm not gonna blame you know emts or whatnot for following sop in this situation i will blame the police for their responses to stuff like this obviously and the fact that um you know it it's it's unlikely that a satisfying police investigation will be conducted that said it does seem like we already based on the early reporting that exists from again a number of different news organizations, a number of different local journalists, that we have a pretty good idea of the basics of what happened. Obviously, more will come out in addition to nothing but respect to the

medics who responded. I think it's worth acknowledging that the protester who shot the shooter seems to have, from the evidence we have, handled themselves as close to perfectly as you can in a defensive shooting. They stopped the threat. They went to the police. They turned in the rifle. They did not. They turned in the rifle. They did not. And there's a number of reasons for this, including the fact that like the last time there was a shooting that was involved, a to make it very clear that this was a very legal self-defense situation. Obviously, I think a lot of the folks who participate in these things don't particularly care about the law one way or the other. But in terms of how other people see what has happened and what the fallout to this is and maybe the degree to which uh people properly put

some blame on the city for this i think it is helpful that the person who responded um with their rifle to this shooting conducted themselves so carefully so i mean i have i have a lot of respect for everybody on the ground a lot of hard decisions had to be made um and it it seems like in a a the worst case scenario situation the people who were on the ground handled themselves um with a tremendous amount of of thoughtfulness and uh and courage i think that's everything yeah i don't think there's much else to say at this moment right now stay safe be careful um and uh again the gofundme just type type gofundme stand with portland into google it will take you to the gofundme um and you can help folks out there hello welcome to it could happen here uh i'm garr, and today we're talking about two of my favorite things, which

is unions and coffee. Joining me as usual is Chris and Sophie. What do you guys think about coffee and unions and the combination thereof? Big on unions like that, like making them them like having them uh not big on coffee it's it's too bitter i can't do it unbelievable uh uh unions great coffee great chris bad chris gets the wall that's no it's the ultimate canceling that is canceling's gotten more intense we are coming down on the coffee issue. Don't ever tell Prop that. Don't ever tell Prop you don't like coffee. I worry for you.

And anyway, to join us to discuss coffee and unions is a union organizer and also someone with a podcast. So that's fun. But Kaylee Shuler. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. You know Schuller. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. You know what they say about unionized coffee? It tastes better.

It tastes better. Yeah, that is what I have heard. Much better quality. That is true. Maybe that's the problem that Chris has been having. Yeah, none of your coffee is unionized. There are no unions here. Yeah, see. That's the thing.

Chris, jump to conclusions, but you failed to consider the coffee question. Anyway, we're going to be talking about unions and coffee and Starbucks today, because there's been a massive wave of Starbucks location unionizations around the country. massive wave of Starbucks location unionizations around the country. And I'd like to start by kind of discussing the origin of this wave of unionization efforts all across the states. Yeah, so I'll just say right off the bat, legalities, logistics, the nitty gritty is still not my forte in all of this. So I might not do the best job explaining it, but I'm going to do my best. And to get into the origin story of the

whole movement, I'm just going to get into my origin story a little bit with this effort. So I started working at Starbucks last year. and not long after I was approached by my fellow partner, my friend, Tyler DeGear. And he's also one of our committee members here. And he was like, hey, did you hear about what just happened in Buffalo? And as you guys probably know, Buffalo was the first to unionize. And so he was really excited about it. I was like, yeah, sounds cool. Probably not my thing though. And he was like, no, it is like, just let's talk about it. I was like, all right, fine. And we talked about it. I was like, oh, this makes so much sense. We should definitely do this. So as far as I know, this started in Buffalo. They reached out to Workers United because they knew that this was something they needed and wanted.

And then when they successfully unionized, I mean, it just sparked so much inspiration across the country. And we hopped on really quick. Other locations in Boston also hopped on not long after. And yeah, it kind of spread like wildfire. Yeah, it's been wonderful to watch the kind of wave of attempts. And in some cases, like in a lot of cases, like successful attempts, just kind of take a, you know, just go all like it, how fast they've been happening in so many different places around, around the country. Um, I'd like to talk, I'd like to talk about like why the Starbucks unionization kind of effort is so important. Like why, why

this is like, of course, like unions are obviously like generally a net good, but why specifically is it important to unionize these Starbucks locations? What types of issues is the unionization trying to solve and give workers better conditions at these stores and cafes? So this great question, and first I want to start by saying Starbucks is a great place to work. I say that all the time. I reap the benefits. There are benefits, good ones. They pay minimum wage or whatever. The pay is decent. We have benefits. It's really a lot of people who work at our Starbucks say it's one of the better jobs they've had. And we deserve a union. I mean, really, in my brain, it's kind of akin to insurance, right? You have it in case you need it. If an emergency happens, you don't have to pay the

whole ER bill out of pocket. You've got some coverage coming from somewhere, right? That, at least in my mind, is what this union is for. That being said, we also just want to obviously democratize our workplace. We want to have a spot at the bargaining table because we have HR, we have people to go to, but unions are partners looking out for partners and that's it. Starbucks looks out for partners and profit. It's a business. It's a huge business. So this would just give us a stronger sense of empowerment. And again, I really think of it kind of like insurance. It's just us making sure we're taken care of at all times.

Yeah. And what type of kind of, I know whenever the discussion of unions kind of starts at workplaces, there's always like an element of like secrecy and, you know, being worried about, you know, different types of suppression. So what types of things have people been doing when the union is trying to get off the ground to organize? Are people using signal chats? In these stores, how are we trying to get more people to be comfortable with this idea and get started with the organizing process?

That's a really good question. And we're still doing that work all the time. That work doesn't really end, especially because it's commonly known now, so I don't feel as scared to say it, but there is union busting happening. It's happening all the time. Um, and it's scary and it's intimidating and it's meant to be, and it's effective, you know? So, um, we have a majority yes vote in my store. I already know that, but it also takes upkeep. It takes maintenance. Um, it takes checking in with people and, you know, for my money, checking in and saying, Hey, how are you feeling about this? Are you doing okay?

Like, I know that this is scary. I know that you're hearing things like, do you have any questions? It takes us doing our due diligence and researching the things that they're saying. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's kind of a constant thing as far as like technically how it's done I mean lots of group chats just like way too many group chats that has been most of my experience with

most political organizing in general is just way too many group chats in terms of like what Starbucks is doing to start their like union busting response is this website that they've launched yeah i i know you've i know you've tweeted about this uh about this site so i would love to love to discuss it yeah i mean i just went off i didn't really think much of it you know i just i saw it on there and just was like this is lies

um I mean well for one I'm trying to remember everything I read and tweeted but the one that's coming to mind is when they say this may affect your relationship with your store manager and it may make it difficult for, to me, that is, that may depends entirely on how much union busting Starbucks wants to do. If you want to tell our store managers that this will negatively impact our relationship with them, if that's how you want to frame it, then yeah, it probably will. Um, if you, if you want to make it more difficult by not negotiating the contract easily with us, um, yeah, then that might happen. It's not, that's not a union problem. That's a Starbucks problem that they are framing as a union problem. Um i can't what were the other things that i commented on i would just like to also explain like what the site is and what it's like trying

to do um oh sure yeah i mean it's it's um it's union investing it's uh it's giving it's giving partners the facts that they need to know you know like it's it's we want to make sure that you are informed before you vote no um that's what that is yeah it's this like sleekly designed page that has the list of facts about about organizing and all the reasons why it's going to negatively represent negatively affect your relationship with the starbucks corporation oh this was one of the points said um the union may not negotiate for some things you were hoping for and some things you value now might go away that is so ridiculous that's a threat yeah yeah that's a threat that your well-being will be changed.

Like we might not negotiate this contract very nicely with you. The union is us. They love to talk about the third party and, oh, your store manager is going to have to work with a steward. The steward is going to be someone who already works in the store. Yes. The steward is us. The union is us why would we negotiate a contract that doesn't benefit us that's so silly it makes no sense it's it's it's very typical union busting kind of behavior and if you know if they can just if this type of

propaganda you know can just convince a few people and scare only a couple of the people, that'll be enough to kind of cause division and shut down efforts in the store, right? So that's all that their goal is, is to prevent at least one more store from not doing it. As long as they do that, then it's successful. Absolutely. You know, based on how many people work at an individual store, that's not like entirely unlikely, right? Is it'll, you know, it will, like union busting efforts do work in a lot of cases and that's why they still do them.

Like that's... Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And that's why it's really important for, you know, if there are any partners listening to this, um, and partners, by the way, is what, you know, we call ourselves at Starbucks. Um, yes. The, the, um, social aspect of this within your store, the checking in with your

partners and seeing how they're feeling about it and having, um, as many face-to-face conversations as you can have and really, really sticking by each other is really important because yeah, like I said, these, um, tactics are tried and true. They're effective. They're intimidating. Um, and so you have to really support each other through that and keep reminding each other, like, no, there's a reason we're doing this. This is actually still a good thing, you know, because on top of our jobs, and then a lot of partners are in school, or they have families, like, we already have a lot going on. And be reminded that our desire for a union is not valuable to Starbucks. And so they're going to make things harder by doing all the things they're doing. You have to really, really be there for each other through this process. Yeah.

I mean, that's, you know, solidarity. One of the key tenets of this type of organizing. Absolutely. I know Chris is a pretty big union appreciator i mean i i i like unions but but chris chris really really really really enjoys the union so i'm wondering if you if you have anything uh he likes them so much he'll he'll even like unionized coffee he'll be like this coffee is delicious what's in this it will convert Chris there's some stores in Chicago that are unionizing and I'm like

maybe we should go check them out at least check them out and say hi and be like yeah good job guys what's a great thing to do definitely go to those stores go up to the counter and offer or order your coffee and then ask them to write like union strong or we love unions as your name um because when the baristas are making the coffee and they like see that sticker come through it's

we really love that chris they have great tea there too ice tea it's really good or the chai like listen that's really helpful information though about like yeah we have a there's finally a store that's like somewhat near los angeles where i am that that has announced that they're unionizing which is exciting like okay California way to join the party late but you know it's it's cool go ahead yeah yeah one thing I'm interested in is like how how big is the shop like how many people are are sort of like well I'm not not just like like just how many people there like could potentially join the union i mean anyone could i think we have about 20 i could be so wrong but i think we have around 20 partners in our store right now um and yeah any

well yeah just about anybody could join that not anyone who's salaried yeah okay that seems that seems pretty common across all the different stores is around that or it's around like 20 union eligible people per location seems roughly accurate based on the stuff i've seen from you know seattle to philadelphia to boston to Buffalo to you know all all places in between and yeah so part of part of like the actual more organizational structure is a linked to workers united yes part of the part of the service employees international union um affiliate kind of a family of unions um who's kind of led the led the campaign the campaign or has been part of the campaign to unionize the thousands of locations through the states.

And yeah, I think around like 80 locations, including two of the company's flagship ones inside Seattle and New York, have joined this effort. And it does seem like every day there's like more stores popping up who are, who are, who are saying, yeah, this is a good idea. This is,

you know, whether it be to, you know, be like, yeah, some of our equipment is old and it's like, you know, it causes like heat burns.

Cause it's not like maintenance properly or being like, yeah, there's a lot of like sexual harassment caused by like some like some like patrons that never gets addressed by management um and like or you know saying like yeah i maybe deserve to be paid more than 15 an hour um with rent being you know as high as as high as it is maybe we should be paying over 20 bucks an hour i don't know how everybody else is doing but my rent situation is interesting so i'm definitely rent has been ballooning in recent in recent months even it's been it's been really going up which i mean i'm sure we'll talk about that at some point on

the show here but yeah like there's a lot of there's a lot of issues that are being like yeah maybe people should be paid more people should be at the bargaining table there's a lot of things to address to make it a safer workplace, to make it a workplace where you're more respected. And it's, it's really nice to see people saying, yeah, I'm not going to put up with this anymore and we can do something about it.

Cause like there are mechanisms to, to do this, right? That's why it's happening. So that's, that's very, very exciting to see, to see this taking place. It really why it's happening. So that's very exciting to see this taking place.

It really is. You make a lot of great points and bring up a lot of the benefits of having a union. It just surprises me how anti-union Starbucks is, period.

Because it's just, it's like, I don't know. Yeah, you paint such a beautiful picture because it is a beautiful picture to have autonomy and respect and empowerment in the workplace. You know, they train us to work through the lens of humanity, you know, by their words. And it's pretty humane to let people have a say, a real say in the workplace humanity you know by their words and uh it's pretty humane to let people have a say a real say in the workplace you know yeah i think it kind of exposes that type of you

know pretty pretty corporate language that's formative yeah exactly it's um i am interested in like the other like kind of union busting or soft union busting kind of stuff going on even like before this website in terms of how like man like how like management's been responding um and how more like like what like what like the local responses to when stores start talking about this yeah and and another follow-up to that is I noticed that COVID was mentioned on this website. Is that being brought up within union busting at all? Or is that brought – it was like a huge red flag for me that they used like, well, we helped you during COVID. Right.

We were there for you. Yeah. I hope so. Which really did not sit well with me. That's like abusive terminology. That is pretty manipulative to be like, we helped you during a pandemic. It's like, well, yes, as you should.

Because yeah, you're the place where I was employed. I give something to you, you give something to me. And as I Twitter ranted in the comment, with peace and love we had to beg to get our cafe closed you know like we we like it wasn't like we just uh cases rose and they came in and said hey guys we're gonna close it like we had we were calling and um making a stink and i, we were talking about striking, but then remembered we're not unionized yet. So we didn't, but yeah, I mean, it was, we, yeah,

we were really fed up with people sitting in there for hours with their faces out, you know, as cases were rising. So yeah, great point. That's really pretty manipulative. Cause like you should be helping us through COVID. That's not like a, that's not a benefit. That's just. No, that's like, yeah, it's, it's not killing people. It's like, should,

should be something that's just kind of always there shouldn't, shouldn't be an extra you know yeah and i mean as far as um you know sort of local um interference i guess i'll say um i do want to say um in my case our store manager um i really care about her um i have a great working relationship with her i I really respect her. She's done a lot of good for our store. And she's really just doing the best she can, having conversations with us. She has her opinions and feelings about it. And I just try to listen to them and she listens to mine. Um, but they're definitely,

yeah. I mean, as soon as we filed for an election, we started actually, as soon as we started organizing and they sort of caught wind, um, we started having barista meetings, which are as vague as they sound. Um, and people who had worked there longer than me said, we've never had these before. Um, maybe once, you know, in a few years. Um, so we started having all these meetings and not even talking about the union at first, but all of a sudden they wanted to hear from us and fix things in the store and, and all this stuff and be super helpful and present. And then there definitely just was a heightened, uh, corporate presence in the store. Um, people we'd never seen before coming in like, Hey, how you doing? Want to talk? It's like, no, you're a

stranger. I don't want to talk to you. Um, so that was weird. Um, but yeah, yeah, there's, there's definitely, definitely just a shift in presence. Again, we have these meetings and yeah, it's been interesting. What do you kind of, how do you see like the situation resolving? Like do you, like how, like do you have has and also like yeah what's like the state of of of your stores specifically yeah so we are um on our way to an election um we've requested an election uh so we're really just like in a waiting period for that. We don't know exactly when it's going to be. We've heard soon. But who knows when that is? We, yeah, we have some, we had to like do a Zoom hearing for some of the legalities for things here in Massachusetts. That was interesting. of the legalities for things here in Massachusetts. That was interesting. But yeah, so we're just waiting for the election at this point. And the election is what will, you know, that's when we're

going to cast our yes or no vote. And we will find out whether or not we're going to unionize. And I think we will unionize. It's looking that way. I'm confident. And I really look forward to that What do you think like what do you see is happening after the vote is done like assuming it is a vote yes how do you think this will impact

working at the store going forward It's gonna be interesting and it's gonna be an an adjustment, right? Because from the time that we vote and we vote, yes, let's say we vote yes. And we're going to unionize. There is, it could take a long time. It could take a year. We don't know. It could take more and less to get from that vote to, you know, what we refer to as the bargaining table, to negotiating a contract with Starbucks. And in that time, there are things, and again, if partners are listening, you can do

your research on this on the NLRB website. There are things that will be, um, different in that waiting period, right? So if, if Starbucks decides to release, um, a nationwide, um, spring raise, because why not? We love giving you raises. Um, we would be exempt from that because we're in negotiations because we're in this sort of in-between spot. There are little weird things that we might have to just be aware of, no going in, in that sort of interim.

Yeah, and then eventually, you know, those raises and any other things that we've sort of been waiting on get brought to the bargaining table. Yeah, I think this is an important thing for people to understand when you're doing union organizing right is you know you have this giant push and you have like you have to have the push to get you to get either recognition or to get this the the national labor relations board vote but most unions that go under go under in like before the first contract and you have to like that's that's something that you know when you when you talk to people who who are professional union organizers

they talk they talk about this constantly which is like you you have to hold it together during during that period between your first like between when you when you're when you get recognized when your vote ends that first contract and it's hard in a lot of ways yeah because the things we're talking about like management will do you know they'll intensify the union busting because they're hoping the union will still fall apart but if you hold it together and if you get that first contract your union like you know you you now have a union and you've basically stabilized and at that point like you you now have a seat at the table and you have to take your seat at the table and fight. Yeah.

But it's a big responsibility. Yeah. When you say hold it together during that time, do you mean like just through those changes and that interim and that sort of weird, awkward phase, like you have to like just hold it together like mentally and just kind of power through it yeah well also i mean you you have to like you have to just keep making sure everyone's involved which is something yes yeah difficult because yeah especially after sort of the initial people lose steam yeah yeah and because people have also have like a job to do yeah this entire time right they're still're still making coffee. They're still making podcasts. They're still doing whatever.

You still have your work. Have you ever done... This is sort of beside the point, but it's fun. Have you guys ever done the 16 personality assessment? At some point, yes. I've never done it. It's really fun. I just did it for school.

It's the thing that tells you like I'm an INFJT. And my thing is the advocate. Sophie, what's yours? You look like you had one ready to go. I don't remember what it was, but I remember having to do it like 15 times in school. Yeah. I also forget what I the one that I did for when I was in school as well but I I brought it up because I'm thinking I want to send it to my fellow organizers and be like do this and we can sort of highlight what each other's strengths are um and start playing into

those because like you were saying Chris like it really is a team effort. And I think it only really works if you are utilizing people and respecting people's strengths, you know, because not everyone has the same strengths. Like, yeah, you might be a kick ass graphic designer, but like, not everyone can do that. You know, maybe they're better at hosting get togethers, or they're better at writing emails or whatever, you know. And I think, yeah, playing to strengths is so important in the long run because, yeah, it can take a year to get to the negotiating table, which which like is horrible. Like that shouldn't be like it should it shouldn't be that long. um and you know tactics such as like specifically you know raising wages around a unionization effort so that people in the union don't get it that is like another form of union busting like

that is like like don't think they haven't thought that through like that is that is part of that whole process being like oh yeah you could have a union or you could get higher wages now like that's like that's that is part of what's going on it's because they want people to not sign on to have long-term benefits so they're going to offer these short-term benefits so like it really is like because of how elongated the unionization process can be it gives a lot of time for people to get burnt out um and and combating that and like combating being burnt out is one of the most important parts and yeah it's it's really it's really challenging sometimes

oh my gosh absolutely i mean i love that conversation i'm like a mental health dweeb um it's it's my it's what my my podcast is called your messy friend. And, uh, that's basically all I talk about is mental health and yeah, the burnout. I mean, I'm recovering from burnout right now, you know, um, it's very real. You have to make sure that, you know, while you're taking care of everybody else and making these efforts, like you have to make sure that you are checking with yourself every day and making sure your needs are being met because giving from an empty tank does not last long. Yep. As I'm sure you guys know.

Yeah. If you if you're if you're if the water in your espresso machine is out, then nothing can flow through to make this anyway and well strato shots for you baby exactly see it was what a amazingly crafted metaphor i just did not tortured at all um anyway so what is the like turnover rate at the store like like how how quickly are people coming in and out of, of jobs and how has that been affecting organizing? Oh, the cool question. Um, we haven't had a ton of people leave since I got there.

I mean, and I definitely, I can pretty confidently say none of those had to do with unionizing. Um, it was all for just like different reasons. We've had quite a few more people come in recently. And I would say that, I mean, it's weird because our current store manager, who's great, she was hired around the same time that we really started amping up union stuff. And, you know,

it's almost unfortunate because I think she thought it was, it was about her and it just so wasn't, you know? But yeah, so it, it, who knows if it was just cause she was there now or because of the union stuff or both, but they did start hiring quite a few more people around the time that we started organizing. And yeah, I mean, you have to walk this fine line when you have new people coming in. Of course, you want to get to them and give them your info or at least give them resources to look into before corporate gets to them um but then you also they're they're learning a new job yes it's really fast paced and overwhelming yeah like you have to be careful not

to totally overwhelm them either absolutely yeah i mean that that's really something i've just tried to keep in mind throughout the whole process is like when my friend Tyler approached me I was like I don't know what this is I I don't I don't know if this is necessary for me and now I'm on the committee you know yeah so I you know what I mean like it's that thing where I'm like okay if I could be convinced. Maybe anyone can. Yeah. All right. Well, is there any direct action that people who are listening or any call to action you have for us that we can provide to our listeners or links or

anything that you think would be useful for our people to know? That's a cool idea. Yeah. Thanks. Like we mentioned before, if you want to just like stop by your local unionizing Starbucks and get a coffee with the name, you know, unionize or union strong that like that in person support, especially when you're first organizing is really, really helpful. Even just stopping by to like drop off a card or say, Hey, good luck with unionizing. Um, that really means a lot. Um, you can follow,

uh, SB workers United on Instagram and Twitter and just engage with us. Reach out if you need info about how to organize. The people on Instagram are so, I mean, on all the platforms are just like so on top of responding. And websites. I think we have a website. I would assume so. I would assume at this point. Yeah, I mean, we have a pretty poppin' Instagram and Twitter. But, yeah, I don't think I'm forgetting anything.

I think that's about it. And just making noise online is also really helpful. You know, I love when people comment on Starbucks posts and they're like, yeah, how about unions, though? How about a little union the website is uh sb workers united.org thank you affiliated with the the workers united and the starbucks unionizing effort which has ways to like donate or buy buy merch in support of the union and that kind of stuff which funds go to the go to the campaign and you know just in case it wasn't clear like and this is something you'll

hear from starbucks is all this about the third party and workers united is going to do this and that and blah blah we essentially you know we work with that they they promote our cause you know, we work with that. They, they promote our cause. You know what I mean? They're here to support our mission and our goals. I mean, you'd be amazed by how much partners do for this, you know, so much, but we, we do the nitty gritty every day communicating with each other. We're communicating nationally. Now we have a platform for that. Um, and yeah, it's really cool and so like they are they're kind of like i don't know the supporting beams of everything we're doing you

know it's us yeah but like the actual makeup of it definitely is with starbucks employees and all the people i've been in like twitter conversations with or dms who are involved it's like yeah like everyone who's like actively involved in doing it all has worked at a Starbucks before. Um, and still, and still are like it is, it is definitely being led by the workers.

Yep. Um, and yeah, that's really great and really crucial. Um, do you have any, do you have any other, uh,

pluggables either for yourself or for, uh, yeah. Anything else in general? Plug your pod. Yeah. Thanks guys. Um um this was really fun thank you for having me on i love podcasting um so yeah i mentioned uh sb workers united on instagram and twitter make sure you give them a follow follow baristas you find along the way who are speaking up about this.

Show them your support. My podcast is called Your Messy Friend. You can find me, I think, wherever you get your podcasts. Definitely Spotify. That's what I use. And yeah, that's about it. Well, thank you so much, Kaylee, uh joining us today to talk about starbucks and unions um follow us online on twitter and instagram at happen here pod and cool zone media

and i think that does it does it for us can't wait for y'all to win yeah absolutely can't can't can't wait for you guys to win is as soon as as soon as portland start going, I'll definitely go in and support. But until then I will make coffee alone in my, my, my, my lonely, my, my, my lonely espresso machine.

Um, but yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for, uh, for coming on to talk. Thank you. Thank you so much.

much. Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturno, Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and Sonora, an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters 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. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart, and even occasionally about trying to put them back together. Today, as is too often the case, we're going to be focused more on the falling apart thing because today we are talking about the situation in Ukraine. It is, as I type, or not type because I'm not writing, but you get how I'm used to thinking. As I say this, Russian troops have just moved in

to two regions in eastern Ukraine that have been occupied by what are generally called Russian-backed separatists since 2014. Vladimir Putin gave a speech that I will be, we will be talking about a bit with our guest, and announced his intention to recognize those breakaway sections of the country as independent republics. And the area that he has chosen to recognize includes about 70% territory that is currently occupied and held by the Ukrainian government. So it's a big mess. This is, some have said like a soft version of the invasion that people were expecting. I think it's probably more accurate to say it's a slow start compared to what is potentially possible and very likely coming in the future. To talk more about this and about being an anarchist kind of trapped in between,

you know, NATO and Russia and everything that's flinging around right now is Ukrainian journalist, Romeo Kukratsky. Romeo, welcome to the show. Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. Been a big fan of yours. So it's an honor to be here. And you're in Kiev right now, right? Yeah, correct.

And how is, everybody keeps asking this all around, but how is the mood to the extent that there's a way of saying that like i've you know have things kind of taken a turn since putin actually made his first big play i mean as much as journalists like to say there is no magic yeah moodometer to check to instantly pull every resident of the city to find out yeah walk around and talk to everybody yeah just like all the four million or whatever citizens in the city let me just let me just ask them um but like there definitely has been a turning point um yeah like one of the big refrains that uh i've seen like personally and everyone has been saying

right is that ukrainians are so calm look at these pictures of them like shopping in malls and like going to school what else are you supposed to do honestly what else are we supposed to do but i mean it is true people have been called but since yesterday evening there definitely has been a shift um and even casual conversation uh in kiev like i was sitting to paraphrase a famous columnist's usual framing i was sitting in a cafe and overhearing the waitstaff chat amongst themselves um and obviously the the the whole conversation is oh is put going to push into Kiev? And anecdotally, or semi-anecdotally, I guess, apartment prices in Western cities like in Lviv and Ushgur have really spiked up like incredibly.

Oh, boy. So people are, I wouldn't call that. That's a depressing way to pay attention to that or reason to pay attention to that. Like, I wouldn't call it a mass panic um there are no like bank runs no like all the stores are stocked no one's like hoarding um but at the same time there is a steady trickle of people going west and kind of making plans at this point yeah and um so this to kind of give people a little bit more context before we get into some of the more political dimensions of this, right now, there has not been a massive escalation of violence outside of the areas where there has been fighting for several years. You know, there has been an escalation on the front line that's existed since 2014.

But there has not been like, you know, troops pouring across the border in other areas and stuff. And that's obviously probably the number one worry. It looks like what's about to happen is, or at least, it's hard to say, because Putin has recognized the borders of this breakaway part of Ukraine as significantly larger than the area they actually control. And he has moved troops, Russian active duty troops into that area. Now, Russian troops, from what I've heard, about 3000 have been in the breakaway areas for years now, but a significant number have been added now. And obviously the fear is that because he has recognized the territory of these, quote unquote, in his terms, breakaway republics as being much larger than what they control, that Russian troops are going to participate with the separatists in attacking and taking those territories from the Ukrainian government. That's one concern.

Obviously, the concern attached to that is that it would be not at all inconceivable for a conflict that started that way to spread to a much wider part of Ukraine. This is all coming alongside a speech Putin gave that, unfortunately, is going to be one of those things people hear about in history books um yeah out of its goddamn mind utterly deranged and it's one of those things we will talk some more about how the western left sometimes i i don't want to be like because this is also largely the the online left but how the online left talks about putin sometimes this was not a i want to return to the so This was not a, I want to return to the

Soviet Union speech. This was, I want to return to Tsarist Russia's borders type speech. The guy has the Tsarist imperial crest emblazoned on the gates to his palace. So I'm really not sure what people would have expected. And unfortunately, he's

better at his job than any of the last Tsars were, because he's achieved a notable amount of success towards that goal already. And yeah, he – a number of things that were – it's one of those – like one of the things he said, which is a line that folks like him in Russia have been saying for a while is that Ukraine, the existence of Ukraine as an independent polity is a mistake. And as an anarchist, you know, there's this like, well, yeah, I don't like the Ukrainian state. I don't like any state in particular. But if your only disagreement is with the statehood of Ukraine, and you're fine with the statehood of Russia, you know, then perhaps what you actually think is that people in Ukraine should not have any autonomy to disagree with the government in Moscow.

And I think that's the case here. There's similarities between how Putin and those like him in Russia treat Ukrainians with how, for example, the Turks treat Kurds in the southern part of the country. There's this thing you'll hear a lot from Turkey where like there Turks treat Kurds in the southern part of the country. There's this thing you'll hear a lot from Turkey where, like, there's no Kurds in Turkey. They're mountain Turks who've lost their language. And there's this denial from Putin and the Russians that Ukrainians are a people, that they exist. And this is something that has translated. Most people have heard versions of this in just any of the coverage

you've heard of ukraine if you've ever heard of it referred to as the ukraine what that is is part of a very old um line that kind of exists to allow russians to deny the existence of ukrainians as a people and make it make it seem more like it's just kind of a geographic region which is not the case and why you wouldn't refer to you you wouldn't call it the Ukraine any more than you would call it the Canada. It just isn't the way you should say that. But yeah, so I think that's at least enough of a background to get into the real meat of what we want to talk about. And I'm just going to kind of open this up to you to chat about what you'd like to say and person I met, regardless of whatever corner of the world they came from, is the exact same human being as me. And it wasn't, and that kind of realization was one of the things that I guess I wouldn't say pushed, but conspired to turn me into a leftist, a socialist, Marxist. the hell all these isms were, was internationalism. The idea that, well, our struggle isn't within the fabricated borders

of whatever polity has decided to impose their authority. But internationally, every single worker is the same as every other worker. We're all struggling with the same issues. We're all fighting the same forces. And generally speaking, we with the same issues. We're all fighting the same forces. And generally speaking, we have the same enemies. Now, fast forward to 2022. I go online and what do I see?

Well, Ukrainians are all Nazis or Ukraine shouldn't exist. Or how can we support either of those? It's two fascist states fighting each other. And I'm sorry, Ukraine's got a population of 44 million. You want to tell me that every single one of those 44 million are Nazis? Like people didn't even say that about Germany. They were literally the Nazi state. I mean, or the United States for that matter. north united states um for that matter yeah like we had four years of trump an openly fascist authoritarian leader and no one seems to say well i guess the u.s should be bombed well i guess there

are some i mean there's definitely there's definitely people who say that but yeah but generally speaking that's not exactly the the view that people, right? So it's been a long process of disappointment. Well, I say long. There's always been the kind of, well, what do these people really think about Ukraine? But bereft of such a strong impetus to take a side, I guess, um, it hasn't been in the forefront. And now every day I see people that I would have considered comrades that I would have considered, um, friends and brothers just kind of turn their back on me because I live here, right? Any, any aggression, any action that's taken will literally affect me physically sitting here in queue. So

it's been really, really immensely disheartening to see that every single value that I thought the left was supposed to value, that I thought the left was built on, be betrayed by people with rose emojis

or hammer and sickles in their uh usernames or whatever the hell it is and we should probably talk about some of why this is and what the what the history is here so the most kind of direct thing that people can point to when they when they call ukraine a fascist state or when they talk about this is the existence of the azov battalion the azov battalion is a paramilitary organization that means it's it's not officially a part of the governmental military structure but it it does receive it has received arms from the government and it uh functions as part of ukraine's defense forces um for the for the purposes of fighting off the russian-backed separatists. And the Azov battalion are Nazis.

There's been a tremendous amount of reporting on that matter. It's a big problem, and the Ukrainian government deserves a significant amount of criticism for the degree to which Azov has been allowed to continue existing. But there's also a lot that gets left out when people focus on that, including the fact that, for example, the political wing of Azov right sector, which is kind of the, it would be fair to call that the umbrella term for like the far right parties in Ukrainian government, have been pretty effectively siloed away from political power through very active measures to about like, what is it? 1%

of like representation. And so it's- Yeah, they didn't actually pass the threshold to enter the new parliament. Yeah. They're not an entity politically. They're just not popular. Their campaigns fail, their mottos fail, their agitation fails. Ukrainians do not want to vote for Nazis. failed or agitation fails, Ukrainians do not want to vote for Nazis. Yeah. And it's it is it is a an ugly situation. And I remember talking with when I was reporting on the Maidan uprisings, which is when, again, for people who aren't up on recent Ukrainian history, they had a president who tried to do a dictatorship and people rose up and fought him in the streets.

It was a very gnarly time. About 200 people were shot by government forces. And eventually the president was forced to flee the country, which is what precipitated everything that's happening now, because that president was pretty closely tied with Putin and the people fighting him were not all, they were not pro-NATO rebels, but they were more, definitely more supportive of closer ties with Western Europe than they were with Russia. And that, again, those are kind of the precipitating events for everything that happened, that's happening now. And some of the people who were fighting the president's forces were fascists. And it's one of those things, I remember talking with protesters at the time who were like well am i supposed to get in fight with them at the same time as i'm trying not to get shot by

riot police like what what do you expect me to do and it is a nasty situation and it's one of those things um i don't know like i i i don't know what to to tell people about that because it's ugly and it's uncomfortable and it's messy. And that's also Ukrainian history. There's a lot of ugly, uncomfortable, messy things here as there is with every country's history. It doesn't mean that people in Kiev deserve to have their housing blocks pounded by Russian artillery. It doesn't mean that people in Avdivka deserve to have their homes pounded by artillery. And whatever criticisms you want to make about how the Russian government or how the Ukrainian government has handled Azov, and there are many criticisms to make, that's not really

relevant to the people living in these areas, having their homes destroyed on a daily basis by mortar fire. I just want to make like a couple of things really clear. The Azov battalion is like a thousand guys yeah like max and the reason one of the reasons at least that they rose to such prominence in the beginning wasn't only their um ability to mobilize in the early stages of the russian war against ukraine uh it was also because they had very strong financial backing from the former interior minister, Arsen Ivakov.

And Ivakov is no longer in power. And one of the things you can see immediately was the almost nullifying of fascist street marches and fascist demonstrations in Kiev, outside the president's office, that all vanished because more like in Ukraine, ideology is not very strong. And this is something that I've noticed a lot of people from the US and Europe have trouble understanding about Ukrainian politics. People here are not really ideological. Our parties don't map, aside from a couple of outliers like right sector, it doesn't really map to any left-right access. People typically

will always want the same policies. They always want a pension. They always want universal healthcare to be better. They always want the roads fixed. want um universal health care to be better they always want the roads fixed um generally policy something most ukrainians actually agree on um as a result most of our elections are purely personality based uh that's one of the reasons um zelensky vladimir zelensky our current president won was because he was a well-known comedian yeah and people liked his personality and he put out a whole tv show as a pr stunt yeah um before launching his campaign and people voted for that personality that's on screen uh and so when there was far-right activity and again i want to stress that that activity even the street activity has almost disappeared it's because the far right is typically used in

ukraine as a political tool by one oligarch or one interest group against another that's why when the money disappeared they disappeared because the leaderships uh the leadership of these fascist groups typically speaking were not um that themselves, but they did like having USUVs and they did like buying guns and hiring hookers and doing drugs. They liked the money and that's why they did it. And they would convince a bunch of teenagers to go out and wave a couple of torches and march or chant. But these guys were really purely in for the money um and again you can tell that because when their financial backer disappeared they're nowhere to be found yeah and it's one of those one of the things that is very frustrating to me i can remember one of the

earliest projects that i did that was like a for bellingcat as we were there was a pride march in kiev that got attacked by nazis this was a couple of years back and we were, there was a pride march in Kiev that got attacked by Nazis. This was a couple of years back. And we were kind of trying to identify the individual fascists who were like beating people in the street. And it's spending hours pouring over that footage. It makes it incredibly frustrating that there are people outside of the country boiling it down to, well, all of those people are fascists. All of those people are part of a fascist state. And it's like, no, a lot of those people, quite a few Ukrainians have fought Nazis in the streets. That's a reality of the situation.

And it's ugly in part because if you actually want to look at what's been happening with the Russian-backed separatists, there's a lot of fucking fascists over there. There's a lot of paramilitary organizations and like far-right groups that have been used by the Russian government. That infamous Wagner PMC. Yeah, yeah. Literally. Literally named because they're fascist leader. Yeah. Like Wagner.

Like many Nazis. literally literally named because they're fascist leader yeah like swagger like many nazis it's it's it's hard to to understand honestly from my perspective um because not only is russian fascism have far more influence on russian policy than any ukrainian fascist has ever had in ukrainian policy um it's also that the russian project and the narrative they use um there there's this uh joke they call or not really joke a slur they call them that they call ukrainians nazi banderists um for those who don't know bandera was uh a uh ukrainian nationalist leader a partisan fought against the Soviets, and his organization was implicated in

quite a few war crimes. Yeah, significant number of war crimes, too many war crimes. So, clearly, Binder himself, probably not a great guy. Yeah. But, to delegitimize all Ukrainian kind of independence movements that have propped up over the years, the Soviet government and now the Russian government has always, always insisted that there is no legitimate way for Ukraine to be independent. There is a picture a couple of days ago of a solidarity march in Kiev with some of Kiev's LGBT community holding up Banderas flags, not because they're gay Nazis, but because.

It's a way of, yeah, retaking this slur back from the Russians. And it's all part of the complicating factor here is that because of how geopolitics worked out in that period of time, there are very uncomfortable but kind of inextricable ties between Ukrainian, the basic idea of Ukraine being a nation independent from Russia and anti-communism. And because of what was going on in anti-communism in that period of time, we're talking the 30s and 40s, it means that a decent number of those early Ukrainian nationalists were either directly implicated with the Nazis like Bandera or at least had uncomfortable ties. And that's a messy part of history that shouldn't be shied away from. But for example,

the same thing is true of Finland. Like you can say the exact same thing about fucking Finnish nationalism, Finnish sovereignty and whatnot. And people don't call Finland a Nazi nation, even though, yeah, the fact that they were stuck between the USSR and Nazi Germany means that there were a lot of Finns in that period of time who made some real fucked up choices. But also, there's a lot that has to be,

like, you can't adequately discuss why those choices were made if you don't talk about, for example, the Holodomor, you know, which was the starvation genocide of several million Ukrainians by the Soviet government. like and honestly to go back even further um and to i don't know burnish my leftist conduction a little bit if you go back to the civil war itself where um a lot of this started most of the nationalist groups i would say nearly all of them there were one or two monarchist minor monarchist groups in ukraine but the grand majority of them were in fact socialism or socialist yeah they had like the hammer and sickle and wheat on their currency and everything because at the time that was what one votes uh from the peasantry but when the bolsheviks crushed every independent Ukrainian social movement

in exchange for bureaucrats that they imported from the empire and just shoved into Ukrainian cities, well, then you had Ukrainians that wanted to be independent and wanted to have a better life than under the Tsar. Well well now suddenly they don't even have that support from the bolsheviks and obviously as a ukrainian i can't talk about this without bringing up nester mcnoy yeah who was a anarchist leader the leader of the ukrainian black army during the civil war and what happened to them well the bolsheviks betrayed them and killed all of them and crushed the movement. And then smeared them all as pedophile rapist cannibals, if I remember correctly. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of disinformation you can find about that time.

Just like today, you know, only the names have changed. Exactly. So if there is no other outlet for Ukrainian nationalism and the group that you thought may be an ally in destroying the empire, in granting you self-determination, turns out to be a continuation of that exact empire. Well, it's pretty logical. Maybe not right, but it is logical yeah for people to go to the for people to go to the other extreme and it's one of those one of the things i think that should be noted more as we talked about earlier is that one of these stories of ukrainian politics particularly in the last god close to a decade since the maididan, is that mainstream Ukrainian political leaders and Ukrainian voters have overwhelmingly rejected that sort of nationalism this time around and have gone out of their way to silo it out of active political power in a way that one could argue

is more successful than has been done in the United States. Yeah, absolutely. We didn't elect Trump. Yeah. No, you guys basically elected Jon Stewart. Pretty much. I mean, that was his whole thing. He put on satirical political sketches.

That was the entire show. We did basically elect Jon Stewart. And, you know, I have my criticisms of zolensky um as a lot of people do uh and one of the things we love saying in ukraine whenever people are like oh look at all the look at all the nazis there we're so not we're so anti-semitic that we elected a jewish comedian yeah that's how that's how anti-semitic we are that we have huge menorahs standing in the middle of kiev during the high holidays that's how that's how anti-semitic we are yeah and and zolinski's uh prime minister is also a jewish man which makes ukraine the second country in the world

to have a jewish president and prime minister um yeah like we don't care because it's not it doesn't even come up in campaigns like what even when romney was running you'd see democratic campaigns um painting this a scary mormon or uh the ads implying and yeah you don't even have that level of religious antipathy in ukraine it's it's it's just a much more complicated we're actually talking about the problems of the far right and the fascism in Ukraine. It's a much more complicated story than a lot of people on social media or whatnot want to give it credit to because it's just easy to sum things up in one sentence and not have to care about a looming humanitarian catastrophe. But that is what we are looking at. If this invasion, it will be bad if Russia uses active forces in order to take the remainder of those two provinces from the Ukrainian government.

It will be a nightmare of almost unimaginable consequence if the invasion proceeds on the wider scale that is possible at this point um and it is oh sorry go on no no please yeah um i've been a doomer on this basically since i i first heard about the build-up um because putin has made it very clear over the years what he considers ukraine to be like you mentioned he doesn't think that ukraine should exist as like a polity um and as a result uh i have pretty much this whole time been pretty sure that he's going to attack you um and now we're coming to a very definite tipping point um just today putin's made a lot of moves um like you mentioned he uh authorized military force to be used um in the donbass and actually he's gone further he's

authorized military force to be used abroad uh which i mean obviously that means ukraine where else that's where his like the about i think 70 or 80 percent of the entire Russian army is currently around Ukraine or close enough that they can reinforce without a lot. Yeah, or at least of the active duty because the Russian military, there's a smaller, but actually competent. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. But the professional, the contract soldiers. Yes. Yeah. But the professional, the contract soldiers, yes. Yeah. And especially on the northern border, there are a lot of battalion attack groups that are basically sitting and waiting, I guess, for whatever the order will be eventually. And in Belarus, and since Putin has given this authorization to operate abroad and he stated that he recognizes these puppet authorities, as I call them,

that he recognizes their borders as the entirety of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, which, again, only a third of those territories are under the de facto control of the puppet authorities. Two-thirds of both provinces are still under Ukrainian government control, including the critical port city of Mariupol. And now that Putin has authorized force to be used abroad, well, it's kind of, I mean, at least it is

incredibly obvious to me what the next steps are from the Russian perspective if I want to subjugate you right yeah um and i think a big failing here is people in the west especially the west and left um know very little uh of for example the chechen wars oh god especially the second war and what happened to grozny yeah um. During that war and what the Russians did to subjugate that population. Yeah.

And if anyone thinks that Putin treasures Ukrainian lives any more than he did Chechen lives, then I've got a bridge over the Dnipro to sell them. Though you should act now because the valley is going to drop real fast. Yeah. And it's one of those, if you as a good leftist uh have spent a significant

amount of time reading about the horrific crimes of of imperialist nations in africa and southeast asia and in the americas um what the russian federation did there is is on that scale it's it's absolutely on that scale it was a it was a a titanically ugly war um and i mean any modernly we can look at what they did in syria yeah or what they are doing in syria yeah what they continue to do in syria um but as it turns out um syrians learned this lesson that i am learning now about big portions of the um western left a long time ago yeah which is that if you can find for example some syrian rebels uh who are shitty and islamists or whatever you can tar every single person who ever stood up against bashar al-assad as a as a terrorist um which is really easy, especially if you're getting paid Kremlin

money to advance that line and your name is Ben Norton. This brings us to the place where there really aren't clear answers, which is like, what can be done? And it is one of those things where it's like, well, that's not an easy question because you do have to when you start grappling with like, all right, well, like should – what should NATO do? What should other European non-NATO nations do? Like what is actually capable of like potentially altering or disrupting the courses of action here? Well, we're talking about the russian state which has a lot of nukes um we're talking about a situation that could spiral out of control in a way that very few

situations globally are capable of potentially spiraling out spiraling out of control and so it is a not a situation where anyone who tells you this is clearly the thing to do that will work is i think trying to is probably full of shit and a little unhinged because this is a real fucking ugly one. have canceled construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which is a gas pipeline from Russia into the EU, that a lot of folks were saying Germany was not going to take any sort of stances, solid stances on Ukraine's behalf because of that pipeline, because of how Germany, along with a lot of Western Europe, is tremendously reliant upon Russian gas exports for just like keeping themselves heated in the winter. So that's a positive move. I tend to be critical of the ability of sanctions to do much. And if we're looking historically at sanctions, particularly how they're most often implied,

they have a tendency to just harm regular people more than they have to do. Like we can look at the sanctions in Iraq, right? Which were part of why something like a million people starved. We are talking about different kinds of sanctions in general. And we're talking about the sanctions being imposed by NATO countries against the Russian state right now. They're largely sanctions against members of the Duma. There's a lot. It's not the same as looking at like what was being done to Saddam's Iraq. That said, I'm still very hesitant to say I think that sanctions are going to disrupt Putin's course of action. I'm curious what you think can and should be done here.

You know, like what is, do you have any kind of clear idea in your own head about what might have a disruptive effect on what Putin is doing? Learn to teleport and shoot Putin in the head with a 9mm. I mean, that would be great. Had we that teleportation capacity, there would be a list. Unfortunately, I never put my skill points into that. But realistically speaking the russian state is authoritarian it doesn't really care what its own citizens think it

definitely doesn't care what other people think however um russia has been at least in um the modern realm relatively image conscious um which is why i think one thing that could work for example or not could work but would perhaps force the russian state to consider its actions a little bit more carefully and i want to be very clear when i talk about the russian state i'm talking about putin himself yeah the government he has no there's no like other decision makers in russia and that was actually perfectly encapsulated um during his speech the other day where he just outright um like eviscerated the head of his foreign intelligence service on live tv for the whole world to see just utterly humiliated the guy

for no real reason just because he can and you could see that and we're talking about russia's top spy i mean beyond putin himself stammering like a frightened school child when putin addressed him just with just a hint of sharpness. So when I say the Russian state, I am referring literally to the body and person of Vladimir Putin. And honestly, yeah, I would love to

see people picket Russian embassies and make demonstrations and marches and so on. Do I think that will have a practical real effect? To be honest, no. Same with the sanctions. I'm sure Putin's pet oligarchs and members of his party and the people that, in theory, keep him in power, the oligarchs, the parliamentarians, the mafia lords, and so on, I'm sure they're going to be premiffed if their yachts and their multi-million dollar properties in Miami and New York and London

and the villas in the French Riviera, when all that gets taken, I'm sure they'll be pretty annoyed. But I don't think Putin cares. I think that he has a really irrational desire to subjugate Kiev specifically. He sees Kiev as what we call in Russian the mother of all Russian cities. It's the birthplace of the Kievan Rus. Yeah, the word Russian comes from Kievan Rus. Exactly, exactly. And I just don't think that Putin is going to turn away from that goal. No.

Because a couple of his buddies are complaining that their mega yachts got taken in by the British authorities or whatever. No. Nor do I think they're going to care that there are a couple of marches outside of embassies in new york or something um but that may help spur the world as a whole the international community into taking a harder line stance against because time and time and again um like the guy's a gangster he's he's like a security service thug if you've ever like interacted with like a petty like sergeant police sergeant or something that has just a bit of authority and pretty much total impunity that that's put into a tee. The dude thinks he's overeducated and the cleverest man. Yeah, I think the way he talks and the way he acts, he's just a bully.

Yeah, I think. But in reality, the way he talks and the way he acts, he's just a bully. He's got the same basic personality as like Villanueva, you know, the fucking head of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. He's like, not like a beat cop, but like one of the cops who rises to run a union or run a city police department. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He's good at consolidating power. He's good at exercising or organizing others to exercise violence on his behalf.

But yeah, at the end of the day, he is primarily a bully. And it's one of those, I don't know, like when it comes to arms shipments, that is historically, again, if you look at the history of – let's just say specifically NATO shipping arms places, most of the time that does not improve the situation for people in that country. That has been a historical reality of arms shipments, not just with NATO. As a general rule everywhere, when you ship more guns into an area, that rarely improves quality of life. That rarely improves quality of life. But we are not talking about a country that has had any kind of centralized political legitimacy or whatnot, collapsing. We're not talking about a guns to Libya. It just isn't. There are different histories, different political realities on the ground. I don't know that I actually think any amount of arms shipments would dissuade Putin from advancing either, but I don't know what else to do. I certainly am not against the idea of like, okay guys, have some AGTMs, you know, have some wire guided missiles,

have some javelins. Um, because like, what else are you going to do? Um, I mean, we're not going to, and I'm,

I'm certainly not saying we should send us troops in. Um, cause again, we have to consider the nuclear situation too. I don't, what do you think is, where are your thoughts there? Um, cause this is something that i i'm very i'm very mixed on although again i'm broadly fine with yeah i mean at least give people the ability to fight back yeah it's a difficult one especially like

you noted the military industrial complex has very rarely improved any situation in the world anywhere. This might be one of the few exceptions. Because the fact is that Ukraine doesn't really have the tools to defend ourselves. We have, or at least our government claims that we have the strongest army in Europe. Which, to be honest, with all the defense cuts that European countries have made over the years, that may be true, at least on the ground sense. Certainly the most combat-experienced army in Europe. Yeah, absolutely.

But what we lack entirely is air power and air defense. Yep. And what Russia has in spades is air power and air defense. And as we saw when the u.s uh invaded iraq well you can destroy conventional army in a couple of days by just bombing the shit out of it yeah uh and the russians have quite a few missiles um aimed straight at kiev uh and quite a few planes waiting on standby i presume to bomb the shit out of Kyiv. And it would be nice to have some way to to defend ourselves against that.

But again, there's there's not much that can be said. Yeah, of course. Stingers and javelins and so on. That'll all help raise the costs of the occupation that follows the initial bombardment. help raise the costs of the occupation that follows the initial bombardment um but if putin goes for the strategy that assad has used in syria which is bomb the living shit out of every civilian residential area in the city until the people just submit or are all dead um well there's not really too much we can do about that and that is like there is a lot that individual that that trained and motivated soldiers with small arms and munitions like javelins can do even to resist a country with with overwhelming air power. The corollary to that is that in doing that a lot of stuff, everyone around them dies.

The city is turned into a graveyard. I've seen that with my own eyes. And that's, I mean, got to be the thing. If you're looking at this with any kind of reasonable eyes and not just like trying to find a political angle to support, That has to be your main concern is that the potential here is for a tremendous loss of life and also for the creation of millions of refugees. And this is something in another audio clip that you published a bit earlier on Twitter, you say, which is that like if this goes as badly as it can, no matter what your politics are, this will become your problem. 100%. Yeah, I stand behind that. Absolutely. Because there are a lot of Ukrainians. And while most of us have no desire to live under the

Russian yoke, the majority of us are not trained fighters. We're just people, just regular people. And I know, um, especially in the U S um, with our like out of control gun culture, uh,

imagining like they're the, the singular guy, you know, they're, they're the macho man, uh, with, with all the guns.

They take down the government all by themselves. I'm sorry. It's a fantasy. It's a fiction. That is not how things work. And quite frankly, most people are not psychologically suited to combat. That's why armies take so long to break soldiers

down to teach them to murder people. Because that is not something humans do naturally. And the majority of people subjected to that kind of violence will run and again there are 44 million of us and they will run and run and run pretty much everyone in the world you saw this with syria saw this with libya um you've seen this pretty much with every single place that has experienced massive violence in the modern world um that's the reaction yeah and yes when we run we bring all of our biases and problems and cultural predilections to you and it's yeah i mean that's that's really the note to end on and it is you get a lot of folks you know who who rightly you know focus on and

think a lot about revolutionary struggles in places like vietnam and um and in afghanistan and we'll point out that like well you don't need to have as advanced a military as your opponent to win and again just the corollary to that all yeah the corollary to that is that like yeah but millions of people die millions of people died in afghanistan millions of people died in vietnam um that's that that is the reality yeah you can resist an imperial power with minimal technology but you're not to leave that fight with a family alive still, you know? Like, that's how it goes. So let's all say a little prayer for, I don't know, peace. I hope the worst doesn't happen. What, you know, has there been kind of mobilization that you've seen within

the the the activists the anarchist community in in kiev um to you know any kind of mutual aid stuff like or is it just one of those situations where it hasn't started happening yet and nobody really knows what would even be useful to do if it does i'll say this um it may come as a little bit of a shock but anarchists not typically the best to organize yeah um specifically like a lot of my uh friends who are active in the anarchist um movement in ukraine have simply joined the Territorial Defense Battalions or the regular army and will simply fight as soldiers. There has been a very strong, I don't know if you call denial, a colleague of mine used the term doomed optimism, and I really like the sound of that. So let's go with that. Yeah, there's been this really strong doomed optimism and i really like the sound of that so let's go with that yeah there's been this really strong doomed optimism amongst ukrainians that the worst will not happen

and there's no real reason to prepare for anything because well things are going to be fine um and that's what our government tells us as well things are going to be fine they don't see any massive attack groups or i mean i feel like that's contradicted by the the open source intelligence that i've been looking at yeah but i i am just one guy i obviously don't have the intelligence apparatus of a nation state um so i mean maybe they're right um but generally speaking people have just been joining the army going to um tactical trainings um but this is all very basic stuff like going the woods learn how to set up camp and you know clean a rifle kind of kind of things um nothing like combat training because where would you get that except by joining the army and going to the front

yeah it's the kind of training that might keep in the event of a full conflict one out of 10 of those people alive long enough to learn how to fight. Yeah, and that might be worth it. Yeah, if you're talking about, like, yes. Not to say people shouldn't be doing that, because people should do whatever they can. How are you, kind of to close out, like, as this... Like, doomscrolling is a thing we all talk about and there's there's plenty i'm just sitting here in portland we just had a mass shooting on a protest

this weekend and so there's a lot of doom scrolling going on in my community but we're not staring down the barrel of 190 000 soldiers you know potentially uh uh hitting us from the air and ground simultaneously how do you how are you like focusing on the stuff that you can do anything about and the stuff that you can productively handle without losing yourself in that opious amounts of cannabis that's good i'm glad you guys have decent pod access yeah i actually don't know what I'll do if, um, if my current supplies cut out to be quite honest. Um,

but I mean, it's been definitely a struggle. Um, and the past couple of days, especially my mental health has not been, uh, especially great. Um,

but again, I'm one dude. I'm not in very good shape. I have poor vision. One of my eyes don't work. I'm diabetic. I'm not going to go out and grab a rifle and start killing every Ruski I see. But at the same time, I've got a job to do.

As an English-language journalist in Ukraine, I have. This is your busy season. Yeah, it's my busy season. Like. One of my jobs is to counter Russian disinformation and to like tell people the truth of what is going on here. And that role will only get more important if the conflict expands from the scope that it is now. So how am I doing? Well, I'm still alive.

Haven't off myself yet. And I'm still working. So I think as good as I can be under the circumstances. Yeah, yeah. Well, I hope your weed supply stays stable at the very fucking least. Crossing my fingers. Yeah. All right.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, Romeo. Do you have anything you want to plug kind of as we go out here? Just if you really want to know about what's going down in Ukraine, I am co-host of a podcast called Ukraine Without Hype. You can find it on any podcast platform. And if you really want to get a look at what's going on

in English with only a tinge of leftist bias, then tune in. You can follow us on Twitter, hype Ukraine. Um, and again, on any podcast platform,

uh, that you, you so desire. Awesome. Well, check out Romeo there, check out this podcast and, uh,

you know, just try to keep your eyes on the situation and don't let yourself be uh overwhelmed by what some random person on twitter tries to sum it up as you know people are more complicated than that welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter 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. 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. It could happen here Coming to you live from My room in Chicago But importantly We're coming to you live

It could happen here central Where the gamers have seized the pod It is me Christopher It is Garrison. Hello, fellow gamer. Hello. I'm in the gaming trenches with my Razer headset on, looking into my NVIDIA-powered viewfinder,

and I'm ready to continue on the fight. It's going to be great. We're talking about gaming. We're talking about talking about gaming we're talking about the military we're talking about why the two of them crossing is extremely bad and uh with us to talk about this are two people who are uh somewhat less clownish than we are um this is katie and chris from gamers for peace which is a initiative of veterans for peace uh welcome to the show hello hey thank you i take offense at being called less clownish than you guys i'm just trying to live up to your standard i'll have you know i am very very clownish and clumsy and all of those

good things and they trusted me with weapons oh god so i guess starting out uh i wanted to talk about i guess very generally the the history of counter recruitment because this is something that's been going on in the u.s military for i mean really is like from what i could tell like about as long as there's been, you know, recruitment for the military. But I was wondering if we could start, I don't know, maybe around sort of the Vietnam era when there's, you know, very, very serious and intense sort of left-wing kind of recruitment, and then we can go from there? Yeah. Yeah. So coming out of Vietnam, you have Vietnam Veterans Against the War forming and there's a massive pushback on the draft. The anti-war movement is pretty much at its strongest and Vietnam Veterans Against the War over time becomes a veteran for peace veterans for peace has a long legacy of sitting at the front of the anti-war movement peace movement participating in uh nuclear abolition work kind of recruitment work de-escalation work out of um save our va helping veterans get assistance with uh disability

benefits and making sure that the the traumas that that veterans suffer and the communities impacted by the military suffer are getting treatment for their care. Deported veterans, because Vietnam vets served and then got deported, and that continues to this day. Veterans for Peace had a multi-pronged approach to the anti-war efforts in 2000s, around 2007-ish. Iraq-Afghanistan, Iraq Veterans Against the War, later known as Iraq-Afghanistan Veterans Against the War, comes along. And that's a new generation of veterans carrying along, built on the legacy of veterans for peace and Vietnam veterans against the war. You know, there's a long history of coffee shops, GI resistance, outreach doing work with veterans, trying conscientious, objective objective work GI resist to work in,

in there. And there's a just a long legacy of just veterans sharing their experiences and coming back and really wanting to make sure nobody else goes through that and making sure that they get the help they need and kind of slow that beat of the war drum that media seems to always be picking up. And that's where we came in. That's definitely a good way to put it now, especially born out of the pandemic.

A lot of the recruiting had to move online. They didn't really have if they wanted to keep recruiting, they had to go online. And that's where a majority of the newest generation is. They are watching Twitch. Twitch had a viewership pretty much competing with Netflix streaming as of this summer. And I'm sure that hasn't really changed much. I'm sure it is just as popular. And the audience for Twitch skews very young. So that's really what started to worry members of Veterans for Peace. Like, okay, we might need to ramp up truth and recruitment initiatives, which is what Gamers for Peace came out of. Because the thing is, if you're forming a parasocial relationship with these younger kids by streaming and

forming those relationships, getting them on Discord and talking to them, you're getting a one-sided view of what military service is about. And you are definitely not getting the imperialist-informed viewpoint, for sure. So Gamers for peace kind of came out of that that's like very insidious looking uh hidden and subtle way of of recruiting using the video games that have already historically been used for recruiting purposes so it's like a double it's like a double whammy they got on us there for those not inundated in the gamer warfare like we are um how let's uh i think we should briefly describe what twitch is because i know a lot of people probably probably isn't actually aware

of uh of twitch not as aware as we are down in these trenches fighting off the the cyber net stuff the bad metaphor sorry yeah uh-huh um, so I guess Twitch is like a live streaming platform that is primarily used for live streaming people playing video games. And people kind of develop their own brands and personalities and parasocial relationships with an audience via them playing these games and kind of adding their commentary. A variety of games, sometimes it's mostly chatting with people inside a group chat while playing a game. or, you know, it's more focused

on the game itself. It kind of varies, but yeah, it's arguably the biggest live streaming platform. I think it was bought by Amazon a few years ago, and yes, there is a U.S channels on there that are actually relatively popular. I guess the other thing to kind of get into for some background is like, you mentioned, you already kind of alluded to this, but like the history of the US military using video games for propaganda. Because they've been one of the earliest funders of games for propaganda because they've been they've been one of like the earliest funders of games for this reason i think getting into that history is like interesting um and something that some people are definitely aware of but a lot of times can get overlooked despite you know call of duty being the one of the biggest video game franchises in the world yeah absolutely the um military's involvement in video game video game

design using as recruitment using it primarily initially at first it was thought of as a training tool and they started looking at it for training um if you think back to like early 90s doom the original doom had a mod released uh called Marine Mod. It was a modification designed for the Marine Corps to use to train Marines in as early as the early 90s when Doom was at its height. And then that grows from there.

You have First to Fight. What is it? A game called First to Fight features Marines in dress blues where you're tactically fighting a battle and um and which you never want to do if you know anything about the marine corps blues you do not want to be doing anything in those that isn't getting drunk exactly just drunk and dancing in blues is all they're good for um yeah so you have you have a the fight, and then it turns into Call of Duty, America's Army, which thankfully just got pulled down from its platform.

That's a huge win. But the Army started getting into the development of video games for training and then got into it as recruiting and america's army is the perfect highlight of that where they just flat out had recruitment posters and training things uh in there with links to how to get to recruiters or get more information about joining the military joining the army um you have arma 2 uh you could you could argue and draw the line from uh military training simulators to PUBG Underground, which is one of the biggest Battle Royale games, which is where you get Fortnite out of. So you can draw these lines straight from the military's involvement in designing training and recruitment materials to what our kids are playing the most these days. what our kids are playing the most these days and really one of the most kind of sick factors of this is like how much games have been designed and pushed towards basically training people for um like uh i guess what trying to think of the term but like combat at a distance in terms of like

like drone combat there's just. They started just using Xbox controllers for some drone missions. They're specifically looking at the pipeline of specifically young males who get into this type of gaming and trying everything they can to push them into a career where they just kill people in overseas countries using the same technology. Using video game

controllers, using, like, you know, operating systems very similar to what were being used in video games. And I mean, like, video games are a very effective propaganda tool if you're thinking, like, okay, I mean, I just enjoy playing war games. It's not, like, what's the big deal? Like, sure, like, I also enjoy playing war games sometimes. They can be fun. You know, I like those I like those tactics-based games. But these have been shown to be very effective at recruitment, to the point that video game footage and video games were one of ISIS's favorite recruitment and propaganda tactics as well. It's a thing. It's not just like, oh, it's fine. Like, no, these things are actually kind of a problem. Yeah, they are very effective in that manner as a recruiting tool. And there is a real synergy between gaming developers and the DOD because of how effective, you know, that recruiting can be or that recruiting tool can be. Similar to movies, you know, the military entertainment complex is a term thrown around a lot for good reason. You know, you have, there is a black box of politics whenever you're

watching a movie that pits, yeah, some sort of power structure against whatever the villain is doing. There's, there's always something there and video games are not too different from that. You just have a little bit more say in where the story goes but maybe not even it depends on the development but um there was an article in in the atlantic uh that was it was actually like about a book um from i think it's dexter thomas uh warplay and it's all about uh video gaming and the the relationship with the military and he said the pentagon avoids pitiful, expensive efforts to create their own training simulators and developers get fat government checks.

So they can help fund these new games, new virtual reality things under the guise of it being a useful training tool for training in like virtual reality environments, which scares me already. And then game developers are like great i can get a government grant so even if this flops i we still got the money out of it that's not an uncommon phenomenon yeah i mean in terms of like filmmaking yeah like there's been

there's rules for like pentagon contracts with film studios particularly like if you want to use you know u.s military equipment or personnel you need to follow these specific rules and portray the military in this light, which often do get followed just because people want to use the cool equipment and stuff. You know, I'm still angry that my beloved Transformers got cucked by the US military

in all of their films. Got cucked. And as a result, the films are pretty bad. Yeah. I'll have you know they are film art no i'm sorry i can't even keep it straight i will i hope i hope as a as someone with many many star scream action figures i i dream of one day of having good transformers movies i mean you got the 80s

classic you have the 80s classic um you've got uh you've got the touch um and the bumblebee film was okay but it's even still that one got that one got cucked by the military pretty pretty severely yes it's it's funny that you mentioned uh isis using uh video gaming uh there was just a recent report came out uh it's linked to the un i I believe it's linked to the UN Council on Counterterrorism or Office of Counterterrorism talking about violent extremism in gaming, the link between video games and violent extremism. And what's really interesting is it's not so much that the video games themselves are the issue. It's the gaming adjacent spaces. It's the parasocial relationship development. spaces it's the parasocial relationship development it's the meme and it's the what what we've what we've known in in the gaming world for a while as associated with like the behaviors and culture around gamergate and things things like that where we see this uh this toxic culture that um

is easy to cultivate inside these spaces and and be co-opted for more nefarious things. And that doesn't mean that the military isn't banking or utilizing those same principles to get its recruiting messages across. The military is another violent, extreme position, right? Whether you're the violent arm of capitalism and the state or violent, like domestic terrorists or something like that, you're still opting into or your position is still getting mobilized towards potentially doing violence. And these gaming adjacent spaces are make it really easy for recruiters of all sorts to be in there and uh push people to more that side of things yeah one of the things i remember when i was like a teenager on twitch was like so i watched just like a lot of hearthstone streams right and this was like these were you know like completely mainline hearthstone streams and there was there was this artist who everyone called

kebab the german and uh yeah so it turns out that kebab the german was a miss was like a a shortening like abbreviation of his actual name which was remove kebab and this guy's stuff was just being played on like every major like like twitch like all the major hearthstone streamers were just playing remove kebab songs and it was like and this this was just like what like all the major harshness you were just playing remove kebab songs and it was like and this this was just like what like this is just what twitch was in like 2014 2015 and yeah like there there's so much like the the the extent to which just this sort of like i mean just overtly fascist like milieu would just seep into just like you know here's a bunch of people playing a card game and like it wasn't and it wasn't even like like i mean some of these

streamers were like really reactionary like i've seen like i've seen tft streamers who like will like watch videos of like cops doing rate like raids on people's houses on stream like you know you have those people who are like really far but some of these people were just like i don't know they're just a lot of them are just regular people like a lot of them don't consider themselves extremists by yeah yeah but right yeah that's just sort of like culturally shock value yeah well even then like some of them just like i think with like like with with like with the germans like they just didn't know like they just they just like didn't know what was going on and so they were just just, you know, spreading all of this stuff. And it was like it was horrifying.

Yeah, absolutely. And actually, I'm glad you mentioned that, because about a year ago, the the Army Esports channel got in trouble because one of the streamers didn't catch on to two. There were two usernames that were explicitly white supremacists. One of them was six million was not enough yeah uh yeah yeah real real gross and i guess like just in the whole uh idea of multitasking between playing a game trying to interact with chat and trying to make sure you're you're on screen and all of those things they didn't realize it or they willfully didn't realize it i don't know which one and i'm not going to make a judgment either way but they did they had to shut down

that stream and i don't think they streamed for a couple of weeks after that they had to like reassess some some things because they're like hey uh actively you know white supremacist people are on your stream you should probably you should probably do something about that yeah i feel like if you're the u.s military streaming on twitch that someone's job should just be to prevent that from happening like yeah but have the resources yeah but it's like they kind of have this problem though because twitch has a there's a huge just like like core like a large enough base of twitch users are just like fascist or like hard right wingers that do things like like there's been a persistent problem on twitch for for years now of like these hate raids like people doing mass raids on like anyone who's not white and anyone who's like not

a cis white dude and just like hate rating their channels and like spamming the chat with like slurs and stuff like that and you know when when that's you know and that's too large like yeah like those those are the people like you know that that's a large enough part of twitch that you like even even even if you're like taking the most charitable thing which is that the u.s like the army is not overtly recruiting white supremacists which like okay but like even even if you give them the benefit of the doubt right like that that's a large enough part of just what Twitch is. Absolutely. They have an incentive to turn a blind eye.

And radicalization, specifically right-wing and white nationalist radicalization in the military is well-studied and well-established as an existing phenomena. I knew someone personally who got caught trying to smuggle weapons for a neo-Nazi group. And that's all I'll say on that. Oh, boy. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is a thing and it hits really close. caught trying to smuggle weapons for a neo-Nazi group. And that's all I'll say on that. Oh boy. Yeah, yeah. No, it is a thing and it hits really close. It is definitely a phenomenon that happens in the military.

And these paramilitary neo-Nazi groups actively recruit from people coming out of the military because they have the trainings that they want. And I mean, I'm trying to figure out a way to tie this back to recruiting online, but with all of this in mind, it is very insidious that the target is explicitly young kids. And I'm not saying that just to be like, Oh,

you know, because we've gotten a lot of, we've gotten pushback with saying, well, the military doesn't recruit kids. They can only sign up when they're 17. No, that is a kid.

That is complete bullshit. Yes. Legally a child. First of all, that is a kid. Second of all, it's like the thing is it's it's it's just like grooming children that's like that's what it is like it is it's the same process of grooming that's that's what's going on yeah one of one of my best friends growing up like

like this kid was my best friend for like a decade like i met him in like first grade he was my friend for the entirety of school and And then he got like, cause his parents sent him away to like a, one of, one of those like, like summer, like, like military school camps.

And he was just never the same afterwards. And he's like a fascist now. And yeah, it sucks. Yeah. It, that does suck that there's not a better word for that. That,

that sucks because yeah, they can't sign up until they're 17,. There's not a better word for that. That sucks. Because yeah, they can't sign up until they're 17, but the point isn't to convince 17-year-olds. The point is to ingrain this idea in them when they're like fucking 12 years old on the internet. And that is just what grooming is, right? Starting it when they're young, so when they're old enough, they will be able to sign up for the thing. That's what the process is, and that's what military propaganda recruitment's been doing for a long time, but specifically the way it's being done on the internet around gaming is extra insidious. It is explicitly said by one of a recruiting officer, Dr. E. Casey Wardinsky, and I

apologize if I'm pronouncing that wrong, but he literally said, we have to confront this question of, will we wait until they're 17, or will we start talking to them at age 12, 13, 14, 15 when they form the set of things they were thinking about doing with their life? Exactly. He's literally saying, we want to groom children. Yeah. So I think now would be the time to kind of get into the countering side of things. It's like, yes, this is a big problem as we've laid out the past 20 minutes. Um,

what can we do about it? Yeah. Uh, so what can we do about it? There's, um, a good deal that we can do about it. Right. Um, we, we veterans for peace, the truth and recruitment, uh, uh, working group came up with an idea for the Gamers for Peace initiative, concerned veterans and gamers and allies, because Veterans for Peace isn't just comprised of veterans themselves, it's also allies and accomplices, came together and started forming an online community of our own, where we have kind of dropped uh some four channels of change this

concept of four channels to change uh one do education talking about uh sharing our experiences as veterans talking about and unpacking uh recruitment tactics and techniques uh start talking being extremely vocal and raise awareness around the recruitment techniques that we've already been talking about. Right. Second, we're doing some mentorship and leadership stuff, starting to develop programs in local communities that offer alternatives to the economic draft. Right. Like just throwing it back to where we started talking about coming out of Vietnam. It was already said that Sergeant Hardtimes is the best recruiter and it posts the draft. So when we went to an all-volunteer force, you have to have a reason to join. And there's a thing called the economic draft and it's the impoverished conditions that many kids and people face that force them to go into the military, right? You don't have healthcare

coming out of high school. You're in an abusive home. You're not talking to a guidance counselor. No college is coming to you. You don't know how to pay for college. You don't know where, what you're going to do because you're 18 and on your own. And that's what we keep telling kids. So you have the economic draft, which encouraged, gives an opportunity for recruiters to go, Hey, this, this program will solve everything. And what, what people don't realize is what's being asked is, are you willing to kill for a Camaro? Are you willing to kill just to have a roof over your head? Are you willing to kill for Medicare? Right.

So we're starting to focus on developing mentorship and leadership programs, include helping kids and young adults get into college or find mutual aid programs within their communities, start doing stuff locally because the problem is pervasive. Right. start doing stuff locally because the problem is pervasive, right? Not everybody needs to escape abuse of home and is fine staying in their community, but doesn't know how to survive within the community because they don't have the resources there. And we also look at what's going on in the world today and recognize that things must be done at a local level. And youth can be part of leading that change, right? And addressing some of our world concerns.

We ourselves do direct actions. be part of leading that change right in addressing some of the our world concerns we ourselves uh do direct actions we go to gaming conventions speak out try to actually do counter recruitment right where the recruits are yeah we just it's really pervasive if you if you if you go to any kind of con or any kind of any kind of like game fest or whatever um you knowons, there will always be multiple military recruitment booths there. Always. Like Navy, Marines, Army, National Guard, all of them. They will all be there. And it's

not my favorite thing to see. No, it's frustrating. Yeah. Board games aren't even safe, right? The Army esports team has a 40k team. So if you play Warhammer 40K, they have a nationally or internationally ranked 40K team playing in the major circuits. You know what's most insulting about that? Sorry, Chris.

Go ahead. What's most insulting about that, and I know this because one of the streams that we do, I host it, it's called Ad Slam because we started out as like roasting military recruitment ads, but it kind of morphed into just like general veteran and military depictions and media. And one of them was on the, or at least reference the army e-sports Warhammer 40K team. And you know how people will like take their figurines really seriously. They paint them. They look really cool. The army like spray painted them gold and it's called it a day. And I'm like, really, you have all of these resources. You are using the recruiting budget, which is

ridiculous and astronomical. And you spray painted them gold. Are you kidding me? Come on. And it's just insulting that it was so low effort, but they still get the praise. A lot of people report like having positive viewpoints of the military after interacting with members of, you know, the esports team or the booth or whatever. So I'm genuinely annoyed that it's also low effort on that matter. And they're still getting a positive response. It bothers me. That's a perfect highlight because being there on like the hate using military terms nowadays, but being their boots on ground, you know, at these conventions, doing, providing truth and recruitment, right?

Talking about alternatives, really just being there in front of recruiters and talking to the people that they're targeting and family members, letting them know like, hey, we as veterans, right? Don't let this be what shapes your child's future or your future, right? There's other opportunities for you. And, you know, whether that's if you're into gaming, start designing games, right? Like, there's so many opportunities within the gaming community that doesn't want to put you into the military pipeline also, right? So it's not the game's fault.

It's not, like, it's a tool that the state's using right now. Right. And then we're trying to form some, our own e-sports teams also. Right. So we can compete directly against them, kick their ass in some of the tournaments that they host. You know,

my, my dream is to see some gamers for peace jerseys getting awarded, like some trophy next to the army esports team and just dunking on them so across all the all the if we lose if we're up there we still get to dunk on them see we had so much more fun we don't have to go clean a barracks room after this like the ultimate goal being uh us being able to provide tangible alternatives so uh a kid coming out of high school thinking like well i either go into a lot of debt to go to college or I joined the military. If we can get not a hold of them, that seems predatory, but if we can talk to them or our organization can provide that alternative and say, oh, well, you don't

really have to do that. We have a scholarship program that we can offer you, or we can provide at the very least education about what they're really getting into so they can make a better informed decision. Because the main problem that I have with the way that recruiting works is that you are not getting a view of what life would actually be like. You are not getting a view of what you are fighting for. There's a whole lot of these vague concepts that they tell you that you're fighting for and that you're supposed to feel great about doing, but none of those are real in practice. Liberty or protecting the homeland, none of that is what you're doing.

You're helping Northrop Grumman create a profit, right? Like there's, and so at least, at the very least, someone who thinks that they have no other options. And in this country, that might not be too far off, right? We don't have a universal healthcare system. That was part of the reason why I joined the Marine Corps is that I knew I would get healthcare and I knew I would get money to go to college and not be in the student loan debt that I was in. So I'm definitely not alone in that. And if maybe we

can even just provide a more holistic view of what decision that you're making, that would be considered a win to us. So that was my soapbox. One of the important things is trying to push back on the most nefarious things that we're seeing, right? Whether that's games that are becoming way too training simulator. There's another campaign that Gamers for Peace worked on and Veterans for Peace worked on called the platform Six Days with CARE, the Council on American and Islamic Relations, pushing back on a game called Six Days in Fallujah,

which was delayed to quarter four of 2022 of this year. So we got it. It was pushed by a year, whether through our efforts or for whatever reason, but it was pushed by a year. And this game is dubbed uh arab murder simulator uh because it is it is uh we look at other games like escape from tarkov as as teaching fundamental skills uh through tried and true teaching methodologies for military skills um you know we were talking about counter recruitment and truth in recruitment to give people an opportunity to make informed, have an informed decision about their participation in the war machine.

But also we're trying to push back directly on the war machine and and say, hey, there's better uses of our money for for as as a government to take care of our people. There's a lot of fundamental things. There's the contributions to the climate crisis is the military's number one impactor on the climate. War is never green. You can't greenwash the military. We have just so much going on around all the ways that people don't realize the military is involved. We have the future of drone warfare, kill cloud technology, gaming technology, and militarism is so tightly wound right now that just pushing back and trying to parse those two things apart is one of the things that is most effective for counterrecruitment. And also for mobilizing people to be like, Hey, we actually deserve better. Like get out of my gaming space and like, get me some food sovereignty. Get me, get me like, let,

let me be part of my community. Get out of the gaming space and stop using what is fun and has actual educational value, mental health benefits physical health benefits communal impact social impact like this this gaming tool this gaming technology we have can be used for so much good uh but we need to disentangle the military's usage from it and and stop framing our our time our time and joy uh that we enjoy with our friends and family through this lens that the military forces us to view it through. Because there are so many great games out there.

Like, we are in one of, like, right now we have the most amount of games ever released, most amount of good games, like, always being announced and released all the time. There's so many great stuff to play. And yeah, anything that can be done to push people away from stuff that kind of promotes this, you know, colonial imperialist kind of mindset is great, right? That's why I kind of appreciate the cartoony aspects of Fortnite,

even though I hate playing Fortnite and will never really do so. I still appreciate it as opposed to to the heavily militaristic kind of aesthetics that other similar battle royales show. Because with as many games out there as there is, yeah, I think any kind of attempts to push people away from the more problematic aspects of, you know, specifically shooting games is great. Yeah. And just noting that when you're playing these games, especially if they are relatively close to reality, understand the impact that you can have by pointing out simply that your friend doesn't respawn in real life, right?

And also keep in mind, if you are playing a game that is close to a recent reality that you could be playing through someone's actual trauma so i'm not telling you not to play the games if they are uh we've gone over a couple like squad uh and and others that are like very very realistic um in their application just keep in mind when you're playing it that maybe look at it through that lens like would how would you feel if you were playing through a game, but it was the exact moment of your trauma? And I'm not even saying from the military side. I mean from the people who are being bombed side. So I just want to have more people be more mindful with what they consume and how.

And again, I'm not telling you not to consume it. mindful with what they consume and how. And again, I'm not telling you not to consume it. Just telling you to think a little bit about it and what that type of media can do while having that baggage onto it. There is a place for vets and the military experience in gaming, right? Like when I was in, when I was deployed to Iraq, I took an Xbox 360 over there with me in the bottom of my sea bag. And we had on Camp Felicia, we had a local area network of Xboxes in all the camps. And we sat there and played Halo and Gears of War when that dropped while I was there. Right. Like, it's how we stay in touch with each other. It's how we process like auditory things and our combat experiences.

Right. That's valid. Sublimation and processing of our combat experiences right that's that's valid sublimation and and processing of of our traumatic experience is a thing and games have that and that's not a military exclusive thing or veteran exclusive thing that's for all communities um but what we have to do is add context and nuance to when we're playing these games and go oh um there's another side to this story that's the local civilian that just had a bomb cave in their ceiling right uh there's there's these these instances where we've removed that because we're so focused on the competitive nature instead of the storytelling and the full scope of what that game is allowing us to process um and that's why I don't like, I'm not blaming recruiters or blaming,

like coming up to people in the military and going, you know, you're horrible. It's not the right thing. Hey, I was there, right? I did six years in the Marine Corps. And, you know, instead of going, hey, you're a horrible person or things like that, like we're trying to offer them, the recruiters and other military members, community, they go, hey, you're a horrible person or things like that like we're trying to offer them them the recruiters and other military members community they go hey you're allowed to speak out against the things that you know are bullshit while you're in there because i knew it was a bullshit while i was in there and i couldn't speak out i didn't know i had a community to speak out to or with and we're trying to offer community to them um and that's beyond beyond just video games but that's drone

operators and infantry guys and and people that are just fed up with what they see in a system that is supporting a crumbling infrastructure, right? Like, you can only deploy so many times without developing either becoming completely dead on the inside or developing some semblance of empathy that goes, hey, deep know something's wrong here and i just don't know how to uh like i don't know what that feeling is well that feeling is it's just empathy for the human condition and not wanting to see people traumatized through war right um that that idea of us going into like even post 9-11 like immediate post 9-11 vets early on they had they went there with the right right idea i want to defend my community i want to be do do service right like i don't have another option yeah i'm an economic draftee but all in all i'm really here to help defend my people yeah it was it was it was a genuine thought like it was a genuine idea right people you can very much disagree with like the

intentionality and the propaganda that like governments were doing to promote the war and the unjust reasons for that. But for the regular people, it was genuine feelings that caused that to happen. And overlooking that, I think, misses what makes the recruitment work. the recruitment to work. If you just look at all the people who join the military as being like, oh, they're just bad people who want to kill brown people. You're like, you can think that,

but that doesn't actually do anything to understand how recruitment actually works. And then if you can't do that, then you don't know how to actually counter it. Right, exactly. If you are a veteran and you feel like we do, this whole thing was bullshit. You and that can be an incredibly alienating experience.

I've been there because it feels like with the amount of veterans we saw the January 6th events, all the veterans that you see that get through to the right wing side of the culture of war. Just want to say that we see you. You're not alone. You are not crazy. I promise. We are trying to build a community of people like that who understand it and promote healing through that community, political education through that, so that you can create resiliency within your community and as well as at least put a little bit of pressure on the military entertainment complex and the military recruiting apparatus.

Yeah. Fuck the military. Fuck and the military recruiting apparatus. Yeah. Fuck the military. Fuck war. It's truth. Do you two have anything specific that you want to plug? Yes. Join our Discord. If you search the Discord, you can

look up Gamers for Peace and you will see us. On Twitch, we are Veterans for for peace all one word and we stream several times a week uh gaming content content about um different alternatives to military service uh content breaking down propaganda and recruiting efforts as well as other political education things uh sometimes it's just a random community game night as well um actually no that's not random. Those are on Thursdays. So go ahead and watch us there.

Chris, should we add anything? I got something. If one of the first things you can do besides going to Discord and checking us out on Twitch, we actually have an online digital direct action campaign going on that we're pushing to allow content creators on Twitch as a platform to be able to opt out of military ads on their channels. So that is our campaign that we currently have ongoing. There's a petition. It is bit.ly slash Twitch military ad opt out is the url that'll take you right to the twitch petition that uh feedback through twitch uh we're looking to hit a thousand at least asap uh on that petition

uh to get some get a response from twitch and then go from there allowing content creators to take ownership of their of the the ads and stuff that are on their channels, at least when it comes to military recruitment. And then going from there. We also are doing actions and planning things constantly. So be on the lookout. Join the Discord. All that good stuff. Oh, if you need help navigating that, I'm Ahmad in the Discord at Plantipa.

She slash they. And you'll find me. We'll try to put that link for the petition in the show notes so people can find that with an easy click. Awesome. Perfect. All right. Well, thank you two for joining us. We are It Could could happen here at happened here pod in the places. In the places. The places, you know,

all the places they're all there. Well, thank you everyone for listening and yeah, go play. I don't know. Mario cart eight or something, you know, something,

something fun. I don't know. I, I enjoy, I enjoy the Mario Kart games as someone of my age. Very, very, very integral to my driving education.

So yeah. Go play Mario Kart 8. Fuck war. Fuck war. Not another generation. 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. 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. Oh boy, it could happen here, is the podcast that you're listening to.

All right, St. Andrew, that's my job done today. Why don't you take over? Good job. I'm proud of you. Thank you. Welcome, everybody, to another wonderful episode of It Could Happen Here. Today, hoping to take a look at another book. Well, two books this time. This time, works of fiction.

well two books this time uh this time works of fiction and this time by an english unfortunately writer named alice huxley right we'll be looking at island and brave new world the sort of twins of speculative science fiction i would say alice huxley was uh like i said an english writer and philosopher and he actually wrote a lot of books um 50 in his lifetime to be precise he was also a french teacher who interestingly enough taught george owell but i did not know that yeah but from what um what his past students have said he wasn't a particularly good teacher okay but he was a good speaker um he was also a very very big fan of psychedelics and mysticism and philosophy and particularly like Advaita. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly, but Advaita Vendatta, which is like a Hindu spiritual practice. Yeah, I know.

He's even referenced a lot in like occultist and chaos magic books written like post the 60s. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's like that guy. Yeah. What's his name again? Alan Watts. Oh, yeah. He's like a Watts what's his name again? Alan Watts

also very interestingly Huxley actually had LSD injected into his veins on his deathbed it's amazing yeah he was like he was dying as you know one does on their deathbed sure and that is the

traditional thing to do traditionally yes but while in the process of dying because he had like advanced laryngeal cancer he had to write to his wife laura he was just like lsd 100 intermuscular and she just like she's like okay hell yeah she injects him yeah and she doesn't inject him fucking muscles yes and she doesn't inject him with one dose she injects him with two doses and then he dies like several hours later incredibly based what a way to go staggeringly based and honestly if if he was like speaking on his deathbed i would really love to know like what that experience was like like are you just like dancing through hell like what's going on i mean it could it could i think i can see it being the most amazing thing and also

extremely terrifying slightly terrifying right As a general rule, when, like, they've done studies on, like, giving different kinds of psychedelics, usually psilocybin mushrooms, to people who are in hospices, and it generally reduces their fear of death. Yeah. They go in peace.

Yeah, yeah, it just makes them like, ah, you know what? Everything is the same as everything else. We're the imagination of the universe. I'm going to go back into space. Which is fine. Good for them.

Yeah, good for them. If I were on my deathbed, I probably wouldn't want to be thinking about death either. So, yeah. I mean, that assumes that, you know, we get a deathbed, you know. And that's the kind of wild thing about death. You don't know when it's going to happen. But to return to the topic of discussion, Brave New World and Ireland, right?

To summarize the plots of both, I guess'll start with brave new world it is the more famous of the two i don't think a lot of people have heard of island compared to brave new world because i mean brave new world is like new world in high school but uh i i have not read island exactly and it's like it really says a lot about society that that we read about the dystopias but not the utopias but um anyway brave new world you know it's really up there with like 1984 in terms of um you know it's it's notoriety um it is like one of the quintessential dystopias it's set like several hundred years into the future like unlike 1984 which you know took place 1984 which is several decades ago brave new world was set in 2054 sorry 2540 ce so yeah we're several hundred years star Star Trek times. Yeah.

But, however, in the book, it isn't called 2554 CE. It's called 632 AF. AF standing for After Ford. Because, in this world, and I'm sure we'll get into this a bit, Henry Ford,

the assembly line guy, the Model T guy, he is basically God. He is the God of their world. Yeah, that wouldn't be ideal. They say things like, by Ford's name, and that kind of thing. And his whole sort of assembly line structure is basically extrapolated to society as a whole. Right? There's this world state where emotions and individuality are conditioned out of children.

And everyone belongs to everyone else. else and you know there's children are created in in like factories and generated to be part of specific classes whether it be alpha beta gamma delta or epsilon so it's like it's kind of like what's what's what's happening today you know in terms of the greek alphabet um we have the alphas who are bred to be like the leaders and stuff and you have the epsilons who are bred to be like the menial laborers and you have the folks in between and like they are literally conditioned you know so like in the factory in the baby making factory which is in this case literal and not a euphemism for the womb um you know they they like hold back on oxygen or they apply certain chemicals or certain hormones in order to like

condition people so they don't do like genetic um like coding whatever they just they do a chemical concoctions in those sort of test tubes and yeah i mean the story of the world is really how it's affecting like some of the top level people within it and sort of contrasted with sort of reservations that exist in their world where people are a bit less restricted um and it ends pretty tragically but the next book also ends a bit tragically the x book being island which is like the utopian twin for brave new world in a lot of ways in terms of memory mirroring a lot of the same themes that brave new world explores right so in island there's this specific

island called pala which is um fictional i mean there was an area in india called pala but the island of pala in this world is like it doesn't exist right and it's basically seen as this oasis of happiness and freedom and where its inhabitants have resisted capitalism and consumerism and technology right then this journalist another british guy named will farnaby um pulls up on their island and he's basically trying to scope out the island for exploitation because he's friends with this industrialist who's trying to like extract oil from the region and um while he's going through the island and really going through the society going through the book there are a lot of monologues

and stuff i mean this book is kind of heavy on like the monologues and stuff. I mean, this book is kind of heavy on the monologues and the discussions. It's kind of like Alice Huxley's soapbox for all his ideas, just laying them all out there. So Will enters Palazzo's cynic, but by the time he comes out, he's had layers and layers of epiphanies. And I don't know,

for those who have been reading Dawn of Everything recently, in chapter two, the authors, David Wendger and David Gruber, they sort of outline some of the discussions that were happening between Europeans and indigenous Americans at the time of arrival and how those discussions were shaping both um but primarily the europeans view of society interestingly it's kind of like reflected here because you know i have this white man who pulls up with all his english ideas and it's basically these indigenous inhabitants in parla basically deconstructing his ideas through dialogue and through debate and discussion. And unfortunately, it doesn't end very well. Despite being convinced of the purity and brilliance of the Palanese way of living, he already made the deal with the industrialists.

And Pala has basically been sold by a neighboring country. And so its downfall is now sadly inevitable. And that's how it ends. Oh, and also, Will Farnaby kind of has like an LSD. Well, it's not really LSD,

but it's like a psychedelic trip. Yeah, it's like a combination of like mescaline and psilocybin almost. yeah but in true alice huxley fashion yeah yeah there's like a lot of the tropes and like themes that were present in brave new world exist in island but as like their inversion so like in terms of like it's show like like brave World, it's written before Huxley had psychedelics. It was like his his version of drug use is so different in that book. It's more like a pacifying drug, whereas the drug use in Island is more like an like an enlightening drug. So I guess there's a whole bunch of themes that like parallel but are also inverted on each

other yeah exactly exactly and we're gonna get into those themes just now but to summarize brave new world is basically humans becoming less than human because of all these technological and sociological um efforts whereas Ireland is like the opposite where it's you know humans are able to come into the fullness of their humanness while still using science

except in a way to enhance their quality of life I don't know if I missed any aspect of either plots that any of you want to, like, touch on real quick. No, not really. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I will say the one thing that's interesting is because Brave New World also has this sort of, like, weird,

like, going to a reservation plot that's, like, kind of a B plot, but you see sort of, it's another one of those things that's kind of, like, I don't know if inverted's the right word but the sort of context of it is very very different in island than it is in every world yeah yeah because i mean in a sense you have this outsider protagonist who is introduced to this alternate way of living um and is transformed by it you know except in brave new world you know he ends up killing himself and in island up killing himself and in island well he already sold out the island you know i will say um one criticism that i want to get out of the way before we get into like the concepts and you know how they might apply to politics as a whole, really, is Huxley, like a lot of authors and thinkers and ideologues of his time,

has this very unsettling fixation on overpopulation. It's kind of like what we were talking about with the last book we discussed here. This sort of weird fixation on oaf population and people dying out and that kind of thing. In Parler, in Ireland, there's a sort of acceptance of

oaf population as something that needs to be you know avoided and so i guess it brings us to the first theme which is the use of contraception in both books right like on one hand you have in brave new world where there's like mandatory contraception and people are literally not allowed to like naturally give birth. You know, they have to have babies through test tube. Whereas in Parler, you know, there's reproductive education and reproductive choice and expressive sex. And it's really like a complete contrast so i guess i want to do something like uh i like speculating and thinking about how anarchy would operate um i think there needs to be a lot

more of that in terms of um creative works and discussions i mean mean, like, there was At the Cafe by Mara Tester, and there are some, like, utopian fictions out there. But, and like, less than utopian, but still interesting explorations of anarchist societies, like Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed. It is interesting to me that even in mainstream sort of imagining whenever there's an attempt to envision a utopia there's nearly always a lot of anarchist principles involved in that yeah it's basically impossible to imagine a utopia without

aspects of anarchist theory making it into it exactly there tends to be like some elements of anti-work in there and like you know like use the work we want to be post hierarchy you know freedom of association yeah there's a yeah yeah yeah yeah and so i kind of want to look at that look at these works through that lens as well here mostly island considering island is a bit closer to anarchy than brave new world is yeah i'd say so just a little bit a little bit yeah yeah like when you look at how sexual liberation is treated in ireland it is pretty much an echo of what anarchists were saying about free love in like the early 20th and like late 19th century yeah particularly like emma goldman like free choice and contraceptive access and that sort of thing reproductive choice free love it's really, in Pala, I would say, they have this sort of element as well of communal child-rearing.

I mean, which is another thing, I spoke about that in my video in December on the family. The fact that humans basically evolved in an alloparental arrangement, in a cooperative reading arrangement. Because of capitalism, we has moved away from that yeah there's a lot of if you if you study how kind of different societies that were not capitalist handled child rearing there's a lot of like very interesting i think my favorite is it was some indigenous group in um America whose like cultural belief was that you didn't you didn't have like one man have sex with a woman and that like leads. Oh, yes. Yes. It starts the process. And so once you've started the process of making a child, the woman then is going to pick out all of the guys that she thinks have traits that she wants to be like part of the child she's making and has sex with them because you're like

gradually building the child by having like adding additional sperm to it, which means that when they have the kid, all of those guys that she had sex with while pregnant have a responsibility to rear the child and teach it things, which I think is objectively the best way to treat kids. I mean, even on like, it's, that's such an interesting metaphysical concept in terms of like what constitutes like, even like the idea of genetic makeup.

Because even though it's not like literally true, it still is like, if you can convince yourself of that in your head, then it kind of is physically true. And it will be true enough for the kid, because like really, most of what's going to matter is like, Because if they're raised by all these different fathers because we've all taught things yeah exactly and those father's traits are gonna like manifest in the child anyway because they were raised by them

therefore i think we should all agree to just act like it works that way yeah yeah but i mean like and also like in terms of like the group living in Island versus like Brave New World, Brave New World, it's always like you don't you have group living because you've lost like the idea of individual yourself because the best version of yourself exists in a community yeah exactly as opposed to there's like there's being a barista or whatever there's a kind of like like a jokey version of this i think about a lot where it's like if you see a block and like you're looking at like a black block right it's like the the way you can tell that there are malice involved is if you see a bunch of people actually like legitimately wearing all the same thing it's like like, like it's, it's like, it's,

it's really like, it's, it's, it's extremely rare that like, even, even when you're doing this for security reasons that you can get a bunch of anarchists to actually literally all wear exactly the same thing, because it's like,

it's like, yeah, you, you have this sort of like, I mean, okay, this is, this is not like always true,

but like it's, it's, I don't know. You, you, you have this thing where like always true but like it's it's i don't know you you you have this thing where even when you're like even when anarchists are like trying to sort of like fade into a single mass it's like we like you literally can't do it because everyone has this sort of like

this individual street i've definitely seen people be bad at block more often than i've seen them be good at it yeah it's like i don't know which i mean like the actual hiding part of it yeah yeah but i don't know like it's it's like it's it's there's there's there's a way of sort of egalitarianism and sociality where like you treat everyone as if they were exactly the same and like and you know and there's models of this where it's like yeah it's like okay you actually try to like force everyone to be exactly the same or like everyone to be exactly the same in the class. And like that sucks and you shouldn't do it. And the alternative to that is everyone is just sort of like in a group, but they're all like. I don't know, I'm not entirely sure if this is making any sense, but it's I don't know.

There are ways you can have within a group thing. But it's, I don't know. It's like the individuals within a group thing. Yeah, yeah. The purpose of the group is to maintain the differentiation of the individual. Yeah, to foster what makes individuals really good at being their own person and give them the tools that you can set that up. Exactly. I think culturally we have problems thinking about that because like the sort of american version of individuality has to do with like no no you're an individual because you have no

connections to anyone else and it's like well this sucks it is bad yeah because and that kind of goes back to the whole spoon building a baby concept right i didn't think I would ever use that phrase but individuals only individuals because their combination of influences are unique to them yeah well not just that I mean obviously there's a genetic component and I know a lot but I think

a key aspect of it is that you know because we are raised in these different environments surrounded by different people we have different experiences that's what builds us up yes you know like i can i can already name off the top of my head like a bunch of like defining moments from my childhood you know that basically changed my course you know like the one time i got cyber bullied and that basically like shifted my perspective and my approach to the internet and that kind of thing. You know, it's like, it really, I really can't imagine how someone could come away with the idea that an individual is just an individual on their own. Yeah, they just pop out and are that thing.

Yeah. thing yeah i mean yeah because like a large portion of you is built up of previous you and previous like like exist like your previous existence is what makes a large portion of yourself and like sure you can say you have a little bit of like ego from the start like your actual self self that in that you know contributed to the way you interpret events which then will in turn build your personality. I think these things are not opposing. These things work in tandem. The whole group living

component and also in that group living component you notice at one point in the book one of the children basically in passing mentions that they don't want to go by a certain person because they're mad at them or whatever. And so they basically have that freedom to remove themselves from that situation and go and sleep at another house or another space until that sort of situation is resolved.

And I think that also would really be a crucial element of anarchist society, particularly for children having that freedom of association and freedom of movement. Because imagine how many abusive situations could be avoided or remedied if children had the ability to come out of it you know restrict children of choice and that's what allows these sorts of dynamics to persist yeah which then leads to dynamics that persist in the next generation and so on and so on it's this thing that's having a resurgence in the united states right now and is like at the core of all of the book banning and the anti-trans legislation which is this idea that like kids shouldn't have a choice because that would interfere with parents having absolute control over the life of their child and that includes the control to like if a child says I'm this or I'm that the parent can say absolutely not yeah exactly

yeah you had like this this if you sort of like tour with like someone from the past or someone who lives in like a cooperative reading arrangement that the child is the parent's property entirely they would look at you like real funny because the child is part of the community

it doesn't belong to anyone if it belongs to anything it just belongs to the community. As a whole. Yeah, as we all do. Yeah. But, yeah. Another element I think I find really interesting in the way that Palmy society operates

is that, and I guess in comparison to brave new world unlike in brave new world where drugs are used like um like i was saying like how drugs are used for pacification and control and self-medication that kind of thing to sort of like chill you out and prevent you from basically going mad in a mad society um in parlor you know drug use is used for bonding and for enlightenment and for social connection and social cohesion it is really interesting that he changes what drugs do in his books, like, after he starts doing them. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And I actually don't know, you know, I used to have, because I had the opposite arc with drugs, where I started doing them when I was very young and had the belief that, like,

uh very young and had the belief that like they were kind of inherently this mind opening tool uh that could be used to expand the the borders of reality within human beings and as an adult um in part through some of the research i've done on the far right come to understand like no you can also use them to reinforce the very limited terrible things you already believe yeah and there are folks who do that quite effectively like It's like that sort of PLU esotericism kind of thing. Yeah. I don't know if I just made up that term. No, I like that term.

I was thinking of like... It's an accurate term to describe the thing we're talking about. Yeah, I'm taking it. Okay. But yeah, yeah. I mean, that is absolutely correct. Because, I mean, yeah, like those sort of psychedelic substances and stuff,

yeah, they can open your mind, but they are ultimately drawing from your mind. Yeah. Drawing from your past experiences and beliefs in some capacity. The way I always describe it is that like psychedelics are an accelerant to the fire that you've already built and they can make it flare up and it can be really cool and awesome and it can flare up and be utterly terrifying and be like oh no oh no no no no um but it's always kind of amplifying the things that you've already built through like the kindling of yourself. Yeah.

Psychedelics do not create things within you, but they can lead you to realize things you wouldn't already realize, or they can lead you to reinforce things that you're already doing. And it kind of depends on what you go into it with. It's like, you know, Leary said, I think it was Leary,

the set setting and dose. And like Your mindset is one of the most important things for what's actually going to happen when you take psychedelics. Yeah. And if you're a Nazi, you can get better at being a Nazi from taking acid. If you're a Nazi, you're going to see Hitler pull up on you like,

yes, my son, continue the good work. That's the thing a lot of people don't understand. When I've tried to talk to people who are really obviously pro-psychedelics, I'm like, yeah, they're so freeing. They make you think about new ways. And then I explain to them, this isn't an easy segue, but if somehow the conversation goes to the point of me talking about all the Nazis who do psychedelics and then do weird esoteric rituals while doing psychedelic drugs,

it can confuse these people because they're like, how could you be a Nazi while you're in that mindset? And like, well, it's actually for all of, yeah, for all these reasons that we've discussed, it can actually assist within that like fantastical genocidal conspiratorial thinking. It can really it can really give that a lot a lot of credence in someone's brain because if especially if you have spoken to someone who has taken psychedelics and have had a specific kind of experience you can't talk them out to that experience yeah as far as they consume that is that is solidified in their mind you know this is reality i just had a glimpse of reality kind of thing you know yeah absolutely absolutely

yeah it's one of those like if you want if you want an illustration of how psychedelics do not work the way some people claim uh just make a note of the fact that at every street fight between fascists and anti-fascists in portland both sides, every single person had fucking weed on them. Like, the fucking, the far right likes smoking pot as much as everybody else. They just also do cocaine. Whereas Antifa does ketamine, yeah.

Yeah, Antifa does ketamine, the Proud Boys do cocaine. And they both have weed. Everybody's got joints. And both people and people on both sides have dropped acid and taken shrooms. Yeah. I can say this from a point of journalistic certainty because during one of the rallies where there was a permitted event at the federal park, the police were there and telling people they could not take weed onto the federal park because it was federally illegal. And every like both sides, people were like, all right, shit.

Like we're turning back because they couldn't walk on with the weed in their pockets. That's going to open up a whole kind of room to me because I don't know if you all saw this tweet I put out recently. I don't know if you all saw this tweet I put out recently. There's still this resistance to drugs, particularly to cannabis. And you would think that after decades of research and decades of understanding, and really decades, not even decades, centuries of its use in various religious know religious and spiritual practices that by now

you know in a post-colonial country would reach the point where you know we let it go and we decriminalize it but although we're kind of in the process of it we still have this situation where the police are like constantly burning down like fields of cannabis like they pull up and they're like we just seized and burned down like one million dollars worth of cannabis yeah and arrested this point where um basic basic like plants and herbs and medicines and whatnot are still facing this stigma it's not grounded in any sort of reality or logic you know it's just colonial era prejudice. But that was a brief aside. Yeah.

I don't think I have much left to see about Ireland and Brave New World. Well, you know, listeners, go home, put on some Hitler speeches, drop some ass and see where it takes you. Absolutely not. That is the worst idea. not do that go to the woods go do do basically literally anything else besides

that specific thing it's that specific thing that is like different people can can disagree no like that is like one of the worst things to do to your own brain and psyche. Absolutely not. Yeah, just do whatever, guys. Literally anything else. Watch Star Trek. Put on off the air. I have watched a lot of Star Trek while tripping. See, there's so many better things to do than that thing you've set. Mm-hmm.

Go watch the movie Conspiracy starring Kenneth Branagh. See, that could... Take a shitload of mescaline that could be funny they already know what masculine is neither instructions do not compute if if acid made time different what yeah that's kind of I mean, mescaline is like the active thing inside peyote. Yeah, mescaline is, as a psychedelic, the most intense time dilation I've ever experienced where you will feel like weeks have passed and it's been like seven hours. What? It's pretty dope. I definitely recommend mescaline.

Everybody go take mescaline. I didn't know I would get that. Everybody go take mescaline. Even if we already got that. Well, if you – there is a way to get the cacti, which are legal pretty much everywhere because they're just cactuses and a lot of people use them decoratively. And then using a – what do you call it? A pressure cooker. You can get the mescaline out of the cacti. I've known people who have done it.

I have not personally done it, obviously. That would be a crime. We would never advocate that. Yeah, but there are ways that a person with minimal resources can get mescaline out of the right cactus.

People have done it. Criminals have done it. Bad people. There's this thing called Tor yes because it's obviously criminality criminality is morality anyway yeah

alright Saint Andrew that was awesome I'm gonna go read Island now it's a good book I haven't read this I guess at the end of this i am kind of bummed that as as imaginative of a guy as he was his this was his final book story well and his utopian story had to end with it being crushed essentially by industrial capital expansion

yeah and like co-option i mean like it is interesting yeah this was his final book this was like his like send off in a way there's an interesting component though right because like in Ireland yeah it's like a utopian society but there is a king

and a queen mother but not they don't have like the kind of power that you know we would typically um bestow upon kings and queen mothers you know they're still they're still able to destroy the society ultimately by collaborating with the military dictator neighbor and the industrialist oil guy but i mean they are not really that involved in the day-to-day run into their society you know like parlor would be the same with or without them and interestingly

the reason they were taking part in the destruction of palestinian society is because they were educated in europe by christians and then went back to palo yeah it's interesting because he's kind of playing with it sounds like the same thing tolkien was because like jr tolkien at the end of his life kind of identified himself as like this weird sort of monarchist anarchist where he wanted there to be he thought the ideal society was one in which people could not exercise power over each other. But there was a little hierarchy in that you had a king who couldn't actually do anything, whose purpose was to act as a figurehead. And I don't entirely get what he was going through here. He wrote a lot on the subject himself.

And it's interesting that Huxley is kind of playing with the same idea, but is obviously being like, well, this is a bad idea. It could only work for so long, yada, yada. I don't know. I find that compelling. Again, I want to read this, and that's something I may dig into more, is kind of like how Tolkien conceived of the ideal sort of monarchy versus how Huxley was thinking about it. I think that's kind of interesting. Yeah. Well, that's going to do it for us here. And it could happen here.

Garrison? Tor.com. No. Sponsored by Tor.com. No. Just drop some acid and Google Hitler. Again. Seriously.

Don't. Don't. Don't. Literally do anything else. Don't do that. The woods are lovely. The beach is magnificent. Talk to the ocean. It's so much better. Go up a mountain.

You can go and roleplay as Moana or something. Yeah. Go to a comic con. Literally anything. My suggestions. I'll talk about that experience at a comic con. Literally anything. I see. My suggestions. I will talk about that experience at a later date.

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