It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 9

Episode Date: November 13, 2021

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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit.

The podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect podcast network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package

for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome to It Happens Sometimes, the podcast where it's happened shit um garrison chris somebody somebody somebody pick this up this is on you anybody nope anybody got help not banning you out of this one okay well you know what podcast this is you've been listening presumably for months or this is your first time listening if so i've probably lost you already with that Bush League introduction. Jesus Christ. I'm Robert Evans. This is a show about how things fall apart and how to maybe stop them from falling apart as much. And today we're talking to some people who were in kind of the best case scenario situation for having a bunch of authoritarians try to dominate your country, by which I mean

we're talking to some Chilean activists who won in as much as it's possible to win in the world. It's a pretty exciting situation happening there. I'm excited to introduce people to what's been going on. But first, I want to introduce our guests for today. Y'all want to introduce our guests for today um y'all wanna you'll wanna say hello uh hello and my name is jeremiah i'm from the united states but i've lived in chile for the last 10 years and i'm stephanie go ahead i'm a chilean and i'm i'm live here with with my my husband I'm a Chilean and I live here with my husband. Hi, I'm Nicolas. I'm Chilean and I have been living here for my whole life.

Yeah, so we started a small group called Vecinos Unidos to do some activism to try to get out the vote for the Pueblocito to try to, last year to get the Constitution approved to be voted on. And it was successful. So we are proud of the small bit of work that we did to help that happen. And so today the Constitution is being written and it's a very exciting time. Yeah. And I want to let's pull back a little bit, because the last time we talked about Chile on Behind the Bastards in 2019, when a protest that started as some, I think it's fair to say, Zoomers protesting a fare increase by like jumping fares at the at the underground, fairs at the at the the underground the subway um was met with police doing police stuff uh which was met with people taking to the streets in very significant numbers which is the thing that by now a lot more people are experienced with but unlike kind of what happened in my country

you did it you made them blink and and that's what the plebiscite is right like the there was an agreement made to give because chile was, if I'm not mistaken, governed under the same constitution that that Pinochet had had. Right. And Pinochet famously not a great guy. of an overview of y'all's experience during that time from like the start of the protests to, oh shit, we might actually get to change things at a pretty fundamental level in our country. Yeah. So it was incredible time about exactly two years ago. So just the 18th of October was just the two year anniversary. And as you said, it all started with literal high schoolers, 16 year olds who are protesting a 30 peso increase, which is, you know, like 20 cent increase in the metro. But we, of course, have one of the most expensive metros in the world and a very low minimum wage here. And so, as you said, they went out there and started to jump the turnstiles, but in massive groups, hundreds of

them going to the metro together and all jumping together. And in response, the government ended up closing the metros. And so it was this Friday night and we were having dinner and suddenly the metros were all closed and everyone had to just walk home from work or dinner or where they were. And that was kind of the beginning of everything. And it was almost like the government brought it on themselves because suddenly there were thousands of people in the streets just because they had no other way to get home. And from there, there were protests and the protests were met with extreme police oppression and water cannons and tear gas and all of that. And eventually, it led to one march, which had over a million people throughout Chile marching, and a series of marches and protests basically every week for months. And finally, it came down to, they announced that there would be this plebiscite, and it was a vote, yes or no, to create a new constitution. Because, yes, Chile

is still, there were some reforms in the early 2000s to the constitution, but still we live under the constitution written by Jaime Guzman, kind of Pinochet's right-hand man. And we happen to live, Nico is our good friend and also our next door neighbor, and we live about four blocks from the plaza, formerly Plaza Italia. Now the protesters have deemed it Plaza Dignidad. And so we've been just in the middle of it. And for a couple of months, our whole neighborhood was like a war zone and just really crazy protests every single day and tear gas and all of that. And it was really intense for a while. And it still is. You know, last Friday, we, you know, but the police are still out there being bastards.

I'm curious what each of you kind of sees as the moment when or if you because maybe I was going too optimistic, right? Like, I guess I'm wondering, do you think that a corner has been turned? And if so, what was kind of the moment each of you felt that like, oh my god, we might actually, this isn't just going to be like, showing up to get the shit kicked out of us, we're going to get some at least of what we're fighting for? Yeah, I mean, I think that that particular moment was when we finally went to the election, what we call the referendum, for this new constitution. And we were kind of skeptic about the percentage of people who approved this new constitution. Because a few months ago or a few weeks before this referendum, we had polls and they were kind of 50-50. So we were kind of skeptic about, are we going to have a new constitution or not?

And the same night, I mean, the process is very quick. So after, I don know the the this thing closed at 6 p.m and then you have the results like three hours later so on the same day we're having the the results and it was like 80 against 20 so it was like kind of shocking I mean we I I think that nobody was expecting to have this kind of 80% of the people in Chile were thrown to the bin

in the Czech constitution. So it was kind of like I don't know, I would say the best moment. Yeah, there's this, there's an American a deceased American sociologist who wrote an essay that I find quite influential called The Shock of Victory. And it's about how activists often fail to take advantage of of their momentum, like because they're kind of surprised at the success early on.

And then they don't properly take advantage of what they have when they have it. And, you know, progress gets turned back, which I think we've seen happen in the United States in the wake of what happened here last summer. Why do you think that that hasn't happened in Chile? What do you think it is that that that enabled you all to actually keep the pressure on and take advantage of that that moment in time, which never, I guess that's what I'm impressed with the most is that y'all did manage to make that momentum work for you rather than kind of letting it pull you off balance. And I guess I'm just trying to get a handle on how. I guess for me, what I think gets lost a lot in the conversation is the Primera Linea. So the first line of defense. And so you have a bunch of young people, anarchists, you know, just crazy young people who went out there to fight with the cops every single day. And it was really impressive. And a lot of times we, I don't know, I feel like they don't get the credit they deserve because, you know, they're the delinquents. And, you know, we talk a lot about the big marches when there was a million people in the street.

And obviously, like Nico said, winning the vote by 79 percent showed that it was something that everyone in Chile wanted, but it never would have happened if it weren't for this small group of fighters who were there every single day facing tear gas and water cannons and police beating them up with, you know, throwing rocks and stuff like that. So I think that's the main thing. It wasn't like once a month or even once a week. It was every single day. And they were there on the front line. And none of this would be possible without them. That's fascinating to me, because obviously things like that, groups like that existed here, like in Portland, when every night for not as long, but for not an insignificant amount of time. And it was those same, it was a lot of these kind of young anarchist frontliners who were willing to go toe to toe with the cops every night, but you didn't have,

you didn't have that kind of larger, more moderate populace backing them up. And I guess one of the things I'm curious about is what was kind of the you mentioned you don't think they get the credit they deserve. Was there a broad attitude that like these people are the ones going face to face with the cops so that those of us, you know, people who are older, people who aren't in as good a shape, people who can't physically take as much abuse can still show up or was it i'm kind of curious how how those people represented what they were doing and how it how it was seen by most of kind of the more moderate people who still supported change around you because that that dynamic exists in any mass protest movement and i'm it it worked where you are and i'm trying to get a handle on maybe how it was different than than what i saw in portland uh so now a lot of them are in jail and um or without one eye so it's uh it's really terrible because we have all these new uh beautiful process but um we are without uh really a complete democracy with liberty for this guy or democracy for all this person that lose eyes or result como heridos. Yeah, and everyone that was injured. resultaron como heridos. Sí, y a todos los que se les perdió.

Así que sí, hay muchos protestos actualmente. De hecho, creo que hoy en día hay un protesto que se está haciendo para liberar a los prisioneros políticos. Pero sí, creo que incluso entre, obviamente, el 80% del país votó por la nueva Constitu So there's a lot of different points of view there. But But yeah, there was division, even among the left, a lot of people said, you know, this is not the form of this is not the way to protest. And we should not be violent and, you know, burning things. And, but but there was a lot, I mean, you saw a lot of the opposite where

people were saying, just as you said, those out there on the front line are the reason that the older people and others can come out and feel safer to protest because the primera linea is kind of taking the brunt of the violence from the police. And that allows the older people and those who are less confrontational to be out there and protest. So for me, some of the most inspiring signs I remember seeing are like, folks that are 80 years old and they have signs that say, you know, gracias a la primera linea, you know, like, thank you to the frontliners who are taking that violence so that they are able, the others, to protest in a more peaceful way. That's such a fascinating situation to me that you've got these more radical frontliners who were, as you say, critical in allowing this really groundbreaking change to occur in your society. But at the same time, things haven't changed enough that, number one, the cops who beat the shit out of them, I'm guessing, are still largely employed and a bunch of them are in jail.

And a bunch of them are in jail. Do you have much hope that at the very least there will be something to like get these people out? Or is it is that maybe a bridge? I don't know. I don't know your country, obviously, as well. I'm curious. Like, do you feel like there's much hope in pushing for that? Because it seems like, you know, those people need to be free.

I mean, most of these guys who are in prison, they have spent like oh no like 12 months in prison without any evidence so yeah it's only the the word of the cops against them so after i know like 13 months 14 months they will finally get released because they hope they have no evidence or they could they may find that the police they made up all the evidence so the they finally go out but i mean you spend like almost a year in prison that's yeah me it's clearly like political i mean you're a political prisoner like they got they got you in prison with no evidence without any proper process they keep you in prison for a year. And who's going to pay for that? I mean, you lost a year.

Yeah. We're talking so far about the sacrifices made here. What do you think, with this new constitution, you and your fellow Chileans, what are you going to get? What are the changes that seem to be most concrete and the ones that you think are most important? Um, I think already it's been groundbreaking. I, I believe it's the only constitution, uh, ever to be written, um, by, uh, a plurality of women and, and also to have a representation from the indigenous peoples. And so it's already been very inspiring and groundbreaking. The president of the Constitutional Convention is a very inspiring Mapuche leader, woman.

leader, woman. And the good thing is that the right represents less than one third of the Constitutional Convention. So they don't have the power to block anything as far as only by the right so we will see but they literally just started writing the constitution last week so yeah yeah it's still but that's i mean that's that's a significant is there a kind of a broad agreement that one of the things that needed to happen here was a redress of grievances between the indigenous people um and the and the the state because it sounds like that's a significant chunk of what's what's been already agreed upon just by like how this is coming together yeah so uh well nico could probably tell a lot more about this than i could but um there's a big deal with uh the united uh with the Indigenous people in the South and the government basically waging war against the Indigenous people. Actually, two weeks ago, Pinera, the current

right-wing president, declared a state of emergency in the south and he just extended it for 15 more days so we have the military in the south um and they are you know with the tanks and attaching attacking the um the mapuche and other indigenous people there and uh so yeah a big aspect of ch Chile right now is the fight between and the oppression of the government against the native people and it's a cultural thing too. I mean it's really heavy. Everyone, most people here in Chile are mixed you know between the natives and the white men and everything and the Europeans. But the Mapuche and the other indigenous groups have really not received a lot of respect in the last 30 years. And so, yeah, that's a big aspect. So yeah, that's a big aspect. Yeah, I would say like, for me, it's very inspiring to have like the president of this new constitution to be a Mapuche woman.

So, yeah, I mean, I guess like the most important thing, like the thing that these indigenous people want to claim is their land. I mean, land for them is the most important thing. And that's what the government, I mean, for the last 300 years, they have been taking to them. And they are now like trying to claim again their space. So, I mean, let's hope that this new constitution will bring them back their land, the respect that they deserve.

Now, there's been a lot of discussion about this new constitution will bring them back their land um the respect that they deserve now there's been a lot of discussion about this this new constitution as i think the term used as an ecological constitution um and it's it's the necessity of it addressing a lot of the climate not just climate change but like a lot of the things caused by climate change like like unequal access to water. There's been discussion, I think Ezio Costa of the FIMA NGO is arguing currently that the Constitution needs to enshrine a human right to water and recognize it as a common good. It's obviously, again, they're writing it this week, so it's kind of unclear if that's going to happen. But I'm wondering kind of what y'all think it's actually because as you've talked about with the protests ongoing, with the military

being deployed in the South, this is not a finished fight. It's just a fight that a lot of progress has been made on. What do you think is reasonable to expect from this new constitution in terms of climate change, in terms of ecological justice?

I will say that no. The right of water? So water is privatized here. So Chileans here in Santiago, we have to pay a Spanish company for our water? Sure. I will say the economy in this country is based on extractivism. So you have the most productive thing is mining and then you have forestry. All these things have an enormous impact on the environment. The people in Chile, the people who live right next to these kind of things, they don't get

anything from them. I mean, the poorest places are like right next to the forestries, right next to the mining. So it's kind of like we are creating a lot of income from these things, but we're not getting anything from them. I mean, also, it's not like a thing like, let's get everything back to the state, I mean, to the state, because it's more than that. It's just like ecological equality, equity.

Yeah. It's not saying we should take all of the private water and give it to the state as much as it's saying everyone who lives here has a has a personal right to enough water to survive okay yeah so you have towns where small little towns and uh they don't have any water to drink because all of their water is to the going to the farm owned by nestle to make uh you know to grow avocados to sell to Europe and the United States. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's a pretty crazy thing. One of the things that's most interesting to me about your situation is you, you are in a place where not entirely dissimilar from the United States, you have a police and a military that are heavily dominated by, right-wing ideology um obviously like the united states is partly responsible for that in your case we we funded it for a very long time um and uh and so it's still

an ongoing fight but at the same time clearly the people are unhappy enough with that situation and hold like they were able to make they were able to force the folks with with guns to to recognize that they can't hold on to everything that they wanted to hold on to. And I I guess I'm. What? How can we do that? how can we do that? I'm very impressed by like, and, you know,

watching from the sidelines, I was just so happy to see this not go where I think we were all scared. It might go, you know, in either the direction of like Syria, where it turns into this horrible bloodbath or where everything gets crushed, you know, and I, I'm wondering like why you think

on a on a broader scale what do you think was responsible for those people with access to the guns deciding we can't hold on to this like i yeah i'm i'm just i'm so intensely curious about that because it's it's it's important for a lot of people in a lot of other parts of the world curious about that because it's important for a lot of people in a lot of other parts of the world. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I think it was just the protest and the daily protest and just getting out there and keeping the pressure on. And at some point, it's like, hey, this is not good for the economy. So all of the rich people and, you know, the 10 families that are in control of, you know, 60 or 70 percent of the wealth of the country. And equality. Yeah. And they at some point had to recognize that this was something that that, you know, had reached its boiling point.

And they could no longer respond with just force because they tried it and it didn't work for months and and it was just months and months of protests and um and uh and obviously that caused a hit to the economy and that caused a hit to the wallets of of the ultra rich and so at some point they they realized that uh they had no other move to play than to accept it in some way and uh and that's how we got uh you know this new constitution that is being written one thing i was i'm interested about is the geography of the protest because i know chile is very urban population and also it was is it like it's like a quarter of the population or something lives in santiago

or like in in that area and so i'm wondering i think wow so although sorry i just want to note if i'm not mistaken there were only five you have kind of communes instead of states is what they're called. Like 10 voted in favor of the referendum and only five voted against it, if I'm not mistaken. Well, communes are within cities. Oh, within cities. So, Saskatchewan has different communes. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

It's like boroughs in New York. But we have different regions instead of states. Right. And I think they all voted. Yeah, there might be like seven who voted. But what you might be thinking of, Robert, you might be thinking of communes in Santiago, where Santiago is very... So it's all on the Rio Mapocho, the river, which goes east to west across the city. And basically you have this like very rich part on the east and up into the hills.

And, um, and then it gets poorer and poorer as you go to the west. And, um, yeah, for the vote for the constitution, um, it was everyone voted, uh, for the vote for the constitution. It was everyone voted for the constitution, except for these communes, these ultra rich in the East. Oh, wow. Amazing. Okay. Something I was also curious about this was, so when the protests were going on, because Chile's had like huge protests before i mean even the last sort of decade what i was interested also with this time is like well hey what do you think is different about this

than say like 2011 2013 and then b in terms of like the geographic breakdown of where people are and where they're going is it that you know so so you you have this you have this classifying the city but were were were the working class districts like were were people staying there in those districts or were they like moving from those places like to protest inside of the the richer urban areas i'll say like i mean yeah we have like many protests in past, but they were more kind of like students' protests, and then you have university protests. But when we have this protest, like the one we had in 2019, it's like something that unites everyone. I mean, you don't have to be a student, you don't have to go to university to protest.

I mean, it's something that is affecting everyone. I mean, the fares of the metro, they affect everything. And the inequality in the country affects everyone. So, I mean, I guess that's the thing that makes this protest of 2019 unique in this term. Yeah, and I think it was actually a problem when all the protests were happening. A lot of people were saying, we can't keep going to the plaza.

The cops are just going to wait for us in the plaza and it's going to be a shit show and we need to protest all over. And there were protests across Chile in every single major city. But I will say the majority of the protests have been here in the plaza and close to La Moneda, where the presidential palace, but some of the most memorable protests. And the Costanera Center too. And the Costanera Center, the tallest building in Latin America, which is a mall and a monument to this idea that Piñera has of Chile being an oasis in South America.

We're not like other countries. We're like the United States. You know, we're this capitalism, capitalist oasis. Exactly. We're like the United States, you know, we're this capitalism, capitalist oasis. And exactly. But but yeah, so some of the most memorable protests, they weren't super common, but were exactly that where the people said, you know what, we're not going to the plaza. We're going to Costanera Center or we're going to Vitacura. We're going to where the millionaires live, where they work. And those were really powerful. And so that's when you started to see like all of those banks and malls and just blocks and blocks of what the rich folk like to call San Hatton, you know, Santiago, Manhattan, the skyscraper part of the city. And it was just all boarded up, you know, because there were definitely a couple of weeks where the protests went that way. And yeah, it was inspiring. What I keep coming back to when I look about like

why it worked, it wasn't because the frontliners just kept the pressure up because the front liners did in a lot of places here. The front liners stayed out well after everyone else stopped coming out. It's that the population kept up the pressure like the the there were like Chile as a as a as a nation, as a as a people kept up the pressure in a pretty significant way, as opposed to kind of fading back after the first couple of weeks. And I mean, I think I'm sure the question of why it happened has a lot to do with, like you said, inequality, you know, things that have been going on for decades. It's a complex situation. you know, things that have been going on for decades. It's a complex situation. But it does seem like that's one of the big takeaways that if you can secure, even in a pretty terrifying situation, a lot of concessions, a lot of what you need, but people have to have to keep putting themselves out there. Yeah, absolutely. I would say it's a couple of things.

One is, as you mentioned, I think it's like the culture of protests here, you know, especially in the last 10 years, like with the Revolución Penguin in 2011, in 2011, you know, and there were... And the 8M. And the feminist protests, the Ocho Eme, and so it's, it's not something that just happened two years ago, it's the last decade or two has, has been

the people, especially the young people going out there and protesting, and that's And that's one thing that's inspiring about Boric, the candidate for president. The election is next month. So the left-wing candidate, Boric, and he came out of that movement. He was a student protester and a leader of the student movement. And so I think it's like it grew out of that. It grew out of kids in high school saying, this is just what we do. This is normal. We go out there and protest when shit happens. And the other thing is, yeah, you know, we always say here in Chile, after the protest started, it's not 30 pesos, it's 30 years. It's not 30 pesos, it's 30 years, you know, 30 years of neoliberalism, of this revolving door of center right and center left and just continuing on with the economic oppression.

And the other thing I feel like people don't understand is that, you know, people either think Chile is like the United States or they think it's like Peru or something, you know, and it's really neither in Chile. The the minimum wage is half of what the United States is, which is already terrible. Yeah. Yeah. But the cost of living here is almost the same as you guys in portland i mean not the housing probably but like you know food and stuff yeah yeah it's like europe you know i could move to berlin and live cheaper than here you know it is hard to have three times that you know so so i think it's that's the other thing is people just they they had no other choice you know and they were just bored down by by 30 years you know after 20 years of a dictatorship 30 years of of this terrible wages and um just neoliberalism and uh so so i i think it's it's partially that and partially just like the culture

of protests that grew out of the student movements in in the early 2000s yeah there was one thing i was interested also interested about that i don't remember seeing much of at the time was what was chilean organized labor doing during this? It's a good question. Honestly, labor hasn't been a big part of the protest, at least from my point of view. You know, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it took a pretty strong hit during the Pinochet years, if I'm not mistaken.

So there was kind of that, like, I guess that does make sense. Sure, Yeah. Honestly, I don't know a whole lot about labor history here in Chile, but, but yeah, it definitely is. I mean, you would see, you know, union groups in the streets here and there, but, but, but definitely they weren't a leading voice in the protest, I would say. Yeah. So I guess that leads into the other, I guess one of the other things that from my understanding has been happening

all across Latin America, but in Chile in particular, is the rise of the informal sector and people just sort of not having access to sort of stable wages and labor and i'm wondering about okay so organized laborers like so the classical unions aren't really involved in this and i guess i'm i'm interested in how if i'm right that that you're dealing with a lot of people who aren't doing traditional labor stuff. What was the process that was able to get people mobilized? Especially people who just have no sort of, like people who are in the informal sector and people who aren't involved in the sort of older classical organizations?

Yeah, I don't know. I guess I would just say it's like that, that culture of protest that comes from the, the young people in the last 20 years. And then of course, the older folks who, you know, live through the dictatorship. And of course there were an incredible protest at that time too. And, and so I don't know. I mean, honestly, I was, even after living here for six years, I was shocked. I never thought it would come to this. I never thought I would see over half a million people in the streets of Santiago.

And I would never thought we'd see a new constitution. So I don't know. I don't, I don't have the answers. It's, it's surprising to me, but what I will say though, is I don't want to paint a rosy portrait of Chile right now, because if like we mentioned, you know, tomorrow night, if you guys go to gallery sima c-i-m-a on youtube or instagram they have a live feed of the plaza four blocks from our house and every friday you know you the protests come out and sometimes the cops are there right away and they make a whole perimeter with 200 cops and all of the,

you know, tanks and everything, um, uh, blocking entrance to the Plaza in every direction. Sometimes they let the people protest, but then at 10 o'clock, you know, after the sun comes down, they come out there and, um, you know, it's, it's the same thing. A young woman was killed a couple of weeks ago. And the other thing is that we have this election coming up and this guy, caste, extreme right winger, Pinochetista, just like they call him the Chilean Bolsonaro, just like a real piece of shit.

And he has really risen in the polls in the last month or two. The right-wing candidate, Sitchell, who won the right-wing primaries and was kind of going to be the successor to Piñera, the current right-wing president, becauseitchell, who won the right wing primaries and was kind of going to be the successor to Piñera, the current right wing president, because in Chile, you know, you can't run consecutive, you can't have consecutive terms. But Sitchell just kind of was not a great candidate and kind of blew it. And he went down and now Kast is going up. And it's really scary to think about Kast getting into the second round where it will probably be him versus Boric.

And so, yeah, you know, even though the Constitution was approved by 79% of the country, you know, it's very possible that this election is going to come down to a runoff between a, you know, moderate socialist like Boric, not the most extreme leftist. In fact, known as Amarillo, you know, very yellow bellied here in Chile. That's his nickname. But it will probably right now, Amarillo, you know, very yellow-bellied here in Chile. That's his nickname. But it will probably, right now

it's looking like it's going to come down to him and Kast, who is like almost a return to the dictatorship. So it's pretty scary. So it's just this, there's just so much fighting to do. Yes.

There's just so much fighting to do. It's just so much fighting to do. I mean, I, yeah. Do you have, do any of you have anything else you want to make sure you say or talk about before we kind of close out for the day? I don't know. I will say like three days ago, I just paid my, I finally paid my whole student loan

like i've been working for more than 10 years of my life since i finished university and i've been wasting i mean all my savings i just paid this fucking student loan i i guess that you guys in the united states are like the same. Like, I don't know. Well, except for people don't pay off their student loan. Yeah, we just don't. It just stays there forever. And I just, I would like to wish to the coming people that, I mean, I don't wish that future for my, I mean, for the future people in this country,

I don't wish anyone that i mean university i mean all students should be um study for free i mean it's like unconceivable for me yeah so that was a big part of it and then also the ifpa pension system here, which is totally privatized. And so the government just takes your money for retirement. You get to choose between four or five options, which are private companies. And then if you make money, then the company takes their chunk of your retirement as the payment for managing your fund. But if you lose money, then it's on you. So literally, Steffi's mom is like, checking on her retirement, how did I do this year? It's like, oh, you lost $2,000 this year. like, oh, you lost $2,000 this year. That's your retirement savings. And you have people here trying to live on retirements of $100 a month, while the military is receiving $10,000 a month.

You know, so that was a big part of it. But I think what I always come back to here in Chile is, like we've said, the activist renamed the plaza, Plaza Dignidad. And that's what it all comes down to is just we're not asking for, you know, ponies, as Hillary Clinton would say. We're not we're not asking for the moon. We're just asking for basic dignity that everyone deserves. And it's as simple as that. So we just have to, uh, cross our fingers and, and hope that, um, we've done enough, uh, that, that, you know, at a minimum, you know, people can live and retire with some dignity. That's all. Yeah, and that enough ecological justice can be gained that people can survive what's coming. Which it's nice to see, at the very least, that that's a central topic of discussion.

Whereas in the United united states everyone in power seems fine with just ignoring the increasing profits for now so i don't know you know i i again i also don't want to be painting too rosy a picture as you've as you've read repeatedly clear there's a lot of of struggle left still um but at least you've you, you've achieved a lot. And I, I, I've just, uh, uh,

heartened by, by hearing your story and, and, and hope that more people pay attention to what's happened there and try to take lessons from it. Cause I think we all need to be, we all need to be gearing up, um,

as, as I'm sure y'all will continue to do. Anything else before we close out? No, that's it. I mean, I completely agree. I think that just like the message is that better things are possible. Like real change can happen. Like this started two years ago

with high schoolers protesting and now we're going to have a vote on a new constitution, and it's going to be an ecological constitution, a plurinational national constitution with respect for the indigenous people. It's written by, you know, an equal amount of men and women and everything. And so, yeah, just I think for me, it's so easy for us who have grown up under the gloom of neoliberalism to just get really depressed and fatalistic about it. And so for me, I feel the same way. Like, it's just such an inspiration. And the Chilean and especially the Chilean youth. But yeah, it's just an inspiration. And, you know, like Chileans have elected socialists. You know, the former president was a socialist, but it was just the same neoliberalism bullshit.

So I think, you know, voting is great, but like that's just not enough. And so you have to, you know, get out in the streets and try to, uh, organize and make real change, uh, in other ways as well. All right. Yeah, I agree entirely. Thank you all for coming on. Um, I couldn't appreciate it more and, and I hope you have, uh, uh, a lovely rest of your day and a lovely continuing to, uh, uh, stick it to the sons of bitches. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. 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, from the shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive

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This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here,

the show that is only introduced competently when either someone besides me is the one hosting the episode or when I have a guest that I feel embarrassed about being incompetent in front of. And this is the latter case. Because today I'm talking with my friend and admired colleague, Molly Conjure. Molly, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I got to do that like a professional

welcome to the show that's like an npr shit right i know people have been saying on the twitch stream that i have a very soothing npr style voice you would be great i would love to hear you uh talking in npr about how it's it's rad that those those people broke the windows on those police cars or whatever no i can't be allowed in respectable spaces. I can't be allowed there. They let me talk on a panel at Harvard one time and I accidentally said fuck in front of a bunch of people. I mean, I assume Harvard students know a fuck word or two. They know that one.

Speaking of fuck words, there's a couple of fuck words who are under trial right now for inciting mass violence that led to human death and suffering. You want to give us the overview? We're talking today about the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 that led to three deaths, one as the result of direct violence. Heather Heyer, who was murdered by the fascist James Field, currently in prison for forever. Yeah, forever.

That, you know, his trial concluded a while ago, but there has been churning through the legal system, a trial against Richard Spencer, Jason Kessler, who was the main organizer, Cantwell. There's other plaintiffs, right? Oh, Cantwell. There's other plaintiffs, right? Oh, goodness gracious. Yeah, a lot of a lot of fascists about, you know, all of the things that they did, the fact that they clearly intended this to be a violent riot, assault, whatever, like they wanted to have it be a fucking lynching, essentially. And there's a lot of evidence, including things they said to each other about

building armies to murder people. Anyway, Mollylly you want to take it from here i think i've introduced the situation there's a trial going on you have been listening to every day of it and covering it on twitch very ably um and so i just kind of wanted to catch up with you you also wrote an article in slate with our friend emily gor Gorchinsky about what's like largely the jury selection of the trial. So I was wondering if you could just kind of give us an overview of what's happened so far, if your thoughts on it. Yeah, that that seems that seems good. Yeah. So there's just right at the outset. This is a civil trial, right?

This is not a criminal trial. No one's going to the no one's going to jail at the end of this. Some of them are in jail. We call it's that the who's gal we call it the who's gal on the show that's the proper term who's yeah okay um some of them are already in jail obviously like you said james fields is serving 29 life sentences that's a lot of life that's a lot of life so he was he was charged in charged in Virginia state court by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He was convicted at trial of first degree murder and several counts of aggravated malicious wounding. He was, so that trial happened in 2018. He actually went to trial for that.

But then he pleaded guilty in federal courts. He was charged in two separate courts for the same underlying events. And in federal court, he pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes. He pleaded guilty to hate crimes. So there's no debate about whether these were hate crimes, right? And he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty because a hate crime murder is a capital crime. So in this lawsuit, right, this civil lawsuit against Deep Breath, Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, Christopher Campbell, James Alex Field, Vanguard America, Andrew Anglin, Moonbase Holdings, Robert Asmodor Ray, Nathan Domingo, Elliot Klein,

Identity Ropa, Matthew Parent, Matthew Heimbach, Traditionalist Worker Party, Michael Hill, Michael Tubbs, League of the South, Jeff Scoop, National Socialist Movement, Nationalist Front, Augustus Olenvictus, Returnal Order of the Alt Knights, Mike Pinovich, Loyal White Knights of the KKK, East Coast Knights of the KKK, East Coast Knights of the True In uh mike pinevich loyal white knights of the kkk east coast knights of the kkk east coast knights of the true invisible empire several of those parties have been dismissed from the suit um that's a lot it's a lot of bad guys right um several of those parties have been dismissed from the suit um augustus invictus defaulted um pinevich got dismissed early on does that mean the fact that he defaulted does does that mean he was like, yes? Right. He offered no defense.

Yeah. So that's what that means. Yeah. I mean, he's been dealing with a lot. What would he? He's had some problems. He's been in and out of jail. Child molesters, right?

Something like that. He abducted his wife at gunpoint. I think he's out of jail now, but he's had some personal problems. He's had some personal problems. He's had some issues. Yeah. So the underlying claim of the lawsuit is a Section 1985 complaint, a conspiracy

to deprive people of civil rights. This is fundamentally, at its core, an anti-Klan statute, right? It was designed to disrupt Klan organizing. And that's kind of what it's being used for here, right? It's a perversion of the intent. So the lawsuit

was brought by nine plaintiffs who were harmed, people who got hurt at the rally. Most of the plaintiffs were physically injured in the car attack, although not all of them. But these are people who are seeking damages, right? Like for all the emotional weight, all the sort of social ramifications, fundamentally, this is a case about damages. So the jury is going to say, okay, these people were harmed. Do we believe they were harmed by a conspiracy to commit acts of violence? Conspiracy to commit racially motivated acts of violence, right?

So all of those elements have to be proved. Did the KKK guys want to do racial violence when they assaulted people? Yeah. Was there a conspiracy? Was it motivated by racial animus and were overt acts of violence committed and did those acts of violence harm these people in a way that entitles them to damages that's all the jury has to decide right should be an open shut case not not a lot

but it does seem like kind of an open and shut case. It does, right? If there are people out there who are not familiar with the events of that day, a lot of alt-right groups, you know, overt neo-Nazi organizations, the literal Klan, the literal American Nazi Party, like neo-Confederate secessionist groups. David Duke was there. David Duke was there. David Duke, who Elliot Klein described as an ideological grandfather when he was asking other organizers if he can invite him um these guys came together they came to charlottesville they brawled in the streets they beat people they hit them with shields um a literal clan wizard fired his gun at a black man while screaming die n-word well now okay it

seems like you're reaching a bit to call that racially motivated well that's something they're trying to litigate now right so amazing you're probably familiar with the video of deandre harris being beaten nearly to death by members of several different hate groups right so one of the guys that beat him was a tdvp member one of them was a league of the south member and they worked together to beat this young man nearly to death while he was lying on the ground. And so today they were talking about like, well, can we really say that was racially motivated? You know, can we really say? I think we can. You know, his mother has been on podcasts since his conviction. I'm referring to Jacob Goodwin, the TWP member, the man who used a TWP riot shield provided to him by Matthew Heimbach to beat this young man. His mother goes on Nazi podcasts still to describe how her son is a martyr for the white cause.

So there's no ambiguity. But where are you getting racially motivated from that, mom? Right. Like, there's a picture of her with her arm around her son. Her son is like seven feet tall. He's a giant boy. She's got her arm around her large adult son, and he's wearing a T-shirt with a giant picture of George Lincoln Rockwell on it. Ah.

Ah. You love the deep cuts. So, you know, at Billy Roper's Christmas party. Yeah. Another Nazi. Right. So there's not a lot of ambiguity here for the average person.

But so, you know, like you were saying, Emily, and I wrote about jury selection. Jury selection is, so court proceedings are, generally speaking, open to the public. Anyone can go to their local courthouse and you can sit through a trial.

You can sit through the voir dire process. You can see how a jury gets chosen. Yeah. You can go trial hopping, get wasted, you know? Free entertainment. As long as you sit quietly, they can't make you leave. That's right. It's like a library.

Sorry. It's very discouraging because the whole point is to pick jurors who've never encountered reality. You pick people who don't have any opinions, right? Because you want them to be able to be impartial. And the best way to make sure your jury is going to be impartial is to pick people who don't have any opinions. And if you don't have any opinions on whether or not it's good for Nazis to beat people in the streets, I would say that in and of itself is an opinion that you already have, right? the ability to not have an opinion about that so jury selection took three days because they had to go through this process of speaking to each juror individually usually they'll do it in batches where they ask questions

of people in batches um but this was so sensitive they didn't want to taint the jury pool so they did it one by one so it took three days um and they chose jurors who didn't have opinions about the existence of racism in the united states okay that seems unbiased again it's this thing you keep seeing where it's like well we can't let people have a bias so it has to be people who have never heard of white supremacy which is like well then that's a bias in favor of white supremacy but of course that's the default of the system it It's like, that's the tear, right? Like you stick white supremacy on the scale and you tear it,

but then you add awareness of white supremacy and suddenly there's weight on it. You know, it's, sorry, it's very frustrating. I know you know it's frustrating. I mean, yeah, I shouldn't, yeah. It was frustrating to sit through listening to them to ask people, you know, because they had to fill out a questionnaire ahead of time

so they can sort of sift through obvious no's. And one them to ask people, you know, because they had to fill out a questionnaire ahead of time so they can sort of sift through obvious no's. And one of the questions was, you know, how do you feel about, you know, how concerned are you about these different kinds of prejudice? You know, prejudice against black people, prejudice against Hispanic people, prejudice against Jewish people, or prejudice against white people. And a lot of people indicated that they were very concerned about anti-white racism. Oh, good. And a lot of jurors were asked follow-up questions about, like, well, why aren't you more concerned about anti-white racism oh good and a lot of jurors were were asked follow-up questions about like well why aren't you more concerned about anti-white racism why did you say you don't care about that well because it's not real yeah because i've never

seen it in my entire life um but okay so but we seated a jury we did see the jury and there were you know there's always concern in a case like this that you just won't be able to get an impartial jury. But we got – it could be worse, right? It could be worse. There is a guy on the jury who said that in high school he was the victim of a racially motivated attack by a Samoan person because they didn't like white people. I wonder what that person was doing slash saying. Black people who believe that they have a right to exist without being subjected to racism. Not impartial. Can't be on the jury. But a white guy who says he was the victim of a hate crime because someone didn't like Howley's. Jury.

He's on the jury. God. So people talking about like, I don't like it when folks not from my island come here and fuck shit up and make it expensive yeah that's anti-white racism he was living in hawaii incredible incredible it could be a worse it could be a worse jury but it's not ideal um god where did we go from there it's been it's been a little bit of a blur um so can't well and spencer don't have lawyers right why yeah okay so right because can't well can't can't well is for people who aren't aware can't well is representing himself and tell correct me if

i'm wrong here but he started by acknowledging the old saying that a person who represents themselves has a fool as a lawyer but then said but I'm not a fool in this case. Yeah, he said, you may have heard this, but that's not true here. That's not the case here. And unbelievable. Just incredible. He said, and I didn't even stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Oh my God, really? He seriously made a Holiday Inn Express joke while he was on? Oh my God. But the follow-up, the follow-up was, but I did stay in the Central Virginia Regional Jail because that is where he's staying. Yeah, I mean, because he's in prison for sexually or not for harassing and threatening and blackmailing another Nazi, right? Yeah, yeah. He was transported here from the federal prison in marion illinois where he is a guest until next christmas um so he had filed motions to exclude the fact that he's currently incarcerated

as is his right right like if you are a yeah yeah absolutely i don't think that's bad in a you know in a criminal case or in a um in a civil case it is it is your right to have the jury not see you in a jumpsuit and i respect that i think that's good absolutely yeah so he went to great lengths to make sure that the jury would never see him in cuffs that the marshals wouldn't bring him in in irons that he would change before the jury arrived at the courthouse all very reasonable and no one was going to get to talk about it yeah but he brought it up in his own opening statement he told them hey i'm here from prison i'm here from prison by the way i'm in prison for the other crimes I committed, but they're not related to these crimes. They're not related to these crimes, except to the extent that he's unable to shut the fuck up.

He's only in prison because he emailed the FBI or recording him him doing the crime that he's in prison for. He's he's really a very cunning man. But I think, you know, so as much as those crimes aren't relevant to this case, I think it is very relevant to his trial strategy, right? That he has this belief that all the things he did that were wrong, they were right, actually. He just needs to explain to us why he did them and then we'll understand, right? He's in prison because he tried to talk his way out of a thing that he did that was wrong by telling everyone that he did do it. Yes, I did it because I had to. You didn't have to make an extortionate threat to rape another man's wife in front of their children.

You didn't actually have to do that. Yeah, that's really I mean, I would I might argue and perhaps I'm an extremist, but there's no situation in which you would ever have to do that. Nobody made you email the FBI about how you did that. Yeah. But you did. I think the FBI would have told you that was a bad idea. I mean, there's some snarky stuff in some of the affidavits about how, like, he called the Keene Police Department trying to tattletale on other people so often that they were tired of taking his calls. Unbelievable.

What an amazing man. Like, he's a piece of shit, but he is legitimately an incredible person. I mean, if you wrote this, no one would believe it, right? This is so heavy-handed. It's so goofy. Like, when he was paying Elmer in guns. Yeah, he paid his lawyer in guns, and then he ran out of guns, and his lawyer stopped working for him. Yeah, so he doesn't have a lawyer anymore because he ran out of guns and his lawyer stopped working for him.

Yeah, so he doesn't have a lawyer anymore because he ran out of guns to pawn. Unbelievable. Although I guess he can't anymore because now he's a convicted felon. Also, I gotta say, running out of guns to pawn for your lawyer, it's pretty cucked. He even had to sell the bucket of loose bullets he used to keep as a prop on his desk. I mean, really devastating stuff. You're down to the rails when you're doing that. Really the bottom of the barrel. So he's proceeding pro se, which unfortunately, unfortunately for everyone involved, means he gets to talk a lot.

A lot, a lot, a lot. Which means he gets to cross- lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, which means he gets to cross-examine his own witnesses, right? So the first two witnesses the plaintiffs put on were two of their plaintiffs, right? Two young people who were injured in these events. The first witness they put on, Natalie, is a UVA student who had her skull fractured in the car attack. She had to learn how to walk again. She had to see a neurologist to retrain her eyes to track movement. I mean, she was very badly injured. And so she testified at length about the damage that was done to her because, again, this is a case about damages.

So the jury needs to learn who is this person? What happened to them? What did it cost them physically, mentally, emotionally, financially? Because what they're going to be asked to do is to put a dollar amount on it. emotionally, financially, because what they're going to be asked to do is to put a dollar amount on it. So they had to meet her and hear about her injuries and hear about her motivation for being there. You know, she's a young queer Latina woman. She's the first college student in her family. You know, she's a very impressive young woman. And she was very composed on the stand as awful as the content was. But then every single one of the defendants

gets to cross-examine her. Richard Spencer gets to cross-examine her. Christopher Cantwell gets to cross-examine her. James Kalenich, who took the case, he's Kessler, D'Amigo, and Identity Europa's lawyer, James Kalenich, he's an Ohio-based attorney who said on the record that he took this case with the express purpose of opposing Jewish influence.

Great. Great. Kalenich gets to cross-examine her. matt heimbach's new lawyer josh smith used to be the campaign spokesman for paul nealon um he's a holocaust denying was an endorsed by trump at one point in his run for congress uh and is also just a straight-up nazi who's repeatedly threatened to murder you yeah yeah one time he spent all day posting pictures of a deer that he said that he named after me. He said, I named this deer Molly.

You know, he spent all day stalking it, posting pictures of it, posting pictures of his gun. And then he posted a picture of the deer staged like a lynching. And then he spelled my name out in its entrails and posted pictures of that. So you're just like a really normal guy, Paul Nealon. Like totally, completely with it.

His campaign spokesperson when he ran for Congress was the Holocaust-denying former Jew, Josh Smith. Josh Smith was born Daniel Nussbaum. He changed his name to hide his Jewish past. Oh, wow. That is an old story among the Nazis. It's fascinating. We talked about the guy who invented sea monkeys. But yeah, it's basically the same case. And you know who else hides their identity? No. Okay. This was meant to be an ad plug. Normally, Sophie would jump in and stop me from doing that. that uh don't think about none of these advertisers are plaintiffs in the current case that you're covering that's a guarantee that is that is an absolute promise david duke

is not about to sell you dick pills no no no although he could use them we're back um all right molly sorry please continue god where were we i got distracted thinking about david duke trying to sell you dick pills. Yeah, that's not good for anybody. Right, so everybody gets to cross-examine the witness. Josh Smith is Heimbach's new lawyer. Kalenich used to be a lot of these guys' lawyers, and then he sort of dropped them over time as they became uncooperative.

There were all these motions to withdraw. Yeah. Kalenich slowly dropped clients over the last two years. He dropped Cantwell as a client because Cantwell wouldn't stop posting about hurting Roberta Kaplan. Right. Who's the lead counsel for the plaintiffs. Roberta Kaplan, famous Jewish lesbian lawyer. You know, she was on the USV Windsor.

I'm losing it. Absolutely losing it. The Supreme Court case that gave us gay marriage, right? Roberta Kaplan brought us gay marriage essentially. Yeah. So she, you know,

famous Jewish lesbian, that is a well-known portion of her identity. And Kent well kept posting, um, antisemitic remarks about her. And finally Kalenich was like, you're making it really hard to be your lawyer and you don't pay me. Um,

and Kalenich dropped Heimbach as a client in 2019 because heimbach just stopped answering his calls um great smart people yeah so matt parrot who's matt heimbach's father-in-law but also the husband of the woman that he was sleeping this complicated there's a chart there's a chart matt heimbach and matt parrot um founders of the traditionalist worker party best friends for a long time fucking each other's wives big problems big problems for them yeah the night of wrong wives the night of the wrong wives so yeah matt parrot was technically matt heimbach's father-in-law during the time period which heimbach was fucking Parrot's wife. Very classy people.

Not a great situation. So they lost their lawyer. Parrot very publicly told all traditionalist worker party members to destroy evidence. So we knew that, right? That was on the record from the beginning that Matt Parrot was like, hey, everyone in you did any crimes delete it right delete your social media delete your pictures like we weren't there right yeah and that's that's a crime that's a crime yeah that is a crime that is a crime right there but an interesting thing that we learned today that i don't think we did know before um in november 2018 so they played a recording of a conversation between Matt Heimbach

and Christopher Cantwell. And this was during examination of Heimbach. So Heimbach was on the stand and they're talking about like, you know, you didn't produce discovery. You said you lost your phone, this, that, and the other, you know, after you beat your wife, she threw away your phone. So he said, I couldn't turn over my social media accounts because my wife deleted them because we had an argument about me taking out the trash, right? Like we had this domestic dispute about the trash and she deleted all my accounts. So I couldn't turn them over. Um, well, today we found out that he told Cantwell in 2018. So a year after the lawsuit was filed, when a lawsuit is filed against you, you have a legal obligation to not do things like this.

He told Cantwell that after a conversation with his lawyer, on the advice of his lawyer, he deleted those accounts. Oh. Oh, great. So there's just a record of him criming. Yeah. That's a crime? Yeah. And it's also a crime for his lawyer to have advised him to do that

great um again that's there's no direct evidence who told him to do that but we do have a recording of him saying a lawyer told him to so that's not great that's not a good situation is he gonna get charged with anything for that i am curious you know i'm not a lawyer just for everyone listening i'm not a lawyer i didn't go to law school i didn't even finish undergrad i'm not a lawyer um but i have listened to a lot of lawyers and but i am i am curious what with what frequency can perjury charges be sought in a civil case right yeah um it's still under oath like it is still perjury but how common is that to be pursued because they're perjuring yeah they're for sure per like it is still perjury but how common is that to be pursued because they're perjuring yeah they're for sure perjuring they're just doing the thing the right always does

which is trust that the law will never actually come after them for their many crimes and there's yeah there's a good chance they'll be right god you know like heimbach said you know when he was asked have you ever provided security for richard spencer and he said no and it's okay well there's like a hundred pictures of you doing that multiple events um you know they're claiming they don't know each other like here's all these pictures of you guys hanging out um god where else are we um yeah i'm curious i you know one thing that kind of especially because of the written house thing and're actually, we'll be talking to our mutual lawyer tomorrow night about, or tomorrow about the Rittenhouse thing. Every cool person shares the same lawyer. But yeah, because of that, I'm kind of curious, what is your, what sense do you get of this judge? There's no good judges. There's no good judges.

But it could be worse, right? Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying like, yeah, but how is it, you know? It could be a lot worse. You know, Trump appointed a shitload of federal judges pretty recently. Judge Moon is 85 years old. He's a Clinton appointee. He's a Clinton appointee. So it could be worse. Could be worse. He's been on the bench, you know, since I was in elementary school. And he's very old.

And he's a little bit hard of hearing, but he's not stupid. There's a lot of people I think who are really frustrated with some of the things he's allowing to happen. He's really allowing these pro se defendants to sort of run roughshod over the procedure. But, you know, like I said before we started recording, it's really hard to apply. Your sense of how things are supposed to work

doesn't really apply in court, right? There's a very rigid sort of outdated set of rules and procedures, and they don't feel right. They don't feel logical or reasonable or fair, but there is a specific way that it works, and it is hard to watch, especially if you've never seen it before. And because of the emotionally fraught nature of this, it's particularly frustrating to be listening on this line and saying, like, why are they allowed to do this to this witness? Well, legally you can cross examine your witnesses, even if you are the person who hurt them. It's not a good system,

but it is how it works. Um, but he's, um, and I also think there is, there's concern about appellate issues. There's concern about mistrial. And so they're really going out of their way not to give anyone any excuse to

say, well, this was not fair to me. Um, they're going to say, well, this was not fair to me. They're going to say it anyway, but they're really letting them have a long leash in a way that feels very bad. But at the same time, I can kind of understand it. Yeah. I wish they hadn't done so much Holocaust denial like on the record.

Yeah, that would be good. They put an expert on today who's um dr deborah lipstadt who's an expert in holocaust denial to sort of talk about what the holocaust is i guess in case the jury doesn't know god oh that's bleak oh my goodness that's fucking bleak because they chose this jury based on them never having heard of Jews, you know? My God. It's a bunch of, like, middle-aged people from Greene County who have never met a Jewish person. So they had to put on a professor to say, okay, when he says gas the K words, we're talking about gas chambers. Gas chambers from the Holocaust. They didn't start out with gas chambers.

They started with mass shootings, but it was too messy. I mean, she was literally recounting sort of the evolution from the ensigns group and, you know, shootings in the fields to the gas chambers. Like, we had to talk all the way through it because it seems unnecessary. But again, for the jury, it might be necessary. And so when Asmador, Robert. You don't want to take anything for granted, you know? Yeah. Right.

And you really have to sort of lay out these connections, right? Because the idea is you have to prove a conspiracy and you have to prove the conspiracy was racially motivated. And so when Asmodor is the racist wizard name that Robert Ray uses when he writes for the Daily Stormer, when Asmodor keeps saying, we're going to gas the K words, everyone knows what I mean when I say that, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. K words. Everyone knows what I mean when I say that,

right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Um, you know, he keeps saying, you know, the,

the plan is to gas the K words, you know, GTK RWN, um, gas, the K words race war. Now he keeps saying, he keeps saying,

keep saying it. And then the torch March, he pepper sprays a bunch of people, which he is currently a fugitive of justice for. Um, he's, um, he's wanted for felony in,

um, Almarol County. He's missing. Um, so he says he's going to do it. Then he does it. And then afterwards, he's on video saying, yeah, I gassed half a dozen K words. So you can see from A to B to C. And then we have this expert saying, OK, what he's saying is a direct reference to the Holocaust.

Yeah. Right. Like you said, it's pretty open and shut it's pretty straightforward a to b to c um you know we have these discord leaks um if you want to browse them they're on unicorn riot and almost immediately after the rally unicorn riot had these discord leaks um the entire server the charlesville 2.0 server where they planned this out where they're in the discord saying yeah it's going to be so great we're going to do so much violence we're going to we're going to hurt people we're going to bring shields we're going to bring base really explicitly talking about the plan making jokes

about hitting people with cars um now the entire discord will be admitted um it has been authenticated they received another copy of it via subpoena directly from discord it's real it's evidence um as much as cantwell doesn't like that um but more than that um we have you know some first person authentication we heard deposition testimony from elliot klein's ex-girlfriend um the woman that he was living with in 2017 so in the summer of 2017 he was living with this woman that he had just met and entered into a romantic relationship with um she has since left the movement she has a lot of regret about her involvement in that time period and you know there's a lot of people have a lot of mixed feelings about what it means to leave the movement what it means to atone is it possible to redeem yourself for having been a part of something like that uh we don't have to litigate that no but we do have to place but yeah well we do have to recognize that her testimony is

damning yeah i mean this is not this is not elliot klein putting on a show in public this is not elliot klein posturing for his friends this is eli at home in bed with his girlfriend talking about his fantasies of killing all the jews um And her testimony was pretty harmful. You would think. Yeah. It's not great. You know, really, you have to wonder how the jury is taking this, right? These people who have no concept or context for this.

Who haven't been living and breathing this for years. Yeah. Hours of this woman sort of near tears talking about how her boyfriend said that he was going to put her in a breeding camp once they had the ethnostate. Not nice. No. Really not nice stuff. I mean, she also testifies, you know, we have the messages from the discord where people are posting memes and jokes about hitting protesters. jokes about hitting protesters.

But Samantha testified that at private parties at Richard Spencer's house in the summer of 2017, these private parties with the organizers of the event at Richard Spencer's apartment, people explicitly discussed the legality of hitting people with their cars. This is not random people in the Discord that Richard could say, oh, I don't know him, I never met him,

I never posted in Discord. This is somebody sitting on your the Discord that Richard could say, oh, I don't know him. I never met him. I never posted in Discord. This is somebody sitting on your couch, Richard. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, Samantha said that during that time period, Klein was building an army for Richard. And Kessler texted Spencer something similar, right? That we'll build an army, my liege. Fucking dork ass shit.

similar right that we'll build an army my liege fucking dork ass shit um but so one one fun surprise from samantha was that during that time period klein was you know planning to provide his militia in the form of identity europa right these these street troops he was going to provide to spencer to build the movement but that when the time came he always knew that he would kill Richard to take control. These people are all such fucking. It's a shame that what they actually are is. Deniable assets for the most dangerous folks, you know, the fucking the fucking Bannon types. Right. Because if all of the fascists were this dumb i wouldn't be so

worried and it's hard it's hard to walk the line between you know really getting a kick out of some of these moments where it is yeah genuinely funny right but then you remember like these people are very dangerous these people are responsible for a death these people it's this emotional whiplash right of the plaintiffs getting on and saying, yes, my life was ruined. I still have nightmares. I still have to go to physical therapy. And then Cantwell getting up there and asking Heimbach if he's a federal agent. Yeah. Right. So we've only seen one of the defendants on the stand so far, but I have a strong feeling Cantwell is going to use every opportunity that he has his frenemies under oath to ask them if they snitched on him.

Yeah, that's going to be pretty funny. It's going to be great. You got to laugh sometimes. Life's too hard. But Cantwell is really using this. I think, you know, he has nothing to lose, right? This is a case about damages. He has no money for them to take.

He has $30,000 in credit card debt and his car got repossessed once he went to prison. He has nothing for them to take. He has $30,000 in credit card debt and his car got repossessed once he went to prison. He has nothing for them to take. The only person he knows who did have anything is Ian Freeman, who's currently facing federal charges for some sort of complicated Bitcoin money laundering scam through a fake church. So he doesn't even have any friends to help him. That's an interesting case, but I don't have time for it now. Yeah. But he has nothing for them to take. He's already a felon. He can't have a gun anymore. I think he's just using this as an opportunity, as a platform to get his message out there and to harm the people he thinks harmed him. So every chance he gets, he's trying to force witnesses to dox people.

Right. He asked one of the plaintiffs, Devin Willis, another young man who was injured at the Torch March, a plaintiff in this case. He asked him, he forced him to name the names of the non-parties who were also counter-demonstrating at the statue. These people's names have not been on the record. The judge made him do that? Made him do that. That's fucked up. made him do that that's fucked up um and you know you could if you were i don't know a complete baby-brained idiot you could say well you know that maybe there was a legal reason that he needed

those names there's not and we know there's not because he tried to do it again today um there was a non-party witness a young woman who lived um in one of the dorm rooms right by the rotunda they're called the lawn rooms it's a opportunity. Only super high achievers get to live in those beautiful historic lawn rooms. So she lived right near where the torch march was happening and she heard it and she went outside and she looked at it. She's not a party to the suit.

She has no knowledge of these people or what happened. She just saw this thing happen and she testified to that. And he tried to, you know, she had made some passing remark that she'd heard from another student that maybe there would be a thing on campus, right? That they knew about the rally the next day, but like, I don't know, maybe these guys will try and come here, just like be on your toes, right? Not anything specific. She was not, she's not an activist.

She's not, she didn't know anything, right? And so he was, grilled her. Tell me who told you that. Tell me who told you that. How did you know that? And he said, on the record, direct quote, I want to know who infiltrated our communications. So he's trying to use this, this moment where he has someone under oath to extract information about who snitched. he wants to know who infiltrated their secret communications, which is him admitting there were secret communications that weren't turned over in discovery, which wasn't smart of him to do. But he's using this process to get names of people who he can harass. And we know that's what they're doing because while he was getting these names from that other witness,

you know, the names of the people at the statue, Jason Kessler, the lead defendant, right, the defendant whose name is on the lawsuit, the lead organizer of the rally, is posting all this time. He's posting through it, posting through it. If you had a good lawyer, he would tell you not to post through your own conspiracy trial. So while Cantwell is extracting these names from this poor young man, Kessler's posting them. He's posting their pictures and their legal names

and describing their involvement. These people who are not party to this lawsuit. And there's no way to interpret that other than as a vehicle for harassment. Yeah. I think there will be collateral damage of this lawsuit, but I hope that it does have the

intended deterrent effect, right? Sorry, I've been talking at length for a while, but just in summation, in summation, I think, inside the courtroom, this is a case about damages, right? The judge is very clear that like, stop talking about broader societal impact.

You can't tell the jury about that. That's not relevant to this case. This legally speaking is a case about, did this thing happen? Were these people hurt by it? What is the dollar amount of their pain? Legally speaking, a case about did this thing happen? Were these people hurt by it? What is the dollar amount of their pain? Legally speaking, that's it.

But outside the courtroom, this is about deterrence, right? This is about setting a precedent that if you do this, if you plan a rally knowing that the people who come to your rally will hurt people because you told them that's the goal, right? Even if you're not the one who swings the stick, even if you're not the one who swings the stick even if you're not the one pressing the accelerator you are responsible and you can be held accountable yeah and that is an important message yeah we will like your life will be ruined if you participate in this shit that even if you don't have anything for us to take we will put a garnishment on you that will follow you to the fucking grave yep yep and i think yeah that's that's i would agree what i think is important here um molly i think that's that's everything for now we're still how much longer do we have to go through this the uh the court whatchamajig well it's scheduled for four weeks it's been one and a half so and there was there was some some anxiety and hand-wringing about how maybe four

weeks won't cut it yeah jesus so i'm regretting my decision to actively live tweet so like i'm transcribing in real time for eight hours a day that happens oh your fingers you are using a laptop or are you doing it on a phone i'm'm doing it on a laptop. Thank God. So because of COVID, no one can go into the courthouse because there's so many parties in this case and there's the plague and no one can go into the courthouse except for there's a press room where 15 people who got pre-approved by a federal court can go and sit and look at a monitor. But I'm sitting at home. I'm comfy at home. Good. So I'm using my computer. Thank God. Okay. Thank God.. So I'm using my computer. Thank God. Yeah, that would be a nice thing. And I was disappointed.

You know, I kind of wanted to see. I love to see. I love the courtroom ambiance. But I'll be honest, I'm way less worried. I'm way less worried about getting stabbed here at home. That is true.

That is true. People are less likely to get stabbed at home or more likely, one of the two. I don't know. Tell us in the comments where you think people are most likely to get stabbed uh and um molly thank you so much thank you both for what you're doing and for coming on the show is there anywhere the listeners can find slash support you uh would you like people to mail you knives?

What? Oh, mail me knives. Yeah, but not as a threat, like as a fun thing. Fun knives for fun. I did get a large machete in the mail the other day, and before I saw the little gift note, I was confused. Oh, good. Okay, I'm glad you're getting gift machetes.

Yeah, yeah. My friend Shep, a sheep farmer in North Carolina, sent me a large blade. Thanks, Shep. Yeah, good. Okay. I'm glad you're getting gift machetes. Yeah. Yeah. My friend Shep, a sheep farmer in North Carolina, sent me a large blade. Yeah. Good. No, but if you're interested in reading moment by moment live transcription of people screaming Holocaust denial at a federal judge, you can check me out on Twitter. That's at socialist dog mom. you can check me out on Twitter that's at socialist dog mom that's what happens when you make a little joke with your friends when you have five followers and then you end up

using it professionally then you become national news repeatedly I know then people are posting your mugshot making fun of your username your bullshit mugshot you look great but it's bullshit nobody looks good after they get left in a hot van

like a dog yeah but that's true well molly that's gonna be the end of the episode so why don't we why don't we sing a song and and and roll out hopefully not not the song that Heimbach included in his Christmas letter to James Fields in prison. Oh, God, that must have been really special. Ah, geez, I'll have to look that up. I did come across in my browsing through Fascist Telegram the other week an entire album, dozens of songs that were all nazi covers of blink 182's entire discography everything everything and they called it of course they called it blink 1488 like of course they did of course they did it was i don't i don't even know like i i i don't even know like how to talk about that it was just a thing that i found do you know hampton stall the

the guy who studies malicious oh yeah yeah yeah yeah he's got a particular fascination with white power rap oh god yeah it's never any good although there was a there is a fun in one of the uh h bomber guy videos he found finds this flat earth nazi has a rap. That's amazing. Oh, all right. Partial. I'm partial to Cantwell's diss tracks. Yeah.

Oh God. Chris Cantwell. Well, thank you, Molly. And, uh, off we go into the wild blue yonder.

I'm going to go smoke some legal weed and fall asleep face down. Hopefully not thinking about this trial. I am not going to smoke some legal weed and fall asleep face down, hopefully not thinking about this trial. I am not going to smoke some legal weed because that's federally a crime, Molly. All right. Have a good day, Molly. All right. Good night. Thank you all for listening. 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 Sonorum. 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. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities,

artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,

where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible don't get me wrong though i love technology i just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people i swear to god things can change if we're loud enough so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home, and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, the podcast that is occasionally introduced competently, as it sort of was today, because our guest today is someone who is very near and dear to me and to, like, almost every other person that I know and work with. Moira Meltzer-Cohen.

Moira, you are a lawyer focusing on civil rights and movement kind of cases. And you are the lawyer of, yeah, like everybody I respect in the world. Yeah. You're the person that I text whenever I need to know hey was this a crime um or it never is and it never is uh i'm law-abiding very law-abiding um and uh yeah we wanted to have you on both because you're always a breath of sunshine and because um there's some like law stuff happening these days we just had um our mutual friend molly conjure on to talk about the charlottesville case which is quite a thing uh

today was the day yeah today today had some had some moments chris cantwell and richard spencer representing themselves separately each cross-examining each other i'd have so many thoughts but mostly my thoughts involve laughing yeah it's very very funny it's it's it's the funniest of an incredibly tragic and infuriating situation something fine funny finally happened um so at least there's that. Chris is often very funny in spite of himself. Yeah. I would love one day to just get you on and do a, we can do a reading of some of Chris Cantwell's better legal filings. Oh.

Because he's got quite the legal mind. Robert, I think I maybe didn't ever tell you about the fact that we did a Purim spiel, which is a performance of the story of Esther. Oh my God. Traditionally done at Purim, which is a Jewish holiday. And it was based on the complaint that he filed. Oh my God. Yeah.

Woodard the third was prominently Unite the Right rally, has been incarcerated for a year or so now and continues to put out his own legal motions, generally handwritten, alleging all kinds of conspiracies from the people who did not call the fbi and admit to committing several crimes yeah we should we should absolutely absolutely do a crossover with daniel harper um and moira to discuss cantwell's uh legal genius but but today moira we wanted to have you on because there is another case that uh a lot of folks are rightly concerned about because it has some pretty dire implications, depending on how it goes in a number of ways. The trial of Kyle Rittenhouse for the I mean, everyone knows Kyle Rittenhouse took a gun illegally across state lines to a protest. So he might have the chance to shoot people and then shot people. This is my opinion about what happened. the legal case is unfolding um there's been a lot of talk online

on on twitter and whatnot about how obviously unfair the judge is being this is what the talk on twitter is about and it's because of a couple of things one is that the judge and and again i'm before i i cut i go to you moira I'm just explaining kind of the way the discourse has been. The discourse has stated like, well, the judge said you can't call Kyle. You can't call the people that he killed victims, but you can call the people that he killed looters and arsonists. And so people are saying, look at this very clear example of how how bad the justice system is. And I wanted to bring you on for a number of reasons, including the fact that like,

there's a lot of stuff that seems fucked up and in fact is fucked up, you could argue, but is also like pretty normal justice system stuff and some stuff that seems fucked up, but actually isn't. This is not, I'm not necessarily talking about the Rittenhouse case here, just in general when we talk about the law. So I guess I wanted to have you on to explain to us

what's happening in your opinion and how normal, abnormal, good, bad are kind of the things that we're seeing, the decisions we're seeing this judge make in this case so far. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So the trial, I think when you asked me to comment on this, the trial had not started. The trial has now started. It has been characterized by the defense saying the N-word, a juror being dismissed. The juror this morning, I think, was dismissed for making a cruel and nakedly racist joke. And apparently the judge had a fit of pique about the media's response to his

evidentiary rulings, which are what you've asked me to come discuss, which is itself actually one of the more unusual things about this, how this trial is going. It's always a little bit hard for me to opine on a case that is not my case. I feel tentative about it. This would never be my case because I would not represent a white supremacist and I am not a prosecutor and would never be a prosecutor. And I was not able to look at the briefing because although all of the briefing was ostensibly publicly filed, it is not actually publicly available. I had a very interesting conversation with the clerk of court in Kenosha who told me that if I mailed her a request, she would fax me the briefing at $1.25 a page. And I said,

thank you very much. Goodbye. So I'll do my best to speak to these rulings and the sort of larger issues as I see them. As you noted, there've been a lot of kind of salacious headlines about the evidentiary rules in this case. And I think those headlines are really, they're less about what's actually happening in the case, and they're more reflective of the sort of pearl clutching liberal impulse to notice the totally self-evident hypocrisy of the legal system. And then to conclude that because certain groups are shown more leniency, And then to conclude that because certain groups are shown more leniency, the way to resolve this hypocrisy is to make sure everyone is policed and prosecuted and punished as viciously as the left is, which is talk about liberals, as I will probably do a little bit, I don't mean like, I mean liberal as opposed to radical people who are more or less okay with the

underlying big systems like capitalism and white supremacy and heteropatriarchy and like maybe are more concerned with the iterations of those things that are particularly gauche, but they don't actually mind the systems themselves or the way that those systems are reiterated and enforced by, for example, the American criminal legal system. So, you know, I think the kind of liberal read on these rulings is not only not legally sound. I think it's actually incredibly dangerous. And it's watching this unfold and watching the liberal commentary on it, I think, is one of the things. really see liberals and liberalism losing credibility because they're sort of calling out this hypocrisy. And at the same time, there's a little bit of a double standard that they want to propose and enforce. So, okay. So I'll talk about the rulings that you discussed. The first

one is that the judge said that the prosecution is not allowed to refer to the people that were in-house killed as victims. I will remind you, as I remind all of my clients continuously, that the law is at best adjacent to common sense understandings of justice and even frankly, common sense understandings of reality. Obviously, the people that Kyle Rittenhouse killed were victims. But as my beloved colleague, Sandy reminded me, the concept of victimhood, the status of victimhood is among the things that needs to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at this trial. Yeah. Right. And so in, in fact, this is a totally straightforward ruling. Yeah. It is a ruling that I would argue for as a defense attorney, and that I expect to win where I trying in your case. So, you know, yeah, it's one of those things like you have to overcome this.

This you have to overcome when you're thinking about a trial, like the fact that, you know, he's guilty because the point of a trial is that everyone like there's a process. Right. We don't just do street justice because that's what Rittenhouse did. Like where you have to like one of the it is troubling to me the extent that people are like, well, he he should be presumed like we should be referring to the people he shot as victims before he has been adjudicated as guilty because like that's that's important. Like the presumption of innocence matters. And it's it's it's also something that's that's important like the presumption of innocence matters and it's it's it's also something that's very unfair like there's a a person in portland uh alexander dial who got in trouble for taking a hammer out of a nazi's hand during a rally um and has been charged with several felonies and because his trial kept getting delayed spent two and a half years under

pre-trial conditions so the presumption of innocence is hardly equal, but it is important. Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, we'll talk about this, I think, in a little bit, but that's exactly the issue, right, is that we need to be enforcing the equal application of the presumption of innocence, not being, you know, rabidly going after the right in the same way that we are used to law enforcement and the judiciary going after the left. The other ruling that the judge made, which you mentioned, was that he said that the defense is authorized to characterize the people that Rittenhouse killed as looters or rioters if there is evidence presented that they were in fact looting and or rioting. I would, if I were, you know, in this case, which of course I'm not,

I would object to this on the grounds that it is prejudicial and bullshit. I would object to this on the grounds that it is prejudicial and bullshit. And it's fucked up and bullshit. Yeah. Yes. That said, I am not super surprised by that ruling. I would say it's likely within the sound discretion of the judge. And if, you know, and if the prosecution disagrees, it's a matter for appeal. You know, I think one of the things the judge said about this,

actually, that I think is really important and correct, is that he has a tremendous amount of discretion in making evidentiary rulings. One of the rulings he made was that he's admitting the testimony of an expert witness, which, you know, I think a lot of people are also quite upset about. But that said, again, this is not that unusual. And it's very difficult for him to deny that motion to have his evidence or his testimony admitted, because the prosecution routinely uses use of force experts in similar trials yeah um so now we're they're just on the other side of the table yeah um so you know first of all i get that these rulings don't make us feel good um but they aren't that strange. And as I said, the judge has tremendous discretion in these matters. I was thinking about how to illustrate this, and it occurred to me that I

think the last time I was on one of your podcasts, you asked me whether cocaine was illegal. Yeah. Where are we landing on that, by the way? So I think the first time you asked me, I was a total killjoy and was like, of course, it's illegal, Robert. But if I'd actually taken your question more seriously, I think a better answer probably would have been nobody knows. For precisely this reason, because the real question is not what the law says. reason, because the real question is not what the law says. The real question is how or whether or against whom or to what degree and under what circumstances will that law be enforced? And these are always open questions and arguments, and judges have a ton of power. This case is no exception. So, you know, again, not only are these rulings pretty

standard, but they're, I think within the judge's discretion, some of them I really dislike, some of them make total sense to me. And I think that what is happening is not necessarily sound legal analysis, but liberals sort of trying to argue that Rittenhouse should be more harshly prosecuted by saying that these specific rulings are unfair or unusual. It's a little bit like the liberals crying out now because people are putting like, let's go Brandon on printing it on rifle receivers and saying like, well, the Secret Service should investigate. Well, if they do that, then some then like 30, if they do that and like one company gets a fine 40 people are going to go to prison for having red flags on their body armor like that's the way it works in this country but it's the right thing yeah any any anarchist with a 3d

printer is going to immediately go to jail yeah that's not like that is correct yeah yeah so i i guess the thing that i want to point out here is that what is actually unusual about this case is not these rulings. It is that Rittenhouse is going to trial at all. And the reason Rittenhouse is going to trial is able to go to trial is largely because this prosecution is fundamentally calculated not to be repressive. to be repressive. So I want to kind of zoom out and get away from the weeds of these evidentiary rulings. So in its simplest expression, when we talk about the difference between state and federal jurisdiction, we're saying kind of jurisdiction for dummies, overly simplified, Jurisdiction for dummies, overly simplified, is stuff that happens inside or only impacts a given state is typically prosecuted by the state. And if it impacts, if your offense conduct or alleged offense conduct impacts more than one state, then it is or can be prosecuted by the federal department of justice. So Kyle Rittenhouse crossed state lines with a pretty serious firearm and he shot three people. This puts us immediately into federal jurisdiction land. He did this in the context of an uprising for racial justice that has been

characterized by the fact that those rising up on the side of racial justice have been subject to intense repression by the federal government, DOJ has shown themselves to be fire-breathingly enthusiastic about criticizing their jurisdiction over heady offenses based on totally tenuous grounds for people on the left or who are perceived to be on the left. DOJ has asserted jurisdiction in order to prosecute people for absolutely trivial, but politically motivated offenses that would be left to the state to prosecute absent the politics of the accused. They have asserted federal jurisdiction on really flimsy bases, like that a local police building or vehicle belongs to a department that has received federal funding, so property damage against it becomes a federal offense.

One thing they're doing that is unusual is the federal government is asserting concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute offenses. So I know there's someone in Portland who is simultaneously being prosecuted by Multnomah and also the federal government for allegedly throwing some accelerant on a police building. Right. So it is very curious that Rittenhouse, who quite clearly did something that would, you know, fall under federal jurisdiction, is not being federally charged. And it matters a lot for how the case proceeds. Because the way that federal prosecutions operate is that the feds will typically stack these indictments in a way that really puts tremendous pressure on them to plead guilty, which is not typically the case or doesn't happen in the same way in a state prosecution.

or doesn't happen in the same way in a state prosecution. So you have these stacked indictments with multiple, multiple counts ranging, you know, all kinds of conduct, often involving, you know, a conspiracy, which can be very, very easy to prove. And a guilty finding on any of those counts could be like a mandatory minimum of five to 10 years. And then if you're looking at a guilty on more than one or all of those counts, you're looking at a sentence, potentially concurrent sentences that are tantamount to dying in prison. And so this creates tremendous pressure on federal defendants to negotiate a pretrial disposition to take a guilty plea. So again, Kyle Rittenhouse crosses state lines with this firearm, which gets used in the commission of an act of violence. And I feel extremely confident that any federal prosecutor could come up with a stack of counts against him within about 10 minutes without breaking a sweat. But, you know, so, you know, if you think about

him being in that position, you think through, okay, if I go to trial, what are likely outcomes? what are likely outcomes. If Kyle Rittenhouse went to trial federally, and even if he prevailed on a self-defense, which could happen, if he were found guilty on one or more of the lesser charges, he would still be looking at really, really serious time. But that's not where we are, right? We are in a really weird place where, like in a federal context, we wouldn't even be like talking about evidentiary rulings because he would almost certainly not be going to trial, right? Yeah, it would be a plea sort of deal. be going to trial right yeah or you know if he had a reasonable lawyer he would probably be negotiating a plea i'm curious what do you think about because one argument i've heard and i'm

certainly in no position to evaluate this personally is that if federal charges had been placed on him you know when the crime you know in, Trump would have pardoned him. I don't know. Yeah. Like I've heard people argue that like, well, at least with the state charges, he can't be pardoned by President Trump. Like I'm in no position to really evaluate that. But I'm curious what you think about that. I honestly can't even. Yeah. Speculate about what might have happened. That is very interesting. I do think that if the if DOJ wanted to charge him at this point, I mean, not. They still could, right? interesting FOIA request to be made to DOJ to see what kind of memo was circulated about whether or not they were going to pick this one up. They clearly declined to prosecute.

The only thing that I could come up with, to be honest, and I looked and did not really see any meaningful discussion of this, of their decision not to prosecute. The only thing that occurred to me is that they might have been reluctant to assert jurisdiction over a minor, but they can prosecute anyone over the age of 15 as an adult if they engage in violent crimes, or if they are alleged to have engaged in violent crimes. So that's not, or if they are alleged to have engaged in violent crime. So that's not, it wouldn't entirely undermine their ability to do so. So, you know, for whatever reason, you know, for whatever reason they didn't, I think it is worth noting.

I think it is, as I said, very curious. And it's particularly curious in light of the intense federal repression that has been faced by people perceived to be on the left yeah absolutely you know so like again i want to be very clear i don't i'm not suggesting that i want him to be federally prosecuted um i i don't particularly i'm not interested in arguing for more prosecutions or for making the state the arbiter of political righteousness or giving the state more enforcement power or more resources. You know, but, you know, and look, no shade to Kenosha, Wisconsin, all right. But one of the things that federal prosecutors are really have a lot of experience doing is digital forensic investigations. And in this case, one of the sort of

critical questions is, did he have specific intent to go across state lines and engage in violence? And I suspect that if you were to access all of his texts and metadata and social media posts, that you could probably find evidence of that specific intent. And I think that the federal government is probably better positioned to do that than the prosecutors in Kenosha. And they decided not to, right? So, you know, and that is exactly the kind of investigation that they mounted against Daniel Baker, who just, he's the yoga teacher in Tallahassee who just got three and a half years for posting vague, sort of incoherent,

mutually contradictory, kind of not at all frightening. Yeah. I, it's not, I wouldn't characterize this threats, but I, I hesitate to,

to that, you know, he posted some stuff on social media and, and now he's going to do three years in federal prison. Yeah. My attitude on the nature of what he posts is that like if prior to his prosecution, you had brought that post to me, I said, well, probably not a great idea to post. But also literally every week, a right winger in the Portland area posts something significantly more actionable right now. Chandler Pappas currently being charged with assaulting six police officers in the state capitol in Salem just announced that he's doing armed training as a convicted felon outside of Portland later this November, which if he's if he touches a firearm, he should go away to like, based on the letter of the law, he should go to prison for years. Like that's the way the law is written. Nothing's going to happen to him.

He's going to get to train people with guns and continue to carry guns. And it's, it's fine for him. Um, anyway, I, whatever, I'm sorry. It's okay. I just, I guess your, your listeners can't see that I have my head in my hands. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, what Daniel Baker did was certainly ill-advised.

Yeah, ill-advised is how I would characterize it. I have clients who have been visited by the Secret Service or have been visited by the FBI for saying stuff that when they call me and they're like, well, I just said this. And I'm like, yeah, I know that you're not going to actually not gonna actually do that but maybe don't you know it's ill-advised it's not it's ill-advised but it's protected by the very first amendment more or less and you know i i i've said this before i don't think the uh solution to to um being surveilled on social media is self-censorship i think it is courage but i also think that discretion is the better part of valor so yes pick your battles and maybe yeah um understand that it's not fair you know uh yeah and also like what do you gain by you know being bumptious on the internet no and it's one of those things where yeah if that guy had had a high dollar lawyer um if he if he'd been a rich person yeah maybe he would have gotten away with it um who

knows but like he it's it's he certainly would have gotten oh i can certainly say he would have gotten away with it if he'd been a right winger because a bunch of every single day. I can't make any speculation about that particular case, but I can say that the people who are being surveilled intensely and targeted for that kind of repression are not the people on the right. The people on the right are able to make those kinds of statements and not be particularly taken seriously, even when they should be. And people on the left are presumed to be, you know, Antifa super soldiers. So, you know, I think the decision not to assert federal jurisdiction in the Rittenhouse case is interesting. It is noteworthy. I'm really curious about what was going on there. And it has had a sort of cascade of effects,

including, I doubt that the forensic digital investigation was as good as it would have been had it been federal. And I doubt that the, I mean, he's facing multiple charges, but I don't think that he would have been as likely to go to trial had he been federally charged. So again, I don't, you know, this is not an argument for more federal prosecution. Yeah, of course. But like, I think the breathless outrage that we're seeing in, you know, these headlines, where people are correctly identifying the hypocrisy of the criminal legal system. I think it's sort of an exercise in point missing. You know, this prosecution, like many of the prosecutions that we see or the prosecutions that don't happen at all

that involve members of the dominant class or people who uphold the values of the dominant classes, is sort of proof of concept that it's possible to effectively allocate the burden of proof to the prosecution. It's possible not to go super hard on people and punish them for exercising their trial right. Right? I mean, it's possible to treat all people accused of offenses in this way. And I would much rather, I mean, obviously, my ultimate goal is to dismantle the entire system, you know, but in the meantime, I don't think what we need is more vicious prosecution of the right. I think we need consistent and commensurate prosecution or lack of prosecution.

We need, you know, I think that seeing the way that the right is treated should be evidence for and an argument for the possibility of treating all people with more leniency rather than the intense federal repression that we are facing and have been facing since the Palmer raids. So, yeah.

Yeah. Well, Moira, that is the stuff I wanted to ask about. Is there anything else that I mean? Sure. I go off on liberals some more. Please. Please. I mean, Garrison is a huge fan of liberals. He's got actually a full back tattoo of barack obama and bill clinton but they're they're in the the volleyball scene from top gun um it's an incredible tattoo he did it all freehand on his own back amazing um this is like the garrison i hope i don't receive any nixon tattoo i hope i don't receive any awful fan art now oh no someone someone do it come on come on photoshop garrison's head onto onto roger stone's back and photoshop nixon's head out and the volleyball scene from top gun with

bill clinton and barack obama do it do it someone's gonna do it garrison's workplace somebody is definitely gonna do it this is you could sue me for this and you'd be right to do so um but let's get back to it. And I might represent you. Trial of the century. Yeah, that sounds great. I think this is a trend that we see with people who are not necessarily focused on looking at the ways that the law is always going to be used first and worst against the already most vulnerable, right? So we've seen things like, I think there's just this very well-documented liberal impulse, and I think it's very well-intentioned, but it's very dangerous to do things, to like assume that the system somehow works or should work.

And that it just needs to be like followed more closely. And that if we push for things like if we like use the law to constrain things that I would agree are the most harmful excesses of bigotry. would agree are the most harmful excesses of bigotry, right? That the law would be a good tool for addressing violence and bigotry. And the law does not, that is not what kind of tool the law is. When we push for things like laws regulating political speech, including so-called hate speech, laws regulating what are referred to as hate crimes, laws regulating who can carry a firearm and what they might look like, you know, pushes for limiting the places or circumstances under which you could protest or demonstrate, right? Which, you know, which was done. There was a real big push to forbid anti-choice activists from protesting outside of clinics, right? Which I understand,

right? But what actually is the upshot of doing that? When we see this kind of push to use the law as a tool to enforce a particular political agenda, it is not, you know, it's just a very ill-conceived way to approach this because the law is never going to protect the most vulnerable. Well, these structures of power that remain in place. And so, you know, it's just always going to be leveraged against the people who have the least amount of power. And, and so, you know, this,

this sort of response to the written house stuff to me is just essentially a recuperation of that impulse. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a little like that old. I think the joke is attributed to Gandhi. I don't know if Gandhi actually said it, but like he was asked, what do you think of Christian civilization? And he said, I think it would be a wonderful idea. What do you think of the fair and equal rule of law? Sounds nice. Yeah. But it was either Gandhi or Groucho Marx. Yeah. One of the two.

Yeah. Maybe both. Maybe both. I don't know that we ever saw them together. All right. So I don't know. I it's it's obviously it's too early to. It's one of those things where all of the complaining about the unfairness of the trial of Rittenhouse winds up getting rammed into a legal wall. Metaphorically, it may seem silly in context or in retrospect, or he may.

This may be the thing that ignites a new wave of vigilantes showing up at protests with guns. Yeah, it's to be untouchable like really with the big fears that we don't know precedent that will allow other people to use quote-unquote self-defense claims in effort just to kill black activists to kill activists on the left to kill people wearing you know black hoodies and bandanas right yeah because that's the that's the big fear out of this situation because my my expectation is that if Rittenhouse gets off um or even just gets very minor like if it's if he's if he's out of jail quickly within about six months he's going to be a millionaire um absolutely yeah that's the way the right wing works I would gently ask you to think about what happens if he doesn't because if he's convicted, we are going to see a deepening of the repression that is faced by everyone on the left as well.

We lose either way. Yeah. No good choices on the table. There's no winning. I guess I think, I mean, part of it, I guess, depends on what he's convicted for. I mean, part of it, I guess, depends on what he's convicted for, because some of the stuff has I would it seems to me some of the things he's charged with, if convicted, there's more potential negative implications across the political aisle than with others. Like if if it's ruled murder, I don't know, that feels less worries. I mean, I have some concerns about the crossing state line stuff.

I don't know. I mean, none of it's good. I guess where I am is I remember vividly how much the situation on the ground changed after Kenosha, just in Portland even. I mean, Garrison can back me up with this. They were there for that, too. Like it was a it was a significant shift in the feeling of deadliness, you know, whenever there't know. I don't know, Moira. Uh, I don't know. I, I don't, I don't want Rittenhouse to get off scot-free for shooting three people. You're absolutely right.

There's no, there's no winning with the legal system. The only way to win is not to play. The only way to win is not to play. So form your own breakaway civilization. Yeah. Escape. And also Gandhi. And Gandhi. Yeah. is not to play so form your own breakaway civilization yeah escape and also gandhi and gandhi yeah uh and elrond hubbard take to the sea yes yeah always look i don't i don't think um i i'm not looking for him to prevail on the self-defense yeah um of this is going to make me feel good. But I think that whether or not he is punished, whether or not he is convicted, there will be negative repercussions. And all of those

negative consequences will redound to the detriment of the people who are already facing the most intense federal repression. Yeah, that is. I mean, and in fairness, like this is the case of a child who killed two people and is now we are determining whether or not this child will spend the rest of their life in a cell. None of this should make anyone feel good no matter what happens it's a thoroughly bleak story yeah yeah it's yeah because this kid is never gonna have a chance to grow up and be like oh i was being like a horrible no they'll never be able to adjust to anything else rather than being this person that like culturally has been created right there they are like a cultural thing they are an item they're not a person anymore yeah and they'll

never be able to escape that yeah i was a piece of shit when i was 17 and if i'd had access to an ar 15 and a chance to feel like a hero i might have done something horrific too. And instead you were just doing sloppy steaks. And it's fine. And now it's fine. You watched. I think you should leave Moira. I'm sorry. Have you watched? I think you should leave Moira.

No. Oh, it's good. It's good. Okay. I'll check it out. I'll take a look. Yeah.

I don't know. Well, thank you, Moira. This is always appreciated. You're welcome. I don't know. We've talked a bit about anarchism. How much of your belief about the way the world ought to be and is came as a result of getting into the

guts of the legal system you mean did i become more devoted to anarchism when i went to law school yeah um i didn't become less devoted to it i i remember when I was going to law school, people kept saying, oh, you're going to become really conservative. And I was like, I don't think that's true. That seems fake. And in fact, I remember being in my criminal procedure class and just thinking, how in the world can anyone at any law school read Miranda, which is a case where someone is, you know, just horrifically abused by police in order to extract a statement. How could anybody read this case and not come out of law school with a deep contempt for law enforcement? You know, I know that it happens.

I don't know how. Yeah. Always uplifting. Yeah. I mean, it is. It's important to know. You know, I when I was when I was younger and poor and dealing with things like taxes, I would often go years without paying them and I would ignore debts and bills until my student loans, until it became a serious problem because I didn't want to look at it. I didn't even want to look at the scale of the issue and grapple with it.

I just wanted to run away from it and when i actually like sat down and and figured out my situation and and like really came to understand like what what i needed to do in order to deal with those problems like it was stressful and it sucked and it was fucking days of work but getting understanding the scope of the problem i'd gotten myself into was a necessary step to like fixing the situation. And I think the same is true with like this kind of shit. It's not fun. Nobody who is, I think, a reasonable person like wants to dig into the U.S. justice system and get into the guts of it because it's bleak as hell.

But you need to because it's it's you can't escape it unless you flee the country and live in a place with no extradition treaties or international waters. I feel like you're talking about a lot of the people you've profiled. Yeah. I mean, Ecuador does sound nice. I'm sure it's lovely this time of year. Yeah, I think you're right. We need to be able to have a sort of clear-eyed assessment so that we can accurately identify

and effectively address the problems. Unfortunately, I think the problems are so um all encompassing that i i don't know that there's i would venture to say that there is not a real totalizing solution no that doesn't involve total abolition yeah i i i agree with you but the meantime, I mean, I think there are there are things that we can do to. Yeah. To advocate for our clients or. Yeah. As an individual, you can do to protect yourself.

And that's why it is important to have some sort of working understanding, because you can keep yourself and the people around you at least somewhat safer if you do understand the beast. Even though your goal is to destroy it, and that's, I think, the only reasonable goal when you really understand it, it still behooves you to understand it. I mean, it's the same with what Garrison and I do with the fucking Nazis, spending all this time in weird telegram channels like reading what they're trying to understand them?

Because you do need to understand them to effectively combat them. It's not for the faint of heart. No, no, no. I mean, what we're doing. Yeah, neither is what you do. The message is that we're all well adjusted and we're all great. We're all doing great. We're saving up for that boat.

Nobody has any secondary trauma. No. There's no secondary trauma in international waters, Moira. I have that my old friend LRH told me that. Just you and the open sea. And a bunch of 20-year-olds searching

for gold that I buried in a past life. That does sound fun. Yeah. He is both fascinating and terrifying. Yeah. Just like our legal system.

And that wraps up this episode. That brings us around. Moira, do you have anything you want to plug? Any place maybe our listeners could, could send donations that would help somebody who's throwing themselves against a wall at the moment. Would certainly suggest that people look into whatever, um, bail funds are local to them.

There's one I know in New York called COVID bailout, NYC that's, um, doing incredible work right now to get people off Rikers Island, which is having a humanitarian crisis of just unbelievable scope. It sounds to me like the conditions on Rikers right now are at least as bad as the conditions that led to the Attica uprising. that led to the Attica uprising. So I would always, always direct people to give money to local bail funds. I also want to plug the National Lawyers Guild Anti-Federal Repression or Federal Defense Hotline, which is 212-679-2811. 212-679-2811. If you call that number or you can call that number if you are having unwanted contact with federal agents and you can be advised by an attorney, who is me, about your rights and responsibilities with respect to federal agents. And I will try to

connect you with appropriate resources in your area. This is not the hotline to call if you've been injured by a police officer. This is the hotline to call if you have been visited by the FBI. Don't talk to cops. If you are contacted by law enforcement, say, I am represented by counsel. Please leave your name and number and my lawyer will call you. And remember that you cannot talk your way out of an arrest, but you can talk your way into a conviction. All great points, all great things to be aware of. Speaking of great things to be aware of, be aware that we'll be back tomorrow, unless this is a Friday, in which case we'll be back next week from now until the heat death of the universe. Thank you so much, Laura.

You're so welcome. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though.

I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you.

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

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian mean, you look so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Cuba. Mr. González wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian González story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about the continual state of bad things happening and how sometimes you can make them less bad or not happen and today we're going to i'm christopher wong by the way and today we're going

to be talking about bosnia a place where things went about as bad as they possibly can and about how they're heading in very scary directions now. And with us to talk about this is Arnessa Kustrit. Arnessa is a genocide survivor and an academic expert on genocides in general. Arnessa, how are you doing? You know, I'm doing okay. I think all things considered. Yeah. You know, being sort of bombarded on a daily basis with, you know, possible threats and talks about, you know, a new conflict, war brewing in the Balkans is not an easy thing to contend with.

Yeah, definitely not but yeah but other than that i'm doing great thanks for asking yeah i'm glad i'm glad i'm glad you could be here with me today because the balkans extremely complicated place which i guess is true of most places but yeah and so i guess that that's that's where I wanted to go with my first question, because reading about what's happening now, my first instinct was go back to the Dayton Accords. But I'm actually not sure that that's even the best place to start. you if so okay so if if you're coming into looking at the balkans for the first time and you're trying to understand what's going on now where do you think is the best place to start on it because i think you know the best god it's so hard yeah we're talking about so much history honestly but the thing is let's you know let's start with the death of Tito. That's always a good place, I think, because that's really when things started to kind of shift in the Balkans and the former, you know, socialist Yugoslavia was really once Tito died and his place became, you know, empty as this sort of unifying factor of all the

various ethnicities and nationalities within Yugoslavia, you know, once he was gone, that sort of left this vacuum that needed to be filled. And unfortunately, instead of being filled by another instead of being filled by another socialist, you know, pro equality, pro unity leader, it was filled with a nationalist vacuum, which is kind of where we still are, unfortunately. You know, it started obviously with, with little things, I think with little sort of conversations and, and little subtle, I think, with little sort of conversations and little subtle,

I guess, you know, ethno-nationalist rhetorics. And it just kind of like grew and spiraled from there. And obviously, you know, that sort of thing led to Milosevic in Kosovo giving his infamous speech, which kind of really gave that full-fledged stamp on, okay, yes, this is a ultra-nationalist, you know, ethno-nationalist president that we now have who's threatening war across the other ethnicities. What do we do next? And at that point, you know, that's when you sort of see the other countries start to secede, you know, Slovenia, Croatia, they're attacked by Serbia. And then obviously, eventually, it goes down to Bosnia. And yeah, I mean, it starts with the ethno-nationalism as it always does in the Balkans, I think. Um, you know, I don't think we're, we're anything special in terms of having conflict with our neighbors.

Look at France and England or America and Mexico or anyone really. It's just, you know, I think people make it sound as if we're special or we have these ancient hatreds, but you know, that's not really true. It all comes down to the fricking politics and the leaders. And unfortunately, you know, Milosevic was removed, but his policy, his beliefs continued to kind of stick around. You know, I think, you know, people think of people like Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic

who were, you know, genocidal war criminals as a thing of the past. But really, you look at, you know, the Serbian president, Vucic, or the Republika Srpska president, Milorad Tadic, and they're really just a continuation of Karadžić and Milošević. So nothing, you know, has fundamentally changed since Tito died, except, you know, we got some new agreements, we got some new territories, some new ethnic lines drawn up, and new pretty buildings, too. We have those now as well, but we don't really have that coexistence, at least not on paper, not in politics, certainly. at least not on paper, not in politics, certainly.

I want to go back for a second to, I guess, the moment of Tito dying, because it's always been a sort of interesting thing looking at it for me. Because I remember, I mean, you know, from studying Chinese history, right? There's a period where, in the 70s, where, okay, like everyone's looking for reform in China. What you would consider the sort of the... I guess you could call them the... I don't know. Left and right is complicated in China, but

there are a lot of what you would call the sort of left socialist democratic reformers who... I mean, people, they're looking at Yugoslavia as a model and they're going, oh, we can have workers' participation and we can have this we can have these like democratic enterprises and then that just implodes and and yeah i wonder if we could talk a little bit about more about that because my my very limited understanding of it

is like there's an economic crisis from the oil shocks and then once tito dies it's just like the wheels come off the whole system i mean that's a really good way of like putting it um you know like life in yugoslavia i don't think was like ever perfect and i definitely don't think it was a perfect system i think you know me being a Bosnian who was born to very, I think, pro-Yugoslav parents, I just like many of my, you know, socialist models, the fact that our parents, you know, were able to provide for their families and take vacations and travel and, you know, get together and all these sort of wonderful things. together and all these sort of wonderful things but in the background really in the sort of depths of the you know politics and the economic issues were kind of always there uh you know the one thing that Tito did was obviously he relied

unlike I think other socialist leaders of his time is, you know, he basically worked with anyone, you know, the non-aligned movement, but also with the West, with Europe, you know, so he was a very picky choosy, I think. His ultimate goal was, you know, the betterment of the country by kind of any means necessary. by kind of any means necessary. But I think, you know, he made mistakes just like other leaders do. And I think obviously we had, you know, two issues.

One, he was sick, he was dying. And two, there was an economic crisis happening. And three, then we had like the economic reforms, which really shifted the entire. I mean, they just they very much shifted the system that the Yugoslav people were very much used to. It became more and more prior, you know, privatized after his death. to. It became more and more privatized after his death. And Milosevic,

he was a banker, he was a businessman, he was who he was and I don't think that he ever really pretended to be a socialist. Which is why I get so upset when

certain American leftists call him a socialist or call him an anti-imperialist because Yeah. was just it was that sort of thing where there's an economic crisis brewing they have no ways to really fix it people are broke people are starving suddenly the ownership the worker you know owned sort of model is being shifted to a more privatized model and people are just not happy what's a good way to distract from that yep you know it's just we see it happen everywhere it's not a new it's not like a new you know tactic it's a tactic that everyone has utilized blame it on the other um so Yugoslavia didn't really have you know immigrants that they could blame it on but they had Muslims and so and they had the Kosovo you know Albanians and the Bosnians and that was you know enough and suddenly the conversation really shifted and obviously I'm simplifying all of this. Yeah. So much more

complicated. But you know, there are books out there and that obviously go into a great, you know, level of detail into the actual sort of breakup. So I can give some recommendations later. But yeah, but I think in that sort of very simplistic kind of sense is there was an economic crisis happening. A good way to sort of distract that was the use of ethno-nationalism. And it just kind of spiraled from there. you know what milosevic and what people like milosevic always want is more power for themselves and so his whole thing wasn't really ever about keeping yugoslavia intact as yugoslavia it was keeping this vision of a greater serbia alive because the thing is you know if we had not had a person like milosevic if we just had somebody who was you know the second Tito maybe more or less worse or better who cares I think people would have been fine I think you know I don't see this like war breaking now but instead we had Milosevic who was like way more concerned about consolidating power, exerting that control.

And when he realized that he could use ethno-nationalism to get to his goals, of course he was going to use that. Of course, like who wouldn't? You know, we see it today with like what Trump did. He utilized, you know, Muslims and immigrants and refugees and black people, all his scapegoats to distract from all the other things that are wrong with him his leadership and the overall country and Milosevic did the same he just did what any

other politician did and you know that's the thing I think you know in thinking about Bosnia Croatia Slovenia and all these countries that started to secede, I think, if they had felt comfortable with, you know, staying in a country that is multi-ethnic, at least in the case of Bosnians. I'm not going to speak for the Slovenians or Croatians because they have their own, I think, complicated identity. But with Bosnians, our thing collectively, I think, while we're not a monolith not monolith but collectively was always we are united we are multi-ethnic multi-religious multicultural and it's such a big part of like our entire history and identity and so if the choice is being you know under serb control being secondary citizens not having that equality not having that multi-ethnicity of course we're not going to

take that choice yeah of course people are going to want to you know when when you have like that you know that boot on your neck of saying, like, we're going to control you, we're going to take your land, and we're going to basically rule over you. Nobody wants to deal with that. And, you know, unlike a lot of the other countries in former Yugoslavia, Bosnia really was the most multi-ethnic. It had one of the highest rates of, you know, mixed ethnic marriages and multi-religious marriages. And that kind of remains true even today. So especially in places like Sarajevo, Mostar, Baneluka, you know, the bigger cities, it has this very proud history of, you know, coexistence and multi-ethnic coexistence. So I think what happened for so many people was just a huge amount of shock. My own family, so many people in my own

family just did not think it could happen there. They grew up with this idea of a united, you know, multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. Brotherhood and unity. These are our neighbors, our friends, our teachers, our lovers, you know, whatever. They work with us. They live next to us. Of course, they're not going to, you know, turn against us. And I think even while the politicians were fear-mongering while you know Milosevic and Karadzic were sort of leading their campaigns of you know especially islamophobic propaganda propaganda you know in in newspapers on the radio on tv any chance that any speech that they gave they talked about how the Muslims were coming. We were going to make their daughters wear hijabs.

We were going to take over. We were going to kill them. That's why they have to kill us because they don't kill us. We're going to kill them. It was this whole really brilliant propaganda campaign in so many ways that has now been replicated in so many other countries. Can we talk about that specifically for a second? Because I think there's something interesting in the way that you get people to do a genocide always seems to be, it's extremely hard to get someone to just murder their neighbor because they don't like them.

You have to do this. Like they're about to exterminate us. And that's why we have to like strike first. And that, yeah, that, that, that aspect of it,

I think is, is something that I see a lot when, when I do this. And yeah, you, you have, you have done infinitely more genocide studies. I want to hear.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. I, it's so funny i gave like an interview um on this specific topic i don't know like two years ago and i remember turning to to the guy who was interviewing me because he was just like his look at his face was i just don't

understand like i don't i can't wrap my mind about how people could do that to their friends, neighbors, students, you know, people they were sworn to like protect and people they lived with their entire lives. How could they do that? Well, you know, I turned to him and I said, yeah, I mean, if I told you right now, go kill him, you know, you probably would have. But if I came to you day in and day out, and I slowly started to kind of whisper in your ear, and I started to tell you, you know, he's been really, really, I don't know, he's been saying a lot of stuff about you. He's been quite negative. Or I don't know, you know, do you think he's kind of acting weird? I feel like he might be planning something. He might be planning to take over your house. He may planning to i don't know probably attack your sister i

think he's going to kill your sister i think he might make your sister wear a job so it's these very like slow subtle things and that's the thing that people don't understand and you know violence never interrupts like never erupts out of nowhere you know it it's always planned it brews and it brews and it brews and then it explodes you know then there's the thing but it it comes slowly and that's how it was in Yugoslavia it wasn't this sudden you know oh yes we're brothers and sisters forever go Tito go Yugoslavia to to, you know, oh, I hate you because you're Muslim, and I hate you because you're a Serb, and I hate you because you're a Croat. No, that was not the case. The case was that this was a very slow campaign of propaganda that started in

the 80s, almost immediately after Tito's death, let's say. It started very slow. It started with the sort of, I think, disenfranchisement of the Kosovo Albanians and kind of the targeting of them. And again, yes, there was this economic component of it, but the way they wanted to kind of sidetrack that was, you know, well, you're hungry because the coastal Albanians are not, you know, and they're taking your jobs. Again, similar, you know, tactics that we see even today. Yeah, so it's not that much different. But yeah, you know, it starts slow. And the Milosevic and the Karadzic and the Mladic kind of campaigning was, God, it was brutal.

I mean, like I always say, it was kind of brilliantly executed in that it really got to people so much that then, again, you know, they turned neighbor against neighbor. It was subtle in the beginning. It was that sort of, what are the Muslims up to? Can we trust them? Can you trust your neighbor? Can you trust your neighbor? Can you trust the Muslims? You know, talking about Islamization, talking about Ali Azzed Begovic's book he wrote when he was like, I don't know, 18 or whatever, like, and, you know, talking about World War II, this was another thing. Like, everybody knows that there

was a period in world war ii where you know a lot of serbs were killed by the ustasha uh and by the you know nazi collaborationists and i think obviously that's a real fear for you know for a certain group of people who went through that so there was a lot of that as well you know that's going to happen again that's going to happen again meanwhile there was no grand plan there was never even talks of you know, that's going to happen again, that's going to happen again. Meanwhile, there was no grand plan. There was never even talks of, you know, committing violence or even, you know, talks of, you know, seceding from Yugoslavia or anything. It was all, it was all set in motion by the Serbian leadership, you know, and I think that's what people don't understand. The Bosnian leadership, while not perfect, were simply reacting to what the Serbian leadership

was in many ways making them do. And, and that's kind of what, you know, what happens in these situations, you know, they kind of push you and push you and push you until they're able to get you know some sort of rise out of you or a response out of you or or get you on that sort of offensive where you have to defend yourself you have to defend your identity you have to defend who you are you have to justify it and also in many ways so yeah the you know this sort of propaganda campaign god there was you know obviously the funny things were like things like they're going to make you wear the hijab but it was also very insidious because they would target like these you know villages where they were like Bosnians and Serbs you know living together they're quite small but they knew that like in the village obviously usually have a gun

or you know shotgun because of the animals or you know working or whatever so they would like target them specifically with like the you know the radio and instead of like the big cities like they worked up to the big cities but they really started in like specific sort of areas like in eastern bosnia especially because there was like a lot of um i think majority muslim like villages in that area that would also have like nearby serb villages so yeah I mean there was that there was you know then sort of taking over all the radio stations and um kind of going full force I think like in the sort of early days of the war like we're talking April May of 1992 they know, they would get people like pretending that they were Bosnians,

that they were actually Serbs, and they would like talk about how they went to, you know, kill all Serbs or something like that. There was also when they were like having people in concentration camps, when they like started kind of putting them in those concentration camps initially,

they would make the victims in the concentration camps the muslims um basically you know say that oh they're just there as a refugee and the serbian army is like protecting them and they're making them feel really welcome and stuff like that so it was right at the beginning between, especially 89 to like 92, the propaganda was so visible and it really escalated. And it was like suddenly everywhere. And you would hear Karadzic and Milošević talk about,

you know, the Muslims and the things that we wanted and, you know, the things that, the goals that we had, which after all, we're not, you know, nobody was saying it. There wasn't like a single person that was saying these things that they were attributing to us, but that didn't matter. What they were just doing was instilling enough fear and enough doubt in the population to eventually get them to take up arms when the time comes. And unfortunately, that's precisely what happened. When the time came, you know, a lot of people did take up arms.

Whether or not they wanted to, they had enough of that doubt and fear sowed in their minds over the course of several years that they ended up feeling like, I have to protect myself. I'm not saying that's the case for every person. I think some, a lot of, especially in higher leadership positions, a lot of them were just sociopaths who wanted to kill. And I don't think it mattered why or how because you're always going to get those kind of people yeah but i think when we're talking about how how that shift happened so fast we have to obviously discuss the the propaganda the huge amount of propaganda that went into the you know implementing it. So I guess... You're such a tangent. Oh my gosh.

No, that's okay. That was really great. Yeah, I think it's incredibly important for everyone to understand that propaganda works. If you just say something over and over and over again, it does... Eventually it pays off. And, you know, the quote-unquote payoff here is the genocide. And I guess, yeah, I'm not sure how far into detail you want to kind of focus on because i think from from reading what you've been saying about this that this wound up being a big deal with like why things are sort of still fucked now which is that like the international response to this like i mean one of the things i was always just like haunted by is there's this quote by midirand who's the

uh department of minister of france he's this, he wants to be the socialist. He's like the guy that like, they finally put in power after like all of the stuff in the sixties. And he has this line about like, I, I'm sorry. I wish I, I wish I told up the exact quote,

but it's, it's basically like, I, I know the quote. Yeah. Do you want us to say it? I don't remember the exact. I know the quote.

Um, it's, uh, it's uh it's what was it a peaceful but necessary reconstruction of a christian europe yeah um and bosnia does not belong so i remember that very specifically it's really stayed with me for such a long time because he said that at a time where the Bosnian Muslims were just completely defenseless. They were being dragged away to concentration camps. The massacres were already well underway. We're not talking about Srebrenica in 95. We're talking about Visegrad, Sarajevo, Foccia Goražde, even Srebrenica in 92. You know,

this is all in 1992. The things that happen in places like Buczkon, Zvonnik, and all these like places that I think the vast majority of people don't really know about and hear about. Like in Visegrad, a lot of my family is from there. Within a span of three months, that entire town, that entire town, which was once almost entirely Bosniak Muslim, was ethnically cleansed. And that was done through

forced deportations, concentration camps, mass rapes and rape camps of women, and obviously a lot of murders you know so we're talking about one small town that took you know three three months and my family when it comes to that town on both my mother's and my father's side interestingly enough has like such a long history my parents fell in love there when they were like kids so you know they you know my grandmother's house was there my grandfather's house was there um on like both sides and they you know so is this

beautiful little town uh where you know Bosnians then Bosniaks and Serbs and Croats lived and Jews Roma and you know my parents talk about the beauty of it and this wonderful sort of experience that they had when they lived there my mom is from sarajevo um and so am i as well obviously but michigan was like the place that she would go kind of like for the weekend just because of the family that we had there um so very special i think in her heart, my grandpa's heart as well. And, you know, within, it's just like so hard to like fathom that within just a few months that town was completely ethnically cleansed. And that the international community knew this and did nothing. You know, there is in, I believe it's in the Clinton tapes as well, but there's

this thing about how they had provided aerial footage of the massacres that were being, that were being enacted in places like Butchco and Zvonnik where, oh my God, the paramilitary did some horrifying acts of violence and torture against the civilians. And they had showed it to the Clintons, and they showed it to the French and the English, and they did nothing. They knew in 1992 that a genocide was unfolding, and the Dayton Peace Agreement wasn't signed until 1995. So the international community, I think, has just as much of a responsibility in the, you know, the genocide of the Bosniaks as Serbia does, because they sat there and they

watched when they had all the power to stop it. They always had the power to stop it. They had the power to stop it before even one person got killed. And two, it's not even that they just watched. It's that they purposely left the Muslims defenseless becauseeless because serbia had all the yugoslav army yep all the weapons all the you know everything all the tools that they needed to commit genocide they already had it in all the arsenal everything um

and you you the yugoslav army was like the most powerful in the region at the time. And I think the third or fourth most powerful in like the Europe, Turkey area. So, you know, quite a powerful army. And there was Bosnia, which had no weapons, no military. No weapons, no military. You know, you see these pictures of like civilians fighting against, you know, tanks and mortar shells and snipers. And it's like these, you know, youths basically in like converse and jeans and like an army jacket playing soldier. Because that's all we had. You know, we had the homemade weapons we had um you know how to make your own bomb books kind of thing and trying to basically

defend ourselves with anything that we could um they specifically did not lift the arms embargo knowing that they were leaving us defenseless like they they just knew there was no way there's no doubt on everything that we have read about the international community response everything that clinton mcgrant john mayor major major um not mayor major have said uh you know about it during that period shows us that they absolutely knew that we were defenseless you know and this wasn't you know a lot of people say i didn't know about the bosnian genocide but it was discussed you know i've looked at the archived footage um it was talked about on television it was brought up in parliament and in senate there was people at the time who were like why are we leaving the bosnians

defenseless why are we you know not helping them uh why are we allowing them to be let into slaughter this is genocide blah blah so even as early as 92 93 there was still people who knew about this stuff we're telling the leaders but nothing yeah i think i think like that part also like it's it's not just that like they did nothing like they they they like they did worse than do nothing like i mean midoran's actively cheering it on like you know the the arms embargo is just like the arms embargo if you're applying an arms embargo on a conflict where one people one side has tanks and the other side has like molotovs like you you are actively supporting one of the sides and i think that like that just like is completely lost in how like almost everyone

seems to talk about this now because there's like you know because because when you sort of get like interventions later like people are like oh look was, like, planning to intervene here the whole time. And it's like, no, like, they were literally cheering, like, mid-Rand was cheering. Like, it's like... It's so frustrating because, you know, you take what we know about... And here's the thing. what we know about, and here's the thing, I know that Islamophobia escalated after 9-11, but Islamophobia has existed for a very long time. And I think talk to the Black Muslims of America,

they will tell you more, you know, better than I could ever tell you about the history of Islamophobia in the United States. So Islamophobia was always an aspect of life. And in Europe, Islamophobia, just like anti-Semitism, I mean, it is like the staple of European cultural cuisine, so to say. Yeah, it's like they have like the triforce of European civilization is anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and hating the Roma. Yep. It's like those are just like, yeah. at the time in in you know effectively ensuring that we were killed off because a muslim country

in europe could not exist yeah and that's the thing that they said literally said a muslim country in europe cannot exist like the fact that that was so open and brazen, like, kind of takes me back. But it really, like, tells you how much Islamophobia formed, I think, the international community response on this. And it's so interesting to me now. I think I've seen it over the past, I would say, especially five years, this sort of leftist genocide. Yeah. This sort of leftist anti-imperialist kind of defense of milosevic and oh they were the you know the serbs were the actual victims blah blah blah nato blah blah

western intervention and i'm just like oh my god read a book read an article from that time read their actual quotes there's no way that you can actually convince me that europe fortress europe and the united states of america would do anything that would benefit you know the muslims well this is what was one of the things i think was it's really interesting to me about the way that the sort of like left genocide's nihilism works is that like it always seems to be rooted in islamophobia like and i remember seeing this with bosnia too where they're like oh yeah well it well it's, it's because, it's because what's okay. They have two things. One,

it's like, well, the Bosnians were Nazis, but the second one was that, oh, well the, the, the Bosnians were like all jihadists.

And it's like, like it's the exact same thing you see with China. And it's like, oh, it's because all the Uyghurs are like Salafi jihadists, ISIS, CIA. And it's like,

no. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's honestly laughable at this point it really is and it also just you know obviously i'm a leftist you know i'm gonna cheer the left on to an extent but that is my red line the genocide and that really is my red line and the reason it's

it you know my red line isn't just because i'm a genocide survivor but because it's like oh for god's sake the the data the statistics the research the forensic the analysis the specific quotes videos articles uh you know all of those things exist and are out there and all you have to do is actually do your research and you will find out that actually no you're in the wrong and the other thing is what you just said about this sort of thing of painting you know the muslims as like the nazis and the you know the extremists um you know the thing about like the wazian muslims is like we don't hide the fact that there were people of our community that participated in Nazi Ustasha crimes. There isn't this goal of concealing those crimes, of minimizing the crimes or pretending that they were right. There is, I'm sure, a fringe group of people who defend these kinds of people, like there is a fringe.

But I'm talking about the collective sort of Bosnian, you know, state level response, as well as like an individual response is that the, you know, the Nazi division had like 17,000 Bosnian soldiers, and there's millions of Bosnians in the country, the vast majority ended up joining the partisans and stood against the Nazis. And the thing is, when it comes to Yugoslavia and World War II and the Holocaust, you can't just say that the Bosnians were Nazi collaborationists, because the thing is, so were the Serbs, so were the Croats. At that time, let's be honest, who the hell wasn't a Nazi collaborationist? Now, this doesn't excuse it. Absolutely not. But what it does sort of show is that that history,

that period in Yugoslav history is really complicated because, you know, you had the Ustasha and then you had the Czechniks. And then there's a period where the Chetniks were against the Ustasha right because like the Ustasha were killing Serbs and Roma and Jews but then the Chetniks turned around and they're you know these Serb nationalists they start killing the Jews and the Roma and then they start working with the Ustasha to hunt down the Jews and the Roma and then they start working with them to stand against the Tito's partisans. Meanwhile, Tito's partisans had a multi-ethnic coalition. Again, we're talking about Serbs, Bosnians, Roma, Jews, Croats, Albanians, all sorts of people who were very like you know anti-nazism

yeah bro you know we're we're gonna we're gonna win we're gonna rebuild our our country we're gonna you know make this beautiful sort of you know multi-ethnic kind of state which they did which is amazing but yeah but it is a complicated sort of piece of history so you can't really say oh yes they're the nazi collaborationist because um at some point or not everybody was and at some point or not everybody was also yeah yeah it's like like it's when when you start getting into like it becomes this like you know it becomes a way of just of getting people to i don't know how to describe it like it you know when when when it starts being like this specific ethnic group as a whole is responsible for all of these crimes it's like no they're not like that's that's not that's not how this works like it's not like like like there are like there yeah there's going to be people

in the ethnic group who did things that were awful there's also going to be people especially especially in in a situation like this there's there's a lot like a lot of like probably more people who fought them yeah and that like yeah that's such an interesting statement because i i'm going to compare to the bosnian response after the genocide, which has consistently been, no, we don't believe that every single serve is bad. And we are only talking about those that took place, took part in these crimes and those that concealed them. And that has always been the collective and state level response of all Bosnians. Now, you have to think about, I have a friend whose 99 members of her family were killed in Srebrenica in July of 1995. That's an absorbent number of people.

These were women, children, and men, and elderly. There was no discrimination when it comes to her. I've sat with her as she's read all the names of her killed family members. That woman, with all the pain that she survived, with being there as a young girl in the midst of genocide, she survived with being there as a young girl in the midst of genocide in the midst of these horrifying crimes has never once publicly or privately to me said yes old serbs are the same yes all of them are war criminals yes all of them hate us absolutely not and the thing is i think about myself as well like you know my earliest childhood memory is me being shot at by a sniper knowing my father was in a concentration camp knowing that my grandmother was just killed by a bomb knowing that you know

my biological dad was dying in a hospital from an attack and my mother could also be killed because she was pregnant with my brother at the time And so these are my earliest childhood memories. They're not very happy memories. And I know why those things happened. You know, I know why I was being shot at by a sniper. And it was because I was Bosnian. It was because I was Muslim. And because I was seen as the enemy, even though I was, you know, a little kid at, you know,

six, seven years old and absolutely not a threat to anyone. And nobody should have been shooting at me. They did anyway. Even though that happened, I never had that feeling of, all Serbs are awful, all Serbs are, you know, I'm going to paint them all with a brush. But a lot of them, unfortunately, especially on the, you know, the ultra-nationalists that continue to not just deny the genocide but also glorify it and celebrate it they do paint everyone with the same brush you know and and the worst thing the funniest thing is that they paint themselves with the same brush you know they they think that they get to speak for every single serve person um And that's the tragic path. Like, I'm not, I'm not,

I get accused of like constantly talking shit about Serbs and I'm like, I absolutely am not. I'm talking about the nationalists and I will call out all the nationalists, whether they're Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian, American, whatever. But we're talking about, you know, what you're doing to me and your response to my criticism of nationalism is actually the thing that's ruining your reputation.

Yeah, it's the ethno-nationalist gambit. You have to conflate all of the individual people, the ethnic group, and the state. They all have to be this organic totality, and it's not true it's just not but that's you know that's that's that's the sort of it's it's the modus operandi behind their entire ideology and it's what they deploy you know it's what they deploy when they eat eugenicides is what they deploy when they have to sort of like you know sort of promote it openly or less openly afterwards. Yeah. It's like that justification. It's how they justify it. Yeah. You know? And like, we all know about the 10 stages of genocide,

but my colleague, who's brilliant, actually has often talked about that denialism is not really the final stage of genocide it is in fact triumphalism um and that's what we're actually seeing in Bosnia you know we're not I get genocide denialism from American leftists and like British leftists who are on a certain spectrum and of a certain I don't get genocide denialism from ethno-nationalist Serbs what I get from them actually is very openly celebrating and threatening another genocide they're not in my mentions saying oh there was no genocide

yeah they're in my mentions saying, which is basically a slogan that says knife, wire, and it's like basically a threat that another will occur. They're in my mentions and my emails and in my DMs sending me threats about how they can't wait till I'm put in a rape camp again, how they can't wait till they kill my family, till Sarajevo gets bombed again, how,

you know, they're going to finish the job. How Ratko Mladic is a hero because he killed all those, you know, people in Srebrenica and Sarajevo and Bishagrad. Karadzic is a hero because he did the same. Milosevic is a hero because he believes in a greater Serbia. These people

don't hide it. And that's the thing. So it's very like, just today, you know, first thing in the morning, I opened my Twitter and the first thing that I see is a Bosnian activist arrested for protesting the Ratko Mladic mural, which the Serbian police were guarding. They were guarding a mural, like a mural of a war criminal who committed genocide, who everybody knows committed genocide, a mural glorifying him. They were, the police were guarding, you know, the mural and inflicting damage on innocent civilians who were there to protest against the mural. And so I think that really tells you so much about the issue in the Balkans. This has been It Could Happen Here. Join us tomorrow for part

two of this interview in which we discuss the dangers of what's currently happening in bosnia in the meantime find us on twitter at happened here pod and you can find us on twitter and instagram for the rest of our shows at cool Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Listen to 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. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. Apple Podcasts, or is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong

though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What could happen here?

A podcast about bad things happening and how they can continue to happen if you don't stop them. I'm your host, Christopher Wong, and today we're doing part two of the interview with genocide expert Arnesa Kustra, focusing on the absolutely horrifying things that have been happening in Bosnia recently. Here's the interview. Hope you enjoy. Can you give an explanation of what's happened in the last couple of weeks? Because it's terrifying, and I don't think enough people are talking about it. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So that's... Where are we now, I'm just going to talk briefly about the Dayton Agreement, because I think. Yeah, yeah. The audience needs to understand what the Dayton Agreement is. And I was going to talk about it earlier, but I went off on a tangent.

So my apologies. So obviously, you know, where the war is happening, the genocide is happening. happening, the genocide is happening. Sarajevo said 1995 the worst of the genocide happens, you know, 8,000 people are killed in just a matter of a few weeks, few days really. The international community does not act at that time. Towards the end of the year another attack happens in Sarajevo and Markale. Civilians are once again targeted waiting for bread, fruit, I think it was humanitarian aid at the market and that's kind of when the international community starts to open their eyes a bit and negotiations start and not to worry with the details the negotiation process was absolutely ridiculous. And every single time they discussed it, it was about splitting Bosnia down ethnic lines.

And that's ultimately what happened with the Dayton Agreement. Yes, peace, quote unquote, peace was achieved. But the Dayton Agreement mandated so that there would be a three-member presidency. So instead of having one president, we would have a three-member presidency. It's a rotating presidency. There would be a Croat representative, a Bosniak representative, and a Serb representative. That also means that there's no representatives for anyone who's an other, whether they identify as Yugoslav, Roma, Jewish, Bosnian, but not Bosniak. Like they, you know, it's just there's no space for the other in this constitution, the state and peace agreement. But that's for another day.

They also split the country down by ethnic lines. also split the country down by ethnic lines so all of those genocides and ethnic cleansing that the serbs had just been committing all over eastern bosnia up in the north um you know basically the international community said good job here's your own territory that you ethnically cleansed yeah um so they split the country down you, these ethnic lines and, you know, the war stops. And then now we have to sort of contend with this, you know, peace agreement with the new constitution. We get this called the OHR, the Office of the High Representative. The High Representative is basically a person who holds the highest power in the country. They're not a Bosnian. They're actually kind of, they're put in place there by the international community.

So the OHR kind of, you know, comes and breaks us up when we're squabbling over issues and this has been anything from things like the flag like the new flag of Bosnia the the flag of Bosnia that was the flag of Bosnia had to sort of be replaced because the OHR deemed that it would be you know offensive to the Serbs or the Croats and the same thing with like the national anthem so they hold a lot of power now just recently we switched um ohr representative so we have a new high representative uh before it was valentininsko and his final kind of part of his you know time as the high representative was to enact a law against genocide denialism, which the Bosnians have really been campaigning for for years, because, you know, I think in your birthplace, in the place where the worst crime ever could, you know, happen to you, happen to you, where, you know, 50,000 women were

raped, 100,000 people were killed, 600 plus mass mass graves were dug up to hide the crimes and the massacres. People want to be able to know the truth and feel safe with the truth. So the genocide denialism law was good, but this is kind of when things started to you know shift a bit because i think dodd that came out milan dodd who is currently the serb member of the presidency um who controls the public which is the entity where that's considered the serb entity but bosniaks also live there as well um He came out and he said, well, if they pass the genocide denialism law, we're going to secede within eight days. And obviously that didn't happen.

Yeah. And here's here's the thing. Milorad Zardek has been threatening secession for years now. This is not anything new. not anything new. What is new is the fact that this time he seems to not just talk and threaten about seceding, but actually has started to kind of draw up the papers and not to legally secede, which he's not allowed due to the Dayton Agreement, to legally secede which he's not allowed due to the dayton agreement um but he is he has drawn up the papers to start pulling out of all the national level so you know bosnia is the country republica subskye is an entity the federation is an entity but both of them are accountable to the

national sort of state level institutions he's basically at this point you know been saying i'm gonna republicans subscribe to serbs we're leaving like we're we're gonna form our own army yeah we're gonna pull out all all the bosnian state institutions um we're gonna have serb only you know serb only courts serb only lawyers serb only just justices serve only i don't know passport whatever control serve basically anything that was at a national level whether that's like a healthcare institution or like i don't know procurement for supplies for the office yeah they're gonna have it as like serve only obviously i think the danger is is right there serve only where have we heard that before we heard that in the 90s and the biggest sort of

red flag has really been this thing about them forming the republica subscot army and they're not even talking about forming a new army they he specifically stated the words reforming the Republika Srpska army. Now, the Republika Srpska army, you know, was led by Karadzic and Mladic in the 1990s. These are the same people that put girls as young as 10 and 12 years old into rape camps, that killed babies as old as, you know, a few months, that killed, you know, elderly women as old as 100 years old as you know a few months that killed um you know elderly women as old as a hundred years old you know these these were the guys that were going village to village city to city killing torturing bombing the hell out of Sarajevo these were the guys that you know would throw like 3,000 to 4,000 mortar shells uh on Saraymo and snipe it i don't even know how

many times like tens of thousand times per day it's just these are the bad guys basically um so i think there is an alarm right now going in bosnia and it is the reason why so many of us are quite worried quite frightened because on one on one hand, he has threatened. He has made, you know, Dodik has made plenty of threats before. Yep. But on the other hand, in prior times, the international community has somewhat gotten involved. You know, the U.S. has sanctioned him. The U.K. has scolded him.

The EU has said, like, you got to chill out. Otherwise, you know, Serbia doesn't get into the EU. You know, there's always been some sort of, I don't know, influence there. The OHR's influence as well. But in recent years, the international community has not stood by its responsibility to the Dayton agreement I mean here's the thing they implemented this agreement they made it so that we the Bosnians have to abide by it but they also have a responsibility to ensure that it is actually being upheld and that they're doing their job in accordance with

the international like with the dayton agreement so you know the dayton agreement was very kind of specific that it was one a temporary solution and two the international community was to work on finding a more permanent solution yeah that will bring about you know actual sort of reconciliation and justice and all of these things but they didn about, you know, actual sort of reconciliation and justice and all of these things. But they didn't. They, you know, they've left sort of Bosnia to kind of live on its own. And now they're not really doing much. I mean, the EU, the US, they're doing their typical thing of strongly worded open letters. And Dodik seems less afraid than ever before. He seems very brash. I mean, he is a fool and a half and an ultra nationalist. But right now, I feel like he has

so much confidence. And I think he also knows that like, the US and the EU have so many bigger problems to worry about, rather than Bosnia. And so we're just not a priority so he can play around with it. And then we're also, you know, seeing like the Secretary of State, Matthew Palmer, hanging out with him. The day after this man openly stated on national television

that he is reforming the public. And they're being very cozy and very friendly and stuff like that and here's the thing i've never been really a big believer on the international community because come on like i the experience speaks for itself i've already lived lived their help and i'm like no thanks please stay away but i don't live in that world. I live in a world where, you know, I'm from a small country that is unfortunately very dependent on outsiders and on the international community. So while I would love to say, well, fuck the EU, fuck the US,

we don't need them. The reality is that we do need them. We do need them to do their jobs. We don't need them. The reality is that we do need them. We do need them to do their jobs. And because if they don't, I am really worried that the situation is going to continue to escalate further and further. And this appeasement of Dadik, especially in the last several years has gone on so much that at this point,

I think you have to like start to wonder, like, do these, does the international community, you know, even want peace and stability in Bosnia? Or did they benefit from our constant instability? And what is their long term plan? So that's kind of where we're at right now. I think there's, you know, there's the people in Bosnian politics and activist circles right now who are calling on US leadership or calling on EU leadership. And there's a lot of, oh, no, the EU sucks. The US will help us. The US sucks. The EU will help us. Turkey is going to help us. No, Turkey sucks. There's a lot of like disagreement. I think the reality is that, oh, my God, does it suck that we are in this position where we have to rely on external sources?

Because once again, we are feeling alone. Once again, we're sort of being backed into a corner. And once again, we're being threatened with a prospect of a new war. you know, a new war. And I think the reality is the minute, the minute that he gives that green light for that Republic of Srpska army to be formed, there will be violence. And we've seen what happened before. We cannot afford to even have one act of violence. We cannot afford to have even one person injured, let alone die, because these people in Bosnia, on all sides, have suffered so unbelievably much. They are exhausted. They are still bearing their loved ones 26 years later. They still haven't found that peace. They're worried and scared for their future. And they deserve so much more. They really, really do. So I think, you know, I'm hoping and praying that, you know, we obviously continue talking

about this issue and we try to pressure those people in power to, you know, calm the situation down. But the reality is that this is going to be our future for as long as Dayton exists. And until the Bosnian constitution is completely reformed and Dayton is completely either thrown out or reformed to actually allow for, you know, actual multi-ethnic united country that's not broken up across ethnic you know lines and it's not ethnically segregated we're going to continue being in the situation so yes for right now I think let's talk about this and let's kind of pressure those powerful people but really long term it's time to start thinking about ending the Dayton agreement and it's time to start thinking about actually building that you know multi-ethnic multicultural multi-religious country that we fought for

you know you're saying like okay like what what what is you know what what is europe actually wants out of this and you know i mean i think it's pretty clear like okay so you know the dayton accords are like okay we're just gonna give all of the ethno-nationalists like their own fiefdom right it's like okay here's your award for the genocide you get you're like yeah and i think you know like that's that's that's that's that's a very classical you know that that's what europeans do right it's like yeah they come in they support eth nationalists and it's like you know they don't want this like they don't actually want like a a a a functioning multi-ethnic multiracial society because you know oh oh the horror wait hold on what if other people look at that and go

wait why why do we have like yeah i think that i don't know i i think you see this both you know back back in what they were originally doing in the 90s and you know they come in later and they're like oh hey look we're heroes we uh helped them do the genocide and then kind of sort of did something maybe later and i think like yeah i don't know just the the possibility of that happening again the possibility of it just being, you know, this is, it's like, oh, hey, we have Bosnia. This is where we do press tours for, like, why the American army is good.

And, like, fuck anyone else who actually lives there. Yeah. I mean, like, come on. They're America. Like, let's be honest here. Like, I'm not saying they're an all-powerful entity. But what I am saying is that if they really wanted to, the people who are in power would not be in power. Right. Like, yeah.

But these people, people like Dodik, people like Dragan Covich, who is the Croatian ethno-nationalist leader, who is also, by the way, directly involved in this mess. And, and once again, we're seeing that thing of the 90s of, you know, Croatia and Serbia want to split Bosnia up and, you know, break it for themselves, basically. That's, you know, it's just now, instead of Vrano, Tudjman and Milosevic, it's now Covic and, you know, Dodik.

I talk about Dodik a lot more because I think he's a more immediate threat, but it's important that we don't forget that Bosnia is also facing the Croatian threat as well. And, you know, but I think about it this way. Like, I know for a fact that if these people did not benefit the system somehow, they would not actually be in power. But they do, they do benefit them. And I think, you know, you albright called milan a breath of fresh air god um in you know the 90s when he came to to power and then and now here we are you know yep um doddick's threatening war and threatening secession and talking about serve only you, you know, spaces and Serb only armies. And it's just, it's exhausting. But yeah, it's, it's also funny. It is funny when you think about

it, because the reality is that it doesn't, it never had to be like this. And it doesn't have to be like this in the future either. But unfortunately, it will continue to be like this and it doesn't have to be like this in the future either but unfortunately it will continue to be like this because that's just you know what the powerful want like what those actually who have some power want and that's the thing that sucks because when you you know I feel like I'm starting to sound conspiratorial but I'm not um you know when you when you think about like Europe overall and how they looked at Bosnia, I think, for the last, you know, 100 years and their policy towards Bosnia, it's really difficult for me to kind of be filled with any sort of confidence about what their plans are you know yeah i mean it's it's europe in the united states two countries that historically have never done anything bad have never done any genocides and have never yeah just absolutely annihilated countries yeah yeah i mean it's just you know they're the good

guys so like you said you know bosnians there are so much as like this press tour for you know these politicians to come and to talk about why we're such a great example of the peace process when we're really we're not you know and the thing is though you know they'll come on and they'll say well while dayton wasn't perfect it was the best solution at the time and it's like it wasn't it was not yeah you know but but they have convinced that themselves that this was like a win for intervention and win for the international community now don't get me wrong i alongside everyone i know is extremely happy that the war ended and that the genocide ended um and i think until you're in that position of growing up in the midst of,

you know, all these bombs and murders and tortures all around you, and, you know, the only sound you ever hear are the sounds of bombs and mortars falling and snipers shooting at you, you won't really know how it feels when that finally stops and when you have some peace, it feels when that finally stops and when you have some peace and how difficult it can be to think about obviously any future sort of prospects of war and I think that's that also is a is a contributing factor to the overall instability of Bosnia because for 26 years, our policy as a people, but as a country as well, has been as long as there's no shooting. Which is not a sound policy because, you know, settling for the bare minimum is not helping any of us. Our youths are leaving in absurd amounts to Germany, to Austria, to the United States people are struggling for for jobs people are struggling to find food you know all of these things um on top of the threat of war

and violence and conflict so it's just it's not a sound policy and I'm just hoping um it will change eventually somehow I mean I'm to keep doing my part, which is, you know, yelling and yelling at people on Twitter and in person and pressuring them to do the right thing and to obviously talk about this. But yeah, I just feel like we have such a long, long, long, long road ahead of us.

And, you know, peace is a process it's a process so i think we're just at the beginning of that process yeah so much more to do i think i think that's a good place to end on with just the the the realization that yeah i mean if if mean if there's no fundamental change in the structures and the forces and the politics that created a war that created genocide it's going to happen again and so you have to

actually change it you can't just sort of put this bandaid on it and put it in stasis and just leave all the structures intact you have to knock them over before you can build something else yeah absolutely yeah anessa thank thank you so much for talking with me um where can people find you and what books do you want to read because as as as we've said over and over again on this podcast do not get your information from podcast actually read books this is the thing you need what you need to

do um yeah well if you obviously i know our audience can't see it but here's my little one of my little selections of books on bosnia um obviously people can find me on twitter um you know type in my name a-r-n-e-s-a but my at is at r-r-r-r-n-e-s-s-a yeah twitter's probably the best place but also I have a book out so if people want to read it it is about the Bosnian genocide and it is based on real life experiences of my family and friends it's called letters from diaspora it's more so on the emotional um side of things uh but if you want to learn about the conflict uh from a leftist perspective i always recommend um and i don't know where it's going now but i always recommend um bosnia kosovo, and Yugoslavia by Mike Karadzicis. It's the Marxist perspective on the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Additionally, I have a PDF on my Twitter of tons of books. So if you want to learn more about Yugoslavia, about Islam in the Balkans, about the history of Bosnia, about the war genocide, feel free to shoot me a DM. I have a handy little guide that I hand out constantly to people. And there's also a list of books on like my website and stuff like that. Yeah, I think I can post it. We can put a link to it in the description. I've read some stuff on there. It's very good. You should read it. Thanks. I pride myself on really good reading list. Yeah.

Depending on topic. this has been it could happen here uh find us at it could happen here pod on twitter instagram uh the rest of the shows that we do are you can find it at the cool zone on the same places and yeah oh boy genocide bad hope there's no more work to stop them Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow of Wrath.

Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home,

and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.

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