It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 92

Episode Date: July 22, 2023

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into 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. 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. Chris Christodes, Ipsis Christodes. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where the only person who actually took Latin in high school isn't here leaving me to do this Latin bit. I'm your host, Mia Wong, and with me is Garrison. Hello.

Hello. I'm not going to try to speak Latin because if I did, it'd be some like weird like esoteric incantation and then it would open up a whole other can of worms. So, you know, this is this is this is the most the most well-known Latin. That's probably not the most well-known Latin is That's probably not true. The most well-known Latin is probably some bullshit from Latin Mass or something. But one of the more well-known Latins, which is who watches The Watchmen, roughly. The popular translation is who watches The Watchmen. And by that, I mean we are asking the question, who ensures that the American Supreme Court does not just sort of collapse into a ball of pure corruption? And the answer was nobody. So true.

I always trust in the Supreme Court. Yeah, it's great. I learned that we pay these people $285,000 a year. We pay them $285,000 a year. Like we pay them $285,000 to like take our rights away. This is just insane. Like why, why do we do this? It's,

well, I mean, there's a very clear reason why, why we do this actually that maintains the, the semblance of order and civility. Yes. However, deeply fractured.

However, comma, this is coming apart because these stupid assholes can't even maintain the veneer of not being like the most corrupt people in the history of mankind so we're coming off of like two i mean not a there wasn't really a potential for this this this session of the court to be as bad as like last year's one where they killed row, but they killed affirmative action. And they also did this really, really, I just sort of really weird ruling on queer stuff and the business's right

to discriminate and choose the business's right to choose how to use their creative expression which has resulted in a bunch of really funny things i saw this morning actually there's this hair salon who was refusing to serve lgbtq clients yeah which now all of like all of like the suppliers for the hair salon are no longer sending orders to the hair salon because they're also allowed to discriminate from this hair salon because of the same ruling. So it's creating all these really complicated supply chain things with businesses choosing to be really homophobic

and queerphobic. And then the type of suppliers then just not giving these businesses the supplies they need to operate their business. Which is pretty funny. It's really amazing too. So the other thing about this is like this is the actual ruling where like any pretense that this is like a functional court

was just sort of thrown out the window because okay so one of the one of the like the fundamental principles of and this is one of the principles of the common law legal system right of of the common law legal system, right? Of the legal system that not only the US is based off of, but like, you know, like literally we're talking like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of history that predate the American system, arguably can trace us back to the Roman system. One of the things that's fundamentally based on is that you cannot try a case on a hypothetical.

Something has to actually happen for you to have a case and this case has just thrown that shit out the window so what this case was is there's this woman who supposedly is a wedding a wedding website designer and we'll get back to that in a second because oh boy uh just straight up lied to the court and claimed that a guy had requested her make a wedding website for a gay wedding and this never happened, right? This like did not happen. The journalist like tracked down the guy

who she said had like requested a website and that guy is A, straight B, had already been married and C, is a web designer. The whole story was just a web designer. The whole, the whole story is, was just a, was just a fake example. And I think,

I think like that's, that's, that's the part of the story that I think got the most press. But the part of the story that I think is like funnier is that she's not actually a wedding website designer. This entire case, she set up this entire site. What appears to have happened,

she's not a wedding website designer now, right? What appears to have happened, she's not a wedding website designer now, right? What appears to have happened is that she and one of the right-wing legal networks got together and cobbled together this business specifically so they could get this ruling. Which seems like it should be illegal. It is. All of this is illegal.

It sounds like legal fraud or something. She should be on trial for perjury right now. Her lawyers should also be, like, her lawyers and her lied under oath multiple times to multiple different courts. Yes, but that's obviously never going to happen because we don't live in that. What we're seeing here, right,

is the sort of, like, thin legal veneer that has always been sort of over the supreme court that's supposed to make it seem legitimate it's just sort of like unraveling and at the same time um so if if you if you think that makes the the supreme court like like look illegitimate wait till we get to the corruption uh this is the real reason we're doing this episode because oh my god jesus christ this is i oh god i you know i the thing i really learned from this is i didn't understand how rich supreme court justices are like clarence thomas and in all the pieces about clarence thomas right it it starts with, like, he is, like, the poorest of the Supreme Court justices, and his family makes $800,000 a year. That seems like a lot of money.

I was like, what are you even talking about? So, in terms of the sort of corruption stuff that's been happening, there's been a bunch of there's a bunch of research done by ProPublica into a bunch of just like incredibly shady and corrupt things that a bunch of Supreme Court justices are doing. So we're going to start with Bastards Pod alum Clarence Thomas. So one of Thomas's close friends is this real estate mogul named Harlan Crow. And he Harlan Crow sucks ass. He Harlan Crow sounds like what you would name, like some like weird, like rich villain and like a pulpy 70s like mystery novel. I don't.

Did you see when what like when people figured out who this guy was and it went around on Twitter? No. Oh, I'm so excited for you. Okay, this is going to be great. So, okay, so Harling Crow is, he's one of the country's largest landlords. He has like, he has a portfolio of $29 billion of assets. He owns properties like all over the US.

He also, okay, so he has a giant mansion, right? And in his giant mansion is a bunch of nazi memorabilia including an autographed copy of mine this this guy yes okay now now that now that you mentioned the nazi memorabilia i now remember so he has the things that like stereotypically you would assume that like a like a nazi paraphernalia guy has right like he has like he has that signed out autographed copy of my comp. He has like a bunch of pictures that were drawn by a bunch of like actual paintings that were drawn by Hitler. Um,

but he also has weird shit. Like something I've never seen before. Like he has like this, these sets of like napkins that just have swastikas on them because they were like official Nazi napkins. I feel like we probably shouldn't like we can even keep one copy of these in like the holocaust museum and the rest of this stuff should be like burned right like we shouldn't yeah we shouldn't really have to this tough line around you know like okay so i'm gonna circle back to this in a second i think

there's one there's another piece of context that we need to sort of get here he also has this thing called this he has he has this thing he calls the garden of evil which is this like garden of statues of the garden of he calls it the garden of evil yes and it's a it's a statue garden behind his house that has like a bunch of like statues of of dictators they're like almost all communists he really hates tito for some reason. I don't know why. Well, I mean, he's a billionaire, obviously. This is why he hates Tito. But the funny thing is, it's like almost all

it's like almost entirely communist. There's no Mussolini or anything. It's all communist. There's no Mussolini? What? No! No! There's a host named Mubarak and then there's one of, what's that guy's name? I can't remember his name. Princeps. The guy who shot archduke ferdinand which is weird because that guy was not he wasn't he wasn't evil no well i i that's i i will not i refuse to take

a position on that i i'm like that's not my position my position like on but he's not a dictator oh yeah that's like on the level of like evil on a dictator level he like he's not my position. My position, like, on the level... But he's not a dictator! Oh, yeah, that's it. Like, on the level of, like, evil on a dictator level, he's not... He's no Mao. He's no Hitler. Like, come on. Well, but, like, he also, like, again, he is not a dictator. He was just some fucking random guy.

Like, the guy who killed Archduke Ferdinand. Like, okay, baffling stuff. But, okay, the important thing about this... Wait, wait, wait. First of all, who would be your first five statues in your own Garden of Evil? Ah, the Garden... Oh, okay. This is going to be very biased because I'm ranking this by people I have personal grudges against. Okay, well...

If we're doing personal grudges against. Okay, well, if we're doing personal grudges, that changes the list. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, CeCe, what the fuck is his name? Paul Volker. Who else do I have a personal grudge against who's a dictator?

Mohammed bin Salman because he bought my fucking StarCraft League. What the fuck are you talking about? We'll do an episode on that one day. I'll put we'll put Mao on number five. Fair.

Fair. Okay. Now, okay. So the reason I bring up the Garden of Evil, right, is that, okay, so he has like a thing where he puts all the stuff the the the the garden of evil right is that okay so he has like a thing where he puts all the stuff from the evil dictators but then all of the nazi stuff is just like randomly strewn about his house yeah like his living quarters yeah like like they'll just they'll just be paintings by like actually he has like bush paintings too so he'll have paintings it'll

be like bush there'll be like like a renoir and then there'll just be a hitler painting and it's like he's this guy you know all of his friends would be because this guy has like a bunch of like right because he's one of the guys i'm sure his friends are normal well-adjusted people all of his friends would be like this man is not a nazi and i'm like i i he hasn't he has i don't know man like there are not many non-nazi reasons why you would have like multiple of hitler's paintings hanging on your wall and also the signed autographed copy of i just want to remind myself that there's evil in the world you know okay okay this gets me pissed off so my my uh but one of my grandpas i took took a, took a Nazi sword off a dead officer and like brought it home from the war. And it shouldn't be like, and we like still have it because what the fuck are you supposed to do with

that? Right. So like that, that's like, we have one of those, right. But like, we didn't take an autograph copy of my cough.

We fucking killed a Nazi officer, took it from him. Like if we're going to do this, you have to do it correctly. Yeah. I don't know. this guy this guy okay oh also he gets really he's like unfathomably mad that people wear che govara shirts like he's i mean me too mad me too whenever i see a che govara shirt i'm usually not i'm not the most pleased almost circling back around on it just because it makes this guy so mad. Like this guy in particular, his life needs to be worse.

Most of the Che Guevara shirts I've seen are sold by disgraced right-wing commentator Stephen Crowder. Oh, God. What the? No, we've truly entered hell world now. Okay, so why am I talking about harlan crowe um partially because he's really funny um does it is it doesn't he like give a lot of money to like certain people so okay we're we're we're yeah so he's one of the people who runs a really really extensive network of sort of like it's like right wing like think tank dark money network that you know buys judges like pays for people's legal careers and he's also very close

friends with clarence thomas and so i'm gonna just run through all of the shit that is like all it's just like incredible corruption that he's doing so okay so I'm gonna start with like this is like this is like like the level one corruption which is so crow bought Clarence Thomas's mom's house and then did quote

tens of thousands of dollars of improvements to the home and he seems to have bought the house for like significantly above market rate and so this is this is a this is i'm gonna i i i'm gonna we're gonna do it we're gonna do a corruption anatomy here because this is a classic chicago uh uh corruption scam so there's like there's like six revenue streams in this right you have the money from the sale which goes, which goes to like, you know, that's your level one bribe, right? You're selling your house to someone at above market value.

The level two bribe is you're now throwing in the renovations because his mom's still living in this house, right? Oh, so this is like actual bribery, huh? Oh, yeah, yeah. And again, this is like this is like actual bribery huh oh yeah yeah this is and again this is like the mild stuff um so that level level two is you get the you you know you okay so now now you have the contractors and the contractors allow you to throw in more money into the bribe because you're not you're not doing all this renovation work like for free um the level three of the bribes is that okay so now now once you once you have a renovation contract you now have a contract that pays out money and you can use that to like reward

your political allies and so this is a this is this is a classic like absolutely classic like chicago uh like payoff scheme um now the other thing that's so so harlan was contacted about this and she claims that he's buying this house because he wants to preserve it for posterity because clarence thomas lived there sure which like she is very weird he did give a hundred thousand dollars to harvard to buy a portrait of like to get them to hang up a portrait of clarence thomas so you know he is a deeply weird guy but this uh this reeks of uh of oh boy now yes yes like propublica points out also that they bought two random vacant lots in the area from Thomas for like unclear reasons.

And you know, you can also you can also ask why does the Supreme Court justice like own a bunch of random vacant lots? And the answer to this question is that these people are part of the real bourgeoisie. They are like they they they are like as alien to us. Real estate scamming, right? This is like basically yeah like they're they're they're they're they're doing stuff like they do stuff with their money that like makes them like like they they are like as dissimilar to us as like we are from like a fucking neanderthal like these people like the way they think about money the way they like just like the way they act in the world the way they relate to other people like the fact that they're just buying random fucking lots like across the street from their parents house like

why who knows and and okay so the the thing that's very important about this, right, is if you, you know, okay, everyone in the government, right, from like starting from every court that is below the Supreme Court down to like a fucking astronomer who works for a national lab. If you receive a like a large gift over $500, you have to report it to the government and there's like an ethics process you have to go through and this the standard and again this is the standard that holds from like like the fucking president of the united states down to again like a random astronomer they are not allowed to have to do anything that has quote even the appearance of impropriety now do you want it do you want to know uh who these standards don't apply to the just the supreme court yep does not apply to them they have there's only one thing they have to do right and again this is amazing like so again everyone else has actual enforceable ethics standards the supreme court has you have to report it it doesn't have to go to an access commission

you just have to report it and do you i do do go to an access commission. You just have to report it. And I'll give you three guesses as to how much of any of the shit that I just talked about that Clarence Thomas reported. Probably none of it. Nope. Absolutely none. Zero. Zero of it. Like over a hundred thousand, probably like $150,000 of bullshit. No reporting at all.

I'm sure the cops are going to go arrest him for all these crimes, right? Yeah, yeah. Any day now. The FBI is going to be busting down his door. Now that we've cracked this one wide open. Do you know who else is, and I am not joking,

legitimately is bound by significantly stricter ethics regulations than the Supreme Court. It's me plugging these products and services. The FCC advertising guidelines that we have to follow. I am a podcaster.

I have stronger guidelines than the Supreme Court. Every few months we have to take a 10-minute training that just basically plugs into our brains and it downloads all of these like terms and conditions that we then just robotically need to enforce um so yeah do you know who else commits fraud we are legally not allowed to say that these products and services oops okay well i'm gonna i'm gonna have to do another one of those fcc trainings after this

one aren't i well well here's the thing for the cause crime crime is just legal now like this is what i'm getting out of this report stuff so all right i i started with this housing scam because a it's like okay this is this is like this is like a classic level scam b this because this is like absolute brush league shit compared to like everything else that's about to happen here are you telling me this is this is this is gonna get worse oh okay so all right i'm just gonna i'm just gonna start reading this from pro publica because i i don't i i cannot think of a funnier way to just do this in late j June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia.

He and his wife were going on a vacation, nine days of island hopping in a volcanic archipelago on a super yacht staffed by a coterie of attendants and a private chef. If Thomas had chartered the plane in the 162-foot yacht himself, the total cost of the trip could have exceeded $500,000. Fortunately for him, that wasn't necessary. He was on vacation with real estate mogul and Republican mega-donor Harlan Clow, who owned the jet and the yacht, too. Ah, I see. Harlan Clow, who owned the jet and the yacht, too. Ah, I see. This just sounds like a friendly vacation,

right? I need to read another, like, really just genuinely, one of the most brutal polls I've ever seen anyone do is later on in this Republic article, quote, In Thomas' public appearances over the years.

He has presented himself as an everyman with modest tastes. I don't have a problem with going to Europe, but I prefer the United States and I prefer seeing the regular parts of the United States. Thomas said in a recent interview for a documentary about his life, which Crow helped finance. I prefer the RV parks. I the walmart parking lots to the beaches and things like that there's something normal about it to me doubt doubt you know i don't think he's gonna be getting a charter to yachts all the walmart parking lots honestly i i don't really see that one happening five hundred thousand dollars and and the thing about this it seems like he does something like this every fucking year oh that does sound nice doesn't it like because i wish i wish i could take i i wish

i could take a supreme court justice out to the open waters of the sea about once a year you know wouldn't that wouldn't that be fun for everybody involved well i mean here's the thing we're gonna have to pool our money to rent the submarine that's true that's true but we look we will persevere we will achieve submarine there's no laws on the ocean international waters baby it is legal as as as as as as are regrettably off doing actual journalism colleague james constantly reminds us it is legal for him to fight the seal in international waters just as legal as me disparaging all of our advertisers so all right you know okay so like obviously what is happening like harling crow like this is a level of like bribery where it's like

i the wheels kind of fall off of the word bribery because like how do you even i i don't know i i don't even i don't have a way to adequately describe what this is. What I'm going to do instead is to remind everyone that Thomas was one of the justices who decided Citizens United, the 2010 case that made it legal to bribe politicians through campaign donations and allowed corporations to directly involve themselves in legal campaigns, leading like directly to the hellhole we now all live in. campaigns, leading like directly to the hellhole we now all live in. Now, once again, Thomas was required to report this as a gift to the government, and he simply did not. And, you know, this is one of those things where, okay, so like if a normal person does this, right, in the government government you would take them to court but we've now returned to our problem of who watches the watchers because it's supreme court

right they've established themselves as a dictatorial ruling council based on a power grab and you know i i i'm gonna i'm gonna do my my the supreme court rant i do every time but the supreme court does not have the power of judicial review they do not have the power to strike down laws they don't have it they fucking invented it out of whole cloth in 1802 it doesn't exist it's not real it's never been real you can just fucking ignore them but in the meantime while everyone believes that it's real they get to do this bullshit and you know so yeah so that that indonesia trip is like the big one that we know of uh he took another one to like moscow um at another point the the other thing that that he seems to have been doing a lot is basically like he like just uses harlan crowe's private jet as like his own jet um um ProPublica calculated that like one just like one flight

that he took in 2016 would have cost $70,000 which is more than I make in a fucking year yeah why why did that cost so much it's really expensive to to lease those kind of like that specific kind of private jet

oh yeah okay if it's for a whole private jet that makes sense yeah i simply wouldn't lease a whole private jet but i'm just built different i well i did clarence thomas is built even more different because instead of leasing it he just has a friend who has the jet who just lets him take this like like one of the things republican was doing was they were just tracking the jet and they, they, they, they, they could match the jet showing up to the airport where Clarence Thomas was going to be. And then,

and the jet would mysteriously then appear in a location where Clarence Thomas appeared. It was like, Hmm. And, and this is something we should specifically know. So, okay.

The, the, the, the reason the Supreme court has to do any of this at all is that the Supreme is that like someone finally had a good idea right after watergate that was like we should actually make everyone in the government disclose their gifts and this and this law actually like included the supreme court although i feel like it won't in like two years when they strike that law down or some shit but you know but again like one of the things like specifically in this law is if you take a

private jet, you have to report it. And Thomas has been just like jetting around in this fucking jet for like a, I like many, like at least like at least seven years that we know of and has never reported it. So let's,

I'm sure the, I'm sure the FBI is going to be busting down his doors any day now oh yeah and again like let's you let's you think we've reached the end of the clarence thomas corruption uh crow also like okay so you know how clarence thomas's wife is like a q anon person yeah tried to overthrow the government yes so she has like a she's like a like a it's like a basically bullshit like political lobbying group but it's like so it's a lobbying group but like the actual thing that it does is reverse lobbying which is you can go to the lobbying group and and use it like to get access to uharence Thomas. And that group funded... God, I didn't write down the number

amount, but that group got $200,000 that, again, his wife works for. Got like $200,000 from Crow. There was another story that... Now, I'm no lawyer. These are not actual... these claims have no basis.

This is just an uneducated opinion. But to me, if I saw this in a movie, I would call this money laundering. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. Okay. So, let me just go to the next one because there's fucking more. There's more. Let me just go to the next one because there's fucking more.

There's more. So. All right. Clarence Thomas has like a grandnephew that he like adopted as his son, basically. Like he like went to the family of this kid. It was like, I can give this kid everything in the world. So you should like give him to me. I'm sure this is all above board.

I don't know this is uh what about this man has proved to you that he's untrustworthy what do you mean i okay to be fair clarence thomas makes the argument that like he did this because like he was abandoned by his father as a kid and was raised by his grandfather so he was like okay i'm gonna raise this kid like i'm going to steal his child his parents seem to have agreed to it I don't know you can read into that the level of sketchiness that you want to

the part that I want to talk about is that this kid a thing that I didn't understand until I got to college is that I knew intellectually that private schools existed i did not understand that private schools there are like like there's like because i was used to like like christian private schools right yeah yeah um i i did not like i

didn't like get how rich people could be and I didn't understand that they were like I like walk in there and there's like nine kids who all speak Latin and every single one of them went to a private school that was like 50 at least 50 like somewhere between 50 and 100 thousand dollars a quarter

I was like what the fuck what the shit so Clarence Thomas isn't... So the schools he's going to aren't quite that expensive, but the ones he sends this kid to... So for two years, the estimate is that it was $150,000. Per year? That was for two years, so $ is that it was 150 000 per per year uh that was for two years so

75 000 a year which again more than i make it a year that's reasonable that's fine that's fine that is more that is more than like that that is more expensive than my fucking college that is more expensive like i i like that no it is it is a ludicrous amount of money. And guess who paid that? I'm guessing Harlan Crowe. Yeah! I don't know. I'm just going to pick a random name off the top of my head. Hitler's number one fan harlem crowe it's so amazing because like again all of these people have this like every single like conservative like every conservative journalist like every

conservative judge and every conservative politician are all they all have one of these guys yeah well it's this guy this is the guy and so and every so like everything the coke brothers fund a whole bunch of like content creators like there's like but yeah every almost every big like right wing dude has one of these guys which is totally unfair because the entire left has to share one of these guys we only get one and he has to fund everything on the left meanwhile the right has like has like a dime a dozen of these fucking. We only get one, and he has to fund everything on the left. Meanwhile, the right has like a dime a dozen of these fucking billionaires.

Legitimately, this was actually legitimately the thing that caused Soros to get into politics. He looked at us and he was like, what the fuck is going on? This is insane. What do you mean the American Enterprise Institute just creates Supreme Court justice?

But the funniest part about this is, again, whenever any of these pieces come out, every single conservative pundit in unison and all of their fucking newspapers, all of their magazines, they're all funded by these people. So they all publish identical things going like, how dare you criticize the noble friendship of this billionaire and the supreme court justice who are just pals they're just extending hospitality like you would to any other friend by taking them on a half a million dollar uh cruise around on your yacht it's like incredible stuff alright we should do

we should do one more ads because these are advertisements that we are being paid to promote these are not our personal opinions these are these are ads there I followed the FCC guidelines.

Here's the fucking ads. And we're back. Totally not going to get in trouble for that one. Lest you think, and I can't emphasize this enough, this is something that was like, when these stories first started coming out, the way it was framed was like

Clarence Thomas is like a uniquely corrupt Supreme court justice and then people did literally any digging and it turns out that clarence thomas is not a uniquely corrupt supreme court like all of the like supreme court legal justice like experts were like this is like a unique situation the history of the court and then like like literally two months later. So Samuel Alito, who is another Supreme Court justice, I, and this is in 2007, appears on a $200,000 fishing trip in Alaska with a billionaire hedge fund manager,

Paul Singer, who is, Singer is like one of the most like, okay, as much as I don't like Harlan Crowe, like Singer is like one of the most evil people who's ever lived. Do you know who Singer is like one of the most like, OK, as much as I don't like Harlan Crowe, like Singer is like one of the most evil people who's ever lived. Do you know who Singer is? No, but I'm sure this opinion is is Singer's same opinion as all of our advertisers. Probably our advertisers probably don't like him. It would not surprise me.

So Singer is just like incredibly, unbelievably, relentlessly aggressive, aggressive hedge fund guy. His thing is he goes into companies and makes really embarrassing slideshows about their CEOs and then deposes them and then takes them over and then strips them for assets and sells them all. That's one thing that he does.

That sounds kind of cool. Yeah, I mean it sucks because every single person who would work there loses their job, but that's the less bad thing that is cool well yeah i mean it sucks because like every single person who had worked to lose their job but this this is that's the less bad thing that he does right like like and this is why i'm talking like this is like legitimately one of the worst people in the world like for like any normal like mitt romney right like that was the worst shit that he ever did was was like just destroying a bunch of people's lives by like annihilating these companies for singer that's like that's like the fuck that's the bullshit stuff.

Like that's like, that's the fucking brush league shit. Singer's actual game is. So one of the things that happens over the course of the seventies and eighties is you get a bunch of, I've talked about this at length, my new labels and episodes, but you get a bunch of these economies

that basically like across the global south that just implode and they implode because there's this combination of like commodity prices drop and then they have all these adjustable rate like loans that they've taken out and when Paul Volcker like hikes interest rates all of these like

loans suddenly have like 20% interest and so you have all of these economies all over the world that just fucking are imploding because they suddenly have this unbelievable debt they can't pay off. And so over the course of the 90s, this kind of anti-IMF revolt starts, and

the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, they're the people who you're borrowing money from who also destroy your economy to pay the IMF back the money. By the time you get into like the two thousands, it's gotten less bad. Well,

I guess bad again, 2008, but there had been this process of debt restructuring where these countries were allowed to like only pay like a small percentage of the debt because I just literally couldn't pay it because their economies have been destroyed. Or, and this is another very common thing.

you, you get a country where like a bunch of loans were taken out by like a dictator and he would just like buy planes with them and then he'd get deposed but you know the imf and like the world bank would still hold him liable for the loans it's like well okay like that's like the money's gone right like it's it's in like a bunch of gold bars this guy like drove across the border when he like fled um singer singer is like the last guy who really goes in for like to buy this debt and the result is this so for example like he buys a bunch of the debt of the democratic

republic of the congo and the result of this is that he turns like the entire Congolese economy into this debt servicing machine. We're like, just like every, like there's, they're like, they're, they're, they're stripping the copper wires out of the buildings

in order to like fucking pay for metaphorically. So metaphorically, they're stripping the copper wires to pay this debt off. I not metaphorically, they are taking food from the mouths of babies because the way this stuff is paid for is they cut a bunch of government assistance programs and they're like you know they don't build fucking hospitals they don't staff hospitals and so like a lot like he has killed a lot of people um and his his most famous version of this was this battle that he waged against argentina um so in in 2001 there is this

massive like basically like the the last 20th century like the last 20th century communist revolution happens in argentina in 2001 and they lose but it's they they lose like pretty it like only pretty narrowly doesn't work like there is a there is a timeline that is not that different from this one where like like a bunch of anarchists basically have taken control of argentina um and the result of this is that argentina defaults on its debt and you know they default on this debt so they enter this restructuring program and all of the rest of the like people who are like holding this, okay, well, in order to let the Argentinian economy recover and get, like, some of this money back, we'll just, like, let, like, okay, we'll, like, write off most of our debt. But Singer, like, looks at this and is like, oh, shit, I'm just going to buy all this debt that I know is junk and can't be repaid, then i'm gonna go to the courts in the u.s

and like just force argentina to repay it now this is not how debt is supposed to work right the thing about debt right the thing about like lending someone money or you know this is what essentially what buying someone's debt is right the thing about that right is if the person can't pay you back you're supposed you're out of the money right like that that's that's that's you know this is this is the theoretical economic justification for why you can charge interest because there's risk but what singer figured out is that you could just use the u.s court system and you know the threat of the the the implicit and explicit threat of the u.s military to just like force people to pay you whether they have money or not. And so,

and this is what, so this is what he does. He, he's like, he's like the one, he's the one creditor. Cause he buys like an enormous amount of this debt. And he's the one creditor who refuses to,

to negotiate. And so he like starts running around the U S trying to like steal Argentinian assets. Like he tries to have like argentina's central bank reserves seized um there's another like the most famous instance he tries to steal an argentinian warship in order to pay down the debt um there's another one where like he tries to like he tries to steal argentina's entire pension fund and this causes this like series of of uh like lawsuits that sort of like run their way through the courts and in 2014 one of these cases finally makes it to the Supreme Court

and this is where Singer's $200,000 Alaskan fishing trip pays off because Samuel Alito rules that Argentina has to pay Singer 2.4 billion dollars and eventually they do so elito like like he's also he also has another guy who just like pays for his vacations who's the uh i don't know if i want to say incredibly named or disturbingly named but this guy's name is robin arkley the second wait robin our robin arkley the second second god okay yeah and he's a uh also like a genuinely terrible person like these are these are all like you you read hitchhikers wait have you read hitchhikers guide to the galaxy no okay so my favorite bit from that is there's a bit where like the encyclopedia from the foundation series like from the future like falls down and it falls open onto a page

and someone had just made a joke about how these people are going to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes and the encyclopedia for the future drops down and they open it and it says these two people were first against the wall when the revolution came and that's like all of these people these are like the worst people in the fucking the wall when the revolution came. And that's like all of these people. These are like the worst people in the fucking world or like in the US. So this guy, um, Arkley makes his fortune like buying distressed mortgages and then foreclosing on people's houses and flipping them.

So he is, it seems like a valuable contributor to the economy. I, I, you know, I mean, this is like, this is literally like literally one of to the economy like i i you know i mean this is like this is literally like literally one of the old like crime think jokes was uh when the bank seizes your house the gdp gdp goes up like that's literally this guy this is this is the guy who makes the gdp go up by seizing you by stealing your house um and so this guy takes Alito on a bunch of trips.

So when when ProPublica like reaches out to Alito about this, he gets so mad that he he the Wall Street Journal editorial board allows him to publish a like an op ed that is just him yelling about how this article that hasn't come out yet is fake and one of the specific things that he's really mad about is part of this article is talking about how uh the the wine at this met at this like lodge that he's staying at that's being paid for by by the the fucking mortgage flipper guy has a thousand dollars a bottle wine and clarence tower was just like no the wine is not was not a thousand dollars a bottle you could check the website and then Republican was like well yeah but that's because the the lodge like the the the the quality of the lodge was downgraded after Alito had like one of the like just just just a truly incredible meltdown that he was just allowed to have in the op-ed section of the wall street journal

in like in response not even in response like before this article came out and the other thing that we learned from this is that also apparently uh former justice anton scalia uh also was taking trips from this guy so this is just like every conservative like justice in the last like 20 years has just been doing this they've just been getting like flown around the world on fancy vacations by their billionaire friends well i don't actually know if i actually might merely be a millionaire i'm not i'm not sure but he might be a billionaire i don't know the other two definitely are um wait millionaire billionaire because those are two very different things hold on let me google is this guy

a billionaire yeah Arkley doesn't seem to be a billionaire he seems to merely be well no I've seen other places that he is a billionaire I don't know there's some dispute actually it's the guy there's like dispute over what's his net worth oh we don't know it's unclear what's his name there's there's dispute over it

dispute disputed net worth yeah unclear um the other two guys definitely billionaires this guy may be a billionaire unclear but like literally like all of these like literally all these have just been like taking just like, and again, the thing I forgot to mention that I should have mentioned is that like all of these people have had cases appear before the Supreme court. Hmm. Curious.

And this is, this is another amazing thing. This is the thing that came up like really prominently when there was a case that I, you know, there, there was a case about the attempt to like overthrow the government in 2020 or in 2021 that like, well in 2020 there was a case about the attempt to, like, overthrow the government in 2020, or in

2021, that, like, well, in 2020 and 2021, that Thomas, like, objectively should have recused himself from because his wife tried to overthrow the government, and he just didn't. And this is a really important thing, which is that Supreme Court justices, like, your fucking daughter, like, could be one

of the plaintiffs in a case, and you don't have to recuse yourself? Recruiting yourself is completely voluntary which is not how this works for fucking anything else right but again the supreme court is not like it's not actually a court it's just like a fucking it's just this like weird dictatorial tribunal that is subject to like absolutely no authority whatsoever and okay so it also turns out that there's like there's like yet another layer of fuckery with this which is that

universities uh use supreme court use supreme court justices to solicit donations by like so so they'll have like a don't invite a justice to like give a talk at the university and they'll pay them a bunch of money and then they'll they'll have them them a bunch of money and then they'll they'll have them like go to a dinner and then they'll advertise to all their donors like hey

if you give us a bunch of money you can go to this dinner with supreme court justice and so a bunch of like like a bunch of people who have cases in front of the supreme court like use this to go get access to a bunch of supreme court justices so it's great uh this is this is really fun uh oh did i did i do the venmo thing then no i forgot the venmo thing okay okay here's the venmo thing so two days after i started like i like two days ago like from the time of writing this will be like like this will actually be like almost exact well it'll be like almost a week from when this comes out there was another thing of this that came out which is that a bunch of lawyers had just been sending money on Venmo

to one of Clarence Thomas' aides and these these are not just people who have active cases, these are like one of the guys not just people who have, like, active cases. These are, like, one of the guys who Venmoed Thomas's aide is the guy who won the affirmative action case.

And another one, one of the other lawyers who Venmoed him is the guy who, I don't know if you remember this, like, in, like, the last, like, term of the court, there was a case where I, the Supreme supreme court like fucked the epa's ability to regulate greenhouse gases so that lawyer also paid a bunch of money on venmo to clearance thomas's aid so this is this is the level though of corruption that we're working at right which is like people sending public venmo transactions to the aides of supreme court justices who's about who are about to hear their cases oh oh it's so good um now the reason this is happening is that the right has built like just an extensive an incredibly extensive network to seize control of the judiciary uh liberals have produced no such network because they're fucking hacks and this and this is not it's not just the sort of like there's only one like liberal billionaire like no there are liberal billionaires the actual

real problem with a liberal attempt to like take control of the judiciary is that like liberal like liberal lawyers are hacks instead of actually like trying to hold on to like judicial positions right and you know attempt to like move their way up through like circuit courts in order to like like seize control of like large like increasingly large portions of of the court system which is what the republicans did uh the democratic lawyers they'll they'll get like like they they do the even lazier corruption which is like they'll just they'll be a judge for like three years and then they'll just leave to private practice because they're all just fucking greedy shits. And,

you know, the result of this is that all these like fucking liberal lawyers, I, you know, they go into private practice, they make a quick buck and they leave us to fucking burn to death in the smoldering heat while they spend their vacations in Bali. And,

you know, and again, the, the only, the only thing that like could conceivably slow down the Supreme Court is the fact that technically speaking, although it's never actually gone through, it is possible for Congress to impeach a Supreme Court justice. But the Democrats don't want to do that because… Because then the right will be able to impeach all of the liberal justices. No, it's worse than that.

The actual Biden's actual stated reason for why he didn't want to do it is because it would undermine the legitimacy of the court. And the result of this is that, like, for all their fucking screaming about lawlessness and rising crime rates, the fucking biggest criminals in the entire goddamn country are just literally sitting in their stupid ass robes taking the biggest bribes in the history of the fucking republic and the democrats are just like well if we do anything it'll undermine the faith in our institutions so i yeah fuck them but also like we don't fucking need these people like you could like you could You could fit all of these people in one submarine and we could just be fucking dumb with it. And then we'd get a whole bunch of new Supreme Court justices

picked by Joe Biden and they would save America. So that's why we need to vote for Joe Biden 2024. Save America. This is the submarine plot. It'll go great. We have mandated submarine vacations for all supreme court justices submarine is now the the only vehicle you're allowed to travel on justice

taxpayer-funded titanic explorations for all supreme court justices we're already giving them 285 000 a year it's not actually that it wouldn't we would save money if we just put them in my position on this is clear it's this is this is this is a fiscally conservative position most of my budget can be interpreted as fiscally conservative it's cheaper to put all the people at houses than do what we're doing now. Anyway, well, glad we could learn about how the Supreme Court is good and just. Well, you know, the second thing you can learn is

if you one day somehow are like a semi-minor Chicago politician, you now know how to launder money. Which does sound exciting. Yeah. You never know. Well, thank you for this insightful look at

1970s mystery villain Harlan Crowe who has a mansion full of Hitler paintings. This feels like it's like the location of like an Agatha Christie book or something. Let's all investigate the murder of Harlan Crow. Spoilers, it was a Supreme Court justice. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo.

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 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. 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. podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his his jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's

toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29 they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head

and see what's going on in someone else's head search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it.

Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew, of the YouTube channel Andrewism. And hi, this is Garrison. I've not been on an Andrew episode in a while. Yeah, it's been a minute. It's been a minute. And it's been a meme at this point that Aotearoa or New Zealand is forgotten, you know, from maps, both physical and mental.

But those islands contain a rich history of activism that deserves a spotlight you know um much of what i've discovered has been thanks to the academic efforts of teahu um i hope i'm saying the name correctly but their research found formed the foundation of uh my exploration of just some of the 20th century history behind contemporary Maori struggles for autonomy on the islands. The story of Maori oppression begins not long after the arrival of European settlers in the late 18th century. The Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between the British Crown

and Maori chiefs, was meant to protect Maori rights and ensure a peaceful coexistence. However, as a bilingual text, it kind of sucked at being bilingual because some of the words in the English Treaty did not translate directly into the written Maori language of the time and so the Maori text is not an exact translation of the English text, particularly in relation to the meaning of having and ceding sovereignty. In other words, the full implications of what they were signing was not fully understood. The concept of private land ownership, as the British understood it, clashed with Maori communal land practices, which led to a significant land loss for Maori communities. The New Zealand government implemented policies and laws that systematically

favoured European settlers, and throughout the latter half of the 19th century, Maori lost control of much of the land they had owned, sometimes through legitimate sale, but often by way of unfair land deals, settlers occupying land that had not been sold, or through outright confiscation in the aftermath of the New Zealand Wars. And New Zealand Wars, whether they're also known as the Land Wars or Maori Wars, were a series of conflicts that took place in Aotearoa between the indigenous Maori people and the British government and its colonial forces. These wars spanned from the early 1840s to the late 1870s and the

underlying cause was that very struggle for land and resources as European settlers were arriving in increasing numbers and more and more disputes had arisen over land ownership and the interpretation of the Treaty of Watangi. The wars were fought on multiple fronts involving different Maori tribes and regions conflicts included the northern war the Taranaki wars the Wakaito war and the Taranga campaign and these wars were characterized by a combination of guerrilla warfare fortifications and conventional military tactics the results as with pretty much all wars was the disruption of well in this case, specifically traditional Maori social structures

and economic systems, and the results and hardship for those Maori communities. And so as the 19th and 20th centuries progressed, Maori oppression would also manifest in the suppression of cultural practices and languages by the government, as the government aimed to assimilate Maori into European culture, because of course, to them, European culture is considered superior.

Maori children were often forced into English-speaking schools, where their own language and customs were discouraged, and that also led to a decline in the use and transmission of the Maori language, and the loss of cultural identity for many Maori individuals. This, I think, can be characterized as a cultural genocide. Moreover, discriminatory practices were prevalent in various areas, including in employment, in housing, and in political representation. Maori people faced significant barriers and discrimination when seeking employment or housing opportunities. They were also underrepresented in

political institutions which limited their ability to advocate for their rights and influence decision-making processes now the seeds of contemporary maori activism were sown in the 60s and 70s struggles were taking place basically from the point of first contact but Maori activism as we understand it today really launched with a new fervor in the 60s and 70s the late 60s and early 70s really marked a turbulent period globally because there was an upsurge in class conflicts and social activism you know there were the independence movements and decolonization movements happening all over the world. It was a time when people all over were taking a stand against injustice and fighting for their rights. And this wave of political and social movements, also known as the New Left, had a profound impact on the islands as well.

In New Zealand, as in elsewhere, student activism was really taking shape. Across the world, students were protesting against the Vietnam War. In the US, they were advocating for black liberation. And then there were also social movements that gave momentum, like the Women's Liberation Movement, the Anti-Racism Movement, the Environmentalism Movement, and the Gay and Lesbian Rights Movement. They were all, you know, sparking around the same time. So the New Left and A and out here was shaped by these international developments the late 1960s had witnessed a surge in student activism

and the emergence of various social movements again environmentalism women's liberation anti-racism etc and so Maori protest groups were really picking up on those movements and those movements would shape the mindsets and the actions of Maori protest groups during that period they were taking the analysis and the understanding of of racism and other inequalities faced by Maori in a broader context and so they will align themselves with class struggle as well and with the progress if I do to the left at large so this point in time in the Maori struggle, it was characterized as largely leftist. That is something that will change later on

as the movements become more heterogeneous. But for now, it's been mostly leftist. Even though there were some Maori protest groups

that were less left-oriented and more just, you know, national liberation focused, they still saw themselves as part of this broader left movement.

Okay. They were still actively working to incorporate these radical intellectual traditions, particularly Marxism and feminism into the Maori struggle. In the late 1960s, there was this very strong collaboration taking place between Pakeha, or European New Zealanders, and Pakeha anti-racist groups, and the emerging Maori protest movement. One significant event that really brought them together was the exclusion of Maori rugby players from the 1960 All Black Tour of South Africa by the New Zealand Rugby Football Association. all-black tour of South Africa by the New Zealand Rugby Football Association. And that decision, of course, sparked widespread opposition because at the time, South Africa was very much involved in apartheid and this decision to exclude Maori rugby players from the team and from that particular tour led to many protests under this banner of

No Maori, No Tour, which focused not only on the exclusion of the maori but also on the morality of engaging with a country practicing apartheid more collaboration would take place in the form of the formation of the halt all racist tours group also known as heart in 1969 which is an umbrella organization that united a couple different voices and groups both maori and pakeha in their opposition to racially discriminatory sports tours. They also involved organizations like CARE which included young Maori political activists among its members alongside Pakeha political activists in organizing these panel discussions to address the position of Maori in New Zealand society. And then while this is going on, there's also the growth in the influence of individuals like

Ngahuia Te Awikatuku and Tana Wateri began shedding more and more light on the barriers that prevented Maori women specifically from fully participating and contributing to Maori society. They were out here criticizing the patriarchal nature of traditional Maori leadership and advocating for the speaking rights of Maori society. They were out here criticizing the patriarchal nature of traditional Maori leadership and advocating for the speaking rights of Maori women to earn inspiration from the broader, non-Maori specific women's liberation movement

as well. Were these other movements that were happening in New Zealand that were kind of working together or this just part of a broader trend of these movements in the 60s? Yeah, so they were starting to collaborate at this point in time. Both Pakeha and Maori political organizations were beginning to form connections and spark discussions. Those Pakeha organizations obviously being of the leftist variety yeah and

the maori organizations being uh primarily leftist apparently align themselves with leftist uh causes and uh political ideologies but from like a more like indigenous perspective and standpoint and like goals yeah yeah definitely all right got it one particular organization which was formed in the mid-1970s was created by maori women within the maori activist organization got tamatoa who had embraced a feminist perspective to analyze the oppression faced by maori women particularly and this awareness was fueled by their experiences of frustration and anger with the Maori land rights movement. Because these women are here and they're struggling for Maori rights as a whole. But then also they're facing issues as women, both in the organization and in broader society.

society. So they're fighting to preserve the politics and culture and language of Maori society while also seeking liberation from the oppression that they would face in that Maori society. So it's a struggle for both preservation and also reformation of Maori society, or rather liberation, preservation, and reformation. There was also an increase in strike activity and general class struggle happening during the late 1960s, which had a significant impact on the political education of many Māori workers who were fighting for better wages and improved working conditions. as demonstrated by the emergence of groups like Te Hokihoi and the Maori Organization on Human Rights, or MWHR, both located in Wellington and both strongly connected to trade unions. The secretary, in fact, of the MWHR, Tama Poata, was actively involved in the Wellington Drivers Union and the New Zealand Communist Party. These organizations were advocating for an alliance betweenori and progressive elements within the working class they view the fundamental

contradiction society as being between labor and capital between workers and bosses or landowners and racism was seen as a consequence of class inequality and the majority of maori being working class were considered an oppressed segment of the working class both teo okioi and mwhr promoted the idea of a unified struggle across racial lines focusing more on class-based strategies as the most effective means of addressing racism and reducing maori inequality if you're picking up hints of class reductionism yep i was i was actually going to mention that yeah there are some some some hints of that um in this particular approach and you'll see the consequences of that as we progress a bit further through the history like could you i mean could

you briefly explain class reductionism in case someone is like listening and is unaware of that concept sure so class reductionism is basically the idea that the exploitation of labor uh and the exploitation of of the working class by the capitalist class is the fundamental um you know a form of oppression within society and it trumps all other social divisions all the forms of oppression such as. And it trumps all other social divisions, all other forms of oppression, such as racism or sexism. Yeah, like when you mentioned like they were viewing like racism as like a consequence of capitalism, right?

That puts racism like after capitalism, but racism has existed way before capitalism. It is many way one of, it is one of the main drivers of capitalism. It's not merely a consequence. It's actually like a motivating factor. Yeah. And particularly their position that focusing on class-based strategies

would be the most effective means of addressing racism. Yeah. What I can see from a particular angle, considering that the majority of Maori were working class at the time, saying that the best way to alleviate their condition would be to focus on things you do to impact their class position yeah that may be true but then at the same time you also have to consider uh that the racism embedded within new zealand society you're not going to go away just as a

result of the end to that class-based oppression to be fair to the mwhr they were also played an active role in raising awareness about racism specifically, you know, in housing, in sports, in employment, and in violation generally of Maori political rights. They also had a very strong stance on issues related to the Treaty of Waitangi, you know, the alienation of Maori from the land and depletion of resources and the inability of Maori to access those resources. Their stance, interestingly enough, was really on sort of reclaiming the Treaty of Waitangi

as a potential foundation for a harmonious and bicultural country with the conditions that past injustices were addressed and rectified. However, like I alluded to earlier, there would be a shift as the movements would progress. The inspirational momentum behind Te Hokiwai and MWHR had begun to wane, particularly during the early to mid-1970s. And eventually in 1975, the MWHR would merge with Matekite as part of the land rights movement, which marked the end of their separate existence and also led to the rise of brown power. So if brown power sounds like black power, that's because it's copying black power. Similar to the ideologies of black power advocated by folks like Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton,

brown power centered on the complete rejection of the racist institutions and values of New Zealand society and the belief that group solidarity was essential for effective collective action and negotiation. The proponents of brown power urged Maori people to unite, to recognize their shared history, and to foster a sense of solidarity and community. Significant emphasis was placed on the goal of Maori self-determination, which involved the ability for Maori to define their own objectives and to establish their own distinct organizations and institutions. So this is like like at this point brown

power much like black power is the opposite of just assimilation or adjustment or cohabitation with existing structures it is a movement that desired complete autonomy from those systems, from those structures, an assertion of the freedom of Maori people to exist and not have their existence imposed upon. The organization, Ga Tamatoa, initially drew inspiration from the revolutionary faction of the Black Power Movement in the US. However, as the group evolved, different interests and objectives had emerged, which led to a division within the movement. On the side there were the conservative university educated members such as sid and hannah jackson peter reichis and donna wateri and on the other side there were the more militant proponents

of black or brown power like john ohio paul kotara and ted nia eventually unfortunately John Ohio, Paul Kotara, and Ted Neer. Eventually, unfortunately, the more conservative members of Tamatoa really took center stage in the movement. Their strategies diverged from the militants in that they sought change through alliance with more liberal elements within the ruling class. They believed that by implementing appropriate legal measures maori could achieve prosperity um so they were really advocating for like welfare and self-help programs for maori development and in fact there was even some belief among them that new zealand capitalism coupled with the parliamentary political system, could be rid of racism. That you could extract racism from capitalism

and then everything would be hunky-dory. Interesting. Yeah. Which is like the opposite of the class reductionism that we mentioned previously. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, this perspective is exactly the kind of thing that you see manifest again and again within um

political movements across the world really the interests of middle class university educated individuals who are more focused on their own individual advancement within the existing system than an actual thorough critique of the structure and history of that system and so when you have when you're um fueled by those individual interests and you're focused on how you can advance in that system in business or in politics whatever the case may be it's very easy to just you know be like be like, oh, well, I don't know what you guys are talking about. I'm sure once we get the racism

out of the way, you know, we can all succeed, wink, wink. But of course, that is a rather myopic approach. And so as a result of the centrality

of those individuals and that particular perspective in the movement, the meaning of brown power as a result of the centrality of those individuals and that particular perspective in the movement, the meaning of brown power as a slogan kind of got watered down. It became more ambiguous and potentially associated with either Maori capitalism or revolutionary activity. Arguably, the same thing could be said for black power. A lot of of people a lot of advocates of black power ended up going in the direction of black capitalism um talented tenth um black business black wealth that kind of thing um and well we've seen the consequence of that i mean there are more black billionaires and millionaires than there ever have been in human history but that doesn't mean racism has been dealt with putting aside the capitalist oriented advocates of brown power on the revolutionary side a new

group would emerge to challenge the system and this group and you're gonna you know gonna pick up on a little bit of a theme here in terms of inspiration this group was called the Polynesian Panthers. Interesting. Established yeah they were established in June of 1971 and they had a membership primarily composed of Pacific Islanders such as Samoans, Tongans and Yuans and they drew obviously explicitly inspiration from the Black Panther Party in the United States. Just a heads up, in New Zealand, the Maori and Tongans and Nguyen and people from the other smaller islands within Polynesia, within the, you know, area from those various islands in Oceania and the Pacific Ocean. And a lot of them had arrived as immigrants during the 1960s economic boom that had taken place in New Zealand.

The founders of the Polynesian Panther Party were actually high school students. They weren't university students, they weren't adults. They were mostly from working class, first generation families. That's cool. And their parents were actually encouraged by the New Zealand government to migrate as cheap labor during that economic boom. But of course, as these things go,

again, once you've been like looking at this history and for any significant length of time, you see certain patterns emerge. So governments are going to invite you like, yeah, yeah, yeah, migrants come, we'll take advantage of your labor and in the second there's a downturn migrants are to blame for everything so as the production boom was subsiding in the mid-1970s and living conditions were deteriorating racism and police harassment against pacific islanders

became even more prevalent and by by the way, Pacific Islanders does technically refer to Maori as well. And the Polynesian Panther Party's position is that Maori or Pacific Islanders are considered part of the Polynesian Panthers. But I'm speaking specifically about the migrant Pacific Islanders and their experience here.

They're dealing with, you know, just like the Maori, they're dealing with low wages and poor living conditions. And the government, you know just like the Maori they're dealing with low wages and poor living conditions and the government you know being migrants they're in an even more precarious position because government had taken a more aggressive stance towards overstayers people who overstayed on their work visas which put these first generation New Zealanders at risk of deportation to countries that they had never visited had never You know, being forced into these precarious circumstances, a lot of young Pacific Islanders were living in unsafe neighborhoods

and a lot of them felt compelled to join gangs or to stay hidden at home for survival. And so the Polynesian Panthers really emerged as an alternative option, seeking to provide a more positive path for young people in Pacific Islander communities. provide a more positive path for young people in Pacific Islander communities. The Polynesian Panthers were particularly influenced by Huey Newton's policy of Black unity and also echoed his distinction between revolutionary and cultural nationalism when debating the conservative members of Nga Tamatoa. The Panthers identified the root cause of Pacific Islander oppression within the exploitative social relations of the capitalist system. And so they advocated for a liberation strategy that involved

completely overthrowing the capitalist system and the social relations and enabled its existence. And so in practice, this meant that the Panthers expressed solidarity with other liberation struggles, oppressed groups and activists, and ultimately aimed for a global revolution. They worked to empower the Polynesian community and improve their quality of life. They organized strikes in factories with poor working conditions.

They protested outside substandard housing through the Tenants Aid Brigade. They established homework centers to help address educational struggles. And they focused on raising awareness of rights

and entitlements among Pacific Islander families who were often unaware of their legal protections. In fact, a lot of the Panthers' focus was on assisting individuals who were caught up in legal issues. They distributed pamphlets that informed people of their rights, they provided legal aid for court representation, and they organized buses for families to visit their loved ones in prison. In fact, the Panthers' support and advocacy earned them the gratitude of prisoners who often contributed a portion of their meager earnings to the movement. As they shed light on the daily struggles faced by Maori and also other Pacific Islanders, ranging from land claims to discrimination, police violence,

the Panthers actively worked to unite Maori and Pacific Islanders in a pan-ethnic coalition, which contrasted with the viewpoint of Ngāti Matua, because they were prioritizing Maori unity above everything else. It almost reminds me of the way that sometimes in the US context, there were some organizations, or rather there are some, to me, PSYOP organizations that are attempting now

in the present day to emphasize African-American unity above and before any other form of pan-Africanism or black unity. So an insidious seeds to attempt to distance African-Americans from the rest of the Black diaspora and to foment divisions between African-Americans and African immigrants or Caribbean immigrants. So again, the tactics, the strategy is the,

it feels like a canon event at this point that there will always be these um individuals or groups who are trying to find ways to chop up and to divide uh groups that should be united and have a lot to gain from being united in a common struggle. The Panthers, along with many other Pacific Island youth, were actively working to support Maori causes, including the 1975 Landmarch and the Bastion Point occupation. They became more and more adept at political lobbying, which became apparent during the Dawn Raids in the 1970s and the springbok tour of 1981 t ness was jailed for his actions during the tour but was eventually released without charge and will i know the higher along with honey harawira and others were on trial for two years

only getting off the charge after and you know they'll calm your appearance here Bishop Desmond Tutu well-known South African activist flew in to be a character witness for their trial and I think I'm going to put a pin on it there cover the seeds of contemporary Amari activism the trade union movement brown power

and the Polynesian Panthers and in the next episode we'll talk more about the development of the land rights movement and the weaknesses of the Maori struggle in the post-1980s context. That's it for now for me. I'm Andrew. You can follow me on YouTube at Andrew Azam. And support on Patreon.com slash stdrew. This has been Ikra Pinyin.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter... Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by I Heart and 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 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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains

and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they don't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in

someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. on it. Hey everyone and welcome back to It Could Happen Here. In my last part I spoke a bit about the historical context of the Maori struggle in New Zealand or Aotearoa.

I spoke about the seeds of contemporary Maori activism, the involvement of Maori in the trade union movements and the involvement of Maori in the trade union movement and the development of Maori women's movements, as well as the development of the brown power slogan and the split between the movements,

more radical and more conservative coalitions with the former eventually going on to, as inspired by the Black Panther Parts in the US, form the Polynesian Panthers. For those unaware, this is It Could Happen Here. I am Andrew of the YouTube channel Andrewism, and I'm joined by... Garrison is also on this Zoom call. As we discuss the maori land rights movement now the struggle against maori oppression

racism led to a division within the movement regarding whether the existing political structures could bring about real change or if a complete overthrow of the system was necessary the failure to address land alienation through official channels created a sense of pessimism about the government's commitments to Maori rights. The Maori land rights movement emerged from 1975 to 1978, bringing together a diverse range of activists. They sought alliances with workers, both Maori and Pakeha, viewing them as natural allies in the fight against oppression, the common enemy was seen as the racist and capitalist state. The occupation of Bastion Point and subsequent eviction from Bastion Point

intensified the direct conflict that the movements were having with the state. It garnered their public support and also their involvement from the Pacquiao left. The Auckland Trades Council placed a quote-unquote green ban on the area which meant refusing to allow work to commence on the planned subdivision and a north shore contractor even donated six trucks including two bitumen tankers to help with a planned blockade the occupation at bastion point was followed by arrests at the raglan golf course

and many of those arrested were representatives of various activist groups the land rights movement and the struggle against racism radicalized a group of maori women who were already part of Nga Tamatoa, to go on to form the capital B, capital W, capital M Black Women's Movement. In the early 1980s, the Waitangi Action Committee, Maori People's Liberation Movement of Aotearoa, and the Black Women's Movement emerged as prominent

Maori political activist groups, primarily based in Auckland, New Zealand. They continued the protest tradition of Ngāta Matua with annual protests to the Waitangi Day celebrations, and they even came up with the idea to call it the Chiti of Waitangi instead of the Treaty of Waitangi. Very clever. And they also called for a boycott of the celebrations. Now, initially, for a boycott of the celebrations. Now initially, Maori activists had collaborated with certain Pakeha anti-racist groups, but that association was weakened after divisions emerged during the anti-Springbok tour protest in 1981, which as you may remember from the previous episode,

was a protest against the national rugby team's participation in a tour that included apartheid South Africa. The perception was that, at least among Maori, that many Pakeha had failed to recognise the connection between apartheid in South Africa and colonialism and racism in New Zealand, and so the bonds between those two movements were beginning to weaken. You add on top of that a prolonged economic crisis that was taking place in New Zealand during the 1970s, 1980s. As a result, of course, of the inherent tendencies of capitalism, the government had to grapple with a crisis of political legitimacy and of economic management. And that, of course, fueled further ethnic and gender inequalities, further social unrest and worsening economic conditions,

and increases in unemployment. The upsurge that took place during that time in Maori protest really highlighted the marginalized position that Maori were dealing with in New Zealand society, and studies ended up confirming their disproportionately poor educational outcomes, high unemployment rates, low incomes, health issues, high imprisonment rates, low rates of homeownership and dependence on the state. While some Maori activists had sought strategies to challenge the system and address these inequalities, others ended up pursuing struggles that posed little threat to the state and failed to address the root causes of economic and social crises inherent to capitalism. Now the initial focus of Maori

cultural nationalism was on securing Maori studies and language programs in the educational system. However, the movement eventually shifted its emphasis towards rediscovering Maori history and culture more broadly and along the way there was less emphasis on putting together a robust political movement and robust strategies for broader social change. And while earlier movements had a very clear focus on left-wing politics, it's also around this time that we see a shift towards a broader range of politics, including right-wing. One of the most important works in the Maori actress movement at the time was Donna Awatere's Maori Sovereignty, published in 1984. And that book was really less of a critique of right-wing racist politics and more of a critique of left social movements, which, according to Awatere, was committed to a status quo characterized by white supremacy and Maori subordination. And she was calling everybody up. She was calling out Pakeha activists, whether they be feminist, trade unionist,

socialist, or otherwise. She called them all out as being committed to this status quo of white supremacy and Maori subordination. Around this time, there was also a growing sense that Pakeha society was intrinsically based in competition, exploitation, material success, as opposed to Maori society and Maori values, which culturally was more communal, more collaborative,

and more focused on the wellness of the whole. And so the solution was seen as really emphasizing cultural consciousness. wellness of the whole and so the solution was seen as really emphasizing cultural consciousness but the emphasis on cultural consciousness alone often led maori away from political activism and towards you know purely cultural vitalist pursuits in 1984 the fourth labor government was elected and it sought to address the rise in maori protests by enhancing the status of maori culture specifically and incorporating maori representation and practices within state institutions this approach is known as biculturalism and it extended the jurisdiction of the waitangi tribunal and incorporated maori personnel and cultural

symbolism into government institutions. For those who may have missed it, the Waitangi Tribunal was basically an institution set up to deal with specific cases of violations of the Waitangi Treaty. And so by extending the jurisdiction of the Waitangi Tribunal, by incorporating more Maori into positions of government and of power this gave this illusion of a partnership and it ended up satisfying some of the Maori demands for self-determination but at the same time and again echoes to other movements around the world you see that the government cedes certain ground but it does so so it doesn't lose other fights it pretends to lose certain battles so that it can win the war right because in conceding to more reformist demands of the movement it allowed them to marginalize and to disempower the movement's more radical demands. And it allowed them to, you know, put forward this PR face of doing a good thing for the Maori community

while not actually challenging the underlying social relations of racist and capitalist society. Basically, the state's adoption of ethnic rhetoric and co-optation of Maori elites into state institutions served to appease a decent portion of Maori protests while maintaining the status quo. Now after the Labour government had

introduced the Treaty of Waitangi Amendment Act which expanded the powers of the Waitangi Tribunal in 1985, the Waitangi Tribunal actually had very little power when it came to enforcing its recommendations so it would hear out these cases of land theft it would hear out you know these Maori individuals or groups would invest a lot of time and energy and resources into their land claim cases the tribunal would find them correct it's like oh yeah they did steal from you you probably should get that land back but the only thing is we can't really help you the tribunal which was set up to help with these cases did not actually have the power to enforce its recommendations to actually enforce the settlements that came to it was toothless so it really ended up being a waste of energy and at the same time the labor government was doing some economic restructuring to reduce government expenditure and implement an economic plan to restore profitability, which included measures like deregulation, privatization, dismantling of the welfare state.

Again, echoed, this is neoliberalism 101. Thatcher, Reagan, all of them. and all that because the claims that were made to the waitangi tribunal and the recommendations made by the tribunal posed obstacles to that sale of state-owned enterprises and that further restructuring the economy towards more neoliberal ends there was a growing sense within the government that this was quote-unquote special treatment for for Maori and the political costs associated with the tribunal was just causing too much headache for the government. And so by 1989, just four years after they introduced that act under the immense pressure of, you know, these Maori people getting in the way of their ability to neoliberalize the Labour government ended up downplaying the significance of its treaty policy and while that's going on the government is co-opting key individuals in the Maori protest movement through various negotiations and consultations more and more of this quote-unquote Maori elite was being brought

into the fold of the state, getting privileged positions and wealth. And so they became insulated from the grassroots Maori struggle. The following government, not the Labour government, but the national government, also sought to restore, you know, profitable investment in the New Zealand economy and to address some of the uncertainty created by the treaty claims. And so they went to the Maori elite, did their little negotiations, and they decided to settle certain claims to the fisheries around New Zealand. And that became known as the Sea Lords Deal, which caused a lot of headache and anger and division within the Maori community

because of the lack of transparency and democracy in these negotiations. The deal was made between the New Zealand government and a group of Maori corporate entities known as the Sealord Group in 1992. And under this agreement, the Sealord Group, which was said to represent Maori interests, acquired a 50% stake in Sea Lord, which is a major seafood company in New Zealand. The other 50% remained with the Japanese fishing company, Nissui. And so the deal was seen as a resolution, like, yeah, we pat ourselves on the back. The Maori were making these claims over fishery resources. So we met up with some Maori businessmen and gave them a 50% stake in Sealord.

Problem solved, right? Now, you know, they will get some commercial benefits from the fishing industry, but no more than 50% though. Of course, as a result, a lot of Maori were arguing that, no, this does not adequately address our grievances. The settlement is not sufficient.

And on top of that, why are you going to make any of these backroom deals and not consulting the community as a whole? The positions or the opinions of one doesn't represent all of us. And it's actually kind of similar to what was happening during the initial stages of the land theft that was taking place

during New Zealand's colonization. to what was happening during the initial stages of the land theft that was taking place um during new zealand's colonization because when i mentioned in the first part that some of the land was sold legitimately what i mean by that is certain maori individuals saw an opportunity to profit by screwing over everybody else in their community so they would claim oh yeah this is my land completely disregarding the fact that this is communal land and it has been for generations this is my land so i will sell it to you you give me the money and so i you know profit and everybody else had a suck so i see kind of seen that mirrored in this 90s context and then at this time

with the divisions in the Maori community over the decisions made by these Maori elites there were even further divisions strained by some negotiations that were also taking place for the government's one billion dollar fiscal envelope which was an attempt to evoke

a full and final settlement of all remaining Treaty of Waitangi claims. Basically, the government was saying, here, here, have some money, get out of the way, shut up, that's it. So-called reparations, right? And so there was another upsurge

of Maori protests and more and more people were frustrated and there was another upsurge of Maori protests and you know more and more people were frustrated and there was greater desperation because there was really a lack of options for resolving the grievances they were dealing with some of the protests were continuing the struggle of the land rights movements of the 1970s but others were challenging the decision-making power of the iwi bodies the iwi bodies by the, are the largest representative bodies of Maori in Aotearoa. They're like mega tribes. And so there was an increasing frustration among some Maori of, you know, these representative bodies' inability to accurately represent them.

And another key component to this division was the fact that the more middle class elements, middle class professional elements of the Maori population were enjoying an expansion opportunities and were growing in wealth and prestige. But they were leaving behind the working class Maori population, which was still struggling the same way they had been for decades. which was still struggling the same way they had been for decades. The policies of both the Labour government and the national government disproportionately impacted working class Maori communities and the movement that was supposed to represent them had lost sight of them and their interests. There was a lack of inter-movement solidarity, of pushing for fundamental social change instead of these

individual changes and there was a sense of crumblance internal cohesion some Maori activists such as Te Ahu who like I said in my first part I drew primarily from their work when researching this particular history. And they were very critical of that historical period and particularly of the personalization of the conflict for liberation. And so their position was that by focusing on individual relationships and prejudices, rather than challenging the systemic structures perpetuating oppression, it left the struggle to be fought on this individual level while the larger system was left unaddressed and particularly because you know in the 80s there was a shift away from

class struggle as a central component of the Maori struggle middle class and wealthy Maori interests were dominating the conversation and their interests were exclusively in cultural nationalism with no real room for working class struggle for class struggle in any form and then part of that whole strategy and that whole focus on exclusively cultural nationalism would attempt to throw everybody under this one under this broad brush right the wealthy neoliberal Maori politicians would be in the same vein as the impoverished and unemployed working-class Maori despite their clear differences in access to economic and political power and so this notion of Maori as a homogenous group with identical experiences and political aspirations,

disregarding diversity within Maori society and the conflicting political strategies within Maori communities, would really weaken the cohesion of the struggle as a whole. And I don't know how else to say this uh except there needs to be a recognition of racial struggle of gender struggle of class struggle of struggles for ability and disability justice like intersectionality intersectionality It's really so simple. Cultural nationalism has its place, but it's very insufficient and very easily co-optable. That's why the new African anarchist Ashanti Alston says that we must go beyond nationalism even if we don't go without it. That's why I've made a whole video on the subjects of nationalism or more specifically national liberation for

oppressed groups. You see it's a tool that oppressed people can use in their struggle but it's not enough and focusing too much on it leaves a lot of exploitable gaps in one's analysis it's a again it's a tool it's not an end in itself it does little to change material realities teahu in their piece had said that while and i'm quoting here while culture and identity remain absolutely essential to maori well-being, it does not automatically follow that cultural identity alone should provide the organisational basis for the fight against racism and Maori disadvantage. Because identities are blurred and multiple, any fight against Maori oppression must be

based upon building the strongest possible liberation movement by uniting different oppressed groups into a common struggle. This is essential because true liberation for Mari will not occur without a fundamental transformation of capitalist society and the creation of a classless society in which there is real women's liberation, gay and lesbian liberation, and freedom from racism." Historical evidence has shown that the political movements based solely on the identity of the participant can be very uh diverse let's just say on the political spectrum um there are reactionary and there are revolutionary segments of pretty much every liberation movement from black power to free palestine because when the focus is on cultural or national

liberation there is a lot of room to adopt a variety of approaches and a variety of political aims it's also a lot of room for middleclass interests to dominate as they have a lot more time and resources to contribute and take over the rhetoric and the messaging of the causes. Another example of that can be seen in the feminist movement, which in a lot of ways diverge from the struggle of working-class women towards the more niche interests of, you know, the girl bosses who were facing genuine hurdles in their climb up the corporate ladder. But in focusing on those instances, there was a loss of the needs of working class women and the precarious position that women as a whole are still in.

Maori political activism has always been diverse you know there's a wide range of strategies campaigns and participants there's not a unified movement but is a heterogeneous force with both radical and conservative elements each pursuing different methods to achieve the objectives. There is no unanimous agreement on the vision of Tino Rangatiratanga, which is the Maori term for Maori self-determination. Tino Rangatiratanga can be associated with Maori capitalism, electoral power, cultural nationalism, or revolutionary activity. In the past, some activists had believed that fundamental transformation of the system was necessary for liberation and so they rejected reformism. But the landscape has changed. While some still advocate for constitutional

changes in electoral politics to address systemic issues, some influential tribal executives and corporate warriors have even gone as far as to argue that Maori can only achieve true self-determination and liberation through unrestricted free market capitalism the objectives that Tino Ranga Tiratanga promoted by different groups are contradictory because there is no homogeneity in the Maori struggle. But I hope that the takeaway here has been clear, and that is the need for a clear intersectional approach to revolution in our struggle against racist, sexist, capitalist, etc. society.

The Maori movement is still ongoing, etc society the maori movement is still ongoing and though the focus of these two parts has been primarily on the current or rather has been primarily on the struggle of the 60s 70s 80s and early 90s maori liberation has not been found tino rangatiratanga has not been found Tino Rangatiratanga has not been achieved and there's still a long way to go that's it from me again I'm Andrew from the YouTube channel Andrewism

you can find me there and you can support on patreon.com slash stdrew this has been a good afternoon. 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. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. and 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.

I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment.

I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head search for therapy gecko on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts it's the one with the green guy on it oh welcome back to it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart and about what we like to call the crumbles in here. And a key aspect of the crumbles is the ongoing resurgence of fascist political parties and politicians in the United States and elsewhere. And today we're going to be talking about about one of said fascists, a fellow you might have heard of named Ron DeSantis.

Pudding Ron. Yeah, Pudding Ron, old DeSanctimonious. Now, Garrison, you've got a banger of an episode written out here. I'm looking at your script right now. It's beautiful. Right before we get into it, I do want to give an update on a past subject if it could happen here. Lord Miles Rutledge. For those of you who may not have caught that episode, Lord Miles is a British man who went

to Afghanistan to hang out and got caught up in the Taliban's, you know, victory in that war and then turned himself into a danger travel influencer visiting this dangerous place, going to war zones, going to Ukraine, and, like, making it about him. He went back to Afghanistan because it really was better for his social media following than any of the other places he went, bragged about breaking laws, including faking his visa, and then got arrested and has been radio silent for about the last five months. Now, a lot of people have wondered, is Lord Miles dead?

Did he, like, die in custody and the Taliban are trying to keep it a secret? But worry no longer, friends. Today, his account posted, this is a friend of Lord Miles to give an update. Four months in Taliban custody, he's treated very well, has several servants, loads of movies on his laptop, goes on picnics, and has tea with the Taliban cabinet government. He still loves Afghanistan. And then there's a photo of him giving the thumbs up.

Doubt. So he's not dead, guys. He's in a nice Taliban farm upstate. Upstate, yeah. He gets to run all he wants, you know, wide open fields. He's super happy infinite tennis ball it's really funny one of his all of these people are so fucking brain point brain poisoned but like a big part of miles he was like trying to also be kind of a right-wing influencer uh he was doing

this like anti-woke the taliban is awesome and like actually kind of good guys because they don't like believe in the woke agenda. And one of his friends, after this message got posted, like messaged his account, be like, hey, Taliban, if you're the guys that have like captured him, we really want him back. I'll pay a ransom. Like, I know this is probably just a misunderstanding because you guys are on our side on the anti-woke war.

Sure. Yeah. I'm sure the Taliban cares about the woke culture war facing America. That's what they're all about, that shit. Good work, guys. I'm sure they tune in to Sean Hannity every night. So funny, so funny. Anyway, that dude is dead as hell.

Look, I'm not saying that to gloat. I'm just saying that that motherfucker's dead as hell. I'm saying it to gloat. I don't care. What a prick. He's dead. He deserved it. Many, many people have died in Afghanistan,

and it's been a tragedy. This one, less so. Anyway, Garrison, please continue. All right, so we're going to return to this podcast being your number one source for slightly homoerotic fascist memes. Once again. That was how we pitched it to iHeartRadio. Yeah, it gave us millions.

Explaining the homoerotic fascist memes. A lot of people talking about fascists these days, but none of them are homoerotic. um so on the on the last day of pride month desantis's campaign shared a ad that's been described as bizarre and mystifying um where he peddles a whole bunch of pretty pretty extreme like homophobia um he attacks trump for for previous statements that trump has made regarding LGBTQ rights. And then the video kind of transitions and we see basically a version of what we're going to call a fash wave. And I'm going to explain all of these terms here in this episode. But we're seeing kind of a resurgence of a political meme style that was popular years ago. It's kind of laid dormant the past year or so for reasons that we will very soon discuss.

But a whole bunch of both conservatives and liberals are kind of not really sure how to take this ad shared by the DeSantis campaign and are ill-equipped to understand what the fuck is going on. But luckily, I am equipped because I spent my teen years in Telegram chats watching this meme style develop. Proud of you, buddy. Yeah, thanks.

In the Telegram trenches once again. All right, so the first image of DeSantis, when it flashes to this other kind of weird, more like bizarre editing style, has him with like these these blue or red like glowing eyes. And this is going to be something that is going to be a recurring trend that we're going to be talking about this episode. These like these like glowing laser eye type things. So we're going to start with this because this is actually one of the most common traits of Fashwave. And we've seen this be adopted by multiple politicians in the past. And most people probably like don't know what the fuck this is.

Like, is this like a Superman thing? Like, what the fuck is this? So laser eye memes started in the early 2010s, originally referencing video games like Mass Effect 2 and other sci-fi and superhero media. People like Superman or anyone with laser eyes is also a cultural touchstone for this sort of thing. The laser eyes usually represent a figure growing in power. So when someone has laser eyes in a meme, it's like they are gaining power, they're gaining security. The original caption for the early laser eye memes was assuming direct control, which was also just a video game reference. So again, it would have someone with glowing laser eyes and text that says assuming control or assuming direct control.

So this was popping off in the early 2010s. Around the same time, Synthwave and Vaporwave were gaining traction as both nostalgic musical microgenres and a memetic visual style featuring neon, glitchy, kind of 80s retro computer aesthetics mixed with traditional Greco-Roman sculpture

for a variety of reasons, which we'll touch on. But Vaporwave had influences from video games, cyberpunk, anime, and it was relatively popular as a microgenre in the 20-teens. And throughout the 20-teens, both the laser eye memes were steadily growing in popularity on places like Reddit and 4chan, were steadily growing in popularity on places like Reddit and 4chan, alongside the rise of Vaporwave and its surrealist, nostalgia-laden aesthetics focused on highlighting the comfort and unfulfilled promises of the internet of yesteryear. And this nostalgic, surrealist aesthetic was prime bait for easy co-option into the reactionary meme variant dubbed Fashwave, which soon became kind of the de facto aesthetic of the then-burgeoning alt-right.

Glowing laser eyes on various fascistic political figures became a staple of Fashwave during the rise of the alt-right around 2016 to 2018. I actually kind of like Vaporwave. I think it's maybe a bit overplayed now. And it certainly is frustrating how much it was kind of taken over by reactionaries because actual Vaporwave is almost actually like anti-capitalistic in a few ways.

It's kind of criticizing the disposableness of like modern consumerist culture using forgotten 80s technology and software and that kind of stuff. So I'm looking at two of my little vaporwave images here in the script. ways that the images are broken up makes it look kind of like old internet pop-up ads back when they had clearly defined borders and Xs and weren't just overtaking your entire screen and you had no way to close them. But you know what does kind of overtake your entire viewing experience via an ad? It's podcast advertising because it's going to go straight into your ears. There's no way to X out. You have to suffer through the ad

unless you figure it out that you can press a button that makes you go forward 30 seconds. Anyway, here is our beloved sponsors who fund such vital research that I'm doing for this episode. Anyway, the rise of the alt-right. This is kind of where Fash wave is both like getting the name fash wave and also you know it's becoming a larger problem because there's more nazis walking

around so after the deadly unite the right rally in charlottesville the alt-right went through a sort of split between the more trumpian adherents who made up large parts of the then dubbed alt light a term we don't really use it very much anymore. Um, and then this, this kind of other section, which had more of the like acceleration as to neo-Nazis who were starting to congregate on the messaging app telegram.

And then we have groups kind of like the proud boys are like in between. They're kind of Trumpian. They're also also like more fashy, but they're not like really full skull mask. Usually some would, Some would adopt that aesthetic later on, but that's kind of due to this cultic milieu that's starting to develop on Telegram. So a fash wave largely followed the self-proclaimed fascists. So it too became the central visual style of the burgeoning network of militant accelerationist Telegram channels,

which would eventually be dubbed Terrorgram, terror as in terrorist. And this was combining with a whole bunch of weird factors around 2018, 2019, including the Boogaloo Boys, which Robert has written about at length before. And it was also influenced by the Iron March forums and the Skull Mask Network with groups like Adam Wathen and The Base. The Iron March forums are like the boomers of Nazi internet people. Not quite the boomers, maybe the Gen X. The Gen X, yeah.

Very much the Gen X. The forum generation. There's a generation of people who had forums before social media was a thing. It's Nazi something awful, right? We're not quite into the chans yet. Yeah, and after Iron March kind of collapsed, a whole bunch of these weird accelerationists were starting to all congregate on Telegram.

And this is where we see kind of Fashwave develop into a much more overt, apocalyptic, and a doomer focus. The hauntology-inspired nostalgic reflections on the false promises of techno-capitalism that were already present in Vaporwave

were ripe ground for the addition of, like, return-to-tradition-style reactionary fascism. Do you want to explain hauntology if people aren't familiar? Yeah, hauntology is a... I mean, it started as a term

which then developed into a musical genre, but it's similar to Vaporwave. It's about kind of looking back on the unfulfilled promises of the past that we were like promised as a culture that then never came to place. But these promises still kind of follow us. They kind of like haunt us. Hauntology is a big reason why liminal spaces got popular because of early 90s and uh and 2000s like aesthetics of like big office buildings that are now left empty office buildings like schools like

particularly like the you know like the doors to a school or whatever you get a lot of like photos of that yeah so stuff that makes people feel uh a longing for a past that was never really real yeah and like a like a a longing for like this sense of home really real. Yeah, like a longing for this sense of home and this sense of a safe home that you never actually really had. Yeah. Yeah, because you hated being in school. You just had forgotten it.

Yeah, but you've kind of mythologized it. Hirsch calls it post-memory, when you re-remember things based on your current stance and standpoint. Yeah. The sort of Doomer accelerationism of this variant of Fashwave, or this evolution of Fashwave was also accompanied by

groups like the Boogaloo Boys who were starting to make their memes in this style as well. I have a few examples of Fashwave here showing to Robert and James. Son and Rads were pretty popular. It's like the the sunwheel version of the swastika essentially but a lot of these are like remember tradition embrace your race with like nazi figures in like this monochrome style uh over over like scan lines

like you would see on like a like an old like arcade video game that has like that has like a horizon um but you know all like neon colors kind of kind of like glitchy type stuff there's there's one trump one here from uh from like 2018 where he has uh glowing yellow eyes um also in the fast wave style so this was kind of the the aesthetic around around 2019 here. And like, FashWave was definitely still common on image boards like 4chan, 8chan, and 8kun. But the ever-present kind of Hitler particles

and poor web design on those sites drove away most of the mega conservatives who might try to stumble on to 4chan or to 8chan to like watch QAnon stuff. It was just, the site was too hostile to them. And then circa 2020,

among waves of Twitter and Facebook suspensions, Trump supporters and high-profile far-right figures started congregating on other platforms. A few Twitter clones popped off, like Parler and eventually Trump's own Truth Social, but a number of mega-conservatives also ended up on Telegram, in part due to Telegram's largely hands-off approach to moderation. So around this 2020 and like just post-2020 time period is when Telegram began functioning as the

far-right's very own cultic milieu, a sort of shared online space where various memes, ideologies, conspiracy theories, and propaganda could all intermingle with each other and spread. Now, part of this is how Telegram operates as a platform. I'm going to quote from an article about Telegram and the cultic milieu from Logically. Quote, Telegram offers features that straddle the line

in between social media and messaging app. Users can create channels which function as one-way message channels that allow someone to send a feed of messages available to all of their subscribers. Public channels and group chats are searchable by name, allowing anyone to subscribe to a public channel or join a public group. Channels and groups are uniquely connected on Telegram. When a message is forwarded from a public channel into another channel or group, it links back to the original group, creating a chain in between different channels and groups. Another common feature is for users to advertise for channels and groups in other channels and groups, with some users creating directories of these

channels and these big group chats that have extremist content, unquote. So this kind of interconnected nature that allows this chain link of being able to forward a message, like you have a Telegram channel with like 3,000 people in it, and you post Fashwave memes. You can make some Fashwave memes in the style of like Trump, and then you can forward this message to a Trump channel that has 45,000 members in it. They see this meme, they might like it, they click the meme, it sends them back into your 3,000 person channel.

So now they're getting exposed to all of the other weird shit you have going on. So it became a really easy way to kind of make a rabbit hole and like a pipeline for people to get exposed to new aesthetics, new ideologies and especially conspiracy theories. I think we should have an ad break now, and we will return to talk about the increased Trumpian focus on Fashwave

that happened as a result of this kind of telegram cross-proliferation. That's right, everybody. We're going to break for ads from our sponsors, uh, who, who also sponsor Lord miles Rutledge. So, um, you know, let's hear it up for these ads from the Taliban. Ah,

we're back. And I don't know about you guys, but Taliban's making a lot of sense these days to me. Good picnics. Really good. Yeah. I like, I like their war on wokeness.

Yeah. Speaking, speaking, speaking of a war on wokeness. Yeah. Speaking of a war on wokeness. That leads us right back to old Ron. Old meatball Ron. So to understand what the fuck is going on in that Ron DeSantis video, this is probably one of the most important

little tidbits of knowledge that some people may be overlooking is this brief fever dream known as Dark Mega. Oh, God. It gets worse. No, I know. I'm just glad. Yeah, I'm glad this one didn't work out the way they'd hoped.

No, it did not work out. The opposite of the way they hoped. Yeah. So because of this kind of telegram cross-proliferation, the far-right's memetic aesthetic went through a sort of coagulation after 2020, which eventually resulted in the upsetting, albeit short-lived, Dark Mega, also known as Ultra Mega, both of which are horrible names.

Yeah. Yeah, I remember Ultra Mega being big and people putting their Twitter handles along with an eagle and a flag. Yeah. So the Dark Mega trend started around a year after the January 6th Capitol attack and steadily grew in popularity for the next few months during the lead up to the 2022 midterm elections. midterm elections. After two years of right-wing influencers and politicians operating in Telegram's cultic milieu, the influence of militant accelerationist propaganda is immediately apparent in this new stylistic iteration, which is basically downstream from Fashwave. Dark Mega promoted a form of dystopian-inspired overt authoritarianism with the assumed direct control laser eyes front and center and for emphasizing militaristic domestic connotations. Dimly lit images were usually edited in red or blue monochrome.

Dramatic images of Trump are fairly prominent, as is the presence of weapons and the occasional Nazi symbol. I have two examples of Fashwave here for the gallery. James, what do you think of this? Of these two pictures? First of all, they look like somebody used MS Paint. It's kind of that.

That's the tier of work we're looking at here. None of these are well edited. No, they're not. It're not 90s horror yeah it is one of them the one on the left he looks like it's like it's like a terminator almost the the eighth movie in like a jason or freddy type series right where it's like straight to dvd like they're moving that shit right into the red box and they just paid a guy $45 to mock up a cover. Like, yeah, absolutely. It is a 2B direct to digital remake.

I do, he's like, it looks like it's like being developed in a dark room. It's like red and black. It's like all red and black. His eyes are glowing blue. He has a musket. It appears to be like a long, a Springfield long rifle or something like that i

couldn't tell you the exact type but that does i am now thinking about like so if you've ever loaded black powder you tend to like have you know like a wrapped you know cartridge that's got the ball and the powder and you rip it in half in your mouth and you pour the powder and then you like spit the anyway trump is such a germaphobe i just desperately want to see him Try to manage a black powder rifle I would really deeply enjoy that It's as good as Tucker Carlson Shooting the select fire rifle Was a very funny moment

In guys who pretend to like guns And then the other more horror inspired one Has text at the bottom that says, it's time to just kill them with Trump and red laser eyes. I was upset to find out that the original Nazi who coined the term dark mega, which kind of started this trend, followed me on twitter which wasn't wasn't great oh no oh no yeah yeah um so that was that was a fun thing i discovered over the course of researching this episode so one pro-trump neo-nazi described dark mega as such quote dark mega is the

aesthetic demand that trump embrace a harder and more focused approach in the role only he can fill. He was too kind-hearted, too forgiving. Dark Mega demands he learn from his mistakes. Another Dark Mega proponent described the intentionality behind the movement of being, quote, if you want to win, if you don't want to repeat the past, you have to get mean. You have to almost embrace the villain role that they're bringing you with. So that's fun. But Dark Mega's ambitions were to be more than just a meme, but instead kind of be the first real attempt

at a coherent post-alt-right aesthetic that was being pushed by mainstream political actors. And included in this push was kind of a pressuring back toward militant posturing after the failed pseudo-coup on January 6th. Because in those first few months after J6, everyone was like, oh, you know, we probably shouldn't be doing super overt, like violent propaganda if we're if we're like on the

right and then over over time and i think dark mega was part of this was uh the right realizing that maybe they should just keep going and like go back to that much more kind of like militant posturing that they were doing beforehand um i have i've i have uh a few other a few other dark mega images here. One with Trump in a skull mask and pit vipers holding a Bible in front of a son and dad. Pit vipers are a type of ski sunglasses that have a very distinctive look. There's nothing wrong with them. The company is actually anti-Nazi. Whenever people post their pit vipers pictures they will like donate the price of that pair of pit vipers to you know the adl or something

but they've become a signifier for nazis for reasons that we probably don't need to explain it no uh but you can read an article by me and robert and bellingcat about white boy summer if you want to if you want to really need that right now if you really want to hear more about pit vipers yeah we can explain this shit at length bro and then and then i have these two other images of trump in front of these american flags and one of them's edited in a glitchy style with him holding a uh it looks like some type of like machine gun or something tommy gun yeah it might be a a Tommy. I can't really tell. It's too small to see.

Oh, no, no. That's got to be some sort of either AR or 9mm carbine with a suppressor on it is what it looks like at least to me. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's generic. It's kind of Wolfenstein style almost, that one. Yeah, all of these guys are obsessed with Wolfenstein.

Yes. Oh, yeah. Very good, James. You figured it out. style almost that one yeah all of these guys are obsessed with wolfenstein yes oh yeah very good james you figured it out there's a longer conversation to be had because wolfenstein the most recent game not a pro-nazi game no they're all anti-nazi but because you know it's it's a game where like the nazis won the war and you're like fighting them yada yada yada because they're trying to do like future nazi troopers and it's like a video game where you want to make the bad guys look cool. Same thing as like making the demons look cool in Doom

and that, you know, it's kind of hard for Nazis to not like that. Very selectively edited clips of Wolfenstein cut scenes and music appears in Fashwave propaganda fairly often. It appears in Schizo Wave propaganda, which is kind of another downstream iteration of Ash Wave, which I am not going to cover on this episode. And I guess the

one other meme style we have here is red and dark blue monochrome with Trump with these blue laser eyes. And this is kind of the, this is like the main dark mega aesthetic here, is this one that's just like red with like a dark blue as like the accent and then these little laser eye things.

So Dark Mega had the goal of serving as both a rebrand and an attempt to reunify the various disparate factions of the online right into using attention grabbing authoritarian propaganda to push Trump and his supporters even further into the extreme while holding on the legitimacy that is lacking in the contemporary sketchiness of like the Proud Boy groups or like Patriot Front, which especially after J6, the Proud Boys legitimacy took a big hit. And all of these fucking dark mega guys think that Patriot Front's like a fed op. So it's a way to kind of like push a new version of the alt-right that still relies on the legitimacy of Trump. To quote the Institute for Strategic Dialogue,

quote, the secondary aim of dark mega is to launder more extreme narratives and aesthetics into the mainstream Trumpist movement and attempt to introduce mainstream conservatives to more extreme parts of the right through melding Trump memes with these different aesthetics. So like we kind of mentioned before, the previous attempt at this was the white boy summer trend from 2021, which I and Robert have already wrote about before.

And white boy summer was influenced by very similar kind of fast wave telegram aesthetics. But it was only really successful in leaking through to one or two Republican politicians, namely Paul Gosar. Paul Gosar. You can look him up if you want. He's one of the Republicans who had a degree of mainstream legitimacy and was also super tight with like just straight up. We want to set off bombs places Nazis. Yeah, but Dark Mega, on the other hand, was picked up by a large handful of conservative politicians, as well as like the usual suspects made up of right wing influencers and content creators. of right-wing influencers and content creators. Among the dark mega proponents were Republican candidates like Tim Swain,

former strategist, now Blaze TV employee, Logan Hall, Andrew McCarthy, far-right propagandist Jack Sobiek, now former Congressman Madison Cawthorn, and former White House lawyer, Andrew Kloster, and was even boosted by the father of accelerationism, Nick Land, who was a brief dark mega proponent himself. Famously, Marjorie Taylor Greene joined in on the action in May of 2022 under the hashtag ultra mega, but with the same red monochrome images with the with with the big glowing eyes um

probably the most upsetting bit of dark mega lore was a post that madison cawthorn wrote on instagram he he he had this post full of like here's the list of of america first conservatives look how small the list actually is the people who are truly america first and to attach to this little image of this list uh he wrote an extremely unhinged dark mega post this was also in may of 2022 quote the time for genteel politics as usual has come to an end it's time for the rise of the new right. It's time for Dark Maga to truly take command. We have an enemy to defeat, but we will never be able to defeat them until we defeat the cowardly and weak members of our own party. Their days are numbered. We are coming, unquote.

So this rhetoric did not secure Madison C carthorne uh continued employment in the house of representatives yeah it turns out most people in national politics are not entirely telegram brained like have not just had their skulls melted by that shit. Oh, so, so yeah. To quote an analysis from the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, quote, Dark Mega is an embodiment

of the revenge president burst from the far-right's urge to reclaim what they crave and have lost, power. Proponents seek to punish their political enemies without attending to political correctness. Dark Mega is an appeal to accept the true desires

of the most dissident Trump supporters and mainstream their feelings through the medium of memes, which played a crucial role in the 2016 election. So Dark Mega peaked as an online search topic back in May of 2022, and it may have reached like peak popularity in actual like spread of memes as early as march of 2022 i think it i think it peaked in may because there was a few news articles about it so more kind of normies were like googling what it was but it the actual peak was only in March of 2022. It only lasted like three months.

You can still find some Dark Mega bubbling under the surface, but only by like random Nazis. And like that doesn't, that's not signifying any kind of like political movement. And the reason why Dark Mega kind of stopped being effective in between March and May of 2022 is that there was something that happened that summer and that spring that effectively killed Dark Mega while also dealing a pretty big body blow to Fashwave in general. And we will learn more about Brandon's special secret operation in part two

that's right this is going to be a surprise two parter because I wrote too many words yeah because this took an hour and a half to record of dense dense information so now it's two days you guys get to enjoy this for two days.

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 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 podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. 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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's

pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy

on it. Yeah, I hope you guys have a wonderful Christmas as well. Merry Christmas and let's go, Brandon. Let's go, Brandon. I agree. Let's talk about let's go, Brandon. I maintain the only good thing Biden has done so far. It's pretty funny. It is very funny. This is also the sort of attitude that is actually necessary to like win the culture war side of these things it's not like defending yourself and it's not when they do something

like put out this meme like being like oh my god this is so dangerous and like so irresponsible no you fuck with them right back you know like it boo the shit put some glowing eyes on joe biden and make it looks like he plans to shoot somebody you know it's funny so let's talk about the rise of dark brandon and yeah also the other thing that they're kind of deturning and reposting with here is like taking the uh uh what is it taking the the fucking brandon memes and shit let's go brandon meme let's go brandon and going uh being like all right yeah fuck it call him brandon like doesn't hurt us like yeah we'll be brandon but biden did that himself when someone asked him about it he didn't know what it meant and he was like yeah let's go brandon i i actually i actually already have that

clip inserted of above this conversation james so good good job. Good job. We're on the same page. Um, yeah. So which is disturbing given the content. So dark Brandon combines two different pro Trump memes while trying to subvert them both pretty successfully. I would say, um, I'm, I'm, I'm going to assuming everyone listening to this is, is familiar with the fuck Joe Biden, let's go Brandon kind of evolution. So I'm just going to skip right past that because the other half of dark brandon i think is a little bit more interesting so dark brandon began with chronically online leftists doing a satirical riff on dark mega replacing the figure of trump with an alter ego of biden and having and having this like mirror universe

president appear as some kind of neoliberal socialist demagogue because when you replace the fascist figure with some largely ineffectual liberal given militaristic and socialist or anti-fascist catchphrases but otherwise leave

the rest of the authoritarian aesthetic stylings of fascism the result is pretty funny because it's Joe Biden. Yeah. Yeah. So again, I think I've read a lot of stuff on this. There's like two academic reports on Dark Brandon.

Some people believe that Dark Brandon started as like a right-wing meme. They are mistaken. They are misreading irony poisoned leftists as being like alt-right memesters. Common mistake. Yeah. Because you wouldn't want to be stuck in a car with any of them, right? No.

But Dark Brandon evolved into satirically imagining, what if Joe Biden was actually the militant communist dictator many on the right made him out to be, with all of the authoritarian impulses of Dark Mega turned on its head and ironically targeted against Trumpian conservatives? Dark Brandon can be seen hunting down Trump voters for execution or sitting on a throne of AR-15s with yellow laser eyes. I'm going to play one video for us to watch here.

I haven't seen this. For all those of you who voted for President Trump, there's no way out. You won't be safe in Joe Biden's America. He's putting on a skull mask, but it's also like a government mask. No more bourgeois malarkey. Tie me to a missile and fire me into the suburbs. I'm ready. It is genuinely quite amusing.

It's pretty funny. it's pretty funny it's pretty funny stuff um i i do like the the way that like dark brandon edits work is there's there's there's this one smile that biden does that looks very like evil and mischievous that if you edit it if you like edit it in after you said something ridiculous it's pretty funny so here. So here we have a meme about Joe Biden publicly executing Patriot Front members after they got arrested in Idaho. And probably my favorite dark Brandon meme is a picture of Biden with sunglasses

and a list of names. It has Shinzo Abe, neutralized. Gas prices, neutralized. shinzo abe neutralized gas prices neutralized covet 19 neutralized antifa fully armed roe v wade 2 coming soon global homo coming soon communism coming soon which is pretty funny that's good so one of the reasons that dark brandon was able to flourish where dark mega stagnated is that the biden version is both based on and never lost its sense of irony imagining the feeble bumbling biden as some like hard-lined ruthlessly effective tyrant is in it like is like an innately humorous premise from like from the very beginning the

ironic nature also made a dark brandon all but impervious from attack by conservative commentators on the right because like how can you attack this meme like it's it's so ironic and absurd that like there's no way to be like look how dangerous the dark bryden meme is like come meteor's eyes glow! It's like, come on. Come on, guys. So, Dark Brandon grew in popularity as Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, also known as the IRA, passed last summer. Some good memes out of that, too.

And it also kind of spread after news broke that an American drone strike killed the then leader of Al Qaeda on July 31st, 2022. So around this time period is when dark Brandon broke containment. So dark Brandon kind of started in March of 2022. And by, by early August, it has now left the, the irony poisoned leftist, like Twitter sphere sphere and is now broken out and is freely swimming around the liberal populace um so come august dark brandon no longer belonged to leftist

shit posters liberals started to catch on and make dark brandon memes of their own albeit much more cringy boomer versions and And although most of these liberals probably didn't really know what was quite being satirized, that didn't stop them from trying to emulate this cooler, more edgy version of Biden with glowing eyes. So here I have two liberal memes here with someone reacting to the news that there was no civilian casualties in the drone strike that killed the Al-Qaeda leader. Having Biden shooting laser eyes down from orbit and then also him eating ice cream

in front of an explosion, which is a not very good meme, but the fact that there was bad, like very, very bad, low quality, dark branded memes is actually very important for later. Yes. Yes. No, it's good that this happened.

Yes. The internet has taken notice. And now there's a new meme out there known as dark Brandon, which shows a badass Biden with supervillain laser beam eyeballs. with super villain laser beam eyeballs. The liberalization of Dark Brandon was met with sadness from the original memesters that pioneered the overtly ironic dictatorial Brandon who commanded battalions of Antifa. The ongoing liberal co-option of Dark Brandon

was thought to signal the death of the meme, although a completely unintended positive side effect of this recuperation seems to be taking hold we'll have we'll have more on that later i have i have a four other pretty bad dark brandon memes here the one with cornrows just fully fully sent me it's not good there's there's two of these are like photoshop movie posters with biden's face extremely poorly photoshopped onto neo's dog shit photoshops again this is not photoshop but this is ms paint at its finest yeah and then a poster for the dark brandon rises with the tagline that the malarkey will end. Not not very good memes. So it wasn't just overly online Democrats on social media who were spreading these dark

Brandon memes. Soon enough, White House staff joined in to celebrate the passing of the kind of neutered Inflation Reduction Act. On August 7th, the White House digital director shared a high-contrast photo of Biden grinning with red laser eyes pointed towards the camera that quickly went viral. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut posted a dark-branded meme, which was a drawing with yellow glowing eyes later that same day. And the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee posted the same picture

as well uh and the deputy white house press secretary andrew bates posted a whole ass dark brandon meme writing dark brandon is crushing it with a horribly cringy photo of biden with red laser eyes and white text that reads yeah your malarkey has been going on for long enough kiddo oh my god oh my god no you know what garrison we were just celebrating this but i think i am now a fascist it's it's done it um the white house staff secretary joined in by responding to a tweet saying lasers shooting out of joe biden's eyes is an official statement of administration policy by saying that is indeed an official position. What? Anyway, so.

God damn it. Many people, myself included, suspected that dark branded would suffer through kind of a regular meme cycle and die off pretty soon once it hit this like peak popularity. meme cycle and die off pretty soon once it hit this like peak popularity but somehow brandon showed a surprising amount of resiliency partially due to liberals being a few months behind and there being really nothing else for liberals to meme about because this was like one of the this time in biden's presidency was the first time the democrats actually felt like they had something to celebrate and having this kind of overly outrageous kind of joking meme was like the first bit of like agitprop that liberals have like done since Trump went out of office. And it's also like the first effective agitprop they've ever done, period. Now, Dark Brandon showed one other surprising

trait very soon, the ability to influence actual Joe Biden. On September 1st, Biden gave a primetime bombastic speech addressed to the nation and spoke about the threats to American democracy from extremist mega forces. Joe Biden stood outside of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, lit with high contrast red lights and uniformed Marines on either side. Far-right politicians and influencers reacted with shock and horror, calling the speech demagogic, outrageous, and divisive, while liberals and even some leftists praised the speech for accurately addressing the threat posed by far-right actors in this country.

But both of those on the right and left definitely noticed the frank, like, Brandon-ness of the entire thing, especially with this being less than a month after the White House's own Brandon posting. The red lights, the background Marines, and the impassioned and oddly well-delivered appeal to fight for the soul of the country from the Trumpian mega-extremist political faction set on dismantling democracy played very well. The whole thing felt very Dark Brandon-esque. And the takeaway many people had is that they had somehow memed Dark Brandon into existence.

Do you know who else you don't want to fuck with? It's the products and services that support this vital academic level research into Dark Brandon. Truly, truly unparalleled work on the part of myself. You're welcome. Let's talk even more about Dark Brandon. I cannot believe I wrote over 3,000 words on this. All right, so like many natural predators, Dark Brandon went through a period of hibernation, laying dormant through most of the winter. That is until a huge resurgence in April of this year. This past April, Biden launched his new 2024 re-election campaign website, which not only featured a dark Brandon error 404 page reading, you're lost, Jack, let's get you back on the rails, which is kind of funny, but not really funny because it's doing the whole like Biden and track reference. And it's kind of funny because it's like a 404 page. So it's like this, it's dark Brandon telling you to get back to the

regular website because you're now on like the, the part of the website that doesn't exist. Cause like dark Brandon doesn't exist. It's not, I'm, I'm, I'm overthinking this. I'm doing way too high concept. It's like Baudrillard analysis of this. This joke is not that good. But beyond the dark Brandon error 404 page, there is also official dark Brandon merchandise. Biden's dark line features dark blue monochrome images of Biden or Brandon staring forward with red laser eyes and a mischievous grin. The design comes on baseball hats, t-shirts, mugs, stickers, and tote bags. Product descriptions are as follows. Best worn while vanquishing malarkey.

Protect yourself from malarkey and the sun with this dark cap. Dark Brandon, dark roast. What? Dark Brandon, dark roast. Tea drinkers, welcome. And, and finally the worst one,

malarkey is totes over after we reelect president Biden. This is the, this is like the internet equivalent or the me. I don't know what the, I feel the same way I feel in like old yeller when you're like, well, the dog's got rabies. You got to shoot it.

Like there's no other ethical way to deal with this is like to deal with it but but it's yeah it hurts it's like when someone's dad turns up to the skate park this is what's happening here yeah you've got to shoot them otherwise they'll give everyone rabies right that's what you meant james yeah yeah so it's time for their life to end yeah this is also like fascinating because like the fact that that biden joe biden made assume direct control laser eye dark merch before trump did is wild and now trump won't really ever be able to like capitalize on this sort of thing because biden just beat him to the punch on this and in a way that's not actually promoting fascism, which effectively, this whole thing effectively neutralized Trump's ability

to cash in on Dark Mega and the FashWave aesthetic, which is just a pretty shocking and amazing trajectory for FashWave. Yeah. The latest appearance of Dark Brandon was during the White House Correspondents Dinner this past April when Biden handed off the podium to comedian Roy Wood Jr. Roy, the podium is yours. I'm going to be fine with your jokes, but I'm not sure about Dark Brandon.

The coolest thing he's ever done. The libs were so happy to have a meme, to like have a meme of their own. The first time they had a meme. They got one, they got one and they were just, I, yeah,

it's one of those things again, like, like a little kid having to shoot his dog. I just, I couldn't, you can't take it away from them. They were just so happy. I have have i do have three that i i selected the only three dark branded memes i like here for the very end one is just biden in a beard and eye patch it says it's over jack uh one has

biden with a like a very horror like horrifyingly edited smile with laser eyes saying malarkey detected he looks like the monster in a fucking like i i don't i don't know exactly what from but like demon teeth like nightmare teeth the leftists are so much better at making these memes than anyone else and my favorite is this is a satirical rift on the this post has been fact-checked by real american patriots trump beam instead having an image of dark brandon with laser eyes is saying this post was fact-checked by real dark brandon acolytes so this is like fun and good right like this is this is fine but there's actually a surprisingly like positive result from this whole dark brandon sega because even as far back

as august of 2022 myself some research colleagues and other journalists that i have like no connection to all started to kind of observe the same thing the liberal recuperation of the fast wave style via dark brandon seemed to seriously damage fast waves's legibility in right-wing circles. The normie use of Dark Brandon had already appeared to have ceased all of the Dark Mega posting because there was this influx of minions Facebook-tier branded memes

which offered very strong levels of vicarious cringe that provided a social disincentive for anyone wanting to post laser eye dark mega memes due to their fear of being associated even just aesthetically associated with the liberal boomer biden memes which now which now like represented this cringe and dead style the widespread nature of brandon laser eyes also seemed to uh seriously dampen the patrick batemanification of characters like homelander from The Boys, who was at the time becoming one of the far-right's favorite memeable characters. Yep.

There are few things that these online Nazi weirdos fear more than their special toys being played with by normies. Because almost immediately, their esoteric play thing loses all appeal once the normies like start using it like it's a signifier that you're part of the club and if yeah fucking the dnc is posting these memes you're not part of the club anymore right like there's no or it's not a club you want to be in i guess so i i still maintain that one of the best things biden has done since taking office is utterly destroying fast wave by complete accident. I postulated this back in 2022, and it still pretty much holds true now. And it's not just my opinion either. Others have noticed that Brandon's disturbance in the

far right to meme ecosystem has really taken effect. I'm going to quote Ali Breland in Mother Jones, quote, the fast-wave aesthetic has already seen its best days and wasn't as pervasive on the far-right internet as it used to be. But by associating himself with a meme style that had partially descended from it, Biden and his earnest staff and followers have probably made it impossible for neo-Nazi edgelords to make FashWave posts for at least a bit. By enlisting fascist meme offshoots, the administration unlocked a code. Earnest Democrats like Biden may have a hard time being cool on the internet, but they can kill hip stuff that bad people like.

That is extremely powerful. They made FashWave a bit cringe. Do you know what else is a bit cringe, Robert? What's that? The fact that we have to have advertising on my Fashwave Biden dark Brandon episode. Garrison, the only purpose of studying or learning anything is to provide space for advertisements.

That's why we do it all. That's why all human work exists. Actually, do you know, if you subscribe to the new Apple Premium, you can have no more bourgeois malarkey because there won't be any ads. So there you go. That's right. All right, we are back. And we are finally, finally going to talk about Ron DeSantis

and his kind of fash wave misfire so this happened about a year after dark brandon had taken control um so there was at least a year like a good a good year's worth of buffer where fash wave was unacceptable and just not really even attempted because of how cringe it is at this point. But that did not stop the DeSantis War Room Twitter account from trying to do it. And then we will see what the right's reaction to this episode. On the last day of Pride Month, DeSantis' campaign shared a video on their DeSantis War Room account attacking Trump for previously held positions seemingly in support of LGBTQ people and statements that he said about allowing transgender women to compete in his Miss Universe

pageants and allowing Caitlyn Jenner to use the bathroom of her choice in Trump Tower. This video opens with footage of Trump at the 2016 RNC saying that he would, quote, do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens, unquote. Now, this is pretty gross that the video opens this way, because very importantly, this this was just a month after the Pulse nightclub attack in DeSantis's home state of Florida, which killed 49 people. That's why Trump was saying this. It's because there was just a massive massacre in the state of Florida.

And the fact that DeSantis is opening up this Trump homophobic attack ad by including this little bit is pretty gross. So this video then kind of transitions 15 seconds in, accompanied by a dark synthetic beat to a black and white image of DeSantis standing in front of an American flag with red glowing eyes shooting out little laser lightning things. Before, a wave of pulsating images of Spartans and the muscular Chad and clips of American Psycho, the Wolf of Wall Street, and Peaky Blinders. Overlaid on top of these flashing images are headlines and short clips about DeSantis' extreme anti-LGBTQ policies that he enacted in Florida. I cannot think of anything more horrifying. It really has shut down drag.

Just produced some of the harshest, most draconian laws that literally threaten trans existence. Congratulations, Ron Sanders. Mission accomplished. You win. All right. So first off, Garrison, it had been so long since I looked at a bit shoot video. So first off, fuck you for that. and it had been so long since I'd looked at a bit shoot video. So, like weeks. So first off, fuck you for that. I had to watch a lot of bit shoot videos for this episode. Yeah, I know.

Yeah, so that's, I mean, absolutely impenetrable for like anyone who is not out of their mind. Like it is, yeah, sorry, James. It feels like his 14 year old nephew who goes by like groper chad 1488 on on 4chan i'll describe what's happening as like you know first you get obviously the beginning which i think is clear just from the audio these clips of like trump saying stuff that's not it's pro-gay you know from back in 2016 um and then it switches to like footage of like news articles

about DeSantis you know doing horrible things to queer people in Florida and like clips of leftists reacting to how bad it is and like clips of Ron DeSantis like walking around or you know art of him photoshopped with like sunglasses

or looking super muscular American Psycho stuff yeah clips of american psycho clips from like like i think it was actually from the movie troy um yes it is yeah just to like make him look yeah it's yeah so like it's just sad it's just sad for example so what one little snippet of is is one of these little one of these little like headlines is is intercut between a Chad meme and a clip from American Psycho. And it shows DeSantis in wearing sunglasses, walking around with the headline DeSantis assigns the most extreme slate of anti-trans laws in modern history with this like pulsating music. So, yeah the the whole the whole second half of the video is just like that um the video seems to receive an almost universally negative reaction it's so bad it's like famously dog shit like just instant failure

upsetting both trump supporters and gay republicans and confusing those who are actually sympathetic to desantis uh because due to the bizarre imagery in the video i'm going to read some of the comments under the desantis war room post nick ad Adams alpha male replied why is the DeSantis campaign sharing a video comparing him to Patrick Bateman? Isn't Bateman a serial killer? I'm sure that the whole Nick Adams thing is an extended bit.

It is literally impossible to tell. Masculinity is an extended pain. Matthew Weaver says, it is disgusting that this ad is linked apparently to the DeSantis campaign. It makes me question my support for DeSantis. You love to see it?

A George Santos staffer said, quote, this ad makes the meatball look gay. Wow. Now, I don't want to go too far here. I think that was pretty funny. If you ever type out the sentence, this ad makes the meatball look gay, you can't be in America anymore. You have to go somewhere else. Like, that's banishment, right?

Like they used to do in the old times. Like, here's a backpack. Off you go. Off you go. You're not allowed here anymore. Lisa Loves Liberty replied, Um, what? An American First commentator with over 150,000 followers asked,

what's the message that the DeSantis team wants people to take away from this ad that associates Ron with flawed criminal individuals? Is it that Ron is a bootlegging psycho killer who commits financial crimes and has an Achilles heel? Because that's what it's saying. God, that's so funny. And finally, far-right activist, former congressional staffer, and aspiring

conspiracy theory documentary film producer Daniel Bostic said, quote, this is the gayest ad in the history of political advertising. So, I don't know about that. That was roughly the responses to DeSantis posting this ad.

All of this is extremely fun. I'm having a good time. I like this. The only figure that I found who was in support of this ad, like the only like slightly, even slightly notable person who seems to enjoy this ad or thought it was a good choice was Ian Miles Chong.

Everyone else on the right thought this was a horrible decision. Again, if you're not as, if you're not a terminally online leftist like us, if you're one of like the nice, sweet liberals who liked the Joe Brandon memes, the dark Brandon memes, Ian Miles Chong is a Malaysian senior citizen who has become a far right

youth influencer through a series of decisions that like, you don't, you don't need this to be explained, but he's one of the people that Elon Musk cares about the most in this world. You can Google a picture of Ian Miles Chong and understand everything you need to from that picture, I think. So, Fox News called the DeSantis campaign's

use of the ad mystifying and an unforced error. Now, I'm also going to play... God, that's so good! I'm also going to play... God, that's so good! I'm also going to play a short clip from Miami, Florida's local CBS affiliate. By the way, the video that you're just about to see has over 24

million views. I will do everything in my power to protect our LG ET LGBTQ citizens. The video then suddenly veers in a different direction, accompanied by dark images, loud music, mixed images of governor with shirtless muscular men, including actor Brad Pitt. A prominent group that represents LGBTQ conservatives also went on Twitter criticizing the video, saying Florida governor can't tell the difference between common sense gays and the radical left gays. Label the scientists' positions as dangerous and politically stupid.

So I think that clip's also just a good reminder of the level of specialized political analysis that you're getting by listening to this show versus what you get on local news. Yeah. Because this local news could never explain this. No. This can't say that. No. If you were to hand this over to a team at MSNBC, they would die.

They would be aneurysms. That's the next clip I have. They would die. There would be aneurysms. That's the next clip I have. The next clip I have is them handing this over to MSNBC. This is one of my favorite days at work we've had. First of all, the DeSantis campaign sent out a tweet later that night saying, quote, opposing the federal recognition of Pride Month isn't homophobic.

We wouldn't support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation. It's unnecessary, divisive and pandering. It's very, very cool. So here is the clip of MSNBC reacting to this ad. It's gonna be pretty good. Meanwhile, Governor DeSantis is defending a controversial and frankly bizarre campaign video that attacks former President Donald Trump's views on LGBTQ rights. Donnie, Deutsch, Adman, Extraordinaire. What am I looking at there?

Adman, Extraordinaire is stumped, okay? I've been doing this for a long time. What are we doing here? And the answer is, well, first of all, DeSantis is flailing. And he's trying to continually move to the right of Trump. But this LGBTQ thing is just, do you think this is moving voters? Are you, and to pay Trump as a patron of this group is, you know, as an ad guy, there's one thing I learned over the years is people aren't stupid. Okay. You just, and I don't know the voter that's going to

see that and go, you know what, Trump, I'm gone. DeSantis, you're my guy. And it just, DeSantis is such a dark, dark, dark character. I've talked a lot about it on the show, how at the end of the day, a candidate, Trump, even though, you know, we eviscerate him and there is a likability if you're a Trump guy about him. He's entertaining. He's a lounge act. He's this and that. This guy is just dark, the prince of darkness. And that is one of the darkest, most bizarre, twisted, deviant ads I've ever seen. Well, he was defending it yesterday. Bipartisan backlash to the video, by the way, many people calling it homophobic. Governor DeSantis standing by the ad calling it

fair game. I think, you know, identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants. I think that's totally fair game because he's now campaigning, saying the opposite, that he doesn't think that you should have men competing in women's things like athletics. competing in women's things like athletics. And so we've been very clear on it that we believe in protecting the rights of our girls and the rights of women athletes to be able to participate with fairness and with integrity. In response to those remarks, Trump campaign spokesperson said, quote, a desperate, desanctest campaign with a flailing candidate is in its last throes of relevancy. First off, such bad analysis of that video. Yeah, I mean, they're completely out of their depth here.

Yeah, no, no, the point is not that he is so dark and evil. The point is that this is incompetent and impenetrable. You can just say that. It's okay. Yeah, it's my job to understand this shit, and I don't. Yeah. It's my job to understand this shit and I don't Yeah So Beyond DeSantis being the prince of darkness

As we've already established Yeah, why try to make him sound cool? What are you doing? This is the thing they don't understand This is why Dark Brandon happened by complete accident It was so effective Because there was no way for liberals to concoct this themselves.

They were only copying the aesthetic stylings of ironic leftists. So yeah, everyone is just baffled by this ad. Saying there's absolutely no way of understanding what's going on here. There's absolutely no larger trends that may be at play. But obviously we've kind of offered some insight into what's been going on here. And in the end, DeSantis's attempt at Fashwave has been rejected by conservative America, either through its just sheer like esoteric strangeness and also the kind of the the whittling away at Fashwave's power that the dark brand of meme

has been doing for so long there's just nothing first of all appealing about this which makes all that remains just incredibly just like just like off-putting um so like what we have here from desantis like in the actual video but besides the obvious like homophobia is a sort of like meme soup combining some elements of like fash wave and some like dark mega imagery with other imagery from uh from right-wing meme tropes that have also gotten popular the past few years like patrick bateman uh who's who's kind of more popular in like the schizo wave sub-genre which is still heavily tied to fash wave uh kind of like it glorifies the aesthetics of mental illness to push you towards doing like extremist violence um yeah and then i should say the the aesthetics of like how a specific

subculture just depicts mental illness yes yes yeah um and there's there's a whole bunch of other pop culture sigma figures in this video, there's images of the real life Chad mistaken in news coverage as a generic bodybuilder but this is actually a very specific online meme it's not niche

and there's also a very specific DeSantis Chad Wojak in this video. So, and in the end, this attempt at kind of reviving a soft FashWave style or kind of dark mega style for an attack ad by the DeSantis campaign was basically wholesale rejected by conservative Americans. And with no other politicians co-signing this, the only other notable figure who applauded this

was Ian Miles Chung. No one else of note thought this was a good idea. Most dissenters and supporters were off-putted. The only people who really liked this were chronically online fascist Zoomers who are either not old enough to vote or just barely old enough to vote yeah they are they are teenage uh nick fuentes fans yeah like because like they're the only ones who like will understand what's going on so it like becomes a cohesive

message because if the average viewer isn't turned off by like the intense homophobia or the anti-Trump angle, the alienating editing style and online references and other and other kind of bizarre attributes like the music, the flashing images, it either left most ordinary viewers confused or just like turned off. And, uh, so in the end, like, I think there is, there is a recurring trend here and that like dark mega didn't help the Republicans win the midterms. Like that, that was, uh, that was a pretty, pretty big defeat for them. All of, all of the work they were doing beforehand to like, to like start getting people like riled up, get make, making, making like attention, grabbing authoritarian memes, all of like the critical race theory stuff. None of that panned out in the actual elections. And whatever DeSantis is doing sure doesn't seem to be helping him beat Trump. Um,

the only person who, who is, who is winning right at this is dark Brandon, dark Brandon strikes again. He is the one that actually has made, has made sure that DeSantis cannot use this playbook. Dark Brandon is sitting on a gargoyle over top of whatever city in Florida DeSantis lives.

Dark Brandon is our watchful protector. He is our silent guardian. Now, as Garrison was just talking about this image of Dark Brandon sitting on a throne above, I'm going to say Miami, they lifted up their shirt to show their new Dark Brandon chest tattoo. And wow, that must have been, what was that?

12 hours in the chair, Garrison? It's big, it's big. It was, well, the first day was 13 hours. The second day was 12 hours. How did they get the LEDs in there? 13, 12 at the end, yeah. That's good, that's good. Very base. Will you run out of battery or are the eyes always going to glow?

No, actually, those are fluorescents. So I have to stand in the sun for like 10 minutes to charge them up and it lasts about like five hours. Magic, magic. Love that for you. I have a conspiracy theory here. I believe that Ron DeSantis' 14-year-old nephew, Groyper Chad, 1488, was extremely online. So online that his parents took away his phone and he just lost all contact with the internet circa like early

2022. And then Ron DeSantis asked him to make an advert and this is what happened. Then Ron DeSantis asked him to make an advert, and this is what happened. So I tried tracking down who made this advert. I messaged someone who I suspect of making it who ignored my message. To be fair, I messaged them on my Julius Evola sock puppet on Telegram, and they still ignored my message. And they still ignored my message. So I there the video was not created by the DeSantis team himself. It was it was it was it was embedded in their war room Twitter feed. It was tracked back to this at a one time pro Trump account called Proud Elephant, who has a corresponding Telegram channel. So,

this guy, Proud Elephant, is, from what I can tell, the origin point of this video. I can't seem to find it in any earlier places. I've tried getting into contact with him to figure out what his intentions were for, like, if he made the video or if he found it from somewhere. But, this is why I said, I

clarified that the DeSantis team shared this video on their official campaign account. They did not make it themselves. Which is also pretty funny, because they didn't spend any money on this thing, and it still was a massive shot in the face. It was just a huge, huge blowback. They didn't need to embed this video video made by like whatever weirdo loner who has like Final Cut Pro on his computer. Like there's, there's really, there's really no reason like they have an actual ad team. And for some reason they did this instead. Now also as a part

of this research, I, uh, joined as many DeSantis, uh, telegram channels as I could. I scrolled through months of posting. Um, I scrolled through, uh, all like all three of the official DeSantis telegram channels as I could. I scrolled through months of posting. I scrolled through all like all three of the official DeSantis campaign Twitter accounts. Nothing else in their propaganda quite compares to this video. It is such a weird outlier that makes me really wonder like who who both who who was operating the the DeSantis War Room Twitter account that that like hit publish on this tweet with this with this video embedded and like what their relation is to the rest of like the DeSantis like media strategy, because it's just it's just it is it is utterly, utterly baffling. can come back to in 2016, kind of about a month or so, I think before the election, the Trump campaign came out with this really weird, very 4chan inspired sort of like ad video for the campaign that like a lot of Democrats, you know, made fun of, but it was a pretty effective ad. And I, you know, I wrote about this some at the time and I talked with the guy who'd been

doing attack ads and stuff and was like, I don't know, I think this is a pretty successful ad because it it feels authentic in a way that political ads don't. And my guess is that when this got presented to them, people at the DeSantis campaign were like, well, this could be that for us. Right. This could be us leaning into something that's it's new, but it's like real and it's representative of how kids, young people are talking these days. And that will build the kind of excitement and the kind of like conversation around our campaign that can help take us to the next level. in sort of, you know, signposting to that online alt-right, was adopting and kind of making his own a real movement that was representative of some things that were appealing to a lot of people.

And this is not, right? Like, there's been no groundswell of people who are into this, like, these weird, like, the only groundswell of a lot of normies getting into Fash wave has been dark brand like like normie normie republicans did not adopt like this kind of shit in a in mass and i think it was a mistake like it was a it was a it was a mistake to think that, like, I don't know, like, random, like, GOP heads were going to see their candidate compared to a serial killer from a famously off-putting movie and be like, this is a good call for us. This is my guy.

Yeah. Like, yeah. No, like, not everyone is, like, a 17-year-old suicidal alt-right teenager. Yes. That's actually not their prime base if you want to win an election. There aren't many of you kids. Like they don't want teenagers voting at all. Which is – it's also really weird that DeSantis has been given multiple opportunities to pull back the ad saying it was a mistake.

It was not officially made by our campaign, it shouldn't have been shared. But every time they've been given this opportunity, they doubled down on the ad. That's his whole thing, though. Like, never admit fault, always push forward. Yeah, I guess that is like a staple of fascism. But like, yeah.

Man. Anyway, that's good. Disturbing stuff. Well, Garrison, this has made my week. This has been... What a fucking time to be alive. This has been far too much of my week, has been putting together these, like, 3,000, 4,000 words.

Yep. Well, I'm glad everyone was able to come away from this as enlightened as enlightened as God. Oh yeah. I have entered a state of gnosis. Thank you. Thank you for this. I've achieved enlightenment.

Alright, well, long live Dark Brandon. 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 iheart radio 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.

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