It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 98

Episode Date: September 2, 2023

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking music, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and

influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. decisions. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I am Andrew of the YouTube channel Andrewism, and I'm here with... Oh, wait, was that the cue? Oh, no. Yeah. Hi, it's me, Mia Long. I'm also here, and apparently missing cues instantly. I don't know, it is barbarically early for me so yay barbarically

what time is it uh 10 o'clock oh come on come on come on come on look it it would have been fine if i wasn't up till 3 a.m last night dealing with a session of minor crises oh damn that's unfortunate yeah it's all right otherwise if it wasn't a crisis i would have like flexed my early bird supremacy but you know i haven't up since like seven six thirty or something like that or took a whole jog now but um i just did my duolingo this one. And yeah, so today I wanted to shed light on some really interesting history, I think, of the anarchist movement in Egypt. I've been reading this book called Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World. And there's a section by a guy named Anthony Gorman that I found really interesting and just had to share. by a guy named Anthony Guaman that I found really interesting and just had to share.

It's really specific to the anarchist, Egyptian anarchist history of like the late 19th and early 20th century. And honestly, I find that whole period to be very interesting, partially because I am a dreaded Paradox Games fan and I enjoy my little like E3 my little you know I like that period in history

honestly any period of history prior to World War 2 I find interesting everything World War 2 is just like a complete bore to me and then everything past World War 2 is like cool but see like the World War II period itself not my thing

you know like tell me about the Phoenicians tell me about the Phrygians tell me about the Carthaginians but I don't really care about the Axis and which tank was the superior

tank and all those different things a lot of these um quote-unquote history buffs into um not to piss anyone's cereal of course whatever you know floats your boat but for me i really like that pre-war two sort of stuff um and the victorian era is one particularly interesting point uh in history and a lot of things were happening in that time um industrial revolution was shaken up around the world colonization was going on uh and the effects of that but you know reverberate for centuries to come and the true successor to the roman Empire, in my opinion, the Ottoman Empire, was kind of going through a series of crises. And Egypt, which was under the Ottoman Empire, and then broke free of the Ottoman Empire, had its own stuff going on.

So I don't want to get too much into that whole mess, but I want to give some context because, you know, this isn't, this is a history episode. It might be a two part history episode. In fact, so let's just start back in the late 19th century. So there's this foreign working community in Egypt, thanks to Muhammad Ali, no relation. And he was the ruler of Egypt from 1805 to 1849.

This guy was all about modernizing stuff like the military, the state administration, and the economy. So he invited skilled folks to come to Egypt and lend their labor. Oh, isn't he the guy

that Napoleon fought for a little bit? I think so. I think so. I mean, who didn't Napoleon fight? I'm sure if he could have, Napoleon would have fought like the dinosaurs. Yeah, Napoleon fighting cavemen on the moon, like things of this nature. And speaking of Napoleon, I really don't appreciate how, I mean, no disrespect to Joaquin Phoenix, but wasn't Napoleon like in his twenties when he rose up the ranks military and all that?

Like I could be mistaken. I could be confusing him with the other Napoleon but I'm pretty sure Napoleon was not an old man when he was making a lot of the moves he was making again I could be wrong he was born in 1769 I'm leaving the math of this

as an exercise for the reader what really throws me off is that there's like multiple napoleons and so i mix up the histories of the different napoleons um reasonable but if it wasn't that napoleon i know for sure one of the napoleons in question was like relatively young when he was making some of his moves like in his early to mid-20s when he's rising up the ranks kind of thing yeah but I could be entirely mistaken I'm sure somebody will correct me um none of this is relevant to what this episode is about. But yeah, so Muhammad Ali, again, no relation. His successors, Saeed and Ismail, took things to the next level after he passed on

with some major infrastructure projects. They were building railways, they were expanding canals, they were going wild with the urban development. And they needed a bunch of skilled workers for a lot of that. So they brought in Italians, Greeks, Syrians, Dalmatians. And of course, they used their local Egyptian laborers as well. Many of those workers came to work on the famous Suez Canal, of course. And that required a massive workforce.

Yeah, many of whom died. Yeah. Canal digging, like canal canal digging i don't know high mortality rate profession yeah yeah like you you might as well dig your own grave too like like dig it before you start so they can bury your body halfway through yes it's like not gallows humor it's like canal humor you know it's like oh we're digging this canal we're gonna die in here anyway it's kind of similar thing

occurred in digging up the Panama Canal although in that case they brought in a lot of Bajan and other Caribbean workers to yeah

you know set that up and actually the digging of the Panama Canal is responsible for like was responsible for I think a third of the of the Bajan economy at one point

because the remittances they were being sent back to their families at home that's a whole different chapter in history but yeah so this this massive and diverse workforce is bringing of course not just their labor but ideas because whenever you get people together they start talking um egypt was already considered something of a place of refuge for political exiles so it's not very surprising that anarchism was starting to gain popularity around that time particularly with the italians in egypt yeah that's the thing that's the thing in this period is like you you can literally track the spread of anarchism like by where there are a bunch of italians workers like this happens in argentina too it's like anywhere there

are italians anarchy spreads it's like it's a me anarchism yeah yeah oh that's that's gonna set somebody off um my apologies to the italian community i shouldn't have said that yeah look they they had they hadn't invented fascism yet this is back when the italians were still cool yeah yeah yeah i'm probably gonna get a letter hopefully you know there's nothing else attached to it um italians already had a history with the anarchist movement as we know um i mean some people would of course be familiar with folks like eric o'mara tester so there's no surprises there um labor and political radicalism caught sparks first in the italian worker society um or società opera italiana in 1860 which was formed to look out for the interests of its members and later on in the mid 1870s you had these veterans from garibaldi's campaigns and by the way garibaldi's campaigns. And by the way,

Garibaldi was one of the figures responsible for the Italian unification. And then you also had other radicals forming Thought and Action, a political association with Mussinian principles. Mussini, by the way, Giuseppe Mussini, was an Italian Republican who advocated for liberty and democracy and class collaboration and all that jazz uh marx once called him an everlasting old ass which is just really funny and i had to include that there he's just like me for real anyway um and then in 1876 a more radical splinter group became an official section of the First Internationale in Alexandria, which is one of the earliest attempts to create a worldwide association of workers and socialist groups. I don't know if it could happen. He has ever discussed the history of the Internationale before, but it gets messy.

Oh God, yeah. It gets messy. It gets catty. It gets like we had to. Yeah. It gets messy. It gets catty. It gets like, we had to spill that tea at some point. Yeah. It's fucking wild. Like,

especially, especially once you get into like the 17 different fourth internationals. And it's, it's a time like the, the, the, the second international is such a disaster that Hosni Mubarak is part of it. When he gets overthrown,

like it's a, it's, it's, it's a good time. And by a good time, I mean, Second International is such a disaster that Hosni Mubarak is part of it when he gets overthrown. Like, it's a good time. And by a good time, I mean an incredibly bad time. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Honestly, I just have to throw my head back and laugh quite heartily when I hear folks talking about, you know, why can't the left unite? You know, like, where's the leftist unity why can't we just come to like nah this has been taking place since 19th century you know my my absolute favorite version of this is people being people taught people being like ah marx marx wouldn't want there to have been so much discord on the left it's like have you ever read any marks like that that is a man whose writing is about 60

percent yelling at someone whose ideas he's also stolen like by volume like one of his most famous like one of the things that you you get assigned to read from marks in college is the german ideology which is like 400 pages of him being annoyed by people whose ideas are slightly different than his it's like like this is this is this is an ancient tradition the the irony of marx calling somebody else an everlasting old ass will not be lost on me um and and quite frankly this idea of oh marx wouldn't want this marx wouldn't want that that really comes from that sort of messiahfication of marx i just coined that term you know i could me my flowers in the mail. Because essentially what people are doing

is treating Marx and Marx's ideas and Marxism as just like Christianity 2.0. You know, it's kind of like how, you know, people would have been saying like, oh, Jesus wouldn't want all this division in the church, except he just replacing Jesus with Marx and the church with the left. Yeah, like Marx has this famous line where he goes like if uh he's responding to like the first like french marxists

and he goes if this is marxism then i am not a marxist oh yeah and then everyone proceeded to ignore him and call themselves marxists that's like well this is great things have gone this is yeah yeah i mean even even in their lifetimes all these figures that we respect now they didn't really like the admirers like Malatesta was quite embarrassed that he had fans I recall yeah

to be clear that is the appropriate reaction to having fans it is a terrifying thing right sure flee in terror exactly exactly but back to alexandria right where the first internationals first official section one of its sections came about and it was one of the earliest attempts to create a worldwide association of workers and socialist groups and it expanded and it formed sections in Cairo and

in Port Said and in Ismailia or Ismailia Ismailia um and they even had the idea of spreading socialist propaganda in different languages like Italian and Greek and Turkish and Arabic to reach more folks in the quote-unquote east they want to take the ideas of the first international beyond just european communities you know trying to reach out to the locals unfortunately for those familiar the history of the first international it fizzled out so you know they couldn't really fully execute their plans but you know you gotta give them credit for trying to make a difference beyond their own little circles meanwhile egypt was in the midst of a deep political crisis. The military was pissed because of the disastrous Egypto-Ethiopian war. The upper ranks, the civil service, the army, and the business world had

become dominated by Europeans, who were paid much more than native Egyptians. The country's inability to service its debt from costly infrastructure projects and lavish spending by ismail its rule at the time led to european control over its treasury in 1876 and under european treasure um pressure ismail was deposed in 1879 replaced with his son taufik who aimed to basically satisfy egypt's creditors by any means necessary. And so this tumultuous political climate provided both challenges and opportunities for the anarchists in Egypt. A revolt led by an Egyptian officer of the Egyptian army, Ahmed Urabi, sought to depose Tawfiq, establish a constitutional government, and end British and French influence over the country. Although he was characterized as anti- foreign, Urabi received support from some

foreign elements, including the very same Italian workers in Alexandria and a lot of the anarchists in the area. Now, as we know, anarchists are not really advocates of nationalism, though they will fight for national liberation causes. So anarchists and nationalists found themselves on the same side when it came to fighting against European imperialism in Egypt. So when the British were causing trouble, anarchists like Malatesta teamed up with nationalists led by Urabi to resist foreign domination. However, the British and French governments, who were intent on protecting their investments and nationals, governments, who were intent on protecting their investments and nationals, confronted Urabi, which resulted in British forces bombarding Alexandria and eventually occupying the country in 1882. Throughout the early years of British occupation, the anarchist movement in Egypt faced

both internal divisions and factionalism, similar to what was happening in other parts of the world anarchists and socialists had been uneasy comrades under the umbrella of the international during the 1870s but the defection of a particularly locally influential figure named andrea costa from libertarian socialism from libertarian socialism in 1879 caused a significant schism within the local movement. Let me reread that. So anarchists and socialists had been uneasy comrades under the umbrella of the international during the 1870s, but the defection of one particularly locally influential figure named Andrea Costa from the School of Libertarian Socialism in 1879 caused a significant schism within the local movement. And the movement also suffered other

internal divisions, particularly with the enduring conflict between anti-organizationalists and anarcho-syndicalists on the role of collective association in achieving anarchist aims. on the role of collective association in achieving anarchist aims. Quote, Until the end of the 19th century, the former trend appears to have been in the ascendancy, but with the growth of the labor movement, anarcho-syndicalists expanded their influence. Other disputes reflected the power of personalities. Ugo Parini, a key figure and staunch anti-organizationalist, was notorious for his uncompromising style

and was a persistent obstacle to greater cooperation among anarchists. Not until after his death in 1906 was a national program of action agreed, which provided a solid basis for collaboration within the Egyptian movement. Now, I didn't find any writings by Ugo Perini himself to speak his piece, but it sounds like he might've been a everlasting old ass himself. If, you know, after the moment he died,

they were able to finally come together and come to agreement on something. That means Peru is like a significant obstacle to the organizational efforts, but you know, he fought with his principles and he died by them so you know some respect there so until the end of 19th century the anti-organizationalists seemed to have had the upper upper hand but with the growth of the labor movement anarchist syndicalists gained a lot more influence tut tut leftist disunity strikes again the real downside of this history is that the anarchist movement was still quite european and quite male and the right and nationalist movements were not exactly

helping matters however while the majority of anarchist women there was a women's section established in Cairo during the 1870s so there was some female participation happening as well you know it's a real real barbie moment there you know real win for feminism the ethnic diversity of the anarchist movement in Egypt did expand over time though. Although Italians remained the dominant group until World War I, the movement attracted Greeks, Jews, Germans, and various Eastern European nationalities. Arab-Affron Egyptians also began to play a lot more significant role, as seen in their involvement in industrial actions, educational activities, and anarchist meetings during the early 1900s.

And the occupational backgrounds of these anarchists were just as diverse as their ethnicities. Skilled artisans, including carpenters, masons, tailors, and painters, were among the majority. Some came from the petit bourgeoisie, like grocers and tavern owners, while others were involved in trade or worked for merchant houses. And the movement also included professionals like doctors, lawyers, and journalists. By the late 19th century, the anarchist community started to shift its focus toward the new working class, such as cigarette workers, printers, and employees of large utilities like tramway companies. However, despite this diversity and despite all the calls for internationalism local nationalist associations still held a lot of power because they provided their communities with welfare services and social events and all that it's kind of like how immigrants uh in new

countries even today will typically like group together um in enclaves and communities to share their culture and to share their support, economic and otherwise. When you're in a situation where everyone around you is perceived as foreign and you're seeking some measure of security and safety and also cultural preservation, that is a thing that immigrants tend to do. And these workers were immigrants to Egypt. And so they kind of did the same thing. Unfortunately, many of these national associations were controlled by bourgeois interests. In the Greek community, for example,

the powers of the bourgeois oligarchy in funding and controlling community institutions really worked to keep workers in line with what the authorities wanted. Because if you stepped of line from what what this oligarchy wanted you know you kind of like lose access to those essential community institutions and if you try if you still have like a family to take care of a family that you might have brought to egypt or started in egypt or really just struggling against meat or you know you're a fish out of water um and you don't really know any other languages you just know your own people to be

isolated like that is really a hazardous situation to be in and so that's how they kept people in line but as in terms of the european nationalists there's also some rise in egyptian nationalism that also had some sway originally egyptian nationalists called signs of militant labor as part of a european disease and alien egyptian context which by the way i've noticed a lot of right-wing um organizations and movements tend to apply that pseudo anti-imperial label to things so you would see it with for example um some right-wing um african nationalist groups would describe the presence of homosexuality in the country as a consequence of European imperialism. European colonialism is completely foreign to any kind of African context, history, whatever,

which is entirely false. But they do use that sort of like false anti-imperialism to build up their power base and build up their reactionary base. So it's a pattern you can observe a lot of these right-wing movements and particularly global south right-wing movements interestingly though the egyptian nationalists who were calling militant labor uh european disease their opinions turned around kind of quick when they saw how potent it was for exercising power.

In 1909, the Watani party openly backed the formation of the Manual Trades Workers Union, which was a diverse body of Egyptian urban workers. Because they recognised, the party finally recognised both the need to constitute a broader national community and the political potential of the workers in the struggle against British occupation. Now, before the Egyptian nationalists came around on this, the anarcho-syndicalists had already begun trying to attract more Egyptian workers into their internationalist anarchist struggle. They knew that to make a real impact, they had to connect with native Egyptian workers. But here's the thing, you know, the international union structure wasn't always practical for them. Many occupations in Egypt were pretty much exclusive to Egyptians, and many occupations in Egypt were pretty much exclusive to Europeans.

So forming those unions was easier said than done. But that didn't stop the anarchists from trying. You know, they saw the importance of promoting labour organisation and militancy among the Egyptian working class. And so when the cab drivers in Alexandria went on strike in 1903, the anarchists were there to gas them up. The anarchists were of course trying to emphasise what the workers had in common, the lack of boundaries that labour has, that it doesn't care for things like nationality or religion or race, that all workers had care for things like nationality or religion or race, that all workers had the same needs, the same struggles, and the same aspirations for their well-being. Of course, the nationalists had their own political vision, so while anarchists emphasized

international solidarity and shared interests, nationalists were resorting to nativist appeals and organizational tactics to splinter the labor movement and break up its internationalist orientation. To give them some credit though, the Watanian party did recognize the importance of allying with foreign workers and urged Egyptian workers during the tram strike of 1911 to unite and strengthen yourselves and increase your numbers through combination and through unity with the European workers, your comrades and let me get to 1919 and the quote-unquote 1919 revolution um it's kind of a significant moment in egyptian history and and i guess we're there so let's talk about it in 1919 the british government imposed new taxes and restrictions on civil liberties,

which further fueled the discontent and united Egyptians from various social, economic, and political backgrounds. The spark that ignited the revolution was the deportation of Egyptian nationalist leader Saad Saglul and other political figures by the British authorities for opposing their policies. In response, massive protests erupted across the country, with strikes, demonstrations, and civil disobedience becoming widespread. Egyptians from all walks of life, including workers, students, intellectuals, and peasants, took part in the movement. They were influenced in part by the strategies and tactics of the syndicalist presence in the region and abroad at the time. The revolution gained momentum and the demands

of the protesters became more explicit, calling for full independence, a constitution, and an end to British rule. The British authorities initially tried to suppress the protests with force, which of course led to violent clashes and bloodshed. However, the resilience and unity of the Egyptian people ultimately forced the British government to recognize the scale of the uprising and the strength of the nationalist movement. In 1922, the United Kingdom unilaterally declared Egypt's independence, though the British continued to exert considerable influence over Egyptian affairs. One could argue that the specter of anarchism would rear its head again in Egypt's history, particularly during the Arab Spring in 2011,

when anarchic tactics could be found across the Middle East and North Africa. In the next part, I'll be talking more about what anarchists were doing in Egypt in the late 19th and late 20th centuries. But for now, I hope that today's anarchists in Egypt and elsewhere can keep the flame of freedom burning. All power to all the people. Peace. Oh and this has been Andrew, you can follow me on youtube.com slash andrewrazzrewism and support the Patreon at patreon.com slash stdrew. See you all next time.

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Welcome to Carapaneer. I'mrew of the youtube channel andrewism and i'm here with mia who uh didn't miss the miss the cutest hey i'm learning today i just wanted to shed light on just some of the interesting history of the anarchist movement in Egypt. This is part two. The first part really just went into the historical context and progression and how the anarchist community emerged in Egypt, fueled by this growing Mediterranean network of migration, labor mobility, and communication. Of course, it started with the Italian community, known for their anarchism in that time, but it soon gained the support of other groups sharing a radical vision of social emancipation. I learned all this from the book Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, particularly the section written by Anthony Gorman on Egyptian history.

Anthony Gorman on Egyptian history. In the years leading up to World War I, anarcho-syndicalism represented by the International Union played a leading role in organizing and developing a militant labor movement. Advocating for international solidarity among workers, they adapted well to Egypt's diverse society, embracing ethnic and religious pluralism and internationalism while opposing capitalism. Anarchists, along with socialists and liberals, contributed to the advancement of secular thought and Egyptian intellectual life, leaving a significant impact on their society. However, the anarchist movement faced challenges due to the state's coercion through surveillance, prosecution, and deportation.

The authorities portrayed them as dissolute political adventurers pushing an alien ideology. Despite their achievements in formulating an anti-capitalist discourse and advocating for social emancipation, other forces like the Egyptian Communist Party and the Egyptian National Movement would take on some of their ideas with a louder and more prominent voice. Today I just want to give more details on the movement and what exactly they were doing in their heyday. Clearly, the anarchist movement in Egypt was not confined to the local. It was all about connecting with anarchists from different countries, making international friendships, and fighting for their shared ideals. The anarchists in Egypt got involved with the conference in Vervez and conferences in London and Italy, and hung out with anarchists from Istanbul, Greece, Tunisia, and more.

Egypt became the spot for anarchists in the Eastern Mediterranean, and they'd make connections all the way to the United States and South America. It's kind of interestingly playing a similar role to like early 1900s japan in terms of the anarchist movement where yeah it's you know you get you get these sort of like regional hubs that develop and people sort of like move through and around them which i think is really interesting yeah yeah agreed agreed and Egypt being a hub you know a lot of big-name anarchists were visiting oh you know big name uh talking people like Emile Claire, Cipriani, Elise Reclus, Erico Malatesta, Luigi Galliani and Pietro Gori and of course with these agitators in the mix, the authorities got a little nervous. But the real lifeblood of the movement were not these influential figures.

They were the publications that this community was producing and reading and distributing. The anarchists in Egypt didn't just read from newsletters all around the world, though that was a part of it, but they also contributed their own articles about what was happening in Egypt. They were connected, informed, and motivated by the international community they had built. They had a bunch of publications dedicated to workers' issues, offering insights, debates, and discussions on common difficulties on matters of labour organisation and strategy. Facilitated by an increasingly developed international transport system particularly steamship services the International Anarchist Press served as a vital channel for dissemination and diffusion of the movement's ideas.

It was the anarchist library before the anarchist library. it was the anarchist library before the anarchist library in terms of how they went about organizing and propagating in egypt the anarchists there recognized the unique challenges of the local situation that they have to deal with for the european anarchists promoting their message of emancipation and combating the exploitation ignorance and injustice caused by capitalism, the state and religious authority would be no easy task in a region where for one they're already being seen as part of the ongoing attempts of political domination by western powers and also in a region with very deep historical religious divisions you know such as the crusades

and the british and french colonization it's really one of the major projects i suppose the european anarchists needed to communicate to the local population was that their ire did not lay with europeans as a whole it lay primarily with the European ruling class. That's when it came to critiquing suicidal issues and his strong attack the evils of capitalism. And of course, that had the best reception among the Egyptian workers. Of course, this isn't to say that the European workers in Egypt were completely in common with the Egyptian workers, despite the fact that the ire of the Egyptian workers should really lie primarily with the

ruling class that was responsible for the imperialization of their country and the exploitation of their people, the presence of the European workers did also contribute to the exploitation because those European workers were paid so much better than native born workers were able to experience certain privileges that native born workers did not have access to. Interestingly, although anarchists typically advocate for emancipation from all religious authorities, Islam wasn't specifically targeted in their literature, and there was probably a pragmatic consideration for whether anti-religious rhetoric would fly, considering they could just be deported because of course that was a crime.

They still took on a hostile attitude towards the Egyptian state though, condemning its coercive actions, surveillance culture, and abuse of power, but they didn't confront it head on. Their program of action was far more focused on the goal of social transformation through the use of propaganda, education, and workers' associations. Because of the mixed conditions in Egypt, the ideal of people of different races, religions, and nationalities united in solidarity had some real potency to it so the internationalist mission was a very central component in their messaging at public conferences

and at labor meetings but it really was more so about the the speaking the propaganda of the word rather than the propaganda of the deed in fact interestingly for that time the anarchists in egypt didn't really engage in much propaganda of the deed at all propaganda the deed being you know political violence and assassination attempts for those who know you know a bit about the anarchists of that time propaganda of the deed was what they were known for they had some some big name assassinations in the bics um for example franceinand, I believe, was assassinated by an anarchist. Wait, no, hold on.

Franz Ferdinand is the guy who was killed by Gavirio Princep, the guy who started World War I. Right. I've seen some sources call him a nationalist, some sources call him an anarchist. I don't think he was an anarchist.

Yeah, he was exposed to socialist, anarchist, and communist writings when he was younger through school and through his roommate, Danilo Illich. But he was more so associated with nationalists, particularly when he got around to assassinating franz fernand nazis and fascists did call him an anarchist and a socialist but it seems as though although he was inspired by uh nationalist anarchists he was more so in the nationalist side of the equation yeah i mean they did kill a few Habsburgs, which always a good thing to have less Habsburgs in the world. You can make a chart over time,

and one axis is good and the other axis is Habsburgs, and you can see that they're inversely correlated. Yeah, yeah, Habsburgs are something else. But yeah, the anarchists in Egypt, not too much into the political violence and assassinations. They were focused really on promoting the ideas through spoken and written communication, you know, like public meetings, demonstrations in the press. And the press was really the crucial axis of their efforts

in disseminating their ideas and sustaining their identity. Their local publications like La Tribuna Libera, Le Perrault, Lux, and others which serve to spread anarchist thought and discuss ideas and issues of social emancipation. um the weekly paper la perrault mostly promoted anarcho-syndicalism and then the paper ill domin domine came up and decided to adopt a more tridently libertarian tone um and then you have uh rise again or resurgete which is another people another weekly that promoted a very strong anti-clerical line um and then there was the people who ergatis which was or the worker and that was an organ organ for the emancipation of women and the worker and it provided primarily for a greek language readership um honestly a lot of these keepers will tailor

towards specific languages so that greek had um italian and you also had french um like leon and la idea but despite its polyglot character the anarchist press in e Egypt doesn't seem to have included an Arabic language newspaper, which is kind of weird when you're surrounded by Arabic-speaking people. However, anarchism had regularly featured in the mainstream Arabic newspapers since the 1890s, usually, however, in reports in the activities of the movement abroad, not locally in Egypt. At the same time, there were also journals like Al-Muqtadaf and Al-Hilal, which carried articles discussing the origins and development of anarchist thought and practice. It seems as though in 1897 there was also a figure who engaged with socialized ideas, but that particular publication seems to have been closed down quite quickly

by the authorities, particularly for featuring the work of Salama Moussa and Shibli Shumayil, who were two Egyptian writers who were clearly influenced by anarchist ideas. Something that just occurred to me is that what it could be influencing this is that the it could be influencing this is that the

italians and the greeks and the french and all these different people who are writing about these anarchist ideas in egypt it's possible they had a bit more leeway when it came to the local authorities that locals themselves would not have their foreign status may have provided them with slight immunity in comparison and this is just me spitballing but it's possible that arabophone writers and speakers would be taken on significantly more risk if they were to agitate in the same ways that these you know migrant workers were advocating and then there's also the component and that's speculation but there is the proven component of financial difficulties and limited literacy rates among the egyptian population that made it difficult to distribute um language, material related to anarchism

because a lot of the workers in Egypt who spoke Arabic were not literate what did help though because the anarchists were about that life they would go to cafes and read their newspapers out loud

to reach their target audience. The first podcasters. Exactly. Exactly. The first podcasters, for real. As the anarchist movement in Egypt was really commemorating important political events, celebrating the principles through posters,

leaflets, and flyers, celebrating the anniversary of events like the Paris Commune and May Day. It's really spread that message of international solidarity among the workers. Anarchists in Egypt were also very fond of showing solidarity to their international figures. Like Francesco Ferrer,

who was a very influential Spanish anarchist thinker who did a lot of work in the field of anarchist education. He created Farrero schools, which influenced figures like Emma Goldman to create their own modern schools in the US and elsewhere. And he was arrested and then executed, which led to a lot of protests, locally and internationally making him something of a martyr for the anarchist cause and so the outrage expressed at the execution of ferrara was not simply just a protest against the attorney but also recognition of his status as an advocate for secular education which is an important vehicle for you know social emancipation

before francisco ferrida was executed though anarchists in egypt were already working on educational programs in fact they launched their most ambitious project the free popular university or universita populare libera or upl in alexandria in 1901 the upl aimed to provide free evening education to the popular classes and received great support across Alexandrian society. Courses included the works of Tolstoy and Bakunin, the arts, and pragmatic topics like worker negotiation strategies. and pragmatic topics like worker negotiation strategies. However, the UPL's radical nature also brought criticism,

with the Italian authorities initiating legal proceedings against the UPL lecturer for some remarks he made about the assassination of the Italian king, Umberto I. I, of course, leave you to speculate what those comments and remarks may have been. But despite some initial public support its critics accused upl of being based on depraved principles now i mentioned this school before in the episode i did on islam and anarchism and like i said in that episode arabic speakers were quickly marginalized from the education and the upl graduate became more aimed toward and controlled by upper class interests in fact within a year reliably bourgeois elements had wrested control of the upL from its anarchist founders

and proceeded to transform it into a vocational college that, among other things, taught shorthand, accountancy, and languages. So despite its very brief existence as a revolutionary project, the UPL marked an important moment for anarchism in Egypt and inspired other movements seeking educational reform. The UPL's impact and vision influenced Egyptian nationalists, who established the Higher Schools Club in 1905, which also emphasized educational means for political purposes. Anarchism in Egypt had a significant impact on the development of the labour movement. As a new working class emerged towards the end of the 19th century, anarcho-syndicalism

emerged as a powerful force advocating for formal collective organisation as the instrument of social revolution. Of course, Egypt's labour movement wasn't entirely new, as guilds had been part of the traditional Ottoman order order regulating trade and providing mutual aid but the modernization efforts of muhammad ali no relation and egypt's integration into the international capitalist system changed that landscape affecting the role of guilds and shaping the working class foreign workers like i mentioned before came into egypt alongside native egyptian labor um but despite the differences between them

evidence does show a strong cooperation and collaboration between the groups the native Egyptian working class was affected by a variety of factors but there was a model of collaboration that was in motion

between European and Egyptian workers. The Cigarette Rollers Union, for example, was initially a Greek body in Cairo, but later became more inclusive as their successful strike in 1809-1900 marked a milestone in Egyptian industrial militancy. However, their subsequent strikes faced brutal confrontations with the police, leading to divisions among the workers. By the end of the first decade of the century, the anarcho-syndicalist international union had emerged as a significant force based on universalist principles and international solidarity. The optimism for the future of a socialist centre in Cairo was a reflection of the broader movement within the working class, led by anarchists and syndicalists. Anarchism first appeared in Egypt among Italian political refugees and workers during the 1860s.

in Egypt among Italian political refugees and workers during the 1860s. Nurtured by a developing international network of labor, transport, and communications, expanded beyond Italian circles to attract members from across Egypt's diverse communities. Though heterogeneous, through the discourse of radical social emancipation and propaganda and public action, declaring the universality of humankind and decrying the evils of capitalism, state power and religious dogma, the anarchist movement would come into force in Egypt's history. In the years after 1900, anarchist syndicalism played a central role in the development of the labor movement, articulating the rights of workers in struggle against capital and

promoting internationalist activism. Yet while they rejected nationalism as an organizing principle, anarchists did at times make common cause with the nationalists against imperialism and arguably had a reverberating influence on the strategies and tactics of the nationalist movement. That's all I have for today on this brief moment in Egyptian anarchist history, but I hope it illuminated a very interesting chapter and context and sphere.

Yeah, and I think there's another kind of important broader lesson from this that is, I think, mostly forgotten, which is that from this period of, I don't know, roughly the late 1800s through about 1917, I don't know, roughly the late 1800s through about 1917, like in most parts of the world, except for basically like Western Europe or not even Western Europe, like apart from basically like the Germany's, if you're talking about socialism, there's like anywhere in the world, there's a very, very good chance that thing you're actually talking about is anarchism. And, you know, there's been a sort of systemic attempt by both liberal and sort of later communist like historians to sort of like

wipe the historical record clean and make it look like everything was always sort of like the sort of on rush of marxism but like that just wasn't true and there were very powerful uh anarchist movements on every continent and they did a lot they did a lot of really interesting things and yeah yeah that that really needs to be respected and recognized and it hasn't so far so flee this and if folks check out the book they can get some more insights on some of the other actions that were taking place in that time again the book is anarchism and syndicalism in the colonial and post-colonial world it really illuminates a lot of that lost history thanks for joining me and Mia on this episode of It Could Happen Here again you can follow me and Drew on the YouTube channel

and support on patreon.com slash saint drew take care y'all welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal tales from the shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

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

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

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It could happen here uh yeah that's the podcast that you're listening to it's also a thing that is happening the thing that is happening is it is a kind of rough time to be a trans person in the

u.s and also in most other countries and you know we we do we do a lot of episodes on this show about how it's rough and why it's rough and the specific things that are happening but also sometimes we do we do the other part of the podcast which is to put it back together part of the podcast or in this one i this this is more of a bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old episode and in order to talk about uh doing that we're talking to samantha medina who's an organizer for Donut Workers United and also the Coalition of Independent Unions, and Sinead, who is an organizer for the CIU and also the IWW. And yeah, both you two, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Good to be on.

Great to talk to both of you. And so the specific thing that, yeah, I wanted to talk about today is the Trans Day of Solidarity that is being organized in Portland right now. And yeah, I wanted to, I guess we should start with what is this event, who is doing it, and then we can get into why it is being done. being done? Sure thing. So the Trans Day of Solidarity is an event being put on right now by the Coalition of Independent Unions. And it's an event that's basically about both celebrating trans people in the labor movement and the workers movement as a whole, highlighting the importance of workplace and union organizing for trans communities as a way for us both to survive but also to struggle towards our own liberation and finally it's a way of uh it's a way of sort of us clarifying how we can start using workplace struggle as a means of turning the tide against the current genocide we face. Yeah, that covers most of it. I think the only thing that I'd like to add is a lot of what this event is around is bringing awareness to the trans community and specifically our experience within the labor movement and on the job.

and specifically our experience within the labor movement and on the job. And it is a way, as Sinead mentioned, to kind of like highlight exactly what unions do and can do for trans people. While at the same time also giving us a moment to remind unions that they should be doing more. Even if what they're already doing is great, they could always do more. And especially in a time right now where trans people are facing the discriminations particular to us across this country right now. And as Sinead mentioned the world, but focusing on the United States,

it's really important that the avenues that are there to protect us are aware of how to protect us. So I think this is our opportunity to kind of remind unions to step it up a little bit. you are intimately aware of this but i don't know if overrepresented is the right term but like trans people like literally right now in particular are effectively the vanguard of new union organizing they are you know enormously like quote i guess i guess overrepresented or whatever that's the word you want to use in in you know like among union organizers a lot of actually and this i think is a you know another thing i'm excited about for this is that like y'all are kind of like at the forefront i guess of like what the new sort of union organizing stuff is and how it's how it's sort of you know how how how it's been working it's like that the fact that this is like the one place where there's actually a lot of us and that you know is is is a place where there's enough of

us that it actually matters is important and that you know that that that works in a lot of directions at the same at the same time yeah i mean i i think it's good to acknowledge that like yeah there are a lot of trans people that are organizing their workplaces there's a lot of trans people taking part in their unions and uh, you know, a lot of that, I think, comes out of necessity. Like if we're not there to discuss our needs with these unions or to create our own unions out of necessity, where like maybe our cis co-workers don't understand the struggle that we face on the shop floor. So by reminding them, we're able to make it better, you know, like all that's great and true and everything but i think it's also really good to acknowledge that like lgbtq people in general uh whether they

just be uh trans or otherwise uh have been organizing and organizing their workplaces for decades now so i think a lot of this like yeah we're seeing a lot more trans people involved but we're also seeing a lot more recognition and visibility of trans people than ever before. Right. Well, and part of the reason we're so involved is because it's a matter of basic survival, right? The average trans masculine and non-binary person make about 70 percent of the median U.S. wages, whereas trans feminine people make 60 percent. of the median U.S. wages, whereas trans feminine people make 60%. And this is below, like, compared to cis people, you know, that's wild, right? The level of homelessness, of discrimination, of job loss, of hours being reduced, punishment, of sexual harassment on the job, it's just, you know, it's unconscionable and it always has been even

in the good days it was garbage and miserable and honestly took a lot of us out yeah and i mean you know like part of part of the thing with that right it's like that all of that has knock-on effects right you know if if you can't get a job and the jobs you can get pay less a lot of this forces people you know like the rate of homelessness is unbelievably high. People get evicted constantly. And this, you know, all of this ties together

with sort of like trans housing struggles because that's a huge thing. And yeah, the consequences of this is like, yeah, a lot more of us end up dead. And the way that we don't end up dead is by fighting. And one of the places that, you know, like one of the places we've gotten good at is fighting in the workplace.

Absolutely. And I like – I mean, I'm talking from my own experiences as an organizer and as an IWW member for, God, 17 years now. Wow. Yeah. It's like I think about all the major campaigns that I've seen and all of them, all of them have had trans people as core organizers for each and every shop. From the canvasser strikes to Burgerville to a number of fast food shops and service sector shops and retail shops. Every single time there are folks that are trans that are playing key roles, which is given that we're, what, probably between 2 and 4% of the population, at least, you know, at least according to current estimates, probably going to be higher. But, you know, that shouldn't be possible. Yeah, it's shocking.

That makes no sense, except for the fact that well survivability bias motherfuckers it's this or we're dead like no sorry I'm not going to sugarcoat that no no no that is the blatant truth right and I mean like even if we're not talking about life

and death I mean it's the difference of whether we have access to a bathroom to use. Yeah. Yes, of course this is also about life and death. I think another thing that trans people face a lot is

access to healthcare or really the lack thereof, access to healthcare. Especially healthcare that will actually get us the medication that we need to be on and the surgeries that we need. Because, again, these are issues that help with dysphoria. And we all know the statistics on how dysphoria affects people of all ages. And that is, again, a matter of life and death.

So, like, I don't think it's wrong to not sugarcoat that statement. Yeah, right. And there's another side to it, too, is that, like, this is also a point of community. This is a point of actually, like, folks from, you know, it's meeting up with other trans folks. But it's also, like, working together with other, like, with cis co-workers and friends, right? This is a point of belonging and togetherness and of being able to really be there for your neighbors, and your friends, and your co-workers in ways that, like, and to be a part of community, which is something that is often stripped of us, right? Yes, it's about survival, and it's about what we need to do in order to keep breathing, but it's also about what we need to do to live, you know, to go beyond

survival, to have joy, and to have enough money to make it through, and maybe be able to actually have something for ourselves. Maybe be able to not have the constant anxiety, but instead spend more time being happy about who we are. It's easy to overlook that, but I don't know. Again, biased sample source, but almost all my fondest memories are from being side by side with my fellow workers, right? Absolutely. And I think also, you know, like time's gone long enough now where, you know, trans people are starting to be something that people are aware of, something people are talking about. Whether that's in the best ways or not, we're at least more visible now than we've ever been. And, you know, I think like organizing in general, community in general, whether that's, you know, community within the city you live in

or within your workplace, you know, like a lot of our success at being able to live the lives that we want to have or be the people that we want to be and be respected for that really does come down to our family members, our co-workers, our friends, and ultimately complete strangers who we need to rely on. You know, I hate to use the word ally, but we need our allies more than ever. And it's about time that they step up too. And that starts, typically speaking, in your community and in your workplace. I think it's also really good to address the fact that like, you know, when we're talking about trans issues and organizing around them and like organizing your workplace in your community and all that like it's it's also important to acknowledge how intersectional the trans experience is and that's something i really wanted to address we got talking about uh specifically about unions

and things like that because also unions are an incredibly intersectional piece of politics and life that we need to appreciate because when we talked about these statistics affecting trans people they affect uh disabled trans people and black and brown trans people at much much more so much higher rates than they affect white trans people and i think that unions being something and not just unions i mean every aspect of organizing and community building really needs to pay attention to this but i think this is something that is so ingrained in unions that unions have been fighting for this sort of protections that are very intersectional, you know, like whether they're protecting women in the workplace, whether they're protecting

black and brown people, whether they're protecting disabled people or whether they're protecting trans people. That is a large part of why unions were established. We talk about wages and working hours a lot, and that is all fine and dandy and it's wonderful. And that's something that is a base core value of unions. But I don't think it's celebrated enough how much work unions did in equality in this country. And I think this is just a continuation of that tradition. And trans people just happen to be

one of the largest topics right now. And we tend to have one of the largest topics right now and we tend to have one of the largest targets on our back more than we've ever had before um and so yeah i think that's why we discuss unions in relation to this because for you know working class folk that's where a lot of our organizing begins yeah and, and I think it's actually honest. It's had an interesting impact on the kind of union organizing that's happening because, you know, like one of the sort of consequences of transphobic discrimination in workplaces is that you get a lot of trans people in what is – Okay, I refuse to call it service sector i'm gonna there's gonna be a whole episode that's me yelling about the service sector that's coming to a recording thing near you but specifically like job jobs and fast food jobs that are very

low wage like high turnover things and particularly fast food's been very interesting because that's a that's a sector that like a lot of trade unions just completely ignore like they just gave up on and you know like they've been starting to organize like starbucks in the past few years right but like you know like if you want to look at the people who've actually been trying to organize fast food workers it turns out it's a bunch of trans people because, because, because who works, because who actually does this stuff, right? Turns out, turns out. Yeah.

There's a lot to be said about that. Like with, with larger unions and, and larger unions, especially within the trades have done a lot of great work, you know, and that's, that's lovely.

And I, I appreciate them for that. But on the other hand, they really did turn their back on the service sector industry for the silliest reason possible, which is that high turnover is just too difficult. And we want to talk about people. Yeah, it's just too difficult. You know, who wants to organize something difficult? Right. Like that might cost too much money or not make them enough money. And which I find highly hypocritical of unions in general. I mean, like not of all unions, but like if that is the stance that unions will take to not organize the

service industry, being a union seems to be exactly why you would target those industries. Right. Because those are where workers need it most. And if we want to talk about high turnover rates being the reason, who do we think is affected the talk about high turnover rates being the reason who do we think is affected the most by high turnover rates you know like it is hard to find a job as a trans person let alone keep a job um for any length of time there's oftentimes no upward mobility for trans people in that job and so you face a variety of life issues when you're

not making enough money, which inevitably leads to you losing your job and adding to the high turnover rates in these companies. This is exactly why, and we can get into what we've been up to and what we're doing later, but that's exactly why the CIU and the IWW and other organizations like us do what we do is because we believe in helping the workers who are underrepresented and not taken care of by the larger unions. Because we are those workers, right? I mean, that is the thing. We're able to do this and put, you know, I mean, we'll put the fucking hours in because that's us. We're doing this because it's the only way out right so like when we schedule something like

or like create an event like the trans day of solidarity um we're doing this because both on the backbone of years of experience but like especially like collectively um but also bringing in new organizers because we knew how we can think back to how we were brought in. Right. We can talk, think back to our friends, our allies, and our, especially our trans fellow workers who were the ones who mentored us.

Um, well before the tipping point, a lot of cases, right. Um, because this is why we're here and like thinking about who this affects. Right. I mean,

like it affects trans people deeply, and it can cut off our access to the healthcare that many, but not all of us very much need to keep going. And the threats above us, you know, only increase as the, like, you know, the oppressions you face are increasing, right? If you're a trans person of color, if you're disabled, like you were saying, right? Like, shit gets worse. It gets harder. The sword over your head dingles a little closer. So, we work to figure a way to get out from under it. But it's also, like, why the Trans Day of Solidarity, like, when we talk about this, it's an event that

is what it is because it's designed to not simply be us just speaking into the wind, but it's meant to be a practical thing, right? The whole event itself is like a rally with, you know, trans speakers from, you know, a number of different shops and unions in town. But it's also then just quickly becomes just a flying picket, right? And this is a tradition that I think we do miss a little bit in this country. The flying picket's an old one and it's a fucking goldie. It's where you get a big old mob of people and you just start going to places all over your town and throwing fucking pickets.

It's everything you love about a breakaway march and also a picket at the same time. It has direct economic leverage to it. You can do, you know, people, it took a minute. But, and, you know, this is also coming from someone who is organizing primarily in Portland, so there's a certain bias here. Your locale may vary, but if you organize enough pickets in your city, people might cross them at first. They get a lot less likely to the more you do them over the years. So the more pickets you throw, the less likely people are to cross them. And if they're not likely to cross them, that increases their impact.

So we're going to be giving our speeches, sure. And we are going to speak to our experiences. That's critical. And then we're also going to ruin some people's day. Or, you know, make their day, if you're the workers. Yeah, we'll ruin some bosses' day. Exactly. Just always the best kind of day.

To ruin. Well, and it's also part of the reason. Listen, should bosses have good days? I'm going to go on a limb and say no. Never. Ever, ever. I mean, how many good days do we have at work? Yeah, damn straight.

At the bare minimum, you get at least one less good day than us. And you know what? You know what? If the bosses don't like having these bad days, then they can just go find another job. Exactly. It's not that big a deal, right? don't like having these bad days, then they can just go find another job. Exactly! It's not that big a deal, right?

They can actually contribute to their communities. You know, do some real work for a change. Which in this case is sometimes just working a fucking tail. Because that sucks. That's it. Speaking of things that suck, we need to take an ad break this is the best ad pivot I've been able

I've been able to think of in the last like six minutes so we're taking it right now it's never going to get this good again and we're back so one of the things that I also wanted to talk about is about, I guess, just talking a bit about

what the Coalition of Independent Unions is and how it sort of formed and, yeah, I don't know, the sort of potentials therein, because it's a really interesting organization. Coalition? Yeah, absolutely. really interesting organization coalition yeah absolutely um so the the ciu uh it's got a long history if we really dig deep into it i mean effectively this idea started uh after organizing within portland for the last gosh i think people might have been organizing here forever. But let's say, how long ago did Burgerville Workers Union start, Sinead?

Let's see. That's a question. If you want to talk about the official date we went public, sure, 2016. If you want to talk about the antecedents, you'll find it in the Industrial Research Organizing Group Precarious Workplace, no, it was Low-Wage Workers Subcommittee in the Portland General Membership Branch of the IWW circa August of 2013. Incredible names, by the way. Oh, you're welcome, yeah.

Oh, honey, honey, I'm a WAP. Do you know how many fucking acronyms do we have? Oh, my God. Listen, the number of things I had to take the GMB when I was BST, despite not actually being the T part of came out of the flurry of independent unions that kind of in fast food service and retail that, that flourished in the wake of the Burgerville workers union, Burgerville workers union itself goes public. And God,

that was April of 2016 because of course it's been that fucking long. It was in the works a while before that. God, all those meetings. general membership branch of the IWW's industrial organizing research group, the precarious worker subgroup, or maybe it was the low-wage worker subgroup, circa August of 13. But that's antecedents, right? This kind of goes public. This itself is built on, you know, the Jimmy Johns Workers Union, especially around the Twin Cities and earlier in the 2000s. And then, of course, before that, the Starbucks Workers Union that had multiple different campaign flourishings, I think the earliest in the late 90s, early aughts in New York City, on which, honestly, you'll see some articles mention this, on which the foundations of the modern Starbucks Workers United now rests. So what we've seen now in the wake of all of this shit, right, is you have an incredibly militant working class coming forward, and they start popping off.

They're not waiting for permission from any org to just start fucking organizing their workplace, sometimes filing for union elections, sometimes not. The ones that have been filing for contracts, there are – I have complicated feelings, but there are real gains you can make from contracts, right? It is a lot easier to get certain victories than you can in others. Now, there's also limitations, right? But the CIU comes from a number of different unions coming together, you know, Don't Workers United, a few others, to basically, like, actually preserve, you know, democracy in their workplace, to pool resources around, you know, trainings around contract bargaining and elections, as well as to rely on each other for direct action assistance and things like that. And, you know, the IWW has also got a thread in all of this. But yeah, it's essentially

a series of like, you know, we're not trying to own everything, right? The CIU exists as a platform for all the different types of independent union activity that are occurring, right? And to create a basis on which we can actually start talking to each other more, to cooperate and interact with each other, right? There is more of a contract focus in the CIU. So, you know, I'm a wab with experience in dual carding. You have your contract union on the one hand and your fighting union on the other. And this allows folks to sort of approach union organizing and labor organizing from any level of experience and any number of backgrounds, right? And I think that's the real strength of the CIU, is not to instead to constrain the upswell of worker militancy, but instead to give it a place to help put down some roots, while also allowing even more militant struggle to intertwine within those, you know, growths. So I think that's a really great explanation of the CIU and how the CIU formed and the purpose that the CIU provides to workers. All I mean, so far, the CIU is growing rapidly. We've been talking with a lot of workers and primarily in Oregon and in Portland, but even workers outside of that purview.

And I have a lot of hope that the CIU is going to be able to to help unionization in a way that other unions are not willing to at the moment or are having difficulty breaking into um and so far so good I mean I think we have gosh I think there's like at least trying to do the math right now in my head I do lose count sometimes but I think we got about 6 different shops involved in the CIU currently including my own

exactly 6 public shops including my own no no that's fine oh honey there's so much more to come there's so much more to come oh they're gonna learn why we picked a city Yeah, yeah. Oh, honey, there's so much more to come. There's so much more to come. Oh, they're going to learn why we picked a city.

Crows, baby, crows. But it's going really well. And we have a lot more campaigns that are going to go public in the future. But one thing that we really noticed while organizing all of these campaigns and whether we ourselves organized them or whether we had a hand in assisting them organize themselves throughout the city, one thing that all of us various organizers started to realize is that we represent

a large amount of trans folks at all of these jobs. And now some of that can be chalked up to the fact that we live in Portland and we kind of live in the trans Mecca. So of course you're going to come across a lot of trans workers. But here's the deal that we kind of noticed is that trans workers, regardless of living in Portland, Oregon, or, you know, the fact that we have so many trans people living here, for a lot of reasons I won't get into that we all know,

which is why we moved here in the first place. refugees we're let's be real it's runaways yeah but we noticed that there's a lot of trans workers working as you reluctantly put it earlier uh service industry jobs and not just service industry jobs a variety of jobs but most of which are you know minimum wage poverty wage let's be honest jobs that offer almost zero upward mobility for trans folks and so that's the thing that we started looking at is the ladder and as you go up the ladder you see less and less and less trans folks so down here at the bottom, working, you know, fast food jobs, working sweaty donut jobs, working, you know, in I mean, the restaurant industry as a whole, I think, is is a lot of who we assist as well as, you know, potentially some grocery store workers and other people like that. We we don't have a whole lot of representation in our workplaces that we make up. You know, I mean, we can look at some of the larger industries in town that do provide

unionization for workers. And there's many, but you know, I think it's easy to look at like a lot of the auto industry or the warehouse industries and things like that. And of course, they have trans workers, but it's an overwhelming amount working within the service industry. And so as we started organizing more and more service industry shops, we started realizing that we are representing a lot of trans people. And what's really important to us is that if we're going to be representing trans people in the workplace, then we should give them a platform and a voice to be able to speak about their concerns and their issues that they haven't otherwise had. And that's why the CIU decided to put on this action, you know, and we chose it

when we chose it for a very particular reason. And to be honest, we thought about doing it over Pride weekend. And I think that would have been lovely. But on the other hand, you know, Pride is about a celebration of existence. And there's a lot of visibility during Pride already. So we kind of stepped back. We reflected on that for a little bit. And we decided that Labor Day is not exactly a time of year where you hear about people talking about LGBTQ rights and trans rights. I mean, of course, there's a little bit of that going on.

I'm not trying to say that there's none, but it seems like a really great opportunity for us to host this event over Labor Day weekend and give trans workers, the working class, an actual platform and a voice to express their concerns, issues, and give their thanks at the same time to the unions who represent them. And like I said before, it could represent them even better. So this is our way of reminding them. And also at the same time, follow up picket, reminding Portland that if you don't take care of your community, and specifically in this case, your trans working class community, then we will make ourselves heard.

And you will listen to us one way or another. And if we have to take to the streets in order to have our voice heard, we are more than happy to do that. Red the promise, black the threat. It's an old slogan, but again, it's one we really need to bring back. And city birds. City birds are very important in all this. Nothing is more important than that on this episode. Listen, we're in Portland. The obligatory

crow conversation is just part of the bargain. The Labor Day weekend tends to be very important because, uh, this is when a lot of retail and food and entertainment business, uh, happens. And frankly, um, given, you know,

the whole genocide, we decided we were going to help, uh, you know, show the power of organized labor by throwing a bit of a wrench into that. Right. So why we chose Labor Day, getting into the sort of like what the Trans Day of Solidarity is, um,? So why we chose Labor Day, getting into sort of like

what the Trans Day of Solidarity is, we're going to be having a speaker and a rally at 4 p.m. at Pioneer Square in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, September 2nd. This is a huge, huge weekend for food service, for entertainment, and yeah, for retail. And while we're having trans speakers from a number of different campaigns and unions speak, from four to, you know, wrapping up at around five, we're then going to start moving on a mobile picket line, a flying picket, all over downtown Portland, because we need to bring joy to a lot of workers and ruin a lot of bosses' days. This is leverage, and we'll use it. We'll just cost them as much

money as we possibly can. We'll be hitting a number of different stores. It looks like we'll be hitting... Well, you'll see at the march. But we'll be going all over the city. We have everything covered in terms of needs and amenities. There's going to be chants and leaflets. There'll be medics aplenty. There'll be all sorts of safety concerns will be addressed by our organizers on the ground. So please, come one, come all. We actually

should have a marching band. That'll be pretty fun. That I didn't expect to land up, but it'll be a union marching band, no less. Nice, nice. We'd love to see it. It's going to be pretty great. So, if you like trans people and making

bosses cry, you should come to this. What time is it starting? Again, 4 p.m. at Pioneer Square in downtown Portland. And then we'll be doing the march throughout the city from around 5 o'clock. And I do recommend to folks wanting to come out to the event, be ready to chant, bring your walking shoes

because we have a bit of a trek ahead of us, making bosses miserable across town, and make some signage. Bring picket signs. Bring, you know, picket signs in support of both trans people, working class folks, union workers, or just reminding bosses to stop being shitheads.

Whatever you want to put on your sign, it's lovely. I will give you a hint as to one of the locations that we will be picketing. I think it's okay for me to mention this. We'll make sure to picket the world's worst tourist trap. Also,

one of the absolute most difficult one of the absolute most difficult union struggles that I've ever been a part of, only being one so far particularly. But, you know, it really irks me. So anyways, if you're interested in that, come on down and you can see the world's worst tourist trap on your way. we're a stern as trap on your way. And for people who are not in Portland,

I do want to remind people, it's probably not enough time to do it this year, but you too, you too can have a trans day of solidarity. You could also have it on a different day. We can have one. If we planned this correctly, we could in fact have 365 days of trans solidarity. We could take all of the days. I don't know.

The cis people can have like the leap year day or something like that. We'll get the February 29th. We already have May Day. There's no need for a second Labor Day. I really feel like if we keep doing this every year, we can just take it. We can get rid of fake labor day and make it uh based labor day again exactly i

mean it's trans labor day i mean i don't know that's a lot i mean i'm only visible one day of the year and i only remember things one day of the year i don't know i don't know hey okay okay there's there's one day we got one day of pride there's like don't know. There's one day. We got one day of pride. There's like... Isn't there like a bisexual visibility day or something? There is one. Bisexuals only appear for one day a year. It's at least three days.

We know of four. There might be four. There's like two other trans ones. We could possibly have a full five days that we're visible in. I'm just going to put forward that, like, listen, if you also want to, you know, and if you can get something together for Sunday,

September 3rd, we could just make Trans Day of Solidarity followed by Trans Day of Wrath. You know, because if the picket line has to go too long, well, you know, we get mighty ornery. Well, and also, okay,nery I have been watching you all make oh it's wrath month oh it's

enough pride it's wrath time jokes for too long and there has been not enough wrath so I'm calling you for more wrath days we need to actually do the day absolutely organize your workplace oh absolutely

organize your workplace. And if you find out that the people that own your company are fascists or helping to fuel the genocide, organize even harder. Help get friends involved. Have them try and get on jobs to help take those motherfuckers down. Remember, there's so much you can do to cost the people that are trying to kill us a lot of money while also making your lives so much better. So, do your part. Hope to see you all again.

Well, not again. I hope to see you all there. And again, it's going to be September 2nd, 4pm, Pioneer Square, downtown Portland, Oregon. And be there for the rally. Listen to people's voices. We are doing this for a reason. It's important that we give trans folks a platform and support us on the picket line. We would really

appreciate this. Oh, you can also find a link to all this on the Coalition of Independent Unions Facebook page. We also have an Instagram you can find us on. Just type in Coalition of Independent Unions or CIU. We'll put links to that in the description. Perfect. And if you need any more information, please feel free to hit up either of those accounts. I would be happy to inform you on whatever you need.

Yeah. And with that, wishing everyone a happy Trans Day of Solidarity. If you're a boss, wishing you a bad Trans Day of Solidarity. Yeah. And everyone go out into the world, make more Trans Days of Solidarity, make more Trans Day of Stays in Solidarity, make more bosses sad, make workers happy.

This is within your power to do. And yeah, go into the world and make mischief. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. at roughline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everyone. It's me, James, today. And I'm joined by Julia Messner from SeaWatch. She's one of the spokespeople for SeaWatch. SeaWatch are an organization that rescues migrants in the Mediterranean. Huda, hi, good morning. Welcome. Hi, thank you so much for your invitation.

Yeah, not good morning for you, I guess. Could you start off by explaining to us perhaps what Sea-Watch does and why there's a need for it to do that as well? Yeah, of course. So Sea-Watch is a civil sea and search and rescue organization. So we are trying to save people from distress at sea in the Mediterranean Sea. So you can imagine the situation being very cruel at the European external borders right now. So far, more than 2,200 people drowned only this year while trying to flee to the European Union. And the area we cover, people are mostly fleeing from Tunisia and Libya,

for example, to Italy, but also trying to reach Malta, for example. So what we are trying to do is actually really rescuing with ships. So currently we have two ships. One is prepared at the moment for its first operation. And the second one had just had rescue on the weekend and is now currently blocked in Italy. And on the other side, we also have monitoring airplanes surveying the area and trying to monitor the human rights situation over the Mediterranean and trying to monitor, firstly, state violence, over the Mediterranean and trying to monitor firstly state violence, but also secondly trying to give information when the airplanes are finding boats in distress for people being rescued.

Okay, so there's a lot there I think that we should probably break down for people. And the first thing I think is you said that one of your boats is blocked. Now, maybe people won't be familiar with the way that certain European countries have reacted to the migration coming across the Mediterranean. So can you explain what blocking constitutes? Yeah, so in Europe, since a few years, in several years, we also see an increase

in ultra-right wing movements and also ultra-right governments. So what is happening now, especially in Italy, where we are operating from, is that we have a ultra-right wing government under the president Giorgio Meloni installed, and the government is currently trying to hinder civil sea rescue because it's a way to actually hinder and also block migration.

So in the beginning of the year, for example, there was a decree put in place that really makes it so much harder for us to operate. And at the moment, after our rescue on the weekend, we are blocked for 20 days, meaning that we cannot go out and do our usual work in the Mediterranean. But our ship has to stay in port because Italian authorities are claiming that we violated the decree, which is actually going against international law. Yeah. So I think when you say that they're trying to hinder migration in the Mediterranean, that's quite a nice way of saying it, I guess, because what this means is that they are making that migration even more dangerous than it already is by not allowing people to be rescued.

And as you said, it's already incredibly dangerous. Yes, correct. The Mediterranean Sea is a graveyard. Like, as I said, more than 2,200 people died this year only, crossing, and thousands of people died since 2014. Like, numbers can be seen, like, with the IUM, so the International Organization of Migration, for example, that are monitoring also the situation in the central Mediterranean. And what this place or

this external border actually constitutes is a crime scene. A crime scene for crimes against humanity because states are purposefully, really intentionally letting people drown. Yeah, it's tragic. It's really horrible um can you explain a little bit about like the way that i guess just the mechanics of people crossing the vessels they use where they uh like the journey of people if people have seen the mediterranean at all uh like depending on where they live obviously they might live on the med but if they don't you know maybe they've seen beaches and beach holidays in spain something. Obviously, that's not all of it. Can you explain a little bit about the conditions of the crossing?

Yeah. People that we rescue mostly are trying to flee from Tunisia as well as Libya. The situation in Libya, for example, is really horrible. It's very violent. There's a lot of documentation of torture camps, of rape, of murder, of slave trade. And people that come from the sub-Saharan region and are trying to flee to the European Union are crossing Libya, for example. But also in Tunisia, the situation at the moment is very dire. It's very racist.

There's like a racist, violent campaign started by the Tunisian president in the beginning of the year, especially. So we see a lot of institutional racism. We see a lot of racism and also a lot of violence on the streets. So people are really trying to flee from the country. And people are using all means possible, of course, because there's no easy way to come to Europe. People fleeing cannot just take a train or an airplane, actually, and then trying to reach shores of the European Union

of a boat is their only means. So they're really forced to do that. And boats that are used are, for example, inflatable boats, but also metal boats. And these metal boats especially are very, very dangerous because they are only like constructed very, really not in good condition. So they're really easy to sink.

So as soon as water comes in, these boats are actually sinking. So people are also mostly not wearing life vests. So it's really dangerous. The number of people on the boat is way too high for their capacities. So most boats, as soon as they go on to sea, they are actually in distress and they are in need of rescue. Okay, yeah. And then let's talk about some of the rescues that SeaWatch has been able to do. Because some of them have resulted in really big numbers of people you've been able to save, right? I think there was one in 2017, which was 50-something people.

Is that right? Yeah, I mean, could very well be. 2017, I didn't work with SeaWatch, so I don't know which rescue you mean exactly. But for example, just now on the weekend, we rescued 72 people actually out of distress at sea with our ship Aurora. Okay, so let's talk about what that rescue looks like. I guess what happens is maybe the aircraft spots that the ship is in distress, is that right? And then your ship can respond and go to them? Yeah, for example, there's also another organization.

It's called Alarm Phone. They are like a distress hotline where people in distress at sea can call. And they are also giving them the information to all ships in the area and, of course, to authorities. So on the weekend, our Aurora actually first supported another civil surgeon rescue ship from open arms with air rescue and then was led to this particular distress case, also with the help of our monitoring flights operations,

which are called Airborne. And the people were then rescued on Friday, as said, 72 people. And then normally what you have to do is, of course, inform the competent authorities in the area, so state authorities. And according to international law, then state authorities have to coordinate the rescue. So we, of course course communicated with authorities and authorities only after a while actually assigned us to the port of Trapani. So Trapani is in Sicily,

on the island of Sicily, and it was much farther away than the nearest port which was on the island of Lampedusa. So you have to imagine, of course, distress and rescue cases are very dangerous situations. And people, of course, need immediate support and need immediate transfer to the land where medical help can intensely happen, etc. Because people might be on sea for several days. They might be on sea for several days, they might be on in psychological, but as well in physical pain and stress. And they might have burns from actually a fuel and seawater mix, for example. And of course, dehydration is a very, very big danger

and risk for people in distress at sea. So after we rescued and after we got assigned the port of Trapani we made very clear to the authorities that Trapani is way too far and that according to international law we need to go to Lampedusa because it's the most suitable nearest port but then we got noticed that we are not allowed to go to Lampedusa actually and that meant that we were in total forced to stay on sea for 37 hours um and also for those people in distress um and rescued they were forced to stay more than 24 hours additionally on sea like having to really endure those really difficult, this really difficult situation. The next day, Saturday, we were still on sea. The sun like really burned relentlessly

by that point. And people were facing dehydration. One person actually fainted and it became really increasingly dangerous, the situation on board, which is why we communicated more and more with authorities and they were then forced after a while to let us enter to Lampedusa because the situation was really dire and people needed to disembark on land. Yeah, I think that's a really good summation the sort of like hostility you encounter from states another thing that sea watches encountered at least in the past is either negligence or like interference by state agencies like at sea i'm not sure if it was the navy or the coast guard i think it was maybe the coast guard the libyan coast guard had interfered with a rescue and this may

have been before you started so it's fine yeah but the so-called Libyan Coast Guard is an actor that is really violently intercepting people that are trying to reach European shores and also violently interfering with rescues of civil search and rescue ships. So we saw, for example, shootings in the air um like in the direction of our airplanes but also in direction of other certain uh certain rescue ships for example we saw intimidations we saw violations of international law and human rights by the so-called libyan coast guard because um what is happening is that the european states the european union is actually supporting the so-called Libyan Coast Guard to intercept people at sea, so to really block people from getting to the European Union.

Yeah, and it seems to be like a strategy throughout the European Union, right? It's rather than supporting people as they come, making this journey less dangerous, they're trying everything they can do to keep people in North Africa or to stop them coming to Europe at all. Yeah, absolutely. We see this on a very practical level in the Mediterranean Sea, but we also see this on a political level.

So with externalization policies, with deals with Tunisia, for example, just recently, there has been a deal between the european union and tunisia with a lot of money involved to actually trying to block migration again and to increase the support for the tunisian coast guard for example but we also see a lot of political talks between italy and libya and libya is also now a former colony of italy So there's very close ties and ties and a lot of influence. And just a couple of days ago, there was the transfer of two ships from Italy to the so-called Libyan Coast Guard.

So they're really also supporting this very violent, very dangerous actor with technical means. Yeah. And obviously like people who listen to all our episodes will be aware like there's increased violence in the sahel there's not like large scale protests in syria this week like it's not as if the the people will there will still be dangerous situations for people to flee and what the eu is doing is making that dangerous journey more dangerous rather than sort of accepting that it's a thing that happens to humans and trying to make it less deadly yeah absolutely and it's like it's a very uh politically induced situation and we are or like

the european union is supporting human rights crimes like with the money of the european union human rights crimes are actually committed. So a couple of weeks ago, we saw deportations from Tunisian authorities of people on the move to the Tunisian-Libyan border, so to the desert, and people were actually left there to die, literally. Another way that you guys encountered state-level hostility is with these legal actions right that have been taken against you against sea watch against individuals who are part of sea watch and against vessels that sea watch owns can you explain some of those yeah so for example i mean the most recent one with the blockade of our ship so it's blocked according to state authorities because they claim we violated

the Italian decree that I just talked about and they actually said that we had to request a port in Tunisia and bring people back to Tunisia, which would have been completely against international law because Tunisia cannot be considered a safe port or a safe country of origin. So now we are in the process of waiting for the Aurora actually to be deblocked again. But also Italian authorities are of course trying to criminalize persons. For example, in the case of Carola Rackete, who was a captain with us in 2019, and who had to enter also the port of Lampedusa because of the very, very difficult situation on board, because the ship was forced to stay several days really on the Mediterranean Sea and the situation became very dire so there was also proceedings against her in person so really

people that are trying to show solidarity and support people on the move to claim their human right to claim asylum are criminalized on the basis of accusations that are just completely not true. Carola Rakesi, for example, was also... all the charges against her were dismissed. There was no legal ground for them. Yeah, but the harassment obviously still hinders your work, right? Even if the charges are dismissed, the time that the ship can't go out yeah absolutely and it also um it's also um a a means to like to to implement fear no in people's minds um because of course it is super scary to be um to be accused by a state to have actually violated law and you are facing charges of years in prison um and like only that fear can already uh do do a lot but we don't only see this in italy we also see this a lot in greece

for example um a country which is also really trying to to criminalize humanitarian and political like yeah humanitarian workers that are standing in solidarity with people on the move yeah and so people might not be as familiar with the landscape of migration so maybe you could just explain like where the boats are based because you talked you talked about greece i know that um that maltese authorities have also like bought cases against sea watch can you explain the different landscape, I guess, of where your boats are based and where they tend to end up relocating

or taking people to once they've been rescued? Well, we take people who've been rescued a lot to Italy. But we're also, of course, trying to coordinate with Maltese authorities who also have the legal responsibility to take people in. But Maltese authorities or Malta, the state, is actually really irresponsive. So we really see as little engagement of the country as possible. We see a lot of hindering of migration.

We see very special cases with Malta where Malta Maltese authorities are actually, for example, communicating to merchant vessels who are finding or who are in vicinity of distressed cases that they should just hand out fuel to the boats or hand out water.

So those dist distress cases, those boats are actually making their way to Italy on their own. So they are out of Maltese responsibility. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it's kind of passing the buck along. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just so sad and how similar so much this is to the way the US deals with people coming across our land border, which is often to say they boot them back to Mexico, which again is a violation of international law and it's not a safe place. And again, people in the US have been criminalized for providing drinking water to people in the desert.

And even if it doesn't work, it scares people. Yeah, and it's like definitely it's not only a European kind of situation, it's the situation at borders in general, because borders are in the end a construct to safeguard in quotation marks your apparent space. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And to kind of, yeah, I don't know, enforce some kind of notion who's in and who's out

and who's the other and who's the same. I wonder, one thing that people will be wondering is obviously SeaWatch is a large scale operation with quite substantial assets. And people may be wondering like, how is SeaWatch funded? How do you get, you know, you need experienced captains. You need maybe people who are experienced in rescue operations at sea, pilots. So where do all these people come from?

Well, like they come, I mean, also from the general public. We have so many volunteers that are working with us, really. Also, we have people that are writing us and trying to support. And of course, like everybody can or anyone can have a look at the website. We have job offers on the website usually as well. And like if you want to support, really have a look and also try to reach out in case of any questions. And SeaWatch and also other civil sea rescue organizations are really sustaining themselves and are financed by donations. So we are solely financed by donations and we are really trying to keep the work up as much as possible.

keep the work up as much as possible. And we have lots of different opportunities as well to support not only by working with us, but also in spreading our message on social media. So that's maybe the easiest for everyone who has social media accounts. Just like search Sea-Watch and you'll probably find our accounts on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, but also on TikTok, for example. accounts on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, but also on TikTok, for example, like inform yourself, educate yourself and share the message. Talk to your families while having dinner and talk to your friends and also support really self-organized groups of people on the move.

So, for example, you can inform yourself by finding refugees in Libya, the group, or refugees in Tunisia on Twitter. And they are actually talking about their situation in the country, but also on migration routes. Yeah. I wonder, talking about refugees in Tunisia and Libya has sort of reminded me, recently we discussed on an episode the presence of the Wagner Group in Africa, specifically they've been in Libya before,

they are now in the Sahel and Central African Republic in different places, and how people have reacted very differently to the presence of the Wagner Group in Ukraine to the presence of the Wagner Group in Africa. And I wonder, and this isn't to say that people, I don't want to be construed as saying

that people shouldn't have solidarity with people fleeing conflict in Ukraine, because they should. And those people have every right to a safe place too. But has there been a change in the tone or just the material support for you guys since the conflict in Ukraine grew broader, like grew out of the Donbass and Crimea into the full scale invasion? I mean, we see like we are in a situation of multiple crises now. Of course, we saw the invasion of Russia into Ukraine, but we're also facing climate change. We're facing dire economical situations, etc. So also our donations went down in the past year, definitely.

But we are still also so lucky to have a very strong solidary basis of people supporting us. So I think it's kind of both a little bit. Yeah, I always think with respect to the solidarity, I've never really seen, like every time there's a larger scale crisis at the southern border of the United States, right? Recently, the United States government, very similarly to what you were describing, was keeping people in the open desert and leaving them there for days without food or water. And hundreds of people mobilized to help them, people who you might not expect to be particularly radical in their politics or, you know, sort of direct action people.

But they were great and everyone helped. as a result no one died uh one young woman died in texas in cvp custody and like i always think if people could see it then like you were saying if they can see your videos people there's a very human response to never want that to happen to another human being it's just hard when there's there's so much going on yeah and also it's i i think it's completely understandable that we like not every person can concern themselves with all the topics all the all the crisis situations we're facing right now and like no one expects that of us but we can expect of states because it's their duty um that like they are taking care of people actually and they are really uh trying to set the base for everyone to uh like to claim their human right

and it's states themselves that actually like wrote down those human rights because of a certain situation so i mean especially in europe we really have, we're just considering our history is just considering the history of Germany. We just like, it's blatant ignorance and also completely against any historical evidence, against any historical work we've done, what the situation now is and what we're actually

doing at the external borders, like committing human rights crimes and ignoring the situation and actually increasing the dangers and actually increasing the dangers for people on the move on a daily basis. And I think, I mean, it's not only, I mean, you also mentioned this before, no? It's also a situation you're facing in the US and we really have to build strong transnational movements and strong transnational ties to like work against state violence,

border violence in general. Yeah, I think that's an excellent point that like this is part of a broader kind of state violence that everyone should be opposed to. It hurts everyone in the end. And yeah, as both of us being European people, we've seen that like very obviously, but we, I don't know, government seemed to have forgotten. One thing that you mentioned that I wanted to talk about before we finished was climate change, because you said, you know, we obviously like the, it's very hard for someone living in Europe or North America this year to pretend that climate change isn't happening, like with soaring temperatures, hurricane in California, wildfires everywhere. Can you explain a little bit because i think one thing

that people fail to connect is and maybe that's largely due to bad not bad reporting perhaps but like it doesn't get mentioned in reporting when we talk about migration we don't talk about climate change when we talk about climate change we talk about migration but the two go hand in hand right the people certainly many of the people that i see are southern border coming from areas most affected by climate change and is that something that see what sees to like as as parts of the world that are more marginal for people to to live in get even harder to live in are those people coming you know being forced to leave i guess let's look at science now and at research and um like millions and millions of people more will be possibly because of climate change in the next years. We can't deny that fact. And we as European states and European societies are a big part of why this is actually happening and why climate change is increasing in the in the speed um that it is increasing

right now so we have a huge responsibility to take care and like to support people actually on the move and i mean at sea watch uh we don't make any difference as of why people are fleeing people are in distress at sea people are uh being rescued. That's it. That's the only perspective we have, supporting people that are in distress at sea. Because if you are calling an ambulance, they also don't ask, oh, hey, why are you actually calling the ambulance? Why are you in this situation? The ambulance is just coming. And this should also be always the case in the Mediterranean. Yeah, or anywhere else people are at sea. The last couple of things I wanted to ask you are more broad, but you spoke earlier about the rise of right-wing governments and movements in Europe. And when we obviously talk about the history of the right-wing in Europe, we think about

fascism. And I know people who listen to this podcast will be very invested in their history and current struggle of anti-fascism. And would you say it would be fair to cast what Sea-Watch is doing within the broader spectrum of opposing fascism or opposing, I guess, nationalist state violence, right-wing state violence? Absolutely. We are part of an anti-fascist movement. We are anti-fascists by core. So we definitely define ourselves as anti-fascist activists. Yeah, nice. And I wonder, last thing,

if people want to show their solidarity, you mentioned some ways. Is there anything in particular, like I know people have contacted me about volunteering for Sea Wish before and I've directed them to your website, but we do have a lot of listeners in Europe and are there particular things

that you're looking for in volunteers? Obviously, anyone can donate and they should if they have money. But is there certain qualifications you desperately need? So, I mean, we, of course, are always looking for people that are supporting our operations, especially on sea, but also with our airplanes, of course. So if you have captain's qualifications or other qualifications that allow you to go to sea and sail or engineering qualifications, for example, or medical qualifications as well where you can just also um sign in for interest basically and then our crewing department takes care and sees uh like who and like when it's actually fitting okay yeah that's great hopefully some people can reach

out and before we finish up is there anything else that you'd like to share with people that you think we haven't got to um i think we didn't talk about Frontex, for example. Oh yeah, let's do it. Explain Frontex to people. Yeah, so Frontex is the European Border Protection Agency, so-called actually, or Coast Guard and Border Agency. Frontex is also surveying and working on the Mediterranean Sea and responsible for border protection specifically in general. It actually has a double mandate. Border protection on the one side, but also coast guard duties, Europeans on the other side. What we criticize is, of course, that Frontex does so-called border protection and does not actually support people on the move and people in distress.

So this double mandate does not work at all. We see a lot of non-coordination, a lot of non-information, and also a lot of violence of Frontex. So for example, Frontex, there was a report from Human Rights Watch, for example, that Frontex is complicit in pullbacks by the so-called Libyan Coast Guard because there is actually communication between Frontex and the so-called Libyan Coast Guard. And the so-called Libyan Coast Guard can then detect boats in distress, their location with this information provided by Frontex and bring people or force people back to Libya, for example.

So Frontex is really an actor that we criticize hugely and that we're actually working towards their abolishment because how the organization or the institution is working right now does not have anything to do with legal rights of people. Yeah, and we spoke with Ruth Kinner, who's a professor at Loughborough, about lifeboats in the UK because the UK has a notionally, it has a very real distinction

between rescuing people at sea and doing border enforcement. And those two are different things. Yes, very different. Yeah, if people, like it's also in Kropotkin's book, Mutual Aid, he talks about the value of lifeboats and volunteer organizations such as your own.

Like it's very foundational to, people talk a lot lot about mutual aid but this is like one of the i guess like foundational examples of it um so like can you explain what a better system and obviously i'm not asking you to like solve all the world's problems but like uh what what would it uh we can make relatively few changes i guess and make this so much more humane and not have someone's little children drown in the Mediterranean so that, I don't know, people don't have to live next to someone who speaks a different language from them

or whatever people's fears are of migrants. Can you explain what that would look like? I mean, we need freedom of movement. That's for sure. And this is also one of our basic demands. We need freedom of movement for everyone we need people to have legal and safe pathways to europe so safe passage we need a system that in accordance to the needs and the wants of people people are actually also redistributed

over the european union and like can join their family members, for example, or their friends, their support systems while trying to flee violence, while trying to flee from places where they cannot live in the end. So this is really like what we are focusing on in the end to have people coming to Europe through safe passages. So and this is really what needs to be established. And of course, in this current situation, as a first step, we need a European coordinated search and rescue program

with the only mandate to rescue boats in distress, to rescue people in distress, to actually make sure that the situation, the death trap that the Mediterranean Sea is actually constituting at the moment stops, like the situation has to stop immediately. Yeah, and it could stop very quickly, right? The level of resources that are state-type available to deploy, they could make this go away very quickly. Yeah, they could if they wouldn't be actually focused

on externalization and blocking people to come yeah and uh i think like i don't know when you think about the fact that that's a conscious choice and the results of that it's very very sad and and i mean in the uk we seem to just talk about it openly now like like they have whole campaigns about stopping small boats uh but yeah i think people need to realize that they're like it's not boats that they're stopping it's little children that they're consigning to to risking their lives yeah children it's women it's men it's non-binary persons it's everyone um who wants to reach safety and everyone deserves to be rescued everyone deserves to be to live no questions asked yeah no i think that's a

wonderful place to end actually because i think it's a hard statement to disagree with uh can you what are your twitter handles where can people find and follow sea watch see what's true okay and that's all over that's your url as well um yeah, so let me have a look. So I'm not saying anything wrong. But SeaWatch Crew, so at SeaWatch Crew, all together and us in small, is actually our German account and our international account is at SeaWatch,

underline I-N-T-L for international. And then we also have an Italian account for all Italian speakers okay perfect yeah we'll make sure that we link to those

too and thank you very much for your time this afternoon your time morning my time thank you so much for the request

and for talking to us yeah of course. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows

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Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel.

I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. I mean, he looks so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzales story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, Elian Gonzalez's story as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and you can't spell falling apart without republican party or at least several of the letters following a party you use that for that are also in this garrison hello how are you doing good over there isn't in atlanta yeah yes i I just got back from a visit in Portland where we watched many upsetting things. We did. Back to back. We did watch a lot of upsetting things.

Yeah. Probably the most upsetting of which was the first of the 2024 Republican primary. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, it sure was nice watching those Indonesian war criminals reenact their crimes. Really cleared cleared my uh my my mind after uh watching the republican debate yeah that was that was a really good palate cleanser so you know this is not uh the most timely thing because we didn't want to just like

do a reaction podcast where we talked about, here's what we thought about Vivek's answer or anonymous white man number four's answer to these various questions. I thought Chris Christie was very put together, very on topic. On message. Yeah. No, we wanted to look at like,

wait for some polls to come out and actually kind of both talk about what happened and kind of what worried us and also how it seems to be playing with the base and the American voters in general. Because all of this matters, because again, the Republicans are, I mean, we are all a little bit the architects of collapse here in our lovely society, but the Republicans, here in our lovely society. But the Republicans, they like to really pump that shit into a higher gear. So I think the thing that kind of stuck out to both of us most, and the thing that's been one of the primary kind of takeaways, the main things people have talked about after the debate, was Vivek's performance, Vivek Ramaswamy, who was prior to, I even made a

little comment prior to it that I didn't know much about him or think he was much of an entity in this, in part because that's true. He was somebody who is just kind of coming onto the scene in politics. I wanted to talk a little bit about how he started that, because there was some stuff I was unaware of here prior to him announcing his candidacy. He's one of these guys who kind of started – because he comes out of biotech. He's a quote-unquote entrepreneur, and specifically he's the kind of shitty entrepreneur who has managed to get rich largely without actually contributing anything, like primarily buying up patents for drugs in development that he profits on, but then later are found not to work, is a big part of where his fortune comes from. And he started kind of about a – really about a year ago, I think,

trying to brand himself as a kind of political influencer, specifically through like social media. And he had been getting a lot of attention, like as a result of the success of his, because he's one of these guys, he's good at using social media. He gets up to, you know, he's at a couple of hundred thousand followers when he announces his candidacy. And prior to announcing his candidacy, he had done well enough at kind of building a brand for himself that in 22 or 2022, early 2022, he and the Daily Wire start putting together a contract and they want to bring him on, presumably for like a frightening, like a deeply upsetting amount of money to do something that

they haven't really done before, which is just kind of launch a like a show based around him. That's like a news and politics show, which was a little bit different kind of than a lot of the deals that like they've had before, where it's more like, you know, here's Matt Walsh's podcast where he's going to, you know, try to get people killed. Here's Ben Shapiro had before where it's more like, you know, here's Matt Walsh's podcast where he's going to, you know, try to get people killed. Here's Ben Shapiro's podcast where he's going to get angry at the Barbie movie. This was like, we're launching a news and culture, like a news and politics podcast and Vivek's going to be like the face of it, right? Yeah. With like, like attempts at actual like a political analysis, mostly from a libertarian

perspective. Yes, yes. And so, so that's the idea. And kind of midway through, after a significant amount of time in development, and according to kind of what Jeremy Boring, who's the CEO of Daily Wire, said, after they had spent a bit of money kind of working on sort of the concept for this, he backs out rather suddenly. Boring later said his priorities were changing and we could have chosen to be aggressive about it. We did spend a little bit of money on the prep that we've been doing. So I think there's a little bit of bad blood there actually between them. But he bounces from this deal with the Daily Wire to announce his 2024 campaign run. And this seems to have kind of started earlier on in this year, start of 2023,

when he has this meeting with a small group who were described in this ABC News article as conservative operatives to discuss his exciting plans. I'm going to read a quote from that article. I'm going to run for president, Ramaswami said on the call. Ramaswami pitched himself as a candidate who could make serious waves in the Republican primary at the meeting. When met with some skepticism, Ramaswami argued that his candidacy could also dissuade Florida Governor Ron DeSantis from entering the race, according to a source who was on the call. In the lead up to his announcement, Ramaswami would tell several other conservative activists that he believed that if he ran, it could stop DeSantis from running or impact his viability as a candidate if he did enter the race, sources said. His campaign has turbocharged Ramaswami's social media presence with his number of followers on Twitter, known as X, nearly quadrupling, ballooning from a little over 236,000 prior to announcing his candidacy to now nearly a million followers just six months later. And so, you know, there's a couple of things that's interesting to me about that. One that

he sort of, he pitched himself as I can stop DeSantis from running. And it's a little unclear to me if these are guys that specifically like hate DeSantis or if it's more, they don't want him running against Trump. They don't want like a fight between those two guys. Yeah, they want to postpone his political trajectory a little bit. And it was also, you know, before the debate, it was kind of looking like, because he was creeping up on DeSantis in like the last couple of polls before the debate, taking and beating him in a couple of states, which was interesting. It was kind of looking like it was working. And then in the aftermath of the debate, we'll talk more about polls later and we'll talk about other candidates, but it looks like he's kind of either plateaued or lost a bit of support,

even though a significant number of Republicans, most in some polls, think that he won the debate, which is interesting to me. Now, when you and I watched this, kind of the thing that concerned us was that we both saw him as sort of messaging to the Nick Fuentes crowd. And what I mean by that is young conservative activists who are at least willing to dance with explicitly white nationalist ideas and who have some sympathies with the insurgent right, including with acts of violence committed by the insurgent right. You know, and obviously Vivek is not, he's not Nick Fuentes.

He's not a Nazi. He's not going to make jokes about the Holocaust. But he does talk about certain things in a similar way, particularly this idea of like the fact that immigration is altering our national character. He talks about- National identity. National identity. Is the thing he kept saying, yeah. Which is something you hear a lot, sometimes in more explicit terms, from these, like basically these Nazis, right? So it's kind of a, he's taking this term and he's washing it a little bit.

Yeah. I mean, throughout the debate, he definitely was like very quick to portray himself as like the most conservative person on stage. Whenever there would be a question about like, like how extreme are you on this topic? And they didn't phrase it that way, but that's essentially what they're asking. He was the first person to raise his hand at every time. And he did it very enthusiastically many of the other people on stage had a lot of like half raised hands yeah we both noticed that desantis before raising his hand on a certain question looked both ways across the stage to see who else was raising their hand before he raised his but every single time um uh vivek was the first guy to like jolt his hand up he was very it was very uh uh very uh intentionally positioning

positioning himself as the most extreme option on the uh on the table there and it wasn't just i think the content of what he was saying that that made kind of parallels between him and people like nick fuentes or just kind of younger younger conservative uh like content creators and influencers. It was also the way he talked. His speech pattern, how fast he was. Very high school debater. Yeah. It was

reminiscent of all of the horrible shit that I watch for my job. Whenever I have to watch through a whole bunch of Zoomer conservative content creators, it was that but now on the debate stage. And this is something I even like kind of talked about in the last, uh, the Santa's fashion wave thing is like, we're, we are about to hit this big wave of conservative zoomers who are going to be starting to run for office, who were raised in this media environment. And they're going to act like all of these kind of commentators that we see on like YouTube, that we see on Rumble, that we see on Twitch. They're going to be emulating that style. I want to put a pin in that because we're going to come back to this with some audio

from Nick himself that expresses a similar opinion. But I want to note a couple of the things that he specifically expressed that I found. We found very fashy and that I consider to be really concerning. Top of the list is the fact that he has openly stated his desire to bomb Mexico. That is a real problem. And the degree to which a significant number of folks on that stage weren't completely willing to put that off the table is deeply concerning. That's not great.

That's a, that's a, now the upside is that like, maybe that's crazy enough that there's no chance independence will vote for it. But you never fully want to say that in America. There's no way to know. No, no way to know whatsoever. The other thing is that, you know, he has.

So Nick and a lot of these guys on the fascist youth right. They're huge into removing people from being able to vote. You know, Nick himself is basically a monarchist, right? Like he wants a Catholic monarch essentially. He's like a Catholic monarchist fascist, yeah. And by the way, this is not a fringe opinion. Michael Knowles, who is one of the major personalities of the Daily Wire, one of the largest conservative news organizations in the country, has just recently went on a rant talking about all the benefits of monarchy and protecting freedoms, by which he means the property of rich people. Knowles is also a trad Catholic, just like Nick.

Knowles is also a Catholic traditionalist. Yeah. And so these guys, they both talk about that. And the thing that Vivek is doing that is sort of the more acceptable, because you can't get up on stage yet at a Republican debate and talk about the need for a king the more acceptable because you can't get up on stage yet at a Republican debate and talk about the need for a king, right? But you can talk about the need to cut people out of the franchise, right? Nick being much more extreme and having the freedom to be more extreme talks a lot about repealing the 19th Amendment, taking the right to vote away from women. Vivek is not going to say that, but he did say this. Young people don't value a country that they just inherit.

That's why I've said every high school senior, I believe, should have to pass the same civics test that an immigrant in this country has to pass in order to become a voting citizen of the country if that 18-year-old wants all the privileges of citizenship as well. This is deeply concerning for a number of reasons, uh, including the fact that any barrier you're put to, to voting is going to reduce the number of people, specifically people who are likely to vote for Democrats who do it. Um, but number two, like who gets to determine those tests? Well, we're already seeing the way in which the, the state positions in like states like

Florida on education are fundamentally changing the amount of information kids are allowed to get. They also theoretically would have the ability to fundamentally change the nature of this test, you know, so that, you know, you have to express certain opinions and be inculcated in certain opinions in order to be able to vote. This is a real problem. Vivek, you know, concerns us both for this. Again, we will talk about his kind of popularity in a second. But I wanted to because we both kind of felt this is a guy who has a lot of that Fuentes energy he's bringing. And so I looked like, what has Nick been saying about this guy? And I found this video from a website you're going to hate called Zoomer National News, Garrison.

Jesus Christ. It's a sub stack that just does different like – I've actually been called Zoomer National News, Garrison. Jesus Christ. It's a sub stack that just does different like- I think I've actually been on Zoomer National News before. Yeah, it's like a lot of clips from, yeah, Nick's show and stuff. So we're going to start watching this Zoomer National News clip because there's a couple of points that he makes in the first couple of, first few minutes of it that I think are unfortunately worth listening to and then discussing and then being unhappy. Yeah. The only person this is going to be good for is Vivek. It's bad for DeSantis because he can't confront Trump. It's bad for everybody else for the same reason. The only person it's good for is Vivek, who's going to get a bigger stage.

And that's what I wanted to talk about tonight, because it's interesting about is vivek who's going to get a bigger stage and that's what i wanted to talk about tonight because it's interesting about vivek he's an interesting phenomenon he's a child of immigrants from india i think his parents are from india and they moved to ohio and he became a self-made nearly a a billionaire. I think he's got an eight-figure net worth, nine-figure net worth. I read on Wikipedia he's got $950 million. So he's a self-made, nearly a billionaire, first-generation Asian immigrant, who, as far as I know, didn't really have much of a public profile or any kind of a political presence, and just took the country by storm with a viral social media campaign.

I think people just like what he says. At least that's what it appears to be. And he's been controversial. I think a lot of people like him. I think even people that don't like him have commended him on his campaign, which has been successful. He's competitive with DeSantis. DeSantis had a bigger war chest than trump he had a bigger war chest than any governor any governor in the united states has ever had i think he had raised 200 million dollars in the last cycle

and he had the support of the jews and israel and all his money and he's the governor and back on his old maybe the next best known politician in the race next to trump and governor of a major state and so in other words he's got all these advantages and this other guy who really started from scratch is now competitive with him and i'll say too it is unfortunate his look because you know i know that probably a lot of republicans are not totally on board with like a hindu indian and i'm not making any kind of comment on that i think that's just how things are just like with bobby jindal or some of these other guys that ran when i see an indian guy running with a name like vivek ramaswamy let's

not pretend i think that's that's also a disadvantage for him probably because the republican voter base is all white it's 90 white and i know that they're they undertake great pains to convince the world they're not racist but or xenophobic or something like that. But, you know, I'm sure they are not in love with that idea. Quite frankly, I'm not in love with that idea. I want a Christian to be president, not a Hindu. And I also would prefer a president whose name I could pronounce, like Joe Biden, not Vivek Ramaswamy. Now, that's quite a line from Nick.

I think what he's actually saying there, I think that's a joke, right? That's quite a line from Nick Fuentes. I think he's making a little bit of a bit there. I don't think he... And that becomes a little bit clear a bit later on, because he talks about,

he's talking about their kind of both how impressive, objectively, the success of a VEX campaign has been and how it points to the fact that he's just done some stuff right even while he's saying, I don't think he can win with the Republican voter base the way that it is, which I think is partly shown by kind of some of these polls that have come out showing him losing support. But he comes in a little bit later, a couple of minutes later, and he talks about why he likes Vivek, what he finds intriguing about him. And I think that this is kind of valuable to hear. It's really more like an advertising pitch. It's like a marketing pitch.

It's the perfect stereotype of like a canned used car salesman political pitch. That's what they're all like. Mike Pence, Chris Christie. You could say they're like full of shit. Like that's how I would characterize it. They're like another full of shit, conventional, polished politician. And they also all went through the steps. They're won statewide elections.

You know, they're all governors or senators. Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Asa Hutchinson, Burgum, DeSantis. They're all governors. Tim Scott's a senator. And they have that canned, full of shit, polished political thing. Both Yang and Vivek, not only are they not white, they're Asian, children of immigrants,

but there's also something that characterizes them that they're kind of like a new type of immigrants but there's also something that characterizes them that they're kind of like a new type of campaign where it's super smart when you listen to vivek it sounds a lot more like a podcast it sounds a lot more like a polemical commentator like me or like tucker or like whoever like alex jones for that matter although that's a specific sort of thing. But maybe you understand what I mean. They're almost talking like, they're talking to American people who have a higher IQ.

So. Sure, sure, buddy. Your average podcast listener, your average high IQ podcast listener. They sound smart like a podcaster right you know we all know that about podcasters it's it's it's super interesting that he made the exact same uh like um observation that we did when watching when watching the debate we we like turned to each other he's like oh he's doing nick fu, no. And Nick Fuentes has has a similar idea about him.

Yeah. So, you know, I can I think he's he really does worry me. You know, as we've stated, his his polling isn't better in the wake of the debate. Yeah. But his personal brand has never been better in that he's everywhere. Every big network's been having him on to talk about shit like this has increased his visibility, not just on social media, but as a political commenter and kind of the things that he's saying because they are so much more extreme than stuff. You know, even a guy like Pence was willing to say, I think that's a real problem. I think it's a problem that's going to be with us for a while because he's very young. Yeah. Yeah.

it's a problem that's going to be with us for a while because he's very young yeah yeah i mean like based on some of the poll stuff like i i'm not worried about him as someone who i think will be president that's not my concern my concern is how he's going to be both influential and he's yeah he's setting himself up to be influential and i guess even even more so it's he's like an indicator of what the future of the gop is going to be. And that's the big thing that is causing me concern. It's the type of thing I've been thinking about more and more the past year as we've had our first wave of Zoomer candidates and also millennial candidates

that are starting to fill up offices. Yeah, and I looked into, I went to Nick's telegram too, because I kind of wanted to see, is there more that he's been saying? And he has actually been sharing a lot about Vivek. One of the things I found was just like Vivek has called specifically for Fuentes to be unbanned from Twitter. Nick is one of the few people Elon is like, I am not willing to truck with this motherfucker, keep him off of my website. And Vivek is really not OK with that, which does point to like you don't specify that like most Republicans kind of prefer to believe, pretend that Nick doesn't exist in public. So the fact that he's going to bat for him like this does point to the fact that he sees

value and he sees a political future in the people that Nick speaks to for himself. Right. He thinks this is a profitable thing to be in. He's like very aware of this side of the political. Yes. Like he's he's he's he knows what their talking points are. He's familiar with how they speak. Like he he's he's able to understand that this is like an actual like political contingent.

Yes. They may not be as reliable in showing up to the polls um but it is you know as more and more boomers uh die off sorry yeah no offense um some offense yeah these are the people that are some offense these are the people that are gonna you know start filling in filling in the voting gaps um the other thing that he shares a lot from Vivek, and there was specifically a clip from the debate where Vivek talks about cutting aid to Israel, right? And obviously, Nick being the guy. I'm sure Nick's very pro cutting aid to Israel. Here at Cool Zone, we're not pro the Israeli state, so I'm not against that from a certain point of view.

But I'm not for the same reasons that Nick Fuentes is. Very different reasons. Very different reasons. Very different reasons. But it is worth noting that that's another reason why Nick likes this guy, right? Sure. So, yeah, that's kind of the core

of the Vivek stuff I wanted to talk about. The next thing to bring up is sort of, how's shit polling after this? Now, as we've noted, there's been like, you know, I found an MSN article that was a I believe it was actually just them republishing a Washington Examiner article. Great. Love to see it. Yeah, really solid to hear that. Washington Examiner is kind of a right wing rag. They analyzed five polls taken just before and after the debate. Trump saw a decrease in two of those polls and no change in the other three. That makes sense. This decrease, it's not insignificant. The two polls show him

both, show him down something like six points, which is not nothing, right? Yeah. But that he's still up by around 40. So it's also not like a sea change, you know? No. It does suggest a couple of things. One of the things it suggests is that there is value to him, especially since it looks like he has lost some of his ability to message and some of his ability to rile people up because of the way social media has changed. He doesn't really use Twitter anymore. You know, he made a post recently. He made the first post in years. Yeah, got Elon very excited. in years yeah got elon very excited um but he can't really and and he you know he he loves to rant on truth social but it doesn't break through the same way stuff on twitter did and it's possible

nothing on twitter can break through that way anymore because of how much changed it is you know it's not the same twitter no that he wrote yeah absolutely it's not it's not not the same twitter it was in 2015 2016 not even the same twitter it was in 2015, 2016. Not even the same Twitter it was in 2020. No, no. It's been severely altered as a platform and how it affects real world events. I think the thing that you're seeing here is that he does have his core, which is a third or more of the GOP who will be ride or die for the rest of their lives, presumably. Yeah. or more of the GOP who will be ride or die for the rest of their lives, presumably.

Yeah. But there is a softer chunk of support that is eroded by the fact that he's not in the limelight, the fact that he wasn't up there, you know, slinging mud and arguing and, you know, talking with these other candidates. And so, yeah, this is kind of a thing you could, it's probably a mistake. I'm not saying a mistake from a point of view of being good for the country, but a mistake in terms of his campaign that he wasn't up there, which is kind of worth acknowledging and probably worth continuing to study. And it may have the effect of pushing him to take part in some of the other debates. DeSantis has said he thinks Trump will be

at the third debate. Who knows? In terms of how everyone else did, DeSantis went up a little bit, about a two-point bump, which is not terrible, but it's also not significant, especially given the size of Trump's lead. It's not the kind of – given the amount of cash burn he's been going through, it's not the kind of raise he needed to keep his campaign viable. It was – he did not do a performance uh that people were kind of expecting him to do and i think i kind of assumed he would try really hard to come out as the as like the obvious front runner and he kind of flopped at the debate and in at least in my opinion he came off as very like uh muted very like

low-key he didn't he didn't really say much one way or the other he was so obsessed with what other people like like trying to make sure that what he was saying was okay based on what everyone else was saying on stage it was very weird it was very weird and not the kind of energy that uh suggests i am building a uh a political machine right. No carry me into office. Pence went up by about four points to 7% of voter support. Nikki Haley jumped about five points. And I, and I would say, I think DeSantis and Pence and probably Haley have,

are in here because they really think they can win. You know, there's a couple of those governors and stuff whose names I've already forgotten. So maybe they felt that way too. No one knows who Bergman is. Like everyone knows Chris Christie is not going to be the president. Like we all know this. And he's not really, he's running to get a TV show on MSN, right?

Yes. Maybe a book deal too. I guess it's possible that's part of Haley's ambition too. I don't really, I don't have as great a sense for what's going on in her head. Yeah. Or, yeah. I mean, it's how they're all treating Trump is interesting because they're also all like kind of auditioning to be vice president, but some of them don't want that job because they're, they're, they're being like very like, like anti-Trump on stage. But

most people were kind of, most people were soft to Trump. Yeah. Um, and I, I think Vivek was both auditioning for like the future of his political. I don't think he reasonably expects to be president this election. I think he may think he can win that in the future. And I think he sees this as, look, I'm young and I'm going to start building. which is make a national name for himself as a guy in politics. I think he may be auditioning for vice president. And Trump recently commented like, yeah, you know, I'm not against the idea necessarily. Yeah, he said he was like impressed with his performance at the debate or something along those lines. Yeah. the immediate reaction from almost, almost every kind of big, like influential millennial gen X kind of right wing content creator person. They,

they were all saying that Vivek like very clearly one, like all of the, all of the, all of the daily wire people were very, were very pro Vivek and kind of riding that train. Musk recently, even, even, even,

even before the debate switched sides from, from being the DeSantis guy to being the, the VEK guy. So it was a lot of, a lot of like the intellectual dark, right type, type stuff of like, like online tech conservatives.

And they were all very quick to jump on the Vex train. And based on his performance at the debate, they were happy with his overall demeanor and messaging. Yeah. And yeah, so, you know, again, as it kind of stands, has anything changed? Well, yes and no. Like the overall sweep of the primary, Donald Trump is so far ahead that it does seem unlikely that he's going to lose. But we've also seen it's possible for him to bleed support. And if you remember far back to 2015, 2016, when he was in these debates with the other Republican candidates, he didn't really bleed support. He was very consistently moving forward. So that is interesting. That does suggest some things about how the situation has changed. And yeah, it's also interesting, polls kind of show that voters did.

And maybe one of the reasons why Vivek's performance didn't boost his campaign overall is that he entered into it with the highest expectations of any of the debaters among like Republican voters. Probably this is because, you know, in the speeches and stuff he's been given before, he's a debate guy. Like that's obvious about him anytime you hear him talk. So I think people were expecting him to do well. And so maybe it didn't – if people are expecting you to perform well and then you win, it's not as impressive as if you kind of come out of left field there. So maybe that's part of why he's not seeing stuff. One of the things that's interesting to me is the stuff that was talked about at the debate compared to what actually Republican voters care about. The thing that came up first in the debate is the thing that is number one, getting inflation or costs under control. Obvious that that's going to be top of the list for a lot of voters. 44% of Republicans consider controlling immigration to be a primary concern, which did come up a bit.

One of the things that pissed off a lot of the Daily Wire crew is the fact that there wasn't really a lot of talk about wokeness or trans people during the debate. Because that kind of shit is not like fighting liberalism and wokeness and President Biden. Like it all gets kind of like lumped together. About a third of the electorate, that's their big concern among Republicans. It's primarily for like online clicks and for driving engagement on whatever Facebook thing you want to do to harass the school board. It is not the prime focus of the presidential race. Yeah. And like issues with trans people and stuff on its own does not come up here as like a major, it's nobody's primary concern among Republican voters. Like it's these weirdo freaks on the

internet, which isn't to say that like they have good attitudes towards that, but like, yeah, it makes sense that that's not going to be what you put front and center in the debate. good attitudes towards that. But like, yeah, it makes sense that that's not going to be what you put front and center in the debate. One thing that's interesting to me is that both election security and limiting abortion, which are huge issues and were big parts of the debate, are very much minor sideshow issues for voters. About 10% of voters consider, of Republican voters consider election integrity their primary concern. About 6% consider limiting abortion a top priority, which is teeny, right? It's not a popular thing. They just have to, because of that hardcore of the base, they have to signal for it.

Vivek was the only person on stage to claim that climate change is not real. Yes, yes, yes, which was interesting, especially as this hurricane batters Florida. And that's deeply negative too, right? The complete denial of reality. It doesn't take long, and Vivek did not do this, but it's not a long journey to go from, I don't believe climate change is real, to I think those fires were started with lasers from space you know and they're inversions of that right um which is deeply concerning to me but uh yeah that's uh that's you know the republican debate and and vivek ramaswamy that's kind of uh our our thinking on him as he embraces nick fuentes thought um, I don't love saying that.

Yeah. No, but like my main takeaway from this debate was that this was based on the Vex performance, based on the types of- I'm just going to cut out, have Daniel cut out from that. My main performance, my main opinion was this was based.

And then, yeah, there we go. Garrison's debate analysis. Thank you. No, please, sorry, there we go. Garrison's debate analysis. Thank you. My main takeaway based on Vivek's performance was that this really was like the first glimpse of the types of like long-term results of the alt-right era in like actual like organized politics. It is our first peak at this upcoming online conservative wave of Zoomers and millennials who are between my age and Robert's age, who are going to be running for office in the next 10 years, who were heavily influenced by the online alt-right era. And that's very worrying. I mean, we saw a little bit of that with DeSantis' campaign staff sharing Sonoma videos, bit of that with desantis's campaign staff sharing sauna videos um videos that were approved by like a lot of people in his staff it wasn't it wasn't just one guy we we have since found out that

those videos were like approved like in in a in a in like a specific like propaganda like chat that these people had i think i think on signal yeah so like it is it is it is part of like this this this wave that we're just starting to see glimpses of here. And it's not great. No, I mean, no, it remains to be seen. Like if these things will actually like pan out in elections, though, I mean, like it doesn't seem like the Vax is going to do very well as an actual presidential candidate during this race. well as an actual presidential candidate during this race. Previously, when Republicans have kind of ran on these very kind of online topics, like back in the 2022 midterms, it failed to give them kind of the return on investment. So we'll still kind of see how kind of viable this strategy is.

But I mean, we're only going to have more and more Zoomers and millennials running for office. Like it's, as we saw today, Mitch McConnell's literally disintegrating before our very eyes. More and more of these kind of old guard of neocons or Trump guys are going to age out in the next 10 years, 20 years. And, you know, it's going to, we are really going to see this new wave of politicians come in. It is interesting how much of Gen X

just has not been a generation that occupies office. No, well, again, Garrison, you have not watched enough Mike Judge cartoons, but that was made very clear in the cartoon Daria. Okay, yes, that is true. Yes. Okay. Wait, was that him?

Yes, that is true. Yes. So I think, so I kind of want to end, I think the, nope, that was not Mike Judge. What was I thinking? Why did I say that? I'm a fool. Oh, wait, because it's a spinoff of Beavis and Butthead. Yes, that's why.

Okay. All right. I solved that mystery. Thank God. Now, the mystery I haven't solved, and the thing I want to bring you to is like we've said I don't I don't think either of us think his presidential campaign has a electoral shot. But what about him as VP? Do you think that that's likely? Because personally, there's certainly a chance.

There's a chance. Trump has indicated that that there's a chance. I believe Trump said he's a very,. There's a chance. Trump has indicated that there's a chance. I believe Trump said he's a very, very, very intelligent person. He's got good energy and he could and he could be

some form of something. Great, great Trumpian dialogue. I'll tell you, I think he'd be very good as vice president. So, yeah. Which, you know, I think the fact that

his overall numbers aren't trending up might hurt him in that, although maybe it'll make Trump feel more secure that he's not going to, like, take anything from him. You know, although maybe the fact that he has gone so viral would would upset Trump because he kind of seems to have preferred having a non entity as his VP. Yeah, I don't I don't know, because it is like, yeah. My previous prediction was that he would try to get Herschel Walker. That may be kind of out of date now. But that is certainly another one of these guys that could be in line. Certainly out of everyone else on the debate stage, he was, I think, the most Trumpian and the most Trump-friendly guy.

He was, I think, the most Trumpian and the most Trump-friendly guy. The one other election kind of restriction that he proposed that we have yet to mention is to raise the voting age to 25 on top of having those civics tests. But yeah, I mean, I think it's possible,, it's a little too far out to say for sure. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Um, well that is,

uh, I think where we're gonna, we're gonna bring her to an end for the night. Uh, yeah, this has been, it could happen here until next time. It certainly could.

It certainly could. Uh, you know, stay, uh, a little concerned. 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.

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