It Could Happen Here - Law & Order vs Nazi Fight Clubs

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Gare and Molly discuss how modern media portrays political extremism.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. On this show, we try to apply political and cultural analysis towards speculative futurity. What can we learn about the future by looking at how our present relates to our past? And now as we approach a whole decade of a resurgent far-right gaining cultural prominence, we're entering a moment in time where pop culture and media is starting to catch up to the current political zeitgeist. Our media landscape is inundated with depictions of unreality, political extremism, collapse, and rising civil tensions. Some of these succeed more than others, but most are still deeply neoliberal in their depictions. The Obama-produced

Netflix movie from last year, Leave the World Behind, was a speculative look at a collapse orchestrated to jumpstart a second American civil war. Alex Garland's voyeuristic civil war movie just released, which sort of gestures at politics with offhand mentions of Portland Maoists and the Antifa massacre, but as a movie, it completely fails to understand the moment we currently occupy, and I believe is even more out of touch than the Obama collapse movie. But we're not talking about that today. For my thoughts on that, you can look up my review on Letterboxd and refer to the reviews I liked for a more robust critique of Garland's deeply troubling depiction of quote-unquote

neutral war journalism as uncritically virtuous. Instead, this episode will be turning to a depiction of modern-day extremism that I'm not sure is better. It's still deeply neoliberal and honestly more overtly propaganda, but one that I still find more interesting and I believe does understand our political moment much better than Alex Garland does, who comes off as less and less intelligent in every single interview he does. Last month, the television show Law & Order did an episode focusing on Robert Rundo's far-right fitness groups, the white supremacist active clubs.

To discuss, I am joined by longtime far-right researcher Molly Conger. Hello, Molly. Hey, thanks for having me on. And you probably didn't know this about me. I am a secret enjoyer of police procedurals, So I've actually watched a lot of Law & Order. I have never seen a single episode of Law & Order until this week. So I was really inundated. I don't know. I watch a lot of kind of troubling media, though, and media that tries to comment on like current political extremism. And often when I talk with

my friends about my interest in viewing things like this episode, I get confused or even adversarial reactions. And I do truly understand their hesitations. Pop culture media like this is often very sensational, turning very real pain, trauma and death caused by the far right into this form of kind of mindless entertainment, and often reifying the role of like good government and good cops to maintain order against racist insurgents, even though more and more of their ilk begin to occupy public office and become cops themselves. But politics and culture are hand in hand. Lots of what became the alt-right grew out of Gamergate,

and I think there is a real use in understanding how the political activities of fascists and anti-fascists are depicted in mass media. I believe there is some value in knowing what NBC and the writers of Law & Order think an active club is, as like a sort of cultural litmus test, and also to see how well people like us are doing in trying to educate about these types of groups. But I totally understand that not everyone wants to suffer through a 40-minute Law & Order episode about cops beating the Nazis, so instead I will watch it for you and talk about exactly how they depicted this with Molly here today. So, I think the most efficient way for

me to do this is to kind of give a recap of the episode. And as I start going through it, we will discuss certain points. I can't just summarize all of it in like a short paragraph. I mean, I could, I just think that would miss out on a lot of stuff. So instead, we're going to go through the episode and comment as things happen. And this episode and comment as things happen and this episode ends up being about a lot more than just an active club uh it's actually pulling from a few other influences that we will talk about probably towards the end anyway that felt sloppy to me i feel like they they tried to tackle several specific like i don't know how familiar you are with with the law and order franchise but they call these episodes the ripped from the headlines, right? Where they take a real-life, high-profile case

and write an episode about it. But they tried to combine several elements that I felt didn't blend well, and it gave them more material to work with than they were able to address. And so it just felt unresolved to me. I mean, yeah, I assume lots of these police procedurals are kind of undercooked as like pieces of art. I mean, the Dick Wolf extended universe is churning out so much content that like, I don't know how they're still doing it. I mean, Olivia Benson has been on television since I was a child. So let's get into the actual episode.

The cold open begins. It's night in New York City. A nervous-looking white woman enters a subway station, and she's startled by a sleeping homeless man. As the subway approaches, eerie music starts playing. The anxious woman walks onto the subway, and a black man catcalls her, as a group of other men kind of join in. The woman quickly switches to a more empty subway car, where she then bumps into another black man whose eyes look kind of vacant and is making weird grunting noises, and then the man appears to lunge towards the woman. We cut to crime scene tape stretched across the subway station. Two police detectives enter the

subway car, where a dead body lies on the ground but it's not the scared white woman it's the oddly grunting black man who appears to have been strangled to death with no apparent witnesses he's identified as 24 year old ellis joiner a stand-up comedian who a detective says quote came from down south loved to talk about how much he loved new york the other detective remarks great place to live not such a great place to die cut to title screen with with uh with music that i assume has not been updated in like 30 years because the actual like theme song it's iconic it sounds so so 90s they can't change it now there are thousands of episodes of this show, Garrison. It's history.

So already with the cold open, we have like, ooh, the dangerous subway, scary homeless people, this poor white woman, a lot of stuff's being thrown at us. Right, and obviously playing on the idea that like, oh, the white woman is going to be under that sheet, like that's going to be her body. Totally, totally. feet like that's gonna be her body totally totally so as we return to the episode a forensic pathologist says the man died after being put in a quote-unquote sleeper hold which cut off oxygen to his brain his medical records reveal he also had severe asthma and his hyperinflated lungs indicate he was currently suffering an asthma attack when he was killed by the lethal chokehold in the 50 minute window for a time death, the train passed through six subway stations, four of which all had broken cameras. Which is supposed to remind the viewer that we really need to fund the subway cops.

Correct. A lot of this episode is about how subway surveillance is under-equipped to deal with crime. And we could probably fix a lot of problems if there was more security cameras in the subway. Or just a hundred cops. What if they put a hundred cops on there sure or or more cops and like to my surprise the subway in new york city historically has not had security cameras inside the actual train cars though they are expected to by 2026 but like the uh the light rail in portland the kind of like not not subway, but like the public transit train in Atlanta, they all have cameras inside the actual train cars. I was surprised that the subway in New York did not. I just never knew that. Anyway, back to Law & Order. Ellis Joyner's credit card identified the station that he got on at, which also had broken cameras. But police pulled street

cam footage from a few blocks away, which shows Joyner getting into a fight with another comedian, where Joyner got punched. The other man is recognized as Malcolm Page, a stand-up who, quote, used to open for Chappelle back in the day, unquote. So already setting up something fantastic. The detectives interview Page and show him social media footage of Joyner's set from last night, making fun of Paige for being old and irrelevant. Paige says that Joyner verbally attacked him because Joyner, quote, got his panties in a twist, unquote, over some of Paige's jokes. Quote, hit too close to home for fancy boy unquote and when page says fancy boy he does this little shaky hand

thing which the detective asks if that's supposed to imply that joiner is gay which the older comedian says yes i mean i've seen this sort of like limp wrist hand movement this isn't this isn't a limp wrist did that was what it did it was just like a weird like shaking like hand like fancy boy. The way you sort of shake your hand side to side when you mean, like, kind of or maybe. Yeah, exactly. It was the wrong hand movement. Get your homophobic gestures right.

It was really weird. I found this whole interaction kind of bizarre. And unnecessary. Like, you write in this kind of red herring when you're trying to fill time. But they had plenty of script. They didn't need this. This episode's so focused on different forms of racism so much adding in this like weird gay subplot doesn't it doesn't end up going anywhere and it's just kind of bizarre so anyway this basically this older comedian was telling homophobic jokes joiner then made fun

of him on stage and this older comedian page assaulted, assaulted him outside. Paige then left in an Uber and Joyner ran off with his boyfriend who, according to Paige, weren't getting along either. So there's some kind of like, like a new suspect arises. Exactly, exactly. So police look through Joyner's emails and texts in the cloud, quote unquote, and can't find any record of a boyfriend, making detectives surmise that he must have been in the closet, which is a baffling thing to surmise. Cops then contact, quote, the Traveler app. That's Traveler spelled T-R-A-V-L-R. You have to cut out a vowel or it's not an app. So, Legally Not Grindr gives NYPD complete access to Joyner's account. And it's, I'm sorry, like, are gay male sex apps usually like pink and purple?

The color scheme is pink and purple. Yeah, not my experience. But yeah, I think it's also referenced like travelers, like fellow travelers, right? Right, but it was obviously supposed to be Grindr. It's just Grindr. It doesn't matter. But yeah, I think this is also a reference to like travelers, like fellow travelers, right? Right. It was obviously supposed to be Grindr. It's just Grindr. It doesn't matter. But legally not Grindr gives NYPD full access to Joyner's account, which shows he's dating a guy named Michael Zane.

And this whole thing is so wild because if you're dating someone, you should not be primarily communicating through Grindr. And he said later they've been dating for six months and they've never texted. They're just using Grindr to chat. Whenever you go on Grindr, the goal is to get off of Grindr as soon as possible. Why would privately texting each other instead out you as gay any more than having an identifiable grinder profile i feel like having grinder up on your phone and it has a very distinctive like text tone like that's way more likely to out you dog just text regular exactly it makes no sense anyway the traveler messages between joiner and michael zane indicate a sort of ongoing fight or argument

now zane has a prior uh conviction for aggravated assault last year. They didn't actually... So I went back and double-checked this because I have some beef. He doesn't have a conviction. They said he was arrested for assault last year. He was just charged. He wasn't convicted.

My mistake, yes. But also, the episode does not make that very clear. No, because I have a reason I went back and checked because it makes no sense. So yeah, his boyfriend was charged last year for aggravated assault. So the detectives pay him a visit because they think he's like a suspect, right? Zane says that he didn't kill Joyner. He loved him and that their fight on the night of the murder was about Joyner's own self-hatred

and Zane believing that things would be better if they could just live openly as a couple. But Joyner was concerned that it would threaten his comedy career. Zane maintained nothing ever got physical between each other and explained that his assault charge was from trying to break up a bar fight, but when the cops arrived, they targeted Zayn because he was black, to which the two NYPD detectives nod solemnly. They're like, yeah, that does sound like something we would do. Yeah, other cops are racist, but not us. They're like, okay. Zane claims that Joyner wanted time alone, so he got off the train a few stops before and went home. But mentions that there was a white guy with short brown hair, bright yellow sneakers, and a hoodie with some kind of symbol on the back who was looking weirdly at him and Joyner.

Security camera footage shows someone matching that description exiting the train car one stop before Joyner's body was found. And one of the detectives recognizes the symbol. We will learn more about this mysterious hoodie, sneaker, and symbol after this ad break. sneaker and symbol after this ad break. 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 iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

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. 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Parente.

And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like,

how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like every single year, you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight,

that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I first I just want to describe what this symbol is. It's it is it's this octagon with spiky corners and like two Ks facing like one facing backwards. Yeah, one facing forward, one facing backwards, but smushed together. And the shared middle pillar is like an arrow pointing upwards.

It looked like nothing to me. They tried to design something that looked vaguely racist, but it's just not. It just looks dumb it looks like i don't like a tech company logo or something like yeah it doesn't even evoke anything for me no it's not good they're trying to make it scary with like lots of like different like angles but like it's it's it's not it's not scary anyway the detectives arrive at an mma gym in chelsea called the kovac academy it opened about a year ago, and they've been peppering the neighborhood with flyers. Well, that sounds familiar. Extremely accurate.

The cops are greeted by a jacked staff member with a shaved head, and they asked to speak with the owner, and this skinhead employee says that they just missed him. But there's a picture on the wall of the owner holding a trophy, and he's wearing the exact outfit in the subway security footage. The detectives are told that he was getting a cab to the airport. Now, I thought this was going to be like a classic Rundo move, right? Do some crimes, flee the country. But allegedly, he was actually flying to Toronto, which actually will kind of get explained later on.

Cops run outside to see if they can spot him before he leaves, and they see a man in yellow sneakers and a logo emblazoned hoodie walking towards a cab they sprint tap him on the shoulder the mma guy throws detectives against the car starts fighting not realizing they're nypd because he has like earbuds on cops pull their guns then he surrenders the owner of the gym is named domino dominoino. It's a weird, weird name. I think Domino. It's like I think it's an Irish name. Domino.

Yeah. Domino Kovac. He has four previous convictions for assault all against black victims with two charged as hate crimes. A detective notes that Kovac has a tattoo on his right arm of laced up combat boots with the number 88, which the detective calls a white nationalist symbol. Okay. Okay. I looked. I looked hard.

I looked hard through a lot of photographs of Nazi tattoos, and the boot tattoo is not common, and you only see it in skinhead culture. And this guy's not a skinhead the actual owner of the gym does not appear to be a skinhead he has like a big beard he has like long brown like longish brown not long but like medium shaggy brown hair but but yeah he has this combat boot 88 tattoo like that's there are a lot of nazi tattoos and that's not the one i would have picked for this character no it's obviously it obviously like some law and order writer googled like a nazi tattoo and just picked that

like but that's the thing is if that's what they had done i don't think they would have picked that because like i said i was looking through all of these sort of like lists of different kinds of tattoos yeah yeah by different non-profits there is one one picture in all of these databases of a tattoo that's even similar to this where it's a pair of boots with the number eight on each boot. I found one. Yeah. I mean, I think that that is the one they used. I think they did want to bring in some level of the idea of dog whistling, kind of, with 88, which will come up later in the episode. But it's not well done. Anyway, Kovac says that he's never seen Ella Stoyner before and that the night of the murder, he was running a late night intensive training program called the

Combat Academy based on the Navy SEALs training course. So many red flags are going off here. It ended around midnight. Afterwards, Kovac said he walked to his girlfriend's nearby apartment. He was never on the subway, but he explains that the gray hoodie and yellow sneakers are part of the Combat Academy uniform that all members wear. It's so important to wear matching outfits with your boys. And in one of the more accurate moments of the episode, as soon as he's in even a little trouble, he gives out all the names of the members in his group. Did not even wait for a subpoena. He's like, would you like their credit card numbers? Did not hesitate.

He's like, no, absolutely. I'll give a DNA swab. I'll tell you the names of all the guys. It wasn't me, I swear. So the detectives locate the recently divorced Brandon Arnault outside of the... I like that they added the detail he was recently divorced but this never actually does not come up it does not matter but the second the second they walk up to him on the street he was like oh my wife left me my wife left me last year

so I got really into grappling with the boys because my wife left me yes exactly so they find him outside the elementary school he teaches that and which also never comes up again nope and after after very very little questioning very tame questioning he immediately admits to killing joiner saying it was an accident and that joiner was attacking a woman on the subway and brandon here was trying to protect her at the police station the police say that they can't find any footage of the woman Brandon is talking about, but the defense attorney asks if the cameras were even working at every station, to which the cops roll their eyes, like, really sarcastically.

They just don't answer. They're like, oh my god, this fucking guy asking if the cameras are broken. The cops tell Brandon that they found Ellis Joyner's missing cell phone in his gym locker. They searched his house. They didn't find anything, but they got a warrant for his gym locker and found the cell phone. And they allege that he stole it after he realized that Joyner recorded a video of the fight that ended up with Joyner being strangled to death. And that's something we call consciousness of guilt.

The defense attorney ends the interview immediately as soon as they bring this up. Like, why wouldn't you tell your lawyer that? Tell him that before you go in. The search history on Brandon's laptop shows him trying to figure out how to unlock the phone to delete the video. Now, this part's a little bit odd. The cops debate, even though, quote quote he admits to killing joiner i'm not sure we have enough evidence to charge unquote which is not true you have so much evidence you have a confession you have so much evidence to charge this is so bizarre like how often do you have an a recording of a murder happening and then the guy admitting that he admits yeah it's

ridiculous they charge on far, far less. They have that conversation in the room where they're like, well, we can charge him or we can let him go. He's like, I mean, I understand a conversation about like, is this murder too? Is this manslaughter? Yeah. But it's not a question of whether or not you charge him with something. You're charging him with something. Come on.

I mean, I think there's a reason actually why they had this conversation, which I will get to at the end of the episode. If you remind me, I think there's a reason why they discussed had this conversation, which I will get to at the end of the episode, if you remind me. I think there's a reason why they discussed this option of letting him go versus charging him. But at this point, we now switch to the law half of the episode after we finished the order half. I don't know why these are reversed because they do the police part first, then the court part, but whatever. It should be called order and law, which I guess just doesn't sound good. whatever um it should be called order and law which just i guess i guess just doesn't sound good so a front page story in the legally not new york post is being passed around the da's office it reads self-defense or racist killing hero or zero a recurring story in new york city the prosecutor

who's played by hugh dancy whom i'm just going going to call Hugh Dancy because I don't know his character's name, states that half the city believes Brandon's self-defense story and the other half just sees a white man killing an unarmed black man. That is what happened. A litmus test for what people want to believe, says the main DA. I think at this point, the writers in that room are just tired. Oh, yeah. So like you can only do so much cocaine before it just like stops working. The DA's office says that Brandon held Joyner in a chokehold for so long after he was unconscious that even if it started as self-defense, it escalated to homicide.

They debate between manslaughter and murder, saying the former would be easier to win with a clear use of excessive force regardless of brandon's story of trying to help the girl but based on the cell phone video the da decides to pursue a murder case due to a quote depraved indifference to human life unquote displayed by choking someone for full three minutes after falling unconscious i'm not sure if you mentioned um so when they found the phone so the victim had been recording the altercation and then it got knocked out of his hand. And so it was recording audio of the murder, but not video. I'm going to get to that once we get to the court scene.

Hugh Dancy is nervous about Brandon's literal white knight story and that he has no history of violence. But the DA insists on second degree murder, saying, quote, this is George Floyd all over again. In what way and i'm sure as hell not going to end up on the wrong side of it unquote which does not make the da sound like a good guy it just makes him sound like he doesn't want to have like a bad press it comes off as very slimy i you know i said i watch a lot of law and order and so i have seen probably a thousand hours of it but i haven't watched it in several years. So I don't know if maybe the tone has evolved a little bit, but I got the impression that like, I don't know, maybe this is a guy who's consistently worried about getting reelected, right? Because his job is an elected position. He just doesn't want the press. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So finally, we cut to

court. The prosecution plays the cell phone video. Seconds after Joyner starts recording on his phone, Brandon knocks it out of his hand, landing camera camera side down continuing to record only audio of the struggle we hear Brandon putting Joyner into a chokehold Joyner repeatedly saying he can't breathe before appearing to pass out followed by three minutes of silence up until Brandon releases his arm from around Joyner's neck he picks up the phone sees it's recording and turns it off as. As the video is playing, the prosecutor and the jury are all shaking their heads so that we know that they don't agree with it. Hugh Dancy questions the medical examiner, who explains that after Joyner lost consciousness, he could no longer pose any lethal threat to the defendant, who continued to talk Joyner for three more minutes.

The defense suggests that a surge of adrenaline distorted time and awareness of his surroundings, which in the panic of the moment made Brandon not realize Joyner lost consciousness for that long. Ellis Joyner's secret boyfriend testifies next. He says the defendant was weirdly staring at Joyner and himself and that Brandon moved aggressively to step in Zane's way when he was trying to exit the train and said, quote unquote, watch yourself in a quote unquote, he was trying to exit the train and said, quote unquote, watch yourself in a quote unquote racist tone. The defense brings up Zane's past aggravated assault charge to cast doubt on his testimony. Okay, they can't do that. They cannot. You cannot do that. There is a very limited set of circumstances in which you can bring up a witness's criminal history. And this isn't it.

There is a lot of funky law decisions going on in this episode. You can't do that. Speaking of funky law decisions. Well, actually, speaking of speaking of this ad break. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. and 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 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 Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Parente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert

Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. we are back speaking of troubling law decisions the defense calls a surprise female witness rebecca lasky something you cannot do i looked it up the average time to take a felony to trial in new york is a year so from time of death to this going to

trial best case scenario probably like a fucking year they had a year to find this woman and she shows up on the last day of the trial it's definitely not the last day because like if this was you know this is obviously sort of mimicking the the what is his name daniel penny yes that that's what i'm gonna do towards the end it's obviously mimicking the daniel penny case like this would have been on the new york post like every day leading up to the trial this woman so it would have been located the murder happened in january the trial starts i believe in early march and lasts about two weeks um according to the timeline of the tv show so that's not how it works anyway um rebecca lasky the female the surprise female witness she she

testifies that she accidentally bumped into joinner, who, quote unquote, appeared mentally disturbed and was making aggressive grunting noises before lunging at her. She then claims Joyner reached into his pocket and she was scared he had a knife or something, so she screamed. She screamed for help, and Brandon Arnault saved her. She screamed for help, and Brandon Arnault saved her. She testified that Mr. Arnault grabbed Joyner away from her, and the two men started fighting. Lasky calls Brandon a hero, and the jury looks on inquisitively. After the female witness's quote-unquote compelling testimony, the prosecutor talks with the DA about offering a manslaughter plea.

But the DA is steadfast, since the video clip of a man begging for his life and being choked to death for three minutes after falling unconscious has not actually changed. Hugh Dancy remarks that new context for the video isn't really in their favor, to which the DA just replies, just because a white woman saw Joyner as a threat doesn't make it true. Like, okay, based New York DA, I guess. Back in court, the prosecution asks Rebecca Lasky if she was actually present when, quote, the defendant choked the life out of Joyner, unquote. She clarifies that the train stopped as the men were still fighting.

Joyner was reaching into his pocket. She was scared that he maybe had a knife again. He's probably reaching for his inhaler. Inhaler or his cell phone to record this fight. She curiously mentions though that after brandon grabbed joiner's arm and the fight started brandon kept yelling at joiner he was yelling to quote surrender and that he was bleeding and that he was dirty or fighting dirty i don't really remember the exact words unquote this me. I almost turned it off. Everyone in the courtroom

gets a really funny look when she mentions the word dirty. So we will get to this in a sec. Under questioning, Lasky admits that she never saw any weapon of any kind, let alone a knife. And Hugh Dancy suggests that after being attacked by a fellow comedian and having an argument with his boyfriend, Joyner was probably suffering from an asthma attack triggered by high stress. He wasn't mentally ill. He wasn't acting aggressive or grunting in a threatening manner. He was stuck in a subway car having an asthma attack. And he addresses Lasky saying, quote,

You saw a scary black man making a noise. Objection! Sustained. So, yeah. But they didn't. this they objected there but then when he says like and isn't it true that his behavior was consistent with an asthma attack nobody objected to that she can't offer a med she can't offer a medical opinion rebecca lasky a ballet dancer not a medical professional cannot offer an opinion on what what his medical symptoms

can be consistent with when she starts getting upset saying like oh my god this is all my fault like this happened because of me like at that point no prosecutor would have allowed her to continue speaking he would have said just answer the questions just answer the questions he would not have let her get emotional up there and blame like that's that's poison yeah But it makes not very good television. Thrilling television. So, after court for the day, the prosecution wonders if Brandon allegedly saying something about blood and dirt could have really been, quote, the Nazi slogan, blood and soil. No, no, no, Gare.

No, no. The new battle cry of white nationalist groups, see here's the thing so this is where the episode goes fully fully off the rails so like when i was watching her testimony she was like he said something about like you know he was bleeding and like he was dirty at no point did my mind no connect that to and and i quite literally just yesterday was watching videos of guys yelling blood and soil this is something that's on my mind it is a ridiculous joke it's it it's not there because yeah he's yelling something about being about like bleeding because his lip was bleeding and sure a remark about being dirty could be could be construed as as like a racist uh remark but the jump from bleeding and dirty to blood and dirt to blood and soil is fucking baffling it's just not even the same words it

but and not to nitpick here not to nitpick i just don't know that blood and soil would have been the chant he chose as he was doing the choking it's bizarre he would have said a slur hugh dancy is also skeptical none of the interviews with brandon's family or co-workers indicated anything about racial extremism but the other prosecutor suggests that they look into his fitness gym the kovac academy as the owner quote has ties to a few white nationalist organizations the da's office decides to investigate further. They arrive at the gym as the buff skinhead staff member from the start of the episode is closing up for the day. He claims to not know Brandon very well. And when he's asked if he's ever heard Brandon say

something that could be interpreted as racist, he responds by saying, I'm sorry, but I can't help you. The prosecutor makes a snide remark and starts to leave and the man quietly says look i can't get into details but let's just say you're heading down the right path but i can't help you because it would blow my cover unquote whoa oh my god he's a cop infiltrating the nazi fight club i mean there are some cops in there right I don't know if I would say they're infiltrating. The next scene is the funniest in the whole episode. After stumbling on to the undercover operation, the head DA arrives at the NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau, as they have info pertaining to the prosecution's murder case. But the Counterterrorism Bureau explains their scope is much larger than this

one case, and they have, quote, had their eye on Kovac for a while now. They explain to the DA that his MMA gym is actually a, quote, active club, part of an international network of white supremacist sleeper cells that all front as MMA-style gyms, unquote. So, okay. Okay. Okay. White nationalists have been using MMA gyms to front for activities for decades. I just found a new one the other day. This does happen.

This does not mean they are active clubs, nor do active clubs have to be MMA gyms. These things are Venn diagrams that can sometimes overlap, but not always. The version of active clubs we see in this episode now starts getting pretty fictitious. At first I was like, oh, that's like a

fairly reasonable, like, yeah, we do have active clubs at MMA gyms. That's a real thing. And they're stockpiling weapons to do a January 6th. What? What? What? So they say they've identified over 30 active clubs across nine states and several provinces of Canada.

So nine states, far too low. There's active clubs in way more states than that. There's also not necessarily, like, if you have 30 active clubs across nine states that's a bizarre ratio that means there's a lot of active clubs in like a few states which generally isn't how it kind of ends up being there's maybe like one or two maybe three like per state we don't fully know but i will give them points for adding in the canadian chapters which most people kind of overlook but also like why is the nypd investigating something happening in nine states that's the feds territory to be fair that is fully accurate the nypd counterterrorism bureau investigates things all over the world but it's like just let if it's interstate let the feds handle it their jurisdiction is fucking bonkers they're like the third biggest like counterterrorism

like law enforcement group in the entire world it's like one of the world's largest standing armies yeah no it is it is absurd they say quote the clubs operate as recruitment centers they lure in young white men under the guise of getting fit while indoctrinating them in racist ideology and training them in military combat unquote now the training that people receive in active clubs very often does not equal military combat training. In fact, they often have very poor fitness regimens and really bad advice on how to get fit. I mean, if getting hooked on gear and rolling around on the floor shirtless with the boys is military combat training, then absolutely. If you look at the there's a pretty extensive docs of some of the active club members of the state of Georgia last year, and they were their fitness information was not up to snuff.

They were they were mostly 17 year olds who were arguing about different ways to lift better. Anyway, Law and Order says that these active clubs are, quote, trying to build an army. It's the new face of hate, unquote. A very kind of retro slogan. We don't really use that anymore, but if you look like 10 years ago or like, yeah, around 10 years ago, you would see a lot of like liberal articles talking about the new face of hate. Quote, no more white sheets or burning crosses they've adapted and created a facade to mask their racist beliefs unquote so the da wants their undercover guy to testify to secure the conviction against one of the active club members but the counterterrorism bureau doesn't want to

blow their nine-month undercover operation even for a murder conviction as they've quote recently received credible intel that kovac is now stockpiling firearms and explosive materials unquote so they should probably go ahead and arrest him for that huh yeah yeah right i i don't it's time to move i guess now they're combining like active club stuff with some like adam woffin and militia stuff just like throat just like just smushing together all these different groups into one like mega boo mega boogeyman, I guess. Quote, these men are terrorists. They're capable of significant violence, unquote. So the Counterterrorism Bureau suggests that the DA takes a, quote, big picture view of the

situation, unquote. So the DA breaks the news to the prosecution team that the undercover will be unable to testify because the active club is quote planning a coordinated attack along the lines of the january 6th insurrection unquote so you should probably like the undercover operation is over like if you have credible intel that there that there's an imminent attack like the operation is over so also like this is just not what active clubs do this is like like, they don't care about J6. That's like a Proud Boy thing. And some militia dudes. Like, most active club members would be like, no, all of the J6 people are like fucking

like conservative, like Trump, Trump brain, brain dead losers. They're like, it's really. That thing a couple of years ago where those members of the base were arrested right before they were going to try to kick off the Civil War by inciting, they were going to shoot into the crowd at the gun rally in richmond at the virginia gun rally and then the plan was that everyone would start shooting each other you know it's like so they had a pretty large stockpile of weapons that one of the guys was canadian so like maybe they got mixed up with that i mean yeah base yeah like they're combining elements of the base adam often active clubs proud boys into like this like mega boogeyman, right?

It's just a villain. The DA says that this new attack will quote, only be more violent and without advance warning this time. What do you mean without advance warning? You just said no about it. No. Are you going to let it happen? Right, right. Are you going to let this happen?

The greater good is for us to allow this to occur. The undercover investigation cannot be jeopardized in any way, but as this looks more and more like a racially targeted murder, according to the DA, the DA's office has to find a different way to show that Brandon is racist. Quote, it's for the greater good. A phrase that Hugh Dancy says helps justify a lot of otherwise unjustifiable positions and true they they start getting into this kind of debate around like the ethics of like

doing a long-term infiltration operation versus seeing like a like like an active like like seeing an active threat or like seeing a way to like currently clamp down on a like arm of an organization even if they can't get the whole thing yet and they have this debate of like is it is it better to like do like a long-term strategy or to like just like chop off as many limbs as we can as we go on and again it doesn't make sense because if they have all this credible intel why not just like get them right now but like whatever right wrap it up so back in court mr kovac is on the stand hugh dancy asks if he and the defendant have ever discussed quote racial ideology to which kovac says i don't know what

that means believable the the process i mean yeah that is the correct answer for this situation the prosecutor elaborates racial purity inter interracial marriage, what role black people should or shouldn't have in society. And Kovac once again feigns ignorance. Hugh Dancy asks about Kovac's 88 tattoo being a Nazi symbol. And Kovac just says, I don't know. I just like the number 88. And then he doesn't, the prosecutor doesn't explain to the jury that it means Heil Hitler. He just, he just, he just moves on.

Never once in the episode is it explained that the 88 symbol is a reference to Heil Hitler. Never once. They never actually say it. Never say it. Yeah. Dancy does bring up Mr. Kovacs' four prior convictions for assaulting black men, two of which were charged as hate crimes. And Kovacs just says that was a long time ago. And now see, I do want to say, because we made such a big deal about it earlier about how you can't ask about prior convictions. I think in this case, it is an

allowable exception because it goes to direct impeachment. Like if he said like, yeah, you know, he made a statement himself about how he's not racist. And you say, well, you have a hate crime conviction. And later in the courtroom, he says that he, of course, obviously doesn't have any problems with Black people when being questioned by the defense attorney. But Hugh Dancy pulls up Kovacs social media accounts, all of which contain the phrase blood and soil in his bio. Objection. Relevance. The prosecution then argues that Rebecca Lasky's testimony of hearing something about blood and dirt may have been a vague recollection of hearing blood and soil.

No. Dancy describes blood and soil as a Nazi reference to a racially uniform society. The jury would not have been allowed to hear this. This would have happened outside the presence of the jury. Kovac just says the phrase means that you're proud of who you are and where you come from. Kovac taught the defendant how to fight, how to do a chokehold. So to end the questioning, Hugh Dancy asks if he also taught the defendant to hate black people. Objection! Objection! All right, so the defense's closing argument frames the subway as a dangerous, lawless zone, and Brandon as a peaceful elementary school teacher who has never gotten as much as a speeding ticket.

Probably because he doesn't drive. Yeah, because you live in New York. Who saw someone in danger and bravely decided to step up and do something. The prosecution's closing argument frames Brandon Arnault as a closeted racist who saw an opportunity to put his white supremacist ideology into practice in a situation where he thought he could get away with it. Quote, people like Mr. Arnault keep their bigotry buttoned up. They only discuss it with people who share their hateful worldview. They rely on plausible deniability because if the racism isn't overt, many good people are all too happy to assume it isn't there.

But every once in a while, in moments of panic or anger, the mask will slip, unquote. Hugh Dancy closes by saying that Ellis Joyner was an innocent, unarmed black man suffering a medical emergency, and the two white people on the train assumed he was a violent threat, and they attacked him. And even if there was no intention to kill at the start, quote, at some point, the defendant's focus shifted and his racial hate began to manifest, unquote, yelling blood and soil at Joyner, quote,

a declaration of hatred for all people of color, unquote, as Brandon choked him to death. Okay, here's the thing. Here's the thing. This whole situation with the undercover, the counterterrorism, I have to believe that they're trying to set up a longer plot arc, that that's going to come back in a later episode. Or so they have a new spinoff called Law and Order Organized Crime with Christopher Maloney, Elliot Stabler from SVU.

I wonder if they're going to cross it over to organized crime because it makes no sense. That's what I assume. I think this white nationalist group is going to come back and be even a bigger plot point in a future episode. Otherwise it didn't need to be in here. Otherwise the inclusion in this, in this piece is, is really bizarre.

So, but no, so they, but what I was going to say is they did not need that undercovers testimony because the only testimony they wanted to elicit from him was like as a character witness to say like oh yeah i've met him and he's racist yeah that wouldn't really even be admissible in most like like even if the judge even if the judge allowed the jury to hear that like this isn't a hate crime case it doesn't matter what matters is whether or

not he used excessive like more force than was necessary for a self-defense argument right the entire legal strategy they shift to halfway through the court proceedings is so obviously a dead end that doesn't actually relate to and wouldn't have been allowed yeah it's so it's so bizarre and if they wanted and if they wanted to get information about like his views that maybe his family didn't know about, that people at work didn't know about, why did they not get warrants for his phone and computer? I mean, I think they did because they mentioned searching through his phone and computer multiple times through the episode. They found that he had searched for how to delete from cloud or whatever from the guy's phone.

Again, I think that's mostly just undercooked. You didn't open his Telegram account to see what exactly exactly you didn't see the active club chat season you didn't see like you didn't talk to any other members of the the combat academy no other members of the gym really anyway so the jury finds the defendant not guilty because yeah okay outside the courtroom the head da says quote we did the best that we could The jury finds the defendant not guilty because, yeah, okay. Outside the courtroom, the head DA says, quote, we did the best that we could. Here's another problem. There's another problem. So not all states allow this, but in New York, the court can submit to the jury what are called lesser included charges.

So if you're charged with murder two, I think was what they charged him with in this case, you know, the jury can deliberate on the actual charge, murder too, but they can also consider what are called lesser included charges. So something like manslaughter. So the jury can say, well, we're not going to convict on murder too, but we do think it was manslaughter. So we're going to convict on that, even though that wasn't the charge in the indictment. So I can't imagine that this DA would not have pushed for lesser included charges well hugh dancy may agree he says quote no we could have done better we just chose not to for the greater good no but they they could have done i think i i think he says that kind of sarcastically

um the the da affirms that one day soon they will take down the whole racist organization. But behind the two DAs here, Brandon walks out of the courtroom and celebrates with the other members of the active club. End of episode. Okay, so when they put Kovac on the stand and they were saying like, oh, did you teach him about racism? The better line of questioning at that moment would have been okay you're his grappling coach did you teach him how dangerous chokeholds are right because like i don't know anything about a chokehold so if i accidentally killed someone with one maybe i didn't know that would happen if you are taking five hours a week of private hand-to-hand combat lessons you probably do know and that would go to, you know,

foreknowledge. And why didn't they ask that? Again, I started this episode because I thought it would be about active clubs. And it turns out by the end, it's really not. It's really about Daniel Penny. It's really about the killing of Jordan Neely. So this is the actual rip from the headlines piece that they're doing, which I did not really realize until the episode was over. So this is kind of riffing on the incident that happened on May 1st, 2023. Jordan Neely was a 30-year-old black man. He was a Michael Jackson impersonator. At the time, he was homeless. He was running the subway in Manhattan and appeared emotionally distressed. He was yelling about needing food and water. No one was helping him. He was yelling that he didn't care about going to jail. He was ready to die. And this was reportedly frightening other writers. Daniel Penny, a 24-year-old former Marine, approached Neely and placed him in a lethal chokehold that lasted anywhere from five to

seven minutes, depending on if you ask the prosecution or the defense. Penny was repeatedly told by other rioters that Neely appeared to be dying. By the time first aid was being administered, he was already dead. Daniel Penny was let go after being questioned by police and only arrested 11 days later. I think this is the part where they're like, do we want to let him go or charge him now? I think that's kind of what they're doing here. On June 14th, 2023, he was indicted on the charge of second degree manslaughter. The trial is scheduled to start on October 8th, 2024. So this episode also, I think it fails in a lot of ways in its depiction of active clubs. It uses certain terms like the term active clubs, which I was surprised they just, I'm surprised they use because that's kind of more of like a niche term,

but they just made it to be this like, MMA elite Nazi squad. And I think them trying to include this bit does an incredible disservice to trying to depict the killing of Jordan Neely, which first of all, like there's already problematic aspects, right? Of turning this, this like really fucked up thing

into a piece of entertainment. That's kind of why I started this episode with that monologue. But I think by cramming so many other elements in here, like this homophobia angle, this active club angle, it does a real disservice to the actual incident that they're trying to comment on, where there was a man in a very crowded subway who very publicly was basically lynched because a few riders were not super comfortable when riding the subway because this man was yelling for food and

water so it's not it's not great um i but after watching leave the world behind civil war and this i think this is the best depiction of our current political moment out of all of those three things, which is a pretty fucked up bar. I guess, Molly, do you have any other thoughts on how they depict Nazi stuff in this? I mean, not well. Not well, bitch. No, I was just going to say, I was looking on Reddit and seeing people's takes on it on the Law & Order Reddit, and I found this fantastic comment. They did take the Daniel Penny case, but changed the whole story to make Penny look guilty, probably to make the real Penny look like a bad guy in real life. Um, um, um, uh, objection? Objection?

Objection, Your Honor. Mods? Mods? uh objection objection objection your honor object mods mods not yeah not great because also yeah it also like for people who are like looking at this as a parallel to jordan either like oh why did they change so many details to make him look even more guilty and like no that's not what's happening at all like i think they did a disservice to that story by changing so many elements i mean like you said there's there's a conversation to be had about the ethics of depicting the story as entertainment period yeah but if they're going to do it and they've been doing it for 30 years right that's just what law and order does if they're going to do it i think they have a responsibility to not do this to not do this yeah well again they have bigger fish to fry since there's that upcoming worse

than january 6th attack had led by these mma guys who were stockpiling explosives so watch out for that i guess yeah i guess i'll have to watch the rest of the season to see if um the mma gym blows up new york yeah i will not be uh until they release a direct follow-up. So I think that does it for us today. This is already way too... This episode's already longer than the Law & Order episode. So that does it for us today. Thank you for listening. If you want to check out my review of Civil War,

it's very short, but it's kind of to the point. I'm on Letterboxd at Hungry Bowtie. And then the reviews that I liked, which are underneath my own review, go into more depth about kind of the problems with that film in my opinion and other people's opinion. Anyway, where can people find you online, Molly? Oh, I am on Twitter at Socialist Dog Mom and my newsletter, The Devil's Advocates on Ghost. And I guess that's it for me. Oh, I'm podcasting sometimes now.

No objections from me. Yeah, I guess by the time you're listening to this, you can listen to my latest episode of this show yesterday. All right. See you on the other side. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Thanks for listening. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. 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 musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world

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