It Could Happen Here - Mass Shootings in Buffalo and Laguna Woods

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

The crew talks about the recent mass shootings in Buffalo and Laguna Woods and the propaganda techniques and discourses fascist terrorists use to create further attacks.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And I'm Jumae Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. If you're early in your career, you probably have a lot of money questions. So we're talking to finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it down. Looking at the numbers is one of the most honest reflections of what your financial picture actually is. The numbers won't lie to you. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Talk to your Zoom H6 about crack cocaine abuse. Some amount of crack cocaine is perfectly normal for a recording device to use. It is part of the recording industry, but everyone can overdo it. And if your Zoom H6 starts not reading cards or, for example,

stealing from you in order to pawn your stuff to buy more crack cocaine, you might need to do an intervention. This has been Robert Evans and a public service announcement about the Zoom H6 handhold recorder. How was that? Are we good? Is that a good way to introduce a podcast? What podcast? It depends on your answer. That's a great question, Sophie. Scholars have debated for decades which show this is, but personally, it is the opinion of myself and a large body of researchers at Oxford and Cambridge

that this is what could happen here. A podcast about how things are falling apart and how maybe put them back together one of these days, figure it out. I'm here with Garrison and Chris. How are you guys how are y'all doing just just absolutely splendid i i'm extremely excited that every time i leave twitter there's a new mass shooting this there was like boy this has been past weekend it's been a lot there have been quite a few mass shootings in the last 48 hours and there's a non-zero chance there's been at least one between when we record this podcast and when you listen to it.

Yeah. I'm not trying to be flippant. That's just a reality. the mass shooting in Buffalo, New York by a 4chan motherfucking white supremacist, very much patterned after the 2019 8chan shootings, particularly the Christchurch massacre. And then the day after, I guess it's not technically a mass shooting because only one person was killed, thankfully. But there was a shooting that was certainly an attempt to be a mass shooting because he attempted to close the exit and stop people from leaving at a Taiwanese church in Southern California, which was stopped by the congregation before nearly as many people could get killed. It appears to be it's just come out motivated by nationalist hatred of Taiwan by a Chinese man.

That's the broad understanding of both. It's complicated. Yeah, I'm sure we'll get into that. But we should probably deal with them chronologically. The Buffalo shooting is... It's one of those things. I made a big chunk of my bones as a journalist in the field that I used to spend most of my time reporting in, covering the 8chan shootings. And after every one of those in 2019, I had an article within about two hours.

I haven't written anything about this one. I don't plan to because there's not much to say. It is what we've seen before. Because there's not much to say. It is what we've seen before. I know there's some debate over how much of the manifesto, as there should be over how much of the manifesto you can take at face value, which is none of it. And as to whether or not there might be something more going on here. But it is kind of my opinion from the information we have that this is the kind of attack we've seen before and the kind of attack we will probably see again more than once before the year's over. we've seen before and the kind of attack we will probably see again more than once before the year's over. This is someone who was radicalized primarily against the immigration or the existence,

really, of people who are not white in the United States and believes that the best way to cleanse the country of people who are not white is to carry out mass shootings that will radicalize other people and that will lead further to the breakdown of civil society in the united states by pushing it kind of like hot button issues like gun control um in order to further you know it's an accelerationist sort of attack um so yeah that's that's what i'm seeing here That's what I'm seeing here. Yeah, I mean, it's... Yeah, like we said, it's very much riffing off of Christchurch. I mean, at least over half of his manifesto was specifically ripped from Christchurch manifesto.

Which, of course, that manifesto itself was ripped from a lot of other manifestos. It's kind of just a series of like launching memetic language from one shooting to another just kind of compiling into this massive conglomerate that's all based on trying to convince more people to do the same act um that's really yeah that's that's why when people are like talking about this and people try to limit the attention on the manifestos and that kind of stuff because it's all crafted specifically to get other people to do the exact same thing um it's filled with memes films with filled filled with in jokes full of like in group out group stuff to convince people to kind of go down a similar path and all of it's carefully crafted that way the one really interesting thing about

this is that there's not only manifesto but also like almost 700 pages of diaries that he posted as well. Um, and logs from, from like over, like, like, like from a long, long time,

uh, tracking his inner thoughts, but also like, again, he posted it and he knew he was going to do this. So there's no telling how, how accurate that is. It's all,

it's all in this package that he wants to present to people. So a lot of the nitty-gritty is not even worth talking about in a lot of a lot of cases no and i'm not i think there's broadly speaking things you can learn i'm also i to be clear i'm not against researchers studying and i think it should be absolutely i am against just finding a thing in there and like posting it like when i when i made my post i was pretty careful to note a couple of things that seemed consistent based on other aspects of the, like things that he claimed about his radicalization that seemed consistent

with what we were seeing. Like he noted that he was primarily radicalized online. That seems plausible to me because of how fucking online the manifesto is. Yeah. Like, and it's one of those folks are not entirely wrongfully bringing up the fact that the great replacement white genocide sort of conspiracy theory that seems to have motivated this fellow is basically identical to shit Tucker Carlson says. That's not not relevant. That's not what radicalized him, though.

But that's not what radicalized him. Yes. This is not a dude who was watching fox right that's something i've been frustrated by looking at the discourse because yes obviously tucker shouldn't be talking about this because he's normalizing this very rhetoric that you find in these manifestos but he did he did not find this from tucker this is like it's a whole whole different ball game um and when there's that conflation i do find that to be slightly frustrating yeah and some of the problem with discussing this is the problem with discussing basically any of these attacks is that the mass media coverage of it is nearly always going to flatten it

to a degree that works in the favor of the people who are using this as propaganda of the deed. And we can talk about maybe are there ways to deter that, you know, I've definitely, Yeah. of basically every politically motivated attack is a whole bunch of people from a whole different bunch of belief systems and sides immediately trying to spin it in order to push the narrative they think is useful for the attack to have. And some of them believe legitimately

what they're saying. I think most of the people who are like, this is, you know, Tucker Carlson's doing are generally just folks who have not spent as much time in the fever swamps as we have and see oh tucker carlson's talking about this this guy carried out a shooting they must be related right i don't think that's like that's wrong but i don't think that's malicious and then you get folks who are malicious with it right like you have all the azar battalion stuff is the folk yeah right one of the one of the narratives we've seen form particularly from what I like to call the shithead left, is folks being like, well, there was a sonnenrad, the black son. It's a Nazi occult-y symbol. People who are more nerds about Nazis will even quibble that. But that's the broad strokes of what it is. And it's a symbol that's definitely on some Azov gear. It's also has been on a bunch of shit well before there was an azoff battalion since the 30s since the 40s yeah it's all over the fucking place and um the reason he

did it the reason he had a black sun on some shit was not because of the azoff battalion um it in fact he talked about wanting to break up nato a bunch uh but it was because the son and rad was on the chest of the plate carrier of the christchurch shooter yes yeah but there's all he's a big fan of the christchurch shooter there's all of these people who are like yeah authoritarian left or whatever who are being like oh how can americans condemn this attack when this guy is is using as of imagery and there i there's no telling how genuine they are with this like there's there's no telling if if they actually know what they're doing or if they're just or if they're just being like if they're purposely misinformed or what's going on it's like it doesn't it doesn't matter

but yeah my my assumption with those folks is that they are doing it because if you are a competent paid propagandist, you want to always be pushing the narrative in a way that furthers whatever it is your job to push. And if your job is connecting Ukraine to every bad thing that happens and a mass shooting that has nothing to fucking do with Ukraine or the Ukrainian government, if you can connect it back to them, then you're back in your wheelhouse, right? Because maybe you're not so strong talking about the fact that you and some of the people around you have been friendly with fucking Tucker Carlson, and he pushes a similar narrative to the one this mass shooter used. Maybe that's uncomfortable. What is comfortable is

saying, no, this guy who did this bad thing is tied to these other bad people who are tied to this group that my entire career is about attacking, that's a much stronger position to be in, you know, if you're, you know, a propagandist. It's just like you see folks on the right who don't want to grapple with the fact that this was a right winger who carried out a terrorist attack, based on an ideology that even motherfucking Ben Shapiro has pushed elements of. You don't want to deal with that. So you call him aist because you saw the same thing with christ church yeah he made a couple of vague he's not a leftist he repeatedly identified himself as right-wing and as a fascist as a nazi um as a an

ethno-nationalist um but he made like a couple of vague comments that they're taking out of context and being like see he was on the left which Which he wanted to happen. Which he wanted to happen. That's why he put it in there, right? It is all part of the bit. It's all of this irony poisoned thing that they do on purpose to give anyone a propaganda out or give anyone a propaganda in. It's all... Yeah.

If you'll remember... You've seen it before. It's not new, but it's frustrating. Yeah. In the Christchurch Manifesto, yeah if you'll remember before it's not it's not new but it's frustrating yeah in the christ church manifesto tarrant um said that he'd been radicalized by candace owens yeah who's like a person who says a bunch of shitty fucked up stuff i don't like candace owens but like had nothing to do with that guy's radicalization right like that's not that's not where he's fucking coming

from um but he did it because he wanted to because it it's fucking – it's shitposting. It's to muddy the water. It's to get people – like it's to reduce the ability of people trying to grapple with what has happened to accurately see what has happened and accurately identify the problem and respond to it. A big motive for this stuff is to cause this kind of social and discourse chaos, right? kind of social and discourse chaos right they want people they want everyone to be confused and they want everyone yeah to be fighting each other and disagreeing on basic terms right because the whole point of this is to like encourage gun control legislation which will get the right match to cause people to be more willing to do mass shootings or to do attacks against government right it's all part of the very basic accelerationist uh like talking points and tactics so and the confusion's not accidental it's all it's all no if you i think a good way to look at this if you like fighter planes and helicopters in a combat zone will have a type of counter

measure they will launch if someone's shooting a missile that's like a tracking missile heat seeking or whatever at them it's called chaffF, and it basically, it looks to the missile the same as a helicopter does. So you shoot a bunch of these out, and the missile goes and hits something that's not the fucking helicopter, but to its sensors looks like a helicopter. That's what they're doing. They're shooting out CHAF. They're getting you to box with shadows rather than potentially landing a blow against like the central problem and the central problem is not an easy one to grapple with without all that stuff around it right because the the issue here is how the way in which the internet enables radicalization the way in

which online communities are prone to radicalization, the way in which the conservative media and aspects of just basic American history play into this specific people who want to do violence in this way for this reason, which is why the cops don't notice them even when they're on their radar, which is why that like the warning signs don't get spotted. And the ways in which I think more than anything, the ways in which the Internet has created a perfect incubation chamber for radical violence. And that is one of the stories here, right? You know, people are focusing on gun control, which this guy bought his gun in the state of New York, which has the most restrictive gun laws in the country. What's more relevant,

even if you're on that end, is this guy was deeply involved in like tactical Reddit. This guy was heavily involved in tactical videos and training videos and talking with other people about the best weapons, the best ways to use them. and if you watch the i don't watch the video um but he was competent he engaged competently he did he maximized his ability to do damage he took out somebody um with a gun who was attempting to stop him um that shit the stuff that he did to prepare tactically worked and the kind of tactical chunks of Reddit, of the internet, which are not all right wing, but a hell of a lot of them are, and a hell of a lot of them have gone in very scary directions in the last couple of years.

Not only do I suspect contributed to his radicalization, but I can say certainly contributed to his ability to effectively kill people. Yeah, I mean, he had like over five pages just on what helmet he picked out. He had pages on what socks he was wearing, which is not, which is for multiple reasons. It's one to make the actual act more effective. It's two to inspire,

not like discourse like this, but also to, to get people to replicate what he did. Right. It's crafting all of these symbols that people can replicate and be like, Oh, he picked out these socks. That means I'm going to get these socks.

I'm going to get these socks. It's all this branding thing. We should take a break, and then I want to come back and talk about some mimetic language stuff. You know, who else can give you good advice on socks? Oh, boy. All right. Here's ads. 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 tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone

from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge

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

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. 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. iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series,

Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. powerful poetry. We'll explore the stories that shape our culture together. We'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them.

Black lit is here to amplify the voices of black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to black lit on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Okay. Um, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Which itself was riffing off other stuff, right? But he went so far as to... The Christchurch shooting was a copycat shooting of the Anders Breivik shooting, or at least descendant of whatever term you want to use. But that's what inspired the Christchurch shooting.

And it's... I mean, he was... For the Buffalo shooting, he was testing out different live streaming platforms. He was doing all this stuff to craft a very specific image. And images are very powerful. We've talked about meme magic before if we want to get silly about it.

But he was very much involved in crafting these things that could be replicated visually. That's why he wanted to livestream it so bad. It's just the same way Christchurch was. And this is really important for why we don't

share this type of stuff and why we why we specifically clamp down on this on this on this style of propaganda and why we really encourage people not to share it not to look at it not to do that stuff because he he does in the few parts of the manifesto that he did write um he does he did say like watching the christ church video was very impactful for him which i don't't disagree with. I'm sure it was. It changed the course of my life, yeah. in their time on Earth are so particular about this. I think last year, like a year and a half ago, there was this film company based in New Zealand

who wanted to make a Christchurch film. And they were going to film a recreation of the shooting, but they said like, oh, but it's to show the horror and to show the impact it had on the victims. Doesn't fucking matter. It matters zero amount. Because once you put that language into

cinematography, you are giving them basically ammunition to help create propaganda which will get more people killed. This is why we see the same thing on fucking Roblox. We see people recreate the Christchurch shooting on Roblox. It was actually a major problem like a year ago specifically.

It was a huge problem of people recreating the footage inside this game engine. And it's specifically, it's a very powerful tool that they use to spread around. It's targeted specifically people ages 12 to 18. This guy was 18 years old.

He was heavily involved in online gaming. He was a really heavy Reddit user, specifically. He loved Discord. So these are the places where it spreads even more so than 8chan. involved in online gaming he was a really heavy um reddit user specifically um he loved discord so it's these are the places where it spreads even more so than hn now to yeah and i would say we now called him like a 4chan shooter because number one he definitely was familiar with with poll and number two he was on there he announced his live stream there i do agree with you reddit was a bigger part of his radicalization i suspect and a lot of and discord

probably and i suspect he did purposefully minimize the extent to which conversations on discord were part of his radicalization journey in particular that would be my assumption at the moment but for countering this type of rhetoric in this type of propaganda right because they're trying to make themselves look cool they're trying to make themselves look tactical they're trying to look they're trying to make themselves look like they They're trying to make themselves look tactical. They're trying to make themselves look like they're in a video game. They make it look like they're in a movie. They're trying to be cinematic. He was testing out different cameras.

He tested out a GoPro. He tested out his phone camera. Trying to get a specific look. And we just talked about how he was tactically proficient in some ways. But in handling this type of thing, we have to, when we're crafting counter stuff to make this to make this thing less likely we need to not even focus on that we need to make them look stupid make them look juvenile make them look like they're pathetic make them look like they're stupid and silly like they're larpers that's one of the things that

saved god knows how many lives at kind of the high point of the 8chan shootings in 2019 was that fucker in Hall, Germany tried to carry one out and got the piss beat out of him by a dude at a mosque and was photographed the next day in court just covered, it's like beat to shit. That image probably saved some lives. They want to be cool. They want to be mem memetic they want to be spread around as a symbol and we need like culturally need to yes this is

obviously very scary this is a very real threat for many for many people many people of color many black people many many muslims people of different religions jewish people queer people but we need to when when specifically crafting rhetoric and propaganda against these things we need to make them look pathetic right that that's what it needs to be framed as because if you make them look scary and competent that's actually going to make these things worse um because they they they love that right like as if you film it it, if you do any kind of movie about the Christchurch shooting,

no matter how you shoot it, they're going to love it. If you're showing people in pain, they want that. They want that. That's what they're looking for. You need to specifically frame this as these people LARPing

and these people being pathetic and people being terminally online and having bad social skills. You need to frame it in this way that makes them look not desirable because their whole point is to craft this desirable and visually stunning propaganda um and i think yeah that's that that's i've been thinking about this for the past yeah because it's just been so much but like hey identifying these people isn't the problem right like this guy he was he was talked to by by counselors last year because they were afraid

he was he was going to do a school shooting um like there was a lot of the red flags and stuff and like he was he was taught he was talked to by people before this happened like he wasn't an unknown factor he wasn't an unknown of the vector to make to make this to make to unknown vector to be a person that can do this. But there's no way. People are good at finding these people before they do it, but we're bad at actually stopping them from doing it once we find them. There's really no power to stop it. And interrupting any kind of radicalization pipeline is really hard so it's

more about laying the groundwork to make the pipeline look pathetic so it's harder to happen again but always counting the stuff is frustrating because if there's a good strategy we wouldn't be here be be deeply i want to move on to the yeah yeah it. But at the end of this, to close out, be deeply suspicious, if not outright contemptuous, of anyone who posits a simple solution to these shootings. Whether that solution is gun control, whether it's expanded police powers, whether it's fucking arming everybody so that they can shoot shooters. arming everybody so that they can shoot shooters. Anyone who proposes a simple solution to this, this is a deeply complicated problem because we let a number of horrible, horrible, obvious problems go on for way too long. And the solution to this will be painfully, agonizingly difficult and will take time. And there is not a simple, all-encompassing way to deal with this. One of the things that you can do right now to better prepare yourself to potentially deal with this problem is take a stop-the-bleed course, carry an IFAC and a gunshot wound kit as often as possible.

And that continues to be my best immediate advice to people because that there's no downsides to doing that. And it, it could, and does save lives in other shootings. All right, let's move on. 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 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. season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone

from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 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. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted 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. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community

of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In other news...

In other news, the next shooting! Yeah. Hooray. Yeah, okay, this is a weird one. Um... in other news the next shooting yeah hooray yeah okay this is a weird one um and I think the thing we need to make clear up front is that this happened yesterday

um yeah time of recording details are still emerging and it's weird. There's a lot of potential. So for people who don't know, a Presbyterian church in California was attacked by a Chinese guy. This is a Taiwanese church.

It's mostly senior citizens. It's mostly senior citizens. And there's a few important things up front that people should probably understand about this. One is that, okay, so Taiwan is ruled by military dictatorship. Basically, the better part of the post-World War II period, it is ruled by a military dictatorship run by the Nationalist Party, the KMT. The KMT is extraordinary. extraordinary in this period it is extraordinarily violent they sat they assassinate people all over the place they kill people on american soil they kill they train death squads in latin america and you know they're they're known for the sort of human anti-communism but eventually they're sort of toppled by revolution isn't quite

the right word but as you know the the camp t as a party is still around today as one of the two sort of major like taiwanese political parties but they're not like the sort of desk they're not exactly the sort of death squad mafia party that they were through most of the 20th century um the the sort of the the sort of progressive forces that worked to overthrow the dictatorship a lot of them coalesce into a party called the ddp and one of the things about the ddp is and there's a lot of sort of complicated Taiwanese political stuff here but they are very very closely connected to the presbyterian church in a lot of ways and this i i don't know the specifics about this church but there is there is a very strong connection between and then the the ddp are okay pro-independence is putting it

too strongly but if you're a pro-independent like you you want taiwan to be an independent country and you don't want them to sort of like either continue well okay this is the problem with taiwanese politics it's enormously convoluted uh there's a lot of stuff going on at some at any time and people are going to get mad at me for the supplications i'm making but yeah the short version of the story is that the sort of anti-ccp pro-independence e-forces are and the sort of like progressive movement is sort of lumped into the ddp and those are the people who are getting shot yeah like because yeah because again there's this very strong connection between presbyterian church and the ddp um and the kmt who again i mean okay they've had an extremely complicated relationship with the communist party over the last hundred years it's incredibly baffling but they've basically swung around towards being more favorable to china and there

are there are some fact extremist factions of it that support unification. Just unification. What seems to have happened here is... Okay, so the shooter's family seems to have been deported from China to Taiwan. And he did not like it in Taiwan. And this is where it starts to get very murky um the the police statement we have says that you know it's about sort of racial like it's it's it's anti-taiwanese animus but that can mean a lot of things and yeah this this again i keep saying it's murky and it's because it's, it's genuinely murky. There's a chance that this is one of, one of the things that's been happening since the Hong Kong protests is a solidification in mainland China of sort of anti of anti-Taiwanese sentiment has sort of lumped in, in this sort of like nationalist anti-Hong Kong thing.

There was, there was a hardening of rhetoric against Taiwan, but also there there's a lot of there's a lot of people in taiwan like like especially kmt hardliners on the hard right who like really really really intensely hate like the sort of like the sort of progressive anti-ccp pro-independence people sure and you know and this is something we don't we don't know what his affiliation is he was like in his like he was like in his like his 60s right yeah well and this is this this is this is weird because like there's a lot of things that could be true about this because of how old he is like again you know i mean he he he is around when the kmt is is straight up a death squad party right yeah yeah so it could be that it could be he's sort

of like independently radicalized there's been some like rumors might be too weak of a word but there there's been some kind of sketchy reporting that like his ex was leaving for taiwan and that that may have played a part in it but you know know violence between the kmt and people who don't like the kmt is a thing that there was an there was a very large amount of in the u.s for a lot of reasons and even though the kmt is sort of like i mean their alignment to china has like flipped in the past about 40 years China has flipped in the past about 40 years. I don't know. I'm really, really desperately hoping that this isn't going to set off.

I mean, there's already been a lot of, especially around Hong Kong, there's been a lot of physical violence. People attack each other at protests about, between, for example, people who spoke at their Hong Kong protests and CCP nationalists. between for example people who spoke their hong kong protests and uh chinese like ccp nationalists but this is something different very weird very embedded in the taiwanese context and i don't think we fully understand what's going on here um the other thing again is like this guy like he lived in taiwan like he was speaking taiwanese like when when he was essentially like going into this church to infiltrate before he shot everyone so like he this isn't like this this this isn't and

i think people are reporting it like this because they don't know what's going on but like this this isn't a case of like a guy who is from mainland china who like decided that he hated taiwanese people like this he he was there he likes he speaks he speaks taiwanese he like understands the taiwanese political situation very in depth which presumably is why he targeted the specific church but other than that it's it's the motives are still kind of murky and this is the other problem with it which is that like the sheriffs like there's no way that the sheriffs have any idea what they're looking at. Like they've apparently reading his personal notes and it's like, I don't trust their analysis of it. Good Lord.

No. Yeah. Like these. If you weren't here, we would have to find someone else who understands that conflict in order to talk about it. I don't feel comfortable like trying to figure out or analyze that guy's notes i sure as shit don't trust some fucking sheriff's deputy to do it like yeah this stuff is like yeah um i don't know yeah and i think that that's i don't know i will say like this i think was like the worst possible scenario for what what that shooting is about because this is a kind of this is a kind of violence that

was really intense like right after world war ii and sort of like you know there's been periods where like yeah i mean people have been like people have gotten killed here but it hasn't been that violent in a long time and i don't know i'm hoping this is just one guy who had a particular grievance who i don't know like was was pushed by sort of external factors but if this is a sign of like if this is a sign of sort of anti-taiwanese like national okay so there's one other thing that that we need to talk about because that's unclear because there's two kinds of potential like right-wing chinese nationalism at play here and it's unclear which one's happening because there are there are people who are right-wing chinese nationalists who are like pro ccp right but there's also a kind like a kind of like it shifted but there's also like a a a like a kmt nationalist based right-wing chinese nationalism which favors sort of like

reunification with china but is is not the same thing as as the sort of mainland nationalism and has its own particular like very local political grudges like with with the ddp and with the sort of mainland nationalism and has its own particular like very local political grudges like with with the ddp and with the sort of like progressive e movements in taiwan and i don't know anything beyond that is kind of like trying to figure out which one it is like we just don't know unless the police unless the police actually decide to like show us this guy's notes or like give us recordings of what he's been saying uh we're not gonna know and maybe maybe by the time this is out like there will be more stuff but right now it's very muddled very bad the fact that this guy also i think was an american citizen but was born in china has gotten every like even even the chinese media outlets are saying extremely weird stuff because they're

confused by it so it is a it is a muddled is a muddled mess i mean everything about this last weekend has been muddled there's been so many different mass shootings this weekend there's been people being paranoid about copycat mass shootings you know yesterday there was reporting that a gunman

entered a church in Buffalo that was not actually true. Someone in the church yelled there's a gunman or something or get the gun down or something and it caused people to create this

kind of rumor but there wasn't actually someone with a gun. Someone was reacting to the sermon that was being had. But yeah, everyone's been super paranoid about every stuff all this kind of stuff as as they should be so sorting through sorting through all this stuff is very complicated and uh not a great time because it's not it's not fun um and we shouldn't have to do it but it sucks I do think it's also worth noting that the police did not stop

I know specifically they did not stop the one in the church the pastor a pastor hit him with a fucking chair hit him with a steel chair and then they hog tied him with an extension cord and then the police came

which is so dope um i'm sorry they were ever in that position they should never have to be in that position but it turns out more and more people are having to do stuff themselves because it it's not also the first time that a mass shooter has been stopped by someone hitting them with a chair if i'm not mistaken that's how the gifford shooter was stopped eventually or part of how he was stopped is somebody fucking decked him with a chair it's really useful

to have something beyond just your limbs yeah if someone is trying to shoot you with a gun ideally you get away but if you can't get away trying to hit them in the face with something heavy is certainly a choice that has saved a number of people's lives something heavy is certainly a choice that has saved a number of people's lives god what what an absolutely dog shit country it's not a great time when i you know i i noted earlier

anyone trying to sell you like simple solutions and i mentioned gun control on that which is not to say that like the outrageously easy how how ridiculously easy it is to get any kind of gun in this country. Obviously, that's a factor in these shootings. My hesitance to take gun control as a, if you'll forgive the term, magic bullet to fix any of this is number one, the sheer number of guns that are already propagated. Number two, the fact that a lot of gun control measures boil down to making it harder for poor people to get guns. And neither of these shootings seem to have been poor people shooting up um folks and uh just also the fact that while some states

are capable of passing additional gun control number one new york's basically done everything it's constitutional to do re restricting gun ownership um and federally biden and their dims can't protect Roe v. Wade. They're sure as shit not going to pass any federal gun control measures. And that's specifically what these people want as well. They're specifically doing this to get this stuff started so that it increases political tensions. Whether or not

to agree with my fundamental claim you don't have to, you can believe that if gun control were to be passed it could be the solution but it's not gonna be. And so like, as, as regards those of us trying to survive,

um, we have to look in other directions because you're not going to get an assault weapons ban. It's just not happening. Yeah. I mean, I, the one good,

I don't want to say good thing, but it has been, uh, nice to see people slowly uh dropping the whole like lone wolf terminology yes that is a positive development because these are not not a lone wolf it's it's part of a very it's a part of an intentional effort to cause these things to happen it's part the groups may be decentralized but they are not levels by any stretch of the imagination but they are yeah they are decentralized and a cephalus but they are deeply deeply sophisticated and connected yeah just not in a way you can drone strike easily well yeah and i think i would have

some target suggestions garrison anyway get an IFAC. Do stop the bleed. Get an IFAC. Do stop the bleed. And don't feed into their propaganda in the ways that they want. Don't feed into their propaganda. Organize with folks in your neighborhood. This sucks. Yay!

Okay. Yay! Okay. Well, kids, adults, boys and girls, and individuals of non-binary or other gender identities, cats who happen to be listening in, airwolf, the helicopter, if you're listening in, everybody, every sentient creature listening, you know, I do believe that things can get better so part of that is not letting the the crimes that these the things that these people do like part of the purpose of an attack like this is to make people feel hopeless and overwhelmed it's to black pill you you know to to to utilize some of their terminology. So the way to fight against it is, among other things, if you're talking about immediate things you can do, go out and do something nice to help people. Yeah, and, you know, I would say, like, as sort of like one brief last note, like, yeah, like in Taiwan, they overthrew their dictatorship. And, oh, hey, it turns out people stopped getting assassinated by the KMT in American soil. So,

you know, over overthrow your governments and you too can make peace with your enemies. Yeah. Yeah. Overthrow your government, overthrow another government. You know,

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