It Could Happen Here - Part Two: Roundtable on the Future of Terrorism

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

The second part of our discussion in the woods about the intersection of climate change, accelerationism, and the rise of nationalistic far right violence. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. This is part two of our terrorism roundtable discussion. If you haven't listened to part one already, I would recommend you scroll back, listen to the previous episode, and then continue on from here so you have kind of context to what exactly we're talking about. Anyway, this is part two of our discussion in the woods. I hope you enjoy. Something that was talked about earlier this year after January 6th was like, should the government ban Telegram? That was the thing. And a lot of arguments are like, no, absolutely not. Does anyone want to speak on that? Because if I want to talk about the government's response to these things,

that's a very government-y thing to do. Be like, oh, people are organizing on this platform, get rid of the platform, problem gone. And that's not how that works. Emi, do you want to talk about that a little bit? Sure. Yeah, so getting rid of the platform And that's not how that works. Emmy, do you want to talk about that a little bit? Sure. Yeah, so getting rid of the platform doesn't necessarily help,

especially when it's something that is important, such as encrypted communication, which is something that more people than just Nazis need. Yes. And that resource should not be cut off. And there's also kind of a bad precedent to be set if the government is deciding which forms of speech it needs to have complete access to. I don't

love that. The other thing is that if we nuke Telegram, right, they don't disappear. They form new networks in other places. They're still there. And then they have to do more things in person. Right. They're still there, they're just harder to monitor. And they're harder to track.

People are absolutely correct when they say deplatforming works because it works for the platform. And a lot of people just want that. A lot of people just don't want to see Nazi shit and they're fine with deplatforming and they say this works and they have data to back up that it does work.

But it works for the platform but the people still exist. People are still boosting their own shit. And when they bring up building their own alt-tech platforms, it only works if you get there early. Yeah. And there is elements,

de-platforming is a wider thing, especially for in-person stuff. But yeah, for the thing you're mentioning, yes, it is definitely not that cut and dry. Yeah, and Telegram's really interesting because it is kind of this middle space between social media and just a messaging app. Yeah.

And the thing about it, too, is that anybody can look at these, you know, the public channels. Yes, exactly. So without saying anything in the chat. So people could be kind of completely invisible. Like, nobody knows that they're there. They're watching the stuff, and they're still getting the the same messaging they're still getting the same dates for protests they're still like organizing but they can be uh sort of just subscribed to a channel and you don't even

need to be subscribed you can yeah you can just know the name just looking into and getting that flow of information without ever having like formal organizing so to speak. So it's really hard to say that these people planned this, because there's a lot of plausible deniability that anybody was involved. There's so much easy hyperlinking between groups and channels and everything, so it's so easy for someone to move

between ideology and to go from the base level shit into the much deeper stuff extremely quick. Very quick, yeah. Extremely quick. Well, that's the thing that is good and to go from kind of like the base level shit into the much deeper stuff. Extremely quick. Very quick, yeah. Extremely quick. Well, that's like... And that's fire design.

The thing that's good for them about Telegram is that you have all of the people that are vulnerable to, let's say, new ideas in one place. Yeah, that's a big thing you get. Right. Retruitment. Exactly. If you're trying to plan a collapse, you're going to need a lot more people than the numbers that the people who want a collapse actually have. So the easiest way to kind of move things along is to start inserting their ideas and their discourses and kind of altering the vibe of certain digital environments manually until they have what we can kindly call cannon fodder. they have what we can kindly call cannon fodder.

Yeah. Or even starting their own and saying like, you know, this is a MAGA platform and it's actually just a bunch of accelerationists who made it. And they made it to recruit them. Yeah, we definitely saw attempts at this with like QAnon. It's people who are way more

accelerationists trying to use QAnon people as cannon fodder. Extremely, yeah. It was successful. It wasn't just a test. And they did it. And QAnon people as candidates. Extremely, yes. It was successful. And they did it. And QAnon people died. I mean, that and then also you've got the idea of the Boogaloo, right, that's been co-opted to try to appeal to leftists.

And I mean, there's a really good article by Left Coast Right Watch that goes into one of those chats and they're basically like, yeah, really try to push these ideas of really try to push talking points like Black Lives Matter and all this. We want to get these protesters on our side. And then you also have some blatant

white supremacist groups who are also using the Boogaloo. And how much of that, too, is sort of real, genuine, like, I am not racist. I believe in Black Lives Matter. Like, I want to be part of this even though I'm a Boogaloo.

Or, like, how much of it also is kind of reminiscent of what we were talking about yesterday, and I also don't want to step in it, but, like, with, you know, the idea of promancing, of, like, helter-skelter and, like, causing that race war. It's like, what they would do is, like, try and frame black people for it

and say, like, this was, you know. Yeah, exactly. And so how much of it is saying, like, this is Black Lives Matter, and they want people to see that after they do a boo. The Boogaloo group that showed up in Portland in July of 2020 when the protests

against the feds were happening, you know, they showed up and were all like, yeah, we're here to support Black Lives Matter and stand against the federal government and stuff. Now they showed up and were all like, yeah, we're here to support black lives matter and stand against the federal government and stuff. Um, and they had some very, uh, suspicious patches that took me,

took me about a year to figure out what they were. And it's like this accelerationist, like, um, it ties into a whole bunch of like eco fascist propaganda stuff. Yeah. Um, and yeah,

it's like they're, they're saying these things while they have these very obscure patches. Um, and yeah, this is an important reason why we need people who are not very smart. Like I will say Jimmy door who puts these, who gives these people platforms are some of the worst and are going to cause a lot of problems because they've no idea what they're doing or they know what

they're doing and they're just bad. Yeah. And like that boogaloo thing kind of serves a twofold purpose purpose in that you can bring people who self-identify as leftists into the movement, but you also have a really good scapegoat for actual action. getting burned down and suddenly people on the internet start losing their minds about the umbrella guy. Umbrella guy! Umbrella guy at the auto zone. And there was a guy who was indicted. He was a boogaloo boy who was indicted for, like headlines said

burning down the precinct. He fired a weapon He fired a gun on like near the wall. Exactly. And so that at the same time takes away agency from left-wing movements. And the state's able to be like, look, see, it's just all... It's okay to crack down on them because they're all, you know, wild

white supremacists. Exactly. It's not even just from any autonomous movement that forms the people in a community that isn't... that we wouldn't necessarily refer to as leftist. It's just pissed-off people. I mean, that's what we saw in every single, you know, every big city. Every big city. The young kids who are fucking pissed off and are going to go smash it,

and it's, like, saying all of this is people from outside of the town, where it's like, I know... Outside agitators! Yeah, it's a tale as old as time. Like, outside agitator has been used since before the Civil Rights Movement. It's a very old state talking point.

What were you going to say, Matt? Yeah, I was going to say, also, it's somewhat related to that. We were talking about using, like, QAnon as cannon fodder. And it also ties into the SovSit conversation we were having. So my research, I special or not specialize, I focus on Christian identity, this white supremacist ideology, and how specifically how it's grown since the 90s until now through the Internet and all that fun stuff. until now through like the internet and all that fun stuff um this whole point they've been pushing lately is to like they're this with christian identity the whole thing is they are preparing

for the apocalypse which they call the tribulations and they see modern ci folks see the boogaloo as like the tribulation that's coming so what they're trying to do is go off-grid and really try to establish this new land to protect their kids and everything from pollution and all that shit, but also to be away from the collapse and be able to survive it. While they're doing all that

prepping homesteads and compounds and stuff, they're also pushing election fraud conspiracies and all that on QAnon and the MAGA crowd. Not because they believe it. Not because, yeah, right. They don't believe it. They know it's bullshit, but they can use it to accelerate collapse.

Just like January 6th. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when I mean, there are groups when Joe Biden won the presidency or won the election or whatever. Some groups being like, yeah, really try to push this theory, this conspiracy about election fraud. Even if you don't believe in it, just push it because that helps our cause. Exactly. And that's something to be really mindful of, too. I forgot where else I was going with that.

Well, yeah, a lot of them don't mean what they say. They'll say things that'll push other people to do something that they don't necessarily want to do. And that's a lot of, like, during January 6th, so much excitement because they could see that the QAnon crowd were actually mobilizing. And so they said to themselves, like, you know, get them mobilizing for the white race, get them mobilizing for, you know, our cause. And they've really successfully been able to infiltrate that and be able to get some people on board with some of it. Yeah.

Just based on using their rhetoric. Yeah. I know I talked about this on our podcast, but you could see it. I reported on January 6th in person, and you could watch it happen. Someone with a skull mask on, or a Proud Boy, or an Oath Keeper,

would literally come back from the police line, grab a group of people, yell something at them about QAnon, or the storms upon us, and throw them up to that riot line. The New York Times did a really good visual investigation of how those extremist groups used mega people and QAnon people

as their foot soldiers. The QAA did a really good breakdown on their J6 episode. QAnon anonymous podcast. But it's also with, I mean, not to link everything to Christian identity, which I have a tendency to do, but it's very ideologically similar to QAnon, like from a Christianity point of view. Like QAnon is like so close to the edge of Christian identity.

It's very scary. there's also, like, not only trying to accelerate things through them, but also trying to recruit them through these, like, very, very similar talking points about, like, the synagogue of Satan and all that nonsense. Saying that Christian identity is an entry point for some of them. Some of them bring it up as an entry point into further, like,

accelerationist Nazi shit, but, like, they will start with Christian identity because they think that it's more packageable to people who already believe in QAnon well yeah, exactly like Will was saying, a lot of this comes from these kind of boomer conspiracies and anti-vax groups

and you're not going to be able to get Meemaw and Pap-Pap into like Wotanism or something like that you can, sure but like, Christianity is something that's palatable. It's something that's normal to them. And as you can kind of slowly tweak it through QAnon, you can get them to this much more extreme place.

When you talk about Christian identity, I think we should, like, maybe, Matt, you could define it. Christian identity, it's this radical offshoot of Christianity that sees all white people as the true Israelites from the Bible. And they also think Jewish people are all literally the spawn of Satan. There's this really dumb theory they came up with and kind of rewrote the whole Bible off of called... Can I name it? Is that okay?

Yeah, you can. Okay. Dual seed line theory where they say... Like the story, if you know about Adam and Eve and all that, they had Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel, yeah. Right, so they see Cain was the offspring of Eve and the devil. And he is literally the spawn of Satan.

And then he intermingled with all these races that were there before Adam and Eve and created this demonic race. And it's really, really fucking dumb. But it's still here. It's been here for a hot minute and it's probably going to keep going it's going to get worse calling it now, it's going to get worse it's going to get worse the whole thing is they essentially

worship a Nazi Jesus they see Jesus was really only talking to the white race and that Christianity and God only is able to be perceived by the white race. And before you start laughing at these people, because yes, it does sound very silly,

keep in mind that these are extremely dangerous. Yeah, I mean, you've had... This is the one problem with QAnon when liberals just start laughing about how crazy it is and then they're so surprised at January 6th where they're like, no, no, it's, yeah like they're actually dangerous yeah i mean christianity he's been mentioned in a lot yeah and he's christian and he's been mentioned in various manifestos linked to you know yes and actual yeah has formed very like organized groups like i mean historically you look at a big

part of like with christian identity and with a lot of these kind of like a lot of them base their like whole historical context of like arianism on this rewriting of history based on um a fake study that was done in nazi germany about uh where some proto-indoo-European languages came from. And so they believe that white people came from an area that's you know, you could generally say

sort of near the Black Sea. And that it's based on this strange idea that Sanskrit is not the oldest language, but like... Are you

pointing the gun at me because I'm stepping in? You're getting real close! You're getting real close! The historical context I think actually is useful. It shows that's not... There is actual things that can be traced back from this

they really tried to push this they made a lot of fake studies that you could spend a lot of time researching this and believe that it's true because there's just so much written about it and I think this is like a tactic that they really tend to do with historical revisionism

a lot is just crank out essay after essay, even if it's wrong, even if it's totally based on false data or just skewed data. They just write about it and they think that having more written about it makes it

more legitimate. That's what we have been talking about this whole time we've been not recording, is there's just an overflow of content that is so easy to access not necessarily from these specific groups they're talking about, just from

the further right in general. They just overflow the content. It's always the top shit on Facebook. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented

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There are Aryan people. That is a thing. Historically. They're Iranian. Yes, they're not white people. But going through... Depends on your definition of white people. Sure. Whiteness is relative. It's based on language. They think of Aryanism as referring to a linguistic pattern. Yeah. But like in a university course, we still had to go through and like debunk these myths because they've gotten so pervasive within culture. kind of these more entry-level conspiracy ideas,

it is hard to overemphasize how small the space is between the entry-level stuff and the much harder stuff. It can happen extremely quickly. Extremely fast. It does happen extremely fast. I'll give an example. I went to, you know, I was reporting on an anti-vax protest, and they went straight into talking about New World Order

and Project Lockstep and the Rothschilds and the Bilderbergers and the Sabbatians and David Icke shit. Just immediately. And this was the middle of the day in a metropolitan area with a bunch of boomers and Trump hats who were getting this hardcore shit

pumped at them. You saw that a lot with the Nashville bombing, too. Like, immediately it was like, oh, it was actually an attack on Dominion, and also it was orchestrated by the Rothschilds to destroy evidence of voter fraud. I forgot that that was a whole thing. Yeah, and then also there was a whole, like, there was a bunch of

stuff that came up. There was a big conspiracy that it was actually a missile strike. I had to talk my grandpa down from that theory. Oh, my, really? Yeah. I didn't know that one. There was a video that circulated for a while about that and I had to get into a conversation with my grandpa, who at the time was super isolated because of COVID and that's a whole other story.

That's a whole other problem. I had to talk him down and show him no, here's a video from somebody I knew who was somewhat in the area and saw the explosion and filmed it and there was not a missile anywhere near Jesse. One of the data studies I've done and worked on is using big pool and small pool Discord servers of far-right extremists, far-right militia groups, and very, like accelerationist skull mass type networks um and looking at the big pools and small pools and seeing the at mentions between them yeah yeah and there was not one person who was more than three nodes away from anybody else so you it's very, it can't be overstated how close people are from entry

to very, very, very extreme types of goals. Yeah. And ideologies. Ideologies that explicitly push violence. And another point I want to bring up is

there's been much said about QAnon isn't going away. It's just not called QAnon anymore. With these anti-vax mobilizations, those mobilizations and groups aren't going away. They're just going to continue to shift and evolve their focus.

The networks stay. And they're planning for it, though. They've designed it that way. Sometimes I find the normie stuff first. Sometimes I find the crazy stuff first. But, I mean, not even that long ago, I came across a particular social media profile

that was explicitly calling for acts of terror and attempting to organize acts of terror and displaying acts of terror, which is, like, an immediate problem that needs to be dealt with. However, they had multiple alternate accounts that you follow that path and on their other accounts they're sharing like tucker carlson stuff yeah like

things that your grandparents are going to watch right like and that is done on purpose to try to like siphon people out of um more quote-unquote mainstream versions of like conspiratorial thinking directly into like you should start exploding things. And even more, let's say, left of center conspiracy thinking ties into this as well. Yeah, it does. And it's not, you know, conspiracy theories are

not solely a thing of the right, which pisses me off to no end. Sorry, Matt. No, I just want to back you up on that. Like, I think there's this maybe this, like, implicit idea that the left is immune to conspiracy theories when it very much is not true at all. Nobody is immune. Yeah, I just wanted to emphasize that point.

Yeah, that idea, though, of never being that far from the serious stuff is something that's really really observable even beyond like a data level i i used to like consult with local newsrooms on how to report on things and one of the big points i always tried to drill in was like if you fuck this up and you frame this the wrong way it will have consequences and if this is stepping in it too much, we can cut this. That's why we keep talking about stepping in it. But like, the Dylan Roof. Dylan Roof started his journey to

radicalization by reading about Trayvon Martin in local news websites and local newspapers, and then googling black-on-white crime. And his first result the first shit that comes up yeah was some people were radicalized by the same exact thing exactly and

like it does not it did not take long for him to go from i am reading local news articles that are framed this specific way to i am killing people yep that's not normal, of course. A lot of people are not going to be reading local news and then suddenly start to think this way. There is a concerted effort by some very specific people who would like

to make that pathway easier. It's stochastic terrorism. It's interesting because we don't... We can't define it, really, as terrorism. What are they doing? They're really just... They're just saying things. They're just encouraging people to do things. And, like,

they're not... They're not doing anything wrong. We can't really call it terrorism. Yeah, the most dangerous people in this game are usually not the ones doing the shooting. Yes. It's the people behind the scenes trying to get people to go on these paths in the first place. Looking for people who are willing. And so they see somebody reading local news, maybe,

and they want to make that pathway easier to go from local news to Dylann Roof. Like, because that's not a normal jump. But they really want to find people who are looking at local news like that and then say to them, like, well, okay, you look at this, now look at this. Trying to tie this back to climate change, how do you see, do you see a similar pathway? Instead of someone Googling, you know, black and white crime, like Googling stuff about collapse and, like, modern civilization. Oh, yeah. Eric Stryker. I don't know. Eric Stryker's been on about this.

And I think that he's a, I mean, relatively, like, middle point that people get to. Like, fairly, like, average people do listen to things like Eric Stryker. Yeah, he's a very, like, entry-level explicit Nazi. Yeah. And another thing, and cut me off if we don't want to go in this direction. Uh-uh. And another thing, and cut me off if we don't want to go in this direction, but, you know, one of the biggest places where we see young people getting into conspiracy theories is TikTok. It is TikTok.

That's where I'm from. All right. Are we talking about TikTok now? TikTok. Ted K. memes on TikTok. Cut that, cut that, cut that. We're not cutting that. That is within the branches of the pod.

I mean, the biggest entry point I've seen for a lot of things remains crisis. And the thing is, this upcoming climate scenario is going to give people an easier jumping on point. Well, yeah. We were talking about

how the mythology of black-on-white crime and all this stuff. They're trying to create a situation that, you know, with the sense of urgency, that justifies fascism, which on its own is unjustifiable and ridiculous. But when there's a crisis, that's when people sign on to it. Climate change is the existential threat that they've been trying to artificially create, and they no longer have to. They now get to skip a lot of steps and save a lot of energy by just pointing at the fact that everything is literally on fire, and that makes it so much quicker.

We have to do something. We have all the guns. Now would be a great time to join in on our power grab. This is our Weimar-era hyperinflation type shit. and our power. This is our Weimar era hyperinflation type shit. This is like when you're when you can't get

food from the grocery store anymore because of supply chain problems or when everything around you is on fire, you don't need a great replacement theory. No, you don't need any of that. You don't need to say that the Rothschilds are behind it. You just need to wait. You have enough things that you

experience yourself. And it's much scarier when you can't because I can't like... How do we stop it? How do we debunk that? The world is literally on fire. It's a problem and something needs to be done about it. I don't like your solution, but

something needs to happen. What do you think on this path, and this is going to get a whole lot more speculative, but what needs to happen. What do you think, on this path, and this is going to get a whole lot more speculative, what can we do to make people falling down those pathways less often? Put it with the doomer shit. Yes. That's one of the things that we're trying to do on the

pod, is make sure people do not fall down the doomer pathway. Because yeah, that does get people along down this path a lot. Extremism is logical. Against most types of extremism, eco-extremism

is most logical. You look at it and you say, we need a radical change right now. And that's correct. It's just the way that they go about it is very, very different. Ecofascism is very different. It it's own type of eco-extremism and there's green anarchy

that's a very different type of eco-extremism like these are all different parts of something that almost has the same goals but wants to go about them very very very differently and it's so easy to just look around and see how everything's on fire and

think the government's doing nothing about it. The government starts doing something about it, and then suddenly it's the state's too big, we're in communism. All of different goals, and it's very conflicting on how to deal with it. And even the very different tactics between green anarchy

and fascist extremism, they also will get to different end goals. Your basic amprim wants a very different life than your very stepping-in-it-pilled fascist. But a collapse can

only benefit the right. A collapse can only benefit the people who already have power, who are already able-bodied, who are already stocked up on guns, who are already, like... Yeah, that does frustrate me with there being anarchists who are, like,

rooting for the collapse, because you're not gonna win. The collapse is gonna get you put behind a fence somewhere. You're not going back out. Or put on the wall. Yeah, well, they've got very strict ideas of which people count as human, and the goal of the majority of fascist movements is to purge the ranks of the people they see

as lesser. They have very precise ideas about who they plan on letting survive the collapse. So let's... I think it's time to start talking about, and tell me if I'm taking this in the wrong direction, what the fuck can someone do who's listening to this?

Yeah. Recycle. No. Stop recycling. It's all getting buried in the Oregon forest. Talk to Joe Biden. Just vote. Vote it away.

Vote it out. Yeah, absolutely. Start local. Find a local group. Find a local direct action group. Investigate that group and see who is behind it, but start locally. It has to start

at the local level, because when I'm not going to say if the collapse comes, or not the collapse, but local collapses. Continuous disasters. Continuous disasters are going to affect at the local level. Talk to your fucking neighbors.

Neighbors, talk to your family. Try to get your family on these paths that lead to helping your neighbors instead of, you know, making friends with the church militia. Before you buy a gun, learn how to fucking garden. Yes. But buying a gun and that sort of Thing is Is good

It's good to know How to use firearms Basic emergency preparedness Yes But learn Learn how to put on a tourniquet Learn how to feed yourself Yes

Learn how to grow Some fucking food Learn how to cook That fucking food Get an IFAC All that comes before Like you get to be A Fallout character

Or some shit Oh yeah Do you make first aid training? Yes Do you want to buy an IFAC? Oh yeah An individual first aid kit You can you want to define IFAC? Oh, yeah. An individual first aid kit. You can buy them online.

Buy them online. You can buy them in gun stores. You can buy them in, like, some pawn shops. Yeah. I like North American Rescue, or North River Rescue. I'm sure we'll talk about IFACs more in the pod. Yeah. Well, there are, look, there are two big things.

One, we all have a moral obligation to consistently counter the black pill doomer shit, everything is coming to an end, like it doesn't have to that's optional things are going to get bad but there's degrees of badness we can stop it from being we don't need civilization to end that can be done

step two, we also have an obligation to counter the individualist stuff and focus our efforts more towards community and relationships. That is so, so important, because every idiot that's going to buy a gun and have a bunker, not only is it not going to make it, but it's going to screw the rest of us.

This has to be a communal effort. And on the civilization thing, we do need the civilization to change. We need human society as we lay out. We have a lot of problems. I understand people's critiques of human civilization. But we also still need a society. But yeah, we need, human society as we lay out, has a lot of problems. I understand people's critiques of human civilization. But we also still need a society. But, yeah, we need places that people are going to gather

and people provide the things that we have. I noticed that that can be a loaded word in certain political circles, so I'm not, you know, we're not getting into, like, civilization theory and that kind of anything. Yeah, I was gonna say, I would argue any ideology or idea, such as the Boogaloo, that

kind of hypes up a collapse is generally one you should stay away from. Anything that makes the collapse sound like a fun... It makes it sound sexy. It does. It's a personal story. As I think it's important to remember, if there was some massive civil conflict that happened, I think the people who would suffer the most are the

non-combatants, As we will talk about. We don't want anything to deal with it. As we will talk about in an upcoming episode of Terrorism Bad. We'll do plugs to the end. Put the gun back in your pants. Hold yourself together. I was talking about historical precedent earlier, about things we've seen in the past with collapses

and how people with guns and people with training end up being the ones who gain power um something that like i was specifically reading about that was um like the rwandan genocide yeah it you know was just the what three months where most of the tutsi people were wiped out um there are conflicting numbers so i'm not going to specifically say any, but more recently, like this year, earlier this year, was only when Rwanda admitted what it was, that it was a genocide.

And the armed forces were the ones who became the leaders. And they were backed by the government. Good thing that can't happen in America. Yeah. And, uh, it's like...

It can't happen here, though. Nope. We are immune to this in our response. It will not happen here. Not if I can help it. The other thing is, look at where you get your information from. Seriously, no matter

who you are, take a long, hard look at who you get your information from. Even if you're on the left. Especially if you're on the left. If you want to hear about something that's happening in an area, look at the people who are actually on the ground reporting that. Local people. Don't just rely on news aggregators, especially on Twitter. Seriously.

There's been a lot of very bad faith news aggregators on Twitter who are opposing us leftists. This has been a lot of bad, very bad faith news aggregators on Twitter who are opposing us leftists. This has been a huge problem in 2020. Even leftists who just don't do their due diligence. Or just do a very bad job. Or even people who call themselves counter-extremism or counter-terrorism researchers. And they

are really talking about Antifa. They say that they are counter-extremism researchers, and they pose that way, and they look sometimes like they could be, sometimes like they're not, but, like, you know, varying degrees of, like, legitimacy. But, like, they focus only on, like, the left-wing stuff. They don't think about the actual, like, mass threats. It has to be this idea of, like, the left-wing stuff. They don't think about the... They don't see where the actual, like, mass threats are coming from.

It has to be this idea of, like, keeping it balanced, right? Like, not making it just, like, a far-right issue, which I would argue I think a lot of other people would, that this kind of stuff is more concerning. It is not only a far-right issue. And there is, like, merit, definitely,

to looking at left accelerationaccelerationism. Which is not anti-fascist. Left-accelerationism is not talking about anti-fascist. there's really not time to get into all that. Left-accelerationism

will be its own episode. But what some people do, posing as people who have credibility and are able to kind of sway opinion, they are not really doing what they say that they're doing. They're really just trying to shift the narrative of racially motivated violent extremism, which is a big, obviously, issue right now. A large category. To being like BLM is racially motivated violent extremism. And they want to push that narrative further and further.

Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors

that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season

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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 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 Feast, 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, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. or wherever you get your podcasts. I think, let's kind of probably start to like wrap up and say our final thoughts on, you know, this whole topic. I know we did not get to talk about like eco-defense very much. If anyone has any final thoughts on that

and how they see it kind of growing and how they see the state's response to it, that might be worth briefly mentioning. But yeah, let's kind of go around in a circle and give everyone's final thoughts on the subjects. I think

collapse is bad, and I think that well, I mean, that's my main thing, but anything that's appealing to you on an ecological level that's collapse-related is something you should be very wary of, and I think you should be very wary of, generally, everything. I feel like that's kind of a butchered phrase. Yeah, be careful of everything.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess, in my opinion, the idea of total collapse is very misleading because it's easy, and disasters don't work like that. You're not going to suddenly reset one day. Everything is going

to suck, and you're going to need to fight for whatever semblance of a society that you want to see in the world. Talk to your fucking neighbors. Get to know the people in your city, in your neighborhood. There are people doing good shit in whatever city, town you live in, most likely. If not, you can start it. Look at your

local mutual aid network. Look at the people who are taking action around and get involved. Seriously, it could be going out into a park Saturday mornings and just giving out food and talking to the people who are most affected. Talk to people. Seriously.

Everyone's a person you need to talk to. Touch grass. Talk to people. Yeah, if you need, like, the most basic thing to start on any sort of mutual aid work, try to find a Food Not Bonds chapter in your area. Yes. They're well organized. They're easy to join. You don't have to put on block and fight a cop.

It's, yeah, it's a good entry point. And it's great. It's great training for disaster relief. Yes. If you have money and you want to help, seriously, just give cash to unhoused people on the street. Give money to people. Give money directly to people. Yep.

Yep. My last thoughts are just that I think the idea of collapse or whether actual collapse themselves, environmental or otherwise, will always be something to rally behind. Like it is always an entry point as well as a motivator. From all sides. From all sides. But it's like when these things become very salient, like was mentioned before, when they're outside of your door, that's when, you know, that's when, like, the ideology kind of hits the pavement. Like, what is actually going to play out, what is actually going to happen, and how that's going to affect people is very real.

So building community, you know, building connections, and just understanding, you know, who is in your community is probably one of the most important things. Yeah, the idea of collapse is a romantic and ridiculous notion. I've come up with people who are really into apocalyptic thinking and the version of themselves where they get to be the main character.

So first and foremost, take care of each other. There are a lot of people out there who want to manipulate you and want to change the way you think about things and they really, really want you to buy in to the end times and you don't have to because you're smarter than that yeah it's it's not hopeless we really have to move away from hierarchical thinking our society really incentivizes hierarchical thinking and like you were saying toothache like we um we really need to just be focusing on people. Like, give thanks to people.

Because, you know, somebody doesn't have to, you know, earn, you know, respect and earn humanity. For some reason, we try and make it seem like that. But people are people. People are in different circumstances because of, usually, because of just the way that the world is. And, yeah, you need to organize locally. You need to help your own people. And stay away from the internet. Shit.

Stop posting. Stop posting. Stop posting. Stop posting, even though I will keep doing it, because I'm the good poster. Who wants to plug the pod? which pod? your pod follow at terrorism bad

we're on that's our ad right? what is the pod? what do y'all do? we go through portrayals of terrorism and extremism and conspiracies in popular media and we look at it from the perspective of people through portrayals of terrorism and extremism and conspiracies in

popular media, and we look at it from the perspective of people who study this and say, did this succeed in portraying these things, or did it, as it more often does, completely fail and cause us all personal problems. Become propaganda. Yes. Did you make terror

propaganda, or did you make good media about terror? That is a thin line, Emmy. Such a thin line. I've made a career out of it. That is the thin terror line. Yeah. Do you want to plug your fantastic group? Yeah, absolutely.

You can read anything I write at anti-hate.ca. And we do just general reporting on far-right extremism in Canada, as well as infiltration. Your podcast. Oh, and I also host a podcast called The Unusual Show. Yeah, if you want to keep up to date on extremism in Canada, their group is probably the best one around right now, in my opinion. Absolutely the largest. Yeah, the largest.

And you do very good work. You keep your eye on my home country where my family lives. So thank you for that. And I'm very happy to be talking with you guys in the beautiful woods where we have no cell service. We can't post. And that's good. And we're going to continue doing that and stop using this microphone. So goodbye.

Yeah. And terrorism. That's the podcast. Yeah, and Terrorism Bad, the podcast. With that, that wraps up the Terrorism Roundtable forest discussion episodes. Thanks for listening to all of us rant about our specific weird niche focuses and hopefully trying to have it within the useful context of climate change. You can follow me at Hungry Bowtie. You can follow the podcast Happen Here Pod and Cool Zone Media on Twitter and I believe Instagram.

You can follow some of the researchers I interviewed on their podcast at Terrorism Bad. So that wraps up this discussion. Thanks for listening. See you later in the podcasting verse, the pod verse. Okay, goodbye. out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking music,

los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.