It Could Happen Here - The Trans Genocide Part 2: Hit Them Where It Hurts

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

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Maybe platforms like Spotify, YouTube, other podcast hosting platforms that I am somehow forgetting the name of, but perhaps they shouldn't be hosting all of this Daily Wire content that is explicitly calling for genocide. Yeah, as we host it. Anyway, I think it is interesting what the Daily Wire is trying to do here, because they obviously saw What Is A Woman, the documentary, the quote unquote documentary by Matt Walsh last year, get incredible traction online and boost their subscription service. So now they're doubling down on this because this is how they're going to try to make content. And they are trying out as many rhetorical styles and arguments as possible just to see

what sticks. Like, it really feels like they're just doing the shotgun method of throwing every single possible reason that trans people are icky up against the wall and seeing which one catches on. They're doing a ban on transgenderism entirely. What is a woman? Groomers. They can't be genocided because they don't exist. Attacking transgenderism as a cover for trans people right so it's all these all these various various tactics all these different rhetorical strategies calling them demonic it's it's it's it's very much trying to be like if we if we if we throw up as much stuff as possible attacking and demonizing trans people some of these trends will catch on online right some of these will will catch on online, right? Some of these will catch on, will be spread to legislators.

Eventually something will stick. And that is very much the tactic that they are trying to use. And I think this is a point I wanted to make last episode, but I think it's still, it's useful to hear now, kind of in retrospect.

Everything, all of the like extremism that you heard in the last episode, all of these like very, very fascist talking points. This is what conservatism is now, right? Like this is the mainstream new right. Sure, you can call it fascist because by definition it is. But sometimes that term, fascist or fascism, it carries with it this false sense of foreignness. It has like this displacement in time, right?

Most people view fascism as something that happens elsewhere or something that happened in the past. By just referring to this stuff as fascist, it creates a distance in people's minds, this exotic improbability. But this stuff is like the mainstream conservative platform that the up and coming leaders of the conservative movement are trying to normalize. This was like the main talking point at CPAC, which is like the biggest conservative convention in the entire country. This stuff is what the conservative platform is now. And I think it is just as important to emphasize that this is what the modern conservative mainstream is. And it is just as important to say that as it is to tie it and tie this rhetoric to the history of fascism, because the Overton window is certainly

accelerating, right? Like this thing can both be heavily steeped in the history of fascist rhetoric and also be like the new up and coming version of the conservative right that the Daily Wire and its allies are trying to normalize. And I just think that that is something that I am trying to focus on a little bit more when I'm doing my writing and my research in these topics, is that we often will use terms like fascist because these things are pretty fascist. And I want to make sure that doesn't create this false distance in people's minds when they think about these bills and when they think about this rhetoric. Yeah. And I think the way in which this is simply what the modern right is demands a different kind of response than a lot of what we've been seeing so far.

Yeah. You can't simply try to catch them in their contradictions. You can't simply catch them in their hypocrisy. Every tactic that liberals tried to use against Trump in the lead up to his election, and even Republicans tried to use, those tactics aren't going to be successful here because they weren't successful back then.

You can't outthink them in that way. Well, but the reason that you, when you call out, say, the governor of Tennessee or lieutenant governor or whatever of Tennessee for about his hypocrisy and how he dressed in drag and stuff, it's not that – the thing that that does to defend it a little bit to that calling out is it doesn't make his supporters – it doesn't change his mind. It doesn't expose him as a hypocrite to his base. But it does expose him as a hypocrite to his enemies. And I think it is worth understanding that are – the people who have declared us their enemies. And I think it is worth understanding that are the people who have declared us their

enemies. It's worth understanding that they are not like morally consistent actors. You know, it is worth understanding that they don't believe the things they are saying. A lot of their base does. But so I actually do think that there is a point, all of the shit talk on Trump or whatever, I think might be part of how Trump didn't get elected again is because he as he got more and more defensive he looked more and more ridiculous not to his base but to uh to the middle which is basically the democrats at this point yeah it was able to recruit like a growing moderate oppositional force which was what beat trump trump was not beaten because people liked biden he was beaten because they didn't like trump and i think you are you are right in

having that be that is a point to focus on um i think it's it's important to to mention that like fascists do not believe in the absurdity of what they say um it is that that is not necessary to maintain fascism. And I think I think so. The position that we're at right now is a very, very strange one for the left, which is that we are in a position where. You know, when the Republicans tried to run on this shit in in in 2022, they got destroyed. Right. This is this doesn't actually have mass popularity. This is what I wanted to talk about next. I have, this is the very last section

I have written is on this topic because yeah, this off-putting focus on like genocide and like the culture war stuff seemed to hurt conservatives in the last election cycle. Yeah, really badly. And yet again, they are still doubling down on it.

Voters in some swing states were turned off by the focus on the regression of queer rights instead of actually addressing material conditions. This strategy, though, is a core concept of the fascist project, right? Instead of addressing material conditions under capitalism to improve people's lives, right-wing populists will conjure up this culture war boogeyman to blame all of society's problems on and to talk about the social war

that is contributing to degeneracy. I also think that they're winning, unfortunately. Not winning in a broader sense, but in terms of yes, this is a very unpopular issue that they're doubling down on but i think that um you know i've i've seen studies where like a higher percentage of the u.s population supports anti-trans stuff than did two years ago it's still a minority thing to hate trans people but it is a growing minority. Yes, which is why we're talking about how in

a lot of ways it's easier to be trans in 2015 than it is now. And kind of on that point, I'm going to play the very final clip of Michael Knowles. We will never have to hear his voice again, hopefully. His annoying little voice. But I'm going to play a bit of a longer clip from him. And this is from his initial like ban transgenderism entirely rant. And I'm only going to play this because he actually makes a point that we ourselves have made before when discussing this topic. The conservative right is desperately trying to play catch up, right? Us who believe in like liberation and freedom have been winning historically, and the right's getting very scared and desperate. So in response,

they're introducing all of these bills, right? And they're accelerating this types of eliminationist rhetoric. But in this clip, Michael Knowles provides us with our pathway to victory. We cannot simply hold our ground on these issues. We have to keep pushing forward because as long as we keep going forward and get on the offense, the right will be stuck playing a catch up forever. You're either on offense or you're on defense. You're either making gains in the culture or you're losing ground in the culture. There's no standing still. There's no status quo. There's no neutrality. And what the conservatives have screwed up on for at least 50 years now, probably more, is the libs make some crazy aggressive play and then we try to dial it back by about 5-10%. Or worse, we try to slow it down by about 5-10%. So the libs attack the family through feminism, the fundamental political institution.

They claim that men and women are basically the same. That takes the culture pretty far to the left, and then conservatives try to inch it back a little bit, but by the time they're even thinking about inching it back, the libs push forward with the normalization of other sexual practices. They agree with his position so far, yeah. And then, oop, by the time the conservatives are trying to dial that back, the libs, they've lurched much further to the left. They're trying to redefine marriage now. They say, redefine marriage? Well, I don't know. I guess we could come to some kind of terms with

a civil union, and by the time you say that, who that, they've lurched even further to the left. Now they're saying, actually, we've got transgenderism. Actually, now a man can become a woman. A man can become a woman. OK, but but maybe we shouldn't do it to my by the time we say that. Oh, my gosh. We're now we're all the way off the screen because now they're trying to trans the kids. And there are many conservatives now who are saying, look, if you want if you're a man and you want to put on a dress that's fine but just don't do it to children just don't make me pay for it no that is such an interesting little clip no i i mean it's funny because this is like kind of this is what i've been saying for a long time since about 2015 or so like looking at the rise all this shit and you know trump and all that is that we were winning culturally i hate

the word culture war now means something different it means arguing about guns or whatever um but like we were winning on a cultural front very dramatically um and like i would point to steven universe as the evidence that we are winning yes um know, and then they basically had to play to their strengths. And he's talking about, he's like, look, it's funny that so much of this is happening on a cultural front because it is not a conservative strength.

They, they have some cards in their hand when it comes to cultural stuff, you know, the anti-modernity stuff when it does weird anti-Semitic, you know, almost anti-capitalism or whatever. That like a strong card they like pulling out all the time but conservatives overall are not very good at the cultural thing what they're good at is politics and violence um and so they're playing to their immediate strengths as hard and fast as they can because they're on their back foot yeah no they are they, they are defaulting to advocating physical violence

and enforcing their worldview with violence and doing stuff on the political legislative front because they've realized just screaming about trans people isn't enough. They have to actually start dedicating millions and millions and millions of dollars to pushing these through state legislative cycles, which is why The Daily Wire

has spent the past month and a half harping on this so hard as the legislative cycle for 2023 is starting to ramp up. Yeah, and I think there's another thing here, which is the sort of fundamental disparity. The fact that they've chosen this front, right? There's a fundamental disparity in what they have to do versus what we have to do right

and and this this this is a giant sort of shift in a way that i don't think has we don't i don't think the left really has much experience with right which is like the thing that is happening in the u.s right now is that we are the silent majority like this this is true when when like consistently over and over again when you when you look at polling on these issues right like just regular people are like what the fuck are you guys doing right the problem is that you know we haven't those people haven't been mobilized and you know it doesn't matter if you're a majority as long as these sort of like you know because because again like who who the actual majority is in the u.s or like who actually what what actual regular people

believe has very very little impact on the kinds of policies that are that are that are sort of enacted but you know but there's a second sort of issue here right which is the conservatives have like because of the fact that we are right now the sort of silent majority, that we have a kind of – I guess the Gromstein thing would be like hegemony. But we have an advantage in just how average people behave. They have to kill us. They have to fucking kill us. They have to make it illegal for us to exist. And they could do this.

There is a real possibility that they can win right they they are winning on this rent right now this is this is what they are you know in the places where they have power this is what they are doing all we really have to do is survive because if if we survive and we're able to stop them you know i mean even if we don't get sort of like argentina style like we're gonna have like hiring mandates for trans people right like even if we just hold the ground that we already have we will win inevitably right like the the the the the the the sort of march of of where of where the culture has been going will favor us trans people will be able to sort of exist in public trans people will be able to survive unless they

kill us right now and that's that's that's sort of that's the sort of the key thing that that knows has realized right is that this is the critical moments where either we win and we in trans people get to continue our lives or they kill us i would argue that it's not just kill us i think that even though we're listening to all this exterminationist rhetoric, I think that the odds are that most of these people don't actually envision a future where they're like rounding us up and putting us in camps and gassing us. I think that overall it's a drive back into the closet. I actually take them at their word that they want to destroy transgenderism.

And if transgender people have to die along the way that's on us but if we you know put on appropriate clothing and shut the fuck up like i actually think that that would suit them just fine and so i actually do think they have to kill transgenderism i think that's true now but i i i don't know how true that is as they keep actually having to implement their they don't think being trans actually exists though right like they they think it just is people doing these things so as long as trans people are are able to for one maybe even not even realize they're trans to like repress that and just live their lives as if they were a cis person that that that is all that that that's what conservatives think trans people already are and i think that that is a large that is a large large part of it is making us just not

able to be trans in public life at all in any capacity i i think that's true but i i don't i don't think they can i i don't think their political path allows them to maintain that position like i i don't i don't think they can, like, you know, one of the things that's happening with the right right now is they're doing this feedback loop, right? Where they get, you know, like, where they're sort of media people, right? Are continuously radicalized by their base and their base radicalizes them back. And I don't think they can maintain an equilibrium position that doesn't involve, like, we have to hunt all these people down to make sure they don't go after our kids like i i you know i don't i don't think they're gonna i don't think they're doing that now i don't think they're even planning that now but it's it's i don't know how they can keep up this cycle without eventually getting to something like that well

it's worth it's worth being prepared for that type of possibility but the kind of thing that i feel like really strongly about with all of this is to like, really not like the sky is falling, but it's not falling the way that we sometimes say it is. And, and when we say the sky is falling in a way that people look around, they're like, I just know how the sky is falling to me. Then people get like, well, actually, I think you all are being hyperbolic, right? And, and so I think that we do need to be really clear that they are open to the possibility of mass murder in us. And they are actively discussing individual acts of violence being very justified against us.

But currently, I believe the thing that they are trying to do is eradicate the concept of being trans as a thing you can do in American society. Um, and of course, like there's a lot of people who believe in death before detransition and all fucking power to, I don't even know where I fall in all this shit. I'm not trying to, I literally don't want to opine about it cause I don't want to give anyone, I don't want to tell anyone what to do about that shit. Right. Everyone makes their own decisions about closeting, not closeting based on their own positions, you know? Um, but I think we do have to be like careful about it. And I think one of the reasons is because from my point of view, um, they have picked trans people, not because they

care so much about us, but because we're a wedge issue. You know, we saw this in like, actually, I don't want to name them because I don't want to get whatever, like different large coalitions of LGBT people were perfectly willing to drop the T 20 years ago. If in order to get certain like equal rights shit passed, they just like straight up like trans people did all this fucking work organizing for this shit. As soon as it got to like higher up level in the government, they were like, oh, trans people,

that's gonna be a problem. We're gonna take them off of there, right? And, you know, and because we are a wedge issue and we always have been, and I think the Nazis use this in a very similar way. But even within us, there's trans, sorry, there's wedge issues within that. And so sports was the first wedge issue. I actually believe, I was reading this earlier, but I wasn't reading it for this, so I didn't take notes.

I believe that the majority of Americans do not believe that trans people should be able to compete in high school sports based on their preferred gender. I'm under the impression that that is a minority position to be trans supportive of trans athletes in school. And so that is the wedge issue that they used to open up this divide in order to then come at us. But we're still just a wedge issue. And one of the reasons I think it's so important for people to understand us as a wedge issue is so that people understand like really clearly that they are not fucking stopping with us. Um, you know, this is like absolutely about like, you can hear it in that guy talking like, cause one of the other things he's talking

about is he's talking about like women need to get back in the kitchen and be obedient to their husbands and shit. And one of the reasons that trans people scare them so much is because we like, like, it's so funny. Cause like a large, by and large, like trans men are left out of this discussion and trans women are seeing

these like evil monsters or whatever. Right. But trans men are absolutely part of it because it's massive, massive threat. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's stealing women from them. It is stealing their fucking wives that they want to

have they want to fucking own women and like so they can't handle the idea of anyway whatever i'm not a lot of a lot of the things they get so mad about is when they see a young trans guy on tiktok and they like look sorry this is going to be like gross but like look at this potentially beautiful woman who's now been ruined like Like, which is horrible, horrible, horrible. It saves the titties. Right. But that is, we have so many grown men like thirsting over 14 year old, like AFAB people who are, who are deciding that, Hey, maybe I want to start HRT. Maybe I want to use different pronouns. Maybe I want to have a binder and this, they get so, so mad at that. And I think a big part of not, not simply, I think, I think it is truly not enough just to hold our ground.

We have to keep going forward. And a big part of that is having more intersectionality with transmasculine people. A big part of that is having a much, much more of a focus on gender, not nonconforming people and non-binary people. Because we have, we have to keep pushing it forward. We cannot simply hold our ground on this. Because if we simply hold our ground, they can pull out the rug from under us.

And I think that is a massive part of this. And I think, I do believe that we will win. I fundamentally do. Because if you look at the rates of which young people, Zoomers, and even the generation younger than Zoomers, I do not know what they're called. But if you look at the amount of us who self-identify as non-binary, trans, or gender non-conforming, it is so much bigger than any previous generation. Once people experience a form of freedom, it is hard to take that freedom

away. There are so many people who are entering their teens and are realizing they can be so much more free and they don't need to be limited to these weird draconian, like dualistic notions of gender. And that's amazing. If you look at a whole new wave of like actors and actresses and people in the entertainment industry almost all of our non-binary like the person who plays ellie in the in the the last of us is trans um oh really i i believe they identify as trans uh non-binary or some form of of genderqueer but this is like play ellie like that too anyway i just like this no absolutely but this is something that keeps happening we are going to win this because there's so many of us.

And we know that it rules to exist like this. And we're not going to let them take it away. And I think that is a big part of not only standing our ground, but continuing to move forward with the confidence that we will win in the long run. Yeah. And I think that we can, and I think that like a lot of the stuff, including myself, right. Um, I I'm famously armed. I'm someone who, you know, believes in, in self-defense and, um, in all of these things. Right. Um, but I think that we always need to like

focus on our strengths when it comes to being, especially on the offense. Right. And so when I think about like strategizing, how do we win the stuff that you're talking about, about staying on the offensive makes so much sense. And I think that, uh, to misquote the art of war, you attack your enemy where they are weak and you are strong, you know? Um, and so like, and they are weak at cultural creation. And I don't mean culture wars and culture war issues. Like art and creativity. Yeah. And so like we win because we say, because our ideas are good.

And when we express them, people are like, oh, that sounds sick. I want to be free. Right. Yeah. Now, at the same time, we need to shore up our weaknesses. And I think our weaknesses at the moment are we need to shore up our weaknesses and i think our weaknesses at the moment are in the political sphere which we're at a on a back we're on the back foot right now because of all the i i guess i don't track this stuff as much but like all the judges and shit

that got put in under trump and we are also not at our strongest I'm not trying to like call us weak here, but like far fewer of us are like weird gun nuts and like militant strategy protectee type people. And we've seen us shoring up that weakness and that rules. But I think it's always important, maybe not always, maybe there would be a time when this would shift, but overall, I don't think that's our strength. That's not where we go on the offense.

That is where we stay like protecting ourselves. Yes. Um, and no, I like defense, like drag defense, great defense that has defense in the name. Exactly.

It is crucially important. Exactly. It, it also terrifies the fascist right. The fact that a 140 pound twink can carry an AR and defend a drag show terrifies fascists.

It utterly destroys their brains. Force equalization is a hell of a thing. Sorry, buddy. The trigger pull is two and a half pounds. Yeah, you know what else is a force equalizer? Swords? The force of advertising.

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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.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian.

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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. And pole arms. As long as we don't have an ad for Rabbit Air, who has an office in Pasadena, California, I'm fine.

So I think if you've listened to the show a lot, one of the sort of sub themes of a lot of the writing that I do is thinking about what we owe the dead. And on the face of it, it's a sort of nonsensical question, right? You can't have any kind of reciprocal relationship with someone who's dead because, well, you know, they're dead. And this question, this question of what we owe the dead is a question board of grief, of a kind of sort of raw and immaculate anguish that comes to the memory of people who are like you in every way except that you're here and they're not. And this was written, you know, this was written several weeks ago. The people this was written for aren't even the same people that, you know, that, that, that, like that, that is for now. Right.

The question in some sense becomes what do we owe the people who have died and were thus denied to live the denied the chance to live the lives that we do you know what what do we owe them what do we owe these people that we failed to keep alive and this has an answer this has this has a very very definite political answer we owe them the destruction of the world that killed them we owe them a future that we owe them the future that they should have had and we owe them we we owe them a world where they never take another one of this another one of us again the world is already fucking burning it is time to start the counterfire now one of one of the things that you that you will hear a lot and this this is this has been this has been one of the sort of dominant responses

for better or for worse from how people are thinking about these laws is that these laws you know these anti-trans laws are unconstitutional and that does not matter that does not matter for shit right like oh our old friend the constitution ha ha ha. Like, I just, I need everyone to understand that the ability of the Supreme Court to strike down a law is not in the Constitution. None of this shit matters. They're making all of it up. The only thing that actually matters is power. And to understand why the law is about power and, you know, and why legality is not actually a tool that we can rely on. I want to,

I want to tell the story. I'm not sure if I've told this story on, on, on this, on this podcast before, but I want to tell the story of the worst mistake I ever made as an activist. So the year is 2017.

Donald Trump's executive order one, three, seven, six, nine, locally known as the muslim ban has prevented people from iran iraq although they drop a rock later libya somalia sudan syria and yemen from entering the country now almost immediately after the muslim ban is announced um

there is a spontaneous wave of airport occupations that sweeps the country. And these protests have two goals. Their immediate goal is to free the people who have been taken captive by immigration authorities before they can be deported. And the second goal is to end the Muslim ban more broadly. This was actually my – this was my first IRL direct action. I remember I was in this train car on the blue line to o'hare which is our our airport in chicago and you know i'm on this train and it's packed and everyone is completely silent and you know everyone thinks people are going to get off and as as we get to

this airport we realize that the entire train is completely full of protesters like everyone on this protester and it goes on and on and on. And we get off the train, right? And we're walking through the airport. And the way this airport is structured is there's like this overpass that you walk over where you can see the trains coming in. And every single train is full of protesters.

And the trains keep coming and they keep coming and they keep coming. And every time a train shows up, everyone starts cheering. And it is starts cheering it is like it is you know like one of the most amazing things i've ever been a part of and you know and we we start moving and there are just you know this is a fucking this is an airport right like this is one of the most heavily policed places in the world there are not enough cops to stop us

and you know they make this one token attempt to try to clear us and they can't do it and they make this one token attempt to try to clear us, and they can't do it, and they pull back. And now we are holding the airport. And we do it. We beat them. We win. The airport releases the detainees. They've been negotiating with the ACLU. The ACLU have been trying to get them released.

And the person from the ACLU comes on the mic and announces that they've released everyone, and everyone cheers. And then the ACLU person on the mic and announced that they've, they've released everyone and everyone cheers. And then, and then the person on the, on the ACLU person on the mic says they're going to beat the Muslim band in court. And everyone goes home. It takes a few hours,

but by the end of it, everyone goes home. And here's the thing. The ACLU several years later, lost that case at the Supreme court. The Muslim band continued the entire fucking Trump administration. It wasn't repealed until Biden took office. We could have stopped it there.

We held that fucking airport. Airports across the country in dozens and dozens of states were being held by protesters. And we could have stopped them. But we didn't. And we didn't because we trusted the courts, right? We went home, we trusted the ACLU and they lost because again, the law is not about the law. The law is about power and millions of people suffer the consequences of that. And this is what's going to happen if we leave this fight to the courts. going to happen if we if we leave this fight to the courts either either we actually sort of like stand up and actually fight not in the courtroom but in the streets in schools in salons and shop

floors in the places where we have power or we are going to die that is my intro to this which is that we cannot we literally like if we try to leave this to what the people who have been acting right now right if we leave this to electoral, if we leave this to sort of legal institutions, and if we purely fight self-defense battles, we are going to lose. So the question from there is how do we hit them back? And the thing that I specifically wanted to talk about first is I wanted to talk about this thing called power mapping. about this thing called power mapping now okay i the moment you the moment you say the word map around leftists people immediately start talking about how the map is not the terrain and that's true true it is true it is true the map is not the terrain they're different things don't yeah but both are useful yeah like you still want a map when you're hiking even though it's not

actually the terrain smash the maps smash the maps walk situation is practice walk around the city without a map mess up the maps sabotage the maps yeah don't walk through the forest without a fucking map the forest is dispassionate and cruel and will kill you so all right so what is power mapping so there there is a normal version there is a version of this that gets you know it's it's part of sort of like what i guess you would call like the liberal version of organizer training 101 which is this like pure ngo thing which is you know i guess you could you could argue it's from like a lyn like from Sala Linsky or whatever the fuck. And this version about it is – this version is about finding and pressuring quote-unquote stakeholders.

This is almost completely useless to us. It's largely politically bankrupt, and tactically it is simply not going to work, right? Like there is some value in mapping out which specific like legislators and which specific governors are going to like sign bills right yeah but like okay ngo style pressure campaigns are not going to stop this this is simply not going to work um and the strategies that people have been employing to sort of stop this right which is you know relying on our suffering and our pain and relying on medical expertise that that doesn't work. It simply does not sway them. It lacks a diversity of tactics. Yeah, the only language people understand is power. So, okay, having said all this,

we can strategically use other groups like NGOs or sympathetic lawmakers to do their own pressure campaigns, but that is not what I'm talking about here. We can leave those people in their terrain. They're paid to do it. don't get sucked up into it but you know and i will say like okay sometimes very strategically right like you can you you can show up to people's events and embarrass them because you know who they are and what they're doing and then that that that can be useful sometimes like i i you know social shame can be can be a useful tactic sometimes yeah like

i i know i know people who've done union campaigns where like things have turned around when they like showed up to like some ngo person's fundraiser and they're like hey you guys aren't paying us and they're like everyone was like oh my god but you know what what what are we what are we actually doing here and what what what what what I'm specifically talking about is power mapping in the context of direct action and in the context of sort of offensive direct action. And when you're thinking about power mapping here, there's two kinds of mappings that are useful. One is physical mapping. And this is something that people don't do enough. I don't know why they don't do this more. People don't do enough. I don't know why they don't do this more. But for example, one of the things that made the Hong Kong protest work is that Hong Kong had really, really detailed maps, right? They had apps for this that were very, very detailed maps of Hong Kong city streets. They would map where the police were. They would map where the police were moving to. They would map where protesters were. And, you know, obviously there are sort of security and tactical considerations to this. But if we know the terrain better than the police do, we can do a lot of things. This is something that people are successfully employing in the city of Atlanta.

Yep, yep. And this is a thing where we actually do have a legitimate advantage in in in large cities which is that like the the cops who are in large cities are not from like those those cities right you know and i think i think we squander this advantage a lot by just like like in fucking chicago there's this one plaza right like pretty close to trump tower where every single protest starts. And that's like it's in the middle of fucking downtown. So I guess people sort of know the way around there. But like I fuck nobody like nobody lives there who doesn't make like fucking seven hundred thousand dollars a year.

Right. Like you're kind of squandering whatever tactical advantage you have. And also, you know, and another sort of another reason to do mapping and stuff is, is so, you know, you can, you can plan things out ahead of time, right? You can plan out where your lines of retreat are.

You can figure out where choke points are. So you don't get kettled a thing that like, I swear to God, no one who arranges a protest in the U S fucking ever does. Like, I mean, I know some people do it, but like Jesus Christ,

you can figure out on a map where you're going to get kettled. You can do this. And you can do other things, too, with maps. You can figure out where the locations are of infrastructure that is particularly vulnerable. You can figure out what

roads will cause the maximum amount of economic damage if you shut them down. You can figure out what roads will cause the maximum amount of sort of economic damage if you shut them down. You can figure out things like, can you lure the police into places where they can't use their numbers very well, right? Can you spread them out over a hundred different areas

and neutralize their effectiveness? And these are the kind of terms that we need to be thinking about when we're physically mapping and physically trying to understand an area, which is that we need to be thinking in very direct tactical terms we need to figure out what kind of places you know and this also this also works defensively right we need to be figuring out you know okay so we we have a drag show that's under attack right we need we need

to figure out what kinds of places these people are attacking we need to figure out how we can defend them and we need to be thinking again in not not just like showing up to a place and being like okay we're hearing these people are across the street right like before that happens and like before a protest starts before an action starts there needs to be like work put in to make sure that what we're that the actions that we're doing are effective are as effective as possible so that that's that yeah that that that that that that's that's one part of this kind of mapping stuff you know if if you if you want more sort of inspiration for this stuff there's a bunch of uh oh my god i'm now forgetting the name of every book i probably should have actually written the books in here but they're

there that you can some of the some of the italian autonomous will talk about this stuff and they have all of these like really wild sort of tactical stuff about like things you could do in a city like you can mess up stop lights you can like i don't know like they they they did a lot of stuff with like moving signs around there's a lot of very weird things yeah in a city that you can do that we don't think about because we've limited our tactical arsenal to like people show up at a place and yell yes stand stand outside of a building and yell at a building end of protest yeah and that that doesn't work like we need to have tactics that are sort of like that are beyond that i i guess i guess part of the reason that i'm i'm i'm starting here is that i i want people to like literally go back very much to square one of thinking about

what our response needs to be before we start moving because you know like and i'm i'm not this this this is not a sort of criticism of the people who've been doing drag defense like they've been doing a great job right but our standard protest arsenal is not enough it has not been working and we need to reevaluate what we're doing. It needs to expand and we need to see a better understanding of what diversity of tactics means. I also think that on this particular issue, until fairly recently, our primary threat vector was non-state actors threatening physical violence. And so the community defense model is actually a very effective response to

that threat and has been incredibly effective on numerous times. Now that we are looking at the threat coming from the state in terms of legislative act, legislative action and all that stuff, it does open up a lot more tactical possibility, like what you're talking about. And that's cool and people should realize that yeah no i think you're right we should go back and look from the ground up and like come to new conclusions new ideas and i think i think the the the other thing of of going back

to sort of like basics right is going going back to the kinds of thing of going back to sort of like basics, right, is going back to the kinds of – going back to changing how we think about the world around us so that we can actually – so that we can more effectively take action. The other kind of thing that we need to do is social mapping. It's figuring out the resources that we have, the resources that they have, where they are, how they function. And this is something that, Margaret, you've talked about in your thread about this, which is very good. Yeah, but one of the things that we need to figure out very quickly is what skills do we have and what resources do we have? And this expands into a lot of different sort of fields, right? Some of this is sort of territorial, right? It's about thinking about physically what spaces are safe for us and which ones aren't, and how can we sort of leverage the spaces that we have that are safe and you know maneuver in the ones

that aren't how is this changing there's also something that i i i want to sort of think about here which is this old is this old tradition do you do you know what workers inquiry is i don't know okay so this is this is a very old marxist tradition um it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people like marx was attempting so the origin of this is marxist tradition um it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people like marx was attempting so the origin of this is marx was trying to like send out surveys to like workers to figure out what their conditions were and people over time took this into more interesting directions of you know but it turns into a kind of like like a worker's ethnography of you know workers sitting down and writing or doing

interviews about just literally like what their workday is like, what the sort of like labor processes they're involved in are, how does that work? Like how do their bosses work? How are they being managed? How are they resisting them? And there are other things you can sort of use this for that are very useful to us, which is, for example, figuring out things like what does your local economy depend on? What are the sort of important logistics lines in that local economy? Who is physically doing the labor that the economy depends on?

Who is doing the care labor? Because that's another side of this that gets sort of brushed over a lot. But for example, this is a large part of why teachers are enormously powerful because teachers are doing a shit ton of care labor that is necessary for the entire economy to function but isn't really seen that way right and you know and and you you you can ask other questions like you know what what like literally what are the physical conditions under which you and the people around you are working a lot of this stuff's come to you like person who works a job right um there there is an advantage that we have as people who do this stuff which is that we we will understand the terrain of our own workplaces better than the people who are sitting stuff which is that we we will understand the terrain of our own workplaces better than the people who are sitting at the at the top of the power structure because we're on the bottom of it right the people who are above us and this is another thing that that's important about this kind of transphobia is that it's it's very much an elite thing i speak this

is i think especially noticeable in the uk where like you can literally track who is going to be a turf by like what kind of like elite schools they're going to. Okay. But like literally like if someone goes to like, you know, it's like who goes to eat and write like this is, this is the thing is tracks who the ruling class is and who, and who is a turf and who's not going to be a turf. Right. And then, but this is, this is also true in the U S where like, I mean, again, if you look at the media people who are pushing this, it's a bunch of people sitting on like an unbelievable amount of trust fund money and getting a bunch of sort of right-wing billionaire money yes my experience has been that since trump's election the random folks around me have become

substantially less favorable towards me um and i think anti-trans stuff is is popular across class but i don't know i think that's i think that's true but i don't think it matters that much because like like the the ordinary person in your neighborhood who has become transphobic isn't the person who has the capacity to get these laws passed okay that's fair and and the things that they know are not the things that the actual people running these campaigns know yeah okay and and that that that i think is what is sort of important about this is that like legislatures right or like you know the the the the the people who are funding who are funding these campaigns the people who donate to these

who donate literally literally donate to sort of political campaigns right these people do not understand what our jobs are they don't understand what we do they don't understand how the economy works very well what the the version of reality that they can see is is a sort of bureaucratic image of it produced by their subordinates and you know that there's a real problem with that which is that a lot of the time right the more powerful a person is the more likely it is that the version of reality that they're getting is the version of reality that is just being told to them by the people by the people below them and you know and this this means that like the

the the more powerful the people we're dealing with the less capacity they actually have to understand is this is true even with for organizations that have like an enormous amount of raw intelligence that you know they their sort of spy and surveillance networks have assembled, right? They have all this information, but they don't understand it, and they're sort of buried in trying to – like trying and often failing to sort through all of the information that they have. Yeah, and they try and map it to their worldview. It's how you always end up with like we found the like i have a friend who was investigated as the leader of international anarchism and it took them a really really long time before they were like i don't think that's a thing

yeah well it's like they don't they don't understand how our networks work very well because yeah yeah they have stuff like that but but this is also true especially like on the level of the workplace right um there is a bunch of stuff that we know that cannot be replicated by the people that's on the top of the org chart and a lot of that stuff has to do with we know how to make things stop working in ways that they don't okay and and that that is that that that is very sort of useful information to have because if you know how something works you can make it stop working and and this is this is the sort of uh you know this is a lot of what the marxist tradition sort of was right it was an attempt to understand like what workers are doing the distinction i would make is they they were

trying to figure out what workers are doing because they were trying to figure out how capitalism works and i don't care about that enormously like that that's that's that's not a thing that actually sort of like i don't know whatever i don't care about whatever esoteric value debates they were having the decision i would make here is that you know the marxist version of this has this tendency to collapse knowledge production into just like incredibly bitter and minute debates about marxism we are not trying to do that the thing we are trying to do with our version of this is stop a genocide right our version of inquiry means attack and and when i say when i'm talking about this kind of stuff right i'm talking about like you and like finding the other people in your

workplace who are supportive of this stuff and you know i mean literally just on like a very very basic level and this is something that you get in union organizing right it's like just figuring out what the fuck they do because like management doesn't know what you do right like i i i have i i have worked in a lot of of of, of places. I have talked to managers a lot. They have no fucking idea what, what anyone is actually doing. And if, if you, if you can build up and this is, this is, you know, this is all going, this is all kind of abstract, but if, if, if you can figure out how your workplace works and you can figure out how the workplaces of the people around you work and how, how the workplaces of the people around you work and

how how the workplaces that like actually genuinely matter to the people who are doing this stuff you suddenly have you suddenly have leverage that you know that you know a sort of like traditional like protest thing doesn't and this means uh for better or for worse trying to get unions involved um there are upsides and downsides here the downside is that there just aren't that many unions and there aren't that many people in unions i also just have like a middling faith in them yeah they're not working on it i mean yeah i mean some of them i'm sure good and and i i want to challenge all of them too and if they do i will eat my shoe whatever the saying is um so yeah i mean it's like they're not going to do unless they're forced to right well i mean depending on

the i think some unions do now i'm like suddenly 180 and i'm being like don't talk shit on unions like that i don't know. Whatever. Anyway, continue. Okay. So the thing, the part of the, the other reason that,

that I'm, I'm focusing specifically on unions and I'm specifically, I'm focusing a lot on workplace organizing stuff is that, okay. One of the inherent problems of trans organizing is that trans people are not a large enough minority to enter the most sort of like cynical, like numerically deterministic counts of who matters enough to support right like not not yet not yet right but as as of right now we're

like maybe two percent of the population now this will change it is it is growing if the zoomer numbers continue yeah we're gonna be we're gonna be quite quite the problem i remember marching with my my first boyfriend in this bash back march where we're chanting one in 10 is not enough. Recruit, recruit. And it's just funny because it's like, it works.

There's more of us now. Yeah. And trans are really good at recruiting LGBT because literally you cannot think I'm cute and be heterosexual. There's no way of making that happen. True. No, this is like legitimately one of the reasons that i figured out that i wasn't like a cishet straight dude was i was dating a non-binary person i was like shit okay so something's like it's um there are

places where trans people are like enormously overrepresented right and and and there are places where we exist in numbers enough that we actually statistically matter and unions are one of those places okay because the people the people who are organizing unions like trans people are so unbelievably fucking overrepresented in all of that stuff and this is this is as much true of i mean okay so this this is true really especially of any kind of sort of new unionism like particularly things like grad student unions right but it's also true of like like all all of the fucking service sector unions that are getting organized and this has been true for like 20 years all the people organizing that whether they realize it or not are trans and you know but this this means that we actually have

leverage there right because this this is a part of the economy where if we stop doing our job shit will actually fall apart right like you know actual sort of large-scale union campaigns like cannot work without us and that means that we we actually we have the ability to pressure them into doing shit in a way that's not necessarily true and i'm talking here like specifically about like you the listener who is trans which is like statistically statistically like you the listener is not trans if you are congratulations um if you're not i I also suspect they are slightly overrepresented in our listener base. Still probably not a majority.

Yes. I guess I also want to say that it's funny because the way to define cis allyship is literally if you're willing to call yourself cis. Because it's not actually a slur. It's just a description. It's just

the not trans word. And it's just a description it's just a you know like the the not trans word right and it's not bad at all yeah um and now that that's a battleground word it's like pronouns and profile or whatever you know it's like it's actually fairly easy to um make it clear where you stand on this kind of issue um and i i will say i mean obviously trans people do a lot of this organizing but i think that we have a lot an awful lot of cis people with us and so you the cis listener we also fucking love and respect you because if you've made it into an hour of us talking about how much this matters it clearly matters to you too you know yeah this is probably hour like three or whatever the fuck and both episodes and soon you won't be allowed to wear pants if you're afab so you know it's this is gonna hit everyone yeah yeah and i think you know all of the stuff

that i've been saying right about you know like another part of this also is is literally just like a thing that you can do that is organizing that will help in this stuff is literally just talking to your friends yeah and being like hey here's my eight friends or whatever here are things how do you feel about this you know and then and then try and then you know using using this kind of stuff using this kind of mapping stuff and you know using using what you can learn about how you know this this this this part of it has been kind of abstract but i i i i think intentionally so it's like we we are we are in a place where we need to very rapidly build up capacity for a kind of movements that can actually do things and i think this is this this is sort of like the planning phase for that yeah that tracks is yeah and but you know

like these these are things that are going to have to be created very quickly these we are going to have to very quickly figure out you know what what what levers can be like pushed right and one of the things about like the the the the first bathroom bill in north Carolina, right? It didn't get repealed, but it got like amended to be slightly less bad. Yeah. And it got amended to be slightly less bad because the state very quickly ran into trouble with a bunch of corporations who were like, you know, because in the initial push that they were like,

we're like, okay, we're going to pull out of events in this state. We're going to pull out of like backing your giant, like we're going to pull out of having our giant like fucking sports tournaments here. We're going to pull out of like backing your giant like we're gonna pull out of having our giant like fucking sports tournaments here we're gonna pull out of like advertising for like retail stuff and that and that got them to sort of like run away very very quickly right and that's been the one big thing they've been actually scared of and i think this is part of why they've been pushing the sort of like woke corporation like anti-disney stuff so hard

is that like the kind of backlash that can very quickly get these people to flip is the kind of backlash that starts actually hurting. If these kinds of bills start hurting their bottom line, these a lot of these people will flip because a lot of a lot of even the legislators who are voting for this aren't as hard lined as the sort of like daily wire people. aren't as hard-lined as the sort of like daily wire people. And if their campaign funders are like, hey, you got to fucking turn this around so the economy can go back to normal. Like they will flip on this stuff. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, this stuff I was talking about is about things that you can do to begin to mount pressure campaigns and mountain direct actions i also wanted to talk about sort of like just survival network stuff because that also was going to be a part of this and yeah margaret you had a lot of very very good stuff in a thread that you wrote about this yeah i wrote a thread a week or so ago ago about all this stuff as I woke up and

doom scrolled for a while. And, you know, and I was just thinking a lot back on, on the organizing that I know people are doing and stuff like that and trying to put things together. And so some of this is kind of like tips, right.

And I want to say like, again, well, again, to the thread, not to something I've said here, I think that we need to focus on what unites us and not what divides us right now. I think that this is not a time for public-facing internal conflict. It is not a time for interpersonal conflict to be aired publicly. Not to say that interpersonal conflict doesn't matter. It does matter. We need to, you know, I believe mediation is actually one of the most important skills, actually, frankly, literally, if you're listening and you have any mediation skills, I think it is the thing that the revolution needs more than anything else off the top of my head. But overall, basically, there's something that MC Soul said. I don't know if it was on a podcast,

might have been Twitter a long time ago, and it's really stuck in my head, which is that we need to focus on, we need to deescalate all conflict that isn't with the enemy, which isn't to say that the conflict doesn't happen, is that we need to look how to deescalate it and bring it down in pressure, except when it's with the enemy, like with someone who's trying to murder all the trans people or someone who's like a white nationalist or whatever, right? We are not looking to deescalate that conflict. We are probably looking to escalate that conflict. We are looking to make it very clear the way in which we are not that person. But, um, and I, I'm as guilty of this as anyone else. I have a lot of pet peeves that people who listen to my show are very aware of.

Also, this fight will happen on multiple fronts using multiple tactics. There's this magical phrase, diversity of tactics, and we have to mean it. And diversity of tactics usually means like, kind of like, no, you should support my tactic. Like, especially if you're like, tactic is like riots or something, you know, you often say diversity of tactics. And what you really mean is like my shit rules and your shit sucks. We actually have to straight up mean it. We need to support the people who are focused in legislative action, even though it's not where we are strong. It is a place that is needs to be shored up. We need to focus. We need to support the people who focus on community defense. We need to focus. We need to support the people who are doing illegal things. We need to support the people who focus on community defense. We need to focus, we need to support the people who are doing illegal things. We need to support the people who are doing organizing in all kinds of

different ways. And if we build organizations that accept diversity of tactics and don't expect to have a sort of hegemony over the movement, we can create a very strong movement. Most of my personal infighting is with people who do want to have a Gemini over a movement. And so you get, I fall into this like trap where I'm like, how do we fucking anyway, whatever. Okay. Other things that people can do. If you are not visibly LGBT and you feel like it is safe to do so, or you feel like it is dangerous to do so. And you're willing to be a little bit fucking dangerous because we are in complicated fucking times. Be publicly clear that you support LGBT, complicated fucking times be publicly clear that you support lgbt lgtp whatever us and like the day that i wrote the queers yeah support the queers like the day that i wrote this i live in you know i live in west virginia i go to lowes and you know i'm having a bad day i'm like fuck i mean like

you know at what point is it going to be a crime for me to go to low's right and the like guy just the fucking metalhead guy who seemed kind of like super masculine metal guy tattoos and he had his fucking like trans ally support pin on and if we were in like a big major city it might have almost seemed like cringy because it said like ally or whatever on it right and I'm fucking over worrying about what's cringy. I'm like, no, thank you. I, I, I went up and I, I thanked him. Right. Because it like fucking helped my day. Um, and that kind of shit is going to matter because it is now actually a fairly dangerous thing in some places to be visibly, uh, in support of us. And I absolutely appreciate the people who are doing it. And another thing that we need to support, this is the kind of thing that you've

talked a little bit about is that, okay, we need to have support networks. We need to have networks that are protecting trans people, families that are leaving environments. There's so many families trans people, families that are leaving environments. There's so many families that want to leave these states where their child is no longer safe, will be forced to detransition, will not be allowed to transition. There are trans parents in Florida who might be at risk of losing their children, all of these things. People are going to want to move. We need to support people materially who are trying to move. And there will be organizations that are doing this. If they don't exist yet, you can start them. And if you wait for them to start, that's also sometimes okay. If your plate is full, you can support those organizations in a lot of different ways.

We can also support and not shame people who choose to live in red states. As a red state trans person, I think about this a lot like I'm not planning on moving, right? You know, it helps that I'm an adult, I'm like settled, whatever, like my mental health is strong, you know, but I'm not planning on going anywhere. And that's why we can't give up these spaces, right? I think that one of the things I kind of mentioned earlier, but is that like, we're not in normal times. We need to take this seriously. We also need to not assume that all of this is a foregone conclusion. Uh, we need to not assume that this will go down like Nazi Germany. However, we need to be aware that it might, and we need everyone. And this is not a trans people thing.

This isn't everyone thing. We need to think about what that actually means. You know, there's that cliche that is true right now. That is like, if you want to know what you have been doing in Germany in 1933, it's what you're doing right now. And like, that's true. This is a time for us to be the kind of person that we want to be. We are in dangerous and complicated times. And it is times that we need to be. We are in dangerous and complicated times, and it is times that we need to be brave and we need to be brave for each other. Bravery is not the absence of fear. Bravery is doing things despite fear. Bravery is the presence of courage, not the lack of awareness that things are scary and bad.

Yes. and bad um yes and that's kind of like my main thing is i want us to not panic right um to not assume that we're going to lose uh to realize that they are acting this way because they're on their back foot um this was always going to happen in the fact that in a way we kind of started this fight by like existing and like coming out of the closet and shit but we basically were like no we're allowed to be here and most people were like yeah okay i guess that tracks i guess you're allowed to be here and then some small portion were like these are demons from hell sent to rip the tits off of the children i'd like to marry the freaks like matt walsh are the ones who

declared a quote-unquote war on trans people right because we were coming for their way of life not their way of life in terms of like heterosexual marriage that gets to still exist. That's fine. Like, but compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory six, cis sexuality, um, is the thing that we are coming for and their way of life is hegemony. Their way of life is being the only force of power. And so, yeah, I guess the other stuff, uh, is that we just, okay, what would you do in Nazi Germany? That's what you're doing right now. And you should think about what skills you have and how they apply to different things. And then the kind of final point to a lot of this is a specific issue and it's a pet issue of mine. And that could be completely wrong. I have a lot of bias about this, but I would fucking love it if liberals would shut

the fuck up about guns right now. It is very hard for me to find a state that is not either in the process of trying to tell me that I can't wear a dress or find a state that is trying to tell me that I can't carry the means to protect myself from the violent bigots who want to kill me because I wear a dress. It is incredibly hard to find states that are not pushing in one of those directions or another. And it is embarrassing. It is embarrassing that this of all times is the time that liberals are focusing so hard on gun issues, which is a culture war bullshit thing for them. They don't fucking care. They didn't fucking care about abortion. They just want your fucking votes. care about abortion. They just want your fucking votes. And we are probably entering a very bad and hard time. However, we can do it. We have done it in the past. In my reading of history, it basically is this cycle. I kind of don't quite believe in like a forward progress, everything gets better. Things ebb and flow. And however, we will survive this, not necessarily all of us as individuals. Probably, probably there won't be like large numbers of killings as a result of this, but it is possible, right? numbers of killings as a result of this, but it is possible, right? But it is impossible to stamp out homosexuality. It is impossible to stamp out transsexuality.

We have always been here. We will always be here. And so, yeah, to quote my final quote in that particular thread, I definitely went off thread, but, um, we need to find each other. We need to stop fighting with each other about bullshit. We need to defend each other. We need to be brave. And then, um, uh, I, I will cite the anarchist prayer, which is that I ask not to be safe from my enemies, but dangerous to them. Because, all right, this is what we're fucking doing. And we all want to be safe, but that's not something that we're guaranteed. What we are guaranteed is that we can choose how to handle the situation that we're in. And then, almost done, almost done.

You talked earlier about what we owe the dead. I really liked your way of phrasing that. I really liked a lot of what you were talking about, about all of that. And one thing that I think about when we're talking about like the Catholic church and shit, right? One thing that I owe the dead is I owe sister Dominic, a Catholic nun, to not fucking go back into the closet. Uh, because when my cousin came out as trans, this woman who is literally married to God, she died a couple of years ago. Um, maybe 10 years ago now before I came out. Um, but my cousin came out before me because it's a contagion. No, because we were always fucking trans and she was completely supportive completely and immediately

in my, like, like you know and just this is a woman who dedicated her entire life to uh well to god and saw literally no problem was the most immediately accepting person immediately said you know i bet she's always felt that way and so i i i personally owe it to her to tell these catholics to shut the fuck up because fucking jesus's wife says it's fine fuck you that's what i got thank thank you margaret yeah that was fantastic where can where can people find you and some of your other work across the uh across the web yeah um i just finished a four part series on Stonewall and the stuff that came before Stonewall, the riots that kind of brought us this movement and how it was all different types of queers.

And even some had people working together to bring us as far as we've gotten. Um, and you can find that on my podcast, cool people who did Cool Stuff. It's with It Could Happen Here host Shereen as my guest. And you can also find me talking about The End of the World on Live Like the World is Dying as another podcast that I'm a co-host of. And my most recent book is called Escape from Incel Island. And it is not nonfiction. It is not something about how people should get better. It's literally about someone with a shotgun who lands on an island full of incels and has to get out alive. Fantastic. Well, thank you for listening through all the way if you are still here. Hopefully you've learned something interesting

across these two pretty heavy episodes. We will 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

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