It Could Happen Here - The Upcoming DC Far Right Rally

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

The Team sits down with Theo (@the0hansen) to get a rundown on the upcoming far right rally in Washington DC.Local DC orgs:https://linktr.ee/remorahousedc https://www.shutdowndc.org/  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. 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. What's a problem, my me? I'm a problem my me i'm a problem welcome to it could happen here the show where i'm a problem i'm on vacation legally you're not on vacation allegedly legally but okay inshallah i'm drunk uh garrison you're in charge now figure it out great hi it's what could happen

here today we are uh talking with somebody if you've listened to the past two episodes you should actually know uh theo who is a journalist and researcher and we are going to be discussing plans for an upcoming rally in Washington, D.C. That's has a lot of. Oh, that seems good. Yeah, this is a. It seems like bad things never happen when people rally in D.C. What happened last time? What happened last time they did this?

I don't I historically only pay attention to things that happen after May and before December. Uh-huh. So I'm unaware of anything bad ever happening in D.C. Well, something... Has bad stuff happened there? You want to key us in? Last time it got a little spicy. Okay, you say spicy, but it's not like they tried to overthrow the government and murder elected leaders, right?

That is what they... People were just having too much fun. Yeah, they were just boys. They were just proud of their boys. A little carried away, building that big hanging contraption, whatever it's called. The gallows, Garrison. The gallows, yeah.

Anyway, Theo, do you want to introduce yourself? Yeah. Hey, guys. I'm Theo. I'm a journalist and a researcher. I'm based out of Virginia, allegedly. Allegedly.

I end up covering a lot of events in DC because of that. That's my plans for this weekend. Do you want to give us an overview of what rallies in DC have been like the past let's say like the past year um oh boy do i yeah let's just for background

yeah so like pretty much immediately post-election as the whole kind of stop the steel thing got kicked into gear um november 14th there was a rally in dc um and then there was one december 12th and then there was finally one as most people are probably aware on january 6th um january 6th you know obviously got the bulk of the media coverage um but november 14th and especially december 12th were uh very violent situations in general um proud boys uh general chuds a bunch of oath keepers keepers yeah three percenters bunch of people's confused memaws and pap paps showed up. Would kind of wander around the city. Yeah.

Yeah, they did. Yeah. It's pretty fucked up. I know some people who were there when they did, and it's... I don't know. It's sad. It's super dark. It's really bleak.

I was there with the people that you know, Robert. Oh, good. Yeah, so you, I mean, it's just, it's so fucking, I don't know, the extent of the disinformation, right? It's hard when you're talking about this to, like, express a lot of sympathy for some of these people. And I'm not sympathetic towards their aims. I'm not trying to do the New York Times. Like, let's talk to the Trump voter down the street. But, like, a lot of them are just, just like they're fucking dumb people who bought into some bullshit

and it it destroyed them and their relationships with their families and in some cases costing their lives and like you don't have to sympathize with them to be like yeah that's bleak as shit no yeah and i think you see that with with the DC rallies really more so than like, uh, Portland proud boy event, for example, that is not at all a gathering of like the masses. That's,

that's a specific group of pieces of shit. Yeah. Yeah. And like, you'd have absolutely like units of proud boys or oath keepers. Uh, we had three percenters, some local Virginia militias,

and they'd kind of be wandering around, but during the day itself, you'd normally see speakers. Alex Jones was there. Got to meet him. That was fun. Oh, good. That's always a treasure, meeting Alex. No, Alex is a great guy.

It was really fun. He's... His neck. It's hard to exaggerate how thick his neck is. He is just as red in person. He's so red. And as a guy who's good at strangling, it seems like he would be hard to strangle. Oh, nearly impossible.

That's so big. It's like a fucking train car like it's ridiculous how big that man's neck is look yeah most people aren't hard to strangle alex jones would be that's not praising him that's just being honest great so during the day there would be speakers you know alex jones and you kind of see people split up into whatever their specific brand of fuckery is. There's groups of nerdy-looking groipers. There were some trad cats wearing robes. Those guys were fun.

God damn it. A lot of it's confused boomers on Facebook. To Robert's point, I normally didn't go wearing press credentials because I value knives being outside of me and not inside of me. Yeah, it's good to not get stabbed.

Most people appreciate that. Yeah, it's one of my favorite things. And so I'd get to talking to these people, especially the older ones, because I take the Metro into the city, and they're just confused old people who've gotten in over their heads. But yeah, and then the sun would set, and that's when the Proud Boys would really start getting into shit. November 14th, they stabbed...

I don't know if I'm remembering this correctly, so feel free to fact-check me, but I believe it was two people on the 14th. They cracked a girl's skull and then on december 12th uh they stabbed one other person and jeremy bertino got belayed on the street he sure did he shared it and the fucking da elected not to prosecute because that was the clearest case of self-defense i have ever seen in my life um yeah so like like the dude literally tried to flee three times he drew his knife after by the third time he was blinded by having a shirt pulled and assaulted by a group

he had no other choice yeah yeah he did exactly what you're supposed to do in that situation and repeatedly tried to flee and when he didn't he stabbed a motherfucker and you can't i i can't he did nothing wrong in my in my opinion the da's opinion yeah yeah we're all probably better off for it but yeah there's this kind of established uh there was this established sort of cycle of show up a bunch of weird republican politicians that you've never heard of before give speeches. You go and kind of wander around. And then the Proud Boys come out and they fuck around. And sometimes other groups, too. Like, January, the night before January 6th, there were people from NSC-131 who were hanging out trying to cause trouble,

getting in altercations, all their normal shit. And so yeah, there's this kind of general mix of groups. January 6th shifted the paradigm on that a lot, and I think that's the big thing for this weekend, is we don't really know what

it's going to look like. Yeah, can you talk about what has the has kind of the event promotion looked like from the right like what have they what messages have they been putting out to promote this event with so yeah a lot of like the bigger groups have been fairly explicitly saying like don't go officially uh unofficially is a bit of a different story and in fairness it's worth noting that prior to um the the united rally in charlottesville the proud boys were saying don't go and an awful lot of their most violent members were at unite the right in charlottesville you know it some some of this is a plausible deniability game yeah so like the

official proud boys telegram channel was like oh this is i mean deniability game yeah so like the official proud boys telegram channel was like oh this is I mean in different words but we're pretty much like this is a honeypot this is a trap this is an op don't go but also like we've seen activity that really suggests otherwise

yeah whether it's like smaller more local groups saying that they want to go or uh streamers and journalists using the word lightly to uh who have pretty close relationships with these groups uh hiring extra stringers for the weekend or looking like they're preparing to report on something big yeah the kind of, I know we've talked a little bit online with some of our colleagues, and there's definitely a mixed opinion on how big the event's going to be and who's all going to be there

and what kind of their goal is, which makes kind of everything all the more tense because, you know, it's almost easier when we know what it's almost easier to when we know what it's going to be like we like we have a good grasp of what's going to happen and this we're not really sure um do you do you know has there been any kind of response from like local dc officials like like law enforcement or anything about what they're going to do at this uh gathering so i did see capitol police is planning to put the fence back up um probably a good idea yeah yeah which like will cover the capitol but there's also a problem with the fence

going up which is the back of the fence goes right up to the end of the black lives matter plaza in dc which has been used as kind of a rallying point for anti-fascist activists, and when that fence is up, it's just, it's a funnel. So it goes like, this isn't a visual medium, there's a street, and that's where Black Lives Matter Plaza is, and there's only two exits. And that's where Black Lives Matter Plaza is, and there's only two exits. And both those exits lead to hotels that Proud Boys and Chuds love to stay in. So what happens, almost without fail, is people go and hang out in the plaza.

You know, Chuds come down the streets, police form a line, and it's pretty much a pre-made kettle. Right. So that's,'s like not good uh it's good for the capital but it's not good for the people that'll be on the ground yeah because we they're also as is most of these events um there's been some organizing locally and even you know uh anti-fascists from around kind of the country trying to like put out advice and feelers on like what to do for the specific gathering um and i know there's been there's been a decent amount of you know there's always like debate and conflict of around how much to show up where to show up you know how proact people should be um but because this is the first big rally since J6, I feel like a lot of people feel it's much more important.

There's a heightened sense around this specific thing. Do you know how many people are roughly planning to show up on the anti-fascist side? It's really hard to tell. It's really hard to tell. DC anti-fascist actions, I've seen, you know, a couple dozen people in block towards close to 100. I would, from what I've heard, the kind of main counter-demo that's happening is definitely less radical

and is kind of trying to establish sort of a community space thing uh so i would say i don't know expect around 40 to 50 like people who are there to throw hands yeah and a lot more people who are just kind of there i I mean, it's, it's this, uh, it's this thing we saw. I w I was in DC for unite the right to, you know, the second rally. And it,

it, it didn't turn into much of a thing. You know, I think because of the, the preparation, the expectation, and I, I guess I'm interested in if you think I'm wrong on this, but my current expectation is that maybe that might be the most likely

outcome because, because of the degree of into the unexpected event already occurred and was awful. I'm not expecting anyone will be given free leash, you know? Yeah. I could definitely see that sort of unite the right to scenario playing out, especially because it is very similar. Like there was this massive shocking event that sort of unite the right to scenario playing out especially because it is

very similar like there was this massive shocking event that kind of yeah uh hit the whole nation everyone's attention yeah and so then people will i think the only big difference is like in the aftermath of unite the right you kind of saw at times a misguided media focus but still a media focus on anti-fascist activists as playing a yeah unique role when you didn't have that for january 6th and i think that's that's really one of my bigger worries is less so kind of clashes between chuds and uh anti-fascists which is still i mean you know that's always a thing that may happen but also like you have to think these chuds that are coming when they look at dc police they see someone they're the people who beat one of their coworkers to death.

And there's Capitol Police, not the same as DC Metro Police, but in the minds of both these groups, that doesn't really matter. And I worry about the tension there. I don't care if they mace each other. If the Proud Boys and Cops mace each other, then that's a great day for me. But if it escalates further, and we're seeing that more and more. The past, what's it, the past two kind of major right-wing rallies in the Pacific Northwest have had shots fired. Yep. Yep. Yep. One of which.

Every recent PNW protest has involved gunfire. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, the one, the August 22nd one had, I guess you could call it a legitimate exchange of fire. A very brief exchange, yeah. Yeah, a casual gunfight. I mean, the start of it was not legitimate. The right winger who fired was not legitimate.

But the two people on the left who responded were doing so in self-defense. Now, what happened a couple of weeks later from the video that's were doing so in self-defense now right what happened a couple of weeks later from the video that's come out was not self-defense it was a guy shooting at somebody pursuing them from like 50 feet back you know it was not legally what you would call self-defense for certain yeah and that kind of the precedent that that's set uh which i i think it's happened few enough times that we can't really say that it's the norm or anything like that, but it's

an escalation. It's something that is... If that had happened in 2017 when Unite the Right happened, that would have been unprecedented. It's very frightening. know and it it should be it doesn't matter what you think about the morality of of shooting tiny you know or whatever

exchanges of fire becoming more common is a threat to everybody and it is something that should concern everybody yeah i mean it reminds me a of, and this was kind of the impetus of the first season of It Could Happen Here, but like the early days of something like the Syrian Civil War, where it went from protests to exchanges of gunfire to, you know, what it is now. Yeah. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com.

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

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

as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit 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. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you think D.C.'s specific gun laws will make gunfire in D.C. a little bit less likely, do you think? I know still the police always have that capacity if they choose to, but more specific on the right between people, I don't know, it's like boogs are going to show up or whatever. What kind of talk do you see around firearms?

So kind of just from experience, I think my worry with DC's gun laws is only one side will be armed. Every time that chuds come to DC, they are obviously carrying. Every single one of them is printing.

You can tell that they have firearms on them. They don't really try to hide it. And none of them have ever, I guess apart from Tario getting arrested for illegal magazines, like none of them have really faced any consequences for that. And the general fear among people on the left is, well,

even if I do come and I carry for self-defense, if I get arrested for something unrelated, that'll enhance whatever charges I get. Yeah. No, it's sketchy, and it's... I'm not convinced in the situation DC is in specifically that showing up with a fucking firearm is the right call. I'm not in this business to lecture people,

but I'm not convinced that's going to help. In the Pacific Northwest, we've seen situations where people with weapons as on the 22nd defended themselves and others. And we've seen situations in which people with weapons on the left escalated things. So it's not a...

It's never a zero-sum game. It's not a simple issue. A gun is a neutral tool you know yeah and i don't want to like i don't want it to come off like i'm encouraging you know every person in block to show up with a long gun good lord like that no because that would be a fucking disaster most likely but also like i i don't like the idea of you know looking at a line of proud boys or something and knowing every single one of these people has a gun and i do not that's yeah absolutely an imbalance of force that i don't like when thing if things do escalate yeah

no that's completely reasonable in my opinion but yeah i mean i think the big thing is just there's so many unknowns uh you know we've never really there's not much of a historical precedent for group tries to overthrow the government group shows back up in dc months later or elements of the same kind of ideology and yeah yeah we just don't know i mean even like i think the unite the right to example is similar but also like markedly different enough that i don't know if it's an all-encompassing tool for like this is what it's gonna look like yeah is there any like specific players that you know is gonna show up or or have like said that they're gonna show up so one that i kind of worry about is um oh i'm gonna get fucking tweets for this god damn it um so there's a group in virginia

that you may have heard of uh blm 757 oh god these guys no yeah i know who you're talking about yeah uh they are based out of the virginia beach area and they are the biggest pain in the ass ever um they work with they claim to be a Black Lives Matter organization. The local Black Lives Matter organizations have denounced them. They work with Boogaloo Boys. They were very tight with Mike Dunn before he snitched and dropped off the face of the earth. Snitched on people, yeah. um and then yeah they they come and i don't like the idea of them coming to a town that is not familiar with them because like they come to richmond for example and people are like oh

there's blm 757 we don't fuck with them but they come you know they come to a town, or groups like this, like NFAC, the Not Fucking Around Coalition, tried to come to DC, and these groups that are going to be armed are going to want to escalate and are going to kind of try to slide in to, like, a counter-demo or stick around, like, the more left-leaning parts of the crowd and then could very

quickly escalate things. So they're one that I'm worried about. Some local Virginia militia movement players have been chatting about it. I haven't seen really that much in the way of definitive

statements that they're gonna go. Those guys don't really worry me they're a bunch of nerds who like to play dress up in the woods mostly but yeah it's again it's just like these kind of unknowns yeah so just like not knowing who's gonna show up and what they're gonna do and where they'll be and yeah yeah like and this was a thing definitely it reminds me a lot of the first stop the steel rally where we had more concrete uh group saying we're gonna be there there was a lot more chatter about it on social media but it was still kind of like i don't know like what range of the sort of right wing ideological spectrum will be

here like i know you know q anon your q anon uncle will be there but like for example on november 14th uh jason kessler was there the organizer of unite the right i literally bumped into jason kessler oh god like i was walking and my shoulder hit him and i looked up and i was like oh sorry dude and then i just kind of stopped and i was like oh shit i recognize you yeah you're that famous piece of shit yeah but yeah so like it's kind of that same thing where we don't we really just don't have that much intel and it seems like you know people with access to more streams of information than us like the feds have been saying for i guess a couple months now like we're monitoring this situation we're like preparing to stop another january 6th which take it with a grain of salt it is the feds

but also like part of me a lot of the worry i get from this is people that i know know more than i do reacting to it like chud streamers hiring stringers feds saying like announcing months before that it's a situation they're preparing for welcome i'm daniel thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though.

I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

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

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

At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books 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. Black Lit 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. A lot of people are very interested in what's going to happen. I think people are definitely preparing for a lot of different outcomes. And that makes any kind of resistance to it hard

because you don't know if you're overpreparing, underpreparing. You don't know if you'll have what you'll need. If your preparations are too aggressive or not aggressive enough, yeah. Yeah, and always trying to feel it out once you're there is more scary because once you're there in person, a lot of communications break down between other activists. That's what happened in the last big rally in Portland is people tried to change up plans once they got to the spot

and it kind of made everything a lot more challenging because a lot of people in block don't have their phone on them. It's hard to get rides. Any kind of impromptu organizing at the site, it's always going to be way more challenging than trying to figure this stuff out at home. And yeah, that's just kind of... I don't know.

I think the Unite the Right 2 background is useful for a big event after a previous event that had a lot of coverage and had a lot of talk about it because it had a disastrous outcome. And then I think looking at November 14th and December 10th are also kind of valuable indicators. Have you seen anything around the Groypers or any of the Fuentes crew showing up to this?

Are they trying to, are they, are they trying to like keep good optics, I guess. I, as far as I've seen, they're mostly trying to keep good optics around this. Um,

that makes sense. They also, they also kind of fall into the category of like people I'm not super worried about. Like some of them, yeah, but in, like, a street fight situation. In a street fight, less so. I'm not worried about a

groiper. Yeah. Like, the most violent encounter I've ever had with a groiper was one that was probably five feet tall following me around and calling me a soy boy for 30 minutes. Yeah, what I'm more concerned about is Groyper is kind of following the in-sale

terrorism tradition of, you know, skinny white guys getting access to weapons than doing something. Yeah, as any man with a gun is dangerous. Yeah, like, they're not going to beat you. Yeah. Yeah, here, finish what you were saying Garrison

I'm just saying like you know all of the Grapers I've seen they're not going to beat me in a fist fight because they're all even more even more lanky than I am I was going to say because you're fast as shit and that yeah I think that's kind of another

thing that's you know it's always a possibility, these things. Like, I always say, like, the worst possible outcome is someone starts shooting. Like, a firefight is always the worst way this could go. But with the sort of optics surrounding this, I think there's definitely space for more extreme people, specifically more accelerationist-minded people, to try to start something, to try to cause some shit. I think of the Richmond gun rally in or lobby day in what was that 2019 20 beginning of 2020 I forget all time is a flat circle to me now but um the members of the base that were intercepted on their way to Richmond. I think about that situation and how other people and other groups that we will not talk about on pod could see an opportunity here.

Yeah, and I think that's more likely happening in somewhere like D.C. than it is in Portland, right? Because in Portland, we have a pretty good grip on who shows up and why they show up. The East Coast, the South, Northeast, Southeast, they have a lot more groups with interest, with, you know, obscure ideologies that are more, I think, more prone to those types of,

to those types of, like, more insurgent attacks than i think people are on the west coast yeah and i think another thing that kind of amplifies that is like you said like portland has kind of an established infrastructure of chud fuckery sure do it you know i mean i i'm on the other side of the country and i know the familiar faces of portland bullshit and we we do have that to an extent but dc brings people from all across the country uh i was meeting people on the metro from everywhere from Tennessee to Kansas to California. And when people are coming in from such a broad range of places, there's a lot more uncertainty. Yeah, well, I'm not sure.

Anything else you want to mention about kind of what you expect at this rally and any, I don't know, general advice since you've been at the past three versions yeah so i mean if you're in the dc area or you're nearby and you're comfortable with it and physically able to do so i show up um the one thing that we do know for sure about these events is that the more bodies we have, the less likely it is for people to be able to prey on someone walking home from work or a houseless person just trying to sleep. Yeah. more bodies that we have the better it is um if you are either unable to come or you don't feel comfortable coming i know that there will be jail support mutual aid efforts uh and garrison i can send you to some links to local dc orgs if you want to throw it in the show notes sure um but yeah just and if you're gonna go be prepared have have a buddy uh lock up bring uh bring an ifac and get ready to party yeah i think it's one of the things you mentioned is like more numbers helps in the case of it's

less likely they'll be like roaming attacks because that's what we've seen at a lot of these rallies is that sometimes they don't ever like actually cause trouble at where people are you know like where the where the people are they wait until people are walking away or going back to their car or if there's no one like that they just find some random person on the street. We saw a lot of that in D.C. of Proud Boys just finding people in the area that they thought looked like Antifa, quote unquote,

and then just attacking them. So the less scattered people are, the less likely you'll get those roaming attacks. Yeah, I think. It's always hard to speculate on an event that hasn't happened yet, but I believe by the time this airs, it'll be happening tomorrow,

so Saturday. Theo, do you want to plug anything? Yeah, you can find me on Twitter, at Theo Hansen, Theo with a zero. Listen to my podcast Terrorism Bad we look through portrayals of terrorism

and extremism in popular media see how it holds up to the real world trying to think of anything else I'll be there on Saturday I'll be live tweeting the event if I'm not live tweeting I'm dead or otherwise incapacitated. Or I don't have cell service. Cell service is always horrible at these things.

Oh, it's awful. Yeah, it's a constant problem. Yeah, they were blocking signals on January 6th on the Capitol lawn. And when I stepped off, I had like 13 texts from all my friends. They were like, hey, text me if you're still alive. It's really hard to tell what's going on. You know, when you're,

like whether or not it's like a cell signal problem or if it's somebody like targeting you in particular. It's frustrating. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you, Theo. Thank you for giving us the rundown on Saturday's activities. I hope you don't get CEO. Thank you for giving us the rundown on Saturday's activities. I hope you don't get shot.

Thank you. I hope I do not as well. That's my general feeling towards anyone who shows up on the 18th in D.C. I hope you don't get shot. Do your best. Yeah, and if you do get shot, know what to do about it. Well, yeah, have an eye fact. Have, yeah, have a combat term in it. Have some cell locks.

Yeah, that's ideal. But not getting shot is better. You cannot get shot. Try not to get shot. Thanks for having me on, guys. Nice to meet you, Robert and Sophie. Nice to meet you. You can follow us at happen here,

pod on Twitter and Instagram and at cool zone media for all the things. And we'll be back Monday. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Brass. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of rife. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

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