It Could Happen Here - Watching War Behind a Screen

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

With Gaza in flames, Robert discusses the dynamics of social media, profit, and war.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for

Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking music, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories,

combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only Nuestra Gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey everyone, Robert Evans here. Welcome to It Could Happen Here. As I'm sure you're aware at this point over the weekend, somewhere between 500 and 1,000 Hamas fighters, those numbers have a lot of flex in them. It's really unclear at this moment that just kind of my guess based on what I've seen so far—carried out a successful infiltration and sneak attack across a wide swath of the Israeli border. Their methods were varied, from motorized hang gliders

and boats to mobile columns of technicals and bulldozers which they used to breach fence lines. Surprise seems to have been nearly total. In their worst intelligence failure since the 1970s, many IDF troops were caught literally in their underwear. Casualties seem to have been highest among the police, who were unprepared for militants armed with conventional military weapons. Casualty accounts remain heavily in flux, so I will not labor over them here. Suffice to say that the best information at the time that I'm writing this suggests at least a thousand dead in the first day or so of fighting. It appears at the moment to be fairly evenly split between Israeli soldiers, police, and civilians, as well as Hamas fighters and Palestinian civilians. We can expect the death

toll among Palestinians to rise steadily in the near future as the bombing of Gaza escalates. It is very clear, though, that the Hamas did not strike only military targets, and Israelis and Palestinians are not the only people killed. Right now, there are reports coming in that a music festival, it was some sort of psytrance psychedelia festival in southern Israel on land that was possibly illegally occupied, was attacked by Hamas militants. Something like 260 people are confirmed to have been killed. There's a pretty hideous video of a young German woman in her 20s, her corpse stripped, being paraded around by fighters. It's very ugly stuff. There's also unclear videos of other

killings. I've seen one video of a man beating another man's head in. It's claimed to be a Hamas militant in civilian clothes beating a Filipino guest worker in Israel to death. There's no actual evidence that I've seen as to who either person in the video is. And a lot of the videos of horrible things that are spreading right now are just that. Videos that definitely show violence, but that are extremely unclear as to who is perpetrating the violence and why. We do, of course, know that Hamas targeted a number of civilians. A significant number were killed, including people in their homes.

And unknown numbers of people were kidnapped and taken back across the border to be ransomed later for imprisoned fighters and Palestinian civilians. This has happened before in previous escalations of conflict in the area. It's not a new tactic, and the videos of it are, of course, horrifying. The capturing and killing of civilians is, by any definition of the term, a war crime. Israel's response has been horrifying as well, and writ on a larger scale. Significant chunks of Gaza have already been leveled in airstrikes. At least one hospital has been targeted, killing a nurse. Israel has cut off power to Gaza, an act of collective punishment

that also qualifies as a war crime. That term has less weight than it used to these days. Many of us in the West grew up with illusions about a rules-based international order. The crimes occurring now will continue to erode the idea that war might ever have limits, like white water cutting a path through stone. I tried to stay plugged into such things, and I became aware of this most recent eruption as it happened. I spent several hours trying to understand the early open- source intelligence, watching people that I trusted in the region post videos that they could verify. And then I went to sleep. When I woke up, I saw the expected river of bloodthirst on social media.

This is also nothing new. The internet has not created this behavior. You may have read when you were in high school that early in the U.S. Civil War, picnicking civilians would show up to ogle the Battle of Manassas. Certain aspects of online culture have, however, lent a deeper ugliness to the affair. I noticed this for the first time during the fighting against ISIS. I reported from Mosul several times and kept up with various Telegram channels, WhatsApp groups, and Twitter accounts that shared footage and updates from the field.

A subculture developed around this, fueled by a mix of professionals seeking intel and amateurs, some of whom later became experts and others of whom simply liked watching the violence. All of us experienced a degree of desensitization, and Gallo's humor was common. Researchers would share their favorite ISIS nasheeds, effectively jihadi theme music, and throw Arabic phrases that they'd read in issues of Dabiq, ISIS's magazine, into daily conversation. Lines of dialogue from different videos of combat became catchphrases. The best known of these was probably a video released in April of 2016, which showed a group of four ISIS fighters battling Kurdish troops north of Mosul.

These guys were not overly familiar with their weaponry, much of which had recently been looted from Iraqi army stores. One of the fighters in the video, Abu Hajar, fucks up constantly, at one point roasting his own men with the backblast of a rocket launcher. The timing on it is pretty perfect, and it's basically impossible not to laugh a little at this. His comrade shouts a now infamous line at him, what is wrong with you, Abu Hajar? The man who filmed the video dies, of course, and so did a bunch of other people that day. Now, these guys are ISIS fighters,

so it wasn't hard to laugh at the footage and move on. I did, and so did many other people. I still chuckle sometimes at it. Of late, though, I've come to find the laughter more unsettling. This started after the expanded Russian invasion of Ukraine. I began to see videos of wounded, dying, and dead Russian conscripts. These were often close-in, gory shots, devoid of broader information, and shot purely for entertainment. It's one thing to watch combat videos in which people die if it gives you an understanding of the nature of combat in that theater of war, the kinds of weapons used,

the efficacy of certain tactics. It's another to just look at a bleeding teenager as he slowly dies and joke about it. Now, some of the folks who were laughing are people I knew, Ukrainian civilians and volunteers, and I cannot blame them and do not blame them for taking satisfaction or even mirth in the death of an invader. That is how war works. That is how war has always worked. It is foolish and cruel to ask for decorum from people under

siege. I'm sure many Gazans feel the same about footage now flooding the internet from this most recent attack. But many of the people cheering at dead Russian conscripts were not soldiers and not civilians who were being shelled by that state, but were random Americans, middle-class suburban war aficionados far from the danger, who spent time, who took a moment from their day to joke about suffering soldiers in a foreign country. A mirror of that behavior now proliferates as well. It curdled my gut then, and it still does. But my feelings here are immaterial. I have come to

believe that this behavior is impossible to avoid or even mitigate to a very substantial degree. It also appears to be nearly universal. Social media has made barbarism easier than ever to monetize. after those runs the conversations keep going that's what my podcast post run high is all about it's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories their journeys and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together you know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout well that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

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

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As the years have gone on, every new eruption of violence around the world brings with it more footage faster. OSINT, open source intelligence accounts, have gone from a niche obsession among reporters and conflict nerds to mainstream entertainment. Because views equal money, especially on Twitter, where Elon Musk pays people based on the engagement they get, there is now a financial incentive to post videos

that will be shared widely. And as always, the stuff that is shared most widely is the stuff that makes people angry. Videos need not be truthful to spread. In some cases, this means reposting old footage as if it is new. This is particularly easy with the conflict in Gaza, since Israel has launched so many strikes against it over the years. One video of a building crumbling into rubble after a missile strike is as good as another to the rats scrambling for Elon Musk's pocket change. Many viral disinformation videos are just clips from the Czech video game Arma 2. For roughly a decade, footage of in-game combat has gone viral, netting followers and sometimes money for all manner of shady figures.

If you see video that's claimed to be an Israeli helicopter or a Russian helicopter or an American helicopter being shot down in some erupting field, you should really double-check that because there's always a very good chance that it's a clip from this video game of a chopper going down or some other kind of military vehicle being taken out. In real warfare, it's quite rare to get footage at a good angle and close to that sort of thing. So anytime you see footage that seems like it might be too good to be real, it probably is. Such

disinformation is of course unsightly, but that's not all it is. It can provoke violence as well. A recent New York Times article on social media disinformation makes this clear. The Times found several pieces of misinformation that spread out across Israeli and Palestinian neighborhood and activist WhatsApp groups this week. One, which appeared as a block of Hebrew text or an audio file, contained a warning that Palestinian mobs were preparing to descend on Israeli civilians. Palestinians are coming! Parents, protect your children! read the message, which pointed specifically to several suburban areas north of Tel Aviv. Thousands of people were in one of the telegram groups where the post was shared. The post then appeared in several WhatsApp groups, which had dozens to hundreds of members. Now, there were no reports of violence in the areas mentioned in this post. This kind of thing happens all over the world and

has been happening for years. And the fact that it's untrue does not stop similar viral lies from inspiring and justifying mass violence in places like India and Myanmar. In both those countries, much of this targeted disinformation was posted at the direct behest of state security agencies to further their efforts at genocide. None of this is new. It all just works much faster thanks to social media. The one truly significant change in recent months has been the addition of a direct profit motive to sharing lies. The best recent example of this is a fellow named Mario Nafal. He's a con artist and a crypto scammer who embezzled from his own company and has

built a massive following, retweeting out-of-context videos, starting with the Wagner Rebellion in Russia earlier this year. Elon Musk, whose ignorance of that conflict is unsurpassed, called Nafal's messages the best coverage I've seen so far. More recently, Mario Nafal has been responsible for spreading fake news about the potential capture of Nimrod Ohlone, who is the commander of Israel's southern forces in the region. The video that he claimed was Nimrod Ohlone being taken into captivity was in fact a completely different person. It's actually unclear who. Mario does not know anything about anything and I think was just lying because that would be the

most salacious thing possible. It's also worth noting that Elon Musk recently made a post highlighting a couple of OSINT accounts that were his recommendations, his picks for credible people to report on the conflict, and you should follow these folks. He then deleted part of that tweet and self-censored himself when one of the sources he had picked referred to dead Hamas fighters as martyrs, which Elon had an issue with. Clearly, what he's doing is attempting to pick and set his own propaganda dispensers, you know, the people that, for whatever reason, he thinks are providing the most convenient narrative about what's happening. None of this should be mistaken for actual news. It is likely that much, perhaps most, of the footage on your timeline from the fighting in Gaza and Israel is reposted video

that is not current. Obviously, there is a lot of current footage going out right now too, but a significant amount of it is not. I find this exasperating, even as I wonder how much that really matters. Is sharing old footage of civilian homes being leveled by Israeli missiles really an issue when similar homes are being bombed at the same time? I do still think so, but I'm no longer sure that my feelings on the matter are quite rational. The most commonly accepted definition of intelligence, of intellect, that you'll find is the ability to adapt to, change, and select environments, or the ability to deal with change in your environment. If that is truly the best measure of intelligence, then

my disgust at disinformation makes me kind of stupid. Its purveyors have had blinding success in using it to push their own narratives and to shape reality. I used the word barbarism earlier to describe this, and it's a loaded word, but not nearly so loaded as its synonym, savagery. Savagery is a word that inspires powerful emotions, for good reason. It was often used by white supremacist colonizers to paint whole peoples as backwards and less human, especially when they engaged in acts of resistance that were, in reality, no bloodier or more violent than the acts being perpetrated against them. The word predates European colonialism, though. It seems to date back to around 1300, and it entered French, sauvage, like the Cologne Johnny Depp hawks, from the Latin salvaticus, which literally means of the woods.

Why this digression? Because in 2004, an Islamist strategist named Abu Bakr Naji published a book on the internet titled Management of Savagery. In Naji's conception, savagery was defined as terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure and stuff like tourist facilities, which were meant to provoke violent escalations from superpowers. That violence would radicalize more people against the West and lead to a progressive degradation of social order and operational capacity in the nations Najee saw as enemies. The management of savagery was a key text

for the men who wound up creating the Islamic State. Some will use this to argue that the tactics failed, since ISIS is not exactly thriving at present. To do so would be to ignore the $6 trillion the United States lit on fire fighting a disastrous war on terror, which supercharged much of the underlying instability in our country and may yet lead to a collapse in domestic order. I will admit that I have found the framework of managing savagery useful in my interpretation and understanding of conflict, both domestic and international. In 2020, I got to watch the process up close over the course of dozens of protests. The basic strategy of most Portland protests that year went like this. You got a bunch of people to

march up to a police building. They would chant and yell until the police got angry and then gassed and or beat up everybody. After a while, this dynamic was widely understood and accepted by protesters. They saw their suffering and the risk that they engaged in as an acceptable trade-off because it revealed the violence and savagery inherent in policing as an institution. This, they hoped, would radicalize others against it, people who watched clips of videos from the protest or who attended themselves. And for a time, this strategy worked quite well. Many people who had been apolitical on the matter

grew utterly hardened against the cops after a few hours in the gas clouds. People cannot endure violence, however, without being changed by it. So as the weeks wore on, participants grew more and more comfortable with not just property destruction, but with the use of things like Molotov cocktails. One may consider a Molotov to be necessary sometimes, and throughout history, they often have been. But savage is as good a term to describe firebombs as any. No one was

killed by any Molotov that I ever saw used in Portland. But of course, no protests come close to the savagery of warfare. The emotional dynamics at play are shades of each other, though, and I thought it might be useful to mention. Perhaps a more illustrative example would be my own experiences in Mosul in the early summer of 2017. My team and I were embedded with an Iraqi federal police unit in the old city, where the fighting was intense and hideous. We came under fire from a sniper. Some of the shots were so close that chipped concrete hit my helmet. The mortar team with us responded, and with the help of a spotter,

they dropped explosive shells on homes and shops until they hit and killed the sniper. In that moment, I felt elation I've seldom felt since. After we found better cover, I began composing the scene in my head, laying out how I would write it. Then my fixer, Sengar, said something that interrupted my train of thought and has remained with me ever since. Did you count how many rounds they fired before they hit him?

I told him I thought it was six or seven, maybe. Where do you think the others landed? From his tone, it was clear what he meant. The old city was crowded. Many civilians had not yet been able to escape the ISIS lines. Their homes were often next door to fighting positions. And the density of the city meant that any honest hit still had a good chance of hitting someone. Later, I met a man whose house had been hit 20 times by mortar rounds and rockets

before he had a chance to escape with his family. So the glee of the moment faded. My writing about that scene was more sober, more careful, and much better as a result. Zangar's words have helped me shape both my coverage of war and my reactions to it ever since. This shouldn't matter to people being bombed out of their homes and losing loved ones right now.

It might be helpful though, to those of us watching Bloodshed from behind a screen, at least until we're the ones filming. bloodshed from behind a screen. At least, until we're the ones filming. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show,

where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow of Black. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most

terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry,

submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.