It Could Happen Here - Years of Lead Paint

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

The gang compare and contrast the Years of Lead to current brainrotted form of political violence in the United States from assassinations, conspiracy theories, and state sponsored doxing. Sources:&nb...sp; https://www.cawshinythings.com/i-was-promised-a-more-aesthetically-pleasing-cyberpunk-dystopia/ https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-violence-rare-united-states https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/52960-charlie-kirk-americans-political-violence-poll https://www.middlebury.edu/institute/academics/centers-initiatives/ctec/ctec-publications/italian-neofascism-and-years-lead-closer-look  https://libcom.org/article/giuseppe-pinelli-death-anarchist  https://libcom.org/article/analysis-autonomia-interview-sergio-bologna  https://sk.sagepub.com/ency/edvol/terrorism2ed/chpt/ordine-nuovo  https://www.britannica.com/event/Bologna-train-station-bombing-of-1980 https://www.britannica.com/place/Italy/Terrorism#ref929858 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/16/us/tyler-robinson-charges.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mU8.jooL.UUL_fH4KQcdy https://www.404media.co/doj-deletes-study-showing-domestic-terrorists-are-most-often-right-wing/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians, artists, and activists
Starting point is 00:00:17 to bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. The moment is a space for the conversations we've been having us father and daughter for years. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On a cold January day in 1995, 18-year-old Krista Pike killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in the woods of Knoxville, Tennessee. Since her conviction, Krista has been sitting on death row.
Starting point is 00:00:48 How does someone prove that they deserve to live? We are starting the recording now. Please state your first and last name. Krista Pike. Listen to Unrestorable Season 2, Proof of Life, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see?
Starting point is 00:01:27 It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want to hear the secrets of psychopaths, murderers, sex offenders? In this episode, I offer tips from them. I'm Dr. Leslie, forensic psychologist. This is a podcast where I cut through the noise with real talk.
Starting point is 00:01:52 When you were described to me as a forensic psychologist, I was like snooze. We ended up talking for hours, and I was like, this girl is my... Let's talk about safety and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones. Listen to intentionally disturbing on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cool Zone Media. I'm not Robert Evans. I'm not going to start this episode with a horrible noise. Welcome to It Could Happen here, a show about things falling apart with me today. Mia Wong, James Stout. I'm Garrison Davis. We have never, as a society, been this years of lead paint as we are now. Oh, my God.
Starting point is 00:02:39 Yeah, it's not great. Speaking of things falling apart, the lead paint in my room is crumbling and it's probably doing things to my brain. Wonderful. Love this, love this. So, okay, a lot of this episode is going to be about the Charlie Kirk assassination and everyone's reaction to it. everyone sort of losing their minds. But I think that the place that we want to start is with a little bit about the concept of the years of lead paint, which was developed by friend of the show Vicki Osterwald, to explain something. I feel like almost everyone's forgotten about, which was right after Trump got elected, there was that car bomb outside of a Trump hotel that was like a Tesla that was a right winger who was trying to get everyone to, like, do the purge.
Starting point is 00:03:21 Mm-hmm. Yeah. The cyber truck, uh, former Greenboro. guy. Yeah, and this is the kind of thing that you would have seen in the original years of lead. So, people who don't know what the original years of lead was, because this is becoming a thing that people are using to understand what's going on now, and I think there are problems with that that we'll get to. But the original years of lead are this period from, I mean, that there's, you know, you can, you can start it in a couple different places, but like roughly sort of like, the 60s to the 80s, like early mid-80s in Italy that are this period of really,
Starting point is 00:04:03 it really intensifies in the 70s, this really, really intense period of political violence in Italy. It is largely a right-wing reaction to this massive series of uprisings in Italy. I mean, the whole 60s in Italy are a time of incredible sort of turmoil and left-wing uprising. there's, I mean, I think there's first-factor occupations are like 65 but there's the massive factor occupations in 1968 which are sort of a global phenomenon
Starting point is 00:04:35 but then also the next year there is an advance called and I, this is literally the term for it, the hot autumn of 69 which I'm not even gonna really, I am. Nice. Yeah, which was this massive
Starting point is 00:04:50 like a second series of like, you know, workers taking over factories and starting like factory councils and like there are so many communist factions that like the communist faction that's doing this stuff they have mutated to a point where they're almost effectively anarchists so this is what's called the autonomists and this becomes like a major influence on like american anarchism later and in response to the fact that these people very nearly on multiple occasions like very nearly take italy a combination of right-wing fascist groups and organizations inside of and sort of parallel to the Italian government
Starting point is 00:05:26 develop this thing called the strategy of tension which and I think this will to some extent sound familiar in terms of what's what's happening right now which is this strategy of using terrorist attacks and using political violence to sow this like fear and panic and chaos that would cause people to turn to the state for safety and cause people to turn specifically to a stronger, like, more fascist and then eventually just a straight-up fascist state that would permanently destroy the left and, you know, like, restore the power of the Nazis, et cetera, et cetera. Well, I mean, not recently these people. Italian fascists. The OG fascists. Well, and also neo-fascist, too, because they're, these people are very weird. Italians. Yeah, these people are
Starting point is 00:06:08 Italian. Yeah, yeah, many such cases. One of the big opening things is that the Piazza Fontana bombing, which is this massive bombing that kills a 19 people, injures an unbelievable number of people, and it is immediately blamed on anarchists. There's an anarchist named Guseppe Pinelli, who he's among like 80 anarchists who arrested almost immediately. He, like, somehow falls out of a four-story window of a police building while he was being interrogated. The Italian state, which will go on to admit a lot of the shit that it did,
Starting point is 00:06:38 maintains to this day that he just got tired and fell out the window himself. I'm going to let you try your own conclusions about how you think this guy died. I mean, a lot of, A lot of anarchists are lazy. I can see that happening. Yeah. There is a good play that I took part in during high school called Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Foe.
Starting point is 00:06:59 Yeah. Which you can enjoy. This is the most, like, James Backstory Moment you've ever seen before. It's so good. This is wild. Yeah. Whoa. Someone update the I-C-H-Wiki page.
Starting point is 00:07:15 Don't do that. No, stop. New James backstory. This is great. Yeah, in my theater era. Who did you play? I can't remember. It was 20 years ago.
Starting point is 00:07:26 You should have remembered. I know. It was very fun. We had a good soundtrack. It was very enjoyable for me and my friends. And I'm sure all eight people who watched it also had a wonderful time. So in less fun times, so this bombing was actually carried out by a group called Ordiné Nouveau, which is, it's literally new order. Fascist groups only have.
Starting point is 00:07:47 foreign names. And this is a group that was aided by a combination of Italian intelligence and this thing called Gladio, which was this American network, sort of stay behind network in case of a Soviet invasion. Yeah. That had all of these weapons, cash
Starting point is 00:08:03 is placed around the country that's eventually sort of repurposed into these fascist terror cells. And they do a lot of these, right? They do a lot of bombings, and they mostly blame the left for them. Probably the most famous one is the Bologna train bombing, which killed, like, 80 people, injured a huge number of other people, which was done by a kind of, like, another fascist group, right?
Starting point is 00:08:23 This is also a period where, like, there is a real left-wing violence, right? The left is doing, like, well, one of the things they did, they kidnap bosses and have, like, show trials of bosses all the time. They love doing this. Factory bosses. Just like in The Dark Night Rises by Marxist historian Christopher Nolan. Oh, God. I thought you were going to say just like cancel culture
Starting point is 00:08:48 but just like just like what the rights doing right now for anyone who posts about Charlie Kirk yeah but there was also stuff like like for example Lota Continua which is a leftist group of staggering complexity I like killed the police officer who was interrogating Guseppe Penelli
Starting point is 00:09:07 so you know like there are left wing assassinations a group called the Red Brigades kidnaps the former Prime Minister of Italy Aldomoro, see every other episode where I've yelled about this. They had been heavily infiltrated and were sort of being manipulated by a number of intelligence organizations that if I started listing them right now, you would think I was insane. But the important thing about this period, right? And this eventually works.
Starting point is 00:09:30 It does destroy the left. But the important thing about the structure of this in the actual years of lead is that these are concrete groups, right? They are shifting. They are flowing. People move between them. But actual organized facts. in a legitimate armed struggle.
Starting point is 00:09:47 I mean, the Red Brigades are literally organized in a military fashion, right? With, like, units and command structure. But this is also true of, like, this is also true of the fascists, right? Yes, yeah, you're very very much. And it's also true of group, I mean, you know, like, obviously, like, autonomy and the sort of, like,
Starting point is 00:10:03 anarchist-e communist factions are looser, but, like, they're still, they still are, like, organized and they're rooted in a whole bunch of different kinds of struggles. And the strategy of tension is being deliberately managed by Italian intelligence and by American intelligence and by a bunch of other sort of like state groups. And this is not at all what we're dealing with right now. Not even close.
Starting point is 00:10:29 Yeah. The Charlie Kirk assassination is neither a guy who was part of like some Marxist group, nor was it a guy who's like a CIA agent or something. It's just a guy. It's a guy who goes on Discord. Reddit Gamer Discord political violence. Yeah. These are decentralized acts being fueled by sort of radicalization,
Starting point is 00:10:51 but they're not like active intelligence operations. I mean, some of them aren't even fueled by radical. Like, even the word radicalization here is sometimes a mis-over. This one in particular is like not that really. A degree, it seems like a degree of like personal motivation based on his relationship with his roommate, as well as this general like Gen Z sort of nihil. that allows you to do a pretty wild act like this. I think specifically in this case,
Starting point is 00:11:21 you know, it's like existential violence manifesting an incredibly political action from someone who otherwise isn't like overtly political. Yeah. This guy's not a leftist. It's definitely not a gropeer, as I've been trying to argue for for days now. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, what he did certainly is, is political, even though he's not, you know, card-carrying, you know, communist or, you know, anti-imperialist, like the guy who assassinated the two Israeli embassy staffers was, right? Which is kind of the only arguably like left-wing
Starting point is 00:11:51 assassin we've like seen in the past, I don't know, 10 years in the United States, is the guy who killed the two Israeli embassy staffers. Every other assassin or attempted assassin would not accurately be described as like left wing in orientation, including
Starting point is 00:12:07 someone like Luigi Mangione who is... Yeah, very much not. Basically a teapot, gray tribe libertarian. Yeah. Yeah, and it's also worth noting that, like, from the state end, these, like, this is not something that was, like, deliberately unleashed by the state, except in the sense of, like, well, some people would argue otherwise.
Starting point is 00:12:26 Right. Yeah, but they're wrong. Right. That's the issue. You know, like, like, if, like, the last time we saw something that you could argue even sort of look like that is, like, there is genuinely something kind of suspicious about the way that a whole bunch of the most famous Black Lives Matter activists who weren't the ones in the NGOs suddenly turned up dead, that's the closest thing, right? And that's
Starting point is 00:12:48 not even a like, we know they did this. That's a like there's, that was, that was over a decade ago. Yeah, right. This is a long time ago. And, you know, and I, and I would argue it's important in that it's part of the same series of uprisings that like all of this fascist stuff is a response to, right? Sure. It's a response to Ferguson. It's a response to 2020. But, like, that structure, which is the structure that a lot of people are using to analyze this of just purely in American years of lead doesn't really work because we're dealing with something way weirder and way less concrete. Which is why we're calling it something else. The years of lead paint because these people are just like. Because it is not the result of this large scale like deep state orchestration
Starting point is 00:13:34 nor these legitimate organized fashions. Everyone is simply brain rotted. Yeah. Yeah. To, to trust, right? In the 20th century, the prevailing concept of how the left would change the world was through the violent capture of state institutions, or in the case of the anarchist, I guess, less so. But, you know, if we look at like this communist idea of revolution. Yeah, how's that anarchist revolution going, buddy? Well, I mean, these guys are 30 years after the Spanish revolution, right? Like, some of them have seen anarchists hold whole cities and hold off the country's army. It's not out of the realm of possibility for them. That concept of revolution, I mean, it does exist.
Starting point is 00:14:19 It exists with people with like anime, Twitter, avatar still. But like, for the most part, that concept of revolution is not that relevant in 21st century leftist political organizing. And so, like, it cannot be the same because the nature of the thing that the struggle, it's not the same on the left. There isn't even a legitimate left in the United States, like in any meaningful sense. sense. Yeah, I mean, there exists, like, and I guess it's like, I don't want to call it incoherent, but like a lot of the left exists, the people going hardest on the left are going hardest on the internet, I guess this is what I want to say. This is nothing like post-68 Italy. We've seen a nice, nice, like, resurgence of like union organizing, and that's like the
Starting point is 00:15:02 most realistic manifestation of the left. And mutual aid organizing. I will also say we did have, this band from 2011 to 2020 was like a really massive period of like really large-scale street movement in a way that really terrified these people.
Starting point is 00:15:23 Like 2014, specifically Ferguson and 2020 really truly rattled the psychology of all of the people who are like currently running this country in that it demonstrated that like
Starting point is 00:15:39 oh damn there could be a world we're like we're not automatically the superior race and we're not like treated like that because it's fucking bullshit and people were willing to fight for that but also like yeah no like we don't have the kind of like
Starting point is 00:15:55 organizational logistical capacity that like any of these things had and it's not clear to me that you like you won't yet things that look like that anymore yeah like as much as like the right wing YouTube podcast fear wants to make it the case. First of all, there was not like an organized revolutionary left in the US, not a
Starting point is 00:16:15 serious one. And secondly, like, the organized revolutionary left that existed in 20th century relied on a network that was international and that sometimes and not always had its roots in Soviet, I guess, foreign policy, right? That also does not like, as much as a YouTube world which is it to be the case, China is not sending people little yellow hardhats to go out in Portland and get mad at the feds being there. That's just not the case. Yeah. Here's an advert for hard hats, which you have to buy on your own, because China is not sending them to you. I'm Jorge Ramos.
Starting point is 00:16:58 In a man, Paula Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians. I would be the first immigrant mayor in generations, but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country. Artists and activists, I mean, do you ever feel demoralized? I might personally lose hope.
Starting point is 00:17:21 This individual might lose the faith, but there's an institution that doesn't lose faith, and that's what I believe in. To bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. There's not a single day that Paola and I, don't call or text each other, sharing news and thoughts about what's happening in the country. This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation public. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos as part of the MyCultura podcast network
Starting point is 00:17:52 on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a tape recorder statement. The person being interviewed is Krista Gayle Pike. This is in regards to the death of Colleen Slimmer. She just started going off on me, and I hit her. I just hit her and hit her and hit her and hit her. On a cold January day in 1995, 18-year-old Krista Pike killed 19-year-old Colleen Slimmer
Starting point is 00:18:22 in the woods of Knoxville, Tennessee. Since her conviction, Krista has been sitting on death row. The state has asked for an execution date for Krista. We let people languish in prison for decades, raising questions about who we consider fundamentally unrestorable. How does someone prove that they deserve to live? We are starting the recording now. Please state your first and last name. Krista Pike.
Starting point is 00:18:50 Listen to Unrestorable Season 2, Proof of Life, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. So like it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke,
Starting point is 00:19:17 but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. Well, 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house. So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage.
Starting point is 00:19:53 Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, couple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls, came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her.
Starting point is 00:20:29 We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.
Starting point is 00:20:55 I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other. stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system
Starting point is 00:21:15 will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. paint. Speaking of lead paint, and in some ways the conspiratorial elements of the years of lead, there is no shortage of conspiratorial thought permeating across the entire spectrum of American politics in ways that I've never really seen at this scale before, which isn't saying much because, you know, I'm not
Starting point is 00:22:16 however old James is, but I have been aware of it, but, but, but. Oh, fuck me. But I have been, monitoring extremist politics for a... A decent section of time. Mainly the past like seven years, the past like five or so years professionally. We're going to have to watch another video because of this whole section of the podcast, Garrison. I hope you know.
Starting point is 00:22:44 I'm actually multiple months late for my workplace arrest training. I can see why. Oh my God. But it's pretty bad. just the total rejection of reality and the separation of truth and reality as coherent concepts. And we've seen this and some of people's responses across the political spectrum to the release of alleged text messages between the alleged shooter of Charlie Kirk and their roommate, which was released in the indictment that dropped on Monday, which shows the alleged shooter explaining to their roommate what they did and how they did it and in part why. We'll talk more about this in executive disorder, these actual messages and what they contain,
Starting point is 00:23:30 but people's reaction to them, both on the left and right, have been pretty wild. Matt Walsh is arguing that these messages were scripted between the roommate and the shooter as a way to absolve the transgender roommate, referring to this strategy as being influenced by Breaking Bad? What? It's a, it's a, so Breaking Bad is a television show, an American television show released around 2008. Uh-huh. I'm not going to explain Breaking Bad. Garrison, do you remember that?
Starting point is 00:24:07 Oh my God, you were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Matt Walsh is, Matt Walsh is comparing this to something that Walter White did during, during Breaking Bad, saying that this feels like a strategy that these two people cooked up by watching too much TV, which, in fact, it just shows that it is Matt Walsh who watches too much TV, but the fact that this is the first thing. he thinks of. But it's not just Walsh. Communists, anti-imperialists, people on the left are spreading a completely unfounded assertion that this text exchange between the roommate and the alleged shooter was quote-unquote obviously written by an FBI agent. Posts like this are receiving tens of thousands of likes across platforms. Yeah. It's such a misunderstanding of how state craft works and how like
Starting point is 00:24:51 the legal system works that people, communists really think. that this state of Utah could orchestrate and convincingly, convincingly orchestrate completely fake text exchanges. Like, that's just simply not how our legal system works. And you have people, like, Hassan, spreading this sort of stuff.
Starting point is 00:25:13 Quote, half of the right thinks the messages are fake because it doesn't implicate the trans person. The other half thinks the shooter is a patsy because it was Israel that killed Charlie Kirk. I will say the text messages are too perfectly plugging holes, for the investigators. Unnatural. Like, come on. Come on. Come on, guys.
Starting point is 00:25:32 This is... Yeah. Like, I don't even know what to, like, argue with... Like, there's no way to argue against people who believe in this in any kind of real way. Yeah, right. Like, how do you... Someone who has rejected facts. Like, how do you bring them back? They have to argue in court that the alleged shooter actually did the shooting, right? That's what they're trying to establish.
Starting point is 00:25:52 Yeah. This is the evidence that will be... read upon as evidence. To introduce the text messages in court, the DA will have to prove their authenticity through chain of custody and metadata. The reason why they were released now is because they were included in the indictment laying out the charges against Tyler Robinson. Robinson might use some odd words, but he was raised Mormon, and all of this just
Starting point is 00:26:22 tracks at a face level to me. He's explaining his actions to the person that he loves and instructs them to delete the messages. He doesn't think that these are going to come back to hurt him. And this isn't just Patel's FBI saying this. This is the work of local police and state of Utah police in the state of Utah court. And this rejection of evidence, not what the evidence argues,
Starting point is 00:26:43 just the base evidence itself follows a week of debate regarding this shooter's political orientation, which me and Robert already discussed in an episode earlier this week. And I understand people's intensity around this issue, especially framing it in this years-of-led concept, right, of the right using this to majorly crack down on trans people and on the left, which, yeah, they're going to try to do. But trying to argue at this point that he's a gropeer is just so faulty and trying to argue that these text messages are faked somehow similarly is just so faulty and is so
Starting point is 00:27:21 detach from how this situation actually happened and how it fits in to the current dynamic of political violence in the United States. On that topic, a few days ago, Fox News's The Five, was debating if they needed more information to definitively say that the shooter was on, quote, unquote, the left. Greg Gutfield went on about how high-profile liberal and left-wing figures aren't being assassinated by people on the right and wrote off the murder of the of Minnesota House Speaker, Melissa Hortman, and her husband. We don't need more information. Really?
Starting point is 00:27:57 Yes, we don't need it. What is interesting here is why is only this happening on the left and not the right? That's all we need to know. There's absolutely no cognitive... What about Melissa Hortman that we just talked about? Melissa Horsman. Did you know her name before it happened? None of us did.
Starting point is 00:28:14 None of us were spending every single day talking about Mrs. Hortman. I never heard of her until after she died. So she doesn't matter? Don't play that bullshit with me. You know what I'm saying is there was no demonization amplification about that woman before she died. It was a specific crime against her by somebody who knew her. You could bring up Josh Shapiro, but then you will not bring up, for example, that that was a pro-Palestine person. So don't use your, what about this?
Starting point is 00:28:42 The fact of the matter is the both sides argument not only doesn't fly, we don't. care. We don't care about your both sides argument. That shit is dead. For one thing, there is no cognitive dissonance on our side. On your side, your beliefs do not match reality. So you're coming up with these rationalizations like, what about this or what about that? We're not doing that because we saw it happen. We saw a young, bright man assassinated and we know who did it. So if you look at like left-wing violence or violence targeting right-wing figures, even just like the past two years, right? There's the two attempted Trump assassinations,
Starting point is 00:29:25 which the right frames as left-wing violence, though the first Trump shooter did not have left-wing politics. They had more of the psychological profile of a school shooter who was looking to do something to get into history books and came from a conservative upbringing. This person was not a leftist, right? But this is still targeting a right-wing figure, so it's framed in this same conversation.
Starting point is 00:29:48 The United Healthcare assassination, similarly, right? This wasn't a left-wing person who did this, but targeting a CEO on a healthcare topic associates it with the left or with progressive stances around healthcare. There's the arson against Josh Shapiro's home. The guy who did this had a mixture of like a pro-Trump background, but with pro-Palestine motivations.
Starting point is 00:30:11 The most clear example would be the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers, and now the assassination of Charlie Kirk. With the healthcare stuff, like we should probably point out that Trump also ran on like medicine is too expensive, right? Like it costs too much
Starting point is 00:30:25 to get the pills you need to stay alive. Like that has been a cornerstone of his platform too. It can be framed as like a populist sentiment. It's a populist stance. Yeah. Not necessarily a leftist one. So that's the political background that these people on the right
Starting point is 00:30:39 are like coming from, right? Like that's how they see this. That's like this spike in left wing violence that they're seeing refers to this collection of acts. Now, for media has reported that a few days after Charlie Kirk's assassination, the Department of Justice removed from their website a National Institute of Justice research study showing a white supremacist and far-right violence far outweighs any other type of terrorism or domestic violent extremism.
Starting point is 00:31:06 Quote, since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In the same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives. So this study has been scrubbed from the website to follow in line with Trump and the rights general talking points about this spike in left-wing violence. I think in part, the right would view explicit white supremacist, neo-nobesist, neo-non. Nazi linked violence as like separate from like, you know, conservative or even some like far right violence. They don't understand the, the linkage from, you know, explicit white supremacist
Starting point is 00:31:55 mass shootings and, you know, make America great again, right? That's something that they would like reject as as a legitimate coupling. In Congress today, Cash Patel claimed to have no idea who did then roof was, for example. Correct. And like what he was about. A lot of them just aren't aware of this stuff. And it's not just this National Institute of Justice study. These findings are incredibly consistent across multiple studies. The notably not left-wing Cato Institute found very similar results. In their analysis of 620 politically motivated murders since 1975, excluding 9-11, most political violence comes from the right. They counted 391 murders from the right, and 65 from the left. I can link that below to get a better look at their actual methodology
Starting point is 00:32:41 and what they count as right-wing, what they count as left-wing violence. But these stats simply don't matter to the right in a lot of cases. Many average rightists will just reject these results altogether, say that the study is faked or had faulty methodology. But others might frame it as, even if this data is true, it doesn't match the current trend of escalating left-wing violence, specifically targeted left-wing violence, not just mass shootings. Here's another clip from Fox's The Five. I understand why people are saying, what about this and what about this? Because if you have to face the underlying fact to this, your life is going to fall apart because you're going to realize you're not the good guys.
Starting point is 00:33:23 If you sat around and you defended the mutilation of children, you're not the good guys. If you sat 600, 700 cases of harassment against Republicans and you said, but what about this? What about this? And then you see this murder after calling somebody a fashion. You, fascist, you realize maybe I'm not the good guy. That is a hell of a realization to deal with. So therefore, therefore, you have to grasp at rationalizations.
Starting point is 00:33:49 You don't have to do that, Jessica. They do. I don't believe you're part of that group, but why the hell do you have to mimic and echo that crap to us? He was a patsy. That guy was a patsy. He was under the hypnotic spell of a direct-to-consumer nihilism, the trans cult. And you know that. If you can decide that biology is false, you can agree that you,
Starting point is 00:34:14 that murder is okay and that humanity is expendable. How you cannot see that alone and see that for what the evil it is without having to attach all of these other things is beyond me. His explicit claim that we should just like flag is that it's not, he's not necessarily talking about leftists as a whole. He's specifically talking about people who accept that trans people are people, a bit of being and like that the existence of trans people. people leads to this nihilism, I guess.
Starting point is 00:34:47 Well, yeah, I mean, they see the existence of trans people as, like, a result of this nihilist culture, right? Yeah. Well, he seemed to put the causal hour the other way, though, in that. He seemed to suggest that the nihilism comes from accepting trans people. I guess I don't fully agree that that's how he's saying it. I think they view it as it's both causal, but also a symptom. I think they play it kind of both ways and showing how it's more so just like,
Starting point is 00:35:14 the result of this like breakdown in in like a moral fabric right which is then breaking down moral decline this like notion of reality which is why you know transness is such an existential threat to the right wing world view in like many senses but that's that's another topic i i do find it interesting how quick these people are just to completely discount right wing mass shootings right and i think one one key difference in talking about you know left wing violence versus right-wing violence, it seems, in almost all their examples here, they're talking about assassinations, targeted against specific people. Most right-wing violence in these, like, statistics from like Cato and the National Institute of Justice are mass shootings, right? The number
Starting point is 00:35:59 of individual people might not be that different, but the kill count for right-wing and specifically like white supremacist attacks are so much higher. I don't think it's the actual numbers that matter to these people. It's their proximity to being the recipient of such violence that really freaks them out. For these commentators, the likelihood of them being in a black church when a white supremacist mass shooting happens is Slimtona. Right? Like, that's never going to happen to these people. But being the victim of targeted violence against a high profile figure is, to them, it seems like an increasing possibility. And that really freaks them out. Obviously, this type of attack directly affects their political class in a way that a far-right mass shooting does not.
Starting point is 00:36:43 I think that is influencing the way that they're talking about this, you know, quote-unquote spike in left-wing violence. We're going to go on an ad break and then return to talk about J.D. Vance's temporary takeover of the Charlie Kirk show and how his rhetoric is affecting this general debate on political violence. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians. I would be the first immigrant mayor in generations, but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country.
Starting point is 00:37:25 Artists and activists, I mean, do you ever feel demoralized? I might personally lose hope. This individual might lose the faith, but there's an institution that doesn't lose faith. and that's what I believe in. To bring you depth and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. There's not a single day that Paola and I don't call or text each other, sharing news and thoughts about what's happening in the country. This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation public.
Starting point is 00:37:55 Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is a tape recorded statement. The person being interviewed is Krista Gail Pike. This is in regards to the death of a Colleen Slimmer. She started going off on Eve and I hit her. I just hit her and hit her and hit her and hit her.
Starting point is 00:38:24 On a cold January day in 1995, 18-year-old Krista Pike killed 19-year-old Colleen Slimmer in the woods of Knoxville, Tennessee. Since her conviction, Krista has been sitting on death row. The state has asked for an execution date for Krista. We let people languish in prison for decades, raising questions about who we consider fundamentally unrestorable. How does someone prove that they deserve to live?
Starting point is 00:38:53 We are starting the recording now. Please state your first and last name. Krista Pike. Listen to Unrestorable Season 2, Proof of Life, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. Hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself.
Starting point is 00:39:16 My dad is a farmer and my mom is a cousin. So, like, it's not like... What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? I know it sounds like the start of a bad joke, but that really was my reality nine years ago. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. On stage stood a comedian with a story that no one expected to hear. On 22nd of July 2015, a 23-year-old man had killed his family. And then he came to my house.
Starting point is 00:39:52 So what do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? A new podcast called Wisecrack, where stand-up comedy and murder takes center stage. Available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved. Until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls. came forward with a story.
Starting point is 00:40:36 I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to be.
Starting point is 00:41:03 find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up.
Starting point is 00:41:30 Bad things happens to good. people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. are back. On Monday, September 15th, Vice President J.D. Vance hosted the Charlie Kirk show from his office in the White House complex. The vice president, sitting down, hosting a private citizens radio talk show. The show's intro has clips from Charlie's studio with signs that read BigGov sucks. Warning, does not play well with liberals. To introduce the show, J.D. Vance says
Starting point is 00:42:30 that, quote, we have to talk about this incredibly destructive moment of left-wing extremism that has grown up over the last few years. We're going to talk about how to dismantle that and how to bring real unity, unquote. His first guest was Stephen Miller. Van said he wanted to talk to Miller about, quote, all the ways we're trying to figure out how to prevent this festering violence that you can see from the far left becoming even more and more mainstream. We have the crazies on the far left who are saying, oh, Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance, they're going to go after constitutionally protected speech. And no, we're going to go after the NGO network that fomence, facilitates, and engages in
Starting point is 00:43:10 violence. That's not okay. Violence is not okay in our system, and we want to make it less likely that that happens. Walk me through at a high level, like what you and I have been working on, what the whole administration has been working on, to try to make sure that we don't reward and promote this craziness. Yes, so it's an excellent question. I said this before, And, but it bears repeating, the last message that Charlie sent me was, I think it was just the day before we lost him, which is that we need to have an organized strategy to go after the left-ling organizations that are promoting violence in this country. And I will write those words onto my heart and I will carry them out. The NGO network. Yep.
Starting point is 00:43:54 Yeah, this is, this has been a thing with them for a while. It has. There was supposed to be a series of executive orders that were drafted earlier this year, specifically targeting Democrat funding platforms like Act Blue and environmental NGOs that it was reported that Trump was about to sign. And then they kind of disappeared. This was around like April to May. And this has been something that they obviously have been wanting to do. But for one reason or another, haven't followed through on yet. But now are talking about this as. an impending policy that the Trump administration is going to enact. I think some of their fascination with NGOs comes from the Trump administration's first term when NGOs were very successful in bringing suits that delayed or prevented some of the policies that the Miller faction of the Trump administration would have liked to implement. Yeah. And then I think the other angle of this is just the pure anti-Semitism angle
Starting point is 00:44:56 that partly when they're saying NGOs, they mean NGOs, and partly when they're saying NGOs, they mean Jews. And it's great. It's... I mean, very often, the specific focus was on Heas, right? Highest Hebrew immigrant aid society who... I mean, we see this in the tree of life shooting, for instance, in 2018, right? This has been with us for some time on the right.
Starting point is 00:45:19 I'm going to play another clip where they outline more strategies for clamping down on left-wing violence. And we are going to channel all of the anger that we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot and dismantle these terrorist networks. So let me explain a bit of what that means. So I've got 30 seconds. So be quick, Stephen. The organized docks and campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people's addresses, combining that with messaging this design to trigger inside violence. violence, and the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence, it is a vast
Starting point is 00:46:00 domestic terror movement. And with God is my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie's name. So in their discussion of taking down this big doxing network, they also inadvertently and ironically, describe this. the doxing campaign that the right is currently doing at a far larger scale and with way more institutional backing than any antif or left-wing doxing has looked like targeting people making posts in support of Charlie Kirk's assassination or people making jokes about Charlie Kirk
Starting point is 00:46:42 in the wake of his assassination. With a doxing website listing thousands of quote-unquote Charlie's murderers, which are actually just people who have made posts about the death of Charlie Kirk. This is building off the Canary Mission Strategy used against pro-Palestinian activists, which has been adopted by the State Department for Immigration Enforcement and Judging Visa Applications. This is the actual, like, organized, state-backed, institutionally backed, doxing campaign that exists right now in this country. It's not your average Torch Antifa chapter doing this at scale. Now it's the right, with the mechanism of state encouraging them, backing them, and tons of money. being funneled into an organized operation to actually impact, like, state policy on who gets
Starting point is 00:47:29 allowed in the country. On that note, Mark Rubio has talked about denying visa applications for people who celebrate the death of Charlie Kirk. We are not in the business of inviting people to visit our country who are going to be involved in negative and destructive behavior, okay? So why should, if I invite someone, if we invite someone to visit the United States of America, as a student, as a tourist, as whatever, then they have a different, the standard they should be held to is very high. We shouldn't be bringing people into this country. We should not be giving
Starting point is 00:48:02 visas to people who are going to come to the United States and do things like celebrate the murder, the execution, the assassination of a political figure. We should not, and if they're already here, we should be revoking their visa. So now there's an organized campaign to not only try to deport and revoke visas or deny visas to people, quote unquote, celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk, but also get citizens here fired from their jobs and disrupt their life. Just two years ago, Elon Musk tweeted, quote, if you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, Twitter, we will fund your legal bill, no limit, please let us know, unquote.
Starting point is 00:48:42 What's different about the rights use of these tactics is the merger of like the right-wing non-government organization like activist apparatus with the ruling conservative guns. government. Like, the Dems in the left have, have never done this before. There's never been this coordination between the actual democratic establishment and, like, the far left. That's never happened. Like, Palestine crackdowns started under Biden. Biden's DOJ prosecuted many 2020 George Floyd uprising cases. Federal assistance in the domestic terrorism investigation into Cop City started under Biden. As for, quote-unquote, organized riots and street violence, right-wing street violence has been encouraged and coordinated with Trump and the Trump administration.
Starting point is 00:49:23 Stand back and stand by. The stop-the-steel protests leading to January 6th, which Trump played a large part in making happen. And then Trump pardoned all the participants. Yeah, like it's pretty clear. The mayor of Minneapolis taking a knee is not on the same level as Trump pardoning all the January 6, quote unquote, insurrectionists. At the end of Vance's two-hour long episode, he reiterated on the topic of doxing and harassment campaigns and political violence. Here's another clip. I wrote a story in the Nation magazine about my dear friend Charlie Kirk.
Starting point is 00:50:04 Now, the Nation isn't a fringe blog. It's a well-funded, well-respected magazine whose publishing history goes back to the American Civil War. George Soros' Open Society Foundation funds this magazine, as does the Ford Foundation, and many other wealthy titans of the American Progressive Movement. The writer accuses Charlie of saying, and I quote, black women do not have brain processing power to be taken seriously. But if you go and watch the clip, the very clip she links to, you realize he never said anything like that. he never uttered those words. He made an argument against affirmative action as a policy. He criticized a specific Supreme Court justice as an individual. He never said anything about black women as a group. He made an argument for judging people of all races and backgrounds by their
Starting point is 00:51:01 own individual merits. The very evidence she provides, this hack of a writer, shows that she lied about a dead man. And yet, she wrote it, an esteemed magazine published it, it made it through the editors, and of course, liberal billionaires rewarded that attack. Now, of course, even if Charlie had uttered those words, it wouldn't mean that he deserved his fate, but consider the level of propaganda at work. Charlie was gunned down in broad daylight and well-funded institutions of the left lied about what he said so was to justify his murder. This is soulless and evil. But I was struck not just by the dishonesty of this smear, but by the glee over a young husband's and young father's death. Quote, she says, he was an unrepentantant racist, transphobe, homophobe, and
Starting point is 00:52:02 misogynist. The nation wrote, who often wrapped his bigotry. in Bible verses. There's a lot to break down there. First of all, the president of the nation, not the country, the magazine, the Nation magazine, has stated that they in fact do not receive money from George Soros or the Open Society Foundation.
Starting point is 00:52:25 Vance's gesturing to left-wing billionaires carries three parentheses around that term. Second of all, let's play the actual clip of Charlie talking about brain-pronger. processing power. Joy Reed and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Katanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks.
Starting point is 00:52:46 We would have been called the racist. But now they're coming out and they're saying it for us. They're coming out and they're saying, I'm only here because of affirmative action. Yeah, we know you do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person slot to go be taken. So he just happens to be talking about three black women and state that they do not have the brain processing power to do their jobs
Starting point is 00:53:14 and that they stole a white man's spot to get in the position they are in now. An opinion writer for The Washington Post was fired this week for sharing this quote on Twitter which replaced the names of the three women he's talking about with just black women. Did she share it like in between quotation marks if it was a direct quotation? She did share it as if it was a direct quotation. All right, okay, I see. So I'm going to read this from the email that they sent to this writer firing her.
Starting point is 00:53:43 This writer is a black woman. Among other requirements, the company-wide social media policy mandates that all employees' social media postings be respectful and prohibits posting that disparage people based on their race, gender, or other protected characteristics. The policy also reminds employees that everything they post is reflective of the company and should not affect the integrity of the post-journalism. you're posting some blue sky, which identify you as a post columnist, about white men in response to the killing of Charlie Kirk, do not comply with our policy. For example, you posted, refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face and performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is not the same thing as violence. And part of what keeps America violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness, and absolution for white men who espoused hatred and violence. so this is explicitly a they think that reverse racism is real and that saying that and talking about white people as a class of people in the U.S. that are responsible for things is in fact
Starting point is 00:54:46 racism that is that is the argument that the post the Washington Post is making in the email where they fire her which is like that reverse racism shit even like three years ago was like a pretty fringe right wing like that was a not originally like a Nazi thing right and this is now being used by
Starting point is 00:55:08 like the Washington Post to fire their own writers for writing really incredibly reasonable things about Charlie Kirk to close Charlie Kirk's episode
Starting point is 00:55:19 and to close our episode J.D. Vance talked about before we can have any national unity we must like Charlie tell the truth Unity, real unity, can be found only after climbing the mountain of truth.
Starting point is 00:55:37 And there are difficult truths we must confront in our country. One truth is that 24% of self-described, quote, very liberals, believe it is acceptable to be happy about the death of a political opponent, while only 3% of self-described very conservatives agree. 3% is too many, of course. Another truth is that 26% of young liberals believe political violence is sometimes justified. And only 7% of young conservatives say the same, again, too high a number. In a country of 330 million people, you can, of course, find one person of a given political persuasion justifying this or that or almost anything.
Starting point is 00:56:23 But the data is clear. people on the left are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence. This is not a both sides problem. If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth we must be told.
Starting point is 00:56:43 So these stats are from a recent U-gov survey, where 24% of very liberals say it's okay to be happy with the murder of a political opponent, and 26% of young liberals say sometimes political violence is justified 3 to 7% of young conservatives. The study also found that Democrats and Republicans are more likely to say that political violence
Starting point is 00:57:05 is a big problem after attacks on members of their own party. Of course, this polling is going to be heavily influenced by whatever recent events just happened. That's going to change people's stated opinion on these questions. Yeah. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk,
Starting point is 00:57:22 67% of Republicans said that political violence is a very big problem. 58% of Democrats agreed. After the assassination of Melissa Hortman, 56% of Democrats said it's a very big problem. Only 44% of Republicans agreed. After the assassination attempt on Josh Shapiro, 44% of Democrats, 37% of Republicans.
Starting point is 00:57:42 Wait, Josh Shapiro wasn't assassinated, right? They tried to ban his house. Well, yeah, they're counting that as an attempted assassination. Oh, okay, I see. After the attempted assassination on Donald Trump, 51% of Republicans said political balance is a very big problem, 46% of Democrats. And after the attacks on Paul Pelosi, 53% of Democrats said political violence is a very big problem,
Starting point is 00:58:05 compared to 31% of Republicans. These stats are very fluid and absolutely changed, depending on whatever current events were current at the time, whatever just happened. We're going to talk about this more in a bit, but I think the way that we frame cheering on, political violence. Also, massively varies based on what you count as political violence. Is the police killing count as political violence? If so, that's going to majorly affect the way
Starting point is 00:58:33 we think about this question. Here's Vance, again, talking about Trump's assassination and the pyramid that supports political violence. Now any political movement, violent or not violent, is a collection of forces. It's like a pyramid that stacks on top, one support on top of the other. That pyramid's got a foundation of donors, of activists, of journalists, now of social media influencers, and of course, of politicians. Not every member of that pyramid would commit a murder. In fact, over 99% I'm sure would not. But by celebrating that murder, apologizing for it, and emphasizing not Charlie's innocence, but the fact that he said things some didn't like, even to the point of lying about what he actually said,
Starting point is 00:59:20 many of these people are creating an environment where things like this are inevitably going to happen. Bansing goes on to talk about how people yelled at him and his family when he visited Disneyland and discusses how after Charlie's death, one of his friends and a senior White House staffer had left-leaning operatives in his neighborhood, passing out leaflets, telling people what he looked like
Starting point is 00:59:44 and where he lived, and quote, encouraging neighbors to harass him or, God forbid, do worse. While he was mourning his dead friend, he and his wife had to worry about the political terrorists drawing a big target on his home he shares with his own children. Are these people violent? I hope not. But are they guilty of encouraging violence? You damn well better believe it.
Starting point is 01:00:03 We can thank God that most Democrats don't share these attitudes, and I do, while acknowledging that something has gone very wrong with a lunatic fringe, a minority, but a growing and powerful minority on the far left, unquote. Vance goes on to state that he seeks no unity with the far left. There is no unity with people who scream at children over their parents' politics. There is no unity with someone who lies about what Charlie Kirk said in order to excuse his murder. There is no unity with someone who harasses an innocent family the day after the father of that family lost a dear friend.
Starting point is 01:00:42 friend. There is no unity with the people who celebrate Charlie Kirk's assassination. And there is no unity with the people who fund these articles, who pay the salaries of these terrorist sympathizers, who argue that Charlie Kirk, a loving husband and father, deserved a shot to the neck because he spoke words with which they disagree. Did you know that the George Soros Open Society Foundation and the Ford Foundation, the groups who funded that disgusting article, justifying Charlie's death, do you know they benefit from generous tax treatment? They are literally subsidized by you and me, the American taxpayer, and how do they reward us by setting fire to the house built by the American family over 250 years?
Starting point is 01:01:30 On September 13th, Fox News Morning host Brian Kilmead endorsed euthanizing homeless people with, quote, involuntary lethal injection or something just kill them. Billions of dollars to mental health and the homeless population, a lot of them don't want to take the programs, a lot of them don't want to get the help that is necessary.
Starting point is 01:01:53 You can't give them a choice. Either you take the resources that we're going to give you or you decide that you're going to be locked up in jail. That's the way it has to be now. Or involuntary lethal injection or something. I just kill them. Brian, why did it have to get to this point?
Starting point is 01:02:08 Right. I would say this. We're not voting. for the right people. In North Carolina, wake up. Just kill them. Jesus. A Fox News host advocating the killing of homeless people. And he didn't get fired
Starting point is 01:02:19 from this. He apologized a few days later, but he's not getting fired from his job for this. Open, openly advocating the death of homeless people. Yeah. Murder. And I think it's worth noting whatever we're having a discussion about political violence that two days
Starting point is 01:02:35 after Charlie Kirk was shot, ice just killed a guy in Chicago who was driving away from their intent to detain him he was driving away pretty slowly and there's video of it now they pulled out their guns and they killed him and you know all of these people who are the people who ordered ice into this city right who are directly responsible for for the deaths of this man who was also a single father Actually, well, no, Kirk was not a single father, but this guy was and was just murdered in cold blood by ice, right? This is not considered political violence by sort of either liberals or conservatives, right? Because they don't think that political violence can be done by the state.
Starting point is 01:03:22 And this is also part of how you get to the situation now where you can be like, well, the state should just murder homeless people. And that's not considered political violence because it's the state doing it and because they don't think homeless people are people. yeah i mean to broaden that statement slightly or take a different angle on it right like there is a complete bipartisan and consensus that we should kill hundreds of people a year crossing our southern border because that supposedly serves as a deterrent from other people coming which it doesn't but that's not seen as political violence no they just murdered three more people on a boat like leaving venezuela a few days ago yeah yeah as vans ended the charlie kirk show episode he advocated that listeners find and call the employers of people celebrating Charlie Kirk's death to join a
Starting point is 01:04:09 TPUSA chapter or to run for office. But I promise you that we will explore every option to bring real unity to our country and stop those who would kill their fellow Americans because they don't like what they say. But you have a rule too. Civil society, Charlie understood this well, is not just something that flows from the government. It flows from each and every one of us. It flows from all of us. So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell, call their employer.
Starting point is 01:04:47 We don't believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination. The idea of the fusion of the state with civil society is really notable there like that that's not what civil society is right that is a concept that is inherently totalitarian that the civil society should flow downstream from the state and the movement it's this fusion between the two that the right has deployed so successfully which has increased their ability to actually like rule yeah i mean that's that's that's what
Starting point is 01:05:20 fascism does right like that that's franco that's hitler like that is textbook that's like the point of the brown shirts yeah or like the women's movement in Spain, right, to give a more civil society example. They're not like a, they're not like a state police agency. They're a civil society organization explicitly run by the state for its agenda. So to return to the years of lead paint idea that opened this episode, what I'm observing right now across the political ocean is this flattening of tactics. As I've discussed on the show before in the Blunon episodes, the right Trojan hoarse political conspiracism into acceptable political discourse, which the left is now embracing, liberals and the left. And you can see this with people's
Starting point is 01:06:03 reactions to the Charlie Kirk assassination and theories about the alleged shooter. So the left is embracing conspiracy theories. Meanwhile, the right is adopting and accelerating political cancel culture style doxing. The key difference here is on the right, these actions have state backing and coordination or serve to maintain state power. For example, there's types of political violence that get cheered on by the right, such as deportations and the cheering on of police after officer-involved shootings. Back the Blue keeps alignment with state power. Same thing with cheering on or encouraging violence against BLM protesters that supports the state structure. And advocating or celebrating the deaths of protesters gets viewed very differently than the targeted assassinations that have
Starting point is 01:06:53 happened the past year. And now of the past few days, Trump has discussed once again, designating Antifa and other groups as domestic terror organizations and bringing RICO charges against Code Pink activists who screamed at him at a restaurant in D.C. a few weeks ago. Do you plan on designating Antifa finally a domestic terror organization? Well, it's something I would do, yeah. If I have support from the people back here, I think we'd start with Pam, I think. But I would, if you give me, I would do that, 100%, and others also, by the way, but Antifa is terrible. Are there other groups that you communicate?
Starting point is 01:07:35 There are other groups, yeah, there are the groups. We have some pretty radical groups, and they got away with murder. And also, I've been speaking to the Attorney General about bringing Rico against some of the people that you've been reading about that have been putting up millions and millions of dollars for agitation. These aren't protests. These are crimes, what they're doing, where they're throwing bricks at cars of ice and border patrol.
Starting point is 01:08:00 I want to close by, you know, we've seen the sort of repercussions that people have had, not even for like celebrating Charlie Kirk's death, but for like being like, wait, this guy fucking sucks. And this whole, you know, this whole argument about civility and, I mean, the vice president of the United States is making, right? I want to read this quote from Matt Walsh. As you're recording this, this is from Tuesday, September 16th. This was left-wing LGBT terrorism.
Starting point is 01:08:27 there was never much doubt. Now there is none at all. All left-wing terror networks must be crushed. All of the terrorists and their helpers and funders must be arrested, prosecuted, and put to death. So, and there have been absolutely zero consequences for, again, Matt Walsh calling for this whole network of people that he imagines exists being executed. That's their endgame, right? It is to destroy the concept of free speech in order to preserve, quote, unquote, free speech, right? In order to sort of, quote, unquote end political violence. They want to carry out, you know, mass political killings of their
Starting point is 01:09:00 opponents. Coordinated at a state level with state resources. Yeah. Yeah. And the state involvement makes it okay. That makes it a moral action, not the actions of some like unhinged terrorist. Yeah. And this is a really significant problem for the way that we think about political violence, because this is something that's true for both liberals and conservatives that they think that the state is the appropriate arbiter for this kind of political violence, which is how Obama, can do a drone strike on a 16-year-old American citizen and kill him in cold blood because Obama had political disagreements with his father, right? And how this isn't treated as something that's fine by a huge portion of liberals. And this is one of the things that's going to allow if these
Starting point is 01:09:43 people are successful, and I don't know that they will be. But if they can be, that's going to be why. well that is how we at the show understand the years of lead paint or the current 2025 September era of the years of lead paint there's phantoms everywhere there's conspiracies everywhere and nowhere and the specter of political violence is around every corner it could happen here is a production of cool zone On Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzone Media.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Starting point is 01:10:36 I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians, artists and activists, to bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. The moment is a space for the conversations we've been having us father and daughter for years. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On a cold January day in 1995, 18-year-old Krista Pike killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer in the woods of Knoxville, Tennessee. Since her conviction, Krista has been sitting on death row. How does someone prove that they deserve to live?
Starting point is 01:11:23 We are starting the recording now. Please state your first and last name. Krista Pike. Listen to Unrestorable Season 2, Proof of Life, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different. What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club.
Starting point is 01:11:49 Answer, a new podcast called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you want to hear the secrets of psychopaths, murderers, sex offenders?
Starting point is 01:12:16 episode, I offer tips from them. I'm Dr. Leslie, forensic psychologist. This is a podcast where I cut through the noise with real talk. When you were described to me as a forensic psychologist, I was like snooze. We ended up talking for hours and I was like, this girl is my best friend. Let's talk about safety and strategies to protect yourself and your loved ones. Listen to intentionally disturbing on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Thank you.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.