Rev Left Radio - Community Armed Self-Defense: Setting Sights on Liberation

Episode Date: February 19, 2018

Scott Crow is an American anarchist organizer, speaker and writer. A longtime activist, he is an advocate for the philosophies and politics of anarchism. In addition to a number of other groups, Crow is a co-founder of Common Ground Collective or Common Ground Relief, an anarchist organization formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. His book Black Flags and Windmills: Hope, Anarchy and the Common Ground Collective details those efforts. Crow's newest work is an anthology which he put together and edited called "Setting Sights: Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self Defense". scott joins Brett to discuss the new book, gun culture, mass shootings, the FBI, and much more.  Follow scott on Twitter: @scott_crow Reach us at: [e-mail] follow us on Twitter @RevLeftRadio Follow us on FB at "Revolutionary Left Radio" Intro Music by The String-Bo String Duo. You can listen and support their music here: https://tsbsd.bandcamp.com/track/red-black This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition, the Nebraska IWW, and the Omaha GDC. Check out Nebraska IWW's new website here: https://www.nebraskaiww.org

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I'm your host, Ann Comrade, Brett O'Shea, and today we have on Scott Crowe to talk about community self-defense, gun culture, American society, and a little advice for the left. Scott, would you like to introduce yourself and say a bit about your background for anyone who doesn't already know who you are? My name is Scott Crow. I'm a longtime community organizer. I've been a dad, a long-time musician,

live in Texas, and advocate for the ideas of anarchy. I believe that we can self-organize in small communities and as individuals much better than any governments can. And let's see, I guess I've cut my teeth on quite a few things. You know, main issues have been animal liberation, radical environmentalism, prisoner issues, political prisoner issues, because these are threads that have kind of run through my life. So I guess I would kind of sum it up

Cool Yeah and I want to give a shout out up top to MC Soul from the Soulcast He was instrumental in introducing me To Scott's work and a lot of Soul's interviews I use as preparation For my interview here So I just want to give him a shout out

One of the things you talked about with Soul Way to go, Saul Yeah, one of the things you've talked about In your interviews with Soul Is kind of your history with anti-fascist work Your run-ins with the FBI And being on the terrorist watch list, actually. So can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, I mean, I've been doing

anti-fascist work since about 1985. I started to cut my teeth on the divestment campaigns of anti-apartheid stuff, but I've always paid attention to extreme right ideologies, because I'm in Texas, and they're pretty predominant. So it's a libertarian-slash-conservative state in the traditional sense, but there's a, but the Confederate Hammerskin started here in 1988. and they became the Hammerskin Nation, which became one of the most violent factions of right neo-Nazi movements. And so I worked with different groups, both within the system or without the system. I worked with Marxist organizations for a long time,

and I worked with different communist organizations and socialist organizations way before I became an anarchist and doing anti-fascist work and around police brutality and stuff. And then, and much, much later in the early 2000s, I joined anti-racist action formally. in 2000, I guess, between 2000 and 2002, and I worked with Central Texas Anti-Racist Action and the Anti-Fascist Network for about a good six or seven solid years doing that, of definitely confronting fascism in the streets much more often.

And can you talk about a little bit about the whole FBI run-ins and how they've monitored you? I think it's just interesting and people find it interesting. You won, you know, the thing is, like I became a poster child and I won the lottery as far as the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force, especially after September 11, 2001. But there's a couple of confluences that have been happening. So I was under investigation for probably about 10 years.

I was investigated in about 13 field offices in nine states. Ostensibly, it was because I was a violent person or I was about to commit some extreme amount of violence that was never very clear. But really what happened was that it was a confluence of things that happened. And I'd been working in animal liberation politics since the 80th and radical environmentalism in the 80s and 90s. And then I became an anarchist in the late 90s. And these three threads became ones that the federal government wanted to go after, especially after September 11th, 2001.

And then there was one more group in there that was the Muslim people of Middle Eastern descent. Those are the four largest ones that were targeted by the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the United States. So being in three of those four categories, it just made me the poster child. for them. You know, I had participated in some clandestine actions over the time. I've obviously, you know, participated in property destruction over time. And so this, this, you know, all of these factors came together, began to reveal that I was under incredible surveillance. Now, you have to understand, like, while this was going on, I suspected it because I think a lot of people who consider themselves activists or revolutionaries or people, anarchists, or whatever, whatever

striped they are, that we're always under surveillance. There's a mass amount of surveillance that we are under, even before the widespread surveillance that we have now. We've always been under it. There's always been filming at protests or the police visiting people, federal law enforcement visiting people. But it was under that, but then all of a sudden I started to get where I couldn't fly. Like starting in 2004, I couldn't fly anywhere.

When I tried to purchase firearms in 2002, the FBI showed up every time after our I was there to scare the, scare the holy shit out of the person that was trying to sell me a gun. This is a legal transaction where I was trying to actually buy guns through their system, even, through the whole federal system and get, you know, I passed the background check, but they would never sell me the gun. It took almost a year before I was able to purchase my first rifle because of that. And they were also not, they were also compelled not to tell me, but I found out by accident by somebody who saw the FBI come in after I was at one of the stores. And so this is how I knew. And then I had been doing a lot of political prisoner support for the Angola 3. And I was unceremoniously kicked off of the list of Herman Wallace, who's now deceased,

but one of the longest held people in solitary confinement, who did win his just freedom before he died, but he died two days later. And I've been visiting him in prison for about six or seven years in Angola, Louisiana. And then one day I was kicked off the list due to information received from outside law enforcement. And then when the lawyers with Angola 3 did some research, it said, I was an environmental extremist and rights terrorist and anarchist. And so this was the unfolding kind of stories that were happening. And, of course, the things were happening at my house,

and they were going through my trash, and they were sitting in front of, you know, it was a joint terrorism task force, so there was multiple agencies sitting in front of my house at different times. But not so unusual in the political world I was in. It was more intense, but not so unusual. And then by the time 2008 rolled around at the Republican National Convention, this man named Brandon Darby who had been a friend of mine

outed himself as an informant and he had put two, by that time two friends of mine were going to prison and a third friend of mine had killed himself due to his actions and so that started the whole process where a non-profit did the Freedom of Information Act request

and so then I was able to confirm of all of these things that were happening. I'm in actually a lawsuit right now with the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Department of Homeland Security to get more documents because they only released about 2,000 pages originally, and there was about 30,000 pages.

And what's unusual about my story is that I just didn't go to prison. They tried to indict me three times with different grand juries, and they couldn't ever bring the indictments to the floor. And I don't know what the machinations is that, you know, it's all secret stuff, but I can see it in the FBI documents. And so what happened for my case is that why it became unusual is that all the surveillance had happened, and they'd done all these things.

They'd spent, you know, half a million to a million dollars investigating me and all these things, but they weren't able to bring any charges against me. And so I was able to talk about it. And so the New York Times picked it up. And so before we, you know, like when Edward Snowden released stuff one or two years later, my case kind of became the canary and the coal mine to show that there was mass surveillance going on.

I just think it's so ridiculous that the notion of you as some violent criminal, like everything I've heard from you, everything I've read from you, you're just like an empathetic, loving, sensitive, funny human being. And so the notion that the government thinks that you're some wild card out there ready to hurt innocent people is just so, so absurd. You know, it takes it. I mean, there is some teeth to it. It's not like it was just totally out of the blue, right? But let's be honest about it.

It's because of what I chose to engage in in property destruction, avocation of property destruction, armed groups arming themselves, taking arms against fascists back in the early 2000s. All of these things kind of led towards that. And one of the threads that ran through the documents was they said that I had a predicate for violence. They started, the first document says that in 1999, although I was never charged with a violent crime ever. I've been charged with tons of things. Well, let me say this, never convicted of a crime because they can charge you with anything.

You know, I've been charged with assault on officers and things like that, but, of course, they always get dropped. And so there's a predicate for violence And then that's where they say they were scared Although they never say where the predicate for violence comes from They've never been charged with the domestic abuse or any of that kind of stuff Never been you know nothing has ever happened So they built this story in their head and you can see that they're just basically lying as the story gets And it gets more scary and it got to where basically by 2006 when I would get pulled over by local law enforcement

They were terrified at me because it said this person is armed and dangerous and and well basically kill you. And they issued a Bolo alert in 2007 just before the Republican National Convention was going to be in St. Paul in Minneapolis in Texas saying that I could burn police cars, I

will injure police officers. I mean, there was a whole litany of things that I saw that have never engaged in. Yeah. There were just lies. But it justifies their budgets. So, for sure. Yeah, and I mean, if you're a leftist revolutionary, you're going to be a threat to the system

itself. But I do think that a lot of the care and sort of the empathy and compassion that I think we on the left have drives us to become revolutionaries or radicals and to take up arms against basically the worst people in society, you know, barbarians and the violent attack dogs of the state and fascists. So I just think there's always an interesting connection there. But it's just funny how the U.S. government frames left-wing radicals and how they always have. But I do wonder, have you ever been targeted since you're so public? And you, been targeted by the government. Have you ever been targeted by the far right in like doxing campaigns or any sort of any sort of threats like that? Yes, we just, I just call that

regular. The reason I armed myself originally was because, um, uh, I used to get death threats at my house. So back before the internet was widespread, they would just deliver them by hand to my house or they would post them on my door or they would mail them to me. And then through Central Texas anti-racist action, we used to have a PO box and I would get death threats. Because I did also media for a lot of anti-racist action stuff. And I've also been pretty public. I've participated in Black Block many, many times, but most often I was not ever wear a mask because I'm not ashamed of anything that I do. You know, like I don't care if they don't like it. That's a whole different mindset. But the thing is, I am not ashamed of what I do and I'm not afraid of it. And so the doxing

has always happened. But we doxed them far more than they do. But also, I got doxed by the ultimate media outlet in New York Times. They published my whole address in photos of my house and me at my house. So that's public record. It's everywhere. So I go on that premise and you know like people worry about

getting doxed all the time. Sure it happens but there's different levels of it right. There's certain things like even if you look at like your corporate social media like I only treat that profile as a public space right. I don't talk about every little intimate thing on there. You know and I think that we need to be careful about that but also

you know like there's different things that people worry about like like if i get a death threat in a you know through twitter let's say i don't even i don't even barely look at it it doesn't even mean anything it means nothing to me even if they say it over and over again or they you know say in different ways or different people jump in that doesn't even mean anything it's just noise as far as static as far as i'm concerned when they email me it's also still still the same public email address it's just static when it starts to come to my house or people start to show up which has also happened, that's when I take it much more serious. Well, let's go ahead and move on a bit just to sort of the reason of this discussion,

which is your book that you've recently published or that you created this anthology that you edited called Setting Sites, Histories and Reflections on Community Armed Self-Defense. What prompted you to create this book, and what do you hope revolutionaries learn from it? Well, like, you know, I grew up with, like, in my own personal life, with violence in my life. You know, like my dad was a violent person and the person who called himself my dad, who actually was only my stepfather for 10 years. But, you know, it was like those 10 crucial years of your childhood. And there was a lot of violence.

And so I learned to reject it. And but I didn't come back to it. You know, I thought nonviolence was the way, especially politics and social change and stuff. I was like, I was like, yes, Gandhian and MLK, like, let's go this way. But what I realized is that it was really from a, even though I was born and lived in poor working class all my life until I was an adult. I realized that it was still a relative amount of privilege in that, and I would still rely on the state to resolve situations. And then, you know, in the 90s, I ran into some old Panthers in Dallas,

and I started to learn from them. They started to talk to me about the ideas of political self-defense that was coming from Malcolm X. And then later I learned from the anti-fascist work of anarchists and, of course, the Zapatistas, who were happening all through the 90s. I mean, these were groups that had armed themselves in these very specific ways that had very big influence on me. And I think the Zapatistas are very crucial

in helping me to form these theories of community self-defense in the way that it might look. And so all of this kind of happens and then I start to get the death threats and so by the time I'm doing very strict anti-fascist work through anti-racist action,

you know, the death threats are coming. But we are also training ourselves as a tactical defense caucus. There's a group of us. We have same caliber arms, firearms, arms, you know, three calibers, and then everybody has them. We train together so nobody shoots anybody. And then, you know, like, so that moves on.

And then Katrina happens, and I actually end up taking up arms after Hurricane Katrina being invited into these communities and taking up arms against white militias who, and fascists who were actually killing black men in those communities. And so then these abstract concepts became much more concrete in my life. They had been concrete through anti-racist action, but still in this abstract. abstract way. I never had to pull my gun to defend myself. But here in New Orleans, we actually were doing that. And we never came from a position of trying to take power. We only wanted to defend the communities that were there. And again, it was two white guys from Texas invited into

these communities. It's not because we just said, we're going to go do this. It's because we'd built relationships with some of the organizers there. Again, former members of the Black Panther Party and began to do this. And then, you know, like, and so that combined with my anarchist, you know, belief or system or theoretical system or foundations is that we must do these things for ourselves we can't rely on the state not conceptually but we must do these things and so there's hard dirty work that has to be done if we want to rebuild civil society it's not just education health care and food security it's also defense and taking out the trash and child care and all of these pieces will take well those two those two pieces taking out the trash and doing the dishes and

also you know defending communities are the things that at the time left us were not even talking about. I mean, you would have thought that we had, you know, shit in the punch bowl or something at that moment. It was not, it was not accepted. So in 2006, some people in Lawrence, Kansas, who were coming from the same views, and I and a couple of people from Texas, we all put together this zine called Desire Armed. And it was a collection of pseudo-anonymous essays on our experience, our limited experiences with guns, drawing on a little bit of history on it. But I thought there's so much more to this. And so it started me on this journey of like, I want to do this into a bigger book. So I would just say I highly recommend anyone to go get this book and start

reading it. I've, you know, I haven't been able to finish the entire thing, but I'm in the process of reading it. And already, it's just extremely informative. It's packed with history and theory and really, really important things that you can put into action, you know, currently. Thanks. And I mean, that's the idea is I wanted to be accessible because theory in and of itself is a dead end, right? If it's only to, for academics or for subcultures or cliques or people, you know, people to keep power amongst themselves and gatekeep, it doesn't do any good. And so I wanted this book to be accessible, you know, and that's the way I am approached

about things like. So that's why there's a lot of personal first person stories in it as well as theory that is approachable. For sure. Absolutely. So let's go ahead and get into, you know, gun culture and American society broadly. During a previous interview I conducted with its going down, they argued that while the left should absolutely arm themselves and defend their communities, we should also not engage in an escalation of violence or a sort of arms race with the far right in the state. What are your thoughts on that and more broadly on the fine line between legitimate community self-defense and the fetishization of weapons and violence for its own sake?

Well, those are two questions in there. So I'm going to break them down. So I'll talk about the first one. Yes, I totally agree with it's going down. should not engage in an escalation of violence, not even just with a state, but even with others who are far more practiced, far more steeped in the culture, and far more armed than we are. And that would be like alt-right, neo-Nazi, white militia groups and stuff. Because, you know, to me, actually, the state is not the issue with us. Like, we're not taking up arms

against the state. We're so far away from that. I'm not even advocating for that because I think it's a dead-end strategy at this point. But really, how do we deal with fascistic elements? When those look like, whether it's mass shootings or whether it's, you know, like what happened after Herkin Katrina with us dealing with two different militia groups that had formed white militias who ostensibly were there to protect their own communities, but actually went out to kill black young men mostly. Or like Greensboro, North Carolina, you know, in 1973, or what's happening in the Zapatista communities or what's happening in Rajava, are there ways that we can take up arms for temporary amounts of time that don't make us into targets, but also don't start

to escalate the violence in that? So that's why I really the premises community defense more than just everybody arm themselves and like let's do this. And so I think it's really important in that way that for me in the book is there's two groups. One to talk about can we change gun culture altogether which is like is there a way to get away from becoming outstanding armies macho culture all this but also

internally I hope that leftists whether whatever party ideology or non-party ideology they have whether communists, socialist Marxists or whatever it is or whether anarchists or revolutionaries or whatever they want to call themselves that we

begin to really think about this because This is, when you're carrying something that is a tool that can kill people, can kill mass amounts of people, there has to be more thought than as general in activism or in general in the political culture in the United States. And so I want people to really think about that because what we are running into is that we are running into this seemingly escalation of violence, especially with far right groups, right? So you used to have, like in Texas, we'd always have far right groups show up with arms. They have, you know, since forever. But they were unloaded guns. loaded guns like AR-15s and, you know, any multiple calibers of guns, you know, pistols and stuff.

And they do. And so now you have these communist groups or these Marxist groups that are showing up also. And you can see the difference. The, the white militias are well-trained. They're, you know, they've got their way they stand. Everything is like, you can tell they've been around gun culture. But when you see these leftist kids do it, it's terrible. It looks terrible.

And it looks like somebody's going to hurt themselves. Also, when you're doing that, if you're doing this, you're talking about, you're taking a symbolic action, which is protest, which is fucking worthless in so many ways as a form of communication. But now you're adding this level of violence to it where if you give a shit about the U.S. Constitution, which I do not, you've got the First Amendment coming up against the Second Amendment because there's a chilling effect once guns begin to show up at these things. I've heard, I've had it from personal experience when, you know, when white militia guys came at me in 2011, when I speaking on the state capital, when I said the same thing to you about the, when I just said the same thing at that speech about the Constitution that I just said just now, they ran to the front and I thought they were going to shoot me. Nobody aimed their guns at me, but it had that chilling effect on it. Wow. So I think that we need to really think about this if anybody's going to do this. And I think that what it's going down was talking about, because we have talked about.

I've talked about it with people in their collective is that, you know, like, is showing up at protests with guns the most appropriate thing? You know, and there are different groups like John Brown Gun Club that had showed up and the Red Nick Revolt much more well trained than the Red Guards who show up in Austin. More steeped in gun culture. Some of them, some of those people have been steeped in gun culture for a long time. And, you know, like what they did in Charlottesville wasn't just showing up at a protest. Those were, to me, I consider Charlottesville an actual battle. but most of the times it's not like that and so I think we need to be careful about that

and the escalation of violence especially with the state because we are not going to overtake the state and there's a whole strategy in that and we can talk about that at some point but so to bring it to the second part of what you were talking about which I totally fucking forgot about

oh yeah sorry the fetishization of the weapons so this is the other thing is that you know in the leftist culture let me say this fuck it everybody whatever spectrum you're on left or right

there's this romanticization about guns in this country and we have our own specific one coming out of leftists and radical cultures which is this thing of the revolutionary you know the che Guevara or the Zapatistas or what's happening in Rojava or other places where people take up arms

but the thing is the only reason those people are taking up arms like that is because they have to because they have no other choices. Their children are dying. They have no access to food. They have no access to health care, education, all of these things. The gun becomes the only tool to begin to sort of even try to even out the playing field at all. And believe me, if you talk to those people, that's not what they want to live in. And that's not the world they want to do. It's not fucking romantic. And having taken up arms myself, or if you look at the stories in the book from, you know, like Ashanti Alston,

who was in the Black Panther Party at 16. He was part of the Black Liberation Army at 19. It was a political prisoner at 21 and served 15 years in prison. And, you know, he doesn't, he tells about the symbolic power of the gun, but also the after effects of how his life is as a 60-something-year-old man now, like how he still has to carry that. There's a consequences to that. And so we should definitely stay away from fetishizing the guns and guns.

gun culture. To me, that would be part of building this liberatory community, a liberatory gun culture would be like challenging machismo, challenging revolutionary ideology or romanticism around it, and patriarchy, and all the things that are inherent in that. Extremely well said, I do think that leftists should be able to, you know, be competent with arms, to train with them in a sort of low-key, responsible way, be able to protect your family, your community, but to not make a big show of it and to not make it sort of the cornerstone of your activism or your approach to revolutionary politics for the exact reasons that you just said, Scott.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I would like to move on and discuss mass shooting because this week we witnessed yet another horrific school shooting, and predictably the entire country has once again been a buzz with talk of gun control. The question of gun control almost always leads to a sort of black and white dichotomy. either people are for it 100% or against it 100% and conversations are rarely able to get into the deep complex issues involved because of this so I was wondering if you could give us your thoughts on gun control broadly

and perhaps introduce some nuance into this discussion one thing is gun control doesn't work it won't work in this country sure they can give examples of how gun control work in the traditional sense of like nobody's going to give up their guns that they have the multi millions of piles of weapons that are laying around people aren't going to give those up So then if you're going to have legislative stuff, I think they need to figure out another way to engage in that. But truthfully, it comes down to culture. And here's what I see.

I'm always about affecting culture, changing culture, shifting culture, because laws that come are always reactionary. You know, like if we look at, if we, if I, let me back up for one second. If we only see ourselves as voters, consumers, or activists, which is largely the way the police, people do in politics. You're either going to vote your way out of it or you're going to buy your way out of it by doing the right consumer thing or you're an activist and you're going to go down these certain channels that are doing that. Well, what I'd say is those are three distinct cultures that might overlap, but actually they don't, they don't, they won't solve this. And so, so there has to be a culture shift around the way that we think about guns,

violence, mental health in this country. One piece is not, there's no one, two, three steps and it's going to happen. But I think dealing with, with that, dealing with the alienation, the lost boy syndrome that we have of all these young men and they were young white men mostly who are drawn to this culture, what we call them the lost boys, of the, you know, the people who go down red pill and all the MRA stuff, the men's rights stuff, the, that's all in this alt-right spectrum that kind of pulls in there. We have to do something to reach out to make, to ask ourselves, why, how is capitalism alienating these people? How do the all right? economic systems because it's socialism too you know how they alienating people and what is what is there to be done and this that is way more difficult than saying oh just say you can't have this kind of receiver on a gun or if you you can't carry a gun in this area because there are times when when guns have

legitimate use but mass shootings come from this alienation they also come from the accessibility of owning guns you know again and my only personal case you saw what happened where is that I could legally purchase a gun because of my political ideology the FBI tried to thwart it at every turn but what if the the person trying to purchase the gun which is what happens agrees more ideologically with the state already which is what happens with these you know when you start getting alt-right you start getting neo-Nazi tendencies white supremacist tendencies they are much they're much more in line with the state so

the state doesn't even see it you know like the shooting in Florida I mean what did they say that the police had been called 39 times you know yeah so you know but the guy still had access to guns um so in in that i think that's one one big piece we shift culture and again i don't have the answers but i think that collectively can begin to think about that if we don't think about the reactionary nature of like let's just pass more laws that said i don't keep my guns by me i don't think about my guns and i don't think anybody should we need a much more sensible culture of guns and what I would call a liberatory culture

of guns, one that challenges the heteronormative, patriarchal, like whatever political language you want to do, the macho culture that surrounds gun, the individual who's going to solve all their problems with gun. And to do that is going to be harder because you have a culture industry of television

and film and video games that says if you want to solve your problem, grab the gun first, negotiate later after you've already solidified power, which all these lost boys have totally been adopted into. I'm not calling for a censorship in any of this media, but I'm saying what I would say as an anarchist is like, well, we need to create media that counters this.

You know, we need to create culture that counters this, whatever it looks like. And these are not the answers that people are wanting to hear in that because it involves us taking responsibility for our communities, ourselves, our families, and thinking about them in different ways and actually having to do some hard, dirty ones. work instead of lazily pulling a liver every four years or buying the right product or even in activism showing a bit a damn protest because we feel better but doesn't really change the situation and just appeals to power so actually beginning to create and doing something different and to shift the culture is is what I think has to happen and for me from my small piece doing

this book is part of that yeah yeah definitely holy fuck I'm working through this I don't know if that was answer, but that's what I'm working through this kind of shit. I think all that is extremely important, and I would only add that it's really worth noting how laws in this society are used. They're often used as pretexts to go into poor and working

communities often and mostly poor and working communities of color, and they're used as sort of pretext to invade and occupy those neighborhoods. If you look at drug laws, for example, they're not kicking down suburban doors or corporate boardrooms even though, you know, drugs are used roughly at the same rate

across race and class divisions. They're using those drug laws as pretext to go into communities of color, fill up the prisons, profit off prison labor, etc. So whenever you're talking about creating more laws, you really have to think about how those laws are actually used in practice by the U.S. government and not merely how you think they could be used in theory. Well, like I would say about laws,

all laws are reactionary, bureaucratic, arbitrary, and selectively enforced. There are no laws that are, enacted that do anything that they say that they're going to do. Not a single fucking one. I'll argue with law professors about this, like pick one where it's supposed to do something good and it doesn't because by the time it comes to a fruition, whether it's city, county, state, or federal, it's already been watered down. It's like the lobby interest have already gotten hold of it. It's not even just because of these things, but also just the nature of laws themselves. You know, laws are of governments, not of men. Well, there, you know, I forgot who said that, but that's the, you know, I forgot who said that, but that's the. That pretty much is the axiom of it. But I want to focus back one more thing on culture real quick. My friend Sue Hildebrand, a long-time organizer, but she's been making a film called American Totem about guns in the United States. And you have to understand that this is really important.

Guns is a culture. It means different things to different people. This is why we can't just say you're pro-gun, your anti-gun. Because guns mean so many different things to so many different people on all sides. And so if you want to enact culture shift, you can't just pick one thing. The other thing is the influence of the National Rifle Association, the NRA, on gun culture. They're the biggest, if not the second biggest, the biggest lobbying effort in the United States government. And so they are spending millions and millions of dollars for the last 40 years to promote gun culture, which is about this machismo culture, like an individual.

individual white man is going to take care of his family, it's going to take care of all these things with just a pistol and a rifle, you know. And so, so, you know, it's not really about whether defense is really needed or not, right? And then also we equate property with life. So somebody's car, somebody's stereo becomes equated with like, these are all in gun culture that are not, that are not things that you can just suss out quickly. Because I'm like, you can have my car. I'm not going to shoot you over it. I'm not going to, you can have my stereo. I'm not going to, you can have my stereo. I'm not going to shoot you over it, definitely not going to shoot you over it, all replaceable things, even if it cost me 10 years to do it. Do you know what I'm saying? Exactly. And so, but so this

culture is really complicated and complex because guns mean so many different things to different people. And that's a really great premise that she is bringing to this conversation. Yeah, extremely interesting. And I know you've touched on, I mean, we're sort of talking about the, the social and cultural forces behind this, but I want to really drill down into this. So with the rise of right-wing terrorism in this country, which often takes the form of mass shootings. The left has a responsibility to get to the root causes of this pattern of mass shootings and highlight those root causes to the rest of society. I think one of our analytical strengths as radical leftists is that our analysis of society is much deeper than the surface level analysis offered by liberal and

conservative mainstream media sources. So what social and cultural forces in your opinion are leading to the sharp rise in mass shootings over the past couple of decades? And what can we on the revolutionary left due to address those underlying issues? Well, I think there's a couple of things. I think you're talking about corporate mass culture. It is absolutely alienating.

Okay, I think that that's a big problem. It's the biggest one I touched on earlier. Like, if you look at corporate mass thing, like look at films, look at television, video games. Again, I'm not talking about censoring these things, but that is the own in the mass, even in songs, right?

Like, they want to take the worst parts of culture and like, you know, push them up. So, again, if it's a white man with a gun is going to answer the problem, why would I ask any other questions? I think we need to ask other questions. How else can we solve these problems? We need to create them.

I think there needs to be more films, more video games that have different conflict solutions. And again, I'm not trying to be all peacemak about it. Like, oh, let's all sing kumbaya and get along because I don't give a fuck about that. But I'm saying that there are ways that we can do this. we just need to start to figure out. The second thing is, I think that there's a failure.

I don't, I actually think there's a huge failure on quote-unquote leftist culture, activist subcultures and radical culture in general and addressing societal issues. You know, I heard you just say that, you know, we're really good at talking about the nuances, but I think that we're only good about talking about the nuances in our own way, in our own echo chamber, in our own bubbles. And I think that there, if you, if you, if you openly and critically, like you would do with anything let's read the

things that are coming out of right wing media that there are little gems in there that we should pay attention to but we don't because the mirror for self-reflection is our own selves because if it comes out of if an article is produced in some shit rag like Breitbart magazine then we automatically assume everything

is bad but there can be good stuff that comes out of there or reason magazine that are actually critical of the leftist ideology and I think that identity politics is one of those driving forces that was a great force of social change and very radical at its root at the time that it came up, but has now become this tool of PC culture that is misused and so distorted by everybody, you know, academics are making professional careers.

I'm not even criticizing that, I mean, identity politics are real, but I'm saying that there's criticisms around it that we just don't even, aren't even able to address because we can't say that because you can't say it in a public forum that come out in right wing culture that is true because it is alienating so if when when a white when some white mass shooter or terrorist of any flavor white supremacist terrorist says i feel alienated as a white man as a poor white man who's got no power in this situation and everybody only wants to look at all these things well there's the leftist view which you're like well yeah you get what you deserve but there's the humanitarian view of it like I can see how this language leaves you out I can see how this culture has left you out of that you know as a white as a white man I mean like I definitely have seen it again and misuse and becoming ideology instead of living dynamic ideas this is not just around anarchy this is around the ideas of how we sort ourselves the other thing is that I come back to culture in this a lot is that that you know like an identity identity is fluid and it's

also it's in some ways it's navigable right so like white man could have an incredible amount of power in certain situations but be absolutely powerless in many other situations their economic situation their familial situation all of these things and i think that unless we begin to have some kind of empathy towards that and begin and understanding at the least that we are going to continue to create these lone wolves who are going to create domestic terrorist events that are nationalistic until it's done. The other thing is, I think that, dude, you have, you know, you have the top levels of government right now that,

I don't even need to name them, but the tiny-handed orange one, it's just so in chaos, like, and such a, such a, such a mass degree. So, so again, these are all, you know, like, and I know that you, like, you probably wanted me to just go, like, hey, man, if we just do these three things, everything's going to be okay. It's not, though. Like, that's the fucking reality of it. And that if we cannot begin to see people where they are at, even if we don't agree with them, that this dichotomy is going to be real.

The other piece I think that's going to happen in this that I've been starting to talk about a lot more because it's really, really real is not just what the mainstream is saying about the Russian influence or hacker influence, you know, like this whole thing with the Internet research agency and stuff, the trolling factories and all the stuff. That stuff is super real. And that it's the government, governments and corporations are always going to be steps behind and trying to stop that devices. I mean, even after, you know, the corporate social media is big crackdown on fake news, still see it everywhere. Do you know what I mean? Right, right. And so, so there's, there's people who have, that have access to grind that are driving, that are also driving this alienation. So I just named out three or four different pieces.

And again, I'm working through this. And I don't have the fucking answers to this stuff. But these are some of the things that I see that I think that we should address and be able to pay attention to. So it's like our own internal left cultures, because I don't see it as one, but them overlapping them. And like, how do we look outside of our own subcultural bubbles in the mirror of self-reflection, but also in having empathy, but also this whole thing about, you know, the McAvellian trolls that are definitely doing it on, using it on purpose. I think these are two or three or four different sets of problems that are, that, that, that we're going to have to deal with and dealing with gun culture.

Definitely. Holy fuck, I didn't think I was going to say that. That's great. I would even, I would take all what you said, accept it, and then I would add this part to it, which is, you know, in American society, in this capitalist society, you talked about alienation, and really what that gets down to, in my opinion, is just a total stripping out of any sense of community. When we're constantly atomized into individual workers, into individual workers, into individual

consumers. We get separated from the social bonds that we as social apes evolved to thrive in. We thrived in communities of tight-knit, extended family, friends, you know, people in the community that took care of one another. When you see somebody like Nicholas Cruz, this latest Florida shooter, you see somebody that is just a product of the most grotesque underbelly of American society and totally isolated and cut off from any sense of social cohesion and any sort of community that could have caught him early and taken care of him in a way that would have prevented this massacre. So at the core of it, yeah, we want to build a world where everybody has a community to fall back into and to have their backs. And that's what that's the sort of world that

we should be thinking about building. Right. I agree with you. You know, like I often, you know, promote is that resilient, autonomous communities, right? Because there's no one community, right? Like, you are part of multiple overlapping communities your internet community your physical geographic community your ethnic identity there's so many different ones

in that I think that yes this is the root of really what's happening and that I think that that activism doesn't isn't able to address that and many political ideologies aren't because they begin to look too much like state ideologies

when you have party affiliations we have ideological affiliations they begin to live too much like religion, too much like the state. And you lose it. You still, you may have sense of community in a certain way, but you still can be outliers in all of that. And I think activism is moving, has been, has moved towards that in the last 25 years. That atomization is really, really scary, not just for guns, but for everything, because, you know, if we are only individuals, so every, every time any kind of disaster happens to us, whether it's ecological, economic, political, or war, you know, individuals

are almost left to pick it up for themselves and not try to deal with it in a, in a, in, in, in community ways or are having resilience as in groups. Absolutely. Well, let's go ahead and move on to advice for the left because we've talked about the issues. We've talked about some of the root causes. Now we can talk about some ways that leftists can kind of take practical advice. So gun culture in this country, like it often is dominated by the right, as you've mentioned. This makes it difficult for leftists to enter many of these spaces.

Many gun shops and shooting ranges, for example, are often owned and operated by reactionaries, which makes going into them as a communist or an anarchist somewhat nerve-wracking, especially for those with little-to-know experience with guns. So for all the listeners out there who do want to arm themselves and train with guns, what recommendations or advice would you give them regarding how to go about it in a safe and responsible way? Well, one I would say that it's just as far as like going into those spaces, you're just going to have to be who you are. It's, again, that macho-patriarchal culture is dominant the reactionary that you just talked about.

is coming. You just have to be who you are in that. But the real thing is, like, just like everything, I'm not into reforming anything. I'm all about building our own. So if it's really that important, begin to build our own gun cultures, you know, like begin to have support like online groups like John Brown Gun Club, you know, form your own gun clubs that would safely practice together, begin able to talk about it, be able to challenge the deeper reactionary culture, the conservative cultures amongst yourselves and then begin to build that and network that because that's going to work far more than going into every gun shop in the country or every gun range in trying to do that. Also, there are some gun ranges that are much more friendly

than others. Again, you know, the conservative is going to run over most of it or libertarian in Texas or Oregon, you know, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona. It's a lot of a lot of libertarian gun culture, a lot of conspiracy theories and stuff. And so you just have to deal with it. You know, like, I mean, the thing is, if you have it, if you don't just try to talk a bunch of leftist shit to those people, you just meet them where

they're at, you're talking about guns. So you just start right there. Even if you're not trying to agree with them, but getting into a debate with them is, as, as, uh, while you're at a gun range is useless. Right. Uh, totally useless. Unless you just want to practice what you're saying. Uh, but you're just going to piss people off. Um, and the other thing

is, I think that, you know, like, uh, we, we run into a thing a lot with individualism trumps, um, trying to meet people where they're at, you know, I've run into this and organizing everywhere. You know, like, you don't have to dress your wildest or your most dirtiest or anything when you go to those places. You can actually just dress regular if you go to those places and, you know, you have to cover up tattoos and things like that. But I'm just saying like, you're not trying to not be who you are, but, but actually it depends you have, it's a tension in there. There's a cost benefit analysis. Are you going to get more information out of that and more skill sets than or or is it worth it more for you

to be who you are you know what I mean right and so living in a largely activist subculture that's stuck in and are in the development phases of trying to figure out who they are and then getting into clubhouses of who they are you know to find safety in that um I think that you know individualism uh and group identity trumps trumps that oh I hate using that word trumps I said that four times now, actually overshadows that often. In many organizing circles, it's just outside of guns. But

I say build, build, build, create and build. If you really want that, that's what the John Brown Gun Club did. That's what Redneck Revolt did. That's what the Hugh and Newton Gun Club did. You know, you think we have to deal with them not like in comedies. How about being a black person? Right, right. You know, how about being a

immigrant? How about, you know, like all these, how about being an ex-prisoner? You know, like, I mean, these are These are persona nangrata everywhere. Go to a gun shop anywhere. And the only black people you will see are right wing, Ben Carson types. Right. And you barely ever see them. Go to a gun show.

I've been to tons and tons of gun shows. In a sea of white men, you'll barely ever see people of color. Yeah. And so do you want to challenge that or do we want to build their own? And so I think there's a challenge in both of that. And there's benefits in both of that. But I think each group or each group of people has to ask them. what it is. I don't think there's, again, I don't think there's one magic answer to that.

Yeah, and I would also toss out a recommendation. If you are totally new to guns and you want to learn, you know, going into a space gun range or something like that, you can just, yeah, like as you say, just dress normal. You don't have to bring up your politics at all. Just be humble and say, I'm really trying to learn. I want to defend my family or to be able to be competent with firearms. Can you, you know, just be humble and ask for advice and help. And a lot of people in those areas are trained to help you learn and develop your abilities as someone who owns and operates firearms. And then the second thing I would say is I would love to see, you know, sort of cooperative, non-profit community centers that are, that have gun ranges that are, that are sympathetic or totally open to left-wingers, to LGBTQ community, to people of color. Absolutely.

Yeah, building that infrastructure is awesome. There are, yeah, absolutely. And I'd love to see more of it. And I think, again, like in this culture shift, though, like we have to start to clean our own houses, right? Because leftist culture is largely still stuck in nonviolence as the only method. Again, with no nuance in it or our conversation about really that nonviolence is actually a piece of violence too in a spectrum, right? It's just a lesser form of violence. Because anytime you stick a stick in a hornet nest, hornets are going to come out.

Now, whether you poke gently or you just jam that sucker in there, hornets are still coming out. You understand what I'm saying? And so I think that, so again, for me, for the book, setting sites, and I think that having this conversation is an important initial steps in this. And I didn't make any of this stuff up. I mean, we've been down these roads before. And, you know, like, and I think undoing the whitewashing of history that, especially in the civil rights movement in the United States, is very, very important. Because in the civil rights, you would think that Martin Luther King, with one hand tied behind his back, led all these people into, you know, into freedom and salvation. And let's recognize the limits of that.

Like the civil rights movement was very limiting, right? It got people the right to vote. It didn't create liberation. But two, that it took armed struggle in the United States in multiple places over multiple decades for that to come to fruition at all, for them to stop killing black people. You know, and you have the nonviolent coordinated committee. You have the Deacons for Self-Defense, the Loudouns County, Black Panthers. You know, like you have all these groups who took up arms who were written out of history.

people who actually could lose their lives or did lose their lives were totally written out of history and so there's been a reassessment of that luckily in the last 15 10 years there's been a whole new growing body of work and this book is also part of that reassessing that and showing that actually there are times when when you can take up arms for a limited amount of time as part of other libertory strategies of food health care education rebuilding civil society you got to do it all we can't just take it piecemeal and like it's going to we're going to fix this one thing That's for activists in general, but arms is part of that at some point. Right. Maybe not every community is going to run into that, but those communities that aren't going to run into it may need support from communities who have that also. Again, using New Orleans as an example. Yeah. And in that book, I forget the person who quoted it or what the passage was, but there

was a point made about how the system of slavery was bumping up against massive contradictions and the contradictions had to be resolved in basically one of two ways. You have the John Brown approach of slave rebellions and taking direct action against slave owners, and you have the more institutionalized, quote-unquote, Abraham Lincoln approach of trying to solve it through what happened to be a civil war, but usually using the system to reform itself. And the big threat of the slave rebellions is that they could, they could have, quote, unquote, got out of control and it attacked the capitalist system itself because slavery was so foundational to the capitalist system. And by hanging John Brown and pushing down those slave rebellions and doing the civil war, it actually allowed the U.S. state and capitalism to sort of continue on without being threatened.

You know, it was a contradiction that was solved in that way as opposed to another. And I found that just absolutely fascinating. Really, really good. And I want to think about this. I want to be really clear. The gun culture that I'm talking about in the arming of ourselves is not in the traditional sense that we arm ourselves and become standing armies. Really, I want to be very clear that I'm talking about. If you have to look at examples, look at the Zapatistas today.

You know, they arm themselves so future generations don't have to arm themselves. They are not armed all the time. They put their arms away publicly once civil society came in and was able to protect them and to show that they were doing these things. But they reserve the right to take them up and they do take them up occasionally to protect themselves against the state from other paramilitary groups, right-wing groups, in Chiapas, Mexico. And I think that that's a good example because when I'm talking about, talking about taking up arms, I actually don't think that, I think making arms the centerpiece

of a group is not just a suicide mission. It's actually silly. It's kind of funny because it is such an old school way. And really what we should do is like when we're building these other programs or projects or spaces and things like that, that we talk about having that in there. And if your group is not going to support that, if your group is not going to do that, at least support that. And again, taking up guns in a group situation, not to defend your private property of your, you know, like again, your stereo or your car, but again, in community situations where people's lives are at stake. And so that is a little bit, you know, like that's the very narrow scope of what I'm trying to talk about. Because again, I don't carry my guns

around. I don't keep them in my car. I don't carry, I don't have a CHL, you know, a concealed handgun license because I don't think because I also don't carry a shovel around with me everywhere I go too because I'm not always going to dig things up and do things with it. I put my tools away and when I need them I pull them out for the appropriate thing and I hope to never ever ever have to use guns again in my life. I will say that clearly. I'm not getting rid of my guns but I will hope to never have to use them again in my life because the fallout is very real. It's very, there can be a high cost to it you know i could have unloaded between us there's five of us on this porch we could have unloaded 250 rounds into about between eight and 12 guys who were drunk in a truck so what if

we'd kill all of those people well one we'd be in prison for that right we wouldn't have been seen as heroes we would are already just for standing up to them we had to take a lot of flack from the left in 2005 after katrina but i'm saying that now but uh but i also had personal fallout from that i mean like the police tried to kill me on four different occasions Homeland Security almost blew my brains out on one occasion, all within the first six weeks of Katrina after Katrina. So I have to carry that around with me. It took a decade of, you know, therapy and talking and writing and doing all these things to be able to deal with the PTSD to that. And, you know, and again, I mentioned Ashanti Alston's piece,

symbolic, you know, use of a revolutionary gun. You know, like there's times when the symbolism of it is important, but there's times when the reality of it is the reality and we really, really need to do that, you know, really need to pay attention to that aspect of it. Yeah, extremely powerful and extremely important. So let's go ahead and wrap up this conversation with one question that kind of diverts from what we've been talking about, but I do think it's important. And you've talked a lot about your dislike of the term activist and the culture of activism generally.

I know you've discussed this in other interviews, but I think it's important for revolutionaries to hear. So what are your critiques of activism and what should revolutionaries aim for instead? well let me let me just let me just go after two at once why not so let's talk about revolutionary too i don't like that term either okay because i think that these are these are these are terms just like many terms they're loaded they meant something at a particular time but they don't really they don't really mean what they they are today because we know pretty much revolutions don't happen like we all are oppressed and we rise up one day and we're revolutionaries and then all of a sudden

we're to rise up when the when the material conditions are right that doesn't happen because what we end with is authoritarian states no matter every time that happens i mean like you know you know i come from an anarchist view but it's like this is this is what happens that so really revolutions are living and dynamic and they come out of crisis and disaster if you look at graham she and look at some of that stuff and so there's no one day we're going to arm ourselves and then we're going to take we're going to seize state power or we're going to seize power it's going to be in fits and starts let's be clear about this you know as the country balkanizes and falls apart as nation states which were only artificially created in the 20th century began to fall off as empires began to collapse there's going to be little fights everywhere there's going to be little skirmishes little battles and things like this and it's not all going to happen in one day or two weeks or any of this stuff and it's all not going to fall unevenly and so if if i go with that premise you can't you can't just be a revolutionary getting for one day you have to so what i've actually moved towards is moving away from being the most radical

or the most, any of those languages, instead, I've used the term liberatory. Because it's liberatory set of ideas, because that's really what we're going for. And this is not parsing words or trying to mix. This is just something that becomes real to people. Because I have been a revolutionary in my life when I thought we were going to seize the power. And I've also been totally disillusioned with that. I've also been nihilistic where I'm like, we're not going to do anything. Would you just give up?

But now I see this living a dynamic thing. so that ties into activism activism in and of itself can be a good thing if you are active in doing something this is that is very important to do rather than than just like waiting idly by for for those in power to do something or to to not upright wrongs or anything like that activist being an activist in that way you know engaging activism is is perfect you know like i need to do something if i'm you know i need to take time out of my regular day to make sure that something happens that's fine but what's happened is that we've created ideology of activism in the last 40 years that, you know, frankly, I mean, academics profit from, the nonprofit world, you know, all the nonprofits of different kinds, the research groups, all of these benefit from, and because they get to formalize it, they get to say, this is the way it is, this is what it is, you can only participate in these ways, we're defining the terms, we're doing all this, but really what you've ended up with is a culture, a subculture on the left that has pretty much dug its roots in.

this didn't just happen since I got in. This has been happening even before I was there to pretty much these same methods and practices over and over again that are not effective and we don't see them as ineffective forms of communication or ineffective forms of building power. I'm not saying that all protests are illegitimate or are useless. I'm saying that most of them are. Most of them are a complete waste of time. Actually, it's a waste of resources, time, money, and energy, which we always have limited amounts of. So what I want us to do is to begin to, instead of complaining about it and is to begin to run and work in this dual power set of ideas. And I'm not talking about the old men and one of just building counter power, counter government power to government

power, just building counterpower altogether. So in the anarchist reinterpretation of it that I, that I have taken on, is that you resist and rebel on one hand, which is the thing that we do pretty well. We're pretty great at doing that. But the other parts that we have to create and build, on the other hand, that if we really want to end exploitation, if we want to end oppression, if we really want to create true power for ourselves, individually, collectively, as neighborhoods, block by block, as communities, whatever, however we define those communities, all across the world, that we're going to have to create and build those. Because until we do begin to build our own power, our own autonomy

in those ways, even if it's collective autonomy and collectively, liberation in those ways, we are going to be stuck resisting because those in power who create crisis after crisis are going to always consolidate. We're always going to be pushing back. We're always going to be behind. Just like I mentioned that laws are all reactionary, bureaucratic, and arbitrary and selectively enforced. Well, it's the same activism is like that. It's very reactionary set of politics. It's a very reactionary set of ideas. And also, the nuance is lost. One of the things is that, that, um, We don't have any, we don't have any retention in social and political movements across,

and I'll speak mostly to the United States, because we have no institutions to back them up. You either go into the nonprofit sector, you end up in the medical sector, which happens so often, educational sector, all these things in dealing outside of it because activism is largely just rooted in a reactionary set of politics that just gets stuck in the same first couple of steps over and over again. There's three stages of social development that happen. all of us go through this. One is that you grow up and at some point you begin to reject everything that you have been taught. So usually it's religion for people. Some, it's power and authority. So you do that. And so then the second thing is you go, well, I reject these

things and you begin to ask the question, what is it that I, who am I? What is it that I am? And so that's where you begin to go like, I'm a communist or an anarchist or I am a liberal or I'm a queer or I'm a black nationalist or I, you know, like there's all these all these identities that we have that we begin to get on and when we do that in the second phase we began to get into groups we begin to to get with groups that are like us we get with others who are like us so we can be with them so it can be in the safety of it if you've been queer and you were by yourself forever it's awesome to be able to get with other queer people and have conversations that that about your life and the things like that or if you're an anarchist

or a communist or whatever it is I'm not conflating everybody's identities but I'm just using these terms. And then, so you have the second phase where everybody's in the clubhouses, then ostensibly what would happen is we go into the third phase and of development, which is that you've now figured out who you are and you want to grow out in the outward world and take your identity with you, your complex identity. It's not just whether you're queer or anarchists, it's much more complex than that, and you go out into the outworld. But what happens in activism is that people are drawn in by the reactionary nature of it. So they come in in droves. There's been tens of thousands of people have come in, but there's incredible political

immaturity that we have. And so what happens is that they stay in the first two steps over and over. New people are coming in and trying to figure out their identity and doing all of these things. And then by the time they get to the third step, the liberatory approach to this thing where they actually figure out who they are and how they want to go out, they leave political social movements because there's nothing for them. And so all the time I've ever been in activism for 30 years, we've been stuck in the first

two movements over and over again. everybody around us is always in that because we're always motivated because there's outrage everywhere for us to be i'm against this i'm against i'm against i'm against and but but in that third stage is the part where you go what is it that i'm for and how do we're going to get there and a lot of times people leave and and and what happens is that people like me who stick around usually become bitter or we're so we've given up so much in our lives that our teeth are falling out and that we're not taking care of ourselves our health is not good or we're angry about things or we're stuck in old paradigms of how how we could organize. And so we don't have a lot of

people who have stayed in who have kept organizing. Or the people have stayed in because they've made careers out of it. Activists make careers. They make public speaking careers. They make whatever the kind of careers. I am anti-career. If you ever, if you're curious about me, I do a lot of media and stuff, but I am not building a career on this. I will walk away from this. And I'm not trying to make money from this. I'm just trying to help people get along in the world. Not with each other, but just get along in the world. And so if we don't begin to build things, we're going to be stuck in those first two things because it's reaction and resistance, reaction resistance. We have to create and build. And I don't mean campaigns

or just a group to do one thing. We need to build everything everywhere all the time. If we want to build, we need to build resilient, autonomous network communities everywhere. So we can respond to every disaster that happens, not in a reactionary way. in a fourth right way because it makes sense, because we can actually assess it. We have taken the information in and said, this is something we need to respond to. And this is all part of another book that I'm doing that it'll be out, not this year, but next year. But that is the kind of underlying premise of it. Yeah, well, Scott, I know you're not going to totally like this because you're such a humble guy, but I find you incredibly inspirational, incredibly wise. I view you

as a sort of sage on the left, and you've become a sort of de facto mentor of mine. So I really appreciate you coming on this show. I really appreciate your books and especially this latest anthology. I'm honored to have a discussion with you. Before I let you go, can you let listeners know where they can find your work, especially your newest book setting sites? You can find my new book is out from PM Press. You can find their website, of course, every electronic seller, your local bookstores and stuff. You can also find it online for free. Many of the essays are being released in different places. I'm into open source publishing. P.M. Press is not always happy with that, but that's just the way it kind of goes, because

the spread of ideas is important. And you can also find me if you ever want, there's other writings I have and stuff and interviews on www.scotcro.org. And it's crow like the bird, not like the actor, if you need to find it. And you can also find me on corporate social media occasionally, ranting about something. Well, thanks again for coming on. It's been a wonderful conversation. I really appreciate it, Scott. Hey, and I want to tell you guys, thank you so much for having me on. I really, I wanted to be on for quite a while since I got started. I really liked the direction of you all taking this.

I think there's a really good conversation. I like that you're being non-sectarian about it and just looking at different approaches, you know, for doing this. And really, really appreciate that. And thanks for giving me the opportunity. Well, I won't back down. No, I won't back down. You can stand me up. at the gates of hell but i won't back down gonna stand my ground won't be turned around

and i'll keep this world from dragging me down gonna stand my ground and i won't back down Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out. Hey, I will stand my crown and I won't back down. What's right? I got just one life in a world that keeps on pushing me around, but I stand my ground, and I won't back down. Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out. I will stand my ground And I won't back down No, I won't back down

You guys are fucking doing a great thing You really, really are Thank you And you guys seem like you're having a lot of resonance in reach Yeah, which is really, really good And needed, you know For sure, it's kind of taken us by surprise I don't think we expected this

We started less than a year ago But I really... Yeah, the best of it. The best thing is when I get, you know, younger people coming up and they said, you know, I've had these sort of instincts, but I've never had anybody talk to me in such a direct way. And, you know, you guys have helped me develop my political consciousness and I'm going on to influence others. And that's what it's all about here, you know.