Some More News - Even More News: Dissent Must Be Neither Seen Nor Heard

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Hi. Katy, Cody, and Jonathan break down the latest police violence against campus demonstrators and discuss President Biden's disgraceful statement about "violent protests." We didn't initially plan to record an episode this week, so some of our audio is a little wonky – thanks for bearing with us! Check out our MERCH STORE: https://shop.somemorenews.com   SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229   Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA   Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/   Facebook:

Hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. A little bit of a different show for you guys this week. We actually originally had planned to take this week sort of off for various reasons. That's why we did an audio re-release yesterday or two days ago when you hear this. And we recorded something new and I think fun in advance to release for you guys. But what with all the events this week at universities across the country, we figured that now is not the time for something new and fun. And so we are kind of running, gunning it today.

It's going to be a little bit shorter of an episode. I do not have my recording gear with me. So, you know, I have about half of my recording gear with me. I'm in a different state right now than normal. So we're. Bear with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. So we talked last week about some of this and the protests and developing encampments on various campuses across the nation of the United States of America. And since then, it has- A lot has happened. Grown and a lot has happened.

A lot of violent things have happened and a lot of state violence has happened. And before we really get into it, I just wanna direct people, if you have any interest in helping the protesters, there are campus bail funds out there to help out with these students and now teachers, notably many teachers, notably many professors of history are joining these protests. And if you'd like to

help them out, those funds are available. Why is that notable, Cody? I feel like maybe if you are well-versed in history, whether it be international, global, or simply domestic history of the United States, and you are very passionate and vocally out protecting these protesters for their cause, maybe you are maybe aware of like the implications of a lot of what's going on and maybe you- You got some context? Maybe you have more context and awareness of these issues

and maybe we should just consider that a lot of fucking historians are concerned with the reaction to this and a lot of the events of recent weeks and one would say recent months and one could even say recent years and decades and so on. Before we just dig into some of these updates, I want to say thank you to all of the protesters and students and teachers showing up. I feel like I'm upside down, wading through all this news and the conversations that we're seeing online and just very, boy, we got so used to throwing around the term gaslit when Trump was in office, but I feel so gaslit by the narratives and the framing and the disingenuousness. Like people full on saying that these protests are hamas, that these protests are about death to Jews.

When that's just such a fucking lie. That's so, anyway, I'm rambling here. I want to say- Yeah, we'll get into it. Yeah. And the visual, the things that we have seen this week are horrifying and y'all are very brave. Yeah, absolutely. Solidarity with protesters. And it is very frustrating to see the gas lighting. And yeah, we'll get into it.

Seeing these massive amounts of people and the outrage. I mean, it's horrifying and it's not comforting in some way, but in the sense that there are so many people. It's very moving here. It is moving. And it's like I keep being reminded like people are fighting for this. People are fighting. People are fighting. So, yeah, I've gotten. Yeah, I've gotten, you know, sometimes you'll text and like family or like friends

just like, tell me that like, there are like more good people than the like these other like freaks out there. And I don't know if I can say that, but I can say there are enough. I do believe that there are enough people who care about these things ultimately. But it is it can be very demoralizing, I think, to see the reaction from whether it be the pundit class or politicians or just people. We're not going to talk too much about people online, but just like, you know, I'll do my best.

The resistance and so on. It is very disheartening to see a lot of the reaction there. Yeah, it sure is. And people that in past lives have respected, you know, I'm sure we all in our own individual communities are also feeling this frustration this whole time. But it's just especially this week about talking about I've just so taken aback by the takeaways that I'm sure that goes both ways. You know, I'm sure we've lost listeners and there are people who like fucking hate our tweets or whatever And I don't think the same thing. So that's bullshit. I usually don't but I have this week I guess

But yeah, it is Cool. It's something not good. Okay, Jonathan set us up. What's the latest? From the latest about the free speech movement of America? Our international listeners, everybody around the world. But this is focused on what's happening here. I mean, like I've been blown away just across all across the world. Yes. And at universities across the world. So all right, go ahead.

Well, this week, the last few nights, UCLA has been one of the big stories. And encampment there started, I think, a few days after USC's. And police and riot gear last night tore through the school's encampment. They fired rubber bullets at at least five people. They arrested 132 people. And the night before that, a group of counter protesters attacked the encampment using pepper spray and fireworks, injuring a number of people, including four daily Bruin journalists while the LAPD watched, I guess, or stood.

Some of them had little pizza parties, but they yeah, exactly. They stood by. I can stood by. Right. There is I think things are pretty fluid at UCLA right now. There's a number of protesters going back there. I don't think we've seen the end of it over there. No, they swept the camp last night and you can see images and footage of that, how that went down.

But I can't imagine that this is the end of it, as we've met. We probably mentioned last week in the episode, a really good way to stop protests like this is to crack down with the state violently. It's certainly not going to make that protest grow at all. People sitting in tents, by the way. That's what they're doing. They're sitting in tents. Yep. Violence.

We've got violence, actually. So many more updates to get through, but I just tensions are high. I am sure there's people are being provoked on and there are reactions. There might be some out of context videos circulating, but it's really important to keep in mind that the vast majority of people are intense and that this is peaceful and nonviolent. And so you have to be judicious. I mean, I keep, it's tough, but you have to like stay focused and, and yeah. And I just also want to highlight that the only places where there are tensions like we're seeing at UCLA and Columbia are the places with the police presence. You know, there are, this is the

media narrative is about all of this lawlessness and destruction and it's happening at most universities to some degree to another. And if the school doesn't try to squash it and allows the students to exercise their rights, this isn't happening. So I think that's a really important thing to highlight. Yeah, it definitely, again, it 100% exacerbates it, makes it worse and grows it. Yeah, of course. Because then people want to, then you can't ignore it when it's not

that people should be ignoring it, but like it does become disruptive when you ratchet it up. Well, and as we saw, first of all, these are college kids, very brave college kids. And when the first state violence came cracking down, the next day, staff and teachers came out to protect those students. And that's not going to change. Also, those like seeing like old lady professors getting the shit kicked out of them. That's not going to make people go, oh, I guess we were wrong. And a little to your point, Katie, about some of the like out of context clips and like

agitators and this and that. We'll get into this a little bit later when we talk about President Brandon, but there is no protest that's been effective in history that didn't have elements, not saying like the whole thing, elements that maybe you found unsavory or people at the time found unsavory or not helpful. There are going to be people involved in movements that you don't agree with or that say things that you don't like. And if you are using those little moments to dismiss the entire movement, then you

never cared about it. You don't care about the cause. You don't agree with the protests. You're not worth listening to about this because you don't understand that context of just like what protests are for and how they have gone in this country and the reaction to those protests at the time and then the reflection back of like, oh, the glory days of when protests were the good kind. And so it is it's particularly disgusting to see a president sort of come out. Well, again, we'll talk about this later, but I just want to sort of highlight what you highlight your point about some of these little things. Like I saw some person I'm not going to bother with calling people out. But like there's a clip of one activist talking about like their right to like food or pizza or something. I don't even I didn't even watch the whole clip

center. It doesn't matter. And if that's And if that's the one thing that you're posting about and you choose to highlight, you don't care, you are not worth listening to, you are useless in this conversation, fuck off, honestly. It is infuriating. That's the person, I told you both that I argued with somebody for most of yesterday and I was responding to that clip.

Yeah, find 5,000 other people saying other things. They do very much care, but their opinions really, really took me aback. Anyway, we've got more updates. And we don't have to go through all of these. I just also wanted to mention Columbia that earlier this week, the New York Police Department broke up the the original Gaza Solidarity encampment at Columbia using stun grenades, arrested 109 people. Hamilton Hall at Columbia was being occupied by the protesters.

Something has never happened before. Billings have never been occupied, specifically at Columbia. This is brand new thing. The 21st century is so violent and wild. Sorry, continue Jonathan. Jonathan Fass Yeah, no. And one of the big things that some of the reactionary moderates, I don't even know how to label them, we're talking about is, well, I can't wait to see how many of these students were actually students and were not outside agitators. And we don't have an exact number, but at least half were students and probably many, many more because the NYPD spin on this is kind of bullshit. Wait, the NYPD are.

Yeah. Well, well, they're saying that about half of the 282, sorry, the 282 people arrested at Columbia were not affiliated and it includes arrests from they're including arrests from City College, which was a separate university. A lot of this comes from Matt Bender or formerly of Mashable who dug through this stuff, but they're not giving a lot of information on how many people arrested were just like people off the street as opposed to people occupying Hamilton Hall. I would go so far as to say they were largely students, if not all students.

But we don't know. Yeah. Well, it's interesting that the NYPD will not release that information and the mayor will not release that information. And when asked about it, will not. It's just like, you know, if they want to release it, they can. There's no it's just propaganda and lies from the usually very honest NYPD.

It's very hard that they're lying about this specifically. A lot of the media outlets for because journalists were not allowed in there while they were conducting their highly sensitive operation So we don't know exactly what happened inside what we do now but before we didn't and so a lot of media outlets just ran with the NYPD saying oh, well, here's what happened Okay, so we only know about the stun grenades because of reporting today in the Columbia Spectator based on newly released video

You know, but of course, the damage is already done. And we'll talk about the media and maybe we will talk about the media. I mean, we it's kind of a mishmash, right? Yeah. Kind of a place. But just to finish up this because I'm sure a lot more is going to happen tonight and everything I'm saying is going to be out of date. There have been protests at campuses across the country. Let's see. Thirty four

students arrested at University of Wisconsin, Madison, a history professor from another school was beaten by campus police at Washington University in St. Louis. And there's video now of a 65 year old woman who is the head of the school's Jewish Studies Department getting thrown to the ground at Dartmouth. She went up to a cop and like pointed at well, she went up to the cop. She went up to the cop anti-semitically and pointed at his face. You can tell by the way the Jewish studies professor was was walking.

The elderly woman was being anti-semitic and they threw her to the ground. Threw her to the ground. I've seen we'll talk about this later. Sorry. I like the number of people who are just like, well, she shouldn't have done that, shouldn't have pointed her finger at the cop. Psychopaths, all of you out in the world, just cheering on this horrific violence,

it is so fucked up and weird and upsetting. But look at this other thing you've included here. Yeah, just to what I was speaking, that Northwestern, Brown and Westland have agreed to some demands such as allowing the protest to continue and establishing advisory committees to review investments, which again is a big part of what they're specifically asking for is for universities to divest from- It's like the whole point. It's the whole point.

Like when I was responding to that person, I was, you know, and they're saying he was the one that was like talking about the death to Jews chant and all this. I was like, well, I'm not seeing evidence of that. That was one person who was a counter-protester. That thing that they are talking about was a counter-protester. That thing that they are talking about was a counter-protester saying that. I was trying so hard to be very calm,

as calm as you can be, but I was like, from what I understand, you know, it's about divesting, you know, and just totally ignored that and didn't engage with me on that point. Yeah, and like the thing about Northwestern is they didn't even say we're definitely going to do it. They said we will reestablish an advisory committee to review our investments. And the students were like, OK. Right.

It's like the deal, like the deals, like the compromises are like pretty fucking soft. And like, you know, I mean, again, like I don't want to dismiss like the results of that that because it's way better than the horrific police brutality or nothing. But like, yeah, a lot of these agreements are like, well, we'll do an advisory committee and we'll vote in October. A quarter of those students are going to be graduated by then. Like it's, you know, like it's all this stuff. And like, yeah, it's like, oh, in 2025, we'll vote. And then in 2026, we'll implement this. It's such a slow burn of a process.

And whatever, like if there is different demands at some of these other schools, you can bet they're going to be more of them now. Now that cops have come to beat the shit out of them. You know, for being intense now, it's, you know, like right now, I'm sure they can't wait for UCLA to start calling them in three, four or five years asking them for money. Like the campus has done, they're like, well, you're sitting in Dixon Plaza, which I went to UCLA.

So it's this huge area in between like the four main original buildings. And like I tweeted about this, but whatever, I'm going to say it here. I went to UCLA in the early 2000s and they blocked off that entire area for days when they were shooting Old School, a movie which I haven't seen, but I assume a big chunk of it takes place there. And I remember being a little annoyed by it because I had to walk a different way, which took me an extra three or four minutes to get to class and

the Encampment in that area I think is smaller than the area they used for old school people can walk around it There's a thread by Zaynab to fact she who talks about how small the area was at Columbia And how the only thing that was disrupting classes or kids taking finals are the helicopters circling overhead film. Yeah, it's a college protest. They happen all the time, all the time. It's like it's actually kind of telling how weird it is that you're so ticked off by it. Hmm. Yes. What does that mean that this one specifically is getting so much under your skin because it comes

because it's about institutional power and the United States sending weapons to other countries and maybe like honestly shocked it's good vector we started I mean I'm not but I mean like this is the response it's such a nothing is unreasonable about what and just the the Democratic leader, just the radio silence like, oh, you must. What is this? I know I'm so. Yeah, I feel like I'm in a different universe. Articulation. Yeah. Happens a lot. Yeah, it's wild. I mean, I keep thinking about like, like, again, like even like

sort of side note kudos to all the people in the State Department and the White House who've resigned months ago over this. Still being around and just being silent, it's wild. But it's also, again, it's not surprising. It's so frustrating to see people just sort of, like, well, what do you want them to do? The thing they're asking. The thing they're asking,

the money that's going towards this, it's very simple to understand. And again, it's this sort of like, like poking to make you look somewhere else and to like, to waste your time arguing. It's a very simple concept to understand what is being demanded and why there's not these protests about necessarily other horrific things going on around the world. We are directly tied to this. There's no way around it. Not just the government, but these schools.

Not to bring it back to the conversation I had. But it does represent so many of the things being thrown around, and he really is touching on all the hits. Of course. Which would be like, why this outrage over this, you know? Waste of time, waste of time for conversation. A Bible, well, right, I know. No, I know, I'm just.

I kept trying to tap out and I kept coming back to another Bible, brick of text. But, you know, where's the outrage for the horrific things happening all around the world? And you know what? Yeah, there's a lot of horrific things all around the world and the US absolutely is implicated in a lot of them. But this is so direct.

We are literally continuing to fund it, to send weapons. Our political system, our police system. But our, you know, like, we just brushed over this part as we're going through it, but reminder, the NYPD and lots of police departments train with the IDF. They train with the IDF, they use their tactics. There's, this is, of any of the conflicts, of any of the horrific things happening around the world

that we have a direct tie to, like, of anything that we might potentially be able to influence. It's this. And also because what's happening is making, is causing antisemitism. Let's not just brush over the fact that a lot of our protesters here are members of the Jewish community and it's just, okay. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's wildly frustrating. to again, sort of zero in on like, again, it's a waste of time. But I've even seen people like, oh, these students didn't even know about this conflict until October. You liar. You fucking liar. Stop trying to be legitimizing. This has been like such a an important topic for a lot of these kids. And for years, when these conflicts bubble over and rise up, it's it's not new.

And it just so many little talking points and comments are like, Oh, so you just you're just lying. You just want to waste people's time. And I to the point of the NYPD and other police departments training with the IDF and using their tactics, whether it be like their physical tactics or their propaganda tactics. I just wanted to highlight this quote that is passed around every so often can connect it to that point about the police training. Fascism is colonialism turned inward. It's a lot of stuff. We talk about it all the time, but that quote I, is so crystal clear in that context of our police, our local police forces training with this foreign military. And even down to like, again, like the propaganda we'll see from the NYPD and the IDF, I'm we don't need to talk about this on morning, Joe, that fucking cop with the bike lock.

on morning Joe, that fucking cop with the bike lock. So students don't have these. These are this is like military. These are evil chains. No, that's a bike lock you can get on campus. Columbia told students to get. Yes, it is absurd, absurd lies. I'm very grateful that that particular show is our president's favorite news show. What a fucking mess. Speaking of our president's favorite news show. What a fucking mess.

Speaking of our president. Yeah. Yeah. I bet he had something at all to say. Do you want to hear him or do you want me to? I don't think I want to hear him. I'll just tell you what he said. You. Yeah. This is looking good. By the way, this was disgraceful. He, you know, started his little speech by saying the peaceful protest is, you know,

very important speech rights as American, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, trailed off. But there is no tolerance for, quote, violent protest. And then he talked about vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. He also said dissent must never lead to disorder. Oh, mustn't it? Dissent honestly should neither be seen nor heard.

Yeah, all of those famously undisorderly protests of the past. Well, I went through this like this list of his vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. First of all, most of those things are not violent. But let's say, let's say. Breaking a window, maybe. I saw a broken window at Hamilton Hall.

So broken window. And I saw more broken windows from the police. Well, right. Most of this stuff is what the police most of this is what the police. Yeah, the police did this. It'll break a window. Who was trespassing at UCLA? The students who paid to go and live at the public university or the professors who paid for her

paid for by a GoFundMe with contributions from Bill Ackman and Jessica Seinfeld, who went there to beat them up. Yeah, that woman that a woman who got shoved for pointing is banned from campus. The professor of Jewish studies? Yes. Cool. Last I checked. So maybe that's changed. But again, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations,

USC did that because they screwed up with their valedictorian. And then because people were protesting their investments in, I guess, Lockheed Martin or whatever. Yeah. I mean, again, that seems just even without the context of this war. Why is the university investing in Lockheed Martin at all? I mean, I would be horrified if my exorbitant students student tuition, which maybe it did back then. Like likely a lot of schools are as you.

If I was a student right now, I mean mean I might fully not go back to school ever I mean even without the international conflict. I think you'd be right to demand that your school dive Which I don't want to make Claims but a second whistleblower Again I'm not to make outlandish claims. Well, you know, it's bacterial infection or something like that. A rapidly developing bacterial infection. We don't know. We're getting more and more.

Might just be a remarkable coincidence. Remarkable coincidence. I don't really believe in coincidences. I know. What about remarkable coincidences? Have we been through this? That you don't believe in coincidences? I mean, I know that it's a coincidence. It is definitely a vibe thing.

I mean, I guess we should save that for another time. I really want to dig into this, but I feel like we shouldn't. I just mean like the odds of something like that coincidentally happening are so infinitesimally small. It's not that I don't believe that they don't, that coincidences never happen. It's just that on some level, I believe there is some other explanation which has just not been revealed to me.

Also, a little bit, I'm a skeptical, sure. I also believe in magic a bit, so. Well, there we go. Maybe, I mean, maybe that's how he got the infection. Magic. But I feel like Biden and look, he might be making a shrewd political move here since, you know, most of the country is like, yeah, squash these protests or whatever. But like, he's really not making a distinction of who is doing

the violent protest because it is factually, factually not the students who have started the dozens of solidarity encampments. That is correct. It's just not. There was violence specifically at UCLA between students. It was not started by the encampment. LA Times even kind of updated their reporting on this.

Thankfully they- What did they say before? encampment. LA Times even kind of updated their reporting on this. Thankfully, they they're now accurate. Or I think it was a lot of clashes between protesters and counter protesters. But there's a lot of going back and forth. Yeah, they have been updated to show that the counter protesters initiated violence and started attacking the the solidarity encampment. I saw there's I don't usually watch cable news because why the fuck would I? But I'm currently visiting where the cable news is on the TV. And I was actually very surprised that the NBC nightly news, it wasn't great, but it wasn't like abysmal. They did sort

of start like point out where that started. But it's largely abysmal reporting all across cable news and not just Fox News, but all of cable news. I feel like Chris Hayes does kind of stand out. I know people have issues with Chris Hayes, but if we are talking about like reasonable voices on cable news. Yeah, like now that Mehdi Hassan has been is gone from that network. CNN is a complete joke on this. Oh God. Yeah. Fox News. I didn't even check to see what there is. Why would you? Yeah, no. But yeah, like the one guy who's like, hey, this is actually like not really what's going on. What's what's the situation here? Yeah. Well, and we can get a little more into media if we want. I wanted

to highlight some of this stuff more in the Biden speech, because there are a few things I wanted to talk about a little bit, and one is an allegedly controversial tweet that I sent out a day or two ago. Oh my God, yeah. About how, I'll just read it verbatim,

and I guess I need to fucking clarify what I meant. I'm begging some of you to imagine how you'd feel about this exact sequence of events if the president was the other guy. And we've talked about this before, and I 100% stand by this claim and idea. A lot of Democrats, whether it be some voters, some people online, the actual party itself and much

of the media can tend to be very reflexive on their opinions about certain matters and reflexive in a way where if Donald Trump says something or does something and if he's rude about it in particular, they are furious and really just can't. They just can't take it. And I remember even in 2017, that first year of his presidency, that happening a lot. Many times, rightfully so. Most of the time, rightfully so. But sometimes you'd be like, that's actually just something the presidents do. That's his president stuff. And my point here is not that we as we've talked about,

Trump would obviously be worse on this rhetorically and probably like with his actions. And and he'd be encouraging more violence rhetorically again, all this kind of stuff. I'm saying if Donald Trump was the president and nothing else was different, if he was saying the same things that Joe Biden said, if every single thing happened the exact same way up until this point, they would be outraged. Yeah. They would be supporting. Cody, I just want to say, as soon as you tweeted that, I was like, yes, because that's what

I've been thinking all day. It is infuriating. I foolishly got into some back and forth with some people about it. Right, not to. And it is just the very dishonest sort of viewpoint, continuing to purposefully not understand it. It's a very simple concept to understand. And it's just true. And again, even if Donald Trump said the exact same thing that Joe Biden said today, there would just be more Democrats and more Democratic politicians calling this stuff out and upset about this,

whether it be upset about what's going on in Gaza, supporting these protests or condemning the violence against the protests. And I just that sorry, folks, that is true. Yep. I agree with you completely. They're upset about they're so worried about a Trump presidency. And I get it. I get a presidency would be horrible. I get it. So it's this reflexive.

I have to defend Joe Biden now. I have to because all I'm thinking about is what's happening in six months. Yeah. From this week, we're very, very concerned about it. So if anyone says anything about the horrible job Biden is doing specifically on this issue, I recognize there's other things specifically on this issue. It's reasonable, I think, to say. I've said this before, like Biden's actions over the last seven months,

whatever it's been, have been disqualifying. That doesn't mean that the other guy hasn't done more disqualifying stuff to a greater magnitude and awful. Although you could argue that the slaughter of 35,000 whatever it is now people that we have directly supported is worse than many of those other things. But be that as it may, just because one person is doing a disqualifying thing doesn't mean that I want the other thing to happen. And I think it's part of that reflexive thinking of like, well, well, if I have to

just shut down the leftists who are angry at Biden right now, or else Trump will win. This is a direct line to Trump winning. And I don't think it is like, no, I know a lot of people are being like, how the hell am I going to vote for Joe Biden in November? And I think a lot of people are just going to find a way, right? Like they'll find a way. And we're not going to worry about that right now. But you can say that worry should not be affecting our conversations about important issues. I don't. Right. He's a disgrace right now.

And we should be able to say that. And without what the other guys were, that's not part of this conversation. We are in a democracy. Allegedly. I keep hearing that. I keep hearing like we need to preserve democracy. And part of that is saying that the current president sucks shit and is doing a lot of evil stuff. You mentioned up to 35000 deaths so far. You mentioned up to 35,000 deaths so far. It is up to about 35,000 almost.

I've heard reports in other places that they lost count of the death count. How could you even know how many people? Along those lines, I think it was pretty disqualifying to me. I don't even remember what it was. I think maybe December when Joe Biden, very publicly, very vocally, out loud to the whole country, denied the death toll, said, do not trust the death toll. And that is one of the most disgusting things I think he could have done and was fucking evil of him. And any report later of how he's privately regretting it, I don't

give a shit, you publicly regret it and you apologize. And there are just so many things like that that we need to be able to say are disgusting, without this, in six months, this, this, this, this, this, because otherwise, you're admitting that you are a prisoner of your own fear. And also, you just, I think some of it, so much of it comes from feeling powerless to them. Because as the president also said during his speech today, has have these protests like made you like change your mind or made you reconsider your actions with the conflict in Gaza.

He said no. End of answer. And I again, if Donald Trump reacted to a protest about this and just said no, up in arms, up in arms, everyone would be. We can even play what Trump said and just pretend he's the president and wonder if anything materially different would be happening. I guess the National Guard was rolling through LA in 2020 and they're not doing that now. So I want to acknowledge that material difference.

But on college campuses, like here, this is quick. I'll just play this clip. Many of them aren't even students, you know, and many of them come from foreign countries. You know, thousands and thousands are from foreign countries. I was wondering about that. I'm saying, where did these people come from? Every college president, I say remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place from which to learn.

It goes on, but like I think we can see great. There's a distinction there. So like there's a week. Yeah, we can hold all that in our minds, right? It's not impossible for some people. And I yeah, I there are. And we don't need to keep repeating ourselves, I guess. But like, yeah, there's some material differences. There are some that are horrifically the same.

And being able to point that out is good and should like invigorate you to continue to protect the democracy that you claim to want to have. And I just can't with this fucking guy. And yeah, I if you're just blindly like, well, but you don't you can't say anything. You can't say anything like I've it's always it's always like just responses like, well, I have my own criticisms of Joe Biden, which I will not say. And you have your right to have your own, even though I hate you and don't agree with them.

And I agree with your right to protest in the way that I prefer. Like it's all these like implicit qualifications. Protest in a way that I would suddenly not prefer if it went on for more than five hours or if I had to get through the street and traffic or 100 percent. There's just such also and we don't need to dig into this too much, but like, there are like a lot of moderates and sorry, libs and Democrats who just fucking hate what they refer to as the far left. They want and kind of enjoy seeing these privileged college students getting the shit kicked out of them.

They just do. It's fucked up, but it's true. And I see it. It's not everybody. State violence makes them feel secure about their property values. Yeah. To revisit the property thing and some of the stuff Biden said, I wanted to I did want to address some of this stuff, particularly his claims of what is violence and what is acceptable protest. First of all, trespassing is violence is trespassing, not peaceful protest. That's most protests are sit ins violence. If you don't belong there, I just want to there are so many examples of protests that these people in power have to pretend like they supported all along or would have supported when these protests led to state violence and arrests for it's what I forget the exact quote that Biden said. But like these need to be like protests needs to be lawful.

No, it doesn't. That's part of the point, actually. And I'm not saying they need to be violent, but that's not the same thing. And like MLK was arrested for trespassing, literally arrested for trespassing. Wait, you've never read Martin Luther King's letters from a penthouse on 52nd Street. Unbelievable. Biden's favorite person to invoke,

John Lewis, was arrested 40 times for being unlawful and trespassing. This is an absurd thing to say. I've even seen people like, you know, people are pointing out like Joe Biden, like this speech that Biden gave and these distinctions he's trying to make, these definitions he's trying to create. He would be against Vietnam protests, all these all these protests going on. And I've seen other people go, quit lying. That's not what he said.

I want to read real quick some things that Joe Biden has said, particularly about the protests against the Vietnam War. He was not anti-war, didn't really embrace the anti-war movement. He said, quote, he was not big on flak jackets and tie dye shirts. He professed a lack of moral outrage at the war. And he described walking through campus with law school friends one day and seeing other students occupying office buildings in protest. Quote, they were taking over the building and we looked up and said, look at these assholes.

That's how far apart from the antiwar movement I was. It's simply factual that he wouldn't have supported the protest or the actions of the protesters. Absolutely it is. I mean, he's just been he's pretty consistent. That is 100 percent like he kind of says that, he's just been he's pretty consistent. That is 100 percent. Like he kind of says that like he's proud of it. He does kind of say like he's proud of it.

And it's just, again, like you don't have to love or embrace every single part of a protest movement or every single tactic or every single person. That's just not how it works. It is an impossible dream. Everyone's like all these fucking like centrist moderate libs are like, well, you just don't live in the real world and you like you want to live in a utopia where this and like you're like you're so unreasonable. No, you are. You want a perfect protest which doesn't exist and doesn't get anything done.

And you would have been against these. The majority of people during these protests in America were against these protests. And I'm not talking to our listeners necessarily, obviously, obviously. I'm talking just generally you fucking would have hated those protests. And I just I am so fucking fed up. There's one more thing for you to be fed up with and that is Congress. So right now I have no idea what the Senate's going to do or if it hits Biden's desk but the House passed an anti-Semitism awareness act with a mostly bipartisan vote which

would change the federal definition of anti-Semitism to include some criticisms of the state of Israel. For example, quote, claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor, applying double standards that are not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation and drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis. I would like to read this thing. Do we like Ryan Grim? I can never keep track. Regardless, are we? Yeah, that's fine. The instance you retweeted. Yes. Yeah, they're exempt. You know, we don't have to agree with everybody all the time. I know. I was just

like pulling them up at all these years. I'm like, I don't know. I understand. Yeah. But, okay, by absurdly claiming that criticism of Israel is antisemitism, this new law would effectively hold every Jewish person in the world responsible for the actions of Israel, which is absurd. Yet the law also banned saying anything, holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of Israel. So the law basically violates itself. Yeah, I can't imagine we're just going to have a year of trials of Jewish students being accused of anti-Semitism. Right. Right.

I mean, we would have to ask have that professor of Jewish studies, maybe. But it's also just straight up not protecting Jewish people from. That's never been what it's about. You know. It's not. Yeah, exactly. That's the thing. That's the thing with all this stuff. It's like the gaslighting and like the narrative, like it's just not what it's about. And what you're saying is not not what you're saying, Katie, but like

what you're saying, it's not what's really going on. Boy, boy. Oh, boy. We are. I kind of can't wait to find three spots to put dynamic ads. Yeah. Oh, have you folks enjoyed the dynamic ads in this episode. It could be for anything. It could be for anything. It's all it's just a real adventure dynamic ads. Oh, God, it could be anything.

Thank you, everybody, for sticking with us during this sort of like unplanned response episode. We already mentioned the death toll. There's an incoming even further assault on RAFA. We focused a lot on these protests and it's important also to... And we've also mentioned obviously what's going on in our relationship and how this horrific thing is going on over there. But the focus can and should remain as much as possible even while Jewish studies professors are getting stomped on by the cops, that what's going on is still going on in Gaza. Less and less land inhabitable, fewer and fewer people alive.

The death toll is getting, again, possibly uncountable, losing track. I was I saw this tweet and it almost made me start to cry actually. This August, it will be 10 years since Palestinians were tweeting at people in Ferguson telling them how to deal with tear gas. I remember that. That was incredible and gave me a lot of hope for the connection that we all have with each other across the globe against things like what's going on. And it's really just so depressing that we're still here and we're still having to like these college kids, they fucking they lost like what how many years of like of their high school for the pandemic, all this stuff and climate, all these things and they're still out there doing this. And you can see even like kids and people in Gaza like of their high school for the pandemic, all this stuff and climate, all these things. And they're still out there doing this. And you can see even like kids and people in Gaza, like thanking the students at Columbia while they're starving. Yeah. And that it matters.

It matters. And I'm just so reminded of that summer 10 years ago. I wanted to highlight that because we are all in this together and some of us just fucking suck and it sucks. And I don't know, solidarity with protesters, solidarity with Palestine. And I guess that's it for today. That's it for today. That's it for today. I don't have any fun jokes to end this with. I appreciate you guys for hopping on. I appreciate everybody for listening. And it's really fucking hard out there, but remember that we love you very much.

Much.