The Young Turks - New Zealand Suffers Mass Shooting And White Nationalism Infects The News

Episode Date: March 18, 2019

At least 49 people were killed and another 48 injured in a mass shooting in New Zealand. People are getting radicalized by the media. Cenk Uygur, Tommy Vietor, and John Iadarola, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Hey, guys, you've heard of the Young Turks podcast because you're listening to it right now. But make sure that you subscribe and give it a five star rating if you like it. Thank you for listening. This is going to be fun. Drop it. Power, Power, Power Panel.

All right, Jake, you were John Idol, and Tommy Vitor, everybody. Hello. All right, spokesperson for one, President Barack Obama, and also the National Security Council and of course, co-host and co-founder of Ponce of America. also has POT saved the world. You've saved a lot of things on me. They used to be ironic and I think people have forgotten that we were making fun of ourselves, but thank you for having me.

So this is like a podcast with cameras? In a sense, in a sense. Or as the Washington Post said yesterday, a lefty blog. Blog, we're still doing blogs. Unbelievable. I think that's the only thing we don't have basically as a blog. Yeah. I remember when we briefly called them vlogs for video blogs.

And the first vlogger I hired, God knows how long ago, was a guy named David Sorota. So, well, you know. Good pick on. Well, yeah, we've had some good ones, some okay ones. Okay, guys, we got a huge show ahead for you guys. So obviously some tragic news to begin with about New Zealand. We'll do that in a little bit. And then lots of political news for you guys, though, including defying Donald Trump.

And that's always good and important. And then Beto's in the race. We're going to have an interesting discussion about that. And now there are rumblings of a primary against Ilhan Omar from the Democrats. Also very interesting. So lots of stories to get to. It'll be the three of us for the whole two hours. Normally we switch at the hour mark, but like I said, fun power panel, a little different today.

Okay. At this age, once you sit down, you don't really want to get up a lot. Plus, Anna, which just spoke at the United Nations yesterday, so she's on our way back for next week. Okay, all right, let's get started, John, tragic news, unfortunately, in the beginning. Okay, it's funny. By the way, I just want to briefly mention, what you just said about Anna is, like, when you're not here, I make jokes about where you actually are.

That sounded like one of those, but it's true. Yeah, in this case is actually true. Anyway, okay, let's jump from that joke to one of the most serious stories we've covered all year. Late last night, a white supremacist perpetrated the most devastating mass shooting in New Zealand in literally decades, killing 49 worshippers at the Al-Nor Mosque and the Linwood Mosque, obviously far more were injured as well. And one statistic that stood out to me was that this represented one out of every 500 Muslims

in New Zealand was either killed or injured in that shooting, which is devastating. Of course. During the time since then, we have found out more about this shooter. There are elements of this person's background that we will go into. I am going to do everything I can not to give this person what they want and publicize information about their life. I don't want to give too much information about their philosophy or their manifesto, anything like that.

I want to focus on the event at least right now. And in pursuit of that, here is some video from late last night. This is the Prime Minister of New Zealand talking about the shooting. What I can say is that it is clear that this is one of New Zealand's darkest days. Clearly, what has happened here is an extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence. Many of those who will have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand. They may even be refugees here. They have chosen to make New Zealand their home and it is their home.

They are us. There is no place in New Zealand for such acts of extreme and unprecedented violence. violence, which is, it is clear this act was. And indeed, as was alluded to there, the worshippers came from a number of different countries, including Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, a number of others as well. Yeah, well, I love that statement by the Prime Minister. She said they were, oh, us, and the shooter was not. And so it's a good way of identifying who you are in a dark woman like this as a country

and as a culture. And so it's a wonderful statement. Our own president with not quite as wonderful statements, so we'll get to that later in the program. So I have mixed feelings about what John said about the identity of the shooter and talking about it. So we usually give the name on the first day, I don't know if we're even going to do that in this case, and then try not to ever give the name again.

But I think the motivations of the shooter is of course relevant, which we all agree. And he appears to be a white supremacist, Donald Trump supporter, and hated Muslims and immigrants, unsurprising given that he killed 49 of them. And so here we are again, another right-wing shooting, Anti-Defamation League in 2018, said every single act of extremist murder in this country in the United States was done by a right-wing extremist. And this is another right-wing extremist, another massacre. Of course, internationally, they're mainly right-wing extremists as well with Breivik in Norway.

And now, is there other forms of terrorism? Of course there are. Are there other extremists from other places and religions? Of course. And so, but unfortunately in the Western world, the extremism has clearly come from one end of the political spectrum. So I'm not interested in the right wing saying two things today. One is, oh, don't polarize.

You polarize every single day and this is what led to the shooting in the first place was you guys polarizing. So for example, when Trump said a complete and total shutdown of Muslims in the country, that might have been a little polarizing. Another thing I'm not interested in hearing about today is Berkeley. So no, it's not even. Wow. As you said, I'm gonna jump ahead just briefly because you sort of brought this up.

But while I understand we have slightly different views on this, I want to read as few of his actual words as possible. But one thing certainly stands out, and I think it's important to acknowledge. And that would be where he called President Trump, quote, a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose, but also mocked him as a policymaker and leader. And so look, Donald Trump tweeted earlier this morning, and he expressed sympathy to the victims. He identified the shooting is happening at a mosque. He didn't mention Islam specifically, and he spoke in an oddly passive tone talking about people

dying and not anything. I guess he didn't know anything at the time about who the shooter was or what they believed. But since then, he has been asked direct questions. With a tweet, we have no idea who actually wrote that, whether it's him or not. There were no exclamatory single word sentences. So it didn't really seem like him. But he was asked about this. And per the pool, this is according to Daniel Dale on Twitter, Trump called the terror attack a, quote, horrible, horrible thing. Instead he called the prime minister to convey U.S. sorrow, then turned to, quote, crimes of all kinds coming through our southern border, adding, people hate the word invasion, but that's what it is. And we will return to that particular narrative that he's

spinning there. But perhaps worse, from my point of view, he was asked by a reporter if white nationalism is a growing threat, and he replied, quote, not really, suggesting it's just a small group of people. There have been multiple successful terror attacks. There have also been terror attacks that were thankfully averted being conducted by people with this ideology, internationally and in the United States, multiple, just this year, just a small problem. And I'm sure we can totally imagine if a Muslim blew up a building in the U.S. and killed 50 people and he was asked about whether he thinks that Islam is a serious issue, he'd probably say, that's just a small group of people.

Yeah, right. Yeah, I noticed a lot of the same people who, when Barack Obama was president and there was some sort of terrorist attack, would demand that he called a terrorist attack, demand that he say radical Islamic terror, their preferred formulation of the sentence. In this instance, they were trying to say, let's not talk about what this person wrote, what his name is, what his ideology is. Look, I think you guys, the viewers are watching us struggle with how to talk about these incidents in real time. I remember after the Boston bombing when one of the Sarnia brothers was put on the cover of Rolling Stone, and it looked like, you know, he looked like a rock star. And I remember feeling deeply concerned about the image that sent about what it would mean to you. you as a disaffected kid who's depressed and alone and in your house every night and seeing

the treatment that's afforded to people that do horrific, hateful things. But I do think we need to talk about the cancer that is Islamophobia in this radical language. In the president's words, talking about an invasion on the southern border, that is radicalizing people. That's scaring the heck out of you if you're worried about your family. So, like, he's part of the problem here. Yeah, well, the guy in his manifesto, 70-page manifesto that he released, talked about talked about the invaders, same exact language, and he says that he's partly inspired

by Donald Trump, used the same language as Donald Trump. So I'm not shy about it, do I hold Donald Trump partly responsible? Yes, absolutely. He said that we should do a total and complete shutdown of Muslims in this country. Is this an open question as to whether Donald Trump's a bigot? Of course he's a bigot. Does he drive Islamophobia? Of course.

Does it lead to violence? Of course. Is he solely responsible? Come on, of course not. Of course the shooter is responsible for his actions. And look, I don't, I'm not in the belief that anyone who happens to be in the right wing is responsible for all right wing attacks, of course not, right? And so there's, I don't know what the different talk show hosts opinions on Islamophobia

or et cetera, and there's a giant range is Charlie Sykes somehow responsible? No, right? But if you have a very powerful leader of a country who constantly, constantly picks out one group, or in his case several groups, Muslims, Latinos, et cetera, and says, they are the criminals. He said it again today. They are the invaders, they are the danger, danger, danger, somebody should do about it. Just yesterday he talked about, hey, I have very tough guys on my side. And if things get very bad, they could do, you know, they could act.

clear reference to violence. So he's talked about a way if people attack protesters at his rallies, that he'll pay for their legal bills. So he revels in violence. Congressman Gioforte body slam someone assaulted a reporter. Donald Trump went to Montana to celebrate it. So is Donald Trump in favor of violence? Yes, repeatedly.

Yeah, and look, I tweeted something to this effect earlier where it's one thing to take something that a person has said, see it echoed in the language of a mass murderer, and then connect those two things, and they will say that that's unfair. Okay, I sort of get that. I think that if you do it repeatedly, and seemingly knowingly, there is something there. But I get that they don't think that that's fair. But it's a different thing when you then proceed to continue to push that same narrative. So we know that the Tree of Life Shooter believed that he, in his words,

the Jews were funding caravans of immigrants to come into the country. So he believed these conspiracy theories about the caravans. Trump had been pushing. After that shooting, Trump continued to push conspiracy theories about caravans, and Fox News would talk about George Soros funding them. So after they knew that this was triggering people, almost literally, they continued to do the same thing. When the pipe bomber sent pipe bombs through the mail to a list of Donald Trump's political opponents that he'd been demonizing for years, he responded by continuing to demonize those same people. Coast Guard shooter in a very similar way, wanted to kill particular members of Democratic Party and figures in the

media, Trump continues to attack those people constantly. This guy used the language of an invasion. Donald Trump today afterward talked about an invasion at the southern border. So he can't plead ignorance, he can't plead coincidence. He is purposefully continuing the insightful language that we know they are already listening to an acting on. So and there's another big difference, which is what are people getting incited towards, right?

So they'll say, well, you know, and look, I blame the mainstream media a lot, not for the shootings, for the coverage that is disproportionate here. They have a fetish of calling everything even when the facts are not even. So your neutrality is actually at odds with what should be your real standard, which is objectivity. So left wing and right wing violence in this country is not remotely even. And as we just told you, every murder committed by an extremist last year was by the right wing. And then that goes to, okay, but what are they saying? So one guy did a shooting who apparently was a Bernie Sanders fan, okay?

So that's the one time they could always refer back to. Every time there's a new massacre by a right wing, they're like, hey, did you know there once was a progressive who did one shooting, right? But did Bernie Sanders go in that direction? You progressives go in that direction? The fact that that guy wanted Medicare for all, how is that connected to a shooting? Not at all. How is the fact that Kamala Harris wants Medicare for all in any way connected to any shooting?

There's no logical nexus there. On the other hand, when the right wing says, this is the group you should hate. This is the group that is the problem, that is the danger in our midst, and that constantly leaves that last sentence out, which is, isn't someone gonna do anything about it? They're the invaders, they're the virus, and they're the ones that commit the crimes. Now also not backed up by facts, but they say all then, they go, isn't someone gonna do something about it, is the last part that's left out. And that's called stochastic terrorism, where you include.

encourage people to act with violence, but you don't say specifically who. You don't say, hey, Bob, I want you to send a pipe bomb to George, right? You just say, isn't somebody going to do something? They're the danger. They're the virus. They're the invaders. And then a random person pops up to go hit your political opponents. Yeah, I mean, look, and what's scary about these far-right ideologies is they're spreading.

And they're spreading in Europe, but they're also spreading because Steve Bannon is over there. setting up shop in Brussels, radicalizing political parties. He's doing it in Italy. He's doing it in an awkward place, hungry. So we should be worried about this. Another element that we are barely grappling with is the role of technology and helping people find radical content. Like, you YouTube, like, how to tie a bow tie, and you're, like, three hops away

from some info wars craziness, right? And that gets you down these, like, QAnon rabbit holes. And, like, we, it's fun to kind of make fun of the Q&N people. But at the end of the day, it's a death cult where they think that all the liberals and Hollywood celebrities are running a pedophile ring and will be locked up and then executed. So, like, people are believing some very, very extreme, frightening, crazy things. And I don't think we can blame it on mental illness alone. I think they're being radicalized by this kind of information.

Yeah. No, and they, and those guys live amongst. I've said this on a number of occasions. One of my neighbors is a Q&M bumper sticker. Really? And so what is he willing to do? I don't know, because they're constantly instigated. So look, I think the issue of social media is a very difficult one, because it has a wonderful

upside, which is that it got rid of the gatekeepers. So there's not just one acceptable thought anymore. But in that freedom, you also have, you know, the monsters that have been unleashed. So we've got to find a way to corral the monsters without taking the freedom away. And it's, it is an extraordinarily difficult job. And so Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, this guy put out a 17 minute video live as he was doing it. They all took it down immediately, but thousands of copycat sites went up and they're all

trying to beat the algorithm by cropping some parts of the video, changing the audio, so the algorithm can't catch it. And YouTube and Facebook, et cetera, are all trying to adjust as we go. And they're in a tight situation. I do not want them to go back to what I consider the bad old day. where, hey, if Les Moonvest says it's okay, then okay. Otherwise, we're not interested. But this is a significant, significant downside.

Why don't we turn to something that's sort of related to that? We know from what we found out about the New Zealand shooter that he apparently was radicalized online. And online, it's very easy to come across white nationalists and white supremacist talking points and find people who share that ideology. But you don't necessarily have to go onto the internet. You don't have to join some weird Discord server. You don't have to go on 4chan. It has become so normalized in media and American politics that you can see it cropping up virtually everywhere.

And I want to give some examples of that. So let's jump ahead to Graphic 5. So I'm not going to give specifics, but in the manifesto that the New Zealand shooter released, he talks about birth rates. They're always all talking about birth rates and how that they're getting outbred by these foreign invaders. Well, not too long ago, Representative Steve King said this, the floor of Congress. I'm watching a motion take over reason. When I made a statement on Twitter saying, we can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies, it seemed to be more

irritating to the left than anything I've ever said. First of all, the total fertility rate in Europe is below replacement rate. When that happens, you were a dying civilization. Now, you connect the fact that there's this low birth rate among white people with an invasion of outsiders, foreigners, immigrants. That was all throughout the manifesto as well. And Representative Louis Gomer recently said, we know that the invasion into France by the Allied forces consisted of about 150,000 troops. About 150,000 people was the biggest invasion in history. And since then, we come up to the year 2014, and the New York Times reported that just in the recent months, we have had 240,000 adults and 52,000 children. Now it's being reported that's closer to 60,000 children, as I understand the article said, since April, just two months.

We've had nearly 300,000 people invade the United States through Texas. And then it's now being reported that there are 300,000 people making their way up from Central America to the United States. You have constant attacks against the idea that multiculturalism or diversity is a good thing. That is in the manifesto as well. You have Steve King tweeting, diversity is not our strength. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, quote, mixing cultures will not lead to a higher quality of life, but a lower one.

And it might be easy at this point to write off Steve King and say, Yeah, we understand that he's a white supremacist. Yeah, he's an elected leader. I guess we'll just allow it. I guess they get one out and out white supremacist. But you can turn on your TV any night and see things on, for instance, Tucker Carlson, where he says stuff like this. Precisely is diversity or strength?

Since you've made this our new national motto, please be specific, as you explain it. Can you think, for example, of other institutions such as, I don't know, marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are? Do you get along better with your neighbors or your co-workers if you can't understand each other or share no common values? Please be honest as you answer this question. Have you ever seen it? So Stacey Abrams, but it's not, I don't mean to pick on Stacey Abrams. She represents a much larger group of people who tell us the same thing, which is this works, we must embrace it. The question does it work?

Has it, have you studied this question extensively, you're a scholar, is there a country in which this way of looking at the world has produced a stable nation? stable nation. I mean, you hit on it in your previews for marks. Diversity is not a strength in politics. And that is, of course, thanks to Media Matters. We know the multi-million dollar a year salaried Fox News host who recently called, or about a decade ago called Iraqi semi-literate primitive monkeys. He has also had people on to talk about Camp of the Saints, approvingly, a book that's about white Europeans needing to gun down by the hundreds of thousands, immigrants from India. He has talked about how farmers are being killed en masse in South Africa, which is a common

white nationalist conspiracy theory, which after he talked about it, the next day Donald Trump was tweeting about this white nationalist conspiracy theory. It is just shot throughout. I mean, look, Tucker Carlson is the easy one to identify it. It's the main plank of his show at this point. But in terms of the media, in terms of the politics, you don't have to go to some obscure corner of the internet. You can just sort of make your way through your day watching TV at the gym or in an airport.

and you will get white supremacist talking points beamed directly into your head. And this is not new, this has unfortunately been around a long time when you want to egg people on to do terrible things. You talk about how the others are invaders, they are sapping our national strength. These are word for word Nazi propaganda that was used against the Jews. In fact, in Charlottesville, they did an old Nazi chant. the Jews will not replace us. On two different occasions, both Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingram have wrote into their script

and their producers saw it, everybody saw it, they put it into the prompter and read it on air, the immigrants will not replace us. So they just took out of the Jews and put the immigrants in. And so when there is tremendous violence against immigrants, we're really going to feign surprise? Yeah, I mean, I think Tucker Carlson is particularly dangerous to me because he looks like just some obnoxious frat boy, right? He looks like a country club became a person

and therefore his views are sort of whitewashed, literally. But, you know, he did a segment about how white South African farmers are being murdered. Now, I don't think that ag issues in South Africa are an issue you find on Fox News a lot, right? Like, he had to seek hard to find this totally made-up white nationalist propaganda. But as you guys said, he's mainlining it into scary,

old white people watching Fox News every single night. And by the way, like, thank God for media matters. The people that sit there and watch this garbage all day long have my unending gratitude because they were able to reveal what he says on a nightly basis, but also these, you know, disgusting things he said to a shock jock several years ago that are now getting all this attention. But yeah, like that's a huge problem. And then God knows what our parents are getting served in their Facebook feeds. Oh, God. You know, I mean, it's a constant process of, you know, We talk a lot about Russian interference in election and memes and 4chan, but like the stuff that was happening in 2007 that was email forwards about Barack Obama being a secret radical Muslim is supercharged today on Facebook. And we have no way of knowing it or preventing.

Yeah, when you spread hate against different groups and you call them dirty as Dr. Carlson did, which by the way, is another old propaganda method from the Germans back. in the day, where they would say the Jews are dirty, and so were, by the way, the Roma and Poles and all the other people that they targeted, and they're a virus, and we have to be cleansed. And by the way, these are scientists that were shown, and I did a story about this couple of weeks ago, that conservatives are most easily triggered by one emotion. It's actually not fear. Fear comes in a second.

Number one is disgust. So we're talking about invaders, viruses, needing to cleanse. keeping things pure, like our babies keep our civilization, our culture pure, triggers conservatives. And sometimes, as in the case of New Zealand, it triggers them to do horrific things. Well, then it's probably a horrible coincidence that a couple of months ago, Tucker Carlson lost a lot of his sponsors when he said that immigrants make our country poorer and dirtier. Yeah, and by the way, I'd just like to quickly answer Tucker's super easy question. And I guess every right winger that watches him is like, yeah, when's diversity ever worked?

No country's ever succeeded with diversity, except maybe this one. You guys are the one saying we're number one all the time, and we are in a lot of categories. And we have great diversity. We have wonderful diversity. We kind of pride ourselves on it. It's kind of in the Constitution. You should look it up. Yeah, also America.

What country does he think he's living in right now? A country that has been defined by multiple waves of immigration throughout its history. Yeah. And we've discriminated against all of them. You know, I from Boston was not very long ago. There were Nina signs on stores. No Irish need apply. Yeah. I'm Italian. We have to constantly fight these idiots and their nonsense. And it's our job. Yep. Let's turn to just a little bit more idiots and a little bit more nonsense. I'm going to go to graphics three and then eight and nine. I want to wrap this up just a little bit. There have been a lot of really horrible responses to the shooting in New Zealand. A lot of people just out and out. happy that had happened. I've seen that all over the internet. It's very common. Even on the gaming platform Steam, they had to take down like a hundred different accounts that had renamed themselves after the shooter, which is certainly bizarre. But we're supposed to be able to have

higher standards for elected politicians in this country and others. But unfortunately, their responses have been bizarre or outright offensive as well. Louis Gomer put out a statement earlier today. Maybe I'm misinterpreting it. Let's see what you guys think he's trying to communicate here when he says, the shootings at the New Zealand might. mosques are egregiously reprehensible, there are courts, dispute resolutions, and legislatures to resolve controversies, there is no place for cold-blooded murders. What? What controversy is he talking about?

He appears, in my view, to think there is some legitimate grievance that this guy was pursuing, and he chose the wrong way of pursuing it. Yeah, well, I don't see any other explanation. Should he have sued Muslims for being Muslim? What grievance is he talking about? And of course, the grievance is presumably based on what he's saying, and it is preposterous, that, well, they're Muslim, and we don't want Muslims. That's why he celebrated Donald Trump, who said he was going to do a total and complete shutdown of Muslims in this country.

Yeah. They're not hiding their bigotry. It's right there. I'm telling you, look, I get frustrated at the mainstream media a lot because they're afraid of offending their right-wing viewers and losing ratings. But the Republicans had 17 people to choose from. They chose Donald Trump. They chose Louis Gomer. They chose Steve King.

These are the guys that represent them. It's not an accident. That statement is jaw-dropping. But, I mean, Medi Hassan, who is a fantastic writer for The Intercept, wrote a great piece today about how Republicans have mainlined Islamophobia. And Trump gets the most attention, rightly so, because of the Muslim man. But it's Cruz. It's Marco Rubio.

talking about surveilling mosques, it's Huckabee. I mean, this is part of the way they reach their base. Anyone who is scared about a primary, Lindsey Graham, all these other folks, is willing to say anything about Muslims. But if a Muslim kills people, there's a terrorist attack, they call on every single Muslim to condemn them. So it's just, we are locked into this vicious cycle of stupidity. And I don't know how to pick the lock here. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and so one more thing that related to what Tommy said earlier in the program. So a lot of times the right wing justified targeting Muslims by saying, well, look, you guys are just being disingenuous, they're the ones doing all the violence. And so we gotta call it by its name. It's not that I don't like them because their particular ethnicity, it's that their religion is irredeemable and their ideology is irredeemable and it inextrably leads the violence, if they were to know any of those words. Okay, so-

Why are you talking about excrement? We're talking about religion. But now we have right-wing terrorist attacks over and over and over, massacre after massacre after massacre, and now in New Zealand. So we could do the same thing and say the right wings, I guess they're all terrorists. I mean, that's what you guys say. You say we gotta watch out for all the Muslims, we gotta ban all the Muslims, we gotta surveil all of their mosques.

Now if we turn around and said, we have to, what, ban all the right wing, we have to surveil all their churches, and we have to just make sure that we are, hey, listen, we're just doing something reasonable for safety, we've got to at least screen them, we got to screen them at the airports. I mean, you'd be crazy not to screen them at the airports, right? It's not like it's nice left-wing socialist Norwegians that are doing the violence, it's clearly the crazed right wing in this country and across the world. So we got to screen them.

Now, we don't say that because we're logical human beings, and as opposed to you guys. The extremists in every category, yes, that is the job of law enforcement to track them, but only the extremists. Can I just point out one thing? There's also considerable political cowardice when it comes to calling out right-wing extremists. So when I was at the White House in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security put out a report about right-wing extremism, including the likelihood that veterans could be radicalized or sought out to radicalize because they had combat experience.

And this got picked up in demagogue by the right wing, and we ended up having to walk back the report, which was a huge mistake, in my opinion, obviously with the benefit of hindsight. But, you know, it's like the politics of the moment say that you can say whatever you want about Muslims, but, you know, talking about right-wing radicalization is somehow out of bounds. And Hillary Clinton actually gave a pretty good speech on this during the campaign last cycle, but I don't know that had the impact that obviously we needed to. We need Republicans talking about this. Yeah, and I'm really glad you said that, because we have often criticized on the show

that the Obama administration walking that report back. That report was right, and it was actually commissioned under Bush. Yes. Okay, Obama didn't order the report, Bush ordered that report. And it was absolutely correct, and there were Republicans in the national security and intelligence branches that said, what are you guys doing? We gotta make sure we track these guys because they're extremists that could do violence. We cannot be cowed by the right wing.

We're not gonna make the same mistakes they do, right? You know what? Because some right wing extremists did it, then all the right wing is guilty, and they're all terrible people, and let's target all of them, and they're an invasion and an infestation and all that stuff, we're not gonna say that. On the other hand, if we're looking at extremist Muslims as we should be, an extremist anyone as we should be, we'd be crazy to leave out extremist right wingers who are doing a great majority of the violence.

By the way, not many years after that report was walked back, Trump came in and defunded the organizations that were already established to look into that sort of violence. Yep. I wanna just, I know that we're going long, but I just want to read one more politician's reaction because we've sort of become accustomed at this point that if a person who is a Muslim commits an act of terror, right wingers attack the entirety of Islam. It's not generally the case that when Muslims are killed in a terror attack, the politician attacks all of Islam, but today that is the case.

With a senator in Australia, this Frazier Anning, who put out a statement on full letterhead, totally available, proud to have this attributed to his name, said the entire religion of Islam is simply the violent ideology of a 6th century despot. It is the religious equivalent of fascism. And just because the followers of this savage belief were not the killers in this instance does not make them blameless. Just to be clear, he's saying that the 49 men, women, and children who were killed in this attack were not blameless for their own killing.

And goes on to say, as we read in Matthew, quote, all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword, and those who follow a violent religion that calls on them to murder us cannot be too surprised when someone takes them at their word and responds in kind. apparently missing the obvious then follow-up, well, if you believe that your violence again is justified because of their violence against you, does that not then justify their violence against you in the future? That causes the sorts of cyclical violence that has led to generational conflicts in the American South, Europe, and beyond.

Okay, so obviously we don't believe in that cyclical violence. But I've got to correct one thing, because unfortunately, no one ever talks about this for fear of fending Christians. And then it allows this ideology to take hold and leads to these disastrous results, which is that Islam is somehow uniquely violent. Its text is uniquely violent, and it leads to the ideology that Muslims, since they all believe in that text, are irredeemable. And that is obviously what the senator from Australia is going towards, but even in a less

sophisticated way. So read the text for yourselves. The Bible is filled to the rim with grotesque violence. So if you don't like that fact, take it out with God. But you can read it for yourself and you could say, oh, Jenk made me uncomfortable by telling me things that are true. And if you don't believe me, like I said, try to make it through the Old Testament, see if you can do it without vomiting.

And even Sam Harris, who is, I think a huge purveyor of the idea. that Muslims are uniquely irredeemable, admitted on the show that, yeah, the Old Testament is by far the most violent of the text. Does that make all Christians or Jews violent? Of course not. Of course not. Here's another uncomfortable fact that nobody talks about. No one actually believes any of the religions.

Christians don't believe the terribly violent things in the Bible, except for a few nuts, right? Muslims don't believe the violent things in the Quran. The Quran has some violent parts, and they know good Muslim folks. say, no, it's a religion of peace, no, like all the religions in their text has wonderful things about taking care of the poor and the needy and terrible things about violence. Also true in the Old Testament, also true in the New Testament. So luckily, the overwhelming majority of Muslims take the good parts of the Quran and leave out the violence, the overwhelming majority of Christians and Jews, take the good parts

of the Old Testament and the New Testament and leave aside the violence. But this idea that, oh my God, did you know there's violence in the Quran? Have you ever, ever read anything in the Bible? I defy you to go three pages in the Bible without running into something incredibly violent. So let's just be honest about all of the texts. And that's why I left religion. I grew up Muslim and I left it because I don't subscribe to that. It's just not true.

It's just not true. So if you don't believe me, go read it. And find me one person that follows every letter of any of those books. And if you do, let's make sure to lock them up. Because they are weird, insane, and prone to extreme violence. Senator Frazier-Aning wants to run it back with the Crusades. And I'm cool with that being in the history books. So he's a profoundly stupid person.

I hope they vote him out. I wish you could swear on the show because I'm feeling the right now. Yeah, that happens. Jencast has to restrain himself constantly. I just sort of super brief, just because you wrote the history books, this killer New Zealand's talking about an invasion, defending their land, Fraser Anning in Australia, wants to defend their land from immigrants. How long do they think that people that look like them have been in Australia, New Zealand,

exactly? Oh, right, right, yes. There were others who wanted to defend their land in Australia earlier. And now, of course, they are also demonized. How dare you be against immigrants? That's our job. Okay, last thing, guys. It's actually relatively easy to keep straight who you should be concerned about.

That's not based on the religions, it's based on the fundamentalists. The fundamentalists are the ones that say, oh yeah, it is literal. We must go murder the other side because that's what's in all of our texts. Those are the ones you gotta look out for. Okay, we gotta take a break, that's. Man, that was a long segment. Okay, we're gonna turn back to America and we're gonna discuss domestic politics. Really interesting conversation about Republican backers of Beto O'Rourke when he was first running.

I'm sure we'll have a variety of different opinions on that. So check that out. We'll be right now. All right, back on a young church, Jank, Tommy, and John with you guys today. Listen, I got to tell you about this fundraiser. Yesterday we had Terik El-Massidi on the program, and he's a Muslim American who's doing wonderful work, raising money for usually other religions. So when the synagogue in Pittsburgh was targeted, he raised nearly quarter of a million dollars

for them, started with Muslim Americans giving, and then it spread to other religions. face as well. When a Jewish cemetery was desecrated, they raised a lot of money for that as well. Well, because of the shooting in New Zealand, he is now doing a fundraiser for the Muslims who were killed in New Zealand. It's launchgood.com slash Christchurch, okay? Launchgood.com slash Christchurch. They've already raised $300,000 in less than 24 hours.

They're trying to get to a million and I believe they can and, you know, I'm agnostic, so I don't believe in God. But if he exists, Tarek does his work and all the people who are contributing to that of all the religions are doing God's work. So thank you guys for doing that and thank you to Tarek again for standing up for people who have been victimized. So I want to read a couple of your comments guys here real quick and then we've got a lot of other stories.

Ambrose writes in from the member section. It's worth mentioning the shooter was Australian. People from overseas are surprised, but we've got a widespread virulent racism in the political discourse here, and now my country is exporting right-wing terrorism. So Ambrose, thank you for watching from Australia and for being a member and for writing that in. But guys, also remember, look, there's right-wing extremism in all countries. And where do you think the Muslim extremists come from?

They're the right-wing in the Muslim world. They're not the ones seeking peace, and they're not on the left side of the spectrum. There ain't any right wing Muslim extremists who are trying to get universal health care coverage. Okay, so- Or increased labor rights. Right. No. And Brenticorn writes, is, sorry, jank, but I have to disagree, while not every right-winger is directly responsible for spreading violence, every current Republican is guilty of, at the very

least turning a blonde eye to bigotry so obvious than even my autistic mind can read it. Okay, Brenda Korn, I get it, but we do have to be careful about, again, not doing what they do and say it's all right-wingers. And remember, like most people never read the texts of their different religions, most people do not follow politics as closely as we do. So they don't necessarily know what Gohmert stands for or what Trump's, Trump's a little bit more obvious, let's keep it real, right? But, you know, the senator from Arizona, they don't, they just don't know. So just careful in how broad you blame folks. Adelencia says, when you treat women the way that the right wing wants to, don't be surprised when your birth rate goes down.

Pick a priority, conservatives. So that's at least funny. I appreciate that. And last ones from Twitter, use hashtag TYT live during the show to talk to us. Asha 86 says, I'm so hyped to see Tommy from Pod Save America on TYTL live, get hyped. Okay, all right, we're apparently hyped. All right.

Hi, hyped is hell right now. Okay, great. Okay, what's next, John? Super fast, a reference to that. Considering the threat of climate change, how significant it is and how much we need to do to deal with it, maybe a lowering birth rate, not the worst thing in the world,

actually. Anyway, that's just my two cents. Let's move on to some domestic politics. Yeah, I was just going to say, I got two kids, so I live in a glass house. Too late for me to tell you to lower the birth rate. Well, the in-cells are really leading on this, so we can thank them. That's right.

Maybe it's because they care so much about climate change. We had not considered that. I don't think that's it. No, you don't think so. No, okay, let's turn to other matters. In the past week or so, Donald Trump has had three votes not go quite his way. Apparently, this is symbolic of how things have changed since the midterm elections. Not only are there more Democrats to vote against him in Congress, but some Republicans

apparently starting to seem like maybe sticking with him, not that. the best thing in terms of your long-term future in elected politics. I want to go through all three. The first and most important is the one that, at least as of right now, he actually has the ability to do something to strike back against this vote. And that was when they passed in the Senate, as well as in the House, overriding his declaration of a national emergency. Now, to be fair, in this case, he has the ability to veto that, which he did, and

here is him doing that. As president, the protection of the nation is my highest duty. Yesterday, Congress passed a dangerous resolution that have signed into law would put countless Americans in danger, very grave danger. The Democrat-sponsored resolution would terminate vital border security operations by revoking the national emergency issued last month. It is definitely a national emergency. Rarely have we had such a national emergency. Therefore, to defend the safety and security of all Americans, I will be signing and issuing a formal veto of this reckless resolution, and that's what it was. He writes like an earthquake that has Alzheimer's.

Well, kind of, I mean, it's not that bad an analogy overall for Trump. So you know it must be a real national security threat because there's two guys in Cowboy House behind them. Big ones. Damn. Yeah, but as he said, rarely have you had one this bad. So we have to revise the list of top emergencies. Actually, Pearl Harbor now drops out of the top five because we gotta fit this one up

at number one. 9-11, somewhere in there, so. Yeah. Remember a couple weeks ago when the Democrats in disarray stories were just flowing because a couple of members of Congress voted against Pelosi on some procedural grounds that are sort of since been fixed, these are three massive rebukes, especially the national emergency when immigration is his singular issue. Yeah.

Yeah. Are they in disarray? And he takes things so personally. Yeah, yeah. Actually, just to half give them credit and half have Donald Trump hurt their chances of winning reelection, let's name the Republicans who voted against him. Let's bring this up, you're gonna see Alexander Blunt, I'm probably not gonna read all of them, but Collins, Rikowski's there.

No, no, you know what, John, let me jump in for a second. Yeah, because I just stay on this for a second. This is the strangest collection of Republicans I've ever seen vote together against their party. Because there's establishment guys like Portman Romney, there's libertarians like Lee and Paul. There's so-called moderates like Collins and Murkowski. And then there's like real conservatives like Wicker in there. And so, and blunt, what is this group? I don't know.

You get your spineless jellyfish with the Rubio Romney. Yeah. Rubio Romney, like, hey, you know, they're both establishment, they might run against Trump or if Trump's not around, et cetera, but it is a motley crew, which goes to Tommy's point of at least we used to be able to track the dissent in the Republican Party, hey, there's Lee and Rand Paul on the libertarian side, they're cute, right? But they, you know, they don't cause much harm, et cetera. That was a mess.

Yeah. And look, I don't give much credence to disarray, honestly, on either side. because why, like what does it lead to, right? And so the Republicans have been fighting amongst themselves for decades now, and they've only picked up seats. Until the last election, they picked up a thousand seats across the country. So I don't think that hurts them, and I don't think the disagreement on the Democratic side hurts them.

But the only way that it would have tangible results is one if you lose votes, and so now you might lose votes from almost any quarter in the Republican Party, and that's got to be a concern for Mitch McConnell. And secondly, if there is a trial of Donald Trump in the Senate, that's a lot of different kinds of Republicans that are now willing to defy him. And that ought to be concerning for Trump. Yeah, I mean, I don't mind the disarrated votes either. It's like it's so much ado about nothing, but it's a mainstream media favorite Democrats

in disarray is like a play in the hits. But it's also interesting that Tom Tillis, who's going to have a tough election, North Carolina, Lindsey Graham did a lot of concern trolling about this. Ben Sasse, everybody's favorite sanctimonious tweeter, thought he was going to oppose it, and then he voted with Trump. And then Ted Cruz, who's supposed to be this stalwart for liberty in the Constitution, went for this blatant power grab, like literally ripping power away from the Congress that is most clearly the delineated power they have in the Constitution.

So, bravo, boys, way to stand up. So I love that story because Ted Cruz throws a hell Mary pass. last day, asked Lindsey Graham, who is now in a rom-com with Trump, hey, can you call up your buddy and let's do a last pitch to try to get him to not do this, right? So Ted Gruse makes his pitch, Trump calls in some sort of lawyer, and lawyer says, that would take away some power from you, Mr. President. And he's like, oh, hell no, why am I, why did I interrupt my lunch, right? And Lindsey Graham, being who he is, says, hell, if he's a lot.

If I was him, I would have told us to go to hell. Then why did you make the call? You're so sad, you're so, so sad. So this, all this show of defiance and when told to heal, Lizzie Graham and Ted Cruz are the first to heal. Yeah. Yeah, and just briefly before we move on to the two other votes, I just want to go back to, you probably saw it yesterday, but when the vote went through, Donald Trump responded

with a tweet that simply said, Vito! And I only want to read that because I imagine that he pressed send, he sits back triumphantly, and then has to be told that that doesn't actually veto the bill. It takes more than that. Anyway. Oh, man, that's right. That's true. Yeah, I'm gonna make one more.

My points are not as good as Johns, but I'm gonna make one more anyway. So, acting defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joseph Dunford, Jr., both said, said that what is happening at the border is, quote, not a military threat. So they are now beginning to withdraw some of the troops from the border. So take this most important national emergency with the appropriate amount of grain of salt there. So this week we also have the Senate finally taking its war powers seriously with another vote successfully passing in the Senate. We'd previously had that in December to stop U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led coalition

war on Yemen. Actually, seven Republican senators voted in favor of that resolution joining, obviously, the vast majority of Democrats. So that's pretty exciting, too, that seven senators on the Republican side took seriously that there was no reason that we're ruining our credibility, spending a ton of money, and massacring civilians in Yemen. And so thanks to, this is actually bipartisan, but Bernie Sanders and Mike Lee on the Senate side, a lot of great members of the House as well, especially Rokana, who over the last year has come on my show like five times to talk about Yemen, and he has been pushing and pushing and pushing for this. And thank God the Democrats took over the House, because otherwise we would have the same result as we did in

December. It would successfully pass the Senate. They would never even vote in the House, and we would continue to be a part of that conflict. Yeah, shout out Bernie, Chris Murphy, Rokana, like, absolutely leading on this, doing incredible work. Mike Pompeo goes out today and says that if we cut off military support to the Saudis, what we're actually doing is hurting the civilians of getting them killed because Yemen will become a Iranian puppet, which is just

the most warped window. It's the way these guys view every foreign policy challenge in the region. Everything is through this crazy prism of Iran. It is divorced from reality and is idiotic. The war in Yemen started in 2015 during the Barack Obama administration. They were providing

logistics, intelligence to the GCC Coalition, and refueling. fueling support. It was a mistake then. They walked some of it back. This should have been stopped years ago because you have a famine that is catastrophic. You could see 20 million people starve to death. Children stunted for a generation, an entire country blown to smithereens.

There is literally known as for this, except for John Bolton and Mike Pompeo and Donald Trump, because he probably doesn't even know what's going on. Yeah. And Pompeo's remarks reminding me of Vietnam. We had to destroy the village in order to save it. Yes. No, I think you just destroyed it. I think that's kind of what's certainly happening in Yemen.

And already tens of thousands of children have starved to death. So every once in a while when there's a terrible attack, usually a chemical attack, people justifiably make a big deal out of it on television. They show you the dead kids. I think that's important because you should know what's happening in the world. That's our job in news to give you the facts, even if they're uncomfortable. But we don't show the starving children, and there are tens and thousands of starving children every day in Yemen.

And so one last political note on this for me is about the Republicans who broke ranks. So again, there's the Murkowski's and the Collins that are more moderate, not surprising. Again, there's the libertarians like Rand Paul, breaking and Mike Lee, not that surprising. But Steve Danes of Montana is on the list, he's got a reelection coming up. So the fact that they're a little worried in Montana for the Republican Party is a good thing. And then Jerry Moran of Kansas, he voted against Trump twice this week. So, huh, I wonder if Chris Kobach losing in Kansas sent to chill down Republican's spines there. So that's Democratic voters showing up to vote in these different areas has a bigger effect

than you even realize. Really good point. The third vote, by the way, of course, was yesterday's 400,000. 120 to zero vote in the House, unanimous to make sure that, symbolic, but to make sure that the Mueller report eventually ends up being public. Squeaker. Exactly, squeaker. They of course are not even going to consider it in the Senate because the Republicans still

control the Senate. But that is fairly amazing that it was unanimous. And I know that Donald Trump and some of his supporters in the White House, they don't want to see that ever come out. He tweeted to that effect today, saying that there shouldn't even be a final report, which is definitely what you would say if you were totally innocent. But now, the idea that you would block that, that you would not find out the results of this investigation, is so radical an idea that you can't find a single Republican in

the House who supports it. But there was one in the Senate who did manage to block it, his little buddy, Lindsey Graham to the rescue again. Even Matt Geitz, I think, just abstained. Like the human frat paddle from Florida. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, if Matt Gates ain't on your side and you're Trump, you might be a little wrong. Historically stupid individual.

Yes. All right, guys, we're going to take another break. We've got a lot more politics coming up, including the question of where do Beddow's loyalties lie? I mean, that's a little much, but that's okay. We'll talk about it. We're talking about it. We're talking about it. We hope you're enjoying this free clip from the Young Turks.

If you want to get the whole show and more exclusive content while supporting independent media, become a member at t.com slash join today. In the meantime, enjoy this free time. Second. All right, back on the Young Turks. There are rallies. These happen to be Bernies. We're gonna cover them on Facebook.com slash RebelHQ.

This one is on Saturday. It's 5.30 p.m. Eastern. We are trying to get the other candidates to participate as well. But so far, Bernie's Camp, pretty enthusiastic to get the message out. So everybody, check it out at Facebook.com slash RebelHQ. That's Saturday at 530 and then the shop is apparently having a sale. I'm always opposed to these. I live like a capitalist every day.

But 20% off new arrivals and this is a panic sale because it ends on Monday. So very, very limited time, only 20% off at shopty.com. And you are allowed to wear the shirts without the scowl, so that is allowed. But lately progresses versus everybody is on fire. And there's also a Bernie one Kenobi on there, so check it out. Okay, all right, John, what's next? Okay, some good news, actually. An estimated 1 million young people across the globe struck today walking out of their schools

to protest lack of global, and in many cases, any action at all at the national level, to deal with the threat of climate change. Let's put up this graphic so that you can see the sheer number of events. You can see a little bit of the outline of the countries there. So individual countries having from a dozen or more to literally hundreds of marches, coordinated in over a thousand cities around the world. And what's so amazing is that this is a student-led thing. Originally, one student led this effort. One student, a Swedish girl, protested outside of her parliament, and she wanted accountability for the lack of Swedish action on dealing with climate change. And that started to spread to other countries.

That is Greta Thunberg. She started this and now they're activists, young activists, all around the world, taking this threat seriously, which gives me a ton of hope because we've seen in a very limited amount of time what groups like the Sunrise movement have been able to do here in the U.S. The idea that things like that can be taking place around the world gives me a lot of hope considering how little action we've had over the past few decades in dealing with climate change here in the U.S. There's a bunch of quotes that I love in here.

One of Thunberg's quote is, I don't want you to be hopeful, and you're like, whoa, really, fascinating, that's an interesting start. She says, I don't want your hope, I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day, and then I want you to act. So part of why the kids are doing this is they're like, look, for the older people that are in power right now, easy for you not to act. But not only is this going to be irreversible in 12 years, which affects all of us, but it gets worse from there on out. And it gets worse every single year. And the point where it gets to be 2 to 4 degrees Celsius higher than it is today, which is catastrophic for the Earth, could be in their lifetimes.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's so great to see this. It feels like it's building off the March for Our Lives and what the Parkland kids did. But it's also, like, if you really step back and think about it, I mean, this kind of direct action, this old school organizing, marching, taking to the streets, is what we saw in the civil rights movement. And, like, we need this kind of activity to keep and sustain people's attention.

And frankly, like, this is one of the things I love about the Green New Deal, because we host a political podcast twice a week, and there would be months where we wouldn't talk about climate change, because the conversation would be it's melting, it's awful, we're terrified. And when you have the Green New Deal or you have kids doing this, it's something hopefully and exciting, that gives people a way forward where they can get involved and do something in their own lives to make some change. So, like, God bless these kids. These are the kids who are expressing their frustration at Diane Feinstein, right?

Like, that's why that reaction was met with the criticism it was. So I hope they keep it up. Yeah, I mean, that protest was huge. I mean, SNL felt that they should parody it. The protest outside of Nancy Pelosi's office has, I think, set the stage for a lot of what's happened in Congress since then. I wanted to read one more quote from Greta, because she does have a lot of good ones. So this is something that she had addressed to their parliament saying,

you are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children. Damn! That's like a line that like Aria Stark would say. I know, she's making a list. Yeah, she's really good. And by the way, this is the biggest and this is the most recent effort by generally kids or at least young people to deal with this. But there have been climate lawsuits for years now with kids saying, how dare you mortgage my future by an action now?

And it does really seem like, is there any chance that we will not be despised by future generations for caring so little about what happens to them in their world in our time? And yet we act like it's totally fine. Maybe we'll get around to it. But they are stressing not just that action needs to be taken, but that it needs to be urgent. That is why I've been repeating, like Aria Stark every night, the list of people she must kill, climate delayers are the new climate deniers, which AOC said recently, which is that is what is so frustrating about people is we have fought to get them to acknowledge climate science, and we've begrudgingly gotten a majority of the country to do that. But so many people take no step further than that.

They say, oh, I guess it's happening. It seems like a big problem. I don't know we can really do anything about it. Maybe we'll get around to it at some point. Maybe someone will come up with some magical technology. They'll suck all the carbon out of the air, it'll be totally cool. I won't have to change my behavior or advocate for anything on a structural government level at all.

And that's not the case. Yeah, Greta Thunberg, by the way, from Sweden, so the North remembers. And I'm gonna give you one more. Bear Island, actually. I'm gonna give you one more quote from a US organizer, Coleman, saying, I'm not gonna leave my future in the hands of people who aren't doing anything. And so, look, my other point here is similar to what John is saying, I think that, I think that climate change deniers are part of the biggest conspiracy theory in the world right

now. And it's not being treated as such, and it needs to be, right? So the theory is that 99% of the world scientists got together from India, China, Russia, US, Brazil, all over the world, and decided that they were going to fix the global temperature readings. They were just going to make it up, and they were all going to fix it, and they were all going to use the same numbers, and that the planet is not warming, and they were all going to lie on top that it was because of man-made situation.

I mean, think about- It was complicated. Yeah, that's an insane, insane conspiracy theory that not only the President of the United States believes, but the overwhelming majority of a major political party in this country believes. So, and again, part of the problem, I keep coming back to it, but it's true, the mainstream media loves to call everything even. Well, now, in this case, they say, well, look, climate change, 99% of the world scientists, they do an okay job at that, but then they'll have a debate. And the debate will be one person versus another person, so then it makes it look 50-50,

and they won't call it what it is. It's a conspiracy theory. To say that 99% of the world scientists got together and made this up is insanity, it's lunacy. So anytime a politician comes on and says that, they should be challenged. The anchor should ask every time, do you really believe that all those scientists made this up? Because that is borderline.

Again, I don't think it's borderline. I think it's insane. Yeah. Great. Let's try to take another break. Okay. Finally, the better O'Rourke story. So, and he came out with a very interesting statement that is going to relate to this.

So Wall Street Journal has a story about his Republicans helping him in the past. and now he has come out against the progressive policy position. So don't go anywhere. We're going to have that conversation when we return. Thanks for listening to the full episode of the Young Turks. Support our work, listen ad-free, access members-only bonus content, and more by subscribing to Apple Podcasts at apple.com slash t-y-t. I'm your host, Shank Huger, and I'll see you soon.