Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 193: Brain Virgins

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

Tanya watches the Q documentary, then the gang takes a trip back to Austin, Texas for some unfinished business Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

I found a new religion I think I'm into. It changes every week, obviously. Yeah. I love it. Is it a cult? I'm waiting for you to join a cult. I'm pretty excited for that to come. Did you go with Baha'i?

What is Baha'i? That sounds familiar. I don't know. I've been trying to figure out what they've been about for years. I don't know. What is Baha'i? That sounds familiar. I don't know. I've been trying to figure out what they've been about for years.

I don't know. I usually see them in towns that have a lot of people that probably shop at co-ops and stuff. I think I've seen one in Atlanta. A Baha'i church. Huh. I'll have to do my research. Stick that in the pen for next week. Yeah, okay.

Who are you this week? This week it's the Abyssidarians. Have you ever heard of them? The Abyssidarians. I like that word. They were... Sounds like I qualify, though. They were a 16th century

German sect of Anabaptists who rejected all human learning. They affected an absolute disdain for all human knowledge, contending that God would enlighten his elect from within themselves, giving them knowledge of necessary truths by visions and ecstasies. Terrence! They also claim... Have you uncovered the origins of the dumb bitch caucus? Here it is.

The founding constitutional document. Do go on. They claim that to be saved, one must even be ignorant of the first letters of the alphabet. Whence their name, ABC Darians. Oh, I thought it was Obesa Darians. A-B-C-O-B-E-S-A. That renders my joke not, it wasn't good to begin with, but now it's even less good.

Now your joke is null and void yeah yeah wait so hold up so like so these people believe that that any human knowledge that like we just kind of like develop is like is like not like what is it not godly enough or it's not true knowledge and therefore only knowledge like you know ordained by God like is that what it is are they just like reveling in dumbassery I'm confused I love to hear it you love to hear it reveling in dumbassery

that's so fucking so they're Jehovah's Witnesses basically they um they regarded learned men they regarded learned men who didn't who did any preaching as falsifiers of god's word so they thought of it as a form of idolatry okay i mean i most culty things i can see how people could get swept up in i think I could probably easily get swept up into a court because I'm like, yeah, okay, I got it, I get it. And this is too, I'm like, yeah, I mean,

think about how you would explain this in current day terms. It's like, we had our last mansplain, honey, and we just, we will not, they declared mansplaining satanic tanya i want you to stop watching that q documentary immediately if you can oh man you're just over here saying oh i could i could say i could easily get swept up in a car yo that documentary is uh i'm not gonna lie man there were some parts where i was watching it with my girlfriend and we both looked at each other like, man, they're like

almost halfway there. And then they just like completely do a 180 with some batshit insane stuff, man. Dude, it has sizzled. I watched the first three episodes last night at like midnight. Bad idea. It sizzled. My last brain cell. My mom started watching it with me. She said, I'm going to bed. I don't get this.

I was like, me neither. And I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop watching it another convert to be sedarianism well literally before episode three when he got more like you know i'm only episode three but i had this is a long story and i just don't think i should tell it right now dude should we get into it well what is it i can't know if i don't think I should tell it right now. Should we get into it? Well, what is it? I can't know if I don't know the story. You have to tell the story for us to deem it valid. You also can't say that without telling the story. Like, you already started. I'm intrigued.

Let's go. Out with it. The thing is, one, let me let Sassy in. She's fucking scratching at the door. Get on my nerves. Hold on a second. All right. Let me fill in some extra.

all right i'll let me fill in some extra so abecedarianism was also pushed by the zwickow prophets there are three men of the radical reformation who um one of them used the name marx actually uh giving credence to the idea that perhaps marx is a reoccurcurring spirit entity across time and space. Yeah. Like it's not a person, but just like a radical entity that possesses people's bodies. In the beginning, the earth was without form and void, and the spirit of Marx floated on the surface. Genesis 1, 2, whatever.

They rejected. I've never known that this is the actual word they rejected pedo baptism which is just infant baptism i've never heard of it they're like i don't know why but that prefix in the future is gonna be fucked up man so we have to reject this. Wow. Ahead of their time. Yeah, they got out ahead of that. That is a good way. So that's a Catholic thing, right? Yeah, that's actually a good way to tarnish, well, not the Catholics' care, because they are actual pedophiles, too. But yeah, if you wanted to say that it's bad be like oh you you believe in pedo baptism

i guess yeah to which your catholic response would respond well yeah but definitely i do the least of our worries sounds like you just get baptized into a pedo church is what it sounds like exactly oh god you become a member and they just sprinkle you. Uh-huh. Well, anyways, the Zwickau prophets. So what was your story going to be, Tanya? Well, this is another area where I cautiously wade into admitting how completely fucking dumb I am. into admitting how completely fucking dumb I am. So this was a good intro talking about

the origins of my now religion or now religion, Terrence. I'm joining your church of dumbassery. It asks nothing of you. And in fact, it asks that you be nothing. It asks you to be nothing. Literally, to be an empty void.

I'm already there, bro. If you want to go to heaven heaven you have to be a shell actually i'm so close i qualify oh yeah i mean i'm sure that tom and terrence remember me asking questions that revealed how ignorant i am i was about the q anon shit and because i remembered the first i heard them talk about true anon before i'd heard the words q anon and then someone was like telling me the like about pizza gate like in person a friend was telling me about pizza gate this is maybe like a fucking year ago like not that long it's funny because that word seems like a relic at this point i know and i just heard it like a year ago and i was like whoa that's

fucking crazy and they were like you're queuing on and i in my head was like but tom and terrence like that they what they listen to that you guys because you remember me asking you this i was like listen i need i need to ask you something right so you you thought you thought me and terrence were members of a of a pedo cabal yeah against it against i thought you all were q and r right a year ago. It's the defense of Trudeau. Because we lose, yes, yes, okay. Yeah, because I thought the two were the same. And Terrence, do you remember me asking you about this? I do, yes. It's like, Tanya just sits there and is like,

hey, I need to talk to you about something. I know, I literally was like, hey, I think I have some wires crossed and I need to ask you some questions. Implications of whether we can continue doing this show together. I have to ask you something about Haitian babies. You guys, I'm not well. I'm just not. The times, they are not good so anywho now reflecting back on how how terrence cleared that up quickly obviously and i was like

oh yeah right and there have been like tidbits you know like the epstein stuff where more things came to light and i was like oh my god what the fuck blah blah blah i was getting into the epstein shit for a minute you remember right but i i just found out last night from the q doc that q's just a purse was just a person posting on here's what i don't understand we have spent our half our lives now trying to get people to care about mass incarceration climate change literally putting all the info out in the world we can titties ass everything we can think to draw in the audience. Did I miss titties against mass incarceration? Titties against mass incarceration.

That's my whole Patreon. I mean, I'm just saying like, you know what I'm saying? I see what you're saying. And you're telling me that one guy one dildo one keyboard warrior is putting out like literal cereal box level uh like carmen san diego style fucking uh code on the shittiest website i have ever seen anonymously to just out into the void words you know collections of words that mean nothing and somehow millions of people are like I mean super into it

like drawn in like moths to a flame to decode to decode this carbon San Diego fucking bit script whatever this fucking is you think it's one person

though or you think because I was thinking who cares yeah it doesn't matter but if it's like it's fucking true it doesn't matter anyway because even if it's a small group of people they're putting out like this this i mean just insane information making all these links like with the pen you know like taking the picture of this pen and that's apparently the pen that trump uses to sign documents and shit like that. And all these seemingly unrelated things. And it's just like, yo, how are you drawing a map of this, you know what I mean? Based on random shit.

It's so insane. That could be the appeal. There's nothing to decode about titties or asses. They're just titties and asses. It's not complicated enough. It's not complicated enough. Climate change is not complicated enough climate change is not complicated enough well i mean here's the thing though people been believing kooky shit since

time immemorial i mean when i was a kid everybody my aunt to this day and i love my aunt brenda she's a wonderful woman but my aunt brenda to this day will not buy Procter and Gamble products, not because of any sort of like imperative to like, you know, vote with your dollars type thing. But because it was believed in the 90s that they donated money to the Church of Satan because they were a sponsor of Days of Our Lives. And they had an arc where one of the characters, Marlena, got possessed by the devil. Right. And they had that moon and sun logo. Yeah, I mean, it was probably even before the 90s. I think that probably existed

even before that, but that was like, that kind of, like, confirmed everybody's suspicions that they were donating money to the Church of Satan. I just don't know you all. It seems like the whole Q&A thing is just like, kind of like, launching off of, like, just something that set in motion with the moral panic of like the 80s and the 90s of people thinking that like you know there was like the satanic church that was like

you know can uh eating children and you know shit like that and i mean essentially like with the q now folks believe in except they're Democrats. And they're not entirely not wrong. I mean, it's not just the Democrats. It's like all of the ruling class. There's some shade, man. I think there's, now that you say that, Tanya, it kind of makes me wonder that part of the appeal is this sort of idea that you are also involved

in uncovering the cabal? Like, there is a sort of grassroots... Oh, everybody wants to be a little fucking P.I.? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And also... Yeah. It's fun to solve a mystery together. Yeah, you're solving a mystery together.

It's like one of those... Choose your own adventure with your friends, yeah. That's exactly right. It's like one of those mystery parties or whatever, with your friends. That's exactly right. It's like one of those mystery parties or whatever where you get like 12 of your friends and you drink, you know, a couple beers. I mean, but like that's kind of the fun of it.

Those classic mystery parties like we had in high school. Just get together a couple of your friends and a ball of boons for them and crack one open. By that I mean a case. We've had a murder mystery birthday dinner ourselves haven't we Terrence? That's right.

That's what I'm talking about. That could be the fun of it. The year I famously remembered your birthday wrong and had the wrong number of candles. Ty, I'm going to be 100% honest with you. You're not real good at birthdays it's not that i don't appreciate the effort it's just i don't appreciate

cleaning up glitter four years later and i'm sure terrence doesn't appreciate being 37 well to be honest i don't hold grudges against anybody so i've totally forgotten already i've never held a grudge in my life not me okay i'm i'm sorry to god if you go before me i'm glitter in your fucking grave i wish you would i'll take a glitter ball right now no it doesn't do nothing to you you'd appreciate it i love glitter that is an interesting that's an interesting kind of dichotomy though tanya that's that you bring up it's it's why is this so much more compelling and um resonant actual problems resonant with people then yeah then the then the actual problems i mean like because this that are just like in their face

i mean even then have you all watched the doc i've not watched it yet no any of it and maybe this has all come out on true and on podcast hell i don't know i never did listen to it that's the problem here lies the problem empty this is empty abcdarius yeah that's right april 8th 2021 and we're still talking about q and i in fact we're still talking about pizzagate technically yeah um i don't know i this was how different my brains were working last night i mean one i was like there's just no way y'all are telling me a million people have been sucked into this little this weirdo there's nothing and it's a church t Tonya, okay? You have to be ecumenical if nothing else.

Anyway. Anyway, by halfway through the second episode, my brain was so sizzled, I was like, you know, Code Monkey could get it. Wait, you mean the Code Monkey? Code Monkey? The Shaman? Are you talking about

the Shaman? The Q Shaman? Nahaman are you talking about the shaman the q shaman nah nah she's talking about the code monkey oh boy who owns 8chan he owns 8chan is he sexy no no one in that film documentary is attractive

at all whatsoever like I'm not hated but they just like and then he tries to get them to go to a soap thing in japan that's like oh god you all anyway let's bring this back and put a bow on it because i know nobody wants to talk about anymore even though i'm just catching up as usual but it was you know 8chan is covered with like awful nasty shit it was you know it's just i don't even know i've never been on 8chan but i know 4chan and it's just worse than that right just like that but it just gets worse and more right-wing. 32 chance. 32.

And they started asking all of these, like, big Q-tuber people in this talk, all the people who have all these, you know, millions of watchers on YouTube where they're just talking about Q fucking codes, code drops or whatever. And they're like, have you ever been on 8chan and all of them are like no i don't go on there none of them have ever been on 8chan yeah they actually just see these from other websites where they post queue stuff right like it's all like fifth fifth hand by that point and the guy's like well he asked this woman who has this huge following and he's like well do you know that they have like um child porn yeah there's like child porn and she's like no there's not yeah he's like no yeah there is and she's like i've that it makes me wonder if it's got to be like several different intersecting phenomena right

it's like our powerlessness as political subjects like our inability to actually influence the political process and then the awareness that something is vaguely wrong, that there are powerful people out there doing bad things. And then, again, that gets sublimated back into our own powerlessness in the face of corporate control, climate change, etc. And then that, it's like a series of sort of dialectical processes. And I guess it's also partially fueled by the fact that politics is now entertainment, but it can't be grassroots anymore. There's no membership in parties or anything like that. And so it allows them a sort of ability to participate in it with their friends.

It's probably kind of fun in the sense that it's kind of fun to be freaked out and scared when you read about mysterious stuff like Epstein or whatever. Or unsolved mysteries in general. I mean, that is a huge genre. True crime, unsolved mysteries and stuff. And the reason why is it's a mystery. And there's something about mysteries that are very compelling to people. But then add in the extra added ingredient ingredient of like either nonexistent or sublimated class consciousness. That's really, I think, the big thing there.

Everybody knows that they're powerless and unable to change anything, but their ability to pinpoint on the map where they're powerless isn't necessarily their position in the class structure as, like, working class or whatever. It's just kind of this vague, you know, sea of there's elite, powerful people, and then there's the rest of the people. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. There's not, like, a sophisticated, like like blueprint of the class structure of american society it's just like us and them but i don't

know i mean like i don't even because there's a lot of there's there's probably a lot of uh different people in the q anon orbit there's i mean you know there's probably rich people there's probably poor people it's probably working class professional class people it is big tent i will say you can say hey say what you want about uh q and non it's big tent well but now that we're in episode three i feel like they're foreshadowing that it's going to come out that q has been like a troll the whole time well he's been that what's going to happen he's been like silent for a long time, right? I think he went silent over a year ago. After the election? The storm's coming

though. Yeah. Right. Don't forget that. But it's like... I think... They thought it did. For a brief moment, they had the Marxist idea that that the process of history would actually instantiate them into a position of power.

They literally did, for a brief moment, have the kind of Marxist understanding of the dialectical unfolding of history. Like, this cannot end any other way but with us being in power, right? You know, I was thinking about when you were uh they bring this up in the documentary the history of it but like fortune comes from like these japanese like image boards that were popular like in the 80s and this is like during when japan was like i mean already had been industrialized for like decades but i mean you know, with finance capital and like consumer technology and being like the hub, like the global hub of that, like you had a lot of like downwardly mobile, like young men, you know, who were also like kind of, I guess, conservative because they were against the free speech. What they saw as free speech crackdowns. Right.

In Japan. the free speech what they saw as free speech crackdowns right in japan and i think these were all kind of ways to prevent anything from like you know like imperial japan and a like fascist sort of empire from like rearing its head again but they were these young men were like incredibly like outraged at all these like restrictions on free speech so they went to these like anonymous message image message boards and that's kind of where 4chan 4chan came out of an 8chan and shit you know like all these like i mean frankly like incels you know what i mean people also too who were alienated and who like economically socially you know didn't have any friends or any prospects for love so like you know they just dive into this fucking culture man

it's like we're game girl uh it was a gamer gate too right that's yeah yeah i learned about that too my favorite part of this whole shit this is the best part i literally had to pause the doc and just sit there like it was revealed to me that there's a whole place on the internet called wizard something where only virgins are allowed what oh yeah where it's like all these dudes all these like virgin dudes just talk about how much they hate women oh yeah and the guy who was over it the guy who was over it he got laid and he had to leave they ran him out bye i love you mom will you close this door hey hey tom wants to say hi what's up shayla bye she's going to get her hair done god she's fine as hell she got cat called in the grocery store yesterday she's wearing a short skirt well let me tell you it was me she said some creepy guy said you are gorgeous and she was like still

oh god but yeah the thought that this guy was like living his best life as a virgin over he was like lording over all he was the wizard lording over all the other virgins and then he got laid and had to like come out with it and tell everybody oh sorry dudes i got laid and they just ran him out of dodge how imagine being nervous to go into all your friends and be like uh i don't know how to say this but uh i know how to put on it was put on me i got kicked off but i know exactly how that feels actually having been in the church getting getting pussy and then having to not be happy about it. Think about what that does to the psyche. And being ostracized. Think about what that does to the psyche.

Yeah, the guilt. Feeling guilt. Well, I think it, honestly, we don't have to get into the sex ed of it, but the mix of guilt and pleasure for the rest of your life is very bad. Turns out really bad. Look how I turned out.

For young, impressionable children. Think of Marvin Gaye. Marvin Gaye's last elbow to the world was sexual healing. He had to marry the sacred and the profane because he's all fucked up about it. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And I mean, to make matters worse, then his own father literally killed him. Well, then there's that.

I didn't know that. Well, you can be a part of our cult you can be mentally a virgin you can be virgin having no ideas having penetrated your brain you can be untapped

pure as the driven snow oh god yeah I don't know if I should finish the doc y'all think i'm for sure yeah i think it's sizzling my brain maybe should but maybe sit out a few few days you know yeah you can't you got to take it in like doses like like yeah i watched like this morning i sat down i was like i should just keep watching it and i was like no don't do it. And I watched a movie instead. Oh, man. It will damage your brain. I mean, it's a great anthropological sort of, like, survey, you know what I mean, from modern times. Like, with all those elements Terrence was talking about.

But it is fucking crazy, man. I start watching it and I'm like, man, I wish there was a way to bring these people back from the brink. Because conspiracy theorists seem to be, I mean, maybe easier to convert to some leftism or materialism. Because there is a grand conspiracy. It's just not what you think it is. You know what I mean? Right. I don't know.

Are we back to winning hearts and minds? I thought we gave up on that. I'm going to be one million percent honest with y'all. I don't even know what the hell to do anymore i don't even have an idea well that's what i was about to ask like i know y'all are joking like well here we are in april 2021 we're still talking about q anon but like they did storm the capital two months ago and what's the ending here you know like what's the culmination is this just gonna fizzle out like what did the birdie people do like went online and shit posted it got bad and probably voted for biden anyway these motherfuckers stored the capital man

we got our priorities mixed up so what aaron's trying to say. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got empty brains and now we got a book. Do they have a holy scripture, Terrence? Let's start a book club. Let's do this all at coffee. I think they just use the Bible. Makes the wisdom of the world folly. So maybe they're on to something.

Well, I mean, we may be out of ideas on what to do but there are people that do have ideas i i wanted to talk about something we briefly touched on with last week's episode so if you'll recall last week we had an episode about the gentrifiers in east austin trying to stamp out the um the toxic masculinity in their community by that i mean people with low riders um wood grain bulls yeah people experiencing joy. Yes. If you'll recall in that article, I mentioned one of the recent battles in that community, in that neighborhood, was this party supply store called Yumpoline,

which was bulldozed. It's a piñata store piñata store with all the shit still inside of it um the owners didn't know it they were not given notice um and uh it was bulldozed so i did not know this but i received a few messages after we recorded, um, from people who live in Austin or around there who said, who told me like the story gets even crazier. Um,

and so they sit, yeah. Pinata truth. That's, um, yeah. So they sent me a story. This is, um,xas monthly um this is called the

battle of the blue cat cafe how an anti-gentrification boycott became a proxy war between the radical left and the alt-right um it's the blue cat cafe the cat cafe that's the cat cafe yes so yes if you'll recall from that episode and before we get into this i want to say there's people that have done there's i think the podcast seeking seeking derangements did an episode about this i believe it's been talked about before but i wanted to talk about it because it kind of reminded me of some things that have happened to us living here in whitesburg kind of why i thought the movie three billboards outside hibbing missouri whatever wasn't the terrible movie because there are we're still taking heat for that

there are moments i've not seen. There are moments. I'm not saying that. There are moments in American life when larger issues, issues that spread across the geography, the spatial geography and also the political geography of America make sense. But once they get crammed into the round hole of American life at the micro level, it crammed into the round hole of american life at the micro level they become very weird and kind of like that emoji that like has the weird you know goofy face that things just get very strange um and so it kind of reminded me of this thing that had happened a few years ago and i know we've talked about it on the show before but it this thing that happened a few years ago in our small town where a resident put a black lives matter sign in their window

and all manner of chaos ensued the black police chief like went on a facebook tirade against it a queer a queer employee of a local grocery store defaced it with an all lives matter thing on it like every part of it was so wacky and bizarre the character is jesus yeah it became a proxy for these larger things that had happened in the national um uh in national life and as i was reading this story those those kind of themes resurfaced in the sense that we enter into political spaces with these ideas of how to change things. But then once they play out on the terrain, the shifting terrain of gentrification or local politics or community politics, they just become increasingly bizarre and unable, you know, you're unable to make any sense of them, of what's going on. Can I say something real quick?

I feel like while all that was going on, that whole skirmish, and if you remember, Terrence, that happened the night Christopher Dorner, like, the shooting in Dallas. Yep. That's what made it great. They all, that's what, the shooting in Dallas is why that's what made it great they all that's what the shooting in dallas is why it all i remember me and terrence walking back from uh from doing our radio show that night looking up and seeing the black lives matter side and just knowing that there that was like a

a harbinger of things to come yeah and the thing is the bill the blm sign went up she went to bed and then the shooting and the shooting happened. And then the shooting happened, right. And then there were news cameras outside from the local news affiliate with the fucking... I mean, this story that I'm about to read isn't a one-for-one in the characters and stuff, but it is kind of reminiscent in the sense that, like I said, once these things that make sense from the national macro level get then crammed into the space of the micro level then they just they just kind of boil over into things that are bizarre and nonsensical well one other thing i wanted to say about that real quick before

you start is i think during that whole sort of time it was the first documented case i ever heard of somebody using the phrase as a insert my identity like i saw ty say as the as the black police chief i think it's funny nobody consulted me about this as a queer member of this community i find it funny that you know what i mean Like that sort of like set up. Yeah. It was, I'm blanking on who, who put all lives matter on there.

Who the fuck was that? I'm not going to dox them on the show. Oh, well, you can just text me later. Terrence, before you start, I was,

I was thinking, were you talking about the sign going up, man? And like how these, like, like, it's like, I guess the only example I can think of is like it's like the sign is like some sort of like

like magic magical like relic from another dimension right that just drops in right to like everyday people's lives yeah it has so many contradictions bundled in it that we haven't resolved yes not even a society but within our communities and the minute it's in this like you know this space like our realm it causes just chaos man it's immediate chaos yes yeah yeah yeah that is he stabilizes everything yeah that is exactly correct and often if you'll notice these happen in spaces that are when we covered this last week tom used the analogy of colonization and i've never really thought of gentrification that way. Maybe, you know, you can sort of, you know, make fun of me for that or whatever.

But I had never really thought of it that way. But that's pretty much what gentrification is. But we are in a scenario now where the old forms of capital are encroaching, like, you know, gentrification are encroaching, or I'm sorry, the new forms of capital, like gentrification, are encroaching on old political forms and communities and identities. And that's kind of what happened with that thing we highlighted last week and with what this is. And that's what produces that weirdness, I guess is what you're saying, Aaron. It's like something drops in and it, I don't know, it's got so many contradictions that it just boils over into something. It's called incoherent. So let's open up on the cat cafe itself. On a recent Friday afternoon, the Blue Cat Cafe in East Austin hummed pleasantly with activity.

On a recent Friday afternoon, the Blue Cat Cafe in East Austin hummed pleasantly with activity. Patrons lounged on couches or sat pecking away at their MacBooks as half a dozen cats roamed freely over and around them. Sounds horrible. A server went from table to table with an iPad, taking orders for whimsically named vegan dishes like Alley Cat Tacos and Barbecue Brisket. Oh, my God. What? I hate this place already. What the fuck? I know.

Like, I like one cat, two cats, okay? Three's a fucking crowd. You're right, son. Zero cats. Brisket? I see what they were going for there. Scat. But it's got the word scat in it.

Come on. Apart from the cats and the feline themed decor the cafe seemed like just another shabby chic hipster hangout anyone willing to pay a five dollar kitty cover could come inside order a coffee and play with the adoptable cats the cozy atmosphere made it easy to forget that the cafe is ground zero for an intense public debate over gentrification a flash point for long-standing tensions between the majority hispanic neighborhood and wealthier wider developers it's a conflict that has now expanded beyond the neighborhood um so and then we get into the part

that we talked about last week this real estate company fnf real estate ventures bulldoze the piñata supply store um they did not give the's notice um and this caused an uproar right when we talked about that so like the the owners of the store were renting the space the owner of the space sold it and it got bulldozed before any communication made it to anyone no what happened no they um or maybe that is the case it's not clear in this that's a great question time it's not clear in this says f and f real estate ventures bulldoze the pinata store um jumpolines owners arrived that morning to find the store flattened i don't think so i think they literally bought the the property that was on and then kicked them out.

Because they had sent eviction notices to the Leharazus who own the store after assorted lease violations. Okay, so they were renting off of them and they kicked them out. Because the real estate owners were trying to turn this spot into basically a parking lot for a couple of other stores one of which was the cat cafe um so then you know local people were outraged they they protested um and then they settled the owners of the store settled with the property places or whatever um enter rebecca gray rebecca gray was in the market um she dreamed of opening what the fuck does that mean she she was wanting to gentrify yeah she was wanting to fill one of these places that the real estate venture uh company had set up she wanted to move into one of them

she dreamed of opening a cat cafe since hearing about two businesses one in montreal one in oakland where patreon patrons could sip cappuccinos and nosh on snacks in the company of resident felines we have one of those here actually in atlanta i've been there before i i it's it's i don't like cats but but if i like cats i'm not a cat guy but if i like cats i mean it's cool you know you can fucking go pet cats while you read or drink i don't know why people want to do that but you know whatever um so uh she quit her job uh started her cafe the blue cat cafe um raised 62 000 with a kickstarter crowdfunding campaign and went into business with her business partner jacques casimir um within 48 hours of visiting

the property in july 2015 they handed over the deposit and signed a five-year lease the front of the lot where yumpoline once stood would become cafe parking just how much gray knew about the neighborhood's antipathy to her new landlord depends on whom you ask gray says she knew for just by the way i need to like interject here like it is so funny how just oblivious this person was to all of this you know what i'm saying yeah like you wouldn't start a business here you should probably know shit you know right i'm honestly just still hung up what does the health department have to say about a cat cafe oh that's a good fucking question i'm uncomfortable with my own cat who i love getting on my countertops it makes it grosses me out we're

in a constant battle royale yeah she's put her shit ass paws on my counter and i'm like i i eat here bitch excuse me what does the health department have to say about this shit well the one in atlanta there was a divider there was like a uh it was like a glass like like i mean it was a glass room whatever where you could go it was separated from the general cafe area so if you don't want to be with the cats like i did it it's a cat it's a deprivation tank it's an isolation chamber yeah god okay i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm gonna try to keep up here terrence um jock casanova um so anyways yes uh on the cafe celebrated its grand opening on october 17 2015

the first patrons to arrive many of them kickstarter donors were greeted by a line of protesters from the community carrying signs. Signs that read, hey hipster, don't be a pussy, pet your cat, sip your tea on the jumps of Jumppoline. The community, it seemed, was making good on its promise to boycott, and they wanted everyone to know it. When, two months later, the owners of Jumppoline reached an undisclosed settlement with FNF, Gray breathed a sigh of relief.

The protesters, she thought, would now leave her alone. But neighborhood activists remained determined to carry on the boycott. Several of them, including veteran East Austin organizer Bertha Delgado, formed a group, Defend Our Hoods, or Defiende El Barrio. In February 2016, Defend Our Hoods launched a Facebook page that would be moderated by Chris Ledesma, a young Chicano activist. The group used social media to organize increasingly vitriolic protests outside the Cat Cafe.

More than once, employees called the police to keep demonstrators off the property. Video from July 2016 shows a gathering of sign carrying protesters lining the sidewalk uh and they're chanting to all you white people you look really fucking comfortable right now because you've got a small army of pigs to protect you how does it feel to need an army of pigs to get you out of the fucking neighborhood get out so things are things are um escalating you know like that i cannot get the visual out of my head of people like with signs in front of this cat cafe and cats in the window just like it gets even more ridiculous tanya it it it so anyways um buckle up things are always in any campaign as we know it's it's like it's always a

process to figure out your main target and i just come into the conclusion that our main target is a cat cafe you know you you do a community power map it's like okay yeah we're gonna get these fucking feline people and the central of this gentrification colonization effort is a literal cat box yes it is it is like it makes you beg the question that you that you ask in every organizing effort and that is how are we losing to these people? Exactly. Truly. Well, that question will get more complicated here in a second. Oh, good.

And perhaps for that reason, you could put this segment, I kind of wanted to put it under getting the goods, but I wasn't sure who actually got the goods in this situation. There are no goods. It's unclear if there were any goods to get. but I wasn't sure who actually got the goods in this situation. There are no goods. There are no goods. It's unclear if there were any goods to get. There were goods, and they were bulldozed. They were pinatas. That's the only good thing in this whole story. So anyways, yes, the portrait is gradual escalation.

You've got Defend Our Hoods organizing outside the cafe regularly. You've got patrons kind of like, well, whatever. They want their cats and they want their coffee. You've got employees there also feeling like, I'm just trying to go to work here, man. You know, let me go to work. And then the owner, Rebecca Gray or whatever, is also unsure and apprehensive, and it's giving her a lot of stress.

On the morning of october 21st 2016 a few days after the cafe's one year anniversary gray arrived at work to find the lock super glued shut and fuck you gentrified scum spray painted in red on one of the exterior walls good one later that day about a dozen protesters from defend our hoods arrived many wearing red bandanas to hide their faces diane ontiveros who lives next door to the blue cat cafe witnessed a confrontation between gray and the demonstrators they were trying to walk her off her property so they could get a hold of her but i ran over and pulled her by her hand back this way she says one gentleman told me that i would pay for that and i think this is where i get off uh the bus with defend our hoods um the 57 year old on tavera says she found

a dead cat in her front yard the following day um they must have escalated tactics i think they must have uh somebody got too drunk they got too drunk talking about how mad they were about the hood. And they went gremlins on the fucking cat. No, no good. Days later, Gray was interviewed by a reporter for InfoWars, the far-right, conspiracy-obsessed media organization founded by Austin Radio Show. And we're back to QAnon.

Yeah. Back to QAnon. Back to QAnon. Hosted by Alex Jones. Thanks to the resulting story, the Blue Cat Cafe suddenly became a cause celeb for the alt-right. Donations from around the world began pouring into the cafe's GoFundMe page.

I hope these protesters die a slow horrible death one donor who had chipped in 500 wrote those violent thugs are disgusting racist vile human beings they're wishing death on people over a cat cafe i'll tell you what they're doing. They're preying on somebody's downfall. That's right. Yeah, in defense of a cat cafe. Vile thugs. Or disgusting, racist, vile human beings.

I want to know if this gray person, if this woman, if her politics are even remotely aligned with these people who are now like sending donations so her business can stay like afloat amidst like you know the the protest that is an excellent question aaron because it seems to me from reading the story that she didn't actually really know what info wars was they saw the story info wars saw the story and they saw it as a manifestation of the culture war what you know what I'm saying so then they wanted to interview

her by interviewing her they then pulled her I don't really have any sympathy for this person because she's like a small business owner or whatever but it is funny that they pulled her into the nexus of this sort of cultural battle and then it became a larger culture

war issue so yes I don't think she really knew what this people were she's an abecedarian. That's what she sounds like. She knows nothing at all. You're so right. This is just like a snowball. It's just like a snowball going downhill, headed for hell. That's exactly right. In the wise words of our Lord.

Stokie from Stokie. So the GoFundMe campaign then raised over $15,000. Grace says she didn't know what InfoWars was when she Stokke. So the GoFundMe campaign then raised over $15,000. Grace says she didn't know what InfoWars was when she granted the interview. She says that not all the donations were from Alex Jones' supporters.

Blah, blah, blah. Defend Our Hoods viewed Grace's InfoWars interview and willingness to take money from Jones' followers as confirmation of their worst suspicions. It just kind of solidified yes it's a snowball and you know you know the infamous cat killer here was all was like somebody's you know some weirdo somebody was dating who brought to one meeting and then like

thought this would like help him get help yeah he was gonna get the goods through like leaving this dead cat in a yard and i'm sure they spent i'm sure protect the hood or whatever they were called spent months trying to be like that we're not with that guy we're not we didn't do that you know tried to like separate themselves from the cat death right the intricacies of this are probably so bananas. Like I said. We've all been there. Trying to be like, I don't know her. It got sucked into the wormhole of the culture war thing. And there was no underlying class solidarity or whatever.

I mean, I guess looking at this and based on my own lessons I've learned from organizing or whatever. based on my own lessons I've learned from organizing or whatever, like maybe a more expedient path would have been to try to organize them themselves or with the workers at the Cat Cafe to come to some sort of, you know, larger political vision here or whatever. I don't know. What's done is done. You know, you can't, you know, play Monday morning quarterback on this. We also don't have all the details. Yeah,'t even live there and etc um anyways yeah they they uh

defender hoods viewed her interview with info wars and willingness to take their money as confirmation of their worst suspicions um around the time of the vandalism bertha delgado began to distance herself from defender hoods they were cursing shouting out bad names that's not the type of protesting that i was ever used to and i've been protesting all my life they were ripping signs off of neighbors property kicking things that was unacceptable the people that chris ledesma started to bring around the group were not people who were from the neighborhood. And that started to scare me. Then she got kicked out of the group. So as you can see, the two sides of this are getting pushed further and further in opposite directions.

Like in the sense that the original founder of the Defender Hoops group, like me, thought the cat killing was just a step too far. I had to get out um enter in rebecca's brother paul an austin security guard an iraq war veteran who was curious he was curious about the protest at his sister's cafe over lunch with their mother rebecca mentioned that the protesters could get out of hand and paul offered to come by observe and asked him to clear the property if need be she accepted he's in security he's gone to war she says describing her thought process he knows how to manage it's a fucking cat cafe that's just insane yeah yeah he definitely how diseased her thinking is yeah like and i get it you know with these you know they kill this cat and you know she's she's scared but like you're

bringing in like a combat like veteran what's he gonna do like bring like an ar-15 or you know an m16 with them to fucking like exactly that's exactly what he's going to fucking christ yeah he was part of the famous cat cafe storming of Fallujah in 2004. It is kind of fucked up. What if it would have been really sinister? You know that part on Blowback where they talk about the troops that would go round up all the cats and kill them that belong to the relief people? He could have been part of them, man. Maybe they just got somebody with some experience.

Right. Yeah. Shit. In June 2017, Defender Hoods learned that Comedy Central was planning to film the pilot episode of a new show called Power Couple at the Blue Cat Cafe and announced the demonstration to disrupt the shoot. But when the protesters showed up at the cafe they learned that the shoot had been called off instead they were confronted by paul who is the uh iraq war veteran and brother and and three of his friends a video shows a tense standoff between the four men one brandishing a baton and a group of protesters in bandanas and balaclavas did i say that right

balaclava i never know how to say that right balaclava i never know how to say that word balaclava it's unclear who struck the first blow but in the ensuing melee one of paul's friends was hit in the head and began bleeding police officers called to the scene used a stun gun to subdue a protester etc so we've got an all-out street brawl at this point. Oh, for cats and pinatas, bitch. Soon after the clash, Defender Hoods found an interview Paul had given to the alt-right podcast Exodus Americanus a week before the incident. Identifying himself as a far-right militant, Paul described how his sister, quote sweet beautiful long young white lady had been menaced by mexicans and communists they hate her simply because she's white who among us you know this is i think perhaps the best sentence in the whole thing they hate her simply because

she's white he told the host before inviting inviting listeners to come to Austin to help defend the cat cafe. Man, they put the bat signal up. Anybody that's pro-cat needs to be in Austin stat. Right. Pro-cat, pro-white. Get down here. It's like white cats even better. You can't get a... All white cats. better you can't get her all white cats

how are we god damn you really we we couldn't have made this up oh i know in any universe and that's what made that's what reminded me of the thing that happened here too tanya it's like you can't make this shit up and it's like you said aaron you drop it into the real world of daily social relations and it just it sets off some sort of like entropic implosion or something it's like what the fuck um oh my god so this is so fucking crazy great rebecca gray claims that she rarely sees her brother and was unaware of his far right uh connections again knows nothing oh it knows nothing she's abc or whatever they were she's just like an empty shell she said i'm just so mad that he wasn't honest about what his agenda was um defender hoods posted a link to the interview on Facebook.

It has never been clearer, they said, Blue Cat Cafe on the ruins of Jumpeleen is a safe space for Nazis and white supremacists. Meanwhile, all of the patrons at this cafe were almost completely oblivious to this. Like, I think several of the people they talked to had no idea that any of this was even going on this same thing happened in wattsburg like around this same time

remember like somebody showed up with something on their jacket or vest or something and then it's all over town that summit city is just oh sympathizers yeah it did yeah that's right the same shit popped off dude this is fucking nuts it was yeah it was some like dude everyone's a nazi what it was what it was was some dude had a confederate flag tattooed on his forehead what or something crazy but he was just like like this dude had been in prison for like whatever. And he just like drifted in Summit to buy a beer. Even Aaron's like, all right.

Aaron's like, it's just called prison. You go to prison any number of years, you come out doing anything. You know what I mean? I can't really talk. I get it.

It should ruin your brain, yo. He walks into Summit City to buy a beer and because somebody served him a beer, the tale was that Summit City supports Nazis. It was a safe space.

It also puts you in that off-footed position where you're like, okay, I'm not even defending some gentrifying-ass small business either, but it's like, the cat thing, man. It's like, come on. Well, it's... I don't know. So Defenderhoods, a spokesperson said,

if somebody crosses the picket line they are accountable talking about like people who i guess work there and patronize the place and it's like it's this cat cafe at this point it's not a it's not a labor strike it's in a picket line necessarily it's just a boycott of them which is it has its own purposes but i mean at a boutique like place like like this this this story is really interesting because uh when I used to I used to canvas for the Housing Justice League down here in Atlanta and we were organizing around the Beltline which is like this ring around Atlanta that's supposed to include green space

some form of public transit in the future they said and like affordable some like some percentage of affordable housing but the future they said and like affordable some like some percentage of affordable housing but mostly it's just been like used by developers retail to like build all these like you know bars and boutique shops and like you know luxury like you know housing and shit and like this woman rebecca gray reminds me of like the gentrifiers that because we've talked to like you know people who live in the community forever mostly black and brown but sometimes you knock on the door and it's somebody who moved there, like, you know, like, within the last, like, year or something like that, you know? Yeah.

And these people are completely, like, oblivious. Like, they're the perfect, like, vanguard for something like this. Right. Yeah. Because they do not know anything. Like, they might have Black Lives Matter signs and love is love and all that shit. But you start talking to them and telling them about, like, you know, the demographics of the neighborhood and the history, you know, the racial history, too. And they don't know shit. They're like, oh, my God, are you serious?

I'm like, oh, you fucking wanted to move here. How did you not look this shit up? I just bought a cheap house. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, well, I heard, you know, the property values wouldn't go up. I heard I heard it's an up and coming neighborhood. Exactly.

Yeah. There are two things here. Because it's like and-and-coming neighborhood exactly yeah there are two things here because it's like and they're kind of opposite so it's hard to okay one you know like confederate monuments like visuals of colonization are significant and going after them like we've talked about this on the show like it's not that's not insignificant there's some marks word that terence uses about it i can't remember but uh it's like this these are significant visuals of imperialism colonialism like is a cat cafe and you know what i mean and it's like it just so that's the one thing it's kind of like i get it because yeah it is i i can totally see a cat cafe being like the last fucking straw and me losing

every everything i have and just like you know like you know fighting nazis on the lawn or whatever whatever it come to just because i lost my shit over the pinata store like i see i see a pinata bulldozed and that's it that's it's over you know i can see how that's just like for you yourself yes you know on the other hand it feels like a bunch of peons fighting while everyone else is making money like kelly isn't getting isn't becoming a millionaire off the fucking Cat Cafe, even though she's a, or whatever her fucking name is. It's like, all these, the people who, like, are running this city and the Cat Cafe is going to create millions for them in condos or whatever bullshit. They are going on about their happy business while this crew of huckleberries fucking duke it out in the street, and who cares?

Yeah, they're like sitting yeah they're like they're like sitting they're like standing looking out the window and like you know their high-rise office like looking at the peons on the street like you know what i mean like the toiling masses yeah yeah that's why it's the terrain on which it's fought that is what makes it absurd i mean like even if it was a cat cafe even if it was something more absurd than a cat cafe, like an earthworm cafe or something. What's more absurd than a cat cafe? But you see, I mean like, it's the fact that, I don't know. Let me just read this.

I mean, you couldn't get a better visualization than this part. February 10th, 2018. Defender Hoods organized a picket line outside the Blue Cat Cafe to mark the third anniversary of the demolition of Yumpoline, which found another home on East Cesar Chavez in July. More than a dozen protesters set fire to a pinata of a man wearing a Make America Great Again cap, a Nazi armband, and a shirt emblazoned with the image of a cat. I mean, it all feels kind of symbolic to me, but also I've really got to question this

because this group is now affiliated with that Red Guards group. Are you all familiar with this? The Red Guards Austin? They're self-described Marxist-Leninist malice collective, are y'all familiar with this the red guards austin uh they like they're go ahead they're self-described marxist leninist malice collective and they like do a bunch of shit like i think they like trashed a dsa office or something like that or you know what i mean like they're just they seem to me like feds that's the impression i get yeah bunch of troublemakers So they disagree with the Big Ten approach Of the Democratic Socialist America

Yeah But I think the cafe Is now closed I think that she finally did throw in the towel Shocker Not that long ago Didn't stand up in the market Right I honestly even the whole time we've

been talking about this at any time i think or experience or read about gentrification anymore i can't help but think about brianna taylor and how many brianna taylors there have been that we will never know about that were literally killed to get out of the way to like clear space for development for cat cafes yeah yeah yeah i mean i yeah i i guess my interview i mean my i don't know my take on this is um it all just seems a bit unnecessary. Like, maybe there is a better way to go about it. Then again, I don't know. It's like I said a minute ago.

You can't really Monday morning quarterback it in the moment. Things make sense. And you got to do what you got to do. And then afterwards, you got to reflect. So did they claim that victory when the cat cafe shut down i would assume they probably did yes no they planted the red flag word right but i guess you could say that the the right the alt-right people also may have seen it as a brief victory for a little for for a time i mean they raised all this money in support of it uh they got to do their street brawl which I

guess is what they really want I mean propagate the culture war propagate the culture war yeah I mean I that's why I said I don't really know who wins here like no and also uh create the fodder for us to write a uh crash style horrible tale about uh race and gentrification. Something's gonna make this into a movie. It's gonna be called Crash 2, Austin. Right. Oh my god. Yeah. The Cat Chronicles. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Anything else you guys want to say

about this? My sugar finally dropped, and so I'm shaky and hungry now now i'm sure i had something more profound to say about it at one point but were you just losing it when you were uncovering all this getting these dms about it were you just like oh my god it's rolling in it was rolling this is just like i don't know man i feel like we're going to be seeing, I mean, maybe stuff like this has always happened. Like these weird little like mini like battles, like small community, like spats that are like emblematic of I don't know what neoliberalism, like gentrification, all that bullshit. But like, I feel like we're going gonna see more shit like this especially with the

right wing the q people i don't know about them maybe but just like the still trumpers you know wanting to push this culture with fox news is of the world and shit like that of america so i don't know man this is just like one small absurd example of like something much larger you know what i mean yeah and it it brings me back to this question about targets again and like as we roll on what does that look like and because we are getting like the not just the wealth gap but the power gap like all of these gaps like we are further and further away from our enemies physically like they are behind such secure closed doors at this point um and they are frail they're on death's door like how do we actually

target like how do we actually not only identify that's the probably maybe the easier part but like go after the right targets yeah like and it's i mean like tom said what are we what are we fucking doing and when we don't do that like we like it's like what happened in that community where all the sides like are like you know entrenching further and further into their positions where they're becoming more polar you know what i mean and like it's like we end up like i don't know maybe that's just like an expression of powerlessness right where like instead of like actually going after the real estate developers and like local, you know, politicians who probably approved of all of this, you know what I mean?

Like, instead you end up fighting people on a cat cafe lawn. Yeah, it's like, yeah. And then probably most of the people in the neighborhood had, by the end of it were like a all bad people on all sides shit you know they were like all these people need to get the fuck out of here there's good people on both sides and it's true i think the the thing terrence alluded to earlier with like three billboards outside of missouri in our own situation is you know there's things we could uh agree on that are objectively bad i mean you got nazism the cops cats tennessee volunteers but but when you plug things in like the cast of characters in in the situations and everything

locally you just throw everything you think about cast of characters in and the situations and everything locally, you just throw everything you think about morality and everything else out the window. Pierce Terrence had heard enough. The sugar dropped too low. The sugar bottomed out and he hadn't heard enough. Take his E now. I'm back. I'm back. Yes, my sugar. Damn. Can you hear us his E now. I'm back. I'm back. Damn.

I'm back. My sugar dropped. Yes. I just wanted to add to what you were just saying, Aaron, is that you enter this sort of political terrain, this arena, and it's like everybody puts on costumes. It's kind of like 18th room air

like you put on a costume of something that is recognizable to you and to other people into history and then you play it out and it's going to be nonsensical in in you know you will have what you think are victories but is it a real is it a victory in the long run i mean because you're not targeting like as you said, the politicians that signed off on this, the actual capital behind the real estate, whatever. I mean, you could even target the small business owner herself. That wouldn't be unproductive. I mean, like I said, through some sort of unionization or organization of other service workers

that can then leverage their labor power against them. But yeah, once you enter it from this angle, it just becomes something that doesn't... I mean, it's familiar to us because we know all these characters and we know all these themes and we know all of these, you know, lines and scripts. But it ultimately doesn't go anywhere, I guess.

I don't know. I hesitate saying all these things because I have been personally involved in stuff like this. And I know how, like, messy it gets. And you don't, you know, you do what you can in the moment and you don't know if it's gonna win or lose uh and like i said you learn from it in the process but um i don't know i guess it's the i guess it's the fact that it's ultimately a cat cafe i guess is what we just keep coming back to in the end it's a fucking cat cafe man would you say erin no i just said a fucking cat cafe, man. Jesus. What'd you say, Aaron? No, I just said a fucking cat cafe, man. Jesus, yo.

It's the last line of defense against gentrification. That's right. Well, so anyways, I think that about covers it. Do you guys have anything you want to plug or say? No. I'm going to Dollywood this weekend. For real? Wow.

Well, have fun. Let's hope I make it back alive. Yeah. Maybe we'll see. We'll see how Ruby's feeling. Well, there's a... She'll go to Doggywood. There you go.

There's a Patreon for us that I don't know if you're aware of. You probably are. But just in case you aren't, go to Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trillbilly Workers Party. You'll find us there. And you can sign up. And you can get an episode every Sunday with that payment. So please go support us so we can keep doing stuff like Cat Cafe content. Maybe by Sunday, Aaron and I will have finished the QDoc.

Yeah, QDoc, yeah. We can pick up where we left off. I'll try to get through it tomorrow. See if Code Monkey can still get it at the end. Oh, God. What a freak. They're horrible people. There's no redeeming characters.

Nah, there is that one guy. It's the one guy who finally got pussy and he came around and he fell in love and got some ass and came around and was like, oh, this shit's horrible. Yeah, he's like, this all sucks. I got a wife now bye i dig it i dig it oh all right well on that note uh we'll see you

later bye-bye