It Could Happen Here Weekly 101

he had a very Zionist upbringing. We talked to him about how he grew up in apart Height, South Africa, how he broke free from Zionism as a teenager, and how he's come to be a very vocal Jewish anti Zionist. He currently lives and works in Berlin and he's exhibited his art all over the world. He's also regularly on the ground in Palestine and he uses his work to raise awareness about the crimes committed daily by the IDF.

Members of the German government have accused him and labeled him as being anti Semitic because of his criticism of Israel. And we're going to get into all of it. I want it. So let's just go back into your background a little bit. Your family on both sides are Holocaust survivors, and your ancestors like fled to South Africa, and that's where you grew up with your parents. And I read that you went to a zion the school starting from

age six. Can you tell us about your family background and your experience going to issi in a school as a Jewish person.

But after a few years in the USA, they began to see the menace of anti Semitism spreading back towards them through Nazi Germany and later through fashed Italy, and they decided to take up arms and stop it when it threatened to overwhelm democratic Spain.

Also that also he gets this opportunity. He meets a woman called Dora Klatschko, my grandmother, who's like four foot two, right, but comes from a very wealthy family in Lithuania. And it's kind of an arranged set up and I think Joshua was paid. Anyway, they get on a boat bound

for South Africa. Some landed up in Scotland or oddly because the boat bound for America there would they would they would disemb most of the all of the people on board and tell them they were in America and then take a whole lot of other people and then carry on to America so they could double the fee by the way. But anyway, my so, Joshua and Dora land up on the boat and they land in the port of Durban. It's around nineteen thirty three.

little bits of stories. And one of those was that her mother, Dora, had had a child who died at nine months old, and she was ann in Johannesburg when the child died and Joshua, her husband, was still in Durban. So you can imagine the kind of the weirdness of that, right, I mean imagine your imagine your your the father of your child not not coming to be with you when you lose your child. Coupled with the fact that they had both lost I think Dora, my grandmother, was one

of eight or nine children. I think only three survived the Holocaust and her parents were killed, and the same with Joshua. So they lost all their family and there they were at the bottom tip of Africa, right without without any kind of orientation.

They were like utterly privileged, powerful and and in control right. And with all of the with all of the corruption that apartheid provided for the elite, for the white for the white supremacist, for the white the white people, that the Jews who arrived were able to plug into that privilege. And there was about two hundred and fifty three hundred thousand Jews who fled and arrived in South Africa, so it was quite a big community. And they did ver fucking well. Let me tell you, and I can tell

you why. I can tell you because my father, who I just saw about three days ago, what's left of him. When he was active and potent, he was the top tax lawyer in South Africa, which means that his clients, and those clients are people who walk through my house, came through my house in the seventies and the eighties were probably the most hideous characters in history. You know,

we're talking soul Kurzner. Sol Curzner started something called Sun's City and he exploited the Buntustan, the homeland system that apartheid built, and he built this casino hotel resort called Sun City.

going to this school which was explicitly Zionist. And I'm wondering, at what point, and I suppose this involves seeing what's happening where you are as well as what's happening in Palestine, At what point did you make that connection and be like her this this like what what? Because you're you're a very explicitly anti Zionist, right, Like it's what was it? Something you read? Something you saw? Like what caused you to make that leap, and how was that received in South Africa.

older than me. Jonathan and Paul, Paul specifically was very politically active, so he started an organization unlike Israel, so that in South Africa the universities were like the bastions of the anti apartype movement right, and he was in newsas National Union or South African Students, and he started a think called the End Conscription Campaign, which was to fight against forced conscription of white men who were compulsory called up into the army at the age of eighteen.

And so given the fact that he was seven years older, when I hit about fourteen or fifteen, at fifteen, I went on a thing called ol pun, which is kind of you've heard of birthright right or pun is something. So I went to the Zionist Jewish day School. So every day I'd go I'd have to pray, go into the synagogue, pretend to pray for about an hour, right, And I was looking at my school, like my sister is like a gorgeous archivist, and she made this little

book called Adam's Life. And I was looking at the school grades at the age of six, and it was

like Jewish studies. And we know what those Jewish studies were, right, So you walked into the Jewish Studies room and there was a little blue tint which was the Jewish National Fund, and you would put your spare change in there, and that money would go towards making the desert bloom I say, in like work marks, right, So that was that money would go to plants in like two hundred and forty million pine trees in you know which I'm not indigenous

in Israel. But just to swing back. So at about fourteen or fifteen, what happened is in parallel I was being told on a daily basis two things I was being told. Now you've got to remember this was the heights of also the Cold War. So there were these proxy wars that were being fought all around South Africa. In Angola, in Mozambique. Mozambique you had for Lima were

backed up by Cuba, Russia. Right, you had you had Ruanamo that were backed up by America and South Africa, and they were running these kind of gorilla bush wars, right. And many of my friends who were called up in the military would be flown into Angola or into into Mozambique. We dropped there, and you know, they were told, look, if something happens you weren't here, Well, you're not there, you know, We're not going to come and find you.

the zimbabwe War of Independence. You might know the last one as a Rhodesian bush war, but Rhodesia doesn't exist anymore. Living in the United States, it's easy to use the phrase cold war as a conflict free standoff mediated by nuclear powers chess something without enowledging that in many parts of the world, proxy wars in these post colonial states and the conflicts of decolonialization throughout the late twentieth century made that period anything but cold.

were by far the minority. White people were by far the minority, I don't know what it was, ten twelve percent, And there was this kind of you could see the fear because the walls started getting higher, the security gates were built, the razor wire, the electric fences, you know, it was it became more increasingly visible in the eighties, the fear keeping keeping apart, tight, keeping people apart. So I was told all the time, like if aparth he had ended, that would mean the end of white people.

At the same time, I was told, given that my community was like second generation Holocaust surviving, you know, the notion of Israel as a place of salvation, a place of when the ship hits the fag, that's where we can go, right, And that we were always told that, and we were also told daily this is a land without people for a people without land. That became a kind of mantra. Honestly, it was like it was said

to me over and over again. Right, So when and what started happening is I think that I became an activist at the age of sixteen. There's an amazing she's now a dear friend of mine. We've reconnected. She's a theater director called yah El Faber, and we started an organization called Links the age of sixteen, which was to educate white kids about apartheid. And what we started to do was to literally kind of break the apartheid wall. We'd start doing visits into Suweta, we'd start doing visits

into Alexandria township, and we started forming friendships. And you know, most kids just didn't go out of the suburbs. And suddenly we go away on these weekends like led by a kind of older activists, and we'd all hang in the same you know, we'd all sleep in the same dormitories and we start chatting, chatting and smoking cigarettes together and so like genuine just basic childhood friendship started for me.

And when that stuff that profound very successful. Other ring that the propaganda of apartheid succeeded in creating, you know, the black person as the other, as the enemy, which it does it does in Israel right on the other side of the apartheid wall is the worst enemy or imagination could possibly conjure up right, And it's exactly the

same process. And suddenly when I kind of pierced that wall and that started falling apart, then the kind of ideology around Israel and the the notion that Palestinians didn't exist, suddenly they started to exist for me somehow. And so it was about around the age of sixteen, I'd say.

mixed marriages were prohibited by law. Sex was prohibited between races. But the thing is that we were mixed together because the labor force was needed, right, so that like you know, the nineteen sixteen Tax Act forced a lot of black migrant male workers into the cities to work on the gold mines, which meant that there was the presence of

the other amongst us. And because there was the presence of the other the other, there was also the desire and it is a sexual desire or essential desire, and the smells, and we would touch each other, and we would walk through the city and kind of rub up against each other. Now, my nieces and nephews having grown up under the inter father and because of the apartheid War, they've been deprived of that dential experience of the.

And children's imaginations are amazing, right, And I did I did say this a while back where where you know how Fucos spoke about He spoke about the structures that were built around the plague, and after the plague ended, you were still left with these structures. Right now, let's think about the apartheid wall. You've got the seven hundred kilometers long, massive like concrete thing. It goes like five

meters underground. Yeah. Now, unlike for coose hypothesis that war has created the plague, that war has created the enemy, because what's on the other side of that wall, that's only that's only accessible through these little checkpoints that are manned by these you know, poor teenage like little foot soldiers of the state. That's the that's the only way

to penetrate that war. So on the other side of that wall is whatever you tell the people is there, and that's the that's the horror of that situation.

casually get into it. Like there's a number of restrictions that exist into the present day because like civil marriage is not really a thing there as it is.

and served perhaps an agenda. When you decided that, like your stance was anti Zionism, and then you said to your guessing, to your friend, to your family, to your fellow children at the school, like hey, what this is fucked up here and this is fucked up there too. How was the response?

and that's meant to be like your holy land. But I did have one of the one of the it's called a Madrich, I think a teacher. He was he must have been eighteen or nineteen. He happen to be kind of like a vaguely liberal Zionist, and I remember

clearly him taking me to an anti Kahani protest. So there was still like Maya Kahane was was alive, and we know that Mayakahani, you know, the Cohanness movement, as you know, was a kind of you know, they spawned the ben Geviers and these fascists who are in power now, but at the time they were deemed a terrorist organization by America. And and I remember going to an anti Kahani protest, So somehow that planted a little seed in me.

And I guess, you know, I think that anti Zionism came afterwards because I was so focused on the anti apartheid struggle because that's where I was and that's what I was doing. And my university was either spent like running battles with riot police or smoking weed. And I literally went to about three classes. Honestly, I was definitely the odd one out in my school. I mean, you know it being a Zionist Jewish day school. I'm still you know, I'm still probably perceived as like an absolute

fucking avarition. You know.

we'll be right back. BRB and we're back. I want to talk now about your experience in Germany and how you experienced like state level accusations of being an anti Semitic person even though you're just a vocal Jewish anti Sionist. Can you talk about what led this person I didn't even though this person existed Stefan Hensel, who is the

anti Semitism commissioner of the City of Hamburg. That's the position someone has, But what led him to call you these really atrocious things in so many newspapers and like basically like just libelists and libelist stuff.

There's this character, like you said, Stefan Hensel, who is the commission of Antisemitism for the state of Bullin. Now eight of the states of Germany have commissioners of antisemitism, right, none of whom are Jewish, none of whom were elected. They kind of semi it's it's super weird they are, it's semi legal. I mean, like nobody knows that exists.

Nobody knows, like nobody elects them. This character Stefan Hensel, and I don't want to pay too much attention to him because he's just like a nebulous Islamophobic pro Zionist, you know, bureaucrat. But anyway, he does a series of interviews and to summarize the numerous interviews and his social media posts, I am called, quote literally a hateful anti Seamite who advocates for terrorism against Jews. Now this is two weeks after bearing my Jewish mother, who was a

second generation Holocaust survivor. Now that is that definition of gaslighting right now? As a white man, it's testimony to my privilege that I haven't experienced gas lighting on a daily basis as most women do. Certainly every Palestinian friend I have, they experience that every minute of their lives, because their very essence is illegal being Palestinian. You know, the blood that runs with their veins is illegal. They

don't exist because they're Palestinian. Right, But so I stand accused of these things, and I'm like, I'm god smacked. I'm like, and the reason is is because I've been vocal about my support and solidarity for Palestinian rights, and.

no there was no sudden moral awakening. Basically the Cold War ended. Reagan and Thatcher, who were total supporters of apartheid South Africa, suddenly the Cold War ended. South Africa wasn't that important an asset, and there was national pressure and you know, more and more people started to see what the atrocities that were going on, and sanctions and

divestments started to happen. Right, So Polaroid, the company Polaroid I did a project about this was one of the first companies that colluded with the South African government but also divested when they were exposed, and that led to a number of banks divesting from South Africa. So sanctions and investments and essentially the South African government in the

late eighties was financially broke. So they were forced to the negotiation table because they were broke, not because they woke up one morning and said, oh my god, we're oppressing the majority of black people in this country, and and and and and you know, so, uh, it's just like they were forced to and so so so b d S, which is a peaceful, non violent means of resistance that that that started during the second inter father has become one of these catchphrases, and I'll tell you

a story, and and this all came to a head around last year's Documenta, which happens in the city of Castle in Germany. Now, document is a really interesting art event in the art world calendar, and last year Documenta was that was was a very very interesting little theater play. So what happened during Documentary last year is that there was a group of Palestinian artists who were invited to show work and their space was invaded and there was

graffiti was sprayed on the walls. There were two things were sprayed. One was the number one eight seven and then the word perolta.

I mean, that's an old truck. We've all done it right, you know, they're the pigs. Police are the pigs. But there was an ideaf as a pig and it was and so it was deemed anti Semitic, and fair enough, it's like it's Germany. It's an Israeli person in a uniform depicted as a pig. It's tasteless, you know, it's tacky. Immediately they kind of covered the mura, right, but bang the troops came in. The israel lobby, the Jewish lobby came in. Boom, right, they seized the opportunity and they hit,

and suddenly the word BDS came in. Right. And so the two curators from grong Ruper, who were amongst the collective who were curating that year's documentor were visiting professors at the Art School in Hamburg, where I had been a professor for the previous six years, Okay, and Stefan Hensel like a little kind of surgeon. He pinpointed these three little nitious, kind of pro Palestinian people that were inside a German university, and he wanted to remove them

with his little tweezers. And so he grouped us together and he slammed the word anti Semitism. He accused us of being anti Semitic, and so he weaponized this word and this word like it's such an interesting word, right, anti Semitism. It's so here you've got a guy. Now he's never declared, and not that it's of any interest to me whether he's Jewish or not. I mean, I don't think he has the right to buy into my lineage of trauma. He doesn't have that right. But he

married a Jew. He named his son, I think David or something, right, He's there's all these kind of like.

of weird or weird ass think tank. I don't know what they do, right, But the point is he has this guy, and I bet you I would lay money on it that his parents or his grandparents were perpetrators during the Holocaust. And this is this is the way, this is the psychological twist. This is like the beautiful little oo that the mind does to get oneself out of like feeling shit about yourself.

Germany tried to make BDS a hate crime. And even though it was challenged and then it was found to be unconstitutional, that like the fact that that tent was made, from what I understand, there's still an attitude in Germany about BDS being this illegal ish thing.

is a presumption that BDS is anti Semitic. And I can give you concrete examples of how it's happened, how it's played out over the last couple of years.

They're the Francoist volunteers who fought for Nazi Germany, which you know, if you're commemorating that, you're kind of a piece of shit. And then she went on to be a further piece of shit. I suppose by like, she's very explicit in her anti Semitism, right, she doesn't do what a lot of these people do and kind of veil it. She talks about Jewish people as the eternal enemy.

And it's worth pointing out that in Spain Spain has had what's largely called anti Semitism without Jews, or sometimes called that because Spain conducted ethnic cleansing or conducted a literally they'll call it an olympia, like a cleansing and a removal of Jewish people, and Spanish Jewish population is still very small, and so this sort of virulent anti Semitism that were seeing on her behalf, it had impacts all around Europe, and she was kind of the most

prominent and outspoken anti Semitic for a little while there.

and into Palestine. The Zionists did so, they collaborated. And I think, really, truly, I think that we do face a real threat of real anti Semitism in Germany. And I have two children. My daughter is thirteen, her name is Lennie. My little boy is ten, his name's Marlow. And if you look at the police report of twenty twenty two that was released in Berlin, there are multiple numerous incidents of visual and quite violent incidents of real anti Semitism. Right, And why are we not addressing that?

Because my kids are in danger? And instead we have the Minister of Culture, whose name is Claudia Roff. Stand up. A couple of weeks ago on a Friday night at the opening of Hakka. There, you know, a huge institution. My dear friend Bonaventour, who comes from Cameroon is he's been made the head of this institution. And it's a Friday night and the whole is full of people, and it's glorious. It's a beautiful night. I mean, you have

diversity like you've never seen. This is like queer diverse blackness, indigenous thought. It's queer thought. It's like fucking Peaches is there? Everyone's there, you know what I mean. And Claudia Raff takes the stage, she takes the microphone, and what does she say? She says, and there's silence in the room, and she says, BDS is anti submittic. Like what the fuck? Yeah, BDS is antisemitic. And I'll tell you I love Boner. Now, let me tell you about bonov into A Bonnach came

from Cameroon thirteen years ago. He has a PhD. His PhD is in biotechnology. He worked all day building pacemakers while he set up a cultural institution called Savvy Contemporary and Savvy represented the biopop community in Berlin and in Germany. Right, Bonner is a genius. He deals with post colonialism like I mean, he's a maestro. He's amazing what he has done. He's changed the landscape of this country. He's brought colonialism

into the into the discourse of the country, into the culture. Right, my fear is is. They've used him as a trojan horse, and they've got the German States have got their fist up his fucking ass. And that night when he it was Bonner's night, it was it was the night of diversity. There comes this pernicious minister of Culture and she stands up and out of the blue, she says, BDS is

anti Semitic. Bonner because he's such a graceful, smart man, and because he knows that we are fighting intersectional struggles that happen at different velocities and happen at different speeds and come at different angles. He came up on stage and he said, we come in peace. It scares me, No, it's.

really grasp the irony of it all. It's a great example of the divide and intensity that happens or that can happen with anti Zionists and Zionists within the Jewish community itself. Adam said that some of the people who he had assumed were friends and allies have disappeared, which is one of the prices you pay for criticizing Israel. Adam had been spending more time in Hebron, what he described as a wasteland. He said in a previous interview that you spend ten minutes at Hebron and you get

the notion of apartheid, occupation and Jewish supremacy. You get it and no one has to utter the words. Adam has documented violence in places like maximum security jails Afghanistan two thousand and three, Iraq two thousand and five, but he said that two times he's felt the most existentially and physically a threat of death. One of those times was last year when he was in Hebron and him and his team went to take photos of olive trees.

Olive trees in that area can be two thousand to four thousand years old, and since nineteen sixty seven, Israeli settlers have destroyed one million of these trees. I have an episode about this and the significance of the Palestine olive tree, about how it's not only an immensely important crop but also a symbol of Palestinian culture and resistance.

I talk about this in that episode as well, but it bears repeating that destroying olive trees is one of the most clear examples that Zionism isn't about wanting to return to a sacred land that is destined to you. Instead, Zionism is hateful and inexcusable. Adam shares this sentiment, which I appreciate, and I really loved learning about his work

with olive trees. I just don't think Zionists have any kind of rebuttal or reasoning to support why the hell they keep destroying olive trees decade after decade, Like in what universe can you say and believe that you have a genuine attachment to that land, a biblical right to that land? Like how could you say that you love that land as a sacred space but then also go and destroy what Adam describes as its quote oldest indigenous citizens,

aka the olive trees. That's not a person who loves that land that it's a person who was driven by hate. So Adam is working to preserve and protect these trees. Settlers pour gasoline down the center of the tree trunk, so by the time you see smoke, the tree is already dead. He was there and have Brun with a camera taking photos of the trees, and then Jewish settlers sent these packs of kids that he said were ages five to seventeen, dressed in full religious garb, accompanied by

these reals military. Adam and his crew kept getting attacked by these kids as the military stood by, but he explained that you can't lift a finger to defend yourself because these kids are miners. Adam talked about this and said, if I was Palestinian and I pushed back, I would be shot on the spot. The fact that I'm Jewish, I would just be removed and the work would simply

be over. So he got beaten pretty badly several times, and apparently there's footage of it somewhere, and his experience and have Bron again is one of those two times that he's felt the most existentially and physically at the threat of death. The second time happened a few days later, which is the story. I briefly mentioned to him in the recording that we did that I want to talk

about more here. So a few days after that incident, Adam returned to Berlin and it happened to be the anniversary of krystel Nacht or the Night of Broken Glass, which is widely known as the beginning of the Holocaust. It's also called the November Pagrome, and it was a pugrum against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party with some participation from the Hitler youth and German civilians throughout Nazi Germany on the ninth and tenth of November in

nineteen thirty eight. The German authorities looked on as this happened without intervening. The name Krystelnacht is literally translated to crystal knight, and this name comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed. So back to Adam's story, a memorial for Krystelnacht is held at the site of the two oldest synagogues that had been burned down in Germany. Adam arrived there with a crew

holding signs that said Jews against Fascism. Everywhere. He's surrounded by fellow Jewish people, And this big guy comes up to Adam, and Adam describes this guy as being much bigger and much taller than him. And so this big guy looks down at Adam and he says, get rid of those signs. Who gave you the right to be here? Adam responded, quote the death of ninety percent of my family? What troubles you about the sign? Are you anti Semitic? Are you fascist? Are you bothered by the word everywhere?

Have you got this weird synesthesia thing where you see the word everywhere and you see Israel? Do you think I'm implying that there's a possibility that Israel could have fascist traits? In response to this, this big guy starts attacking Adam. So Adam ran absolutely terrified. He ran and sought protection from the German police. The irony of a Jewish person feeling his life threatened by another Jewish person

and then seeking refuge from the German police. Adam says, this was the most surreal moment of his life.

riot policeman. Right, And it was one of the demonstrations I was at at the age of eighteen, on the campus at Vitsa University, all right, And I got into ship from my mother, who said, what the fuck are you doing standing in front of the riot police. I got into ship from a black student society because we, as white students, took orders from a black student society. He said, what are you doing holding a flower to the fucking pig. It's like, this is this is not

the nineteen sixties. We're fighting a struggle. So I got in ship from both sides. Right now, cut to May a few months ago, I mean Iranian Platz. There is a commemoration organized for the ongoing Knuckba. All right, we know what the Knuckba is, the catastrophe, right, so in nineteen we don't have to explain that, but all for two the year before that, all commemorations for the Knackbar were banned, and in May, the commemorations for the Knackbar

organized by Palestinian groups were banned. So yidsha Stima, which means Jewish voices the organization. They organized a commemoration and we gathered together on a beautiful Sunday morning, and you know, it was really lovely, and there were kids there, there

were old people. It was great and we were all all gathered together there and we gave the platform to some Palestinian voices who were just speaking about freedom from the river to the sea, you know, and suddenly the riot police came boom, boom, boom, you know, lines of them intercepted us. And I was faced again at the age of fifty two, not eighteen, so flipped from nineteen eighty eight to twenty twenty three. And I'm facing eye to eye with a fucking white riot policeman and it

was the same riot policeman. And you know what I said to him. I said to him, where was your grandmother during the war? And he didn't answer me, and I said, do you know where my grandmother was? And he said, I don't care, at which point I turned around and two or three, and there's there's footage of this from every single angle. Two or three of these right policemen jumped on top of me, brutally beat me

and arrested me, handcuffed me. The handcuffed me so tightly that they had to call the fucking fire brigade to cut the handcuffs off me. And hang on, it gets worse. Then an hour later, I'm on the front page of the Berlin Zetel. There I am being marched off by German police, riot police, and you know what, the headline says, one hundred anti Semitic Palestinian protesters disrupt Jewish memorial. Check it out, Check it out, and you know what, I think it's still up there. Yeah, Okay, this is where

we're at. This is where we're at in this country. Like, forget fact checking. This is not a Palestinian. I'm a fucking Jew. You've arrested, had a fucking third generation Holocaust surviving Jew, your mother fucking Nazi. And they tell me de Nazification never happened in this country. There's no such thing as neo Nazis. They're Nazis man and this Stefan Henzl,

he wants the Jews out of Germany. That's what's underneath all of the shit, right, because if they were worried about antisemitism, let's talk about antisemitism, okay, because I've got kids and they need to be safe.

beaten up by German police officers. And it's kind of this this same like, yeah, what were your what was

your family doing during those twelve years? You know, like it's it's really it's a question you can ask, but it's rarely really a question, right, right, Yeah, Like there was never any That's such an important point, you know, particularly when we talk about like why there is you know, such what you can call technically support for Israel that's rooted, as you noted, often in just getting Jewish people out of Germany, like there was never any kind of real denazification.

Middle Eastern migrants. Right. And in fact, if you look at the statistics from twenty nineteen to two twenty twenty two, violence has gone down by twenty one or twenty three percent, I can't remember correctly, so that's incorrect. But now we have a state a position where at the entrance of every swimming pool there is a police fan and they are ethnically and racially profiling people who come into swimming pools. Right.

And there is basically a law that says that there shall not be more than three men read three men of color in a public swimming pool. Okay, And this is where we're heading. Felix Klein, who's the federal Commission of Anti Semitism Stephan Henzel, who's the Hamburg one these people that the mayor of Berlin. On Pentecost night, he tweeted,

check out check out his tweet. He tweeted something It went like this, It said, we wish everybody a happy Pentecost and we wish our guests a lovely time our guests. This is like, dude, I mean, you know.

in the late nineteen forties forty eight, forty nine. It co signed by a lot of prominent Jewish intellectuals, including Hannah Rent Albert Einstein, talking about the settler policies in Israel at that time by Zionist groups at that time as fascist, which is something that would now be considered to be like antisemit, Like that's calling Israel fascist was

what got you chased at him by that guy. It's considered to be anti Semitic in Germany, right, And these are people who you know, had lost family members, you know, they can their nuclear family to the Holocaust, like prominent Jewish intellectuals who would now be considered I guess anti semitic under this by saying shit, New York Times would publish and the Times would have publish that.

Star of David into his cheek. And we wore red Stars of David at the schedule tonight, and it just strikes me as ironic. You know, like eighty years ago, my ancestors were forced to wear a yellow star as a lapel on their armband or stuck to their jackets to shame them, to declare them as Jews, as dirty Jews in public. And now I feel like I've got to wear this red star because of our collective shame, because of what's being done in our name by the State of Israel and by Zionism. And this is not

allowed to be done in my name. Really, sorry to be so grim. Fuck no, I mean, if.

And there are children, there are old people, there are young people. All the support they're getting it's from mutual aid workers. Then maybe get some water from border patrol, from federal government, and not much else. And I'm here before your podcast to ask you if you can to help. We've all spent all of our time and most of our money the last few days week trying to help, and we're all pretty broke, and we're all pretty tired.

But I could really do with your support. And I'm going to give the venmos and cash apps and pay pal information for two organizations who I dearly love and whose work I have seen is extremely effective and is the only thing keeping this situation from being a lot worse. And please don't think that if you don't have much money that you shouldn't give. We can do a lot with a little. So if you only have five bucks, that is great. And five bucks is are top for

someone to sleep under or a few hot meals. And what we're going to buy is food, blankets, tops, water, the things that stop people dying in the desert. Those two organizations, Border Kindness and Free Shit Collective, can be found online at border Kindness and at free ship PB on Twitter for Border Kindness, The venmo is at border hyphen Kindness. The cash app is dollar sign border Kindness Cash and the zell and PayPal. Information is info at

Borderkindness dot org. Free Ship Collective are at free ship Collective on cash app and PayPal and at free shippbe on Twitter. Thank you very much, guys.

in the United States. Why, for example, do people think that Trump is working class? Why am I watching people argue that being a barista isn't actually being a worker. Why are all these millionaires driving forward f one fifties while simultaneously claiming that they are also somehow working class. Why are billionaires fleeing to Colorado and Wyoming to cause play as workers about wearing jeans and T shirts to bars?

Why is every weight ring dipshit posting the same video of a guy in an oil rig committing approximately sixty thousand OSHA violations. Why is it that the only part of the working class that anyone ever seems to call

the working class is the white working class. Why is it that when people talk about the white working class and then try to explain it with data, and this is true across the entire ideological spectrum, why do they start defining working class by things that are objectively not class,

like education levels. This reached a breaking point with me a few weeks ago and has finally caused me to snap and write this now, I've given the game away a little by leading with the white working class stuff, because a lot of the reason that everything sounds so nuts is that when people talk about class in the US, most of the time, what they're actually talking about is

race and gender. And this pisses me off because I think more about class that a lot of people with my ideology usually do, and I think it can actually be a very useful way to understand the world. However, comma thinking and talking about class as a kind of floating signifier that you can just jam conservative racial and gender politic into is a really, really bad way to talk about class. On top of just the racism and the sexism, this way of looking at class reduces class,

which is a social relation, into esthetics and grievances. And this leads to the question how did this all happen? Now, you could take a really expansive look at this here and go back to Aristotle or start later with Locke or something. But I'm not going to do that because, well, okay, partially because this would be seventeen years long if I tried to do this, and this episode is already now

three episodes. The other reason I'm not going to do this is that the actual story of how everything got like this is the story of how the right adapted and distorted the incredibly successful leftist conception of labor that built the identity of the working class in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds. And in order to do that, we need to talk about the labor theory of value. Now, when I talk about the labor theory of value, there

there are two things going on here. You have, on the one hand, Marx's law of value, and then you have the set of slogans that are passed down the mainline of the workers movements and these are not these are not the same thing at all. Even though when someone just says the labor theory of value, if that's a thing that you've heard of, you probably immediately think Marx. So, for example, let's get into a sense of sort of

what this, this kind of like sloganeering looks like. Here's the beginning of the Gotha Program, which is the program of the German Social Democratic Party in late eighteen hundreds. It begins, quote, labor is the source of all wealth and all culture. Now Marx hates this line. He writes a thing called the Critique of the Gotha Program, where he goes on a giant rant about how you know, nature also produces use values and so on and so forth.

But you know, Marx just sort of bitterness at this aside, labor is the source of all wealth is a very very common sentiments. It's the expression of the sort of common understanding of production, class, and nature of value. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, as the anthropologist David Graeber pointed out, Abraham Lincoln, a man who is by no means a socialist and is in fact the President of the United States, talks like this. Here's Lincoln quote,

labor is prior to an independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not existed. First, labor is superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration.

of capital w capital m worker's movement believed in. And this, as it turns out, has a tenuous relation to Marx, but is not the same thing, and I think is different enough that I'm actually not going to spend another like fifteen minutes trying to explain Marx's version of the labor theory of value or Marx's law of value, because it doesn't ultimately matter that much, which is which is a very weird thing to say about the actual sort of you know about about about sort of Marx's role

in labor movement, but it kind of doesn't. So what I'm going to do instead is read, well, I should I should, Okay, I should also mention like we are going to get a bit more into like the things that Marx actually wrote and why they mattered to the specific movement, like next episode.

that produces the workers movement. It's the expression of what people believe about themselves. Now, there are ingrained ideological assumptions here that go sort of beyond peer arguments about class.

miners and workers involved with energy logistics. You know, you could take for example, like the beating heart of the anarchist movement in much of the twenties and thirties are these Andalusian coal mine whose militancy and ability to sort of control the supply of coal that you know, capital the capitalists class relied on for production gave them enormous leverage and as the sort of as a historian Timothy Mitchell has argued, it was, it was this sort of

capacity to you know, break the economy through shutting off the coal supply, through strikes and sabotage, which workers you know, were workers at the time, like think of like the strike as a kind of sabotage and it's but it's this capability that informs a lot of the sort of politics intensive possibility of the twentieth century work as movements and you know, given what, but you know, like given what what the people who are like you know, working in a coal mine or like you know, are are

like a doc worker or you know, it's like if you are working in a factory, right, it makes sense that these people believe this right, you know, in terms in terms of you know, if if if you're looking at some thing like you know, workers are building the new world with their hands, right, or like we're you know, we're the only social group that's expanding. We're the only people who are like capable of like managing the new

world according to its own logic. This makes a lot of sense if you are one of the people who live in a world that has effectively disappeared. Now, you know, and that and that is a world where you literally are watching cities be constructed out of like you know, the tiny shells of villages.

they're producing. They can, you know, they can see commodities appear in the world, and they can know that it was you by their hands that the world was built. And this is not you know, this is not purely a metaphor, right, These are people who are literally creating

the world around them. To quote one of the verses of Solidarity Forever that modern trade unions hilariously notably do not include in the version of In the version of the song that they tend to sing at things, the trade union version drops a bunch of verses, and one of those verses is in our hands is placed to power greater than their hoarded gold, greater than the might of armies multiplied a thousandfold, We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old.

the incredibly romantic version of this. And before we sort of leave the world of pure romance and go into these sort of dirty and grimy worlds of reality where everything kind of sucks and things are not what they normally seem, we are going to take an ad break and we're back now.

actually going on on the ground. And this also makes it very very difficult to understand what happened, because, you know, if if you want to understand how this movement was defeated and how the like all of the sort of branches of the Worker's movements, like all of his different ideologies, all of those different manifestations are essentially destroyed, you have to get to the point where you are you start to realize that the ideological conception of productivity right of

the producer of you know, like of of what the worker is was never as sort of dry and objective as theorists wanted us. And you know, you got the sense that they wanted like themselves to believe. Case in point is the nature of what Marx calls the lump and proletariat. So here's from endnotes again, who were these

lump and proletarians preaching anarchy? Attempts to spell that out usually took the form not of structural analysis, but rather of long lists of shady characters, lists which collapsed in on themselves in a frenzied incoherence. Here is Marx's paradigmatic discussion of the lump proletariat from the eighteenth through mayor of Louis Bonaparte, on the pretext A founding a benevolent society, the lump and proletariat of Paris had been organized into

secret sections, each section led by Bonapartist agents. These lumpen supposedly consisted of quote, vagabonds, discharged soldiers and jail birds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mounton bunks, lazaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, pimps, brothel keepers, porters, litter, roddy, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars. In short, the whole indefinite, disintegrating mass thrown hither and thither from which the French call labohem. Is there any

truth in this paranoid fantasy? Do escaped convicts and organ grinders share a common counter revolutionary interest with beggars, which distinguishes them from the common mass worker, who are currently revolutionary by nature. To think so is insane. The lumpen proletariat was a specter haunting the worker's movements. If that movement constituted itself for the dignity of workers, then the lumpen was the figure of the undignified worker, or miraculately,

the lumpen was one of its figurations. All of the movement's efforts to give dignity of the class were supposedly undermined by these dissolute figures drunk singing in the streets, petty criminals, and prostitutes. References to a lumpen proletariat registered what was a simple truth. It was difficult to convince workers to organize as workers, since mostly they didn't care

about socialism. A great many of the poor, especially the very poor, did not think or behave themselves as proletarians, or find the organizations and modes of actions of the movement as applicable or relevant to them. In their fear time, they'd rather go to the pub than sing workers' songs. In the figure of the lumpen. We discover the dark underside of the affirmation of the working class. It was

a biting class hatred. Workers saw themselves as originating out of a stinking morass from Kotsky is the class struggle quote. At the time of the beginning of modern industry, the term proletariat implied absolute degeneracy, and there are persons who believe this is still the case. Moreover, capitalism was trying to push them back into the muck. Thus, the crisis tendencies of capitalism could only be resolved in one of two ways, the victory of the working class or in

its becoming lumpen'. Now you can see a couple of things very clearly here. One is there's been a lot of attempts to like resuscitate the lump and proletariat as like a functional class, especially see this especially in the seventies. And I really, I really would recommend those people go back and read what Mark's actually wrote about the lumpen proletariat, because it makes no sense. It is just like absolute

sort of blithering nonsense. And the reason it's this kind of like incredibly bizarre, like paranoid, you know, to fantasies is that beneath the sort of like foe of scientific objectiveness of the workers' movement is this incredibly petty moralism and a set of sort of Victorian social values with all of the sort of cruelty of their aristocratic masters.

And I want to sort of point out here like this kind of thinking, you know, this kind of like we are the movement that is a liberation of the class. But in order to do that, we need to prove that like we are like actually sort of like real dignified human beings, and that there's another group of people who are just us, but we hate them because they don't behave the way that we think they're supposed to.

This is a very very common thing that you see in basically all social movements, especially in their earliest and like shittiest iterations. You see this in the early feminist movement. I mean, you see this still in the feminist movement, but there are sections of it that do this too.

I'm gonna read a little bit from it. One of the things that you get this sense of is that people like Glorious Steinem just absolutely hate Marilyn Monroe, and the you know, the stuff they write about her is stuff that like you just will be like almost incomprehensible to imagine any of these people or even just sort of like you know, not even like like a modern sort of like conservative like writing on purpose about a woman and being allowed to sort of get away with it.

I mean there right, just horrible things about her. I'm gonna read a little bit from the piece. Perhaps it was Monroe's dumping of three husbands, two of them were famous and powerful, that posed quote no adult challenge to Steinem's mind. Or perhaps Steinem's comments closed nothing so much

as her own inability to see Highem people as subjects. Here, in case it might pierce a vail, is Monroe apagem written on Waldorf a story a letter paper in nineteen fifty five, quote everyone has violence in themselves.

production board should be buried alive. Perhaps Steinem, who proudly worked for the CIA in the fifties and sixties, would not appreciate this kind of courage, the courage of one Norma, who, when notified by the police at Los Angeles roadblock in nineteen forty nine that a nearby house was being monitored for ties to communists, shouted the officer's ear off and went straight to tip off blacklisted screenwriters Norma and Ben Bauersman.

And so, you know, you can sort of see what's happening here, right, It's a very similar thing where there were these sort of like you know, you have these very sort of like like respectable mainstream feminists who look at someone like Marilyn Monroe, who you know, and they

just fucking hate her. They absolutely despise her because she is sort of she she is the image of what they sort of think that they're fighting against, right, Like they're they're they're, they're, they're what what liberation looks like for them is to like not be this kind of woman. And that's, you know, and this is that's the sort of unspoken or so sometimes just overly spoken, core of

what a lot of this stuff is. And you know, and This is how these people like can justify like working for the fucking CIA, right and you know, somehow claiming to themselves to be like superior feminists, feminist to Marilyn Monroe, who you know, at like great personal costs and at great danger, like you know, fought hu wac and shit. So you know, this kind of like we are the group who is going to free our own group.

We're also not like because we're not like those other people who are literally the same as us, but we don't like them because they we don't think they're respectable enough. This is a very very old sort of trend, but it has real social consequences and it's you know, it's it's a really disastrous strategy because it means that all of these movements have these sort of flanks from which

they can be attacked. One of these flanks for the workers movements, and one that's become increasingly important now, is the kind of producer's conception of what a worker is. You know, this is the man sort of creating the new world with his bare hands. The problem is that, you know, this is never what most labor actually was. Here's David Graber again. In fact, there was never a

time when most workers worked in a factory. Even in the days of Karl Marx or Charles Dickens, working class neighborhoods housed far more maids, boot blacks, dustman cooks, nurses, cabby's school teachers, prostitutes, caretakers, and costermongers than employees and coal mines, textile mills or iron foundries. Are these former jobs productive in what sense?

and maintaining plants, animals, machines and other objects. Then it involves hammering, carving, hoisting, or harvesting things. And you know, you can see in this sort of issue, right, you can see the axis upon which the workers movement is going to be split in the eighties and nineties. If you can convince a set of workers that what they're doing is you know, masculine productive labor, right, and that you know what those other people are doing, is this

like feminine care labor that doesn't produce anything. You can turn the entire ideology of the workers movement on its head and transform it from a liberatory ideology about the end of the class system to a patriarchal ideology about the necessity of labor to sort of manhood of masculinity.

And once that ideological shift is made, you can start writing off entire fields of laborers as being insufficiently quote unquote productive, or you know, as the right wing shift renders it, you can say productive and mean insufficiently masculine account as part of the working class TM. This problem, Graper argues, is a consequence of the sort of maniacal focus on production that defined the workers movement, because it obscures the fact that, again, most of actual labor is

care labor. And this is something we've discussed at length on this show in sort of ethnographic if not theoretical terms, while talking to Starbucks workers, and in these conversations it becomes almost immediately clear that a huge part of the job has very little to do with making coffee or even sort of classical customer management, and like the interpretive and emotional labor of doing service work, what these workers are actually doing is acting as replacement for the collapsing

American social safety net. Right they are taking care of and literally saving the lives of people who capitalism has spat out and.

But you know, because of the sort of patriarchal like idea and conception that has sort of consumed what are our sort of collective conception of what a quote unquote real job is, the enormous amount of care labor that perics do every day. And you know, there's there's a good argument. Graber makes a very similar argument to this

that you can look at the entire job. And you can look at like most economic production as carelabor, right, because you're producing this coffee in order to care for someone. You make a bridge in order to like, like in order so that people can use it.

obviously the standard form of labor. But the ruling class figured out a way to sort of set this bomb off and ensure that, you know, and ensure that it would like just detonate the workers movement immediately, and the thing that they figured out to set this bomb off

is racism. And that is what I'm going to talk about tomorrow, the story of how the fusion of racism and sexism that I may well be remembered by historians is the force that burned the entire world, consumed what was left of the workers' movement, and turned this country into neoliberal Reagan.

old people, there are young people. All the support they're getting it's from mutual aid workers, then maybe get some water from border patrol, from federal government, and not much else. And I'm here before your podcast to ask you if you can to help. We've all spent all of our time and most of our money the last few days week trying to help, and we're all pretty broke, and we're all pretty tired. But I could really do with

your support. And I'm going to give the venmos and cash apps and pay pal information for two organizations who ideally love and whose work I have seen is extremely effective and is the only thing keeping this situation from being a lot worse. And please don't think that if you don't have much money that you shouldn't give. We can work out do a lot with a little. So if you only have five bucks, that is great. And five bucks is are top for someone to sleep under

or a few hot meals. And what we're gonna buy is food, blankets, tops, water, the things that stop people dying in the desert. Those two organizations, Border Kindness and Free Shit Collective, can be found online at border Kindness and at free ship pb on Twitter. For Border Kindness, the venmo is at border hyphen Kindness, the cash app is dollar sign border Kindness cash and the zell and

PayPal information is info at Borderkindness dot org. Free Shit Collective are at free shick Collective on cash app and PayPal and at free shippbe on Twitter.

But there's another sort of more micro problem with thinking about productive labor, and that micro problem is that people are just absolutely unable to think about productivity in anything other than moral terms. As to you know, why this is the case, I'm not going to go forward an answer. I've seen every theory from like its Christianity, to like it's a structural feature of capitalism, to its human nature

or whatever. I'm I don't know, did pick pick your theory about why everyone is incapable of being normal about productivity? But this turns out to be a real problem for anyone who is trying to use productive versus unproductive labor in a purely technical sense. Now, the most famous person to do this is, as some of you probably know, one, Karl Marx. And you know I was hard on Mark's last episode, but this one and the stuff that's going

to follow isn't really his fault. Marx here is actually doing one of the times where he's being very reasonable and he's being very specific about what productive labor is, and everyone else is being extremely unreasonable. And you know, given the incredibly dark places this is going to go, maybe this is one of those things where, like, I don't know, you need to pick different words that aren't

as emotionally charged as like productive nonproductive labor. But all in all, like this, the catastrophe that's about two unfold is not Marx's fault. There was really no way that he could have known how nuts everyone was going to go over this. So what actually is the distinction between productive and unproductive labor? From Marx? So, first off, and this is very important, productive versus unproductive labor is a

technical term. It has no moral content at all. All it means is that some labor produces capital for the capital owning class and some labor doesn't that. That's literally it. Here's Marx. The commodities the capitalist buys for his own private consumption are not consumed productively. They do not become factors of capital, just as little to the services he buys for his consumption voluntarily or through compulsion from the state, etc. For the sake of their use value, they do not

become a factor of capital. They are not therefore productive kinds of labor, and those who perform them are not productive workers. As you can see, this has literally nothing to do with the contents of the labor itself or morality whatsoever. If a dance er work for production company and gives a performance you know, working for the company, that's productive labor, because the company has turned their capital into more capital by using the dancer to produce a commodity,

which is, you know, the performance, and then selling it. Right, If that same dancer puts on the same performance in the same place for a crowd of you know, just like their friends or even the same people, but who aren't paying a production company for it, Suddenly the dancer, who again is doing the same thing in the same place like even could be on the same day, is doing non productive labor because no capital is being created from it, or as you know, here's how Marx puts it.

Labor with the same content can therefore be both productive and unproductive. Milton, for example, who did Paradise Loss, was an unproductive worker. In contrast to this, the writer who delivers hack work for his publisher is a productive worker.

Later on, Milton sold the product for five dollars and to that extent became a dealer in a commodity But the light sig literally II reary proletarian who produces books e g. Compendium Political Economy at the instruction of his publisher is roughly speaking, a productive worker insofar as his production is subsumed under capital and only takes place for the purpose of the latter's valorization. This is a valorization of capital, which is like having capital make more capital.

A singer who sings like a bird is an unproductive worker. If she sells her singing for money, she is to that extent a wage laborer or a commodity dealer. But the same singer when she is engaged by an entrepreneur who has her sing in order to make money, is

a productive worker, for she directly produces capital. A schoolmaster who educates others is not a productive worker, but a schoolmaster who is engaged as a wage laborer and an institution alongside along with others in order to make in order through his labor to valorize the money of the entrepreneur of the knowledge mongering institution is a productive worker. Now, okay, I'm reading a lot of Marx here. I'm focusing on Marx, you know, because whether or not someone in you know,

the eighteen hundreds is a Marxist or not. And if you picked us like a random worker in the period when this is being written, the odds are really bad that they're going to be a Marxist. Marx was enormously influential, particularly in Europe as sort of social democracy swept through the Germany's and then communism sort of swept back through Europe. In the US, and Marx is also and this is something that Marx himself, like takes great pains to conceal

a lot of the time. Marx is a kind of medium through which the broad cultural consensus on labor was transformed into like capital T theory, and in this capital T theory, productive versus unproductive labor is not a moral claim at all. It's a measure of whether any given

labor produces capital for the bourgeoisie. Now, part of what Marx is trying to do here is to intervene in existing discourse about productive and unproductive, to turn it into useful theory instead of people just yelling stuff at each other and Mars, I feel you, buddy, oh boy, taking this as a validation of what I'm doing. God, here's an example I'm just going to put in here of

Marx being very mad about this. The self employed laborer, for example, is his own wage laborer, and his own means of production confront him in his own mind as capital. As his own capitalist, he employs himself as a wage laborer. Anomalies of this type then offer a favorable field for outpourings of drivel about productive and unproductive labor. So, you know, even in the eighteen hundreds, people are being incredibly normal about this. They're saying things that are great and good,

and only only that they're being exceptionally good. Marx isn't slowly being driven mad by reading it all. But you know, when when it's being used as a technic category, the sort of productive versus unproductive distinction. You know, it can tell you a lot of stuff about how a capitalist economy functions, but when it inevitably becomes a moral category, things get very bad, very quickly. And so we're going to go into two times that this has gone very badly,

the Nazis and Ronald Reagan. Now, the Nazis and Reagan aren't quite doing the same thing, although there's a lot of similarities, which is, you know, to be expected from a band who went to a Nazi cemetery that included a bunch of SS dudes and then gave a speech defending his actions where he said, and I quote they which is referring to Nazi soldiers, quote they were victims just as surely as the victims and the concentration camps, which I.

I don't know, baffling stuff by Reagan. I mean, I guess not baffling considering how closely his administration is tied to a bunch of sort of Nazis who became like anti communists, while here were always anti comics, but who became part of sort of like institutional anti communism and like the post war era.

you know, productive and unproductive members of society. And this is one of the origins of sort of Nazi race science and race craft. You know, they have their attempt to quote unquote purify their race, which relies on a distinction between sort of productive and non productive members of society who'se like quote unquote value and productive capacity, you know, come to be seen as like genetically heritable, which you know, from the Nazi perspective, they are like, oh, this is stuff,

this is heritable. We need to do eugenics and mass exterminations of, you know, increasing numbers of disabled, queer communists and especially Jewish and Groma people to ensure that only the quote unquote like productive members society remain and like pass down their traits. And this is fucking horrible. But this is also too simple for an explanation for what

actually happens. In order to actually fully grasp the depths of what's happening here and how this stuff functions, we need to go deeper into specifically looking at anti Semitism. And in order to do this, I'm going to turn to the great sort of the great social theorist moist Pristone Dressed in Peace died a few years ago. Apparently a great guy. I don't know, but yeah, postone and his essay Anti Semitism and National Socialism. This is something I recommend people read it in full. It's a bit

theoretically intense. It's also like one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever read, but I think it's important to understand what national socialism actually was and what it's sort of ideological basis was because it oh boy, not only has it not gone away, it you know, it's it's it's it's it's doing it's doing, it's doing a lot of the sort of work that we've we've been sort of discussing. Okay, so what what what is what is

pistone actually talking about? So postone sees Nazi anti Semitism not just as you know, the sort of socialism of fools where like Jewish people get substituted for capitalists to see the worker and okay, like yeah, it's like it serves as function to some extent. But for postone, like Nazi anti Semitism is its own sort of horrific, incomplete

anti capitalist system. It's this sort of ghastly aryan mirror of like Marxism, and you know, okay, So so to to get an understanding of what he means by this, because this is something that is you know, like it's it's it's deeply it's kind of theoretically intense, but it's

worth it. So in Marxism, this the central mystery of the commodity is that a commodity is a well i mean central mystery isn't the right word, but this is this is one of the one of the opening things in capital is that you know, this is this is this thing called the commodity fetish. You have a commodity. A commodity is simultaneously a concrete physical object that nonetheless

contains within it an abstract social relation. It has at the same time a use value, which is like, you know, the thing that makes it useful, right, Like take a pencil, right, pencil, it has.

that's that's kind of a simplication of it. But what's happening here is that the sort of the exchange value that lets you compare how much a pencil is worth and how much a bracelet is worth right, that's not an actual characteristic of the pencil or the bracelet. That is a serious you know that that's an embedded social relation, right, is an embedded capitalist social relation that allows a commodity to be compared to all of the commodities by again

like embedding this capitalist social relation into it. The important part for our purposes is that the commodity has at the same time a concrete component, which is the physical object, and an abstract component, which is the sort of capitalist social relation embedded in the pencil that makes it appear

to have value. Here's pistone as indicated above. On the logical level of the analysis of the commodity, the quote double character allows the commodity to appear as a purely material entity rather than as an objectification of mediated social relations. So this is a more complicated way of saying what I've sort of been trying to get at, which is that the commodity, you know, because it's a physical object.

And by valorization process he means the process that turns you know, capital into more capital. So the fact that there's both a labor process and a valorization process allows industrial production to appear as a purely material, creative process separable from capital. The manifest form of the concrete is now more organic. Industrial capital can then appear as linear descendant of quote natural artismal labor as quote organically rooted

in opposition to rootless, quote parasitic finance capital. You can see here where the whole sort of productive versus unproductive labor distinction has ended up right. It's been transformed into the sort of organic concrete rooted like productive national worker and like entrepreneur versus like rootless parasitic finance capital. This is unbelievably dangerous because now having set the concrete against the abstract, the fascist proceeds to turn the abstract into

a people, which is Jewish people. The result of this is that in the fascist mind, the sort of concrete productive worker and the entrepreneur stand against the abstract anti national finance capital personified in the figure of the Jew.

Here's pistona again of what happened next the extermination of European jeury is the indication that it is far too simple to deal with Nazism as a mass movement with anti capitalist overtones, which shed that husk in the nineteen thirty four Rome push at the latest, once dead served its purpose in state power have been seized. In the first place, ideological forms of thought are not simply conscious manipulations.

In the second place, this view misunderstands the nature of Nazi quote anti capitalism, the extent to which it was intrinsically bound to the anti Semitic worldview. Auschwitz indicates that connection. It is true that the somewhat too concrete and Plebeian quote unquote anti capitalism of the essay was dispensed with by nineteen thirty four, not, however, the anti Semitic thrust the knowledge quote unquote, that the source of evil is abstract.

anti capitalist negation. Auschwist was a factory to quote unquote destroy value, that is, to destroy the personifications of the abstract. Its organization was that of a fiendish industrial process, the aim of which was to liberate the concrete from the abstract. The first step was a dehumanize, that is, to rip away the quote unquote mask of humanity, of qualitative specificity, and reveal the Jews for quote what they really are

shadows Cipher's numbered abstractions. The second step was to then eradicate that abstractness. He transform it into smoke, trying in the process to rest away the last remains of the concrete material use value, clothes, gold hair, soap. Auschwitz, not the Nazi seizure of power in nineteen thirty three, was the real German revolution. The attempted to overthrow not merely of a political order, but of the existing social formation.

By this one deed, the world was to be made safe from the tyranny of the abstract.

If you look closely, you can still see it moving.

doing this for like a decade. He does it for like twenty fucking years. It's insufferable, is screaming about the myth of the welfare queen. So the welfare queen for people who like, I don't know, we're too young to like remember what I mean. I wasn't around for the original height of it, but like I fucking remember it from when I was a kid. It's this sort of like mythical racist caricature of like a black woman who

lives off of scamming the welfare system. And you can see what's happening here pretty clearly, right, This is not like a particularly subtle political maneuver. The plan is to pit you know, sort of so called like productive workers and entrepreneurs versus people on welfare, and through through the sort of incredible power of racism and specifically misogyn noir, which is, you know, through the power of America's just like specific abiden casure to black women, the identity of

the worker is transflowed into a racial category. So what you're actually dealing with is this opposition Reagan is trying to create between quote unquote like productive white people who like work for a living or whatever, and you know black welfare queens quote unquote who are dependent on the state and don't work. And this is this is this

is sort of Reagan's framing of it. Now, if you go back to this sort of older Marxist conception of class, right, like unemployed black people are like unambiguously part of the working class. And this is something that Reagan understood. Now, part of what was going on here actually was Reagan attempting to sort of crack down on black welfare activists.

You were doing a lot of you know, really incredible organizing, ranging from sort of like you know, organizing mass protests to like doing squats to doing like it's fall on building occupations and Reagan, and more so the people sort of around Reagan by the end, because you know, like by like term two, Reagan has like basically checked out, you know, But the people around Reagan can see which way the wind is blowing, and you know, they are busy sort of like lining up every fan they can

find to make the wind blow a bit stronger. And the way that the winds are blowing is that a bunch of people are about to be spat out of the capitalist system and too increasingly precarious service jobs or just no jobs at all. And as the sort of crisis dynamics emerged and intensified, and people tend to forget this. But Reagan's term started with him nuking the economy, setting off a recession and jacking employment up to ten percent.

But you know, as this unfolds, Reagan sees a perfect opportunity to sever what Marks would call the industrial reserve army. Who are you know, all the people who've been spat out of the capitalist system and forced to face sort of pecarity and unemployments. He sees an opportunity to like to split these people from workers who held on to their jobs. And the way you do this is by talking about class in a way that's really about race.

This new sort of moral division of like productive non productive worker is incredibly racialized, which is to say that, like, I mean, it's just it's just really racist. There's no certain I don't know, there's no I'm I'm not gonna do the circumlocution on that ship.

What's happening here, right, is is this, this this entire thing is very specifically designed to pit white workers against black workers by invoking racial prejudice, and slightly more subtly, is designed to remove black workers from the category of labor altogether through you know, the sort of sort of means of America's like deep in abiding hatred of black women. Now back in sort of reality. And again bearing in

mind reality has no effect on this bullshit. But you know, back in reality, like the actual biggest welfare cheat of the modern era is Brett Farr, former quarterback in the Minnesota Vikings. Please send all complaints at irite, okay on Twitter. Far managed to spend seventy seven million dollars of welfare money on a bunch of bullshit that includes like trying to get a multimillion dollar volleyball facility built at his

daughter's school. The actual woman who was like the model for the first like welfare queen thing like, may have

stolen eight thousand dollars. But you know this, this doesn't matter at all because again, like reality's ability to combat propaganda is incredibly weak, and you know, and the other the other thing that's that's important to understand about this, right is this was never actually about the money, and this is something that people use to try to combat this stuff, right, which people will point out and they're right that, like, yeah, like you know, in order in

order to like quote unquote combat welfare fraud, like you spend more money try to combat the fraud than you save on the fraud. But that's not the point. That's not the point at all. The point is again like turning white workers against black workers to happen to be unemployed. And it works incredibly well because they tap into two just really powerful wells of emotion racism, and they happen to do a second one, which is people hating work.

But because this is the right the way they tap into people hating work was they transform it into the seething hatred and resentment at the possibility of someone not having to have the suffering that you have and doing the thing that you always want to do, which is not work, and then tying that to, oh, these people don't have to suffer the way that I do because they're living off of like the product of my labor.

And you know, you can you can see the sort of ghosts right of like an anti capitalist critique of labor, which is like, yeah, there are a bunch of people who like don't work a fucking day in their lives off the prophecy proceeds of our labors. They wear a bunch of suits and they you know, they they're like seventeenth generation like descendants of the Walton family or whatever. But you know, this is this is the sort of

right wing version of it. And so through the sort of lens of racism and through the sort of transformation of class and productivity like into into sort of like pure race discourse, they've managed to sort of, you know, they've managed to completely transform the way people think about class. And this is this is a big part of the reason why the way Americans think about classes is so

incredibly messed up. And it's a big part of the reason why, you know, the United States has spent, i mean, spent the next fifty years doing this unbelievably merciless like ruthless purge and just like mass infliction of suffering on the poorest people in the US. It's because of this shit. And this is also the reason that no one, you know, if you're fucking reading the New York Times, right, you will never hear anybody talk about black workers. They will

only ever talk about white workers. And this is because that ideological project, the ideological project that Reagan was attempting to do, was a big part of It was again about an attempt to expel black workers from the popular collective imagination of the working class. And it fucking worked. If you're a white pundit.

workers is like the core of the workers movements. And no one outside of like actual leftist circles or even bad and I no one, no one even thinks this is fucking weird, right, And you can get away with this ship because you know, eighty percent of all discourse about class is really about race or gender, and you know, eighty percent of all discourse but race as fucking white people talking to other white people. And that's what we're

going to end for today. We will we will come back to the sort of ruling class reaction to this another time. But in the meantime, this has been naked happen here, go out into the world and make something that's not this one.

called a ceasefire. Although there continue to be reports of shelling and other violent acts by the Azeri military. It's kind of unclear what is going to happen. Tens of thousands of frightened Armenians have crowded the airport out of Artzok. Pictures are pretty stunning and sobering, out of fears that Aside will be instituted against the Armenian populace in that area.

The episode you're about to hear is Joe and I kind of talking earlier in the invasion, pretty soon after it happened, going over some of the history, what's going on now, fears for the future. So I thought it was still valuable stuff, but I wanted to let you know the situation has advanced since we recorded this, As is often the case when you're talking about you know, unfolding events.

like it's a it's a complicated situation. Basically, the gist of it is folks, if you're if you're kind of tuning in, there is a there are a number of different like little republics in the Caucasus region, and one of the like, over the course of the last like I don't know, a couple of thousand years, there have been a lot of Armenian people in this area that we call the Caucases, right, and you know, you have your you know, a couple of thousand years of history.

You know, around the eleventh century, you get, you know, some claims start being made to this area in what is now called Karbak Artsak. And yeah, now you've got this kind of area that is an Armenian majority region where the surrounding Azeri people argue that it is their land, their territory, that they should be allowed to take it. And there have been a series of wars that have been fighting that have been going on over this area

since the fall of the Soviet Union. And now as we are talking right now, Joe, you and I, the Azari military has just launched a new invasion with the presumed goal, with the stated goal really of retaking this entire region and potentially the goal of engaging the Armenian military in a wider formal way, right, that's at least the way the Azaris have discussed it. The Armenian military, the Armenian government has said like, this is not you know,

Artsak is not Armenia. This is not like our troops and stuff on the ground here. But the Azaris have basically just said, like, we are disabling Armenian military equipment.

the Lashing Corridor. And yeah, according to the treaty it was supposed to be maintained by Russian peacekeepers, but it never was, and specifically, since December of twenty twenty two, Karbak has been completely cut off by the Azarian Russian

military and is effectively being starved out. So it's been you know, quite a long time, and we knew, like everybody knew the war was going to come again, but we kind of assumed it was gonna be in like twenty twenty five, when the Russians are mandated to leave, but st yesterday, you know, it s already yesterday.

was of course helping Karabak with volunteers, soldiers, military supplies, everything. Sure, this time, they can't. It's completely cut off, and that this is not a war of any kind of near peer powers. The local Karabak defense force, called the Artsak Defense Army, is a self defense group. They have some heavy equipment, but the vast majority of it was destroyed twenty twenty. So this is, you know, effectively like a local gun club trying to fight this army.

you know, the government must collapse. You know they only going to like this is going quote unquote until the end, until they see a white flag from stepanik Hert. So this is because now if they don't do that, they can't spin it as a victory, right right, And since December, the Lashing corridor has been shut for everybody. People couldn't leave, people who live in Karbak, who are in our media

for like school or whatever, couldn't go back. And now suddenly, yesterday when the war started again, they are saying there's a humanitarian corridor through the through Lachen. So the goals are very very clear here and we know from their conduct in twenty twenty government propaganda, just the general attitude of the Azari government towards Armenians, which is they don't they can't exist here, like this is a liquidation of the open air concentration camp that they've created.

you name it. Everybody's mad at everybody. So there was different protests yesterday there was you know, fuck Russia protest, there was fuck Nikol Pashnian, who's our prime minister protest. There was a combination of the two protests. They all kind of met in the middle. There is some fighting with the police. I heard reports that someone quite a

few people tried to break into government buildings. That all seemed to have cooled off by that because I went down to the area where there was protesting and I didn't see any of that, but it seemed to have also started up again after I left. But again, it's only day one. People's anger is only going to get worse as the situation in Karabak gets worse. Yeah, you know, the fall of Karabak when Stapana karat If, and when that occurs, I have a hard time believing that the

current government here in Armenia will survive. They'll either resign before stouts, you know, an unfortunate third option might happen, especially with the messaging coming from Russia where they're blaming Armenia and specifically the Prime Minister for all of this. Because since September of last year, Armenia has been doing decent diplomacy in turning towards the West. There's American soldiers in the Republic of Armenia right now for training. We've

sent supplies to Ukraine. We've all but left the CSTO, which is like Russia's shitty version of NATO. Yeah, so this is not very functional, right, Like yeah, yeah, I mean this is a fact. I mean this is a green lit, punitive expedition on Russia's behalf effected.

supplies here and they're non military supplies but humanitarian supplies. Yeah, this gets spun in the brain dead infosphere as it being like another Russian ally that being Armenia is being invaded or you know, people equate Kara Bak to Crimea and Ukraine's war goals, and since Azerbaijan is, you know, a pr ally of Ukraine and supplying the E you with gas and supplying you with Russian gas as well, it gets spun as like people are cheering for Azerbaijan,

which is is absolutely baffling to me. Like it I wish I could say I'm confused or surprised, but like when you treat war like it's a team sport you want to play on your favorite football jersey or whatever. Yeah,

this is how it goes. When you know, Karabak declared independence from Azerbaijan during that the Azeri Soviet Socialist Republic when that was legal to do, and the state that they have created is one of the most free in the region, whereas Azerbaijan, according to like the Freedom Index is one point above the Taliban controlled Afghan state at the moment. Yeah, so like this, this is not a plan. This is not like a liberation. A dictator cannot be a liberator.

They're you know, every single anti Asari piece that gets published in any media, and you can use the term anti Asari to mean like literally anything is funded by the like the Armenian lobbying group, which I mean any Jewish conspiracy theory that we all know and hear about constantly, and Azurebaijan. You just replace Jewish people with Armenians, and

it's a it's functionally the same thing. So you know, we're this global superpower with our tendrils and everything, but also we're weak and pitifol and need to be destroyed. It's it's kind of messaging that we're used to hearing for like classic fascist propaganda, and you know that as far as like why they're doing it now is because they've so ensconced themselves in the European good graces and over the last little bit they know nobody could. Nobody's

going to stop them. The EU literally can't, and the United States, I mean, they're an outside player when it comes to European politics, at least internal politics.

like that's kind of where it all results from. Right, That's at least that's my understanding of it.

Azaria Soviet Socialist Republic. And during the entire period of the Soviet Union, which you know, a lot of people like to frame as this, there's no problems in the Soviet Union control these areas, which is you know, magical thinking. There were protests by the Armenian populace, right, there was

a lot of protests during the eighties. You have what's called the Karabak movement wanted either a Karabak to become its own Soviet Socialist Republic or b to be given to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and away from these areas, and failing that, they declared independence, which was within their rights under the Soviet constitution, which did exist, I mean, it was largely fluid and completely ignored as we see today, and that's what that triggered a lot of different programs

between a Zaris against the Armenian population within Azerbaijan, and Armenians did the same thing here as well. But that started the First War, which ended with Armenia winning and Artsak becoming a de facto independent republic not recognized by anybody to include Armenia, and it's I mean.

support us. And you know, like there's this concept of like ethics and morals from superpowers, whether it be you know, the bastion of democracy in the United States or this concept of European ethics and morals in the EU, Like that's all propaganda v aprior where it's not real. If your country is being helped by any of these countries, it's because it benefits the countries that are helping you geopolitically.

It's not because of they they support whatever it is that you're doing, you know that, And because the Republic of Armenia itself is kind of in the situation as well. But the people of art SoC are certainly in this situation.

years now they want to conquer. The Armenian military is not a superpower by any stretch of the imagination, and since we are not connected to Artsock in any feasible way, it would require a massive counter offensive to just relieve Stapanak Heart from the current siege. Right, there's a reason why it didn't happen when they were being starved. So

Armenia lacks the ability to stop this. However, there's multiple countries in the world, mostly France and the United States, that could end this in five seconds if they truly wanted to.

in this petro diplomacy since Russia invaded Ukraine. The United States has no functional sanctioning powers over Asgerbajan that could really affect them. And not to mention, as we've seen since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, sanctions don't stop wars.

into Armenia. Which is why we're kind of worried of what happens next here because if Azerbaijan does complete the conquest of stapanic Herit, which unless someone gets involved, they will, they need to be like I need to be practical about these things, and once that happens, Russia won't have the sort of damicles hanging over the Republic of Armenia's

head anymore. So it does make it does make us wonder like and everybody is very very stupid if they Thinkbaijan stops with art suck right that in September of last year when I was on your show, they were invading the Republic of Armenia. They were not invading Karabaker arts. They were invading the Republic of Armenia. And their stated goals have not changed. The only thing that would happen is that this thorn in their side over the last

thirty years would not be there anymore. They would have no impediments at all within what is considered their own borders. They could focus everything on the Republic of Armenia. So people who believe that this ends in stapanic Hert like You'll only have to go back to this time last year to see that is not the case. The only thing that's going to happen is maybe they'll take a little bit of time. The war is coming to Armenia.

This massacre will come across our borders. It's only a matter of is it one year, two years, three years? That that's the only thing. So without some kind of immediate intervention, this slaughter will continue until they're defeated. That you don't negotiate with people who want to murder you. It's impossible.

And part of why is that there's this understanding by a lot of these regional powers that like, well, if I kicked the fucking door and nobody's coming after.

I mean, we're still technically legal members of that alliance, but we have no representation in anymore. We don't take part in trainings, we don't go to meetings. We're functionally out of it, and we certainly will be after this,

I believe. But I mean as an example of how you can't really negotiate with someone with this kind of ideology in so far as from this position, like I'm not saying that like this only ends with international peacekeepers hoisting a flag over Blak Whuy with this kind of power discrepancy that the Azaria government has said that they will negotiate with the government in Stepankert in Karabak once

they dissolve and lay down all their weapons. So once you completely disarm and get rid of all of the ways you can defend yourself from the obvious slaughter that's coming your way. Then we'll talk. Is that really a way? Is that a way of any negotiations could ever happen? Like being realistic, of course it's not. The government of

kara Bak is the only thing. The government of Karabak and the small local self defense force is the only negotiating like little crumb that they have because it's it's stopping them from being murdered. And for people who think I'm being like I'm overreacting or something, look at how they treated that. Any Armenians villions that fell into their hands into the twenty twenty war. They cut off their ears, they cut off their fingers, they cut off their noses.

They fucking beheaded them. It was like watching Isis videos. But they're wearing multiicam and wearing fast helmets and they publish them proudly on the internet. They're not ashamed of this. You can only imagine what happens when a city of one hundred thousand people falls into their hands, and that is more so than nineteen forties.

And the thing is, you know, the joke is, every time someone is deeply concerned about something, you take a drink and then you don't fucking alcoholism, But you can't say, you know, we call for an immediate cease of the of the military offensive without an or or like or what or fucking what? Like what are you doing?

our Why are we involved in this? And it's like, well, because this is the thing that we said, like after one hundred something million people died, the idea that we all kind of came together with was, well, we should probably stop folks from doing some of the things that led to all of those terrible wars.

This conflict involves very recent events. Yeah, and it's it's tied to major geopolitical events happening in the world right now that whatever country that you're living in and listening to, your country is involved in.

saying that we did for Kosovo. Yes, yes, that's exactly what we need without without any kind of negotiations or debates like that is the only thing that will stop what is coming. It's not an if like and this is coming and hey online left people, you know, the Azaris are buy in Israeli arms. Like this is a situation in which, like we're not talking about we don't

need we don't need guys kicking indoors. We literally need dudes standing around to create a barrier by the sheer political fact of their existence, right, that's.

as well, but it's also theirs. It's if you want to think of it in that way, which I don't really like to do because it's it's dirt. But the real issue here is the people. The people's lives are like, it doesn't fucking matter who controls TOPONICRT at the end of the day, if people are allowed to live there and live their lives in dignity, in the way that they choose to live them. Yeah, but that's not going to happen if the fascist dictatorship's genocidal armies come storming through, right.

It's it's simply impossible. And that's one of the main reasons why Karabak Armenians and the Armenian State as well, has continuously said that Karabak can't exist within the frameworks of the Azari Republic because the Azari Republic is demonstrously anti Armenian. Like, for instance, if you have an Armenian surname like I do, you can't even go there. It doesn't even matter if you've even been to this country or not. Simply existing is enough to be denied entry,

Like it's it's not a place. I mean, if you want to see how they'll be treated, look how they treat their own fucking people. Yeah, it's like asking anyone to be liberated by the fucking forces of North Korea or Saudi Arabia or something. It's obscene, it's absurd. The only thing that like, and I'm not saying I support the government in Armenia as any as anybody who knows me. I don't support any government, but the only constant track they've had is we support their right for self determination,

as anybody should. And they voted in the eighties to be on their own, not to be part of Armenia, not to be part of Andrewijan, but to be the republic of art SoC because they're the only people who care about their own rights, their own dignity, and their own right to existence. That's all anybody should ever defend

is people's rights to do that. Yeah, and ever since, they've made a functioning state with free and fair elections, ministries that handle these things, ministries of health, ministries of defense, ministries of education. It's a functioning republic. It's not some statelet that barely functions. And the powers invading it don't only mean to destroy those the separatist power, they mean to destroy the people that live there. There's no room for them to exist in this country.

there's only one way to stop it. And you know, like I've said a million times before, I believe before on your show, Yep, the only thing that's allowing this to go on is the unwillingness of literally anybody to get involved. And there's a couple of quotes about that. Yeah, exactly. It's it's not a new concept.

this episode. That's because as we were recording, people have found out that SDG and E San Diego gast Electric were restricting access to one of the sites where migrants were in need of aid, and people were very concerned about that, so they were reaching out to James and Jacqueline and Pedro to ask for assistance and to me to let me know if I could get the word out.

That's why you can hear our phones going crazy, and I think it's good that it's in there in a sense because perhaps you can get a sense of how mad the last few weeks have been for everyone. Our phone's constantly be going off. I'm sure mine a lot less than James and Jacquelines and Pedros because people are overwhelmed and they need more help than we're able to give. So consider that background noise a blessing and I hope

you enjoyed the episode. Thanks. Hi everyone, It's me James today and I hear again to talk about the border today. I'm joined by some guests. I'm joined by James and Jacqueline from Border Kindness, who we've heard from before, and I'm also joined by Pedro Rias from the American Friends Service Committee. If you guys would like to introduce yourselves and explain the kind of role you play along the border, that'd be wonderful if we start with Pedro, because folks

haven't heard from him before. That would be great.

to follow this topic. Our work primarily focuses on border issues, and we have four components, one of which is documenting civil and human rights abuses that occur when contact goes awry between primarily federal immigration authorities with members of civil society, including migrants and border community residents. Documentation could be case evolving abuse of practices, abuse of policies, cases evolving abuse

of authority, and so on and so forth. We also do a lot of policy analysis and advocacy at the local level, at the state level, and at the federal level, trying to hold agencies accountable, making them more transparent, ensuring that there are oversight mechanisms and how they operate, and that's done in conjunction with several coalitions at the county wide level in San Diego, but also at the national level with the Southern Border Communities Coalition and other organizations as well.

the construction of two thirty foot border walls. And we also work directly with community members and providing information about what the rights are, how they can become and our leaders in their own communities, and how they can be active in straightening their communities and providing guidance to other people who might be in the same circumstances. So, in a nutshell, that's the work that we do.

community that's living in rural communities. So all that to say, when the border appeared to be having one of its episodes of chaos, what's happened in the last couple of weeks with folks being detained between the walls down in sanny Cidral and then folks being you know, just dumped out into the street at the transit centers if we've been seeing all over San Diego County. We sort of held off because we knew this was going to happen

in Hakuma. It was kind of one of those sixth sense kind of things, like when you see the writing on the wall, and it was like only a matter of time before people ended up pushed into rural San Diego County, and unfortunately that has been the case. So we were actually out in the desert doing a water drop and heard that that in fact had occurred and there were hundreds.

like in massive numbers this last couple of weeks. So Preps we could start with explaining her Cumba, and then Pedro can take on explaining the other two because I know he's been responding to those. So can you just tell us, like what you saw, the number of people, the conditions in which they're being held, that kind of stuff.

every day. There's a camp on the east side in Hokomba, there's a camp that's on the west side of Hokumba, and then there's a camp that's just outside Hokomba and Boulevard that seems to be the biggest camp right now. That camp is the largest one because it's kind of hidden.

You got to drive down from the main highway. You have to drive, you know, at least fifteen minutes, you know, down some dirt roads, back roads, you know, past ranches and stuff like that to get to that open air camp, where the other ones, especially like we saw in May, were more like wide open, closer to the towns, closer

to visibility, closer to highway access. And so what we've noticed is that speaking with the locals and seeing for ourselves that every day the camps that are more visible are having less people coming in and they're being taken

out faster. And so that part I think is, you know, it could be done for for a multitude of reasons, but the camp that's hidden and out of you is the one that seems kind of strategic and seems calculated on a greater level that as people are being loaded up on vans or buses to be taken out for processing, almost the same amount of people gets walked in to that camp from the actual border by border patrol. So it it's definitely an odd situation that's going on there.

It seems definitely calculated orchestrated and something that you know, we feel that will be going on for quite a while.

migrants coming in on foot. Right around there's a gap in the fence.

anything like that. Those things have all been organized at a community level by a variety of organizations such as ours that's comprised of just regular people. So it's the government's task of managing a humanitarian crisis.

It's getting really cold, so people are distributing warm clothing, diapers, formula, anything that people need is being provided by the community.

back in May. There was an incident where Border Patrol decided to move all the single adult men and walk them, march them essentially about a mile up a hill and then up another hill to get to Spooners Mesa. After some advocacy last week, we convinced Border Patrol to allow two of us to go up there to feed about anywhere between three hundred and eighty and four hundred men, and it took us over an hour. About an hour, fifteen minutes to feed all of the men. Fortunately, we

just barely had enough food for all of them. This was in the evening and as we were driving in and driving out, all we could see was milar blankets strown about, and that's all that was up there. And these were the men that were these milar blankets down

in Whiskey eight. How community members and organizations have arranged the solidarity support stations have been in four set So you have the charging station, you have the medical supplies and other items station, then you have the food station, and then the water station. And so we tried to maintain the medical supplies. The food station is available only when we have enough food to provide substenance to everyone there.

We don't want to create a situation where we only serve half of the people or a quarter of the people, and then the other people go hungry. And mind you, it's important to point out that when people arrive there, they are hungry, they are thirsty. Some of them have rapes because they scale the primary border barrier and injure themselves. Others are wet because they've walked through the canal to

get to that location. I've also witnessed on several locations where a border patrol will tell people who are injured to walk towards our location because they tell them that

that's where we will provide them with medical care. Now, I think it's important to mention that under customers and a Border Protection which is a parent agency of the Border Patrol, under their national standards for how they are supposed to transform, escort, detain, and search people under their custody, they are obligated to feed, to provide water, to provide shelter, to treat medical urgencies. Any time that individuals are under

their custody. There is some back and forth. Orbitrol locally will say that individuals are not under their custody until they are being transported, even though they will provide them with a wristband or bracelet in some cases, tell them to remove their shoelaces, direct them to where they should be walking y'all at them when they're not forming in

lines in order to be picked up. Sometimes throw a fit and will not pick people up even though they're supposed to be there to do that because people are not in lines as quickly as it should be. All of this to several of our organizations indicate that border patrol at some to some degree has people under their custody and as such is violating these national standards because

it's not meeting their needs at any level. Besides maybe the bottle of water might provide and the one or two granola bars they provide per day, if even that, yeah.

States at this time. So yeah, it's just not those people are like, there's lots of evidence that they're being detained, even if they say they're not. What then happens to those people? They We've all seen it, right, These vans pull up. They generally process people in a certain order, which which is to take unaccompanied miners and women who are alone with children, and then families and then single adults. What happens to them once they get on that van?

They will be given a court date when they should show up, and that court date the court location depends on where their final destination will be. Technically, Mexicans can only be detained for forty eight hours. Non Mexicans can

only be detained no more than seventy two hours. So within that detention period, they then are being transported to one of four locations in San die County, two of which are in San Diego, the Santi Zeru Transit Center in the Iris Transit Center, one in Oceanside, and the

other in Alcohol. And so we're seeing the majority of the people being transported to science Ero and to IRIS, and that's where colleagues with other sister organizations are leading the charge to try to support them with assisting and charging phones, providing food, clothing, getting them to the airport, getting them transportation, getting them housing, and as much as limited as that's possible, trying to connect them with lost

family members. Because families have been separated, there are adult children eighteen nineteen who also are trying to figure out where their family members are. And in some cases, as a conversation I had with them, man from Venezuela, he had no idea what city he was at either, though he was in San Diego, and so trying to make that type of arrangement and clarification is always challenging as well.

sort of the community in general. And perhaps we can talk about like, because the scale of support that's been provided by the community is extremely impressive, and given how many people have already come through this sort of not detention detention system, but perhaps both of you could talk about like the support you've been able to provide and how people who are not in San Diego can help you continue to provide that support.

very rugged desert terrain. There is no shade in these areas, so people are making sort of like makeshift shelters, but there is nothing shielding them from the sun, which is really unrelenting all day and it gets up to nineties. So we've been providing tarps, pop ups that sort of thing so people are not becoming sick from overexposure. We're

providing hygiene items, we're providing just basic needs. And that gets incredibly expensive because if it was a static situation, such as in May when there was eighteen hundred to two thousand people, that was a huge undertaking that also took a lot of community collaboration to meet the needs of so many people. But this time around, as James says, it's like a revolving door of hundreds and hundreds of people.

So it's taking hundreds and hundreds while at any given time there may be only and I say only two to three hundred people, it doesn't mean that to only two to three hundred people needed to be fed that day. It's that you know, that is who is there at that time. And when people arrive, as bethro said, like they haven't eaten in days. We talked to people that said that they took two days to walk to Hakumba.

So if they arrived to Tijuana without much food in their belly and then they're having to walk for two days, they're arriving starving and begging for food and not being provided with absolutely anything. So if it wasn't for all of the organizations that are showing up and taking sort of shifts to feed people, there would be nothing for them. And we have absolutely no idea how long this is going to go on. It could be over today, it could go on for months year. I mean, we really

don't know what to expect. And organizations are being relied on to provide, you know, life sustaining care for people, but we're not being communicated with from border patrol as to basically anything, what the outlook is, what the numbers are, what the updates of how the situation is going to evolve. So every day is a surprise and we need to have resources to be able to meet the needs of that day. It's incredibly like consuming of every resource including time and gas is six dollars a gallon.

I expect. So the community has obviously come together in support, but then it's like, well, how do we manage this when we don't we can't forecast what's going on, so it's tough. It's definitely tough. We need sustained support.

It's cruel, it's on purpose. People you know, are are the ponds and whatever, you know, game is being played and it's cruel, and that's you know, we're doing what we can to try to offset that as much as possible, but cruelty is definitely they're all across the border.

a lady breastfeeding in the desert on Sunday night. I've seen grandparents, I've seen people who are eight months pregnant little children like these aren't like people who have done anything wrong, and they just for whatever reason they come here, it doesn't really matter. They don't deserve to be treated

like that. And like James said, it's something of an induced Like I've been to natural disasters all over the world and reported on those and seen those, and I've been to refugee camps all over the world, but like it's some big of a unique to the US problem that our federal government can click its fingers and induce a humanitarian crisis and then like hold its hands up

in the air and say we can't help you. Like that, Like aside from dictatorial regimes in places I've reported in like the people don't governments don't do that very often, and like James said, it's these people who paid the price,

it's not us for the most part. Pedro, could you maybe explain a little bit of how American French Service Committee has been able to respond and the resources you've used, and how you can help make this a little bit less painful for the people who are being held in between defenses.

And so the milar blankets were an indication to us that people were there for probably longer than four hours, and so we kept monitoring that, asking colleagues in Tijuana to inform us if they had seen any other groups like that, and off and on over the past month there were reports of that, and it wasn't until about two weeks ago that someone said that they were there

for a long period of time. So last last week we set up what we called an observation post at Whiskey eight so that we could determine for ourselves how long people were there, what sort of needs they might have, and how to respond whether to set up the solidarity support stations again, and quickly we determined that that's what we needed to do, so we call our colleagues from other organizations whenever set up up with that for instance,

has been extremely helpful and leading the charge in different places. The Appreciate Collective So Mutual Group also has been extremely important in having their people out there, and Friends of Friendship Park also has been important. So all these organizations that responded quickly and started to build from the experience that we had back in late spring setting up these

stations to charge phones. Phones our lifeline for people. And back in may Or Patrol threatened us and they said, if you want to keep feeding people, you can't be charging their phones. And so we said, well, we're going to have to keep charging phones because people need them. And unfortunately Borbtoal backed off then and now it's part of what we do right. We charge phones and it's how people are able to communicate with their loved ones,

especially if they've been separated. Feeding people, it's just as much as we're able to, even if it's just a sandwich, even if it's a warm meal that we're able to get through the bars or the secondary border barrier, that could mean the difference between someone staying healthy or someone

becoming seriously ill. Bandaging up small cuts could relieve someone from getting an infection, identifying when medical emergencies pop up, so an eight month pregnant person who is suddenly having labor pains and having a needing to call nine to one one, for instance, or insisting with porbatrol that the one month old child cannot remain overnight in between border walls, and just insisting and insisting and insisting, insisting that the

two porter parties that they have there need to be serviced, for instance. And so all of this advocacy is happening at the same time that our colleagues and allies are also feeding people, and the constant communication with different elected officials pushing on them to take charge and to respond has been one of the different aspects of our response to what is a humanitarian disaster that has been slowly evolving, I would say over years and years, because human migration

isn't centered around humanitarian needs and human rights. It's been centered around enforcement, around militarization, around cruel deterrence, as James was talking about, which creates conditions where people are led

to suffer. And that's what we're seeing right now, people suffering because of how this has been manufactured, how immigration has been dealt with, regardless of who's in the White House, over and over and over, and so now we're challenged to respond to these humanitarian needs in ways that are stretching our limits, but we're able to do it and hopefully lifting up the dignity of people that are placing under these terreble inhumane conditions.

on the ground. There is a responsibility I believe that the County of San Diego has to meet some of these challenging circumstances at the transit centers, they're bocking, I feel, and to the detriment of people who need these services and need the support. I believe the San Diego Police Department has been suggesting where people should be dropped off and not listening to folks on the ground about how the IRIS station should be central and not dividing the

drop offs between Irish and Sandy Seso for instance. So there's a lot of a lot of necessity for local government to be coordinating with state and federal governments and and that's lacking again to the detriment of people who are cut in the middle.

take on the responsibility of. And you know, you've seen county supervisors speak out against it, push them the blame. People are here, this is San Diego County, this is the United States. Someone needs to take care of, you know, the people here. That's that's the role of government. That's why people pay taxes for you know, for services, and services need to be provided for. You know, we pay taxes so other people can get services as well, citizens

non citizens like that. To me, it seems so easy.

got twelve million dollars a mile. And like on the same day that the San Diego City Council found an amicus brief in this case of the Supreme Court to allow it to further criminalize and house people. We have all these resources and we're just throwing them, as Pedera said, enforcement and criminalization of the most marginalized people in our communities, rather than giving a thirsty personal bottle of water or like a little baby blanket. And yeah, it's really hard.

two in May. I think everyone had their like sort of doomsday op eds in the weeks beforehand, and then that that didn't actually happen in the way that it had been sort of like quote unquote experts who don't come to the border very often had predicted it would, and so folks turned up, especially at Whiskey eight, and did the sort of crisis story. But we haven't seen that this time.

that and they're like, oh good, it's been cleared. Because like, my family back home knows a lot of like really conservative folks Outland par Valley, and like even the most conservative people I knew back in May were like, oh my gosh, how could they have babies out there in the desert.

his heart medication for a week. Like those kind of situations are occurring still, while the report and the public perception is like, ohhkum has been cleared, it's all good. So unless somebody is like already involved, they're generally not hearing about it.

hopefully they'll want to support. So how can people do that? Like, what what resource? Like what I guess the concrete actions can they take? Where can they give you money? How can they send you supplies if they want to volunteer in there in the county, how can they do that? And what kind of volunteers are most needed?

are all communicated really clearly. So the organization very amazingly agreed to help us with that task of screening volunteers. So people, if they are wanting to do so and come out to Hakumba, to email volunteer at Ala dot org.

and so that's important. I think going through those channels. If you you know the folks that are leading the work at the transit centers, check in with them first. But then there are other things that could be done. The other day, someone showed up with twenty boxes of pizza, you know, a very useful, easy way to support connecting with people and finding out what the needs are. That's

another way. If if you would rather purchase the tarps yourselves, for instance, do that and then we can pick them up we can find out how to meet and pick up those items. If you want to donate. There are multiple organizations doing this work. I believe someone was working on a list to produce for us. Going on the website AFC dot org and being sure that you find our locations San Diego, so that our program then receives

that donation directly. If the program goes to the overall a f C, we won't see it.

safe and that that's why that's happening. So yeah, thank thank you very much for this. We'll keep covering it obviously, and I really hope people can find some resources to donate because it's been very taxing financially and all these groups and in our community generally. Is there anything else you guys would like to share before we finish up?

And it's really important for people who aren't as versed in all of this to stay aware of that that everybody who is presenting for asylum has a legal right to do so.