Alzone Media.
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
All right. It is the official it could happen here predictions episode, And to start off here at Gear has some of our wins and some of our losses from last year's That's right.
I took a peek back at our predictions of the past to see how correct we are. We got all of them right, Great job, folks, Let's continue on. No, I will say, obviously the big dub for the year goes to Sophie, who said that Kissinger would die.
Yeah, you got that one, said that.
Good.
Thank you for reminding me that I'm a genius.
Wow.
We all said to know, there's no chance he's too psychically powerful, but you maintained, and it turns out all we needed was a little hope.
That's all we needed.
Wow, I really should use these powers. I mean, I don't know.
You're going to take out next Yeah.
We'll get there.
Who your prediction might death prediction for us?
Just for funzies, We once had a side note we once had back in the beginning times when we actually went to an office. God at at at I heard we once had a prediction of when George H. H W.
Bush was going to die and I was also right.
So oh, okay, well, Sophie, now you have to be very careful, which one guess, very careful.
Yeah, I've been watching hard. I've been watching the show You, which is primarily about how being a serial killer is a great idea, and I feel I feel whyting like White Woman was that so that I can protect myself in case Sophie is secretly murdering people, which would just two in a row, two in a row. That's all I'm gonna say.
If I was, it would be in your honor.
So so let's talk about two things Robert got wrong Robert. Robert said that there was a decent chance, which I think there was, but it just didn't happen that Nick Fuentes and Kanye West would die together in under some mysterious circus.
I still feel like that favor, so I think we I still think we got a shot. I honestly I think so too. But it didn't happen last year.
The other thing Robert predicted is that there would be a SKA total supremacy that obviously didn't happen.
That that happened. I'm sorry that happened. Did you miss me informing Cody Johnston about the Mighty Mighty Bosstones George Floyd album this year?
Because I did, and it was you, unfortunately did And if you have.
A one of the worst things to say happened to human.
Gun, Yes, please continue.
It's Mia predicted that there would be kind of a new sort of like DeSantis style Republican challenger approaching. I think Ramswami perfectly fits the sort of thing that Mea was talking about, and this is the kind of new figure that enters politics.
But he also kind of gives Andrew Yang in a way as well.
Sure sure, sure, yeah, yeah, he's he's the fascist Andrew Yang.
He's fascist Andrew Yang, and he's insufferable. He's in fucking insufferable. Yeah yeah, massive, so fucking insufferable.
Mia also predicted that Mike Pence would try to run for president. The rest of us disagreed and was Nea was proving, Yeah, that was easy.
For fifty percent on that. I don't know how much we'd say he really ran for president.
He jogged at most, and then he realized the only person that would vote for him was mother.
And then he was.
Like, I don't think she would. Yeah, I think she'll say she will, but she's gonna she's gonna pull the lever for Trump at the end of the day.
Yeah they are.
Let's talk about some deaths. Mia said that Nom Chansky would die. Sharen said Joe Biden would die. I think although they didn't physically.
Die, the last.
Vestige of their like respectability basically count right. Basically they torpedoed all the the last bit of like uh respect they had.
For for for people who would typically be aligned with them.
Roughly, Biden has just been he's looked like he's on death death's door for forever.
I similarly thought that Stephen Crowder was gonna die and instead he just he just kind of metaphorically died because he made up a series of horrible business decisions and now is ostracized from much of the online right, So that's cool.
Now.
The one that Sophie's upset about is that she she wanted Crypto dot Com to lose the name of the arena instead instead the Miami Instead, the Miami Heat Arena is no longer called the FTX Arena. I'm happy about that as well. Crypto dot Com is still holding strong. So so there we go, and I.
Take that very personally and it is Staple Center, Thank you so much.
Now, I will say that's I feel like I'm going to roll that prediction in the next year. Let's run death prediction as well.
James James said that there'd be more immigration bullshit, which obviously happened, as James has been covering that most of this last year. Also, James said that Twitter would die, which is true because it's no longer Twitter.
It's no longer Twitter. Correct, It's just like it's just like how Henry Kissinger changed his name. So true.
Yeah, No, I will say the most impressive kind of niche prediction, this is the last one, came from Sharen oh Sharene said that there would be the return of the flip phone, and searches for flip phones were up fifteen thousand percent last year among jung z and millennials, and foldable phones sold forty four percent more compared to twenty twenty two. So three really was the return of the flip phone. So there we go.
I think it's going to continue because of what's happening, it will go and all the tension that's going on over there. I think we're going to continue seeing a switch away from iPhones.
So that's that's proof of why we are all completely trustworthy and never wal wrongs.
And what were you wrong about? Garrison?
Oh yeah, you really skipped over your bit, Garrison. Oh, I.
Thought that Harry Styles would would there'd be some damning information that come out and he would just plummet.
Unfortunately that didn't happen.
The Styles is still is still hanging in there, so Styling here's to hopin.
Hey, So Sophie's favorite musician, not.
My favorite musician, but it puts on a good show.
All right, all right. Predictions for this next year, Oh wait, I I need to take one.
I need to take one other l which is that I significantly overestimated my countrymen, and I thought that we'd see another wave of revolts from people dying from COVID in China and we didn't.
I don't know why country would suck ass like everyone else. Yeah, that's because that's because COVID is not real.
All right, Well, let's uh, let's let's blaze past that one and.
When we get back, when we get back from this uh this break, we're gonna we're gonna start going through some predictions.
And we are back.
Yeah, So that's why I just don't really think the vaccines were it.
So twenty twenty four is in a election year, obviously, so there will be some election related predictions. Let's do I don't want to immediately just go to like who's gonna win. Let's do some V picks. Yeah, let's let's do some VP picks because this is this is gonna be a Joe Biden versus Trump race, right like, unless one of them drops dead before November.
Ideally murder suicide. That's that's my hope for them for once. I don't disagree with Robert, But.
Do we think that Kamala Harris is gonna it's gonna it's gonna stick in? Uh, the the Democrat VP spots.
Got so it's hard to imagine she wouldn't. She's a dog ship candidate, Like, yeah, their best The best person I think they could run is Witmer. Like if i'm if I'm like war gaming the Democratic Party trying to give him the best shot. It's throwing Witmer in.
But Joe Biden at least make a Really Joe, it's gonna he's gonna stick. He's gonna stick with Kamala for sure.
Yes, yeah, which is unfortunate because.
There's bet definitely better that. It's like, definitely, I wouldn't say better. There's definitely like more strategic people that But I mean, if we were going by strategy, we wouldn't the Democrat. I mean, yeah, it wouldn't. It wouldn't be Biden Trump again, if we were going by what's best for the country.
Sure.
As for Trump, last year, I said that I think herschel Walker could be a potential of VP ban, which I think is still true, but there's not as not as much as it used to be.
Trump Trump would become the third organization to become completely screwed by picking herschel Walker, like three executive organizations have bet everything on herschel Walker had lost.
That's the biggest thing is that is that Trump doesn't like losers and herschel Walker is kind of only ever lost. Now, obviously we've talked about this before. The Ramaswami's is maybe a potential, but he could be too loud for Trump. He could kind of steal the spotlight.
He's not the attention. Okay, does each person want to yea, does each person want to go around? Let's go around the horn? So, so, Garrison, who is your pick?
I mean, I was mostly tossing between Favec and herschel Walker, but I it's I'm not confident in either of those. But there's there's no other names that really come to mind, because most of the other people on the debate stage either were too hostile to Trump or just didn't seem like people Trump would really get behind.
M Yeah, I think Bobby Kennedy, I think you could actually do it.
I think Okay, Admittedly, admittedly, my biggest reason for thinking this is not actual political analysis is.
That we live in the dumbest of all possible world. Dumbest world is Bobby Kennedy.
That is that that is true, This is this is the dumbest timeline.
Yeah, maybe Nicky Haley if he can overcome.
Just like, yeah, but with Haley, Hailey's been kind of not like attacking Trump fully, but she has not been super pro Trump on this stage. I think she may have alienated him too much. I was also thinking, like, you know, who's like, uh a more like docile woman that Trump would want to run beside.
But yeah, but Nick Haley has has the reach that I think she'd smart him. And like everyone is against every candidate until they're picked for fucking VP.
Yeah, I think.
I think that there's there's several different people that he could pick. He could pick uh, Carrie Lake, he could pick Sarah Huckabee Sanders, he could pick oh man, what is that governor's name, Christine Yes, I think thank you, thank you. He could pick Christine. No. But like there's if he's gonna go woman, he's gonna go I think one of those three because I think he's already bad mouth.
He's already bad mouthed Nikki Hayley enough. But I think I think what's what people are forgetting is he might just pick somebody that he knows won't turn on him.
He might just pick his fucking daughter.
Like I was gonna say, I was gonna say actually his I mean he might, he might. He might pick Jared Kushner, the cush bomb.
Yeah, let's get that. That's the fucking election I want. Robert, Do you have a pick? I mean, I suspect he's that that Biden and fucking Harris are going to run. Although you know, again, if I'm talking about who I think actually would be the smart pick for the dims, it's Whitmer and or Andy Basheer, who's the Democratic governor of uh Kentucky. Super popular, like really good at talking to kind of working class voters, has been successful in
a red state. We're in this weird situation where almost anyone kind of assides Kamala Harris who were to run against Trump would win easily. And if Trump were to be replaced by like Nicky Hayley, she would just absolutely pants Biden. This is what all of the data shows at the moment. So we're in this really odd moment of like we have. It's like it's the opposite of the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object. It's like the
very mobile object meeting the very light force. They're both just sort of sliding around the room.
Coughing baby versus coughing baby.
Yeah. Yeah, it's two babies with tuberculosis in a steel cage while Joe Rogan narrates the fight, which I would watch a country. So I don't know. I don't know who the fuck Trump is going to pick. Uh yeah, probably probably his daughter Jacob. He might you know, I wouldn't be I wouldn't be wildly shocked if he were to go with christ what's her name? She ran as a Democrat last time.
But I did think about that too.
She's sucking mental now, she's she's been out of her mind. I think shocked.
I think that she's a regular Fox News contributor.
Yeah, I think he doesn't want someone who is like.
He hates Fox News now Theolarity until they avaked him.
He needs unpopular enough that I think Trump might see him as a loser. Tolci's not a loser. She's also not a threat to him being in the spotlight, and he he might decide to roll those bones. Yeah, I did think about that.
All right, do we do we want to switch over to another category?
Gear? Sure?
Does anybody have a general prediction that they would like to share?
Sure? I think a daily wire host is gonna.
Have something funny happen to them, any anything related to based on how much like there's gonna be probably a whole bunch of rallies happening in twenty twenty four in a leading to the election, I think there's can be a lot more on the ground stuff that than there was in twenty twenty three. I think animosity has only really risen these past three years, and I think that we could see the return of pieing as a as a as a widespread tactic.
God God from your mouth to God's er scar.
So you can you can put that one together, all.
Right, I'll go my prediction as a two part and it falls under the Kim ye Oh my first My first prediction is that Kanye people are going to forget. People are going to forget he's going to put out a new album. Uh, and people because he's already started to like do the thing that Kanye does where he plays plays an album at a random club and or plays a listening party event. And yeah, people are going
to forget He's gonna He's gonna do that. And then Kim has been hanging out with Ivanka a lot, and she is almost in law school, and I think she is going to have some kind of a feeler into the.
Field of politics this year. Oh my god, what if she's VP.
I actually that thought actually did go through my brain.
But I don't think.
I don't think she's there yet.
But we are not ready.
We are not ready for a Trump Kardashian ticket. I'm sorry, I am moving. I am moving back to Canada. That's simply not happening.
The reality TV ticket would be, you know, just so America of us.
This is then.
Trump would have technologed the Armenian genocide, would make relations with Turkey very difficult.
That was she would and vice presidency would be very good for our media. It would for the goods, it would be amazing.
But like, but like, since since Trump's been out of office, Ivanka kind of went underground, and you know, most people have not been seen with her. And in the last couple of months, she has been photographed with Kim. Kim has posted her. They've been doing things together, they've been coordinating outfits. It's yeah, and so I think we might see some kind of thing between the two of them there or Kim is going to start making her way
into a political career of some kind. Yeah, although I do think that not you know, some of the work that she's done helping getting innocent folks out out of prison has been pretty dupe. I will say now that is my prediction the kimyer.
I hate this country.
I think we probably will go back. We just did this episode spoiler. We're recording in twenty thirty three. I predict that by this time next year we will probably go back to something approaching title forty two, which will be terrible given that, like as Robert said, kind of we're seeing increased conflicts all over the world. People are coming here, they won't be able to that will have massively destabilizing an influence on Mexico as it did last time,
an impact on Mexico. I'm also really what my concern prediction this year is violence against migrants in places where they're extremely vulnerable as we go through the election cycle, which will never to be demonize them from both fucking parties. So that's become a really big especially with this stupid practice of bussing people across the country and then dumping them onto the streets like that.
That's my big concern for twenty four Yeah, uh, you know what, fuck it?
I can be wrong, all right, So my this is my this is my my, a thing that I've been waiting for to happen. That's gonna be one of the just most one of the worst things that's gonna happen. Eventually, at some point this is gonna happen. We're going to get an attempt by the Republicans to seriously come after interracial marriage, and it is going to form the most insane political coalitions you have ever heard of in your
entire life. It is going to be like this nightmare word coalition of just like the open white supremacists, the like Asian MRA people, a bunch of like you're gonna see a bunch of these completely deranged, like career like nom like nominally left wing Korean at no nationalist groups. I you're gonna see like the like Andrew Tate people. There's gonna be this. It's gonna to have this this
just absolute nightmare coalition behind it. It probably won't work, but it is going to be one of the worst things. And I don't know if I I hope it doesn't happen next year, but I think I think the election year someone could actually decide that this is going to be the time they're going to try and do it.
That.
That is the sort of shit that I when I think about, like what could upset the election in Joe Biden's favor, it would be the Republicans launching a crusade like that and like too hard, too fast, yeah, and on something that like everyone up until the moment it happens, would assume was just not up for debate, right, Like, I don't know it might happen if they let go after gay marriage, but everyone's kind of braced for that.
If they were if they were to launch a crusade against interracial marriage, Yeah, that is the kind of thing that might might just sink them. Everyone might just go, well, I guess we have to u for Biden again because this is just out of its mind.
I mean, one thing that Republicans have been talking more about, and I think it's maybe possible that there'll be one or two states that that actually moves on this is abolishing no fault divorce. I think that is something that could happen in like one or two red states this year. I don't know how much that would actually impact national elections, but that is something I think the Republicans are starting to focus more on.
Specifically like Republican media influencers, largely because they all have had their wives leave them.
Chariny Well, yeah, I do think that flip phones are going to continue being.
Popular, especially dumbling down.
No.
I mean, I'm first of all, I was right. Second of all, I have a couple ones I hope aren't true, but I think they will be.
Uh.
I have a feeling that and I think there's gonna be something similar to the Muslim band but in specific like about Palaesi in Israel. I think that there's going to be something scary that targets and entire people that I don't want to be true, but it just feels like we're we're going up that route.
So I feel like there's gonna I have.
I have a thing about what that's going to be. I think I think what's going to be. And this is something we've been seeing in Florida. There's going to be a giant push to ban Chinese citizens and mooting property because this is this is already happening in Florida. There's there's been this whole and like like like Florida's right now in the process of doing this thing where they're trying to prevent people who spent like one year
in uh in China from like being a universities. I think it's going to be this giant like they're they're they're going to do one of these like Chinese people can own property things.
Yeah, I didn't know that. That's really unsettling.
They're closer than you would sink to already doing a version of a Muslim band not targeting Palestine.
But well and Trump has promised in countries that's.
What I mean, that's it happened before, Like why wouldn't it happen again. It just feels really unsettling that it's that's the possibility of it happening again.
Well, and Trump has promised that if he wins again, where he's moving straight to deportation of Muslims, Like, I think we will like that that he's he said that that's what we're gonna do.
I also think that there's going to be an uproar about a historical figure who is white being played by a black person. Another another one of those.
Yeah, I mean that's like every week already, it's already starting. Charine, you are correct, because next year what Denzel is going to be planning playing Hannibal Barka in a movie about the Second Punic War, which any person who is not out of their mind is like, that's inspired. He's the possible person playing that guy. But it's going to piss off a bunch of people, even though even James.
But we're the one who listened to that James Bond podcast, right.
Kill James Bond the name of the podcast. Yeah, okay, I just gotta say this, tea girl, James Bond. It would set the world on fire. It would be the funniest thing that's ever happened.
Yes, do it? God?
Yeah, yeah that way. Yeah, the Civil Wolf will begin because of trans James Bond.
So true, so true. I see. I take a different tact, which is that we should find the most Cajun man alive and finally give the people what they want, which is Cajun James Bond. I mean that would also go hard, like James Bond making a like instead of instead of a Martini shaken not stir, and he likes a nice ETU fe like, come on, let's do it, let's let's be heroes.
I I know we wanted to close with the with the with the death segment. I think because of Kissinger, we already took so many dubs there that I one thing that is on my mind is surely it's possible there'll be more kind of protests pop the mobilizations like
this summer before the election. But I'm more interested in what's gonna happen after the election, because no matter who wins, which either I already don't have a strong feeling one way or another, there's potentials for Obviously, if Trump wins, I think they'll be.
Massive another January sixth type event.
If pussy hats are gonna come back. If Trump wins, there will be win that's my prediction. They'll be like probably at least two strong weeks of intense rioting across the country. Yeah, I think we'll see more firm suppression than we did in twenty twenty in a lot of cases, which will be interesting because at this point Biden will still be technically in charge, but everyone's going to treat it like it's a Trump problem. On the other hand, if Biden wins, are we going to get stopped to
steal too? Or will a second or will or will a second defeat in a row almost be more of like a death kneel for this sort of like mega mobilization.
I get that.
I think that that's also a possibility that too low is in a row could just just like disillusion a whole bunch of people who otherwise kind of want to do a stop still too.
But it may just it may just not happen.
We literally can we can't. We can't. Let pick more, judge.
I'll tell you what will happen. Uh is because I I I am aware of the predictive programming that the Obamas have been putting out movie leave the world behind. We're gonna we're gonna have a military coup and they're going to use the Havana syndrome gun to make while they while they re you know, fix fix politics one way or the other. Don't know which side is going to do it, but somebody is going to drop the Havana syndrome gun.
Yeah. Let's let's take a quick break and come back with our death predictions. How does that sound? Everybody?
And we're back.
Robert, Who's gonna die? Who's gonna die? Robert Roberts.
Uh, you know what my pick this year is? Everybody, I think this is the year we all get it. I think, uh, somebody's gonna push push the button and finally, finally, the world's atomic stockpile will bring us all sweet release.
Okay, my my serious prediction. I think Putin will be assassinated.
That'd be cool, dude, I was going to say, I have a feeling that there's going to be some type of assassination that will like rock the world.
Yeah, decent chance of sod eats it. Still, I think, God, you know, the only reason I wouldn't say that, that's like the guy I most want to see die in the world and probably won't be until he does. But like aired one's up there. But asad just nobody, nobody else has that body count right now, no one can touch him. That's the thing. That's the thing. Babe's going for it. But still he's got to kill. I mean, like like that, I I just don't know he's he's
a survivor. Unfortunately, like you have to, you do kind of have to acknowledge that about him, Like homologous Vigor, he's pretty good at not getting killed so far. I just don't know whereas like Putin hasn't really been tested this way yet and I I do kind of think, yeah, I think that there's there's a chance. I don't know that. I think it's a high chance.
Sure, yeah, I mean I think every day we get close and closer to an Elon Musk overdose.
Well and all and our lives so so true.
Ja.
Yeah, my prediction is that with the will of God, Morrissey will finally fucking die and rid us if he's annoying bullshit, Oh my god, because.
Wow, not that that is not what I was expecting, sir.
Yeah, in Chilla, we will see the end of Morrissey this year. Friends, has everybody?
Has everybody gone? Because is it? Marturn? With my with my power?
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I really.
I'm not saying more Sea. I really thought about this, and it's time. It's time, David, Misscavage, It's fucking time.
Okay he said it first. Maybe from the person who predicted Kissinger. Yeah, and someone else. She picked someone else, right, who else did you get, Sophy?
I don't know who else did I get?
I I don't have anything you said something about when you were in the office. Oh, George H. W.
Bush, Oh yeah, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, we could be two for two here.
But but I think I think it's it's gonna be a misscavage. But you know that. But you know he'll just jump into another body.
But you know what, I wish. This is a wish that I don't think will come true. But uh, McConnell, I think.
I mean that it seems very likely he has a short circuit in front of a camera. Yeah we have he will die live on TV.
When we have seen the android flip on and off multiple times, I think it's very clear that one day he just won't boot back up.
What she could die too. I think I think McConnell's gonna die the way he lived with Fintanel that got snuck into his heroin. You know, that's that's just I think.
And on that note, Turtle bye bye, are we free? We're free?
Bye?
Welcome to It could happen here. It is twenty twenty four.
A lie, it's twenty twenty three.
Robert has just pissed everybody off for the last three minutes and fourteen seconds.
That listener Sophie is gaslighting you. It is until December when.
They listen to this, it'll be twenty twenty four.
You don't know that.
I do know that I'm in charge. Okay, moving on, We're going to do some listener questions today, but I just wanted to, you know, give a shout out to each member of our team. We have Shrien lani Enis, we have James Stout, we have Mio Wong, we have Garrison Davis, and we have Big Bobby E.
That's right, that's right.
And we're going to answer some listener questions. Thank you for those, to those who have submitted, anybody else want to say anything before I start?
Besides Robert, thank you about half of those. Yeah, you need to have a chat with yourselves. You know who you are. I don't think they do. I don't think our listeners are very self actualized. All right, Sophie take it away to each of you.
Any book recommendations for introduction to anarchist history and or theory.
If I may.
There's a book called Great Anarchists by Dog Section Press. It's written by Ruth Kinner, who's been on the podcast. It's got very short bios of different great anarchists. I think you will enjoy it. I think you can get the PDF for free online. I like to print them out and put them in as little libraries that rich people like to have in their neighborhoods and red pill them, black pilled them slowly that way. So yeah, great. Anarchists
by dog Section Press. From Dog Section Press by Ruth McKinnon.
My one is kind of it's slightly more specialized, but Anarchism in Latin America is a great book. Also, the cover is just gorgeous, so you'll have that around all the time. But yeah, it's really good.
It's great.
Basically it goes country by countries through Latin America and talk about athor anarchist movements and it's great.
Yeah, it's not it's sort of anarchists, I suppose. But I've been doing a lot of union stuff recently, so I've been thinking a lot about the concept of work, so I have kind of returned to this really good book I think put out titled work, very very basic look into sort of like anarchist almost like anti work theory. It's just a nice book to interrogate how the concept of like work in labor exists in your own head. I've appreciated that one through the years.
Sharin or Robert, either of you.
I second all those answers amazing answers everybody, Well, and.
I cannot read, so I'm gonna second those answers.
Robert recommends the book, isn't it like the No God's No Master's Akpress one with the Chaos Stars.
Yeah, that's got a lot of like old anarchist essays and shit, starting in like the eighteen hundreds, So if you're interested in that kind of history, you can read that, all right.
The next question, I think this will be different depending on the type of episode and like what show people are writing it for. But I got several different people asking, you know, how long it takes to research rate like an average episode, So we're talking like not talking like a series such as Garrison's Stop Coop City series, but like an average episode where you're talking about something and it's a scripted episode, but you're talking about something.
Sure, Yeah, I mean some episodes take months, if but an average episode usually if I'm putting it together, it might take me like four days from start to completion. Like I'm thinking of my of my DeSantis fast Wave episodes. Usually you'll have like maybe two days of more research and then two days of like well, then like one day of like scripting, and then editing that script on like the fourth day and then you record. So yeah, maybe maybe around that. I mean some episodes come together faster,
some episodes come together longer. It really really varies.
Shoot shoo, Yeah, I would agree with that timeline. I think three to four days sounds about right. I've been trying to take an extra day just to read through the script, like multiple times, just because I've been it's just better for like my performance.
It's like, where does that sounds?
So?
Yeah, I would say, like when you write a script, the worst thing you can do is immediately read it after you've finished writing it.
And I've made that mistake before. I would definitely have so taking time is important.
Yeah, James mea Robert, anything you want to add.
I spent thirty five years preparing for the sheet Pocas.
Yeah, it really depends on the episode. If it's an interviewer, I'll spend maybe a couple of hours, you know, studying up on everything the person has said. If it's a scripted episode, a scripted half hour to forty five minutes
of the show is generally five to seven pages. That's maybe an hour or two to write, and then four to six hours of research, which although it kind of depends, you know, because a lot of it's based on just sort of like ongoing research, right where whereas like something will happen in the news and we'll do some studying up on that event, but we're also keeping in touch with like like when we have episodes on terrorist attacks
and whatnot. Like I don't know how to actually like lay out how much time goes into those episodes, because it's a large part of it is just the process of like keeping up with the way terror is evolving in America. We will have beats, right, Like we will have that we just keep up with.
Yeah, Like we're not counting all the time that we spend like in telegram just like watching right but the gram but yeah, yeah, sure sing second time this year Garrison's found themselves too old to understand a youth reference.
My next question, what conspiracy theory or unsolved mystery do each of you believe in?
The dangerous question and first answer on air, Yeah.
Yeah, I just want to point out that Garrison sent me this question to ask, so it must be an answer in mind. Yeah, are a Garrison danger Davis?
Okay, Well, I I don't know what what even I'm not sure if I believe in anything that would be classified as a conspiracy theory, I would have to I would have to think on this.
Actually, I don't know. I don't believe in it. I fucking love Bohemian Grove stuff.
It's like one of the ogs you know, from like the beginnings of the Internet, and it just can't get enough about people who have just never deviated from the Bohemian growth. That dude who went there with the combination AR fifteen shotgun and tried to destroy Bohemian Grove legend.
I love reading about that stuff. It's nonsense, but it's fun.
I mean, like I actually have Oh oh no, go please okay, or we're doing we're doing We're doing this one.
Okay.
If you if you were on the live show, you've heard this. You were not on the live show. You have which is that?
Okay?
From from from the late nineteen seventies until the early nineteen eighties when it was busted by the Italian police, the Italian government is run by a rogue Masonic lodge called the Peach Organization. God, I know it's propaganda due very various elements.
Okay. So there's this thing going on here.
There's various elements use the Red Brigades as as a way to assassinate Eldo Morrow. They take them to a hotel that is like it's run by like one of the Red cardinals is one of those sort of the communist cardinals is like in this building is like a NATO weapons is like someone a NATO weapons dealer.
An Italian general of the regulaser. I think I see a red laser hovering over. This is all real?
This was right, Look, this is the raight three.
It's the thing is the thing is that?
Okay, so every conspiracy theory on earth is real, but it was only real from about nineteen seventy seven to nineteen eighty three in Italy, Like all of them are there at the same time, like during the alder Morro assassination, like the the two groups trying to free Elder Morrow are the Pope on the one hand, and then well iatually Sadure's there's the Pope who's working through an Israeli guy in the castnet, and the other for him is.
It's the pfl piece. She's got one of them, the pup.
What he had gotten, Okay, like one of the one of the one of the guys who make sures, who make sure that the elder Morrow dies is he's like a now and he's now insane Alex Jones conspiracy guy, Like he's on Alex Jones all the time.
He was like, he's the hostage. Yeah, yeah, he's the guy.
That guy.
Yeah, he's a he's a regular fixture. Yeah.
So like the people try to kill it. Like the both the US the Soviets, independently of each other, are both trying to make sure this guy dies. Same with the East Germans, the fucking oh what's it called, the miner Mainhoff group, the weird Germany also revolves all right.
Meanwhile, I am I am a nine to eleven truther. Uh in there, God, I don't believe that when you call nine to one one it goes anywhere. I think. I think they're just hooking you up to an AI. It's it's a con people.
Oh shit, Rudy Giuliani has to pay those Georgia election workers one hundred and fifty million dollars.
I feel like he's got that. Yeah, I feel like he's got that hanging around. It will be good.
No, but he literally defamed the ship out of those lovely, lovely people.
He I mean, defamation is like of what he does.
Okay, new new favorite conspiracy theory. Panera Bread made the deadly lemonade on purpose, as are whatever who cares wait genocide.
That's where we see. I fully support the lemonade that kills you. I think we need more lemonade that kills Pete.
We're gonna take a quick guide break. We'll be right back, and we are back. What are you most excited to work on this year? Slashould be a part of create.
What are we most excited to work on? Next year? And I've been stockpiling a lot of and so I I I got some plans. I got some plans. I got some plans. Do we believe or not? That's that's the real question. I don't know. That's that's someone else's job to decide.
I can tell you from experience that the ATF will visit your employer if you conclude instructions on how.
To make in your in your work. It's legal. Go ahead, and they'll still believe you.
Go ahead, Garrison.
I'm planning to attend a whole bunch of more kind of occult conferences or paranormal conventions and and get get more into the high strangeness world this year. That's that's something I'm I'm excited about.
I'm really excited. We're launching a weekly show with Jimmie Loftus starting in the spring that I'm very excited to be producing. So look out for that.
I Okay, I've been working on this for a fucking year now, but it's coming next year, which is my episodes on the lab leak stuff.
I have a corkboard that makes that entire Italy.
Corkboard.
I've spent so many hours talking to epidemiologists losing my mind.
But it's coming, it will happen. I'm very excited about it.
You you have been talking about these episodes for quite a.
While, literally a year. It's Robert I have agreed to do a podcast that is going to be a nightmare, but you'll you'll all love it. You'll all love it as it ruins my life. And uh, I don't know, probably eventually the Robert E. Lee episodes, we'll get those out. You know what I've been doing. I've been working on a te Lawrence series of episodes, so that I'm very excited about. Amazing Lawrence of Arabia, the guy who invented
the concept of insurgency. So that'll that'll be good. That'll be a good series.
I hope Robert and I get to go back to me and Ma and do maybe a visit to some different groups. That would be cool. I would like that. I'm excited to do more migration stuff. Yeah, spend more time and on different parts of the migration journey, because I think that's something I've wanted to do for a long time, and.
Like I've seen a lot of people do really shitty versions of it.
So I'm excited to give you a cracket at not doing a cringe voyeuristic.
Version of that.
Everyone else have an answer to that? Did your answer, Shreanny, I didn't.
I feel like I have two answers, like one, I'm not excited at all, because I feel like the most when I'm most motivated, it's when i'm the most angry, and so I'm not excited for things to make me angry and upset. But I am looking forward to I think I like when I have people on that are like experts or they have knowledge that I don't, and so I like the possibility of having more conversations that
are enlightening, I suppose. And yeah, I also I would like to talk more about corn and food, so maybe I should focus on that.
Maybe I should focus on something could happen here.
Yeah, yeah, that's that's something I look forward to, something to be fun.
We definitely want to do more farm animal episodes, yes, and food, more food episodes. But no, you bring up a good point about how this kind of whole show works is that all of the best stuff we make, in my opinion, is always related to things that we're passionate about, and passion can come in a few forms. Anger something that is a big driver of passion, but that's,
you know, usually less fun. So it's always nice and we can be able to cover something that we are passionate about, but it comes from not a place of anger, but it comes from a place of like, like like genuine like intense interest.
Yeah, like, I genuinely love corn.
I loved the conversation about sheep, So I look forward to the possibility of making things not just when I'm like enraged and more when I'm like that's a good point. That's a good point that passion can can come from different things. Because I was just as passionate talk about corn than I was to talk about an important thing that happened.
So yeah, I have I have a specific question that I vetted to James ahead of time, which is, do you have any stories about meeting fans or listeners? I r l.
I do.
I'm not just stepping on to you. Please approach Robbit when he's buying groceries. But but yeah, yeah, no, dou do it.
Don't.
He's very ticulish. I always armed in the grocery store, so please don't do that. That's why you kind of tickle them. Don't tick or rubber guys. It's weird.
Yeah, so loads of people are not loads, but a lot of people who've listened to our podcast who come to help in Aucumber, and they're all very nice, and I've enjoyed building Gortz and making sandwiches and ladeling out beans with them immensely, and it genuinely does make me really happy because it can like when we do the podcast, we see like each other in our little rooms and then it just goes out into the ether and you never know who's listening.
And so it's really cool when people listen and.
Then like show up and do something that meaningfully makes the world a better place, and that makes me feel very hopeful.
And that's another like passion thing.
Like I think, especially the mutual aid stuff we've done at the border, it makes me feel really hopeful that like we can do things just fine without the state and without the resources of masters of capital and without any major sort of orcs or like institutions behind death, Like we can just help each other and do amazing things.
So, yeah, when people show up for that, it's cool.
Slightly way when they show up listening to the podcast and I hear myself in their car is it's not okay? But other than that, yeah, I trying to catch up with those people. Yeah, yeah, I too would be trying to catch up if I had to listen to all the stuff we put out.
I think it's honestly really cool that people show up for that kind of stuff. It makes it, It makes so much of the weird parts of being a podcast host worth it when stuff like that.
Yeah, that's been something that that me has been pointing out recently, how we seem to be one of in terms of like, you know, podcasts that that that cover the sorts of things we do. We're our fan base seems to be relatively offline in a lot of ways, and a lot of a lot of them. Actually, a lot of the people actually do a lot of real world stuff, which is great. Like that's that that That's kind of the entire point is that most of the things we talk about, there's there's there's he said, you
have the power to change it in small ways. You know, it's no like large immediate effects, like you solve the problem immediately, but there's there's always small things that can that can slowly change the tide of many of the problems that we discuss every day.
Yeah, we're gonna through to an ad break here. Unless you have Cooler Zone Media and Android listeners. That is coming soon. It's a little bit out of our control on that end, but we do ask about it constantly and it will be happening.
If you have a Cooler Zone account, you cannot die. That's fun, that's a good it's the true fact. So purchase it, render yourself immune to the passage of time, and we're back.
I'm gonna ask. I'm gonna ask what's everyone's favorite Christmas movie?
Okay, so I I have already talked about my annual Batman Returns watch party, which was a great, a great success this year. It was a big hit. I made tons. I made about probably like four dozen lot because it was a lot of fun.
We got to wow, Wow, Robert, you show this for jobs kind of humor. That's crazy, what a dub.
But no, we got I got a nice group of people to to google at Danny Dibrito vomiting black U for approximately two hours. So that was a big win. It's it's by far the best Christmas movie in my in my no.
I agree, it's my favorite one by far, and Bangery, me and my family have lost it consistently since I was like a child like but like since I was like two years old. Oh, we just were obsessed with it. And I don't remember if you said this last year, and I already this is like a repeat of the conversation. But I agree, that's the best Christmas movie I can think of.
Yeah, Michael Keaton, total domination. Here we go.
Best best Batman by miles. He's just miles away from So.
When I was growing up, my parents used to ditch my brother and I and go to the Laker game on.
Christmas and we just explained so much. Yeah, so much, Sophie.
I'm sorry, Like I love you, I love your parents and I and I respect it. But my brother and I used to watch like we would spend the entire day watching all the like Hobbin and Lord of the Rings movies.
Nice.
That just feels that feels like Christmas to me.
Sure, Yeah, especially especially the animated ones definitely have that kind of like fantasy jolly kind of feel.
Totally.
Yeah, I yeah, anybody else.
I like to watch love actually, but it's very pretty dreams. It's so basic of you.
I know.
Yeah, I'm secretly basic white lady. Every time I watch you into something else problematic that I hadn't previously fought before. And it's getting to a point where I should probably stop talking about it in public.
That's amazing.
Yeah, now the audience knows who the biggest wife guy on the team is.
Definitely Javes. This is a question for Robert, looking back on season one, if it could happen here, do you still see a second civil American Civil War as a likely or plausible event in our near future?
Yeah, I mean I think it's possible. We're going to look back on where we are right now as the earlier stages of it. Right, civil conflict is pretty widespread. I think one of the differences, like, for example, one of the big differences with that the Texas, California, Waians Yeah four Civil War movie is it's it's clearly imagining like a large scale military conflict. I don't find that
particularly likely. But you do have one major political party stating that when we take power in twenty twenty four, are guy's going to act as a dictator. He's going to imprison and execute his political opponents. And you have widespread acts of violence and violent threats that are occurring as part of a as part of the political conflicts that have existed in this country for a while, they've all transitioned to being kind of explicitly acts of public
violence or at least public threats of violence. You're seeing this around, for example, a lot of the discourse surrounding what's happening in Gaza. Right, you just had that case where like some fucking like grade school teacher threatened to cut a student's throat for criticizing Israel. Like the degree to which people who are if you'll forgive the less technical or pieces of shit feel emboldened to use and threaten violence in the furtherance of their political agendas. Is
something we may wind up seeing. Is like, yeah, we were in it by this point. So again I'm not a believer, and a big part of it could happen here is like I don't I don't think any mass civil conflict in the United States is going to be armies fighting over states, right, yeah, because that's that's simply not realistic. But I do think we are in what
any reasonable person would call a mass civil conflict. And you know, my big question is whether or not we're going to see it as a civil conflict or as an extension of a global conflict which includes outright shooting
wars but also mass information warfare. In this kind of planetary struggle between the idea at least if not the promise that democracy is the kind of goal, and the strongly held belief by large groups of people that we need an authoritarian system governed effectively by the people who
are presently in power. Right, you are seeing this kind of struggle between the idea that we should have a system in which people are allowed to pick their leaders and this idea that, like the winners of the last twenty years of capitalism and politics, should be able to solidify their hold forever. So my big question is whether or not we're going to come to see where we are right now as the early stages of a civil conflict that's going to get progressively more violent and have
a progressively higher body count. Or are we going to see this as part of a global military and political struggle that is going to kind of shake out the next hundred years of kind of the political status quo on Earth, and in a similar way to like World War Two, you know, more or less laid out the next eighty or ninety or something like that.
I've got two more questions.
Sounds good.
First, do you each of you have a favorite episode you've put out?
We're all trying not to say the come episode the same time. I really have.
I have some really bad at all, really some bad news. That was the most I just downloaded episode of Yeah.
Yeah, Everybody loves Look, Everybody loves loves talking about Come Yeah?
Are you fucking s I'm with you, Sharinye with you?
Sorry, So I have you've been out voted.
I'm never I'm never out voted I have ultimate veto powers.
Guys to struggle was talking about right here.
Side disgusting.
I mean, it's it's certainly hard to even pick one episode just from this year.
I mean, but it's the com episode. Yeah.
I will say this episode was fun to put together. I we we really delved into the the trenches there that few.
Would you say it would you say? It really came together.
I'm gonna I'm going to answer these questions for each of you with each of your work, because I'm a fucking professional. Garrisons Skopcop City. Where has been just that I really tell I tell this to go out. They're the most amazing storyteller. You really feel like you are. You're able to visualize everything going on with the words that they say, and I think it's an important story
that they've been on top of since the beginning. I don't think any covers labor issues in the way that Mia does, and I think Mia has really done that in twenty twenty three, and we'll continue that in twenty twenty four in a way that's not being covered in mainstream media. And I think that those stories are extremely important and have made a significant impact on labor and
union culture and strikes and fighting for what's right. James Man, It's like I want to say, I want to say the work you do at the border, but I really love when you talk about things that are silly, and I think they're equally as important. But James, James talking about sheep and the joy that James had when he talked about sheep is really special.
But also the.
Work that you've done talking about the word MEMR and helping people at the border has been extremely impactful to our listeners.
Shoe Shoe.
Is a historical almanac to all things in the Middle East and has I think educated not just the audience but also all of us on things that really everyone should know. And I think that she's brilliant and I love you.
She read Robert, Hey, Sophie, it's the cup episode, right, That's definitely not the episode.
But it's really hard to pick my favorite Robert episode because I record with him like most days. But I think that what Robert has done specifically within Bastards in twenty twenty three was really get on top of the bastards we're all surviving right now, which I think he did a really great job talking about Andrew Tait. I think he did an incredible job getting an episode out immediately about Stockton Rush, the guy who killed these people under the.
Submersial really really the hero of the year, right, the guy responsible for the great feel good story of twenty twenty three. So much better a time we need, we need. I feel like we can solve most of the world's problems with another eleven or so of those subs. And it is true, and a similar socioeconomic group on board them.
You're definitely not not wrong there.
I'd just like to say, you know, if you're wondering why the New York Times in the Washington Post are too big a cowards to do a come episode like we did. You know, there's an old quote. If you want to know who rules, you ask who you can't criticize. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying, Garrison, I see you, I see you doubting me. But you know
it's true. You know it's true. Anyways, Yeah, it's a slash no fat All right, that's should ask another question, But like, really, what's what's the point.
What's the point we've climax guys, Sweeten, Oh my god, thank you, James.
Thank you.
I appreciate the teamwork James. Someone had to.
Robert, but my my apologies to Ian for this night.
We have an edit.
But yeah, anybody have any final thoughts, anything, anything, James, do you have anything you want to plug in terms of donations or anything?
Yeah?
I do, actually, uh so we have a fundraiser for what we're doing at the border.
It would be really lovely if.
You could give us some of your money because I have spent all of the money that I have, uh and some money that I don't have. It's GoFundMe dot com slash cucumber hyphen migrant hyphen camps or TinyURL dot com slash border aid.
G f M. How do they spell cucumber.
That's a good question because that's c U M b A so like it's Spanish. Yeah, you can also tiny rl slash border aid, g FM, TinyURL dot com.
That's that's an easy one to remember.
Great, and we'll be back tomorrow. This is a daily show.
Bye, hello everyone, and welcome to it Could Happen Here podcast, returning from our holiday break to discuss the exciting topic of infectious diseases in Gaza and for that we're joined by an all star cast of experts. We have joining us today Saskia Popescu, who's an infectious disease epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Maryland.
Welcome Saska, Thank you for joining us.
Thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, of course, yeah, you're welcome. It's not just you. We've also got Cave Carve is back.
I'm back, baby, that's actually my first time. This is Sharene. Also i'm here. This is my first time meeting Cove. So this is a real trick.
Yeah, sure, I've done you wrong, Sharen, I'm sorry I didn't introduce you. That's okay, it's probably in the description or something that I'm here. No one's yeah, make a valuable contribution. People will know you're here.
But yeah, it's all of us, And yeah, we're talking today because like I think the origin, sorry, of this particular episode is like a few weeks ago, there was a very funny thing on the internet about people in the I d F getting diarrhea, which is funny object.
That's what the dn id F stands for. Actually, yeah, the kid to saying, but sorry, no, it's donny.
Don't you ever apologize. Yeah, yeah, you do, not apologize for.
Any opportunity just to ship on them. You're good.
Yeah, expect many. It's half an hour at least of this. Don't be driving because you might laugh too much. But no, it's very funny. It's the name of our group chat. It's the as really Diarrhea Forces. But aside from that, like this raises a more important question, right, which is that people in Gaza don't have access to very many medical supplies to begin with. Weird things are embargoed like tornic keys, which you've spoken about in this podcast before.
They also have obviously a very resource constrained environment to begin with, and then a number of their hospitals have been bombed since then, which obviously further reduces their access to medical care. Also, they have less aclos to things like running water now because they're being bombed to an incredible degree. And so Saskia has joined us today to like explain the risk of the spread of infectious disease, maybe give us an update on like what's already happening
and the risks of what could happen. So I guess maybe we should start off with really basic stuff and explain what infectious diseases are and like how they're different from noncommunical diseases gets people aren't familiar, would one if you like to do.
That, Yeah, I'm happy to so infectious diseases, you know, when we talk about diseases in general, as you mentioned, there are chronic diseases, things like diabetes, cancer. When we talk about infectious diseases, meaning they're communicable for the most part, that means that they are spread through various sources human
to human, like influenza. There's things like anthrax that you can equali Campellobacter that you can get from soil, from food, and the zoonotic diseases that they are also spread through animals, so things like ebola mirrors which is Middle East respiratory syndrome, coronavirus. So infectious diseases are viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, and they really love to take advantage of high stress environments for
bread and unfortunately this is one of them. So this is a very What we see with infectious diseases a lot is that conflict and environments where people are stressed, resources are stressed, and the environment is under continuous bombardment. There's densely populated spaces, no access to health, clean food, and water, et cetera. I mean, I could probably go on for five minutes about what makes an infectious disease spread,
is going to amplify it. So these are diseases that take advantage of these environments.
I'll add that the situation is just a perfect setup for infectious disease to run rampant. There's over one point nine million people that have been displaced. Of that, one point four million are living in overcrowded shelters at this point. And in the best scenario from what I've seen, there's one toilet for every two hundred and twenty people. Now, if you ever lived in like a house of like five people and there's like one case of diarrhea, you'll
realize how terrible that is. Now you amplify that to two hundred and twenty at the minimum, and that's the best case scenario. I've heard its highest one per seven hundred people in some places. And then you know, people have to go in the streets, they have to know where there's water supplies, and you're you're going to be infecting those areas. There's one shower for every like four thousand,
five hundred people again in best case scenario. So it's a huge number of people getting concentrated into smaller and smaller areas and without the infrastructure there to handle that in any way. And when that happens, I mean, we are going to see I am really worried about seeing in the end of this more depths from infectious disease than from the bombardments.
Yeah, well, that's that's like a It almost feels like a double another weapon that they're that they're that they've used because they're not letting them have a chance to recuperate or have a sanitary place to do surgeries or anything. Because if they're doing surgery with unsanitary conditions, they can get infect like the wounds can get infected, and that's a whole nother thing. Or even just like having waste in the street, like making it, like having it fester.
It just it's it's really I think people forget that it's not just like a building was destroyed, people were killed. It's there's lasting effects that linger for probably generations.
You know. It's just I don't know what really is infuriating.
I think the crazy part is the World Health organization. So the WHO recently released some data as to what is being reported to them in terms of disease, and they said, so far, Now keep in mind these are just reported numbers, and that means it's just the tip of the iceberg. In most cases, one hundred thousand cases of diarrhea and those are in young children, So half of those are in young children out of the age
of five, which means it can be deadly. And this number is just twenty five percent higher than what we have seen reported pre conflict. And in terms of respiratory infections, the things like covid, influenza and pneumonia, one hundred and fifty thousand cases. And that's just the numbers that we know about. But we're also seeing cases and outbreaks of things like meningitis, skin rashes, babies, LCE, chicken pox, which
is highly infectious. And you know, we worry in those cases about when people are in these close quarters and their bodies are already strained, because one thing we do know is that when your bodies physiologically under stress meaning no sleep, malnutrition, you know, not access to clean water to wash your hands, not you're dehydrated, et cetera, you're
at an increased risk for disease and severe disease. So that means that people are at higher risk to get it and then to spread it in these environments, and that's what's really scary because it becomes a hot spot for transmission. And you mentioned that this feels like a secondary effect in many ways. It's almost like a secondary conflict, if you will, and one that will leave lasting implications because what we do know is that disease and conflict
go hand in hand. When I think about it a lot, it's and we've seen this unfortunately throughout time, is that conflict can bring disease and it can amplify disease. When I say bring disease, we know that people in these spaces soldiers can bring in disease that are reinspread around. But we've also seen sexually transmitted diseases in the past being spread through sexual assault and sexual violence, and that's
one thing I definitely worry about it. Unfortunately, we know that's happening and it's not something we're going to see reported for a while, but things like that can and do occur, and it's a very scary situation.
If I can tack on a little bit to the diarrhea subject here because I am a GI and liver doc. I mean, in a typical month in Gaza, there is about two thousand cases of diarrhea and kids under five, and in the last month there was over forty thousand cases. And for kids that aren't getting water, they're not getting the recommended amount of like daily water, like it's like seven to eight leaders in refugee situations is what's recommended. These people are getting like one to two leaders per
whole families, so they're not staying hydrated. And these are kids that are most vulnerable. That's the part that is really hard for me. And I've actually seen people sort of downclay it, like just like, well, diarrhea, you know, that's what you get, but in these situations, it's it's going to be very serious for these kids. And the
other thing we're seeing is cases of jaundice. They're noting that people are becoming that, which to me suggests that there's hepatitis A and hepatitis E, which is you know, you get through fecal oral contamination. And hepatitis E in particular is what concerns me because there's pregnant women and when pregnant women get hepatitis E, it's worse for them.
There's that that's a really bad situation. And when that happens, I mean, these are these are women who are already not getting support, They're already under nourished, They're not able to produce breast milk, they are going to be sick, They're not going to be able to feed their kids. It's I mean, I can't. I can't imagine, honestly, I mean, I know, it's it's funny. We can say these things, we can talk about the numbers, but it is like to actually wrap my brain around it breaks my brain.
I cannot, like imagine the numbers of people that are sick and are in these hospitals, not just being treated, but like the NASA Hospital, which is one of the two hospitals in Gaza. You know, there are like a three hundred and fifty bed hospital. There are already over like a thousand patients, and not to mention the many thousands, over seventy thousand people just staying there, you know, for for refuge. It's absolutely a nightmare. I can't. I can't write my brain around it.
Yeah, Like often I know when I speak to colleagues who are there or at the journalist say they'll go to hospitals a in the hope that they'll be safe, which hasn't proven to be true sadly, which is pretty messed up. But be you know that they have many generators, right, so they can charge and and tell the world what's happening, or try to. It seems like some of the word isn't listening, but yeah it there. Cospitals are incredibly overgrowded.
I wonder like if we could go back to diarrhea and there's.
Not like a fun topic, stoke about it. Yeah, fix score, Yeah, it's ready, time to shine. Yeah, life's work.
So, like I think it was diarrhea that I read kills more people than conflict annually.
Oh yeah worldwide sure, yeah yeah, well I mean Saskia probably has better numbers on it than I do, actually, but worldwide, yeah, it's probably the number one, number one killer.
So like let's just break that because I most of like by the very nature that's being a podcast, right, most are people listening are in the in the kind of the in the neoliberal core or the global north, whatever you want to call it, right, Like they have a smartphone and they've downloaded this, and it might be difficult to understand how you die from diarrhea, which is
like an inconvenience in a lot of places. So can you just explain that for people so they can they can understand and how the conditions that we see in Gaza would compound.
That Saska, Do you want me to go first?
Oh? All you, I'll talk about how it spreads.
You can talk, okay.
So, I mean, the there's a couple of issues that can happen. There's a lot, but I mean dehydration is going to be a major one, and loss of electrolytes. I mean, these people can get so badly dehydrated that their circulatory system isn't working properly. Or they can lose the amount of electrolytes that they need and they're not replacing and that can cause cardiovascular issues as well. So
it's a terrible way to die. I mean, you know, cholerara and these terrible like diarrheal epidemics that you know, we think of of mostly in the past. They're terrible. They're terrible ways to go and especially if you don't have the I mean, it's treatable usually it's treatable. You know, you get fluid rehydration, you get electrolyte management. It's it's
pretty manageable in the right situation. But if you don't have that, it's gonna be a devastating thing to the body over time, and for young kids sooner rather than later.
Yeah, so maybe we should explained how it spread.
Yeah, I mean the scary part. So there's multiple pathogenes that can cause diarheal illness, and for the most part, we see bacteria and viruses. If you've had neurovirus, which is the cruise ship bug, that is highly transmissible, meaning it just goes through households and environments very very quickly. During outbreaks. You can't just use hand sanitizer and a simple disinfectant. You need bleach. And if you're if we're thinking about the best case scenario, and I've seen you know,
diarreheal illnesses go through schools, hospitals, you name it. We still struggle to contain those. Now, put yourself in an environment with this level of stress, and you know the thirty six hospitals in Gazda Gaza, twenty six have been damaged, twenty one are not functional at all thirteen are partially functioning and two are barely functioning. So we know that access to care is a challenge. Resources I can't even imagine.
So that means the capacity to treat patients with antibiotics, with fluids, everything, and now can paint it, which is the disinfection you know, all the infection prevention essentially, And I don't even want to think about contact tracing in public health interventions because it doesn't exist. It's an entirely collapsed system. You know, this is a humanitarian crisis. So when you know, when you have people in close quarters and there's a lot of high touch items because a
lot of diarreal illness is spread through touch. It's you know, contaminated hands and objects, and then you know, you touch your mouth, you eat with your hands, et cetera. That's how these things are spread. So between the bathroom not
having access, you know, not having access to restrooms. You know, we mentioned the toilet situation, there's also one shower for every forty five hundred people, So we know that people are not able to clean themselves effectively, and this is a ripe condition for diarreal illness to spread, and they it spreads very quickly, very efficiently, and it is exceedingly
hard to get rid of. And it worries me because a lot of these diseases, it's not just like you get at one time and you have immunity to it. It can keep going awaydun and if you have a situation like that where you cannot clean effectively, you can't treat effectively, then we're just going to see it continuously compound. And that's absolutely terrifying because you know, we were talking about pregnant women earlier. There's fifty thousand pregnant women right
now in Gaza and they are malnourished. That's just at the tip of the iceberg. And we see that so many children there are malnourished. And these are very dangerous infections for vulnerable people. And on the best of days,
we struggle to contain diarreal illness. So my big concern is this and respiratory viruses, to be honest with you, because when you have this many people in close quarters and ignore the fact that they are extremely you know, physically strained and stressed right now, which is when your immune system struggles, it's going to spread and it's going
to be exceedingly hard to contain it. So this is an environment where we're going to see diarreal illness spread and it's going to unfortunately kill a lot more people then we will even realize. It's going to take years to understand implications of this, you know, if we even consider that access to clean water and food, and we've been talking a lot about malnourishment, which is huge, but I'm also concerned to the quality of food that they're
getting too, and the water, all of it. Everything about the situation is going to spread disease. It's you know, I know that sounds quite dramatic, but it's entirely true.
No, I mean, I'm glad you're emphasizing that, because I don't think people realize the gravity of of like a second wave of death like that that happens like not even not with weapons.
Uh.
But no, I'm glad you emphasize that. Let's uh, let's take our first break. We'll be right back.
And it reminds me too of when we saw UN peacekeepers in Haiti and they introduced polera, and you know, and that's it's an unfortunate reality when you are bringing in groups of people to in this you know, for in Haiti, they were trying to help the situation. In this case, it's not surprising. I mean, there's a really good book called Contagions and Chaos that actually talks about
how infectious diseases can amplify conflict or create it. And ultimately, I think we're just going to see this as a rolling in health issue until there's a ceasefire and until there's really substantial work in there to resource and to take care of people.
I mean, it's scared any Kyve. You mentioned that you had a question for Saskia.
I do you know You've written and you talked a lot about the intersections of science and policy, particularly in terms of COVID nineteen. We've seen that global threats elsewhere can affect Americans, and I'm wondering, is there a way to try and appeal to Westerners who aren't that interested yet and why they should care about infectious diseases that
are rising or become rampant in other places. Is there an argument you can make to these people who may not care that much about the Palestinian people per se.
Oh, there's the political answer I should give you, and then there's the real answer, which is political answer saying that you know people do care, and you know we're just having the console in your mind them. But the real answer is, look, we just came out of three and a half years of a pandemic and at this point, if people don't give a shit, they're not going to.
And I know that's crude for me to say, but it's I've been working in this and we've seen it from Ebola to mers too, empocs, and in now coming out of COVID. I think we can safely say that, you know, it's not a matter of if, but when. But people really like the saying that is infectious disease knows no borders, and to a certain extent that is true. Infectious diseases they don't know that, but it ignores the fact that some countries are are more equipped to handle them,
and that borders our pores concept. So in this case, I think from an American perspective, where it is a very complicated relationship Americans have and I'm not getting into that. When it comes to Israel, the reality is that it shouldn't matter if it's a conflict. If you see an outbreak somewhere, you should be worried for those people, and
it shouldn't matter if it's going to impact you. But now that we have lived through a pandemic, a historical event, I would like to think people would see this and realize any one of these diseases can come to the States, it can strain global resources. And I'm hopeful that with the amount of attention that's coming to this and that the work that the WHO and the UN have been
drawing attention to it, that will change. But I get a little nervous every time we talk about infectious diseases and conflict areas, because I find that America and it's not just us, that people in high income countries disassociate because that is a conflict related issue, but it's not Conflict can mean many different things, and it's essentially saying, this is an issue that's going to bubble out of control.
And if we were in a situation where there was no clean food and water, we had no access to health services, in medicine, fuel was an issue, in power, no communication, and I just read that three Palestinian internet providers went down, so they have no way to contact outside world. They have housing, safe passes, et cetera. Any one of those impacted US, we would be experiencing it. And I will leave that question with one comment. That's
to say we are a very well resourced country. The US invests so many resources into health, global health, security, biopreparedness, all of the above, and we were one of the
worst performers when it came to COVID response. And I say that having worked in health care during that and doing epidemiology, and I think this should be a continuous wake up call that it's we're one disease away from an international crisis, and when we see this, it should really speak to the fact that it is global health. It's not national health, not local health, it is global health.
That's my ted talk, the good tech talk.
I guess like if I could piggyback on that, there is not a single war that I have covered, either remotely or in person, where I have not then seen those people arrive our border where I live. Like I was in Syrian Kurdistan in October. I am seeing people leaving Turkey, more and more Turkish Kurdistan, but also Syrian Kurdistan, or people who went to Syria went back to Turkey at our southern border.
Right now, I am seeing.
People from conflicts all over the world at our southern border right now, and every single conflict, because we tend to stick our nose into every single conflict, it ends up here right because we tell people we support them and then we abandon them, and they come here thinking that we were going to support them. I also add that every time there is infectia disease outbreak going forward, it will be used in the same way that COVID
was to prevent asylum. So the title forty two that was used to like quote unquote catch and release migrants at the southern border allowed border patrol to eject people without processing their asylum came. That's a public health law,
it's dot a migration law. Biden's already indicated that he would love to do the same thing again, and like, you don't even need an excuse with this in focused disease stuff, right The laws are already there, and it was already in place for several years, so it's kind
of stood the test of the courts. And this will impact even if you don't give a shit about people in Palestine, and maybe you should examine what's up with your morality if you do like this will impact you because people will come here, and it will impact you because people who should come here won't be able to and that will mean that people who have done nothing wrong, who trusted us when we lie to them. You know, people Americans seem to care about afghanstanare than other people.
Like I've spoken to a hundred roods of Afghan women in our border and like they were stuck under Title forty two in very dangerous situations in places like Mexico. So even if you only care about those people, you should still care about this. I guess can I add something to I think, please, you know, to.
Avoid fueling isolationism, because I think that happens all the time when we talk about these global health issues. Every resource that has to be put to helping this health crisis that is bubbling out of a humanitarian crisis is a resource that's not back where it's supposed to be addressing global health issues. Meaning so for example, when we saw the people outbreak in West Africa in twenty fourteen, after there were you know, we started to actually realize
the implications to malaria control, tuberculosis, HIV. So when we have to throw a bunch of emergency resources at a crisis, those are coming out of somewhere else. And I too that people don't realize that we're you know, as the who, the un everywhere, MSS is having to help this situation because there's no access to care, and again is a
health crisis. That means we're going to start to see other things pop up elsewhere, and that really worries me because we are already very strained when it comes to global health resources. We just again came out of a pandemic. So everyone's tired, everyone's burnt out. We've got health systems and a lot of and we're seeing even in the US where a lot of funding for like the CDC
is being pulled and NIH. So now that we're out of kind of coming back into this panic neglect cycle, I worry that a lot of the resources that we're having to pull to address this crisis are going to then ultimately leave a lot of other places at risk or infectious diseases, for long term health implications. So it is a lot bigger than one area or people you know,
having to flee to the US. It's all of these things, and too often we approach this with a very short sighted this and we have, we don't you know, we have finite resources when it comes to global health response, and when we have to use them because you know we're not you know, approaching this effectively or appropriately, then we're going to see larger applications.
Yeah, even like we can just keep building off each other stuff and it's not here from the other two. Even recently, I was trying to buy some humanitarian daily rations for the border, which are people aren't familiar. They're like MRIs for refugees, and make sure we eat one on our live show once. It's very salty, Yeah, very salty. That's good for the electrolytes. But like that is the
State Department. It's buying the back of surplus retailers at the minute, which like means that there's obviously like a critical lack of supply of these things. Same with UNHCR shelters, and like that means that someone else doesn't get to eat, right, because we've just massively increased burden of.
People who desperately need to eat.
Like it's not like these things were chilling before, like there were you know, hunger is still a massive problem in the world, despite us having so much food here and so like the say, Yet the same is true of medical supplies, like you said, right that that means that somebody else doesn't get them, that money doesn't go to something else very important that it could be going to.
Can I ask about something I just learned about the past couple of days. So on December twenty fifth, the Jerusalem Posts reported that an IDF soldier died of a fungal infection, and apparently he was hospitalized and eventually he died, and at least ten other soldiers have been diagnosed with
infections of some sort. I think what kind of made me annoyed is that there is a headline from the Times of Israel that said, as a soldier with fungal infection dies, fears a grow of Gaza diseases spreading into Israel and apparently they're examining whether the infections originated the Hamas tunnels and all this stuff. I think, while I that's it, really it really bothered me because I looked
at all of these articles. I mean, most of them are obviously Israeli sourced, but it still was the same rhetoric of there's diseases in Gaza and our soldiers are getting them, and the Honestly, the takeaway in all of these was we have to worry about Israeli public health and the Israeli citizens. It wasn't about anything about the
Gazins or anything like that. And I was just I guess I wanted to ask, is there any truth at all to the idea that there can be certain infections localized to that degree even though it's like a very small country in general. And I guess it's it's really I feel like it's a fear mongering tactic using health as a weapon.
But I don't know. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Even the fungus has gone woke. I can't believe it. They've weaponized fungus, sasky. I'll let you address it, but I would say this, I mean, I think the fear I just did an episode of my podcast on funguses and talking about the last of us and seeing like the truth that there's really a concern, especially with global climate change, and it is I mean, the thought of a fungus affecting humans in that way who were not in some way under their body under stress or immunal suppressed,
it's it's not that likely. And I definitely agree from what I'm hearing that like this is just another way to be like, look at these dirty people, we should bomb them to them.
Everything related to Palestinians is oh, they're all it's all the plague, like they're scary, they're barbaric, and also they're going to make you sick. It's it's really infuriating. They're just going at every angle. I just I found the quote that made me mad.
Can I read it?
Okay, I'm going to read it.
Basically, it says the war between Israel and moss has led to the destruction of large swaths of Gaza and internal displacement of the vast majority of its population, resulting in what is called the humanitarian crisis for the Palcians. It is called that because it is that body what if law. These conditions have led to the outbreaks of various diseases, which can potentially threaten the well being of
hundreds of thousands of IDF troops fighting in Gaza. They can also ultimately spell trouble for public health in Israel.
I just can't believe that's the takeaway all.
At Saskia, do you want to address the spread of fungal infection in a situation like this.
Yeah, I mean, look again, this is a situation where disease is going to be spread and that includes Ida soldiers. They are risk because guess what, they all have to go back to their bunks and sleep at night in close quarters. Do we see diseases spread easily in militaries, of course, I mean it would be insane not to think that. But trying to, you know, source it in Palestinians and Gazas is slightly ridiculous because there's no epidemiological evidence of that. But it's also kind of weird to
me that they're saying a fungal infection. That's a very specific thing, and bungle infections aren't fast infections for the most part. You know, when we do see them, I think from a regional perspective. If you live in the Southwest like I do. Galley fever is a fungal infection. It's in the dirt though, it's a spore in the dirt, and it's not spread between people though. That's that's the key part. It is you inhale it and you get it and it takes months in a lot of cases,
but you know, you can you see fungal infections. Yeah, that could be contaminated water, you know, inhalation, through showers, things like that. I mean, there's ways for that to happen. But we really just for the most part see those infections spread from an individual source, not an individual person. They tend to really not be they're environmentally spread, you know. And I'm not a fungal expert. I can just speak
to the ones that I've seen. Really, we don't see them spread between people, and so I think that it's it's a weird choice to say, and I worry a little bit that they're just again to your point, trying to say like, oh, look, our soldiers are getting sick. You know, the sacrifice they're making, right, yeah, is so much. And here's the thing. Conflict is where we're going to
see disease spread no matter what. And I if you're so worried about soldiers getting fungal infections from Gaza, then maybe keep the people in Gaza safe and then they're you know, either way you paint this, if you're trying to blame it on them, they keep them safe and they won't be able to spread disease. Very simple.
Yeah, they did cite contaminated soil.
Okay, that's a contamination thing, like environmental.
Yeah, this one that the tibiologist said that these soldiers have come back with serious anti microbial resistant infections that they've picked up through contact with contaminated soil, among other factors.
Like one, I feel like it's like a very direct statement. There's a lot of.
There's a lot to unpack there. Again though, if it's in the soil, it's an environmental exposure. That is like, that's not anyone's fault from an anti microbial perspective that I'm having a hard time believing that value fever, as I mentioned, is really hard to treat, so sometimes it's
not responsive to some of the medications you give. But you know you're gonna get anti microbial infections more so from people and contaminated objects, because that means that it has to have been exposed to antibiotics and become resistant to the infections. But there's that feels like very messy, uh, you know, reporting on their part or communications, because not
a lot of that makes sense to me. And either way, if they're saying it's from the environment, congratulations, you've just proven you're not getting it from people.
Yeah, thank you. For getting into that.
I just the the Hammas tunnels, the Hamas terror tunnels, sorry in their words, their terror tunnels. They're going to investigate whether infections have originated from there.
It just it's also just that doesn't make any sense. So I'm glad to have two doctors here agree, and that's all I wanted.
I mean, I will say this cocady of mycosis is valley fever, and we like, you know, she just mentioned it's we see it here in California. It's the reason why we used to say, if you're driving it down Central Valley, California, down the Eye five, you should roll up your window and and not breathe in the air because there's a possibility of getting it from that so o way they say that, well they I don't think they do so much anymore.
There's a whole number of reasons why you don't want to be breathing.
Yeah, there's a lot of cow farms out there too. It gets a little bit nasty out there in the I five. But but I mean, it's what is an endemic thing. It's like, if they don't want to be exposed to it, stay out of that area.
Yeah. Yeah, but You're not going to get it from other people. That's the kicker. It's not spread from people.
It is very common to a tribute effect your diseases that come from conflict to you'll enemy, right. It's like if you look at like the nineteen eighteen pandemic flu, right, and all the different things that people call that flu and the people to whom they attributed it, like, you can see that we've been doing that for more than one hundred years. It's it's part of the process of dehumanizing people who you're trying to kill.
It happened with COVID too, No, it's yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, that was a whole different situation. I guess humans just don't learn.
I suppose.
So I wonder Saskia, like we obviously this is a terrible situation, and it's one that's like super easy to feel very disempowered with because you know, as much as you march around and do things, it doesn't seem to be stopping. There is there anything that like people can do advocate for, like take action on, that could make this slightly less bad.
I mean, a ceasefire, I encourage people to donate to unisf and obviously you know, MSF, a lot of the wonderful organizations doing work there, and probably my my biggest one right now, especially since we're around the holidays and people are spending a lot of time with family and likely getting into some heavy conversations around the dinner tables. Make sure you're well informed and you're not spreading misinformation and disinformation online because that's been a huge aspect of this.
You know, we saw with the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine. You know, Russia took direct action to spread misinformation and disinformation and we're struggling with that in the United States right now with this. So I encourage people to stay informed of this, to really utilize good resources and not pull things from social media. If you're going to share something, you know, do so from an accurate source. I really, you know, the who un have been really good at
doing continuous updates and sharing that information. Human Rights Watch at all of the above, and on top of again, donating and really being an advocate for a ceasefire to me is the biggest thing because also reminding people, hey, this is currently a localized crisis, but infectious diseases and humanitarian crisis crises, excuse me, rarely stay that way.
I would also plug the Palestinian Medical Relief Society the PMRS. They're the on the ground people. They've been there since nineteen seventy nine. They are founded by Palestinian doctors. It's mostly a Palestinian run and they're doing I think, really
good work down there as best they can. And there where actually the who gets most of their information or a lot of it at least it's coming from their updates from the PMRS people on the ground, So that's another local source to look at if people are interested in getting involved.
I think you got you sure to wrap it up.
Yet, I was just thinking how unfortunate it is that people don't care enough. So you have to be like, it's not only going to stay localized, Like it's not just that probably, you know what I mean. I hate that we have to go there because, especially after going through a pandemic yourself, if that is still not enough for you to have any kind of empathy, that's that's just insane to me.
That's uh.
The one consistent thing I've seen is a lot of people say, oh, this conflict is you know, very There's a lot of history, and I don't really want to get involved and yeah, and you know, to us, I do understand that there is a long, complicated history that not a lot of people are well informed of. But inform yourself. And that doesn't mean you can't have empathy. You can you know, denounce the moss and also denounce
anti Semitism. Yeah, these things are not really intrusive. And it's it's impressive to me that we're still after you know, it's not even been three months and we've lost twenty thousand people that we know of a mess. We're seeing journalists killed left and right as well. It's it's impressive to me that people are still saying, oh, I don't I don't really want to comment on that, or you know, it's it's it's very messy.
In the medical I'm sorry, James. In the medical world, I've seen doctors complain about more about the word provider and how it's used. Then the fact that three hundred medical professionals have been killed, some of them while doing their duty in the hospital. Like, that's a part that kind of surprised me from a medical perspective. And you know,
I think I mentioned it to you before. I'm grateful for coming on your show, because I think a lot of the overlap between doctors who listen to our show and they listen to yours, and they're very vocal and they're online, and they are the ones who are really giving me hope in these situations because and there's a lot of people in medicine and this is a medical issue. I mean, I'm not even talking about any of the history.
That's nothing. That's not what I'm on. What it's important to me right now, it's about this healthcare crisis that is worsening and progressively worsening, and it is it is a bit of a bummer that I'm not seeing a little bit more interest in addressing it.
Yeah, I would hope.
I would say that most people, like insider outside of medical community could maybe agree that like the correct number of hospitals to bomb is zero hospitals and that but that, yeah, there isn't a reason why you bomb a hospitalities, shouldn't.
Anthony Blincoln said like a year or about Ukraine and Russia. Russia bombed hospitals and schools. There's no way that's normal. And then like there's a video where it's like cross sectioning into like right now, how He's like, we're always going to support Israel. So it's like, no, it's not normal. Bombing hospitals and schools is never normal or okay. It's crazy that Israel went from being like we would never bomb a hospital to bombing dozens of them and nothing happening.
Yeah, but I like, yeah, I guess just felt like lick completion.
Again, it's not okay when Turkey bombs hospitals in Northeast area either, Like I was there when they bomb one they bombed another one. Since it's not okay when the Hunter and mean mail bomb's hospitals and at this one hospital left standing in the whole of Corny State right now, and like this is happening there too, when we're not like not caring about those people because this is a topic of the day or whatever.
Like it's also not.
Okay to use white phosphorus on armed civilians across the board were Yeah, like in general, it's horrific, and I just I think it's it's you know, and there was there were a couple of reports and I think that there's still data coming out about it that bodies had organs stolen from them. Yeah, which is just horrific, and yeah, it doesn't really practice what Israel.
Has done for a while though. Israel's uh, they said they stopped it and then they're continuing to do it. But it's like they're notorious for bringing to returning bodies that have been like autopsyed or having all their organs removed. And I want to just point out that for Muslim burials, the body is like it's very important that the body is whole, and the same for Jewish burials. But it's just a really disgusting just point blank and then also really disrespectful.
But yeah, sorry interrupted, No, no, I mean it's and again, you know, I think there's still a lot of information coming out about that and how many that court, et cetera, because I, like I mentioned before, I think information right now is really challenging. Accurate information, of course, is exceedingly difficult, so I'm always very careful, you know what we say.
But to me, you know, the Washington Post just released a really good article and in death analysis of the attacks on the Al Shifa hospital, because that's the biggest hospital in Gaza, and for a while, you know, IDF was saying, well, this is where Hamas has been operating they have a tunnel networks, and there was there was a good breakdown of why this is inaccurate and at the end of the day, now there's no acceptable reason to bomb a hospital, and drawing attention to the fact
that this was occurring and misinformation is being shared is huge. So I'm hopeful that you know and very grateful to be on this podcast and talk with you all because the more information we can communicate about this situation, but also about the fact that there are much larger consequences of this from just even an infectious disease perspective is so critical because I don't think people realize that, and again they disassociate when they hear it's the conflict, it's
a result of conflicts. It is so much larger than that. It will you know, we will see it in the States. We will see the ramifications of this and if nothing else again coming out of COVID, I'd like to think that we realize that we are part of a much larger, interconnected world and infectious diseases are simply a plane flight away.
Yeah, yeah, very true. Thank you both so much for your brains and your knowledge of for coming on the show.
It's uh, thanks for having us.
Yeah, you so much for having us, of course, and before we go, i'd like to ask you if you have anything you'd like to plug like white people can find you good. You've mentioned a couple of good resources, but other information resources that.
Kind of thing that you'd like to share.
So, in terms of the resources, I am following a couple members of the PMRS. They have a Twitter feed but it's not very active, but the who gets a lot of the same information and they do a good job of updating in terms of where you could learn more. I just did an episode on the healthcare crisis in Gaza on my podcast, The House of Pod, which James has been on and stream. I'm trying to get you to come on.
So I'm down.
We're going to keep working on you and Saskia too. I mean, you're all invinded. I'm recording this. I'm just gonna release it on my podcast as well. And yeah, so listen to us there. I'll be doing more episodes on this topic as well in the in the coming months.
Cool perfect, I'm marrying all of those resources I really been looking to. Of course, I'm the Public Health Parents, So who you know Seth, Human Rights Watch and my big go tos as you know, again as all the sources we've already mentioned, and I really I want to give a shout out to a colleague of mine, Jessica Alti Rivera, who is really really wonderful in this space and has been doing a lot of science communication on
her Instagram. I tend to be a little bit more on the cesspool that is formally Twitter, but you know, I'm I think there's some really wonderful people out there, this entire group included, that are actively working to share information but also how people can get engaged and involved. So shout out to her and just all of the hard work that a lot of key journalists are doing in this space, because again, if you have no communication out it's really hard to get accurate information.
Well, thanks guys for listening. Why are you laughing?
James?
Can I wrap us out? Or is this too monotone of up? Send it?
No, that's the show again, Thanks again for both of you being so outspoken. I think, especially reminding everyone that it's actually not complicated, because it's it's also like a medical issue. It's not exactly when you just look at the numbers, look at body count, look at families. That's I think what our main focus should be. And I appreciate you both because I know it's a tricky out there to be outspoken.
So thank you, Thank you guys, thanks so much.
Welcome to it could happen here at the show about the slow end of the world and all the small little things that are kind of pushing us that way. Isn't that exciting?
New Year?
Knew me?
Not not really.
I'm kind of doing the same stuff, mostly staring into the abyss and seeing what stares back. Staring at the abyss with me today is Mia Wong. Hello, thank you for joining me. Oh boy, the abyss is is looking real choppy today, real abyssle.
You could say, the waves coming out of it are staring back at you real hard.
Yeah.
Yeah, So we're gonna talk today about anti semitism, So I guess content warning in case you don't want to hear a whole bunch of anti Semitic stuff. I'm not just gonna be repeating anti Semitic things. It's just this is just the topic for the whole episode. So yeah, the past few months there has been a pretty dramatic rise in anti semitism, ranging from physical attacks, vandalism, and
lots of rhetoric. Now, there's a few as that I think make this a little bit tricky to talk about, which is why it's taken me a while to put this together. Firstly, I want to avoid getting into like oppression Olympics here, right, talking about one bad thing does not negate many other bad things that are happening concurrently. Having a discussion about a very troubling rise in antisemitism and a state backed ethnic cleansing do not need to
be mutually exclusive topics of discussion. Right. We can say both of these things are actually pretty bad. And today we're going to be talking specifically about anti semitism. And I think you know, this show has had a history of reporting on anti fascist movements and attempts to stop fascist entryism and promoting of anti semitism. So this topic is well within our regular wheelhouse and there is a
decent bit to talk about. Now. The second thing that makes this topic a little bit tricky is that some of the big extremism research groups that typically do the most cataloging of anti Semitic incidents have proven themselves to be slightly unreliable on this topic for the past four months. And that's not just my opinion, that's also the opinion of current and former ADL employees who have been coming out against Director Jonathan greenblatz leadership choices, particularly since the
October seventh Hamas attack. Now, due to the nature of their job versus my job, ADL analysts have a lot more dedicated time and resources to cataloging alleged anti Semitic incidents, but under greenblatz direction, the whole of their data from the past four months is heavily skewed to include anything expressing anti Zionism as being included in their data about anti semitism, and even anything deemed too sympathetic to Palestinians as being a driver of anti Semitism. So that's the
kind of situation we have here with. You know, there's many issues the ADL has had in the past, which we may talked about in the future, but typically they've done an okay job the past few years, specifically cataloging anti semitism during the rise of the alt right. Their data is often relatively reliable on this topic. Some of their other data and other practices are very open to criticism. But this is kind of one other factor that's gonna
make this a little bit tricky. Now, as like an example, right, this is this is we can we can talk about these things in abstract. I'm gonna talk about something from Atlanta because this is something I have some experience in. So on the ADL's big map of anti Semitic incidents from October seventh to the present, if you zoom into Atlanta, there's two incidents that are right next to each other. One is a banner drop done by the Goiam Defense League, which is a group of neo Nazis.
Oh God.
Basically, they made some banners expressing pro Hitler statements alongside slogans like free Palestine, and they put them up above a really big road in Atlanta. Right, So this is pretty standard neo Nazi anti Semitism using kind of anti Zionism as this sort of mask But I mean Hitler very thid, Yes exactly, that's not really it's not really
masked because you also have a Hitler banner. But like you know, if someone only sees one banner, be like, oh, it's a Palestine banner, but no, it's actually a Nazi banner.
So we have this incident logged. We also have another incident blogged right beside it from a protest a few days later, which was an Inner faith rally in support of Palestine against the ongoing ethnic cleansing that's happening in Gaza with thousands and thousands of people being killed. So we have this banner drop and we have this rally, and both of these things are labeled as an anti Semitic incident. They're both like equal in the eyes of this data, which just isn't true. I was, I was
at this rally. I did not hear.
Anything anti Semitic coming from the speakers. Many of the speakers, if not the majority of the speakers, were Jewish. There were a group of Jewish counter protesters who showed up who started many fights, fights which were very quickly de escalated by the people who were putting on the rally. There was this one woman who was carrying an Israeli flag on his flagpole who kept hitting people with it.
So there was a lot of there's a lot of things going on at this rally, but this was not an anti Semitic rally, And in fact, the Jewish counter protesters were extremely vitriolic. They were expressing explicit desire for genocide of Palestinians, like very very gross stuff. It was, it was really disgusting. So both of these incidents, though, are seen as equal, which just show that's just an easy example to kind of show how this data isn't
really reliable that the ADL is putting together here. Now, I really don't feel like it's my place to go through the eightyeals database and decide what is and is not antisemitism, right, Like, that's I don't have the time, nor the money normally the authority to be like the arbiter of what is and isn't anti semitic.
Yeah, Garrison, Garrison turning into the anti Semitism commissar.
Yeah, that's that's not That's not me, right. I have a background in anti fascist research. I have a background in neo Nazia driven anti semitism, Right, these are the things I usually specialize in. But still, this is a this is a massive this is a massive field. Antisemitism is a complicated topic. Rhetoric can be complicated, and having not attended or reviewed every single rally or incident in question,
I'm simply not equipped to make informed judgments. So for that reason, this episode I will focus mostly on physical attacks, threats, and vandalism as opposed to the much more murky waters of rhetoric, online rhetoric and you know, just these these there's been probably thousands of rallies across the United States. I've not been to everyone, I've not watched every single speech, I've not heard every single offhand comment, so I'm not
going to deal with those. Instead, I'm going to be focusing on physical like in like IRL and things that have a very clear result of the action. So this
mostly attacks throughout vandalism. Anyway, moving on though, I guess actually the one other thing about stats is that when talking about this rise anti semitism, because there's been a lot of articles from mainstream news outlets being like, here's the rise antisemitism, and here's the stats, another thing pointing towards why these stats are unreliable and the reason why I'm not going to be using them largely is because many of the stats included and these articles are crime stats,
and these crime stats are also proving to be heavily unreliable. For example, the Metropolitan Police claimed that there was a one thousand and three hundred and fifty percent increase in anti Semitic hate crimes in London during the first two two and a half weeks of October, with two hundred and eighteen anti Semitic offenses in London during that time
period compared to only fifteen in twenty twenty two. But included in these stats are incidents like the police in London arresting a man for tearing down some of those hostage posters. That's one of the hate crimes that they include in this, and also the met said that that's the Metropolitan Police said that chanting from the river to the sea near Jewish people or near Jewish buildings during
a protest would be deemed unlawful. And I think there is a debate to be had whether if you're just protesting outside of a random Jewish building, that's probably not great and that could be an indicator of anti Semitism, but having that chant be deemed unlawful for just being near other Jewish people, Like I said, at the rally in Atlanta, there was a whole bunch of Jewish counter
protesters who came to start fights. So like, you're going to be around Jewish people if you're a march you're marching around, or if you're outside in Israeli embassy that's a that's an it M I opinion, a very valid target for protest that would be considered a Jewish building. So all of these stats are heavily heavily skewed by these by by these sorts of reasons for how how how the met is, including.
Things as being anti Semitic hate crimes.
Yeah, and I mean like this, like if you just think about what the rationale is there for a second, Like is a group of anti Sionist Jews chanting from the river to the sea around themselves a hate crime?
Exactly rightight? Like this is nonsense? Like so, and also you know what I mean.
And also like this is the British police, Like those are the most anti Semitic motherfuckers this side of like the Ukrainian neo Nazis or something.
And like I do not doubt there was an actual increase of anti Semitic attacks bendless hate speech. That that is what we're talking about in this episode. We will be getting into many incidents, but it is difficult to pin down some of what these really big stats actually represent because if tearing down one of those silly Hamas wanted posters is being labeled a hate crime on the
same level as drawing a swastika on a synagogue. That data is basically useless, and now I think it's also worth mentioning, just very very briefly, the Metropolitan Police also recorded a one hundred and forty percent increase in Islamophobic incidents during those first two and a half weeks of October's that's forty two incidents in twenty twenty two compared to one hundred and three incidents in twenty twenty three.
And while that percentage is lower than the anti Semitic stat it also indicates how much more common Islamophobia in London is because the regular amount of reported incidents from last year is so much higher than the regular reported amount of anti Semitic incidents. Like having forty two incidents per like two and a half weeks, be the normal stat is not great and maybe someone should look into why British people are so islamophobic. I mean that there's
that that's a whole episode in and of itself. Is Amophobia in the UK is a massive, massive problem. But just as a comparison, I thought I might as well say that we will get to Honkah next. But it has already been thirteen minutes of me talking about stats and giving disclaivers, so that means it's time for an ad break. I'm not going to do a silly ad transition. Just listen to the ads. All right, we are back, since we just finally escaped the holiday season, Let's begin
by talking about Honkkah. Public manoras, often without any extra like iconography tying them to the state of Israel, were
a frequent target of vandalism and anti Semitic messaging. During the months of December, a far right member of parliament in Poland used a fire extinguisher to blow at the candles on a minora in the lobby of parliam A public menora in London had its light bulbs smashed with a free Palestine sticker placed onto the front, and then days later it was found toppled over and left in pieces. There's many of these incidents. I'm just gonna name a few more, just because at a certain point it kind
of becomes redundant. But I think these things are worth talking about. An eleven foot, three hundred and fifty pound menora next to Lake Mari in Oakland was cut up and destroyed in mid December, with pieces being thrown into the nearby lake. A message was graffitied that led We're gonna find you. You're on alert. It was also reported that there was graffiti left nearby that read free Palestine in Arabic.
But I can't confirm that.
The picture they have online does not match what free Palestine in airboth looks like. But I'm not an expert on Arabic, so i just can't confirm that, but that is being reported in local Jewish newspapers. Manora sand sculpture commissioned in Palm Beach was destroyed and left defaced with a swastika outside of synagogue in a suburb of Washington, d C. A Manora was toppled over on the eve of Honka, and two manoras were vandalized and damaged in
Brooklyn in early December by masked individuals. So one other similar incident I will talk about, which is kind of interesting, is that there was this pro Palestine protest at Yale where a one of the protesters climbed up onto this massive I don't know how tall it was, but it was huge. They had to climb up pretty high on this big public menora and placed a Palestinian flag kind of around one of the little arms on the manora.
But very quickly, like within seconds of this happening, other pro Palestine protesters, noticing this is kind of disrespectful, asked this person to take it down, like like almost almost immediately. This is a very a very quick exchange, and this kind of sparked some people talking about, you know, is it okay to put Palestinian flags on manora? Is it okay to vanelize manoras? Which the answer is no, The answer you shouldn't vandalize a manora. That's generally not great.
But you know, people were saying and specifically pointing towards like pictures of IDF soldiers who've been taking territory in Gaza, who've been putting up manoras in Gaza, or like the Israeli military doing these photo ops with big manoras in different parts of gazas being like, hey, when there's this active ethnic cleansing going on and soldiers are using this religious iconography and it's being associated directly with this, with this ongoing ethnic genocide, how can you blame people who
are going to be treating this symbol with hostility, and I think there's a few problems with this idea. I'm going to quote from this Jewish artist who goes by Underscore a Nunnery, who I think phrased this really well quote. Jewish symbols shouldn't be associated with Zionism or ceded to them just because Zionists abuse them. If the manora were put up by Zionists, as some explicit the Zionist display, then putting up a Palestadian flag would be an active resistance.
If it's not, then it's just cementing the Zionist conflation and exploitation of Jewish identity. There are more non Jewish Zionists than there are Jews, unquote. And this gets at a point which I think is really important when you're talking about anti Zionist activism. Attacking symbols of Jewish culture in the name of anti Zionism only strengthens the cause of Zionism by affirming the conflation of Judaism and Zionism,
or Judaism and the State of Israel. This conflation helps Zionists shield their actions by abusing the Jewish identity and making these two things be more like intersectional. So I think that is one a strategic reason for ya this is a bad idea, and two it's maybe slightly anti Semitic. So that is my little holiday section just because I saw a whole bunch of stuff around these manoras and I didn't feel about it.
Yeah, like this sucks, like please don't do this.
And I've seen some people like also using the comparison of like would you would you also criticize indigenous people in America for graffitiing or taking down images of like Christian iconography and like, No, because the oppression faced by Christians and the oppression faced by Jewish people are two different things. Like these are these are actually historically these are very different things. So no, these things actually cannot
be compared in my opinion. But now I'm going to talk about some international incidents because I think we have a tendency to overfocus on America when there's a whole bunch of other stuff happening and you know, the rest of the world. Back in October, a historic synagogue in Tunisia was burned down by a mob of hundreds of people in response to reports that in Israeli airstrike hit a hospital in Gaza.
This sucks.
I shouldn't have to explain why burning down a historical synagogue is antisemitic because you don't like something the state of Israel did.
That's just that. Just isn't that just isn't like, that's just not se shit like come on. Yeah.
So a month later in November, someone posted the video online of themselves pouring fuel and setting fire to the only synagogue in Armenia. The entrance was damaged in the arsen attack, but no one was hurt. The only synagogue in Vortswaft, Poland. Sorry I pride butchered that, but it is a hard word, but the only synagogue in this town of Poland to survive the Holocaust was defaced with graffiti that read quote Israel criminals and murderers unquote and
then like a week I guess. Earlier that week a group of teenagers also destroyed a an aura in this same town. In mid October, Maltov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue in Berlin after Hanukkah. In Belgium, a Jewish materi was vandalized with swastikas on gravestones in late no In In late November, a mult have cocktail was thrown
at a Jewish community center in Montreal. Earlier that month, shots were fired at two different Jewish schools in Montreal in three different incidents, and four Holocaust memorials in Germany were vandalized with a mix of antisemitic and anti Zionist messages. So again, like when I was looking at these ones once in Germany, the actual content of about half of these messages were not anti Semitic. But the act of doing this at a at a at a Holocaust memorial just is like it it it gives me the ick.
And there's arguments could be made that this does actually play into antisemitic troops, like you're what, You're blaming dead Jewish people for the actions of the current state of Israel. Like that's it's it just And also half half of these messages left at these at these Holocausts were also just blatantly at anti Semitic, like very clearly like Nazi style stuff.
I don't have time to go over all of the incidents across the Europe. There is a great deal many. There's many, many, many that I've not mentioned.
These are just a few. Like I said, I'm focusing on like vandalism, very very clear cut stuff, people doing arson attacks, right, it's just very very basic stuff. This stuff in Montreal not great, Montreal, Canada, get your shit together. Although unfortunately not surprising but still upsetting is Jews being barred from shops across Turkey. And oh there's a whole a whole bunch of very gross government government sponsored anti semitism across Turkey campaigns to prohibit the sale of land
to Jewish people. A lot of a lot of bad stuff in Turkey. But that's not incredibly surprising.
Yeah, I mean it's aired Wan, Like, yeah, he fucking sucks ass and he oh yeah. Airedwan is a man who has personally ordered children to be burned alive with firebombs, so you know this is not out of character for him.
Yeah, and I guess, uh finally this this one one other thing about Honkah is that so last month, right after the end of Honkah, bomb threats were sent out en mass to more than four hundred Jewish Jewish centers and synagogues across the United States. This was most likely orchestrated by the same kind of small number of individuals.
All of the messages were very similar. None of these were incredibly credible, but it still sparked a whole bunch of bomb sweeps and concerned because when Jewish synagogues get bomb threats, that's not an empty threat either, Like this is like there is historical precedent.
Yeah.
Well, and I also like I think, I think the everything that's important about this too is like this, this is you know, this is like one of the things is the culmination of everything that Wright's been doing for the last like eight years has been the development of like this quadre of people who do bomb threats.
Calling in bomb threats as a tactics. Yes, no, there's the concerted effort form threats at hospitals that provide transgender care, abortion clinics. There was a string of weirdly organized bomb threats against schools about a year or two ago. But I think I think Robert did an episode.
On yeah now and now we're here at you know, we're at bomb threats you can synagogues, which is terrifying.
According to the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit security organization that tracks threats made against Jewish communities, bomb threats and swatting incidents, basically freight trying to get a swat team to show up somewhere because you lied about there being
like an ongoing crime or something. But bomb threats and swatting incidents targeted against Jewish centers saw over a five hundred percent increase in twenty twenty three compared to the previous year, which I have no reason to believe is incorrect. So on that note, I know, I don't really think we could have a bomb threat segue to adds, I really don't really don't know. Don't do bomb, don't do bomb threat specypically, this is what I got. Yeah, typically, anyway,
do you know what else is to bomb these ads? Okay, fine, all right, we are back. Maybe the worst air transition we've ever done. That's not true, That is definitely not true.
Yeah, okay, okay, you're right. Okay.
So during this last section, I'm gonna talk a little bit more about data aggregation. So, like I said previously in this episode, due to the nature of what my job is and the nature of what an ADL analyst's job is, they just have a lot more time to
dedicate towards specifically logging anti Semitic incidents. So I did look through their data set and I've made some extrapolations based on some of the findings and some of the open source data that they have regarding specific in so on that note, the ADL has logged around one thousand and one hundred anti Semitic incidents since October seventh, not related to protest rallies. So this is specifically all the incidents that are not related to these big pro Palestinian
Interfaith many Jewish led rallies. Now I'm not saying that nothing anti Semitic has not happened at any of those rallies, but these rallies were logged simply as quote anti Israel rallies which featured over anti Semitism, anti Zionism, and or expressions of support for terror. So crammed in the middle of that explanation is just anti Zionism. So that is one thing they are just counting as being enough to
be logged as an anti Semitic incident. So again, I'm not going through the over like one thousand rallies that they have logged here just because I don't have the time and I don't feel like it. But yes, just for full transparency, that is the information. I'm not going to be looking at instead, I'm looking at these one thousand and one hundred other incidents not related to these protests.
So these one thy one hundred harassment and vandalism incidents include things from anti Zionist slash, anti Israel stickers and graffiti being left at universities and synagogues, the latter which I believe is in poor taste, but also you know swastikas being painted on synagogues, extremely anti Semitic messages being left at Jewish centers, and street harassment targeting visibly Jewish people, as well as just overt to neo Nazi activity under
the banner of free Palestine. Now, of these over one thousand and one hundred incidents, I'd say that a very small minority of them are principled anti Zionist activism, which
has been mislabeled. Most of the data in these one thousand incidents is just blatant anti semitism, I an specifically directed to words, just regular Jewish people, people writing kill Jews and bathroom stalls, threats being sent to Jewish people mentioning Hitler or Hermas, a lot of just extremely gross stuff like there's too many, There's too many, Just like threats that mentioned the word Jews that I just can't even read them all, nor do I want to, because
it's just gross. Like there is a truly upsetting number. Which is why I wanted to make this episode in the first place, is because I've been seeing this pretty big rise of anti Semitism. Other people have as well, and I felt like this wasn't probably being as talked about as much as it should be among the anti fascist left, because you know, everyone's focusing on this ethnic
cleansing that's happening, because that is very bad. But meanwhile, there's this other massive problem that if you care about fascist entryism, if you care about anti Semitic behavior and actions being either allowed to happen in leftist spaces or just happening in general, Like a lot of the stuff is being done by fascists who are not who are not you know, going to a pro Palestine rally because
they believe in anti imperialism. But there's just a lot of this stuff happening, which is why I think it is need needing to be talked about.
Now.
There are a number of instances that are logged in these one thousand, one hundred incidents here, such as you know, for I'm just gonna I'm gonna pull from actual examples.
But also this is kind of generalizing because this was also reflecting a small trend things like pro Palestine phrases being yelled at random Jewish people on the street, having like Antizionist stickers being poorly placed in different locations like at a Jewish cemetery, vandalizing non political Jewish owned businesses with anti Zionist phrases, even like breaking the windows of random Jewish owned businesses with no ties to Israel or the IDF and leaving anti Zionist phrases or pro Palestine
phrases graffitied next to these broken windows. Now, while the content of what's being actually said in these incidents may not be like anti Semitic in nature by itself, right, like just having very basic anti Sionist phrases being graffeited that may not be anti Semitic itself, like that combination
of words. This sort of activity, though, plays into a classic anti Semitic kind of trope, as if every like random Jewish person is somehow in part responsible for the actions of Israel, and it also conflates Jewish identity with Zionism, which is the problem that we were talking about before when we started this episode, right when I was talking about the stuff with Hanuka just a few hours ago as of time of recording, the corvalis anti fascist branch.
I guess, yeah, yeah, I think they're a member of Torch put out this thread about how the GDL, the Going Defense League. We talked about them previously in this episode. They're a big group of organized neo Nazis that spread a lot of anti Semitic stuff, How they hijacked a city council meeting to spread anti Semitic stuff during a discussion of a during a discussion about a ceasefire resolution.
And I think they kind of ended their thread by talking about how it is extremely important to call out the conflation of the Jewish people with the genocidal actions of the State of Israel and assertions that the media is controlled by Jews or that regular Jews have some kind of say in everything that's happening. Right, it gets
in this kind of like cabalish notion. Now back to kind of the data that I was talking about, these sorts of incidents are vastly, vastly outweighed by the number of just overt jew hatred, invoking of anti Semitic conspiracy theories,
calling for the death of Jews, and swastikas. But I still think it's extremely important to mention because the targeting of random Jewish people in business is itself that is a form of anti Semitism, and this activity helps to reinforce the abuse of the Jewish identity by inextricately linking it to Zionism, which only strengthens the Zionist ideology. So that's that's that's my little mini rant about the way
we've been seeing some of these things play out. Now, many of these over a thousand incidents logged use anti Zionism as a sort of cover for just spreading anti Semitism, particularly from known white supremacist and neo Nazi groups. The
GDL is a good example. There's also groups like White Lives Matter and a number of others that I could name that when you're looking through the ADL's data on these one thousand or so incidents, a large large amount of them are done by the Goam Defense League, the GDL, And this is this is this is a strategic thing for them, right They're seeing the kind of moment that people are in culturally, the way people are talking about Israel, and if they can find a way to squeeze in
their neo Nazi talking points kind of under this very very thin Palestine kind of veneer, that's great for them. If they can get people to start almost mindlessly repeating their style of talking points, that's great for them. Right, it makes sense why they're putting so much time and dedication to this, because they're trying to use this moment and abuse the thousands of people who might be more susceptible to this right now to spread their ideology and to do and to do entryism like this is a
part of what their tactic is. So while it's true that many of these incidents do come from explicitly Nazi groups, there's also just a really upsettingly and shockingly large number of them that come from students, students from middle school to college who are ostensibly anti Israel but are going about it via targeting randomish people and spreading anti Semitism, whether that's intended or not. But a lot of the
talking points are just anti Semitic talking points. Now, I can't I'm not in the heads of anybody I'm not talking to the twelve year old in some middle school in Colorado who's leaving anti Semitic messages in a bathroom stall, but the effect is kind of the same. And just the sheer number of specifically like like like middle school, junior high, high school, instance, that are logged among this thousand was just incredibly incredibly distressing.
Yeah, And I I mean, I think I think a lot of what's going on here is that, like the US is a culturally Christian society, right like it has like of the developed countries, the US is like one of the most Christian and American Christianity. And this is true of like in different ways of like just basically all of the major Christian de nominations are enormously anti Semitic, like and there are any Seminican theory in different in
different in weird ways. Like I mean, I spent some time recently for something else, like reading about like this argument between like the Evangelicals who are like, we need to we need to have all the Jews go back to Israel so that we can bring about the Second Coming. And they were gonna fight with the the hard line like right wing Lutherans and the hard, hardline right wing Lutherans are like, what the fuck do you mean? Like no, like the Holy Land belongs to us, not the Jews.
What the fuck are you guys doing? Right, It's like, this is the baseline of American society, right, it's unbelievably anti Semitic in ways that you know, are are just sort of passed down through like like culture are culturally received and absorbed in ways that people don't like see or understand or think about, because it's just it's it's the wall, it's the water that American that you know, you swim in in American culture in this or it's
like like this hegemonic Christian society, and that means that like even people with like at least in their heads, good intentions get caught up in this shit.
It's funning, yeah, and bad.
And there's also at the same time, a very concerned effort to slide in the anti Jewish extremism, anti Semitic rhetoric, to slide that in sometimes covertly, sometimes not into lots of mainstream discourse and exchanges and social media specifically, TikTok has been really has been really bad at this, which is where a lot of young people spend probably the majority of their day if they're going to be looking at their phone, and it's it's I said, I didn't
want to get into like social media rhetoric. But also just like as someone who spent a lot of time on four chan and eight chan looking specifically at Nazis, the way Twitter currently works is like it is just four chan eight chan level stuff pretty commonly, Like if I look at the quote tweets of any of almost any tweet made by a Jewish person, there is just some of the most atrocious, unmoderated anti semitism that I've seen on a platform like Twitter, Like this is this
is really like eight chan level stuff, I think, And this isn't intentional to slide this stuff in to make it look normalized. The ADL reported a nearly one thousand percent increase in the daily average of violent messages mentioning Jews and Israel in a white supremacist and right wing extremist channels on Telegram in the days following the October seventh massacre. So this is something that is specifically being done in far right spaces. I'm going to quote again
from this corbalis against fascism. The struggle for the liberation of Palestine is one of the most pressing of our time. It's imperative that we shut down anti Semitic attempts to co op that struggle immediately. Which if you care about the liberation of Palestine and palestadining and peep, well, this is something you also need to be concerned about, because these two things are linked. There's twenty seven assaults have been reported. Around eight of these assaults are stemming from
fights which broke out at protest rallies. I'm not going to get into those ones as much because that can be tricky because I've seen Zionists start fights like right next to me before and then claim a victimhood like no, you're the one that started that. You swung a flagpole at these people, and then they de escalated very quickly.
And I'm sure there's incidents of the reverse happening. But a majority of these assaults that have been reported are very clear cut anti Semitic attacks targeted against Jewish people, some of which are quite frightening to read about. There's been a large number of a vehicle attacks. There was one incident of someone breaking into a Jewish family's home and assaulting people inside their own home. Then also there's been a number of incidents of just assaulting people as
they leave synagogues. I've seen very off start fights with people right next to that is That is kind of what I had to say about this rise in anti Semitism, because I saw this being a major problem that was being not talked about as much as it should be. Because this is it is higher than what we've seen in years, not to even mention the rise in Islamophobia, which is also a massive rise is in Islamophobia has been happening the past four months, including resulting in murders.
Right just in the four weeks after October seventh, the Council on American Islamic Relations logged an unprecedented number of Islamophobic incidents. The research and advocacy director Corey Saylor said in the statement, quote, both Islamophobia and anti Arab racism are out of control in ways we have not seen
in almost ten years. The one thousand, two hundred and eighty three complaints we have received over the past month represent a two hundred and sixteen percent increase in requests for help and reports of bias the islamophobic and anti Palestinian rhetoric that have been used to justify both violence against Palestinians and Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights here in America have contributed to this unprecedented surge
in bigotry. It's just been bad the past four months. Yeah, it's just things have been bad. There's been murders, there's been assaults. It's it's it's it's it's it's horrible. And I think both of these things are things that need to be need to be interrogated more, the islamophobic incidents as well as anti Semitic incidents. So that's what I wanted to to talk about as I have been slowly slowly logging more synagogue attacks, more death threats, all of
these sorts of stuff. So yeah, that's kind of all I have to say, uh today.
Yeah, it's it's reel bad. I don't know, I mean, it's that out there.
I mean, if you care about this ruggle of deliberation of Palestine and the people in Palestine, you need to if you see, if you see anything that plays into these sorts of antisemitic tropes that we've talked about blaming just random Jewish people for what's going on, Attacking random Jewish owned businesses, without any ties to the IDF, without any ties to the State of Israel, just all of
this stuff. It needs to be called out because this actually, this sort of thing only strengthens the ideology of Zionism. So if you call yourself an anti Zionist, it is your imperative duty to be on the watch for this sort of thing and stop it if you see it. That's kind of the thesis at the end of this. All right, Well, without further ado, I think we will end this episode. Stay safe out there, everybody. Hopefully this new year won't be complete chaos for all of us.
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.