It Could Happen Here Weekly 118

happen here a podcast about things falling apart. And you know, folks, season one of this, if you listened way back in twenty nineteen, we focused a lot on my fears about a massive coming civil conflict in the United States, you know, along the lines of a civil war, but sort of based around my experiences in civil conflicts in Ukraine and Iraq and Syria a number of other parts of the

world prior to twenty twenty. And one of the reasons I'm bringing this up right now is because you know, what I experienced with the fighting in Isis in Iraq was kind of instrumental in me understanding how conflict looked in the modern era and how the United States was closer to a conflict like that, then I think a lot of folks would, normally, especially people who are kind of obsessed with the idea of a civil war, as two big armies in gray and blue marching at each other,

we're willing to kind of to contend with. And when I was starting that reporting over there, you know, taking my first trips to Iraq, one of the first things that I did was watch every Isis beheading video and some of the Al Qaida in Iraq beheading videos prior to that, not as a voyeuristic thing, but because I felt like if I was going to take myself and another person into that situation, the responsible thing to do was make myself very informed of what the stakes were.

And I'm bringing this all up not because we're talking about the Middle East today, because we are talking about a beheading video, probably the first beheading video directly tied to the US CO Cuncture war that I can I can name, and I'm gonna throw to Garrison Davis now.

in together. This is one of the most bizarre acts of extremist violence that I've come across in terms of like the amount of research I've done to this, and I think it kind of points at a this trend of extremist acts of violence done by people who have a lot of content on the internet, not just like posting manifestos, but like are positioning themselves as some form of like alternative content creator. This guy had a lot

of music, had a lot of self published books. In lieu of leaving like a complete single manifesto, we get these just years of writing and like artistic creations that now live on archive dot org as kind of ghosts of this guy's presence.

something besides alone maniac. And I think one of the things that's really interesting about this shift to an increasing number of these people representing what they're doing in fiction in some way or in some other kind of creative endeavor is that it sort of mirrors the idea that like, in our culture, the thing that people most want to be is some sort of like influencer content creator, Like that's the top desired job among like a lot of gen Z kids, and it's also just increasingly like the

thing that people creatively want to see themselves as, and so like, I think this fits into this trend of violence, that is that is foreshadowed by someone, not by a work of like political thought, you know, which you may not want to think of a manifesto as that, but that is what it is, but is preceded instead by art.

Second Messiah, King of Earth by Justin Mohen. It is distressingly thick, like four hundred and fifty pages or so. It is so much book. And the weird thing about it, I've read through a chunk of it, and we will be getting to some of it. It's not badly written, and I want to be clear, I'm not saying that like he's a good writer in the commercial sense, or that he's a good writer in that like he's a skilled artist. I'm saying that, like it's clear writing. You're

always sure what he's trying to say. When he depicts the vinces happening. Those events are crazy, but like he's they're clearly depicted, which is interesting to me. And yeah, we will be hearing about more of that in part too. But I have learned a decent amount about him from this book, The Second Messiah King of Earth.

do it, they're also not necessarily less responsible. And what I mean by that is a person can be mentally ill and engage in a shooting, and that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to what they are or another act of violence. That doesn't mean you don't pay attention to why they're saying they did it. The fact that this guy is clearly I believe, schizophrenic does not mean that his reasons for doing this are immaterial, because most people who have whatever mental illness this guy did have

do not cut their dad's head off. So the fact that he is justifying it with this very boilerplate set of right wing culture war grievances is meaningful. And it's meaningful because absent that influence in his life, perhaps he either doesn't carry out an act of violence or it's at least a very different looking one, And so I think that is important to just get out to upfront.

no longer serves American citizens. He mentions how the traitorous Biden regime is sending over American troops to fight in a doomed war in the Russian winter, leaving America defenseless against a quote fifth column army of illegal immigrants invading our southern border to strike Americans on our own soil. Unquote. That's another term he uses a lot, fifth column. Yeah, probly says it like four or five times.

his own head. He then ordered all quote militias and patriots across the country to quote hunt down and murder every federal employee on site, and to sieze all courthouses, FBI, i rs, and federal law enforcement offices, to kill and capture all border patrol, US marshals, federal agents and judges and quote, torture them for information and publicly execute them for betraying the country unquote. He had this, really, he had this line that stuck out to me. I didn't copy.

This is a long video. I did not copy every single thing he said. He also is this is one line he included, earn your place in heaven by sending a traitor to hell early with just the cold, like, very like emotionless way.

federal employees to resign. He was very pro military. I'm not sure if his father working for the US Army Corps Engineers exactly that fits in to his ideology here. But we're not laying out a clear line of thinking.

of America's traders is wiped out unquote. Now, some of these demands that he called for includes closing the borders, mass deportation of immigrants that have entered under the Biden regime, ceasing all human trafficking of children and sex slaves, which is obviously already illegal, canceling all public debt, an end to the Federal Reserve, restore Congress's right to print interest free money. Oh, and and ceasing all of the quote

woke and gender ideology propaganda in the schools unquote. So we have a weird mix of like very like libertarian stuff like the federal reserve, interest free money, and then other more popular conservative stuff around like the border, and then this thing about woke and gender ideology.

I think it doesn't need any explanation. But Moan had this idea that labor unions were working with corporations to make straight white males have a hard time to find jobs, so they would so that they would always be unemployed, and unemployment leads to people being arrested and sent to prison as a way to fund the court system. So this is what he means by labor racketeers of the

prison industrial complex. It's that labor unions are colluding with the government and businesses to keep certain sects of the population unemployed to fill up prisons. Now, in terms of globalist leaders of assorted industries, he specifically was talking about big tech companies that commit tax evasion. He claimed that he used to work for Microsoft and witnessed massive time eccivation. I have not looked into that.

It's it's just it's it's it's it's hard to hold to hold the justification of your You're accusing people of stoking division as you're holding up the severed head of your father. Like, there's just that a complete disconnect here.

each other put to death. Parents will betray their own children, and children will turn against their parents and have them killed unquote.

was closed that same month. He was reported to police pretty frequently for his bizarre behavior in his own neighborhood, like sitting on manhole covers and staring at houses for

hours on end. Now Mon has held CONSPIRATORI and anti government views for at least seven years and attempted to recruit people to join his Moan's militia on Reddit and Discord, though no one seemed to join, and then at least one Discord server threw him out because of his repeated recruitment attempts and after fleeing home after he posted that video, he drove more than one hundred miles north and broke into the Pennsylvania National Guard base with a gun, and

then was arrested after he was tracked there on his cell phone. There is a song that Justin wrote about three years ago about being arrested after being tracked on his cell phone after doing violence against his family.

to bring positive change to the world. Now I will I will talk about some of those some of those other books after we take a quick ad break here and learn about some important messages from our sponsors.

school as a kid. I'm going to quote from the book subscription. The author views the world on the brink of either a golden age of world peace and space colonization, or instead a second dark age of global wars and depopulation within the next couple of decades, if not sooner. Included within the book is a transcript of a letter Justin Mohan wrote to Donald Trump, warning that if America does not go under some great changes, Moan himself will

have to lead a peaceful revolution. In another book titled The Kingdom of Darkness, published on May thirteenth, twenty twenty, it's a novel about Satan and fallen angels becoming quote trapped inside Earth's slowliest creatures after being banished from heaven. He has a whole bitch of other like fantasy and sci fi type books like aliens space exploration, a weird

collection genre. In a pamphlet he self published on Amazon in August of twenty twenty titled America's Coming Bloody Revolution, The small book contains two chapters, one titled why a violent revolution is inevitable and a second titled How revolution can be successful, Moan wrote, quote, Americans will have to weigh what is worse allowing themselves to lose freedom and independence or killing their own family members, teachers, workers, bosses, judges,

elected leaders, and other older generations unquote. This is where we get a lot of predictive writing around what he's going to be doing. Mohne described older generations as quote traders who wished to to take away the freedom and independence that comes with America democracy and free market capitalism. Which leads me then to the book that Robert has, The Second to Messiah, which was published in January of

twenty twenty. It's about a man named Buster Moon who moves from Ohio to Colorado and quote painfully learns the dark secret of Colorado from everything containing satanic cults, the Democratic Party, and the Cold War. Now we will get more into this book, specifically in a later episode. I'm going to read a little bit from the back cover.

The only thing more absurd in this fiction book is the fact that it's loosely based on the life of author and musician Justin Mohan, whose four years stay in Colorado caused multiple lawsuits changed the possible outcome of the twenty twenty US presidential election by exposing three presidential candidates as corrupt, which forced them to drop out of the race.

We have more of these presidential delusions that he was talking about at the end of his beheading video here, and in terms of how this mirrors, like I said, we'll learn more about this book later, but I will talk now some about his actual personal life, which will then become slightly reflect did in the book, like going

to Colorado Springs. He graduated from Penn State with a business management degree and sued the federal government multiple times for letting him take out student loans that he was forced to pay back. The most recent case was last year, where he sued for ten million dollars because despite getting a degree with the loans, he was unable to quote find a satisfactory job as an over educated white man to repay the loan, claiming that he was a victim

of affirmative action and reverse discrimination unquote. In a previously dismissed lawsuit against the Department of Education, he alleged that they neglectfully and fraudulently induced him to borrow money to pay for his education without sufficiently warning him of the possibility that he would face a difficult job market and

could be unable to pay back his student loan. So Mohan did move to Colorado, just like Buster Moon about ten years ago, eventually getting a job at Progressive Insurance, but was fired in twenty seventeen for kicking down a door and quote breaking the company's code of conduct. Moan then sued Progressive in twenty nineteen for not receiving PROMI

motions because he was a man. In his Violent Revolution pamphlet, Man claims that he was a victim of discrimination from quote being a top performing, over educated, and overqualified male employee unquote, and in that same pamphlet, Mohan wrote that his educational, employment and legal issues are evident that there is quote no peaceful solution for the youth to escape

debt based enslavement, unemployment, and ultimately imprisonment. He compared his experience to quote the Soviet unions feared goolog prison labor system and in which entire states and countries were essentially turned into concentration camps. Mohan wrote that educators and parents who quote knowingly lie, brainwash and dumb down their youth unquote must be killed to prevent the spread of quote

globalized communism. And corporate agendas. This is where we have an interesting combination of like anti communism fears but also anti corporatism that you see in some sects of like libertarian conservatism.

up with him. He has songs talking about how it's okay to kill communists and how we're overall seeing a decline in American society. So that that is most of what I have to say about Justin Moune. I could certainly say a whole lot more now on top of

my research onto him himself. I also wanted to look at the sort of online chatter that neo Nazis and other extremists were saying, and I put together, hey, a large catalog of telegram conversations about Justin Moune, watching the spread of certain conspiracy theories around this incident, and just

to see what their overall take was. Will I will paraphrase my eighty page research document here by saying, it seems most Nazis and other white supremacists or far right extremists thought that the Justin Moone incident was quote fake and gay unquote. They tend to keep up with these these thought fluencers, really glad that they're kidding some of their side.

had we had. These conspiracy theories travel everywhere, from standard kind of neo Nazi telegram accounts to more conservative Boomer Mega type stuff as well, mostly picking up on the on the on the anti militia angle, how this is probably a syop from the deep state to push forward this anti militia bill. Some people thought thought they were very clever in realizing this was a syop because they

thought justinmone was thirty three years old. And there's this conspiracy theory around the number thirty three in a lot of these circles, the conspiracies around how the number thirty three is used a lot in like mass shooting incidents. Now it's not this is just pattern recognition, but also mon isn't thirty three, he's thirty two. So great, great work there. And there's specifically one telegram channel that found a prop head I believe on Etsy.

holding up in the video. I don't think it's really much useful else to say about these conspiracy theories, but yeah, they certainly were kind of laughing along at some of like the gang Stocker e elements, thinking, you know, some people obviously thought he was based and cool for actually doing some of the ideological things that these Nazis believe in. Others thought it was it's just fun to make fun

of a guy, so they decided it was a syop. Yeah, that is That is most of what I had to say about Justin Mohan.

I think the stuff, the stuff that Justin Mohan is producing is honestly more like the stuff that schizo wave is like parodying, Like Justin Moans was a lot more like sincere, less less ironic.

back like four or five years. This is there's so many people online who have exact who are in this same scenario, who are putting out this type of writing. No one knows who they are. Moan had like five listeners on Spotify. These people are unknown, and every once in a while one of them decides that writing about it isn't enough and they actually do it in the

real world. And it's just this, it's this interesting trend of these people like almost like hyperstitioning these own acts of violence by making art that predates it, almost in some form of like preparation.

by which things that are fictional become real. And it can be kind of as esoteric as the idea of like preparing the way for a godlike AI by like spreading belief and that sort of thing, or it can be as direct, like as this as somebody envisioning the acts they're going to carry out in fiction and then carrying out those acts for real, like it on an individual level, what you're doing when you're doing this is you're kind of you are preparing yourself mentally for the

thing that you're going to do. And when I would sort of lecture and talk about what to how to know something is like a real threat versus somebody saying shit on the internet, because that's obviously that's a real problem when we talk about this, there's a huge quantity of people saying stuff that could be them presaging like an act of violence, and you simply can't go after everything. One of the key things for me always is what have they gone and done anything in the real world.

So for example, if a guy has like been going out and like egging homeless people or like lighting their shit on fire, and is also talking about murdering homeless people, well that's probably a guy who's going to do something right because he's actively going out in the real world and taking steps. He's prepping himself. And I think this

kind of work. When somebody's written a whole novel about their murder fantasies, obviously that's not a thing you can invest your convict on, but like nor should it be. But that is somebody who is doing more than bullshitting online. That's somebody who has a fixation that they clearly can't get over, and those do sometimes lead to violence. And so yeah, I think I think it's really valid to look at this as not just a couple of incidents that are troubling, but as evidence of a troubling trend.

Gang Stalking is people who have I think these are generally people with schizophrenia, and one of the things that you can experience with schizophrenia is both this kind of overwhelming sense of paranoia and also the stereotypical hearing voices right, and some people become convinced that they are being followed. You know, this is something that has happened probably as long as that it has existed, that they are being like tracked, that they are people who are listening in

on their thoughts. You hear variations of it. With the internet and digital communities, A chunk of people experiencing this started forming communities online, and I don't know the exact I don't know if anyone has sort of like sketched out how this happened in time, but the belief they ended up at is that certain people are what are called targeted individuals within the community, and those people are being stalked at all times by large numbers of generally

government spies. Now when I say government spies, they are not envisioning like a James Bond type operator. They believe these are the regular people in the street around them, like people in their neighborhood. Their neighbors are all spies and are all stalking them all the time. And you

can watch hours of videos. These people will often film eight hours of their life at a stretch, and you can see them just like angrily shouting at their window at like some dude walking past their house or whatever, or like a car. You like see that blue cars past three times, and that wouldn't happen if this wasn't

like that. And it's so one of the things that like, one of the reasons that gang Stocking is kind of interesting and valuable to study if you're interested in, like how we got to our present moment of like reality collapse in the United States, is that this is an example of kind of feelings that have been associated with

certain mental illnesses. I'm not going to say it's just schizophreny, but certain mental illnesses bring about severe bouts of paranoia and a feeling that you are being stalked right or people who are listening in on your thoughts or whatever. Because of the way digital communities work, a number of people experiencing this were able to not just get together and share their experiences, but convince each other that they were not the result of an illness and are in

fact the result of a conspiracy. And they have now built a mythos around that conspiracy, and it has led to killings before. People have killed folks they believed were stalking them over gang stalking delusions. It's been happening for years. So yeah, that was the first thing that occurred to me when I saw this cover. And you can find other art that Moan put out where it's like real pictures of him and then fake art of like ghostly figures stalking him with cameras and stuff.

to it, building a culture in people like really, it takes a lot of time for that to happen. Obviously, YouTube is also a big place where this has grown, but I think after it had its roots established that was a bit of a digression. But I think it is kind of necessary because this is definitely that is definitely where justin comes out of you know, like that is very clear to me. All of this is kind

of rooted fundamentally in Gang Stocking. I think that's like the foundational keystone belief in what has become his like conspiratorial milieu. So into the book itself, the first page, after the page that lets us all know Kindled direct publishing this responsible for this thing, says book Love.

these are like long, long chapters. And yeah, it's about four hundred and fifty pages.

where everyone knows you and see what happens. You'll have to start a new elsewhere, mister Moon said. And obviously, Buster Moon is are the actual justin Mohan And we're talking about his parents, and when we talk about mister Moon, this is his dad who he.

And we get a little more of that where like he's talking about why he wants he's not happy here. There's no future for him. What's interesting to me is why he depicts and we don't know that this is accurate to his experience with his parents. But also I don't necessarily think it is not, because what he depicts his parents as saying is he shouldn't do this because

it's danger Leaving home is dangerous. You can't be safe on your own in a new place or in the city, and you will inevitably get murdered or have something horrible happen. He puts these words in his dad's mouth right after he like, first his mom tells him, like, you're gonna die if you move out, and then he puts this in his dad's mouth, Yeah, you're going to get kidnapped, addicted to heroin, and sold into a sex trafficking rink.

Then five years from now, we'll find pictures of you bound and gagged on some Russian website where you're up for sale. So that's his dad, and then his mom ads, why do you think your older siblings stayed within Ohio when they moved out. It's dangerous out of state without your family. So maybe that's just him putting words.

that he heard before. That that's pretty specific, like that sounds like something somebody was told and is kind of repeating here. You know, I don't know that, but that is very much the feel it has. And there's a couple other bits where it's like, I could see this being something you heard from your very conservative family or elsewise picked up in the media. Because there's another point where his dad is like, you'll be all alone and they know exactly how much money you have. It's all digital.

You can't beat the system. You can't beat dot dot dot. And then in italics the machine missus Moon shot a white eyed glance.

the same time it was. Then there was not one drop of blood near the scene.

like this didn't come into his mind unbidden. Right, the term exsanguinated as referred to a cow's corpse had not come into his mind and bidden. That's evidence of like the kind of media diety had.

maybe even in just a couple of minutes. It's the fifth cow this has happened to you this season, and Betsy was my best cow. We just won't be able to make a profit this year.

into this country, to every country. It is an ugly evil. Nearly all the family farms in this state and plenty of other states have seen the same trend in the past twenty years or so, a trend none of us have seen before, unexplainable tragedies. Livestock gets mutilated or disappears, crops get infested with bugs and disease, and then all of a sudden, the farm is taking a financial loss, the farm shrinks, and eventually the family goes bankrupt or

their land is bought out by a big corporation. More farmers have committed suicide in the past decade than any other profession and I can't blame them.

of Americans to feed themselves. Right Like, this is a This is something he picked up from right wing media. This is not an invention of his for this book. This is probably something he was either raised to believe or came to believe fairly early in life because of what other people around him were saying. This is common stuff. He has put a twist on it, but this is

not coming out of nowhere. So after this, he basically tries to talk his dad and like, hey, can't you call the FBI or the police, serve you survey them to catch whoever's doing this? And his dad says, other farmers have tried, they just lose all their money faster, and the police and an FBI have investigated, But how could they stop something like this from happening out of nowhere. I've sold more than half the acres of the Moon family farm over the past three years alone, and we

can still barely stay afloat. There's no fighting it. It's too secretive, it's too consptantant, it's too well orchestrated. It's just too evil. But why is this happening, Why is the government letting America's farms get unfairly taken over? Well, as my father once told me, if you want to take over a country, you have to gain control of their food supply. Remember, my father was an immigrant from Germany and he fled the Nazis with your grandmother, who

was a Jew, to come to America. He used to always say, there are the Germans, there are the Russians, and then there are the Germans from Russia, and they all came to America for the same reason land.

to sleep. He wakes up the next morning to like leave his family forever to start a new life out west, and he starts by going out to the farm, taking out his pipe and his last bit of marijuana, a few green buds that he says to himself, perfectly calculated, and then he smokes his last bowl of marijuana, which I'm sure he did regularly and certainly did not help.

So why when I brought up earlier that highway rest stops are a major part of this book, that's because of what comes next. So he crosses from Ohio into Indiana and he sees a rest area approaching Hmm, got a piss and wouldn't mind a snack, Buster said. He pulls off the highway. He gets into a parking lot, and he describes most of the men and women wore overalls, flannel shirts, and straw hats walking in and out of

the building to and from the parking lot. A few people stood off to the sides of the building in parking lot. In a grass area, a few men were urinating outside near the trees. An old man was squatting at the tree line taking a shit. I've never been to I've been to a lot of rest drops. I've actually not seen that happening at a rest stop. But this is to set up something that's happening at the rest stop, which he learns about when he goes into

the bathroom. And it turns out to be a bad decision because as soon as he stands at the urinal, he hears someone behind him saying.

something like that. And then they realize he's listening to them do cocaine or whatever in the rest stop bathroom. Hold on a sec, I think someone's in here listening to us. The other person whispered, should we kill him? The first person whispered, at which point he fleets.

That's the kind of delusion leads to gangstik because number one, I guarantee you there were other alone people that every rest stop he ever went to. But also like people don't pay attention to that sort of thing. That is a voice in his head telling him to hyper focus on this.

his chest like sharp smelling fresh blood. So he finishes eating and he gets back on the highway and he drives for a bit more until he crosses he passes Indiana and gets into Illinois, and then we have another rest stop scene. This is like he spends a lot of time on rest stops and this is I'm going to need you're accult knowledge here, Garrison, so you can let me know if he gets.

restored as a rest area. So that's to set the scene. And then he goes like gets himself some food or something, and as he's looking outside at the surrounding forest, he sees one hundred yards into the forest there are tiki torches lit and it's four oh one pm in the afternoon.

What the fuck do they have torches lit in the forest for if it's not going to be dark for another two hours, Buster said, So he walks in and he sees a few individuals dressed like vagabonds, dancing slowly in circles around the fire, with their arms spread out waving in the air. Buster quietly climbed through some bushes to get a quiet closer look. There were two men and a woman, all in dirty torn robes, dancing within

a circle of lit candles and tiki torches. One male and female danced inside the circle, chanting and murmuring words which Buster couldn't make out. The other male was kneeling on the ground inside the circle, carving up pumpkin A picture lay in front of him in a bed of flowers. Please, spirits of nature and beyond, except this pumpkin carving and our sacrifices on this day of sam Hayne, in remembrance of our deceased loved ones, please ease their passage into

the other world. Okay, how's that sounding so far? Garrison?

The sword cut her hand in half from top to bottom between the middle finger and ring finger, slicing all the way down her forearm. Now that's that's not where I expected this passage to go. But it gets better because they all realize Buster's there at this point and give up on their plans to eat this woman, who they have now hacked at twice, and instead she and all of them start charging Buster, and he describes it as they all turned directly towards Buster and began ranning

towards him. Even the woman with one arm, which was divided in half like a lobster claw, ran towards Buster, her arm flapping in halves as she sprinted towards him.

rest stop? So he decides he gets to Saint Louis he needs to find a place to eat. He finds a cheap Italian restaurant and he parallel parked at the curb. Buster walked inside the restaurant into the counter. A small man stood beside the counter with a thick Italian accent.

walk in. But we're taking over their racket and we're taking over their restaurant business in Saint Louis.

on with this guy. I'm not really sure why he It's interesting, like even the absurdity does have kind of its roots, and you can see some of these this like everybody is programmed, like saying the same script or whatever, like they're the Like that's why these interactions seem weird to me, is that like, this isn't real people talking to me.

the other drugs you did. I only did them a couple of times. It's not like I'm an addict. Still serious damage to the body and putting your life at risk. CIA is very concerned about his overall health.

the bottom of the ramp. The FBI agents nodded to the FSB agents, who nodded back. Then THEBI agents got back on board the jet. The FSB agents wheeled Buster to a black rectangular suv and put him inside. Then they drove to the Kremlin. Buster sat in a wheelchair in the Krimlin. He was motionless, stared off into the distance at nothing, and his jaw hung. Suddenly, his entire body jerked, then he went back to being still. The

President of Russia walked up to Buster. King Moon there is an uprising for more food in several parts of Southeast Asia. The President of Russia said, gohea. Buster chuckled, But do you recommend Zig Global Communist Confederation Due to your majesty, the President of Russia said, go ha ha. Buster chuckled. Buster stared off into the distance, sill genocide. The President of Russia said, yeah, heh, I love that.

Buster smiled. The President of Russia turned around to face representatives countries all over the world.

of violence against a family member. But as much as that was the future he was building for himself, you also mentioned that he was being transported around by the FBI, and like, I wonder how much that was a part of the future he was building for himself. Like now that he's arrested at an National Guard base, he's now

being taken from place to place by government officials. He's constantly now surrounded by Feds, Like he has he has built the reality for himself that now he is actually always watched by the government because he's been arrested for doing this things Like he's he has created this fantasy world that he can now live in forever. Yeah, whether he goes to trial, he's probably gonna I if his defense is smart, they'll do some sort of insanity defense.

He'll be sent to a psychiatric place. Like he's now always going to be watched. He is being moved around by government agents, like he is living the thing that he was writing about. And I find that that that second half of like him being caught also a compelling like a compelling thing that he was preparing himself for.

part of this illusion. But also you can see how a lot of these common right wing tropes about like everything is infiltrated by the Feds January sixth, with the Federal op and stuff, how this is also going to feed into the delusions of a guy like this right like he's very much this is very much ripped from the headlines, and that you can see how things he was encountering and like conspiracy culture and popular media grafted

themselves on to the delusions that he had. Yeah, you can also see I turned randomly to a page I haven't gotten to yet in this book two sixty and the first line I saw in the middle of the page is, let's fucking kill them and then eat them a midget and a wheelchair, yelled, holding an RPG.

songs for Me are very very evident of that. Yeah, Like they're very similar to a lot of stuff you were you were reading the book, like he has the The song about him being tracked on his phone is called they Came for Justin Moan. Yeah, they found him all alone, they tracked him on his phone. He talks about the student loans that he couldn't pay off, the payments made him grown, money controlled his life. They wanted him to die just like this, all all of just

all this stuff. They said he was God. They came for Justin Moan.

sort of counterproductive knock on effects. And I hope we can get to that at a later date. But today I want to talk to you about a little project some GDL members have going on the side called the City Council Death Squad?

nine months or so. Remote participation in meetings became nearly ubiquitous during the pandemic, and the opportunity to make a public comment without having to devote an entire evening to sitting in an uncomfortable chair at city hall has made civic engagement more accessible for all kinds of people right, not just because of contagion, but remote participation benefits everybody, like parents who are managing a bedtime routine by the time the public hearing opens at eight PM, or sure

don't work in nine to five, or people without reliable transportation. So it's been a boon for local democracy, but it's also created a unique opportunity for people who want to

ruin that. So last year, Scotty big Balls Mister big Balls, the online pseudonym for a self described not see named Harley Ray Petero Junior, started a group he calls the City Council Death Squad organizes online to find government meetings, mainly city and county council meetings all over the country that allow public comment by a zoom, and then it coordinates those members to sign up for speaking slots, crowding out actual community members who are trying to speak on

you know, like actual matters of local concern, and when the members of the group get through, the calls follow a couple of predictable paths. Sometimes the caller just starts screaming slurs.

a real caller. You know, they'll say, like, you know, I have concerns about zoning in my neighborhood, or I you know, I think we should pay the police more, and then it veers abruptly into some kind of bizarre antisemitic conspiracy theory about crime or nine to eleven or advocating for public lynchings.

the Sacramento area, you probably know him. Masano, a former Proud Boy with several failed runs for office under his belt, already had a long history of being disruptive in public meetings.

In twenty eighteen, he's removed from chambers during a Valejo City Council meeting after saying the city was quote infested with homosexuals, and refusing to be called to order by the mayor the meeting of the same body in twenty twenty two, he was picked up and carried out after refusing to end his remarks at the end of his time. So in twenty twenty three, he's attending every meeting of the Sacramento City Council. This has been going on for

almost two months. He shows up, he gets up, he makes his homophobic, racist, and antisemitic remarks, but he's keeping with the rules of the meeting and they're letting him make his statements.

his name at that time. In twenty twenty three, Parene had recently been arrested outside the home of a youth pastor after publicly calling for others to join him in going to the pastor's home during a school board meeting that had to be adjourned because of Parene's disruptive behavior. So we're seeing a pattern emerging here, right, Like at this point, we've got two proud boys who keep getting kicked out of meetings and failing to run for school board.

These are people who are seeing the value in kicking up some kind of disturbance at a meeting.

continuing the meeting without the public's presence. So I think there was a hearing that night on an ordinance involving homelessness that people had showed up to speak on and they weren't allowed to do that. Now council continues their business, but nobody can be there. And Patera's alliance with Masano didn't last. They actually butted heads almost immediately over optics.

Massano preferred to make his long winded speeches that at least in his mind, were more palatable to the listener and might more effectively spread his message and potentially red pill the listeners. Who's actually angry that Potero's troll forward tactic of just shouting slurs and obscenities was actually resulting in avenues for public comment being closed off. In September of twenty twenty three, he wrote, either out of ignorance or deliberate sabotage, the GDL has no idea what they're doing.

So he was mad right because he was doing this thing where every week he was showing up Megan's comment and because of the different strategy of disruption that was getting harder for him. Masano, for his part, continues his one man battle against the Sacramento City Council. He's still doing that. Oh, okay, He's a lone wolf out there in Sacramento. But Petero saw the potential and trolling on

a larger scale, okay, almost immediately, he branched out. Over the next few months, it developed into an organized trolling machine, targeting meetings across the country, covering at least seventeen states, from Alaska to Maine, Idaho, Wyoming, Georgia, Virginia. They're all over the place, often hitting the same city repeatedly, and in some cases showing up in person with flyers or banners,

either before or after the zoom bombing. After targeting meetings in the city of Walnut Creek, California, the group hung a racist banner in the area. Councilor Kevin Wilk commented on the banner in the press, and the following week the meeting was hit again, with members specifically addressing Wilk, the locality's first Jewish city councilor, asking him how he liked it. In a later stream, Potero laughed about that personalized follow up saying that pissed him off, so I had to.

even ended public comment altogether. The headlines are posted triumphantly in the group, often captured only with loll comments like the calls will continue until the Jews leave and shut it down for the win and never let them regroup arrest no comfort given literal the replies to posts about city after city ceding ground to this harassment.

to avoid being caught or blocked. Potero has written online that he's been quote banned on multiple devices, but I have some tactics to prevent them from stopping me. Patero noted on a recent stream that the ADL's estimate of over one hundred and thirty disruptions is short changing them, insisting they've done at least three times that many, sometimes hitting dozens of meetings per week, and they're not just doing it right. It's not just the act of doing

it that is the thrill to them. They then cut the clips and then post them online for everyone to enjoy. They're cutting promos and making highlight reels of their favorite moments. There are compilations grouped by genre of hate right. There's videos combining all the best moments of homophobia, all the best moments of anti semitism. There are these promo videos set to that sort of ugly electronic fash wave music that they all love so much?

entitled the video CCDs goes Chrystall Knocked on Crescent City. Right, So it's it's just a joke, right, They're not really doing Christall Knocked, but they're using the language of this sort of genocidal violence.

Just last week the group expressed an interest in seeking some kind of retribution for that comment, saying they may need a little visit, and the group is raising money to start traveling to meetings in person. Fundraiser on the platform of choice for right wing extremists, give Send Go, has already raised one thousand dollars in donations to fund travel and lodging for the group members to travel to city council meetings for in person disruptions. On their weekly

live streams, Viewers can donate directly in the stream. On the stream, Potero thanks viewers for donations, often in the amount of fourteen dollars and eighty eight cents.

So this isn't just annoying prank calls. It's an organized effort to ruin local democracy, to make meetings unproductive and unbearable, to intimidate and humiliate local government employees, and elected officials to make your city council chambers and intimidating an uncomfortable place for you, closing off that avenue for you to address and engage with your local government, and to take away options for actually engaging with local government by forcing

cities to limit public comment. And we can't seed that ground to them.

And I know a lot of people do actually end up going out to these and talking about their experiences and why proposed laws or ordinances would be so harmful, and just removing that option, whether or not you believe in like the electoral process TM, removing that option from people to actually speak on their own experiences does have like real consequences.

we're left with a less accessible local democracy. They'd rather prevent anyone from calling in than have to deal with deciding whether they can do anything about it when someone abuses that process. And there's some really basic steps that cities can take right off the bat, like without even overthinking it or getting into the legal complications of the

First Amendment. Cities like Lin would Walkhington responded to their CCDA zoom bombing by adding a few basic layers of security to their virtual meetings, like requiring commenters to sign up the day before. So this group is organized in a private telegram chat, and so like one person gets into a meeting and just drops the link into the chat,

and so everyone just clicks that link. But if you make it so everyone has to have a unique sign in link that they signed up for with a real email address the day prior, that makes a little bit harder to.

their city attorney. I need to do a little research on what was going on in two thousand and six in La. But the LA City Council asked the city attorney, can we make a rule that people can't say racial slurs in here?

part of California. White versus City of Norwalk, and that decision upheld a city ordinance that authorized the legislative body to remove individuals who uttered quote personal, impertinent, slanderous, or profane remarks if the remarks disrupted, disturbed, or otherwise impeded the conduct of the meeting. So it's not just that your remarks were nasty, it's that your behavior was disruptive. The way that these remarks were delivered was interfering with

the conduct of the meeting. So the meeting is disrupted because council is prevented from accomplishing its business in a reasonably efficient manner. The court further wrote, indeed, such conduct may interfere with the rights of other speakers, and that's what's happening here, right that these disruptions are not only not your right. You don't have a right to disrupt the meeting, but that behavior also fundamentally infringes on everyone

else's rights to have the meeting. It keeps the meeting from being conducted, and it's interfering with the conduct of the government's business. So if they open a public forum, anyone can speak in the public forum, and you can't cut them off because of the content.

like a meeting is not a sidewalk there is. This is not just any public place where you're speaking. This is a meeting where business is being conductive. There's a legitimate and compelling government interest in the ability to conduct the meeting, and so the rules that they can make in this space can vary state by state. You know, some states do or don't allow you to limit speakers to residents, or they can or can't limit the topics that are Germane. So it's going to vary a little bit.

But the courts have repeatedly upheld, not just in the Norwalk case, the ability of a council to adopt a content neutral rule and use that rule to cut off or remove speakers who are disruptive. And honestly, I have to say, I think any city attorney worth assault knows this. This is day one stuff. If your whole job, well not your whole job, but your job on Monday nights whenever the meeting is, is to provide legal advice to

a city council on how they're conducting their business. You know this because disruptive behavior during a meeting isn't some brand new phenomenon. But it's kind of remarkable. What I watched like a hundred clips of this happening right and over and over and over again.

room and something? You know, as a resident of the city of Charlottesville who watches our local government pretty carefully. Something we've found over and over again here is that if fear of litigation is your starting point for making decisions on how to govern, you're going to make cowardly, dangerous, stupid decisions every time, and you're probably gonna get sued anyway. So make the choice to protect people. Get good legal advice. Sure, consult with your city attorney, Consult the case law.

like it could happen here. It is happening in a lot of places. You know, if you're inclined to do so, you know, show up, engage, speak your mind on local issues. Don't wait for your city hall to become a battleground to show up to counter right wing inflows. Right like, don't just react to reactionaries. Stake out that ground now,

that's our space. Right, make it clear that people are engaged and that they insist on their right to engage, so that your city council can't say, well, people aren't really making public comments anyway, we just won't have it. And let make sure that they know that you will not accept the death of local democracy at the hands of some Weasley paradox of tolerance bullshit about letting Nazis dominate our spaces.

less of a focus on the actually looking at this as a deliberate tactic being employed to remove people's ability to engage democratically in the city or school board or wherever they live. And I think viewing it as a deliberate tactic like that like you've been talking about, but both gets like a better look at how these neo

Nazis are trying to organize. But also it's a more holistic approach towards why is this happening, And it can allow you to look at this as more of a tactical decision less than just kind of random trolling slurs XD, which it can be kind of reduced to, which is at the very least incomplete way of looking at this phenomenon, if not just kind of wholly inaccurate.

which we might talk about at a later date. But yeah, it's been a interesting watching the GDLs as political FORCET, yes, is like annoying and bad in the rhetoric they spread, but also they've had this interesting ability to just either affect legislation or like shut down people's ability to engage with politics in their local area in a few notable ways.

rewatch podcast pod Yourself a Gun. But the fewest of you might know me from my brand new podcast, Bad Hasbara, the world's most moral podcast, in which me and some of my other anti Zionist or non Zionist Jewish friends and our other friends and our other guests guests who you know you've maybe heard, like Charine here, we have

casual conversations about Israeli propaganda and Israeli propagandists. For some of you, this might be your first time hearing the word has bara, and that's why the homies at cool Zone Media invited me here today. So this episode is all about has balalah aka Israel's public relations and propaganda machine, and I am thrilled to be joined by my friend and one time cat sitter, churene Uness Hi Scheren.

Israeli propaganda. So I went in January twenty twelve. If you don't know Birthright, it's pretty much a two weeks, all expenses paid trip for young Jews from all over the world to go to the Holy Land, reconnect with their Jewish roots, float in the dead seat. It is a it is a propaganda tour of apartheid state. And you know, I'm not going to get too much into the history of Birthright, you know and all the like far right wing funders like Sheldon Adelson and stuff. There's

like not enough time for that. But I'm mentioning it because it was the first time I saw how hasbara was more than just propaganda, and how in my opinion, it more closely resembles like indoctrination, and the organizers at Birthright did like a masterful job of this. Like I went on a trip of American Jews who were like me, like they were like secular from mixed or like intermarried families,

non bar mitzvud. It was all like other Matt Leib type Jews, like ethnic Jews, right, And I realized this. I think it was like day two of the trip. One of the Israeli tour guides literally gave us a bar mitzvah, like all at the same time we had a group bar mitzvah. Yeah, And they did it by saying like Okay, well now bab mitzvah. It just means

you're a man. Now, everyone here is a man. Now, choose an Israeli name, and which was like for me, I remember feeling a little you know, I was like, wait, there's supposed to be a theme party and fucking like yeah, I supposed to yeah, DJ, my dad's gonna buy me a car, or at least me a like a Honda, Like I thought it was more than that, at the very least I thought I would have to like memorize

a tour portion. But no, you just go to Israel and you know, a tour guy does it for you, so like it really works though, like you really you go there being like, you know, I'm European Jew, and you leave this and you're like I invented falafel. So the Hasbara highlight of the trip for me was this

like mega like birthright mega event. It was in Jerusalem and a huge arena in which they had like Israeli speakers, donors, rappers, and there was like a there were rappers at one point who just started rapping about things that they claim Israel invented, like iPhone, computer chips and like the cherry tomato, which was you know, like you And by the way, a not insubstantial amount of the trip was spent telling

us about how Israel invented the cherry tomato. Like we went to places like you know, farms and stuff where they showed us this like drip irrigation. Multiple people were just like, man, we invented the cherry tomato. Here can you believe it? And I was like, this seems like a lot of effort for just this one particular thing, which may or may not be true. But yeah, So the headliner of the mega event of that night, the cherry tomato on top, if you will, was a speech

by none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu. Straight up, the Prime Minister of Israel was the headline speaker of this birthright event and an arena filled with like twenty thousand teens and like early twenty somethings, which was kind of like amazing, Like you know, listen, here's the thing I knew Benjamin netnya who like I knew enough about Israeli politics to know that, like he was a fucking

right winger and bad. But like I have to admit, even I, you know, as a twenty six year old who kind of was starting to get like woke on Palestine, you know, so to speak, Like even I was like kind of like, whoa this is. I'm a little charmed, a little honored to see the Prime minister here. He took time out of his busy schedule of doing crimes, probably to address us. And you know, I actually found the speech of that night. I actually have some clips from it that I want to play.

This is a free country.

internet and press and all that stuff. And it was the first time I realized that, like, oh, part of the hasbara isn't just you know, some government thing. It's like my job. My job is to is to tell the truth. And he said something in that clip, the only way to fight allies with the truth. And so I am going to follow his advice. That's what I'm going to do, Shreen. I'm going to tell people the truth about Israel. And I think it's time to do it. So let's get into it. Let's talk about the truth.

Let's get into talking about hasbara. What is it? What is it? And so loosely, hasbara is it's a modern Hebrew word derived from the word las bier hasbier meaning to explain or explanation. I say loosely because it's kind of a made up word. So, you know, a lot

of words in modern Hebrew are sort of made up words. Remember, Hebrew is like an ancient liturgical language, and modern Hebrew was created by like Jewish linguist nerds who wanted to revive the language to be a spoken one, and that's how you got modern Hebrew, which is fine, there's nothing wrong with reviving a dead language. But because of that, a lot of the words in modern Hebrew are kind of inventions. So, according to Mosaic Magazine, has bara is

strictly a twentieth centuryism. You won't find it in Eliezer Benu Huda's a monumental Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Hebrew, whose second volume, in which Hasbara appears only as the first word of hasbarat Panim, was published in nineteen oh two. So it's not something that you see in kind of like the original beginnings of you know, the creation of modern Hebrew. Like colloquially, hisbara like refers to like media

pr branding, mud slinging. It's kind of a like a sort of like catch all term for general propaganda used to create a narrative based on Israeli government talking points meant for a foreign, usually American or just generally Western audience. People who deal in hasbara are called has barists has baristas, which is fun's that's true. Yeah, yeah, I mean listen, has barista, I think gives gives it a little bit

more flair. You know, kind of imagine someone kind of like making you coffee, but instead of coffee, it's they make you lies.

literally just a calendar didn't have any names. It was just he was pointing at days of the week thinking they were names, because that's what a calendar has. And also it's so fucking weird that they can't read Arabic, Like, yeah, you're in the Middle East, you are the spokesperson.

the basically the office of the Prime Minister. He's a British guy, like he raises his eyebrows. It's like the meme, you know, like he goes like, oh, that's what he's famous for. Then there's a lot of these like non governmental like Israeli Civil Society, haspara organizations like Stand with Us or like a PAK, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Anti Defamation League, Christians United for Israel, the Israel on Campus Coalition. I mean, there are tons

of them, tons of them. And then of course there's people who are just in it for the love of the game, like celebrities, artists, you know, actors, you know, who make like Israel public advocacy part of their thing. It's a fascinating world filled with ghouls and goblins. So the word his bara itself, interestingly is hasbara. So early Zionists had no problem calling their pr campaigns and like

they're branding for a Jewish state and Palestine propaganda. They would say, it's we got to do propaganda, because in the early twentieth twentieth century, the term was generally considered to be neutral, like people said they were doing propaganda when they were doing propaganda. Once the word became a pejorative, they created the word has borrow, which is a nicer

sounding word with more neutral connotations. And although it's now used as a pejorative by critics of Israel and me and stuff, the word is still used to this day in Israel. It is still a fairly neutral sounding word. There are has Borrow workshops sponsored by Israel. They have has Barra Fellowships. That's the name of the fellowship. Like you can get merch that says has bar A Fellowship on it. And the reason is because it doesn't translate.

The word isn't translate to propaganda. It just means to explain, which is you know, seems innocent enough. It's not about doing propaganda. It's not about they don't call themselves liars. They're not saying I'm going to lie. They say they're merely just explaining. And I found this speech from the Middle East Policy Council that goes into depth about what

has Bar is beyond. Just like propaganda, quote has Bar links information warfare to the strategic efforts of the state to bolster the unity of the home front, ensure the support of allies, disrupt efforts to organize hostile coalitions, determine the way issues are defined by the media, the intelligentsia, the social networks. Established parameters of politically correct discourse, de legitimize both critics and their arguments, and shape the common

understanding and interpretation of the results of international negotiations. So behind this term is a large, well funded information warfare apparatus dedicated to shaping Israeli discourse in the media and the government and academic insutions everywhere. And they use all of the tools in their toolbox to silence criticism of Israel, and what they can't silence, they soften. Sometimes it's through coordinated letter writing campaigns. Sometimes it's harassment. Sometimes it's dosing.

You know, people have been docked. So before I continue, I want to address that uncomfortable feeling you had when I talked about like Israel and the media. I want to say that is that is not to say that Israel or the Israel Lobby or Zionists quote control the media, all right, So they do not. That's why hasbara exists,

you know, That's why the Israel lobby exists. If they controlled the media, they wouldn't have groups like Camera, for example, constantly day in and day out, harassing the New York Times and CNN and PBS to get them to talk about Israel correctly. Okay, So it's important when people hear these criticisms of Israel that they don't try to see them as like otherizing Israel or like you know a lot of people, they get uncomfortable because a lot of

these things will match old anti Semitic tropes. But it's important to remember that these lobbying groups exist in Israel. They exist in the gun lobby, in the big oil lobby. This is not unique to Israel. The unique thing about it is how willing the American public is and the West in general is to letting themselves be live to That's why I'm interested in it. But let's talk about Camera real quick, because this is a recent thing that happened.

Some news happened recently about the New York Times and their connection to CAMERA. This is from a recent article in The Intercept. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis, or CAMERA, was founded in nineteen eighty two in response to what it claims was anti Israel bias in the Washington Post reporting on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Since its inception, CAMERA has successfully lobbied for hundreds of corrections in major media outlets seeking to streamline

a pro Israel line in news reports and editorials. It is mere journalists whose work it disagrees with and launched boycott campaigns against news organizations it believes are not responding with enough deference to its requests. So the way this group operates is that they go through any and every article about Israel, looking for sentences, looking for terms, definitions, anything they disagree with, and lobby for corrections to be issued.

Camera doesn't do this quietly. They openly brag about it on their website. Like recently, Camera successfully lobbied The New York Times to issue a correction removing the word occupation from an article, and they wrote this on their website. Quote the ask slipped for their New York Times reporters Kum Hamas stenographers this week when they absolutely neglected to done down Hamas's preferred language before passing off the terror

organization's talking points as original reporting. Take notice of the framing of The New York Times and their mask slipping and their reporters as being stenographers for Hamas. This is like quite the accusation, given that The New York Times is like has and continues to have coverage described as

biased in favor of Israel Like. According to an Intercept analysis, it was found that in the first six weeks of the war, New York Times consistently delegitimized Palestinian deaths and cultivated a gross imbalance in coverage to pro Israeli sources and voices. So the exact opposite of what Camera is claiming is the truth here. You know, this is this is actually a famous hes bar A tactic. It is

the I am rubber, you are glue tactic. And it's really something to see it in action, Like I don't know, suring if you've seen how often you've like read some pro Israeli voices, you know, has Baris online and heard them say stuff that you're like, I know for a fact, the exact opposite of this thing is true, you know what I mean?

like a decline of death or life. Like they use the word decline to describe.

not just that has bara is information warfare. Has Bara is straight up info wars like Alex Jones level shit the same way. Alex Jones will run the same like fantastical paranoid thread to every major news event that happens in order to reinforce his worldview and prove that he's

right and everyone else is wrong. You know, Like that's Israel does this, but with like far more money and far greater success, and it kind of makes sense why they're successful at it, Like Alex Jones Info Wars shit like praise on white Christian paranoia that like the Blacks are trying to take away our guns so they can make our children trans or whatever, like total fantasy in saying shit that you have to be like already far right wing to believe, well, like Israeli info Wars praise

on a much more grounded in reality paranoia that of anti Semitism, Like anti Semitism, it's historical, it's evil, it's pervasive, it's pernicious. Like this kind of paranoia makes sense, and not just for Jews, but like for anyone of conscience, anyone who has empathy, you know, like that they understand anti Semitism is bad and needs to be fought, and that makes Hasbara very effective. You know, people want to support Israel because people want to support the Jewish people

and they want to fight anti Semitism. And when the IDF dismantles a children's hospital and says we had to do it to stop Pomas. Look, here's a list of hostages. People want to believe them. It's like Molder from the X Files, like I want to believe, which is the same impulse as Alex Jones believers. Essentially, like you don't want Sandy Hook to be a possibility. You want it to be a conspiracy to take your guns away. You want those children to be secretly actors pretending to be dead.

So like when Israel says we aren't killing children, we're killing hamas, people want to believe that.

is bad. Like that's how it's worked for decades, in the same way that hesbara serves to explain things for you to basically take the Israeli government at its word, that's kind of how it works. It gives you a believable explanation and not only sounds like kind of real, but you know, conforms to your personal beliefs. And yeah, but speaking of personal beliefs, if there's one thing, oh, let's see if I can do this. If there's one

thing I'd love to believe in, it's commerce. And so yes, I mean listen, people will have to make money somehow, so it looks like we have some products and services that we have to sell. And yeah, when they sell you these these products and services, please believe them when they say how good they are. And we are back. So we were talking about hespara and how you know,

the explanations conform to your personal beliefs. The interesting thing about asbara is that they have different types of hespara for a wide range of personal beliefs. It's not one size fits all. It depends on who you are. There's a conservative version and there's a liberal version like Israel. Israel has been very successful and their ability to brand themselves is both a liberal democracy and a outpost for

Western values fighting the Muslim hordes. Usually these strategies have been like pretty separated, right, you know, like you can't claim you can't do them at the same time, it'll sound weird. It's like Israel is the only gay friendly, climate conscious, feminist democracy and that's why we got to do genocide. Like that doesn't that doesn't sound right. Like you tell the city dwelling liberal elites about the gay stuff, you tell the conservative Christians about the Western civilization stuff.

That's kind of how it works. The basic conservative hissbara doesn't actually interest me all that much because it's I don't know, they don't have to work that hard at getting conservatives to be okay with killing Muslims. You know, it's like Muslims Arabs, you know, they they're they're fully willing to You don't even have to like couch it in something.

that you know, they don't they didn't share values. There were some weird other thing and you know, this was not the the charge of anti Semitism in Europe. And now with like Israeli propaganda towards you know that's aimed towards conservative Westerners, they're like, no, no, we're the most Western, like we're so Western that we're gonna be the ones who are on the front lines stopping the evil, you know,

Arab ports. And yeah, but it's like the that's interesting, you know in some aspects, but it's the liberal stuff. Sureen liberal hasbara is where the lies get so wild, Like that's the stuff that I grew up with.

as representing and supporting all these positive liberal traits. Well, well a lot of it is just not true. Like, for example, liberals are pro LGBT rights, right, you know, they they love gays, they love gay rights, and that's a good thing, of course, and yet gay marriage is illegal in Israel. It is illegal. It's also a mixed faith marriages are also illegal in Israel. They will recognize

those marriages, but they will not perform them. You cannot get gay married, you cannot get interfaith married in Israel. If you're there performed abroad then and they will recognize them. That's kind of the loophole. Also, by the way, Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza who Mariyan Israeli citizen cannot then get Israeli citizenship through that marriage. You also can't get Israeli citizenship if you marry in Israeli and you are from a quote enemy state that read Arab.

If you want to know what the enemy states are, they mean Arabs. So you know, I don't know. Liberals should hate that. They should look at that and be like, well, I don't like that, you'd think, right. Another example, like liberals love democracy and they hate racism, yet believe Israel when they say they are a democracy, because they'll be like, we have you know, twenty percent Arab Muslim population, you know,

two million and all with the right to vote. Meanwhile, they're like ignoring the five point three million Palestinians who are currently living in the West Bank and Gaza under military control by Israel. Like this is a situation was which has explicitly been called apartheid by most major human rights organizations, you know, human Rights Watch and it's the International, the International Federation for Human Rights, and even including Human Rights orgs in Israel, yesh Din and but sell them.

They have all called this an apartheid state, and apartheid to you know, to be clear, is racist and I'm against it, yes, and I think most liberals would say they're against it. Don't you think sharam like something you

would hope. So that's kind of like part of the thing with the liberal You're like, I don't like bad people, right, yeah, yeah, but you know it's it's once again, it's this thing where we're willing to be like, oh, they say they're a democracy, and therefore I believe it, and I think it's you know, you have to remember that like Israel's

got like a caveat for all this stuff. It's usually they'll say, you know, their credentials are touted with this like in the Middle East, the most gay friendly in the Middle East, or the only democracy in the Middle East. But like, once again, that kind of only serves to implicitly condemn those enemy states you know, filled with Arabs, is being racist and backwards and homophobic and anti democratic

and therefore unworthy of liberal sympathies. So it's you know, you liberals will look at it and they'll go like, well, I mean compared to Iraq, and you know they of course, it's like forgetting why the Middle East is the way the Middle East is. You know, they they will there's a complete like vacuum, like everything exists in a vacuum

when it comes to American imperialism. So you don't but you just want to believe that Arabs are backwards people rather than looking at any kind of like Western imperial complicity.

the ones who have the empathy. They're the ones who you know, let women you know, sit wherever they want, whatever the fuck that meant from BB's speech, But like, you know, they're more like me Arabs. I don't know them, and I guess, you know, if they say they're bad, they're bad. You know, it's it's just part of it. And I think what pisses me off about it is

the liberal willingness to believe it. And I think it's like, I don't know, it's fascinating to me because especially right now, in the last you know, four months or so of this brutal incursion into Gaza, it's like so clearly illustrates why people on the left fucking hate liberals. You know, they're just so easy to manipulate if you know the

right words. You know, like if it were any other group, if it were any other group instead of Jewish nation nationalists, like if it were Christian nationalists, they'd be like clearly condemning it, clearly. Like liberals have such a facile identity and race essentialism that they either excuse the crimes committed by the Jewish state because Israel asked them to do it and they want to be like good allies or whatever, or they ignore them because well, it's not my place

to say I'm not Jewish. I feel like I should like, like they're just so squishy it like it. It kind of reveals the modern American liberal for what they are, which is like a tiny baby whose self perception is at the root of their ideology.

Is so much fun. Please come out to it March seventeenth. That's Sunday, March seventeenth, Sacramento Punchline. Come see Matt Leeb Francisca Hearing.

but so much more so. We're going to talk a little bit about the myths about Israel that have kind of like gained a foothold in Western public consciousness to a degree that it's like not just a foothold, but it's just kind of things that we commonly think are facts.

So like, if you grew up in Zionism, which is like if you don't know that's a political ideology that birth the state of Israel, you have probably heard a lot of your teachers, your rabbis, your friends, your family, your Israeli friends, your Israeli family talking about how it's your responsibility to explain Israel to the people, and growing up you don't actually know that what you're doing is propaganda, Like you think you're just you know that you know

more than most people because everyone else is getting their information from anti Semites. You know, you think like you've got the real scoop and that most people are just you know, born ignorant and biased against Jews. And you don't have to be Jewish to have been exposed to espara. Chances are that if you grew up in the West, you probably hold several views about Israel that are the result of decades long pr campaigns. So what I'm going to do now is a lightning round of myth busting.

This is just like real quick getting into some of the I don't know some of the most pervasive things that I think each one could be an entire episode. But you know, listen, this is your guys, pot this isn't my podcast. I can't just take it away from you. So I'm just going to do a lightning round with you. Are you ready, Sharen?

is not a thing. Israel quote lives in a tough neighborhood and it must act tough to survive. That is just regular ass racism and orientalism. The idea that they just you know, you have to be tough, you know, I mean, listen, a tough neighborhood is very much that is translated for an American a white American audience. You know what I mean, what is a tough neighborhood. It's one with a lot of people of color. Here's another one. There are plenty of Arab states. Why can't they just

go there again? This is a weird, racist, dehumanizing thing to tell someone whose house you just bulldozed, like where you know, whenever you see them, like doing a big zoom ount where they go, Like there's only one Jewish state and there's all these Arab states. You know, it's like no, no, no, personally, what happened here? Don't don't you know? It's like you guy had house, Army took house, moved him to other area. That is wrong, period. You

can't just say go to another Arab country. That's that's just racism. Here's another one. It's too complicated. No, it is not. Switch the rolls in your head. Use your brain for a second. Switch the roles of Jews and Palestinians in your head, and you'll have an easier time condemning the side that has powerful government and army whose crimes include genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, military occupation, and religious slash.

Racist settler terrorism. That is not complicated. If it were the Jews who lived in Gaza getting bombed mercilessly, you would not have a problem saying what was happening was genocide. You just wouldn't just do that in your head. All right, here's another one. Zionism is an indigenous rights movement. No, it's fucking not. It's not. It is a settler colonialist movement. That is something that was made explicitly clear by the

creators of modern Zionism. They not only talked about like settling and colonizing Palestine, but they referred to the Arab occupants there as the indigenous population. They they said indigenous they God, it just pisses me off. And also the indigenous argument is like, way, I just hate it in general when people go back and forth about who is

indigenous there, because it's so academic. It's like it's dehumanizing and it obfuscates the whole thing because once again it is just Palestinians being like, I want to be able to vote, I want to have my house back. I literally have the key to my house. And yes, many of them literally still have the keys to their house. All right, there's there's so many, there's so many goddamn myths and propaganda that I just like that. I started

a podcast about it. That's that's that's why. But like much of the stuff that you take for granted as fact is not only a historic but like wildly so. Like the IDF outnumbered the Arab States armies during the war forty eight. That is literally they say the opposite in the you know, nineteen forty eight story of the creation of Israel. It's like un created Israel. All the

Arab states attacked. That is not actually what happened were not just that all the Arab states attacked, but that Israel and the IDEF overcame this gigantic horde of Arab armies. The Arab armies that were in this fight are far fewer than have been reported. You know, they say it's like seven, it was more like four, and only three of them. Only one of them had any sort of like modern military capabilities. The rest were not really armies.

And also they outnumbered the IDEF outnumbered these armies in nineteen sixty seven. Here's another one. Israel attacked first in nineteen sixty seven. It was a preemptive strike, like famously and yet the you know, once again, the narrative around the nineteen sixty seven Six Day War is that, you know, Israel mining its own business and then Egypt along with the people Arabs. Yeah, evil Arabs attacked. The Israeli army struck first. That is a fact that they talk about.

And there's it's also very very much disputed as to whether or not the Egyptian army was going to attack at all. But you know, there's no room for that narrative because it, you know, fucks up the the glorious story of what became the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Another one a whod Barack absolutely did not offer the Palestinians estate during Oslo. He did not, Nor did he offer ninety six percent of the West Bank. And no, Israel did not invent the fucking cherry tomato.

Wait they did it. No, they did not. There was a Haaretz article about it where they're like, no, we didn't. Why do we keep saying this we didn't do that?

what they had already taken. And they the thing they were offering again, not a state, not a state, not a sovereign autonomous state. But you know, this is things people are willing to believe. And that's just that's the whole thing. And again I prefer to say it's the I am rubber, you are a glue tactic, but you know it's the same shit.

the reasons for the effectiveness of it. And in terms of like the inversion of everything, Like I think my favorite example is the is the map, So like Israel will often point to a map of the entire mina region like Middle East North Africa, and they'll highlight all of the Arab countries in green and Israel in blue to show that like, oh, Israel just a tiny is it just a tiny strip of land. It's just a small bean, you know, surrounded by big green Arab monsters,

and I want to kill Israel like that. Hezbara map will like often include the West Bank and the Gaza strip in green as well, and it's a way to frame the West Bank in Gaza is not just being like this,

you know, particular thing. They will be like, No, these are part of the giant invading Arab green monster, because what they're trying to do is show the power imbalance is being completely inverted from the reality here, you know, and anyone, anyone who knows you know, or anyone who's like watched the news, knows that it's ridiculously false to claim that Israel is somehow the less powerful agent here, you know, like you you don't have to have a

PhD to plainly see the disproportionate power imbalance. Like there's Israel, a modern, you know, well armed military, cutting edge technology, backing and funding of the world's most powerful state, most powerful superpower, the United States, and then there is Hamas. That doesn't make Hamas the good guys or whatever I'm saying, it's just a clear indication of the power imbalance. You know,

there is a clear power imbalance. And I think, like to what you were saying, the last one hundred plus days have made it perfectly clear that for all the talk of like the Arab States supporting Palestinians, like, it's clear Israel could literally genocide Palaestinians in broad daylight in the Arab states who do nothing. There's no giant Arab green monster that is protecting the Palestinian like the Palastinians.

Only Arab comrades right now are the Houthis in Yemen and Hasbollah in Lebanon, both of which are non government militant organizations. They are not like, it is not the state of Yemen who is supporting the Palaestinians. It's not the state of Lebanon. It is these militant states within

states pretty much. And yeah, so it's like you have to remember when Israel claims were just they were a small state the size of New Jersey, you know, in a tough neighborhood, and trying to make you know, the West Bank and Gaza look like the spear's tip of an Arab invasion. You have to remember that's not the case.

The truth of it is is like you want to talk about how small Israel is, look how small the Gaza strip is, and that you know alone to like look at that pick sure, to know they are surrounded and to see that there's no way out. That I think changes the narrative for people. And it's a narrative

that the Israelis don't like to show. They don't like to show the West Bank, and you know, in terms of how it is cut into cantons that are basically everything is surrounded by Israeli settlements in Israeli military.

it's to the wall, literally to the wall. But like it's just even seeing how mini school it is is still not enough for people to be like, oh, thirty thousand people dying in this little strip of land.

than they are is helpful for Israel. And that's why they do it. You know, this is this is a way to invert the victim and the victimizer. And it's clear as day. Other things that are clear as day, these products and services that we're going to be selling. So stick around, we'll be right back and we're back again. People in the West, by and large, prefer the Israeli explanation. They're fine living in this alternate reality. And you know,

people believe it for like a variety of reasons. Some people because they were raised to believe it, some people because they just want to believe it. But I think mostly most people in the West just don't really care enough about like Palestinians to like look into it, like they're you know, they're just it's one of many news stories too. I think a lot of people it's easy to put in a box and to be honest, you know, like wouldn't that be nice to be able to compartmentalize

like it would for me. Shit, it would make me way less stressed if I could just not care. And that's not to like call out anyone who doesn't care, because I do think that it is absolutely human and valid to have some things that you just don't have emotional capacity to care about. I think my issue is not whether or not people are, like, you know, supporting

Palisine on their social media or whatnot. My issue is whether or not they're just going to allow themselves to be manipulated and then end up defending the indefensible because of it. Like if you're if you're not going to say nothing, don't do hasbara. That's my that's my feeling about it. But yeah, you know, people want to put in a box. Beyond that, I think there's also no incentive for a lot of people to believe in it.

In fact, even question who are the victims and the victimizers in the whole Israeli Palestine quote unquote conflict, like it brings up a dark, twisted irony that most people don't even want to entertain. You know, people don't want to think about that stuff. And it also it people worry about whether or not they're going to get in trouble. And that brings me to another part of this speech I found from the Middle East Policy Council about haspara quote.

It also seeks to actively inculcate canons of political correctness in Domesican foreign media and audiences that will promote self censorship by them. It strives thereby to decrease the willingness of audiences to consider information linked to politically unacceptable viewpoints, individuals and groups, and to inhibit the circulation of adverse information and social networks. It focuses on limiting the receptivity

of audiences to information. So Hasbar is fucking Orwellian, that is, I think one of the things that interests me about it a lot is how Orwellian it is. You know, it goes beyond mere branding when the Israeli government and pro Israel institutions like so effectively mold the parameters of what is and isn't politically correct, not just like in their own country, but in other countries in the West. Like think about the self censorship that you the listener

do around this issue. Think about the times you wanted to say something but didn't because you didn't know the exact right way to say it, you know, like how how to put it, And like, think about the times that you were reading something critical of Israel by someone you trust and agree with, and one sentence or one word or one turn of phrase triggered you into questioning not validity of the thing you were reading, but like

the nature of the person who wrote it. Think about your reaction to me saying these things about Israel, and about how you felt when Sharen made a lot of these points on some other episode of this podcast, you know,

like think about why that changes things for you. And like there was a time where I was also uncomfortable and like I would only feel comfortable at hearing criticism and doing criticism of Israel in the presence of other Jews, Like it had to be in a you know, private all Jewish Facebook group or in like in person or

through text messages. Like I was so suspicious of the secret motives of non Jewish people criticizing Israel, right, Like, like someone could literally say something that I one hundred percent agreed with, something that I myself had said, and then I would still get this icky feeling from them saying it, like yeah, but why are they saying it

like why do you care? Like that is probably Hasbara's greatest success to relegate the issue of Palestinian human and civil rights to a niche subject that is best talked about in private and only by Jews. So I mean, Sarene, I know that, Like for you, you've got you get shipped for this, you know, I do.

those disclaimers, the more it's conflated. And I've definitely, I mean, I've had a lot of anti Zionist Jewish people on the show, almost almost to like show people that like, listen to these people with actual experience.

occupation or whatnot. That none of this is putting down anyone for being discerning or being careful, but it's to say that like Hasbara has quite an effect on even the most conscious of people. Like making zion and Judaism synonymous and like practically indistinguishable is like one of his Bar's like greatest achievements, presenting Jewish support of Israel as monolithic save for like a few cranks you know, who

are the exception that proved the rule. You know, like non Jews don't want to criticize criticize Israel because they don't want to upset their Jewish friends, or they don't want to be labeled an anti Semite. You know. It's like, you know, after the large public outcry about Israel's brutal response to the homosterous attacks of October seventh, there was a big push among his Bars to frame all Jews of the world as feeling abandoned by the left and

abandoned by their friends. You had people like Brett Gelman, Oh my god, from a stranger walking dumps, I hate

him so much. Oh my god, fucking Wooly Willie over here going on Instagram being like, hey, fake woke former friends, and like he gave a speech at the like Stand with Israel March that was something like the Jews don't need you, like presenting the you know, the idea of people criticizing Israel, or like not wanting at the very least not wanting the complete obliteration of Palestinians in Gaza, framing that as like, oh, well, all the Jews want that,

you know, like his whole thing of being like the Jews don't need you, as if he and Israel represented all Jews, like presenting the Jews of the world as a monolith, as if non Zionist or anti Zionist Jews don't even exist, as if we all felt this way, Like you don't want to hate Jews, do you? Of course, if you don't, then you gotta let Israel do whatever the hell it wants.

good person. I really think that he believes he's a good person, when really he's just a piece of shit that does not see a huge group of people as human beings.

Like they may be like a little bit like liberal Zionists or whatnot, but mostly you know, they all love Israel, and that is is is not true, and it's it's a way of like more so, it feeds into the continuing conflation. It feeds into this hasbara that Israel represents all Jews, and I am telling you right now it doesn't. And I don't think I'm telling anyone something they don't already know. Like I think people know, Zionism is not Judaism.

you know, in fucking America. And I feel like that was the majority of people. Was that kind of like like seething anti Arab hatred. And I'm not excusing it, but what I'm saying is that Jews have a diverse range of views inside and outside of Israel, and a lot of it includes wanting a ceasefire. And that's why you see it in these Jewish organizations that are trying to end the occupation. They're trying they are openly critiquing Israel,

that are calling Zionism racism. You see it, and you see it because they because we're honestly trying to change this narrative. We're trying to stop people from believing this lie that the Jewish people are synonymous with the state of Israel.

is a good thing. I encourage that one hundred percent you respecting Jewish people and wanting to stand firmly against anti Semitism, wanting to fight it with every fiber of your being. You are correct and feeling that way, and

I want to encourage it. And I also need you to understand that it's for that very reason that I urge people to speak out about Israel, because I believe Israel and there has Baris mouthpieces and the project of political Zionism are inherently anti Semitic, and not in like the semantic sense where it's like Arabs are also semi So it's an argument I've heard. I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about anti Jewish, specifically anti Jewish. They actively work to create fear amongst diaspora Jews, make us distrust our friends, our neighbors, our co work, our fellow Jews. Even they tell us that, you know, they tell Jews that unless they support Israel, they are not real Jews, you know, or they are self hating Jews. They use our past traumas against us. They re traumatize us and manipulate us like it's classic abuser shit. It is, it

is abuse. It's it's cult shit too, and they even deal in Nazi revisionism. And it's it's so important to point this out because you see the way that they, the Israeli government uses the Nazi you know, accusation in order to do a genocide. I mean you see constantly, you know, in the last three four months, videos from the IDF showing, you know, an iPad they found in a teen girls bedroom, and you know, they open it up and there's the wallpaper of the iPad is is

Hitler's face. And you look at that, and you're supposed to go, oh my god, I can't I can't believe that, and you forget to question what the fuck an Israeli soldier is doing in a seventeen year old girls bedroom. Why is it blown up? And why why is he going through her stuff like that? You stop looking at what is actually happening, and you start looking at what

the Hasbaris want you to look at. They want you to see the Hitler thing and go like, oh man, this is a whole society of little Hitlers, and I you know, I look at that and I see the way they cynically use that. While at the same time, you know, Benjamin net Yahoo has been pushing this line

claiming that the Holocaust was essentially the Palestinian's idea. I mean, this is something that has been gaining more and more traction in like sort of this new Israel Palestine, like a historical narrative that's been pushed about, like you know, the Mufti and is and Hitler meeting up together and being like, have you ever thought about killing the Jews? And Hitler was like, I never thought about that before.

That's so smart. Wow, thank you Palestinians. Like total bullshit, totally revising, like trying to do fucking like I don't know apology of for literally, Hitler is anti Semitic. I don't care how you slice it. It is. And that's something that the Israeli government deals in. They deal in anti Semitism all the time. I mean, essentially, Israel tells the world that Jews are a third column, loyal to Israel first and foremost, and tells Jews that our home

isn't our home. They say this to us, and you know that due to our traditions and our blood, you know,

we are just merely guests in any other place. This is like an old racist worldview from a previous century, filled with blood and soil fascism, you know, and like for me, like growing up in a mixed secular family, you know, where I'm like, yeah, I'm like culturally Jewish and I'm ethnically Jewish, but I'm like a blood jew essentially, you know, like and as like the very fact of me having Jewish blood was used by fascists to murder

us during the Holocaust. Now under Israel's Law of Return, that very same Jewish blood is being used by fascists as a passport to allow me to move to Israel and displace an entire Palestinian family if I choose to, like, you know, being religiously Jewish doesn't have anything to do with my ability to do this, and my blood is my passport to you apartheid. That's why I choose to

talk about this stuff. You know, if you're going to use my blood to make me complicit in crimes, the crimes of your state, then I'm gonna have something to say about it. You know. So my final piece of haspara has to do with something that has been said over and over again by countless Zionis, including the current President of these United States of America, Joe Biden. Folks, were there no Israel, there wouldn't be a Jewish the

world was safe. The idea that the state of Israel alone can keep the Jewish people safe is an insane piece of haspara. It is a total, utter anti Semitic bullshit. A Jewish state does not and cannot keep Jewish people safe. Tying the fate of the Jewish state to the Jewish people is a recipe for fucking disaster. The Jewish people are a nation that has lasted thousands of years. Nations meaning like a people with a common origin, history, language, culture, customs,

and religion and or religion. You know, it can be any of those things. And for a long long time we were one of many stateless nations that existed. And that's not to say that, you know, Israel shouldn't exist or whatever. But more importantly, what I'm saying is that Jews should exist, whether they happen to be located anywhere, like wherever they are, Jews should should exist. The existence of the state of Israel, to me is not the question,

and that is not what Israel claims to do. They ensure, they claim to ensure the existence of the Jewish people, but they do not. All they do is try to bolster the existence of their state. And it should not be common thought that the existence of Israel and the existence of Jews are the same thing is I can personally think of nothing more dangerous for any people than to tie their entire survival to something as impermanent as a fucking state. And that is the truth about Israel.

So you know, all this to say that I'm a I guess I'm an anarchist. Now there's one thing that you know, getting into the whole Israel palasine thing will do to you. It turns you very quickly into someone who believes the existence of states is the problem. Yeah, yeah, so that's that's me. That's how I feel about stuff.

those episodes will have come out. I you know, I don't know when those are coming out. But anyways, I've only been doing the podcast for a month and it's it's been a lot of fun. It's been cathartic, and it's been hard, and it's definitely been you know, like caused some stress in my life because you know, looking for this content you have to dig through a lot

of really horrific shit. So yeah, check out bad as Bara or you know, check me out met leave jokes on Instagram, and go to sacrament Know punchline March seventeenth, Sunday, seven pm, Me and my wife, my wife. Just if you're in teeny we're gonna be co headlining there, So get your tickets now. Link in the notes. Yay no thank you so much.