It Could Happen Here Weekly 120

fucking pussy woke libs. And it's just like, like, imagine being that racist for that long only to be immediately tossed aside.

speaking of watching football. Yeah, so the thing this episode is actually about is if you watch the Super Bowl or like, God help you, you've tried to use YouTube without an ad blocker, a thing I do not recommend at all. You have seen ads for Temu with it's TMU or Temu Temu. Okay, yeah, it has the absolute the absolutely oh good god, yeah, this this app This one This one's bad, folks, This one's I I went insane and have been spiraling for like two weeks now

writing this, so you know. So it has the absolutely dog shit tagline shop like a billionaire.

So but I'm just gonna call it so. The company, the parent company for both Temu and Pindua Doua, changed their name to PDD, so I'm just gonna call it that two. So yeah, PDD is China's worst tech giant. They have worked multiple of their employees to death. They probably also use slave labor. Those are unrelated stories. So today, welcome to the abyss. This is the story of Tamu. I have stared into it, and now you motherfuckers are coming with me and staring into it some more.

they're the second largest app. Ali Baba reportedly has eight hundred and sixty sixty three million users per year. That's a lot of users. Yeah, that's that's multiple us is. PDD has been claiming that they have seven hundred and forty million monthly users. It's unclear if that's exactly true, but it's probably around there, which again, that is twice the entire population of the US. So this is a

fucking unbelievably massive company. And to understand what this what this company is, and how it became probably the worst of the Chinese tech giants, we have to go back to the very beginning. And the very beginning is this guy named Colin Huang. Huang is a weird guy. I don't know he's he's he's the Chinese version of the American tech bro. So he's you know, he's he's a recognizable like asshole who started a giant company, but he's

not exactly the same. So he So he graduates from like college in China, and in the early two thousands he goes to the University of Wisconsin to get a master's degree in computer science, which it like it should be illegal for anyone to get degrees in computer science. Terrible stuff, zero out of time. I should know how to use computers.

tech tech billionaire. He gets every single article calls him the Warren Buffett of China. I I don't fucking know, but like you know, for like for examples, like how big this guy is like Vivo and like the one plus company the mixed phones, those are both like spin

offs of like things that he built. But yeah, so you know, so this is this is an interesting relationship for Huang because and it's also interesting because like the narrative around Huang and PDDs that they're like these like hungry upstarts, like clunging their way up from nothing, and they can like go after Ali Baba and the Chinese like tech market wars because they're like they're ferocious, they have like nothing to lose, and like they're rich and

fat Ali Baba and like nah, like this guy has had the backing of like a bunch of really powerful Chinese tech guys, like from the absolute beginning. Another part of like the Huang lore is that Dwan like took him to this really famous dinner where Warren Buffett was offering if if you donated like six hundred and twenty thousand dollars a charity, he would like eat dinner with you and like talk with you about like finance stuff.

And so Dwan like buys this thing to go to dinner with Warren Buffett and brings Huang with him, and he Huang, Who's Who's Huang's the founder of PD again, so he gives him credit for like this, this like financial wisdom that he got here. Here's just from an interview with side Jim. This is a Chinese outlet. What Buffett said is actually very simple and can be understood by my mother. Perhaps what this meal meant most to me was that I realized the power of simplicity and

common sense. Human thoughts are easily polluted. When you make a judgment on something, you need to understand the backgrounds and facts. After understanding it, what you need is wisdom, but whether you have the courage to use reason when facing facts use common sense to judge. Common sense is obvious and easy to understand. But our various biases and personal interests form due to growth and learning blind us.

So this is like entrepreneurial bullshit. But you know this is apparently this is like a big formative like thing. Like ah, he like got the wisdom of word Buffett, and he listened to it. It's just like what there's the thing I think is more interesting is that he talks about what in the same interview what Dwan taught him. Dwan also taught me a common sense thing in business.

Price fluctuates around value. The price will definitely fluctuate, but as long as your value increases, the final price will be close to the value. This common sense allows you to focus on increasing the intrinsic value of the company and not be overly concerned about price fluctuations in the

capital market. And this, to me is fascinating because the first half of that is like orthodox Marxist price theory, like in like in Marxist price theory, right, the whole thing about it is that price is determined by value. The value of a commodity is determined by like the number the amount of labor hour is socially necessary to produce it, and eventually, like price, sort of like fluctuation,

the price can change. It's not price isn't like identical to like socially necessarily like labor time, but it like fluctuates abround it. And so that's like the first part of it, which is the Marxist thing, except this is like China, like modern like twenty twenties China. So Marxist value theory has been degraded to like, make your company valuable and don't worry about stock prices and market fluctuations. It'll work out in the end.

down a bunch of these jobs. So he's he's like a computer science graduate, right, and he's being headhunted by like a bunch of the sort of like mainstream tech companies at the times, like Oracle, Microsoft, and they're giving they want to give him like an enormous amount of money, but his mentors like, no, no, no, don't take this tech job, take the Silicon Valley tech job. Join Google. And so he joins Google. And this is this is another like very famous things like ah, he wanted to

join the like up and coming hungry tech startup. But here's the thing, so Google. He joins Google in two thousand and four, which is kind of early, but Google also goes public that year, so you know, this is up working really well for him because he gets a bunch of stock options that those stock options are worth millions of dollars. That's a lot of Also, some of the startup capital for like the later companies he founds comes from that. And Huang really quickly like works his

way up the ranks. But he so he gets put in charge of like launching Google in China, and this is a fiasco, does not work at all. Huang blames like too much oversight from people at the senior leadership at Google, which I can get, but I mean it just doesn't work at all. Like he starts as at two thousand and six. By twenty ten, Google has pulled out of China entirely, like they're not they're not trying to push the fucking search edge because nobody uses it.

So okayv having having like unbelievably bombed out of his first tech job, he he he does the like entrepreneur thing. He's he starts like a couple of these like shopping like online shopping companies they do like fine, and he sells them, but they don't like do incredible and so okay. So this is the part that a lot of the accounts of him leave out, like the sort of like

fawning accounts leave out. Is the next thing that he does, which is he sets up this like really shit game studio and they make like a bunch of like absolutely unbelievably weird and horny mobile games. So they make like Mafia City, Joy Spade, Texas, Hold'm Poker. They had this game called Girl ex Battle that is like you assemble a harem of girlfriends and then have them fight other people. Instead of like absolutely have you played any of these

Oh no, absolutely not. I refuse. I think I've actually seen Mafia City ads before, but it's like, like it's the absolute most dogshit like bargain basement. I guess they're kind of pre gotcha games.

All right, all right, but okay, So, like he's running this shitty game company and he has a genuinely brilliant and terrible insight, which is that she sees how addictive like mobile gaming and how addictive like micro transactions are, and he goes, oh shit, what if I put this in a sh popping gap except that because that's the reasonable way to explain it. But like, the thing he

actually did was like why are okay? His thought his actual thought process was why are we not selling game games are all like advertised in men, right, Like these the apps that he's making are like weird, horny stuff for guys. Why are we not making games of women? Which is reasonable, But then his follow up was, uh, effectively women be shopping, and he was like, so trying,

and we'll make a shopping thing. It's just like we'll make we'll make we'll make an app to make shopping into a game, and so and one of the things he's he's also been doing one of the like the kind of like search engine optimization scams, where like he just keeps making different shopping like shopping websites and hoping that one of them will like climb in the search rankings.

But eventually he hits on a like a combination of using the like dog shit like addictive mobile gamification stuff from his mobile games in a like in an online shopping app, and he hits on that as the idea for a new shopping app. And this is what turns into PDD. Now do you know what didn't turn into PDD and is in fact better?

about a little bit. So something I talked about. God, I don't know how many years ago this was now, but like a while back I did an episode about this company that poisons like three hundred thousand babies by making poisoned milk in China. And one of the things though that was a Bassard's episode one of the things I talked about in that episode was how the Chinese

agricultural market is incredibly fragmented. We don't have time to do a full history of rural decollectivization here, but the upshot of it is that it results in a lot of farmers working really small plots of land who are forced to sell their goods to a series of middlemen who make the actual profits. And because these farmers have like a tiny amount of land and grow stuff on or they have like two cows, right, they don't have the financial leverage to negotiate with like the middleman, the

middle bank can just set prices on them. And and the product of this is you have a really really fragmented market where there's just like all of these like unbelievably large numbers of these really small sellers, and part of and you know, and this and this, this locks all of these people into the middlemen. The middle man

can set the prices. The middlemen set the prices incredibly low, and they're locked in because they don't have another distribution method because the only thing they can do is sell to these like agricultural midleman companies. The companies like above them, like your grocery companies are like actual milk company who packages the milk. They love this stuff because it means that they don't have to like pay the farmers. They

can just buy like the goods directly. They don't have to deal with like employment stuff, and they don't have to deal with quality control too because they can pass that on to the middlemen. Now, something else we talked about in our anti work Lying Flat episodes like three years ago, is that China has these like far like rural influencers. That was it was like a huge wave of these people that sort of like image you might actually have seen you've seen the videos of just like

someone in rural China like cutting wood or something. Oh yeah, totally totally. Yeah. So those those things, we were like, Okay, the US catches up the stuff on the Chinese internet like usually several years after like happened there, and that

makes sense. Yeah. And the next thing in line after the original sort of ural influencer waves was these like was this wave of like farmer influencers and these people they're using like a different Chinese like it's like another it's like another tich Dot clone basically, and they're doing

the thing that they're doing is okay. So you you know, you have your regular influencer who's trying to sell you like the image of rural life, right, and then you have the farmer influencers who are trying to sell you the image of rural life and also their potatoes. And this is this is like the marketing strategy. This is this is how you can skip the middlemen and like actually sell your fruit is by becoming an influencer. Which it's so cursed. It's so cursed. I hate it so much.

If we use that text startup money to give them rebates, we can do things that like you know, we can not charge them commission, right, And if we can do this, we can turn around and sell these fruits for like zero dollars. Zero dollars is slight exaggeration, but when I like, they're selling these fruits for an are unbelievably cheap, Like we are talking ten mangos for a dollar and thirty nine cents, which is like a steal, outrageous, right, And

you know this is this is incredibly successful. What they're doing basically is a giant version of the Amazon gambit. Right, they're eating shit and taking losses to sell all of this stuff, although they're losing less money than you'd think, Like the actual price of these goods is already so low, and we're gonna come back to that too, because that's an aspect of what's so messed up about this whole thing. But you know, so they eat shit that takes some losses,

but they really really quickly build market share. So this is a very very short smart strategy because it's not just in the sort of real market. China has a shit ton of like small and medium sized producers that make a whole bunch of things, or like guy with

one factory person doing like craft production stuff. And PD's plan is to pull together all of these sellers like this, this whole all all of these people from different markets into just one giant, like one giant like market that they control now importantly, unlike Amazon, and this is like ali Baba too, because Ali Baba works on a fairly similar model to well, okay, in a lot of ways,

is a similar model to Amazon. It's not identical. But unlike those two companies, PDD doesn't run their own logistics network. It's all it's all third party. Like the shipping and all that shit is done by is done through third

party logistics stuff. So like their shipping companies, they don't own warehouses like that stuff, you know, what they're what they do instead is they use the shipping companies and warehouses that were developed in like the earlier parts of the Chinese tech boom, and they're able to just use that infrastructure to you know, to to ship all their

stuff around. And this means that the company is extremely lean in the sense that like they don't have a lot of physical assets like they know, and this means they don't have to deal with labor costs or like the logistics problems of actually having to like you know, of actually having employees packing boxes and making things they're just an app. It's it's it's well, they're they're like the original model of Uber in some sense, right where like you don't like Uber doesn't fucking own or wasn't

supposed to be owning cars. I mean, I guess Uber's a bad example because they were trying to do the automated car thing, but that was a fiasco. But you know, the thing that PDD makes is just an app, but it's it's an incredibly addictive app, like it's it's it's a shopping gotcha game, which is like maybe the worst sentence in the history of the human language.

kind of pushed back on some some of that. We're still not all of it, but like there was definitely some some degree of like, oh well, we are simply not going to be buying all of these games if it's just full of like micro transaction bullshit, and then Fortnite took over and we're back and well again.

we have to we need those kids. Yeah, like that's the only way to make money. Yeah, but you know, but but PDDs like brilliant. They're sort of like the the the absolutely evil shit that they realized is like we can just we can just do this for shopping. And so like the moment you log in, right, there's like these flash deals and there's these group deals and this is the thing that the group deals are the

thing that that PDD is based around. So the way it works is you get these group deals and so you get a link and you send it to people, and the more people click on the link to buy the thing, the cheaper it becomes. So, and then you send the links over we Chat, which is the curve of like catch all Chinese messenger or like social media app that everyone uses to like talk to their boomer parents. And so the thing that your boomer parents are doing

is they're sending these shopping links to each other. And you know, and the the more like the more people

click on these links, the cheaper the good becomes. So what was the more people are buying it, the more people you rope into buying stuff from this app, the cheaper it is, and the more deals you get, you get things like they'll just like give you like quote unquote free money if you spend enough money in like basically like in the same way that like micro transaction works right where it's like, you know, in a game, it's like if you play the x number of games,

will give you like in game currency, whereas this is just like will literally give you money, you'll like send things to you. God, that sounds like hell, it's awful. It's so bad, and very importantly right, it's this giant loop that it not only gets people to spend money, but it gets people to bring their friends in because you have to bring your friends in to get the group deals, so everything gets cheap and cheaper, and the

tactics they use are absolutely wild. They get in trouble in twenty twenty one for this promotion called Bargain for Free Goods, where you'd get a link and the claim was that if enough people clicked it, you would get the good for free. And so this guy tried to do it, but he couldn't. He can only get it

two point nine percent of the cost. So we sued them for false advertising and the claim got thrown out, but the company had to pay him like money, so like this is the kind of shit that they're doing. WeChat actually like blocked their links for a while because, you know, cause like some enormous portion of messages suddenly we're just like these people sending these spam links to like every single person they know, trying to get them to buy like a fucking toothbrush so that your toothbrushes

can be cheaper. Right. But eventually we Chat kind of like, you know, we Chat gives up and they start like allying more with PDD. I mean, there's a whole there's

a whole complicated story. I'm not gonna get to hear about like the like China's really really ferocious like tech company wars because like in the US, you know, like our tech monopolies are relatively stable, right, Like they've sort of portioned up the Internet into or and like distribution and stuff into just like basically like local monopolies, right, Like like Google is like the only search engine company.

There's there's basically no competition there, right, Like there's some competition in terms of social media, but even then it's like and it's not like the Chinese version words like unbelievably ferocious competition and sometimes they cooperate, but yeah, you know, it's it's really fierce. And PDDs. You know the thing that they do, right is they pair this app stuff with direct to consumer sales, and PDT is really the pioneers of this. She In and okay, so I I

she In is that fucking fast fashioned clothing company. I learned today that it is actually pronounced she In because the name of the thing is she In, like sa she she and then she's like she's in. Yeah, I hate it so much. I'm so sad. I I mean I feel slightly better because like I kept trying to read it in Chinese. It's like this doesn't make any sense, Like it's just bafflely it doesn't and it's like, oh no,

it's because it's in English. Yeah, But BDD is the precursor of Shean's like strategy, right, like they're they're the originators of this, except they're you know, they're what they're

doing basically, it's it's a fact. It's kind of like drop shipping, but you know, the sales are being pushed by these these sort of gamified app stuff, and this means they have this like real time supply management system that tells producers like like they can like they go down and like tell their sellers like what to produce

more of based on like app sales. So you know, like the way it works is you start off with a small it's like a small number of things, and then you get ads to push that those like fucking toothbrushes or whatever. And then as like sales wramp up, you ramp up productions. You can ship people more toothbrushes. Now do you know who else will ship you toothbrushes that will probably be better quality than the PDD tooth pressure?

just it takes rural China by storm. Sure it sounds convenient, like yeah for some panil and it's really really cheap, is the thing, right, And the thing about rural China is you're dealing with a level of poverty that like is like almost like it's not unimaginable in the US, but it's like unbelievable, Like it's something that like like we don't really have it in the same way because okay, so like an example of the kind of stuff we're dealing with, right, Like, so, China's GDP per capita in

like the sixties was lower than hades. Right, this is an unbelievably poor country. And there are there are places in real China that are still like basically not quite that poor, but are like unbelievably poor in ways that like, you know, we're talking about people who are like people who are doing kind of well in these regions, are making seven hundred dollars a month. Like that's like on a good month, right, they're making seven hundred dollars a month,

which is that's eight four hundred dollars a year. And that's that's that's if you have twelve good months, right, if you have normal months, it's more like six thousand dollars a year. And so you know, and when when when you're in a place where people are using stuff like this, and again that's someone who like has a job full time is making like six thousand dollars a year, and so people use PDD to shop because it's incredibly

cheap and it's also addictive. And when I say cheap, like we're talking like two dollars for a pair of jeenes cheap, right, And like that's that's also like cheap and you on too. It's like unbelievably low prices.

get to that. We'll get to that next episode. The main cost of the stuff being cheap is that the stuff they buy like sucks ass like literally literally this only the CEO talks about is that their gambit is that, Okay, we'll ship you ten mangos for for like a dollar thirty nine. Two of them will be rotten, but that means you still get eight mangos. That we're still unbelievable, Like that's the thing, and like, you know, the stuff

that they get like sucks. Here's from the Chinese media outlet sixth Tone, which has done a lot of good coverage of PDD. They they used to be better. They're like the kind of like left like stay media outlet. They used to be better, and then their staff got run out because they they went they walked too close to the line. So but here's here, here's what here's they've done a lot of they because the most of the PDD coverage came from before their people got run out.

So quote. Following the I p O, a number of purchase Series A purchases allegedly bought from PDD we're shared online, including a hair dryer that broke out in flames after it was switched on, a power bake. Hey, that also happens in America. Don't worry.

and you would kind of get slightly punished. So I think this actually could be a good thing if used correctly, where we where we purposely sabotage every like fourth person who buys anything online.

is absolutely rife with kind of fit products. Right after they go public in twenty eighteen, there's like a Chinese state investigation into the sale of their kind of fit product, and pdd's response is like, Wow, we're just a marketplace, anyone can sell on it. How are we supposed to control who makes counterfeit stuff? But this is this is actually like it gets to a kind of like cultural thing where you know, what is one of the things

that happens in world trying. This happens in a lot of places where like almost everyone is wearing like clothes that are like knockoff brand stuff because it's just the cheapest clothes and like that's that's the kind of clothes that's being made that you can afford if you're you know, like you're you're you're you're trying to sort of make it like in World China, so you get like, you know, you have like entire villages where you walk in and

everyone's wearing like like niaky and like a dietis or something like it's like nice. This stuff gets really wild, really fast. So here's from that that Sedging interview with Colin Huang again. So here's here's a catching it. It's a Chinese media outlet, so they're their interviewer. One of the best selling products on PDD is a bottle of Affidas priced at twenty seven point eighty on that is like three almost four dollars with a total of four

point seven million orders sold. Do you think this medicine might be real? Here's the CEO. First, of all, medicines are healthcare products sold on pdd's platform must have national certification marks. Secondly, the gross profit margin of healthcare products is already extremely high, just like facial mass. Do you think the two hundred yond facial max is useful? So again, again, what is happening here is that like they have sold like one point four point seven million orders of of

like a fake aphrodisiac. And when the CEO is asked about his response, it's like, well, but who could really say if any health products work?

that shit and it really sucks. But on their hand, none of the constant bad press like stop pdd's rise, right, and now it is time to leave Colin Huang soil. Until about phil twenty twenty, pdd's rise was synonymous with its CEO, Colin Huang, But in mid twenty twenty, Huang resigned as the CEO and kind of like exited public

life effectively, like not entirely. We kind of like he like took he like he resigned a CEO, and then twenty twenty one he resigns as like a chairman of the board and he's like, you know, he's doing this like philanthropic stuff instead, and he's you know, he's doing his like post CEO life thing, right, And we've never gotten a good answer as to why he stepped down, but I have a theory, and I think my theory's

pretty good. And also it goes into have I, Garrison, have I explained to you the thing about I don't remember if I've done it? On this show talked about the Chinese paid a loan app thing, M I don't think. So okay, So all right, we are now going to do We're gonna close this episode out on one of the most absolutely insane moments of Chinese internet history. So okay. One of the things that happens in the Chinese tech market in the late twenty tens and early twenty twenties

is this mass proliferation of app based payda loans. This is one of the worst things I have ever seen. What effectively happens is that around like twenty fourteen twenty fifteen, a bunch of Chinese tech companies, especially like delivery companies like sort of like China's version of grub, Public, Door, Dash and Ali Baba, They're like Amazon equivalent, gets in it too, and these people realize that they can start their own payment platforms. So basically like all these companies

are making their own version of PayPal. But then they realize that they can use these platforms to give out Payda loans so that you can in one app take out a payday loan to order delivery, or you can in one app take out a payday loan to buyshit from Amazon. With the payday loan, ten Cent gets in on it, so you can buy Mitro transactions with your

payday loans. This, as you might expect, Spiral's out of control immediate lee on the interest race on these loans are enormous, and this means that they make an unbelievable amount of money. And so apps just start like shoveling these loans in people's faces the momently long onto apps. But the thing is like this doesn't stop with just

like the big shopping apps right by twenty nineteen. It's not just you know, like when I say this is going to apps right like you're fucking Like imagine if Twitter was trying to offer you bad A loans, like that's the main point of Oh that that might happen, but that might actually maybe based on the plans for the Twitter to become the banking app. Yeah, well that's

actually the funny thing. So so Elon Musk really really likes China and part of the reason for this is that you know, a bunch of Tesla factories are in shing John part of the reason for this, like he's trying to like recreate the like weed chat environments, but everyone doesn't, right, Like people don't actually like it. But the thing is, the other thing that he really loves is the number of hours that you can get people to work in China that you can't really in the US.

So we'll get to that fucking next episode. But you know, okay, so like like your your fucking Twitter is trying to sell you paid a apps, But then it gets the point where your fucking flashlight app is trying to sell you trying to get you to take out payday loans, like your like photo app, like every fucking app on your phone is trying to sell you pay loans. That

sounds incredibly annoying. This is and this is one of these things right that like, okay, like as bad as like American apps are, right, like as bad as like the version of capitalism that we have in the American app ecosystem, Like the wildest shit is always going on in the Chinese tech market, which is like even more insane than the American tech market, and this is the thing, like we don't actually have this here, and I've been

trying to figure out why it never happened here. I think it has to do it partially with banking regulation and partially with like the fact that like the actual American payd a loan companies don't want other companies to like cut in on their business. Yes, so I think

that's what's happening. But like in China, it's literally like and this is happening in like like like twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, that this stuff is happening, so you know, and it's in all and this this gets I mean, it turns into just a fucking nightmare because you know, obviously, like this turns into this giant wave of people who got it in over their heads and can't pay their loans back because they took out

a payday loan with thirty percent interest. And also, and this is one of the fun things, companies just straight up lie about their interest rates. Like there's a lot of examples of companies saying we have a nine percent interest rate, and then you know, in the contract it says nine percent interest rate. And then when they try

to get you to pay it back. It's like thirty percent, right, Like this is like you know, and so sometimes they're they're even they're you know, you're getting up to like one hundred tw hundred percent interest like these like organized crime levels of interest. And you know, like Alli like the tech giants are all into it. Ali Baba isn't quite as big into it as like some of the other companies, but like they're doing it, like they absolutely

are doing the payd a loan shit. And I mentioned Alibaba here because in late twenty twenty, Jack Ma who's the founder of Alli Baba, just like disappears. He's just gone for like several months, no nobody knows where he is, and then he reappears in like twenty twenty one, but he's not doing tech ceo stuff anymore. He's doing like

weird public education tours in like rural China. And this causes like a huge, a huge like kind of thing in the American press because what they're reading it as, and they're kind of right, is that there's this in twenty twenty one, there's this enormous raft of financial regulations on tech companies, and this gus interpreted is like a

crackdown on chech companies. Like the CCP is trying to bring the tech giants in line, like they disappear jack Ma and you know, one of the and this is something something that a story that gets lost in this in the American press is that like one of the big things they're trying to do is stop is stop all of these fucking companies. I'm turning their apps to

the pede alone factories. And you know, like I'm I'm not like a CCP fan, Like it is well known, Like it's like my dislike of the CCP is so large that like a non insignificant number of people in the US think I work for the CIA, right, But like this is like those fucking tech companies they were like they were like like on the edge of completely

annihilating the Chinese economy. They were very they got very very close to just like reducing like enormous swaths of the entire Chinese population and to like peer at based

debt pionage. It was a fucking disaster. And this is part this is a big part of why this like tech crackdown came in because the CCP was like, holy shit, if you guys do this like you're actually going to like like you're you're gonna You're gonna fucking nuke the Chinese economy, like we cannot allow every single fucking app to be a paid a loan like service and things. I mean, it's still not great now, but it things have gotten a lot less bad in the in the

payday loan like thing since then. But you know, again like it it it had to get bad enough that your flashlight, we're trying to get your take out of payday loan for the CCP to actually like go after their like tech giant darlings. And I think what happened is that I think what happened is that Colin Huang like saw which way the wind was blowing, and she was like, Okay, there's gonna be a giant crackdown now now two wits credit. This is the only time I

will give PDD credit for anything. PDD actually didn't do the payday loan shit. I think because Colin Huang was just slight was like smart enough to be like, this is a fucking terrible idea, Like if we try to get our like rural customer base hooked on pay day loans, all these people are gonna just be completely broke in

like nine months. So PDD doesn't do it, but she takes this moment like he picks twenty like July twenty twenty eight, which is like a couple months before Jack Modest spears, and he just fucking nopes and he's like I'm out and yeah, like things, you know, and he picked a good time, and this meant that, like, you know, he never really faced any consequences for you know, he

wasn't really caught up in the crackdown. He got out fine, and you know, he picked he picked the right time to do it, and pdd's future in America was still ahead of it. But when the Chinese media began to uncover the dark side of PDD in twenty twenty one, Colin Kwang was nowhere to be found. And that is what we're covering tomorrow. We haven't even gotten to the bad.

for PDD. This is like twenty twenty twenty twenty one, China's lockdowns are actually incredible for PDD because, as we talked about last episode, pdd's strategy is group shopping, right, It's about getting a bunch of people to buy things together to make it cheaper, this thus pulling in more in our customers. Now China had real lockdowns, and in a real lockdown, this is increasingly how people got food.

You know, the strictness of the lockdowns very across, like depending on what province you're in, right, But so like my family was an inner Mongolia and an inner mongolia in like the first lockdowns, you could send you could only send one member of your family outside per week to like, you know, to go get groceries. Otherwise everyone else fed all times has to stay indoors. And this meant that people started pulling together to like all buy groceries and then sending one person out to like go

pick up the delivery. And this this ingrained PDDs like fundamental strategy of like buying into the into the consiousness of the Chinese public because they've just been doing it for like a year, right, And as twenty twenty, for a word on PDD like skyrockets. This this is this. The period from like twenty twenty to like twenty twenty four has been the period where pdd's grown them most. I mean, it was already pretty big before then, but now you know, it's it's now like the main competitor

of Alibaba. It was like the previously unassailable like online shopping giant. The company grew so much that it forced the other like shopping companies to get into the fruit market because it was like clobbering them there so badly. So yeah, it was wild. But then a bunch of absolutely terrible stories broke about PDD in both the Chinese and American press. So we're gonna start with the stuff that's I guess less bad, and then it's gonna get worse.

So question number one is the PDD at malware. All right, we're just really jumping right in here. Oh, this is this is the mild shit, this is the Are we allout to say this legally? Yeah? It's well, here's the thing. So Google play removed the app from its play store. Oh okay, so all right, so so okay, we need to be very specific about what we're talking. It's too bad for Google that it's probably too bad for you. Yeah, so very specifically, this is we're the thing we're talking

about right now is not Temu. We're talking specifically about the Chinese version of the app, PDD, And this was released on the Google Play Store in like the mid twenty the mid early like like I think it's like twenty.

like Chinese government trojan horses, like especially TikTok. So unfortunately, before we start this we have to sort out kind of or like you have to make a judgment about what level of apps surveillance is, like the level of apps are veilance you get in the US because all of your apps are spying on you, and then what is like above and beyond the like quote unquote normal level of spying and like TikTok is TikTok is unbelievably invasive, right,

Like it is true, it's a privacy nightmare, but like so are most apps, Like TikTok's worse than normal. But it's not that TikTok is like the Chinese communists. So this is something we're gonna get into. And this is this is true with pdu too. The US actually gets like the stripped down, cucked not as bad version of Chinese apps like TikTok does not have a bunch of the like integration stuff that that Doyen, the Chinese like

version of it has. We're like Douyen has this thing where like I guess Google's kind of doing it now, but like you can directly, like like an influencer can hold up a p and you could tap the product and go buy it. Google is trying to do that now. Yeah, but China had that, like like Dueyan said that for like ages, right, It's like so like the versions of the apps that we get here are actually less bad than the Chinese ones, which makes the whole panic so

funny to me. It's like no, no, no, like they're sending you like a better version of the app.

this app. So originally there was a Chinese company that a Chinese security company was looked at this app and was like, they're using a bunch of Android exploits, Like they're like they're using like they're they're they're effectively hacking your phone, right, They're they're they're they're deploying a bunch of x of things that are like broken in in like in Android and allowing you like this like lesson do stuff and I supposed to be able to do.

And so CNN brought in a bunch of different security like analysts and like they brought in security companies like look at it, and here's what they found.

to have exploited about fifty Android system vulnerabilities. Most of these exploits were tailor made for customized parts known as original Equipment Manufacturer code, which tends to be audited less than ASoP, which is like another kind of code and therefore prone to more vulnerabilities. He said PDD had also exploited a number of AOSP vulnerabilities, including one that was flagged by Totioniin to Google in February twenty twenty two. Google fixed this bug in March. He said, I've never

seen anything like it. It's like super expansive. Serg Totionin, android security expert, He's like guy said that, sorry, I've never seen and Android Tracin said, I've never seen anything like this. It's like super expansive. According to Tosian, the exploits allowed PDD to access users location, contacts, calendars, notification, and photo albums without their consents. They were also able to change systems, setting an access users social media accounts

and chats. He said, Now that is pretty bad. I will I will mention that like a lot of your normal apps can also do shit like that. Yeah, like that's stuff that you can get out of, like Google, but some of it's not good. The other thing that they were doing is they're doing these things called privileged escalation attacks, where they're trying to get like a higher level of privilege on the system so they can run

code and not supposed to be able to. So you know how like sometimes when you're running something at a computer, you have to run it as admin so the thing actually works.

I showed this to it. So I was trying to get a gauge on how much of this is real and how much of this is insane, And so I showed I showed it to my friend who's a software engineer,

and he was like, what the fuck? So this is this is very tetfically the privileged escalation attacks on the end, the attack on the like the original equipment manufacturer code, like the OEM stuff that's just not normal, Like that is that is actual malware that is like not that is not normal app bullshit that like, this thing is trying to hack your phone. So in twenty twenty three, the like Google pulled the app from the store because everyone was like, what the fuck. Wait, this is just

literally malware. I'm gonna I'm gonna so so what were they trying to do? Here's CNN again. It was in twenty twenty, according to a current PDD employee, that the company set up a team of about one hundred engineers and product managers to dig for vulnerabilities and Android phones, develop ways to exploit them and turn that into profit.

According to the source who who quested anonymity for feear of for fear of reprisals, the company only targeted users in rural areas and smaller towns initially, while of winning users in megacities such as Beijing and Shanghai. The goal was to reduce the risk of being exposed, they said. By collecting expansive data on user activities, the company was able to create a comprehensive portrait of the users' habits, interests,

and preferences. According to the source, this also allowed it to improve its machine learning model to offer more personalized push notifications and ads, attracting users to open the app and place orders. They said, So this all makes perfect sense with like how we know that PDD operates right, Like, you know, they're trying to build detailed profiles or rural customers they can serve the more efficient ads, and they're doing it by apparently just straight up running an in

house hacking team. I got pretty large one. Oh so they supposedly that team got like acted and they don't do it anymore, but who knows. So, Okay, this is not even close to the most batshit thing that PDD gets up to. Okay, we're gonna escalate up the how

weird this stuff is. So. One of the things that that PDD has a six tone och reporting is that they have these really strict non compete clauses that prevent people from like so if you if you take a job here and you get fired or eat, like you leave, you can't take another job at a tech company for like two years. This is like fucking like any tech company, like fucking like, I don't know, they're they're really expensive. It's like like fucking like setting up your grandma's website

like might get you in trouble. It's like it's it's a real disaster. We have these in the US too, and they absolutely suck. So I think there was a ruling about them, an FTC ruling to ban them recently. Maybe oh no, they're proposed, it hasn't gone through yet trying to get rid of them. But yeah, there's they're

in the US two. But these ones are really strict and apparently they're like PDD is really aggressive about it to the point where like people people will take other jobs under fake identities and like pdd's hr will like

track them down. Oh wow, yeah, like they're they're like headhunting these people well, like like inverse headhunt, like they're they're like they're literally just hunting down people trying who are trying to get like jobs, right, And this apparently led people to adopt secret identities to like hide, right, And so this kid is something I I did not believe the first time I read it, which is that apparently and I originally read this in NIK, which is

usually reliable, but I read this and I was like, no way. Uh. The thing that they said was that employees at work, like who work for PDD apparently use pseudonyms and like never tell each like almost never tell each other they're actual names. That's I mean, that makes sense. And apparently also they're banned from like like the information level. Information control was so strict that like you can't you're not allowed to know what like the structure of another

work group is. And like I read this, I was like I don't believe this, right, And then I started running into like other outlets like Financial Times, was like yeah, no, no, apparently they they talked to they they talked to people who work for the company. They're like, yeah, everyone uses pseudonyms. I didn't fucking know anyone's real name or like there was like one person who's real name that I know wild. I don't know why they do. I've never seen I've

literally never seen this before with any company. It's it's fucking nuts. I got nothing. Yeah, I do you know who? No one had this company knows my real name. So that's true. I do actually operate by a pseudonym. Yeah that.

lays down he her bed dies. Then a worker who posted a video of an ambulance outside of pdd's headquarters with the caption another brave warrior of PDD has fallen, which great caption, terrible situation, great caption. He gets fired for it, and then very quickly like after that, so they have like a the company has like a Q and a thing like if effectively, what happens is someone responds to like one of their social media accounts with and asks them what do you think of the PDD

worker who died after working overtime? Should PDD bear responsibility? Their corporate account responded and I quote, look at those in the underclass, who isn't exchanging life for money. I never thought that this is a problem of capital, but as a problem of this society. We live in an era where we spend our whole lives working hard. You can choose a comfortable life if you accept the consequences of comfortable living. People control how much effort they make. Everyone does.

not your fault that you work too hard. This is actually labor's fault and not capital like this. This fucking blew up in the Chinese media when people got like people got really fucking pissed, and PDD at first was like, no, this is a fake post. We never did it, and the people were like, no, no, it's not. This is we found the post. Right, they take they take it down.

People like had saved screenshots, and eventually the company was forced to admit that it was actually their account, but then they said that it was a social media contractor who put it on the corporate account. Quote by mistake.

they are fucking appalling. Here's sixth Tone. A former PDD employee who left the company a year ago told sixth Tone under conditions of anonymity, that excessive work hours are common practice around eight months after he joined PDD in early twenty nineteen. He said employees were told they need to work at least three hundred hours per month, amounting to nearly twelve hours per day, six days a week.

We're gonna get more into that that's a schedule called nine nine six, where you work from nine am to nine pm, six days a week. This is incredibly common and try This is actually a good schedule. In a lot of Chinese work environments, it can get way worse than that. Here's another quote from that six Tone article. The company cares a lot about our work hours. It has become company culture. Even if staff is finished working, if they'll just stay in the office. I was one

of the lucky ones. I only had to work from eleven am to ten pm, and my manager was nice to me. This person added that employees arriving after eleven am would have their daily wages docked by three hours. It's fucking insane. It's nightmarish. That same worker talked about how she would like this is a thing that's like you see this a lot of different accounts, is that people would just literally break down ryeing at their desks because they had so they were so overworked. Are these

like office jobs? These are workers workers? These are fucking tech workers, Like right, these are the fucking bougie tech jobs.

like a huge thing in the Chinese media. But almost all of the reporting and the coverage and stuff like that was about the tech workers. But like, fucking so many people work schedules that are worse than nine ninety six, right, Like that is a that is a that is a tech workers schedule. Right, there are a lot of places where people were fucking way worse shit. The sort of countervailing force to it is people who, like you know, we talked about this kind of in the Lying Flat episodes.

It's people working for like one day and then eating just like plain rice with some like whatever fucking the cheapest thing they can finally they can fucking get out of it and not working for two more days and working another day. But like it's it's so bad, like the little labor conditions are just appalling, And you know, like a bunch of stories sort of started coming out

about how bad PDDs like conditions are. There was one on we chat that broke that I saw via six tone about the toilet situation in pdd's largest office building. So this building has one thousand people per floor, It has eight total bathrooms per floor. One thousand people. They don't even have one bathroom for every hundred people.

fucking go somewhere else. You starve yourself. There are like there's a bunch of reports of guys just like shitting in urinals because there's literally wasn't time for them to fucking actually like use a stall, so they're just like they're they're just like they're they're pooping in urinals. Maybe the worst picture I've ever seen in my entire life is this is gonna be the episode are PDD started installing timers over the toilets to show how long how

long people had been there. So there's just like a like a a fucking clock over you that starts when you when you fucking close the door to try to get people to go to the bathroom faster. It is just appalling the conditions. And again, these are the conditions of like the office workers. It's apocalyptically bad. So I realized when I was researching this story that I actually ran into PDD earlier because I so like before I did this story, I hadn't looked into TEMU at all,

and I realized that I had. I had ran into PDD earlier when I was tracking the story about uh tech workers banding together to like basically like on GitHub, these these office workers, like tech workers like made a giant spreadshet where everyone would document their hours and like their pay scales and stuff. And it was like, you know, it was this sort of like you know, it was

it was a thing to like demand better labor conditions. Actually, i'mretty I'm pretty sure they were actually demanding like the workplace democracy too. It was pretty wild. But the thing that you get out of that is that PDD has the worst the worst hours of any tech company. They are. PDD is so bad that other Chinese tech companies got worse in order to compete with them. Yeah, it is.

that people are just straight up fucking dying. And the Chinese government eventually gets involved, like they're they're, they're, they're version of the Streame. Court eventually rules that like working people twelve hours a day, six days a week is illegal, but it doesn't really matter, like a lot of those people still have those same schedules. Yeah, and you know, and like this this is not a this is not a problem that can be solved just by like court rulings. Right,

So yeah, it's it's really fucking bad. We're gonna we're gonna take an ad break. I don't I don't have a good transition out of that ship. And we're back. So all of this brings us to Temu And it's slogan shop like a millionaire.

out of the ad market. LIKETCCO has been talking about how they can't afford to run ads because ads are getting too expensive. Because they're buying so many fucking ads. Here's Reuter's quote. US companies dependent on commercial spending or spending on commercials, not.

into Chinese development economics. So the Chinese economy has a problem, and this is a problem that the CCP is known about for a long time. It's the problem of turning a sort of like a low on the value chain like manufacturing economy into a consumption driven economy. Now, the problem with transitioning into a consumption driven economy is that people don't have enough money to boost consumer demand. The Marxist way of saying this is that under capitalism, both

output and consumption are double determined by your wage. Right, Your wage determines both firm output and also how much you can consume. Right, in non Marxist terms, Oh no, no one has enough money to buy things. They did you consumer economy by brother in Christ, You set the wages. Okay, where are the fuck? Yes? Where the fuck are these people supposed to be getting money from to buy your

shit if you won't give them more money? Like wait, wait, wait, so you know you can't do this by just making them like work more hours. You know, you can work people for like twelve fifteen, like twenty hours a day, but there's only twenty four hours a day. Like, there's an actual definite there's an actual definite limit to the amount of exploitation you can do via increasing labor hours.

This is this has always been capitalism's problem, right, Like the sort of rapacity of capitalism has hit the secular limit of time itself. So the solution to this is to expand into new markets where consumers have more money, which is to say the US. So PDD initially targeted like poor rural Chinese workers, right, and this is kind of the same group that Temu was targeting in the now. In the US, their initial base is people who like

buy from dollar stores, but they've been spreading rapidly. Temu has outpaced she In to become the second largest shopping app in the US. But the important thing really, yeah, yeah, there's not gonna be on Amazon. Yeah, they're like they're destroying Shiin, Like wow, yeah, I did not know they were that popular. Yeah, I mean, like estimates are like, well, I've seen simens to say they have one hundred million years.

I don't buy that. I've seen that the estimates that I think I'm more reliable of like fifty four million years in the US. Although well, the thing is we don't we don't have post super Bowl numbers between fifty and well, I think I think it's like fifty. I wouldn't I wouldn't accept one hundred million ones. I think that's bullshit. We don't have good post super Bowl data yet. Kind of the issue. But yeah, they're they're they're clobbering people.

But the important thing about specifically the American market for Temu is that like the kind the equivalent person who shops at a dollar store in the US still has unfathomably more money than that same person in China, because partially this is because the strength of the American dollar. Partially this is because American wages are just like unfathomably higher than Chinese wages, and that that's that's that's true even if you like, even when you account for like

the relative strength dollar to the yawn. So you know, the other kind of important thing about Timmy strategy is that they've been using this kind of like loophole that will set up a US customs law to allow people to like bring presents home from countries. So like if you go to another country and you bring a present home, it's worth less than two hundred dollars, you go through like an expedited customs thing, and you don't have to pay tariffs on it.

of the American consumer economy. And there's this like giant war going on like both in Congress, like like in the press over whether they should where they should close

as loophole now, you know. On the other hand, like there are real challenges to Temu being the first like company to break into the like Chinese companies like really truly break into the American market like she and has done well, but they haven't like they have they have They're not like a rival for it to Amazon, right, Like they're not big enough to like knock off one of the sort of like American tech giants. And Temu's

problem is that. Okay, so if you compare Temu to to PDD, right, the Chinese version, PDD is supposed to be about spreading through word of mouth, right, It's it spreads by like someone in your you know, you as as if someone buying something from PDD taps your entire friend group and your family to get them to buy something for cheaper.

there's kind of a limit. And it's something that that Temu understands, right, Like this is you know the whole there's a whole thing in the Chinese tech industry about the power of being able to leverage people's like private networks, right, Timu understands, but they don't have a way to break into the American market because it just doesn't work like the Chinese market. So instead they're like buying three Super

Bowl ads right now. There's another issue, which is that the goods that they sell suck ass and they break instantly. You know, that's an issue, but I don't know it's the US. Lots of things suck and break instantly, but like it is only that's been driving sort of negative sentiment from people who've used it, is they're like they buy something and it's just like sucks, and they're you know,

they're unhappy about it. The thing I think is maybe the biggest problem is that their delivery times are really long by American standards because they're they're shipping overseas. Temu had to build an actual logistics infrastructure where PDD like didn't, right because PDD is just using like Chinese versions of FedEx or whatever, right, And Temu's kind of doing that but in you know, in order to make it convenient

for Chinese sellers. The way that they the way that they've sort of like set this up is they have a warehouse in Guandong, and every seller like ships it to this warehouse and then Temu deals with getting it shipped overseas. The problem is that this is really slow, right, It takes like two weeks for things to show up. And that's not out that's slow by like normal standards, but this is the US American standards. That is like

a tortoise nightmarishly slow. Because we have gotten used to a level i'd say gratification, but like, yeah, like this is a level of power that was previously reserved for like Chinese emperors, and we fucking use it every day to order fucking nail clippers from Amazon, right, or in.

ad spending, not from the actual sales. And this is this is where you get into again the really bleak part about this where Okay, so why are these why are these prices so low? And part of its tech money subsidy, but a lot of it is just labor,

just pure, pure unrivaled labor exploitation. You know, when with with the Chinese workers movement, like as like a a sort of like collective mass movement just completely broken by Tienamen and then again dream like the crackdowns through the twenty tens that wiped out whatever sort of like classical workers movement style thing was may have popped up from the strikes in twenty eleven, Like there's there's no there's no mass countervailing force in Chinese politics to try to

raise wages, like independent union organizing is illegal. You will get arrested. The actual unions that exist, like they all trying of union federation doesn't do shit. We don't really have that kind of like fake union thing here. It's like it's like a different but you know, like they're they're I don't know this is this is this is maybe not the time for me to try to explain China's union system. Like the unions are fucking bullshit. They

don't do anything. Like if you go to them and be like my wages are too low, they'll try to get you to like negotiate with the company directly, right like like as an individual, and like it's they're nonsense. They're completely useless, and you know the results of this and the results of just like the incredible poverty of the Chinese working class and the fact that you know a lot of Chinese migrant workers, who are people who actually making these goods. So a lot of some of

its world workers, some of its migrant workers. But a lot of these people's wages are lower than they otherwise would be because they're drawing revenue off of like they're off of of of like the plots of land that their family has, like back in the countryside, when they like when they they like migrate to another city to find

a job. Yeah, so like all of these factors are just institutionally like smashing the price of like like like smashing like wages, and there's no there's no fucking there's not there's nothing really there to resist them and and act like you know, it's not like the Chinese working class like completely takes it lying down right, but it's like the resistant strategies are trying to work as little

as possible. But that doesn't that's you know, and that's something that can be very effective in the sense of like you're working a lot less, but it's not something that drives up like wages. And so when when you're looking at Temu and you're seeing a pair of Janes for two dollars. Like what you are seeing is the

raw exploitation of the Chinese working class. And this is also true of like the rest of the fucking shit you buy from China, right, Like almost all of the price of like a shirt that you're buying, I mean, Chinese textile manufacturing is kind of like not what it used to be, right but like you know, but like you're you're buying like fucking some bullshit from China. Like if you're buying from like another drop shipping company, right, like the thing you're actually paying for, you're paying the

drop shipping company. You're not fucking paying the workers. They're not they're fucking not making shit all like all of the stuff that's like, I mean, it's not like one hundred percent, like a huge portion of of the fact that the price is higher on non Temu sites is just like it's just markups. Because this is this is just what the Chinese economy is. It's just sort of like it's you know, it's it's it's it's unbelievable exploitation.

And this brings us to the thing we're gonna today on which is does Temo use slave labor.

from people put in in the fucking camps. I think the answer is probably because I mean, so the thing is the State Department doesn't have any actual evidence, right, like they're all and they're they're doing this incredibly what we'll get into this in a second, Like, you know, obviously they're doing this because this is like this is an intra like capitalist feud thing, right. The State Department's talking about this because they're pissed at China. Yeah, this

is like a nastic project for the United States. Yeah, but Comma, it's also probably true because these like and and this this is like the thing specifically with with PDD that we've been talking about is that they don't intimus Like they don't vet the sellers of stuff, right, Like we talked about last episode that like people were selling sleeping pills as date rate drugs, right, they don't

fucking vet it at all. So yeah, probably, like quite possibly. Yeah, the stuff, the stuff that they're selling from Shing Jun, and they have a pretty large presence there, like was using sort of like prison slave labor from the camps there. However, Comma, we can't talk about prison slave labor without talking about the fact that fucking every goddamn US firm also uses

prison slave labor. Everyone from fucking McDonald's to Starbucks, to Walgreens to JC Penny, like fucking every every company, every American company you can fucking think of, uses slave labor or their slave labor in their in their supply chain. And they're using slave labor because in the US, under the thirteenth Amendment, slavery is legal as long as the person as long as the person being enslaved is incarcerated. So you know, like it doesn't fucking matter, like this

is this is this is the problem. It doesn't matter whether you buy from the US or China. Right, Like, you're you're getting fucking slave labor. So if you if you want to not do that, your your your only option. If if you do not want to, if you do not want everything you consume, like the food that you eat.

If you don't want, like everything that you use in your daily life to be the product of unfathomable human exploitation, your only option is to destroy the monstrous economic system that reduces humans to commodities and tear up the fucking roots of every single one of these companies from San Francisco to Shanghai and burn it to the ground. That's that that those are your options, like, it's not your individual consumer choice, not gonna make it any better that That's what I got.

happening ever since Israel's inception. Surface culture encompasses tangible and observable elements that contribute to the distinctive identity of a cultural group or region. Music, food, dress, and other aspects often define a nation's surface culture. Authentic culture evolves organically over generations, at least it's supposed to, but Israel has a sort of top down approach to culture that lacks

genuine identifying characteristics. Throughout its history, Israel has either fabricated, annexed, or reconstructed both surface and deep cultural elements through what writer Jamal Khanj describes as quote falsehoods, myths, and fables. Unlike the conventional, slow and organic development of culture, Israeli surface culture came prepackaged by appropriating those very elements from the Age Old to Palestinian culture. A prominent aspect of

any society's culture is its local cuisine. In nineteen forty eight, Israel ethnically cleansed Palestine of all non Jewish Palestinians, took over their land and brazenly claimed Palestinian culinary treasures like hummus, falafe, Babylonus, deabule, salad, coscos, frikic i, bimjadda, da peda, bread, and many more. They claimed them all as Israeli. All it took was to identify a Palestinian dish and then add the noun Israeli

before its name. Going through the complete list of pleasiarized Palestinian cuisine would take me way, way too long, especially because I feel like Western familiarity with Palestinian cuisine remains somewhat limited. But I do want to explain one example that clearly shows just how foreign appropriated Palestinian food is to Israel.

this a lot recently. When it comes to Ramas. The full name of the dish homos becomes even more challenging when adding its second part to heini. The h in tahini is also a hard ha, So own Israeli would distort the Palestinian dish homos bitahini to horomos bitachini. This is an insult to the Arabic language, culinary etiquette, and to Arab shifts in the levant kitchen around the world. To paraphrase Palestinian American comedian Moamer, homos does not exist

in your lexicon. You can't pronounce it, how can it be your national food. Even more amusing is when an Israeli writer posited that humost and eggplant babyanuche were quote Israeli foods, because that's how the Spanish Inquisition identified secret Jews from the food they ate. A similar hypothesis to this is the argument that foods like homos, fada, felfric, etc. Were brought by Jews who came from the Arab world. Of course, the diverse citizenry of the Arab world or

the Muslim slash Arab Spain. It must have had hommost and eggplant in their cultural diet. Jewish citizens cooked and ate the food because they lived in the culture that produced the food, not because they created the food for that culture. Arab Jews also exist, but that would still make all of this food Arabic.

culture with a distinctive surface cultural identity. It also features atypical exotic culinary dishes to Western kitchens, and this makes it a lot easier to hoodwink the West regarding the origin of their made up surface culture. The gall of claiming Palestinian culinary treasures is not only historically inaccurate, but also offensive and disrespectful. It is quite common for countries

to adopt elements of other cultures, including their cuisine. For example, American cuisine celebrates a rich tapestry of international dishes like Asian, Italian, and Mexican food. However, the foods remained appreciated for their origin, with no real urgency to appropriate them as America's national food. Kanj suggests that unlike Israel, it could be that the United States does not have the same obsessive need to

fake a culture to justify its existence. In contrast, the Zionist movement envisioned Israel's survival as being predicated on erasing the history of the rich heritage of Palestine's culture.

there to begin with. And this has been a narrative that Zionists have said since Israel's inception, the land without people for a people without land. But this appropriation of food in both the physical and cultural ethnic cleansing of Palestine. This didn't start on October seventh. The slow ethnic cleansing of Palestine has been going on for over seventy six years, and the stealing and claiming of Palestinian food as Israeli is intrinsically a part of that. It brings me to

the topic of today's episode. Today, my guests are Reem Asial and Jabriel Units. Reim is a multiple award winning Palestinian Syrian speaker and chef based in Oakland, California, working at the intersection of food, community and social justice. Jabrie is a Palestinian filmmaker and artist who has worked with Reim on multiple projects, including a show that we touch on in this episode. With Food as a Tool, we talk about utilizing Arab hospitality to build a strong, resilient

community as well as celebrate Palestinian joy. Here it is Hello, everybody, this is Sharen. Welcome to It could happen here today, we're talking to two people I love and respect very much about a topic that I think is really underreported on, and that's food erasure and how it's part of ethnic cleansing. And I think it's a really important topic to talk about right now, especially with the genocide happening in Palestine.

So let's just jump right in without further ado. Welcome my guests, Read and Jabidil.

And I think the general log line and dream can dive into a bit more of the general log line is you can tell this like through telling the story of the food, you can tell the story of our people in diaspora. And it underscores a lot of I think we'll talk about today, which is sort of food identity, identity through food and resilience and through food. But also I think one thing that's always been really important to both of us is how much we see the show

as like a celebration of our culture. I feel like there are so many trauma stories from not only Palestinians but Arabs in general, and I think something that was really important us as I guess let's talk about all of it. We're an extremely I think you know, we're extremely politicized as a people, but also very passionate. But also let's celebrate all the things we love about ourselves and love about our culture and the tastes and smells

and sounds and sights. So how would you I feel like that's sort of the setup, but how would you describe it?

show about people and how interconnected we are. So yeah, we're really excited to be able to break down some of those barriers of understanding in a way that could actually lead to people, you know, fighting anti Arab sentiment in this country, fighting Islamophobia, all of these things when they have that kind of lens or that view into our world.

around me. But you have Korean food and Japanese food, and so many different types of Chinese food that are all specifically called what they are and where they're from. Right, They're all like identified correctly, and that can extend to the Latin X world and their food, it can extend

to European food. It's all very you know, like people call it what it is, and then you sort of get to you get to you know, Southwest Asia and North Africa and suddenly the food stops being called you know what it is, and starts being called Mediterranean or starts being called Middle Eastern. And I think that the idea was, like I had gone to Anaheim, where there's a neighborhood called Little Arabia here, and there was a Palestinian restaurant.

of do, especially right now. But yeah, we've been pitching for like, you know, we worked on it together for a while and then have just been pitching and going through pitches and talking at different companies and getting a lot of great feedback and getting some really weird feedback for the past like few years.

your typical Americana suburban culture. And so I was kind of like, even though food was there, the intertwining with identity made me like run away from it a lot because it reminds you of your otherness and also just the nuances of seeing my mom being a working mom

and struggling in the kitchen. So I was like I'm I'm going to be a feminist and I'm never going to touch that was like, and then every time, like you know, and then I did like what the immigrant child does, like overachiever, like go to college, try to be the president, and then realize that's not.

depression and really questioning everything. And it was a trip that I took to the Arab world with my father and seeing particularly bred in these straight corner bakeries be the anchor for this community that I had, you know, as a kid of diaspora, like really longing to feel connected to and it was through the food that I felt connected once again. So my mom did something right. Look of her the credit for that, But I was like, I need to explore this more. I need to understand

what is this? And so then food became a source of healing for me to like come back to my

identity and come back to my culture. But then also just the power of food as a community builder that like transcends all cultures, Like I really loved that as a community organizer who had been working with other communities who struggled just like my own, right, So that's kind of how I got into food by way of my love for wanting to belong and my love for connection of community, and then slowly became obsessed with food itself.

I mean, who doesn't love food? But it is a place of both trauma and healing for me, So it became kind of a way to transcend that.

say Arab, and I wanted to reclaim that identity. I was like, if I'm going to come out, I want to come out as my whole self and not this person, this scared person that was stifled all my life. And I understand why the immigrants before me came, you know, did it that way because they needed to make a living. And you know, there was a lot of anti Arab sentiment, especially in the wake of nine to eleven, that that

kind of climate here. And so I had this like lovely idea that I'm like this generation where I can like break it down and make it cool. I'm like, I'm going to mainstream it, you know, And I got pushback actually from my own family, because they had those fears. They were like just you know, start like don't even start with like a zacta avduu. Shit, nobody's gonna now

it's like the hot thing. But so that was a context in which I was opening my business and nobody had done it really before, so I could kind of create my own rules and people like what is this? And I still got like a lot of like, oh is this you know Mediterranean? You know people, it took a while to train people to say Arab and then put the layer of Palestinian identity, you know, my Palestinian identity at the time that I was opening my restaurant

was really important. It was you know, I had started my pop ups on the in the wake of Israel's second to worst. Now we're seeing the worst of it incursion on Raz in twenty fourteen, in which they killed you know, over three thousand Palestinians in one winter, and we were devastated by that. We were devastated about the state of organizing with Palestinians. And I really wanted to as I opened my restaurant, not be scared to talk about my whole self, and so I h so everything

about Reims. Even though we're not like pushing our politics in your face. Very act of being Palestinian was seen as political, just existing, and we had a mural of a Palestinian activist who was based in Chicago names Desmoda, who is deported by the government, as it made an example of to say, if you're Palestinian and you're outspoken about Palestine, this is what will happen to you. And I put her on the wall to remind my community and to remind myself that we don't need to be scared.

And I got a lot of backlash for that, but I think even in that time, despite the backlash, the amount of community support, amount of opportunity for people to learn, was that much greater, and so I ended up getting a lot more positive attention for my vikery overall as a result of that.

It gives me a little bit of like hope that like our success is kind of like what is threatening, you know, because we are truth We are in the business of truth telling, and we do it in a way that's very human, you know, based in our humanity and our dignity, and that our restaurant was really I think powerful in that way that a simple art piece or the simple act of making food and calling it Palestinian was that threatening to the powers.

that happened. And you know, I think maybe we undersold you your intro a little bit raam, like you're a badass, and you know, the James Beard noms and a lot of great and awesome press.

the show. As much as the show focuses on Palestine, it also focuses on Egypt and Yemen and where you know, I mean the Yemeni coffee tradition is like where Arab coffee kind of came from and started from. And it also focused on Lebanon and Morocco and Algeria. It's been an interesting yeah, go ahead, ream, Yeah.

also Syrian, we're also Oakland, we're also California. Like those things don't need to compete with one another. I hate you know, like you know, my identity kind of coming on the scene. Yes I'm Arab and yes I'm Palestinian, but those are political identities. The reason we call our food Palestinian is to draw attention to the ethnic cleansing and a rasure of our people. That's why we call it Palestinian. But it's not. There's there are certain foods

that are not inherent. I mean, they're enjoyed all over the Arab world and they look different, but you can't like the claiming of ownership of food is. Yeah, So I think this show is really trying to fight against that trope of the it's called ada Bia, which is kind of like a tongue in cheek, like what do you think of with the Arab woman? And it's like, let me take all of those stereotypes and like turn them on their head. It's the same thing with like

all of our food ways in our culture. There is no singular way of what an Arab is. We all have kind of our unique stories and histories, so when we choose to call things what they are, there's a context in a history for that, and that's what we're trying to share.

really powerful. And before I keep rambling, I'm gonna take our break and we'll be right back, and we are back reim you mentioned something earlier that I think is worth touching back on the idea of like existing being already like a political act. I think that is like it's a burden for a lot of people of color

and a lot of marginalized communities. And I think hand in hand with that is the fact that like our food is also like a political act, like making sure it's couscus not is really cuscus, or whatever it is that we're trying to fight against. How do you see food? And especially now, I think people underestimate how many levels there are of ethnic cleansing because erasing food and appropriating food is a huge part of that, right, So can I get your take on that, both of your takes.

you sever them from their culture, from their existence. Then there's just the most the more immediate way as we're seeing this genocide unfolds, where you can starve a population in that and so food then becomes kind of of this powerful tool to break a people, and why we see people like food become a form of resistance for people. But even here in our communities, I mean, this is

not unfortunately unique to the Palestinians. You've seen the pillaging of indigenous folks here in this country the same things, kind of cutting them off from their food ways, their means of subsistence, of supporting one another, of you know, being connected to their culture. And now you're seeing in communities through economic policy, like food deserts and people not being able to access their food or have sovereignty over

their food production. So it is absolutely a tool and something that we talk about at REAMS a lot that, like the fight for Palestine is the fight for food sovereignty everywhere and vice versa.

much more than just olives. It's like very deep. And I think when people that are not as informed about Palestine question like why is there a watermelon? Like what's this and what's the olive about? And I think that

goes to show how powerful food can be. And just for those who don't know, the watermelon became an active or a symbol of resistance because the Palestinian flag was not allowed to be raised for a while, and it has the same colors as Palestini flag, and so that's just like a really beautiful way that food has become this like powerful symbol. And so I just I just trying to, I don't know, emphasize that a little bit, I guess, Jabil, what's your take.

One of the things that's one of the things that's difficult is there are so few identifying parts of or just restaurants in general, like correctly identifying restaurants Syria in or Lebanese or Palestinian or what have you, and they hide under these names which when I'm not going to name like specific restaurants here, but like which when other restaurants open and maybe they're owned by an Italian person or just other people that aren't Arab, and suddenly they're

taking the food and misappropriating it and calling it. Yeah, I mean Israeli kuscus or like an Israeli salad or Israeli falaffl or Hey, here's all this food and it's shuarma and it's kebabs and it's manyish and we're an

Israeli restaurant. Like these are things that are really difficult because I think, you know, those things tend to be unfortunately just like more approachable, saying Mediterranean tends to be more approachable, and what you get ultimately is a population of I would say a larger population of non Arab people that don't really understand what they're eating and they're

not educated on where it comes from. And just the amount of people you know, anecdotally that I personally have met who like don't know that this food is Arab food or don't know like what where the food comes from, which is so interesting to me because it's not an experience that I think many other cultures or ethnicities have.

And so yeah, I mean I kind of always joke that I feel like a really close example is if you know, somebody started like an American person started making sushi and they're like, this is American food and it's just not at the same time. And so I think that the need to assimilate for generations before reems and I I have an empathy for the want of safety that they were doing and the want to make a living and the reasons they did it. I think we

kind of alluded to that earlier. But where it's left us now is a population of Arabs and diaspora that I think are harmed for it. You know, like we don't have we don't show up on the census, and it's all sort of one part. It's all they're all

different parts of the one problem. And I think that when you take the food and you don't give it its correct name, and you don't or you give it the incorrect name, it hurts all of us in ways that like we can't even imagine, whether it's at work or in diversity and belonging initiatives not including Swannamina people, or whether it's just in food ways and not being included or not being included in the census, which leads to us not having as much community support around our

people are not knowing medical statistics like I think they're all they're symptoms of a bigger issue, and I think one of the ways you combat that issue is through knowledge and shared learning and shared experience.

what their history is. And I think people being able to experience those things and go to a Mexican restaurant and learn about, you know, a certain dish and where it comes from or why it's there or why it's named something is an experience that allows them to learn about a culture. And we just don't necessarily have that here.

And then when you add on, you know, misnomers or incorrect labels, it becomes even more damaging and also just hurtful and very annoying, Like it's so annoying, and I like, I don't want to go. I'm sorry, Like there are restaurants in LA that I like just don't want to

go to. And maybe the chefs are really nice and they might be allies in some ways, or maybe they're not, but like I would rather give please, Like I would rather give my money to like an Arab person making our own food rather than going to experience it.

I'm like, come on, y'all, we're out here. Yeah, go find go find us, like, go find give your money to like this Syrian immigrant who moved here and started this place that everybody loves.

are we is this like americanizing the food? And we're like, no, it's just through the lens of a yes for Palestinian

Syrian by way of California. But we I think when we first came on the scene, I mean, there is something to be said about the privilege that I have as English speaking, as this generation that can like what do you call it, translate the foods to a mainstream public in a way that's like really compelling, like a mediator almost, But that comes from a little bit of like that people don't they want the food, you know, and so like I am this palatable character in some ways,

and that's a contradiction that I'm constantly like, I don't want to be, but it's like, what do you call that the trojan horse? Right? But then once you come into Reams, it's still it's very warm. I mean, there's nothing. We're not tricking anyone, right, But we're also truly ourselves

and that's not for everybody. So we don't want to be a gentrifying space where like, if you're going to come in here, you have to deal with the community that we're in just as much as the food that you are obsessed with now, right because either wrote about it or whatever. So we really and that's not for everybody, right, like, and that just speaks to a like a bigger problem of like if you like the people as much as you like their food, Like our food is not just

for sale. You can't just take some of it and leave the rest of it. And I think that's why the American public is so comfortable with our foods being represented by people other than us. We're not we're not We're never the tellers of our own stories because again, this dehumanization of Palestinians, and it's particularly interesting now and I would say, like Reims has always been transparent. But I've heard from counterparts in who are now you know,

like there are other restaurants now coming out. I think there was even just an article that was released today on Eater about the Palestinian category on Google, and you know, people are now calling their restaurants, are maybe leading up to this last four months calling their restaurants Palestinian. And that was palatable enough. It's like cool, like it's this culture that's really beautiful. But then when it came down to it, when we're experiencing a genocide, it made people

feel uncomfortable. So it's like they want to like it doesn't stop at food, you know, And I think our food, at least for me, and I would say for a lot of people who get into like expressing their food ways here in the US, Like you can't just take some of us our food and then dismiss the rest

of us or dehumanize the rest of us. And so I think that is the contradiction that we're always dealing with, is like how can we offer this beautiful culture but not tokenize it so it becomes depoliticized because it is political. And if you're engaging with Palestinian cuisine and consuming it. You can't just you can't do it without either you know, being an active participant one way or the other, right,

and what is happening to Palestinians. And so we kind of pushed the envelope on that, and you know, for us at Reams, that has yielded a real, ever expanding community of folks who have really maybe a few years ago, knew nothing about Palestine. We got to do it in a way that was right. And so we were you know, we met people where they're at. We bring them along. It's not like we're like, you know, beating anything over people's heads, but we're like, this is what it means

to be truly authentically ourselves. This is our story, this is the history, this is the painful atrocities, And like, if you're going to eat our food, you have to engage with that in some way. Like it can't just be comfortable and like it's cool to eat Palestinian food.

I don't want to see our food as a trend, right, Yeah, So while it's while it's cool to see a lot of Palestinian restaurants now gaining popularity, and hopefully, you know, REMS has paid some path for that we got to make sure that we're doing it in a way that's intentional and responsible so we don't get tokenized.

to be who you are. It is what you are, and I think ultimately there's this real pressure for Arabs and in Palestinians as well, to sort of let other people tell our story for us, Let other people make the food, let other people photograph the traumas and the joy is like if you go to any like art bookstore and try to find like an Arab photographer photographing of their own people, whether it's the wars or the joy or art, like, you'll find maybe one, you know,

And I've been to that and said, hey, do you have any I'm looking for like this, and I want it from an Arab person, And like the only one really is sharing a shot. Who's I'm Persian, But I don't know. I think it's I think it's just really interesting how I think there's like a real fear about talking about for a lot of us, about talking about

our own experiences publicly. And I think a lot of that, A lot of that comes from just like being sort of conditioned in this country to minimize ourselves and minimize our identity.

the literal pieces of feedback. And another one was and again like I just I know We've talked about Palestine a lot, but again, like the show is not necessarily centered around Palestinians. It's just us telling our own stories. And one of the pieces of feedback we got was they were worried that Reim and I like that our identities were too inherently political. And it's like, okay, but there's like nothing we can do about how you perceive us.

What we can control is saying, hey, we want to make an Arab joy show, and we want to like show off the things we love about our called Sure, and we want to talk about how great the food tastes, and talk about stories like immigrant success stories of people coming to this country. And yeah, we'll talk about the trauma, and sure, we'll talk about the politics because that's what

we're passionate about. But like to get that feedback even a couple of years ago, when you know, it seemed like everybody was sort of every culture or people were getting their turn to sort of shine, was I was like, really, are we still Are we still here right now?

in this country. Every type of Arab food is called Mediterranean, whether it's Moroccan or Lebanese or Egyptian, and they're all so different, they're all wildly different. Yeah, And I think that, Yeah, like the fact that we haven't been able to tell this story is wild you know, like the fact that no one has and we've come really close. We've gotten into deals before, we've gotten into shopping agreements more recently, and sort of you know, the outcome felt punitive. After

October seventh. And yeah, I think that ultimately the fact that like we we and it doesn't I you know, truly, I hope it's main rym but like the fact that no one has been able to tell this story for a group of people that is so huge in the Arab community, in the Muslim community, like that no one has been able to serve this demographic of people with a food show is wild and there's so many of

us who would be so excited. I would be so excited, Like I would be bummed that it wasn't me, but I would be thrilled that.

so much better about myself. And to your point a couple minutes ago, Realm, you were talking about how you're not exactly a mediator, but growing up, there's almost this like shame about having like you're not Arab enough, you're not American enough. You have a foot in both worlds. But it's really a strength, you know, in your experience and in our experience, Like we can use that foot in both worlds to our advantage and try to show

the American community how beautiful our community is. And I don't know, I think it's yeah, I love you guys.

than Muslim or whatever. Like in La we have a huge Armenian community and they're really embraced, and I would love that to happen for us too.

and Muslim communities. Regardless of who the candidate who wins our political campaign, it's quite clear that the policies towards us, you know, the foreign policy, but also domestically, how that has translated into hate crimes against Arabs simply for being Arab is a really scary thing. And so yeah, it's just a new thing that we're going to have to navigate in this in this new era.

this is what it means to the culture. You can't enjoy some of our culture and not all of it, I guess, And I feel like that happens all the time. I really appreciate you guys both being on the show and talking a little bit about your stories, and yeah, I can't wait to see the show happen day because it will happen awesome.

arrested Rousseau and poked him into the county jail. The jail roster lists the offense as burn object to intimidate OH slash s that OS means out of state, and it lists Virginia as the state issuing the warrant. And Rousseau's arrest certainly made a splash when the news hit Nazi telegram channels lit up with posts about his arrest. Gab feeds were flooded with hastily made graphics decrying this

political persecution. This sudden spike and interest in a little used Virginia Code section might make you think Rousseau was the first person to be taken into custody on this charge, that perhaps he was targeted for arrest in some kind of grand political plan to take him out of the game. But he is in fact the eleventh person to be arrested in just the last year for participating in the Tiki Torch march at the University of Virginia on August eleventh,

twenty seventeen. These cases have been working their way through the system here for long enough that some of Rousseau's code defendants have not only already been found guilty, they've served their time and gotten back out. But with this sudden surge and interest in this case, I want to give you all a little background on the other ten. If you'll indulge me for a moment, though, I'd like to read you something I wrote nearly a year ago, just as the first cases were being unsealed. There is

no statute of limitations on felonies in Virginia. With that in mind, here's section eighteen point two Dash four twenty three point oh one Dash B of the Code of Virginia. Burning object on property of another or a highway or

other public place with intent to intimidate. Any person who, with the intent of intimidating any person or group of persons, burns an object on a highway or other public place in a manner having a direct tendency to place another their person in reasonable fear or apprehension of death or bodily injury, is guilty of a Class six felony On August eleventh, twenty seventeen, hundreds of torch bearing marchers traversed

the grounds of the University of Virginia. They'd come to Charllettsville from across the country, taking Friday morning flights or taking turns at the wheel for cross country drives, and rented vans with guys they met on message boards. Arriving early before the big event. The following morning, they gathered at Nameless Field, a grassy acre near the Via tennis courts with a deceptive name, and distributed tiki torches. Men with walkie talkies clipped to their belts, some with wired earpieces,

barked orders. Elliot Kleine, an ambitious young white nationalist organizer calling himself Eli Moseley after the twentieth century British fascist Oswald Moseley, shouted at the crowd as they formed into a line. Or picking big guys no females. Klein and his security team would be selecting the biggest marshers to lay down their torches and keep the perimeter as the march moved moved through the university grounds, they might need

their hands free. The march wound its way through grounds up the lawn, then up the steps of the University of Virginia's iconic rotunda. On the other side of the rotunda, gathered near the statue of Thomas Jefferson, a small group of anti racist protesters waited. In her testimony during a later civil trial, one of the women who was terrorized that night said of the sound of the approaching crowd, when we heard the roaring, we just linked arms and held hands and started to sing.

They were surrounded, fully encircled at the base of the statue by hundreds of torch wielding white supremacists for a few minutes, minutes that those trapped at the base of the statue said they believed might be their last, as they were doused in lighter fluid, maced and punched. There was a melee. The police made no move to intervene, as streams of pepper spray were let loose and cries of medic were audible above the roar of you will

not replace us. When the trapped counter protesters were finally able to flee, stumbling blindly with burning eyes and covering their heads in a hail storm of fists and torches, the marchers declared victory. Richard Spencer, an organizer of that weekend's rally, climbed the base of the statue and delivered a victory speech to the still roaring crowd, now shouting hail, victory, hail's Spencer, as Spencer told them, we occupy this ground, we one, that is why don't they cry?

as a murder weapon. Before he slept again, he checked Twitter and retweeted a post David Duke had tweeted images of the Torch March celebrating the Altright's success that evening with the caption our people on the march, will you be at Unite the Right tomorrow? As he left Ohio that evening, the young man and the Dodge Challenger got a text from his mother, a text we've all probably

gotten from our mothers. She said, be careful, and James Alexfield's junior, in one of the last texts he sent before a lifetime behind bars, replied to his mother with a photograph of Hitler and the words we are not the ones who need to be careful. Years later, the word charles Ville has become synonymous with those two fused images, Fields's mangled challenger and an iconic photo of the crowd

torches and hands the rotunda at their backs. Fields was convicted both in state and federal court of Heather Hire's murder and multiple counts of aggravated malicious wounding. Daniel Bordon, Alex Ramos, Jacob Goodwin, and Tyler Watkins went away for a brutal gang beating of a young black man. Richard Preston, an imperial wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, did some time for discharging his firearm in the general direction of

another young black man while shouting die and word. But all in all, for all the violence of both days, there was a curious reluctance to bring charges for anything that didn't rise to the level of attempted murder, and some things that did. There are thousands of photographs videos from every conceivable angle taken by victims, bystanders, professional photojournalists, and even the marchers themselves. Their faces are uncovered, their

motives are clear, and the law is fairly straightforward. But the University of Virginia lies within the jurisdiction of Albemarle County. In twenty seventeen, Apomwalle County Commonweal's attorney, Robert Tracy, chose not to bring any burning objects cases under Section eighteen point two Dash four twenty three. He didn't think he could make a case against the tiki torch mob, or

maybe he didn't want to. The Commonweal's attorney for the City of Charlesville at the time, Dave Chapman, wrote in a memo in October of that year that he did believe the cases could be made, but they weren't his to prosecute. But in Virginia, prosecutors come and go, and

a felony lives forever. In a October twenty nineteen debate between then sitting Prosecutor Robert Tracy and his challenger, Jim Hinchley, Tracy again scoffed at the idea of indicting these cases, even saying that Hindley's belief that it was possible was a sign he was inexperienced and wrong for the job. A month later, Hine won the election, and now it seems he's trying to make good on his campaign promise

of proving Robert Tracy wrong. In February twenty twenty three, the Albumole County Commonwealth' Attorney's office quietly sought and got indictments under the Burning Object Statute. A grand jury agreed with Hingeley there was probable cause to believe that objects had been burned with the intent to intimidate. Fugitive warrants were issued, arrests were made by local police and far ranging jurisdictions, And now, nearly six years after that hot

night in August, the extraditions are starting. I want to share with you the stories of the men who carried torches that night. Some of them are now facing felony charges of Almorole County. Others may come to share that fate. After the crowd dispersed that night, and after the deadly

rally the next morning, those men went home. Some started businesses, some died, Some trafficked drugs, beat their wives, choked their girlfriends, went to grad school, went to prison, started families, ran for office, left the movement, tried to lead the movement, or just tried to disappear. There are as many stories as there were flames in the night. When their voices joined as one shouting Jews will not replace us, then going their separate ways back to the communities they came from.

And now some of them are on their way back, this time against their will. So I wrote that about ten months ago, last April, just as the first cases were unsealed. Obviously a lot's happened since then. But before I get into a recap of those first ten cases, let's hear a brief word about some products and services. So if Thomas Rousseau is number eleven on this list of tiki torch defendants, they were the first ten. The grand jury that convened in February of last year handed

down the first five indictments. Will Zachary Smith, William Billy Williams, Tyler Dykes, Dallas, Medina, and William Fears. Will Smith of Nacona, Texas was the first in custody. He was actually already in custody here in Charlottesville when the first charges were filed. He had been indicted on a separate felony charge back in twenty eighteen for pepper spraying the counter protesters that night, but remained a fugitive until his arrest in January twenty

twenty three. So when the prosecutor brought the torch charges to the grand jury in February. It was probably an easy first choice. Will Smith pled guilty to the torch charge in May in a sealed plea deal that dropped the much more serious pepper spray felony, and was allowed to return home without being sentenced. Billy Williams traveled here

with will Smith back in twenty seventeen. The pair were acting as bodyguards for Robert Hasmadore Ray, the Daily Stormer bloger, who is actually also still a wanted fugitive on a felony charge of pepper spraying those counter protesters that night. When Billy Williams was extradited from Texas in April of last year, he was denied bond after some apparent dishonesty regarding his relationship with Robert Ray. Through his attorney, he denied having had any contact with Ray while he was

a fugitive. He in fact claimed they barely knew each other, having met only a couple of times. I can tell you that that's not true. But after claiming that they'd had no contact in the intervening years, the prosecutor revealed in the bond hearing that law enforcement partners had shared information with his office that they believe that not only had they been contact, but that Ray had been living with Williams living on his property while he was in

hiding as a fugitive. Williams two pled guilty to the burning object charge in July, receiving an active sentence of six months but with times and good behavior. He was home barely two weeks after entering his plea, but not before he missed the birth of his seventh child with his common law wife. Tyler Diykes was arrested on Saint

Patrick's Day. He'd been out with other members of the white supremacist group the Southern Son's Active Club, trying to hang a racist banner from a highway overpass in Savannah, Georgia, when he was unfortunately bitten by a dog. I do not have information on what came of the dog. I hope he's okay, concerned about infection though. Tyler Diykes went to the emergency room to have the wound looked at. In Georgia, as in most states, emergency rooms contact the

police to report dog bite injuries. An officer was dispatched to the hospital to take a report from Dikes about the dog bite incident, which is a fairly routine situation. But somewhere during their interaction in the hospital, the officer ran Dyke's name to the system and it came back with a warrant. A panicked Dikes sent his hate group group chat a quick text arrested by Virginia nuke my account.

In video of the melee the base of the statue on August eleven, twenty seventeen, Dykes can be seen throwing punches even after everyone else had stopped, and then celebrating the victory by marching around in a weird, tight little circle with his right arm extended in a Nazi salute. Diykes pled guilty to the torch charge in May and received the same six month act of sentence Williams had gotten with time served and good behavior. He was released

in July. I wonder if he expected to see his elderly parents waiting for him in the parking lot outside the album ArHL Charltsville Regional Jail that day, but he never made it that far. U S Marshals took him into federal custody before he ever walked outside. He's currently out on bond awaiting trial on ten counts for his participation in the January sixth insurrection. Dallas Medina of Ohio turned himself in in April and was allowed to return

home on bond. He had been an active member of an extremely online group of mass shooting enthusiasts calling themselves the Bowl Patrol, so named after the bull cut hairstyles sported by their idol Dylan Roof. After a feud with Chris the Crying Nazi Catwell ended with Catwell in federal prison. The group more or less fell apart in twenty twenty. Mendina hasn't appeared in court since his bond hearing in April,

and he doesn't yet have a trial date. William Fiers was booked into the album L Charlesville Regional Jail in June after being transferred from the Texas prison where he was serving a sentence for domestic violence. Just two months after Unite the Right, William Fears beat and choked his girlfriend. A few days later, he traveled to Florida with his brother, Colton Fears and their friend Tyler Tenbrink to see Richard

Spencer's speech at the University of Florida. He knew when he left town for Gainesville that week that his girlfriend had reported the assault. Having already been to prison for abducting and stabbing a different ex girlfriend years earlier, he knew another conviction would put him away for a while, and he wanted one last shot at starting the race war before they got him. In video from the Torch March, William Fears can be seen swinging his torch at a

counter protester, screaming Die Commie. Fears remains in custody but does not yet have a trial date. William's brother, Colton Fears, joined him at the Albumarl Charlesville Regional Jail in September. I suspect the jail probably kept them separated, but it still would have been the closest the brothers had been in years. When the brothers were in Gainesville in October of twenty seventeen, their friend Tyler Tenbrink shot at a

group of anti fascist counter protesters after Richard Spencer's speech. Thankfully, no one was injured, but Tenbrink was convicted of attempted first degree homicide. Colton Fears was driving the car when the men left the scene of the shooting and spent five years in a Florida prison for accessory after the fact to attempted first degree homicide. Colton was released in twenty twenty two and returned home to Texas, where he was then arrested in August twenty twenty three on the

burning object charge. After pleading guilty in October, he was allowed to return home prior to sentencing Ryan Roy of Vermont and himself in in May. If you've been reading the voluminous leagues that seem to be constantly springing forth from Patriot Front's online comms, you may know him better as Rex. It looks like he's stayed quite busy in the years since Unite the Right as a member of Patriot Front. He is currently home on bond and does

not yet have a trial date. Jamie Troutman of West Virginia turned himself in in October under the pseudonym Altright VA. Troutman was an active organizer and planner of the Unite the Right rally. He was present at many of the precursor events that took place here in Charlesville during the Summer of Hate, including the two other torch marches smaller torchlit rallies that were held in downtown Charlottesville in May

and October of that year. Like Dyke's photos show, Troutman was present at the Capitol on January sixth, though in Troutman's case no charges have been filed. He too is home on bond with no trial date set. And before we get to the last two of those first ten cases, let's hear from someone who has also not been charged in connection with the mill reactionary attempt to overthrow the US government these products and services. The final two of

these first ten torch cases are the messy ones. So we've got these four guilty please, and we've got four cases that are sort of moving along slowly down the usual path. And then we've got two cases where the defendants have had some success bogging the cases down with motions.

Jacob Dix of Ohio was arrested in July. Dix is seen in photos and video on the eleventh and twelfth with two other Ohio men, his roommate Ryan Martin, who recently passed away, and Daniel Borden, one of the men convicted of beating a man nearly to death during the rally on August twelfth. I'm sure we'll learn more about Dix as his case progresses, but I have found him in photos with the Traditionalist Worker Party at the Nazi

rally in Pikeville earlier that same summer. In his torch case, he has been granted both a substitute judge and a special prosecutor based on a sort of nebulous, though very loudly argued conspiracy theory involving the wife of a judge who is not even presiding over his case, and a prosecutor who has a history of expressing anti racist political views in his personal life. Dix is out on bond. With the recent rule in granting him a special prosecutor, we may be seeing a trial date get set in

the near future. And finally, Augustus Sole Invictus. Until Rousseau was arrested last week, the biggest name in this batch was Augustus Invictus. Even before his name was on the fliers as a headline speaker at Unite the Right, Invictus was no stranger to the headlines. In twenty sixteen, he

ran for US Senate in Florida as a libertarian. His campaign was marred by such controversies as his own past statements on eugenics, A twenty thirteen ritual sacrifice of a goat, his legal representation of w supremacist militia leader Marcus Faiella, and numerous police reports from both his wife and his

teenage girlfriend alleging domestic violence. In the years since, Invictis never did become a US senator despite a second attempt, and never did get convicted of domestic violence despite many, many more police reports. He's also no longer a pagan. Asked recently about the goat blood drinking ritual he performed in twenty thirteen, he quipped that he drinks human blood now, just a little transubstantiation joke about his recent conversion to

traditional Catholicism. Invictus was arrested on the burning object charge in Florida in June twenty twenty three and held for a month before being extradited to Virginia and released on bond. Like Dix, he has been granted a substitute judge. He too, was seeking a special prosecutor, but no ruling was made at his last hearing. Currently, his case is docketed for trial next month, but I'm willing to bet that gets postponed.

So that's more or less where we are now. Rousseau is the eleventh man to be charged in these cases. We've got four guilty please on the record, leaving him as one of seven open cases. We can expect to see Rousseau extradited from Texas to Virginia in the near future. I would say maybe a week or two, although some of them have been held for up to a month before a deputy can get down there and bring them back.

Something I was really surprised to learn in all of this is in most extraditions for state cases like this, like these are not federal cases. These are local cases. When someone gets extradited long distance, a deputy just flies down there and then they fly back together on a commercial airline. It's not like a con air situation. They're just on an airplane together. So it really depends on when a deputy can sort of get down there and

get them. So he'll be extradited sometime in the next few weeks, and then once he's booked into the album RL Charltsville Regional Jail, he'll get an appearance in court. It's anybody's guest right now who he'll hire to represent him.

Former Proud Boy and current Patriot Front lawyer Jason Lee van Dyke was thoughtful enough to reply to one of my tweets about Rousseau's arrest to say that he will not be taking this case, as much as he would have loved to try this case, which he said that he would do a very good job doing and he could definitely do it, and unfortunately he just can't. He

cited the difficulty in finding local council to assist. He's not admitted to the bar in Virginia, so who would need someone who is to sort of sponsor him in and be responsible for him in the case. So he said, you know, he can't find local council, and also it would just be two time consuming and too expensive to try a case in Virginia as he's located in Texas, so it won't be Jason Lee van Dyke, I've been writing about these cases in my newsletter, The Devil's Advocates.

It's on Ghost, which is like substack, but it's not substack, it's Ghost, and I'm looking forward to writing some updates very soon. The finding out for this particular fucking around has been a long time coming, and I can't help but wonder if these cases had been brought sooner, Patriot Front might not even exist. You know, I suspect once Rousseau has gotten a lawyer, he will ask for a

bond hearing. That's probably what's next. It's impossible to know how much information other law enforcement agencies are interested in sharing with the local prosecutor, but that kind of information sharing did play a critical role in some of the other cases. In bond hearings for Billy Williams and Tyler Dikes, information about the defendant's associations and activities collected by other local police agencies and federal authorities was what kept them

in custody. In Dikes's case, several police and sheriff's departments in South Carolina and Georgia shared information that he was a suspect in some like swastika vandalism cases, some flying cases. It's not clear if the FEDS shared information ahead of time about the January sixth case, but it is clear that the prosecutor's office was talking to other law enforcement

agencies who'd been keeping tabs on these guys. And I think you would be a fool to think the FEDS don't have some information about Rousseau that might raise a Judge's eyebrow. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

of once. People typically decide, you know you're talking about the climate, talking about resources and the decline of resources, talking about last extinction, talking about societal unrest and break down and the inequality, and truly pick your poison, brother, We're talking about you know, the f and increasing global energy demands to graddingly slow transition to renewables, the destabilization

of our food and water systems. There's no one cause, but several compounding pressures, as Pablo Serophene and Raphael Stevens

aptly summarize. To maintain itself and avoid financial disorder and social unrest, our industrial capital civilization is forced to accelerate, to become more complex and to consume ever more energy its Doasleine expansion has been nurtured by the exceptional availability though this will not last long of fossil fuels that are very energy efficient, coupled with her growth economy and

highly unstable levels of debt. But the growth of our industrial civilization today, constrained by geophysical economic limits, has reached a phase of decreasing returns. Technology, which has long sail to push these limits back, is less and less able to ensure this acceleration, and locks in this unsustainable trajectory by preventing the development of new alternatives sounds familiar.

The global climate system and many of the planet's ecosystems and major biochemical cycles have left the zone of stability that we were familiar with herald in a time of sudden, large scale disruptions which internally stabilized industrial societies, the rest of humankind and even other species.

This could be like the pessimistic episode in a sense, and the next one will be a bit more you know, how not to spiral into despair?

down in Argentina back in two thousand and one. Sounds familiar, Yes, yes, yes, Next we have commercial collapse. Now it's not just about money, it's about losing faith in the market. Shall provide commodities end up being hoarded, shopping centers are closing for business, and we might even bring back barter, and then boom, we have the next stage, political collapse. Trust in the

government will take care of you crumbles. Governments try to maintain oiler with curfews and martial law, but local corruption takes over services, the roads un maintained, the rubbish piling up. All of actually makes a really bold claim here, and that is that the US might be on this on the track of these like stages. Like I know, I know, that sounds like a really like a radical claim to make I.

all falls apart at once. It's that these systems that we've grown to rely on will slowly crumble away until they've become basically nothing, or they just become like corporate puppets, or they've just become like like they're not they're not actually real anymore in any kind of impactful way. And I mean we saw a little bit of this during COVID, how many systems that we relied on just weren't really

around anymore or were not actually reliable. And you see this whenever, like whenever there's a massive amount of wildfires that takes over a whole region and it displaces hundreds of thousands of people. Usually the response to that is not the government's going to come in and save everybody. It's a whole bunch of really poor anarchists set up a series of tents to give people food and to get people organized, to find places to sleep, and like

that's the actual response to these crumbling institutions. It's not just like you know, fallout New Vegas. We're living in the apocalypse immediately. It's a lot more fuzzy.

to it. And I just mobilize all your efforts and all your focus is on solved in this issue, because it's right in front of your face when you're talking about like geological time scales and multiple decades of you know, slowly breakdown, and you know, I have all these election cycles, and you have all these tipping points to scientists are telling you about, and then you know, someday eventually it's raining during the dry season and dry during the rainy season, and there's no snow in January.

with all ours solution here. I think that these types of crisis kind often bring out the best in people. Of course, we also do see the worst in people, but I don't think it'll ever reach a point where the bad of people's behavior so vastly outweighs the good to the point where people just completely lose faith in our capacity for mutual aid and that kind of thing. There is, of course, a bonus stage that all are throsen, which is ecological collapse, where reboot in society in an

exhausted environment. It's like good luck with that. You know, it's very difficult to do. It becomes a sort of a well that we end up trapped in. So that's one way of understanding collapse. And there's also C. S. Halling's four phase model of ecological change, and according to him, all systems go through cycles of four phases. A phase of growth where the system accumulates matter and energy, a phase of conservation where the system becomes more and more interconnected,

rigid and therefore vulnerable. A phase of collapse or loosening, and then a phase of rapid reorganization lead into another phase of growth in often very different conditions. This is more of a I suppose optimistic I mean I read it as kind of optimistic because it recognizes that, you know,

some like things break down, and that's it. Like even in death, there's like a life, and there's like a rebooth, and then there's of course the conditions that rebooth will be different, but it's not like things completely come to an end. It suggest that the conditions that growth and healing might be kick started with would be very different from the ones that with the conditions that were there originally. Another author's views on the subject, a guy named John

Michael Greer, once said that quote. The difference between my view and that of many others in the collapse field, it's a lot of them assume that the first wave of crisis will be followed by total collapse, and I argue that it'll be followed by muddying through and partial recovery, then by renewed crisis and so on. Thus, I don't think it's actually that useful to have a single metric for what counters collapse, because collapse is a process, not

an event. The collapse of industrial civilization has been underway for quite some time now and will still be a going concern for longer than any of us will be alive. And then there's David Krowitz's sort of choose your own adventure style collapse where we have sort of three options that we could go down. There's one of linear decline, there's one of oscillating decline, and there's one of systemic collapse. For the step, we have linear decline, which is optimistic

in a sense. It's assuming everything will respond proportionally to its causes. So, for instance, if oil consumption goes down, GDP follows suit. It's a very gradual and controlled decline, which gives us time to transition to renewable energy and

to change our ways. It's kind of a dream scenario for some deep growth enthusiasts, So some of those who champion a transition to a greener future, we kind of want it to be a slow collapse, not a rapid collapse, because it gives us time to respond and adjust accordingly. Of course, the other side of that, the catch is that when it is that slow, it also sort of gives an excuse for inaction, excuse for delay and putting

off and procrastinating on the changes that are necessary. A more realistic scenario, according to Korwss, oscillating decline, where you have economic activity bounce in between peaks of recovery and recession but with an overall downward trend. It's almost like an oil priced roller coaster where the higher prices lead to recession, then a dipping prices sparks bit of growth. Both each cycle the system loses a bit more of

its mojo for lack of a better word. The debts the pile up, the investment possibilities dwindle, and it's kind of like the catabolic collapse idea that John Michael Career came up with. It's not too fast and so innocence,

it still gives society some room to adapt. And the last model that Coreres has is the systemic collapse model, which sees our civilization has a super complex system with all these intertwined feedback loops, and so by crossing these invisible change over points and dealing with small disruptions can end up leading to unpredictable changes. It's like a roller coaster without a clear track, nonlinear, cumulative, and potentially brutal.

You know, it's like no kind of safety approval was passed on this roller coaster whatsoever, a death trap and there's no telling where the cart will wear. Of course, really the how of collapse depends on who you ask but with all these models, they do seem to be a couple of clear points, best articulated again by Savine and Stevens. One, the physical growth of our societies will come to a halt in the near future. Two we have irreversibly damaged the entire system, at least on the

geological scale of human beings. Three we are moving towards a very unstable, nonlinear future with major disruptions will be the norm. And four we're now potentially subject to global systemic collapses. Prospects look bleak to me. They look extra bleak when you consider that some people are still stuck on the is climate change real? Ha ha ha global warming and yet it's cold ha ha ha level of discourse. But for those who are made away of the issues,

I've noticed people adopt a range of responses. I think one of the first responses that I see to collapse is slumber.

a disaster waiting to happen. These issues are not going anywhere, and we really need people to have the courage and the boldness to face them instead of turning over and going back to sleep. Similarly to that response, we have the denial response, where people face with this reality, reject it consciously and construct their own or they stage for information that comforts them rather than exposes them to the truth.

They construct a media bubble that shields them or a social circle that could protect them and reaffirm their core beliefs. Everyone is capable of denying reality, but it's become quite prevalent in the age of technology, where we can easily shut out any truths that make us uncomfortable. And then this apathy, you know, like slumber and denial. People respond

with apathy to protect themselves in some way. After all, if nothing really matters, there's no need to try, no need to think, no need to bother Jesus, just disconnect as humans. I think we have a really tough time responding to non immediate threats. It's been said, as I said earlier, that no climate change isn't happening too quick, it's happening too slowly. It's not obvious enough. And because it's not obviously enough, it's very easy for this next

response to be made manifest and it's preoccupation. Of course, this is more of a fault of the system. But people these days are all busy, you know, everyone can afford to invest and explore and understand the world's problems, even if the threat is so existential that their office busy work or retail servitude would ultimately amount to nothing. But I'm not talking about those people when I talk

about preoccupation. I'm talking about the people who respond to the issues of the world by purposefully distracting themselves with busy work, constructing a convenient excuse to not challenge the structures that they are under, like running away for the predicaments of collapse. But the prodiccommends of collapse hatches up to all of us sooner or later. And on the flip side of the people who busy themselves with busy work are the people who dive into mind less consumerism,

which is coupled with apathy to some extent. If nothing matters and everything's falling apart, you might as well just indulge, consume, distract yourself with games, music, party and drugs and drinking. It's like slumber, except you're aware of the reality and just plug in your ears to just dance. But at least for those that plug their ears, they don't face

what I've called overwhelment. Some people respond by trying to wrap their minds around the depth and complexity of collapse to the point of obsession and just kind of end up losing their mind together there. I don't think there is any human mind that can completely consume and comprehend every minued problem we face. I think that's why we are social species, because we can we can kind of distribute that understanding of all the various problems so that

no one person has to handle all of it. We really are going to need to come together to understand collapse, because as individuals, to deal with somethings to a complex, abstract, far flung and frightening, it's it's frankly, subjecting yourself to that is almost a form of self torture or self flagellation. And what we need is the oppositeity, people building each other up and healing our communities and coming together so

we could solve this crisis. Of course, there is such a thing as being too caught up in that sort of hope, and a trap that a lot of people fall naturally into, because in a sense we are biologically predisposed towards optimism. We tend to hold on to hope in some future outcome they'll just work out, you know. And it's sort of a blind hope because it can't adjust to the ever shifting reality. It strips us of our ability to see clearly and to take realistic and

necessary action. We give up our agency and leave things in the hands of the leaders and the experts. We stay passive. We waste time, precious time we spend on real harm reduction, just going with the flow. We prevent the necessary conversations with the blind hope when we fixate so much on whether we can fix it or how we can fix it, without considering what we need to do. If we can't fix it, you know what happens? Then

blind hope manifests in a few different forms. But I think whatever formant comes into it ultimately and ultimately and inevitably leads to disappointment, waiting forever for future that won't come, that exists solely in one's mind, irrespective of reality. It's

quite frankly a form of denial. It takes a bit of a journey to move towards a greater level of emotional maturity to handle the tough conversations and let go of the false hopes, like the idea that will somehow reverse all the damage our planet has been dealt with

scot free. But once we have done that, and once we have strengthened or resolve and strengthen our ability to process and to engage with the reality of what's happening, we can take action with knowledge that no, our leader is not going to do anything substantially enough, and no, this moves far beyond reform. It really is a hard pill to swallow, but if you can take it, you'll be better off to resist. We really don't need blind hope and resistance. I think hope is important. I'm distinguishing

it from hope. Blind hope, however, is a distraction and sort of connected to the blind hope conversation. Are the people who respond to this crisis with the obsession with individual change, people who believe with a few tweaks here and there that we can continue or perpetual growth, we just have to switch to veganism or recycle or cockpool every once in a while, and that that individual level action on a large enough scale would resolve the crisis.

They place a lot of stock and blame in individuals entirely, and they don't engage with the wires structures of society. A lot of liberals, of course, fall into this camp. And speaking of liberals, we see a very pernicious trend of progress worship as another response to collapse. The author Dennis Meadows actually points out a curious trend over the past four decades. There's a constant shift in justifying why we shouldn't change our behavior. Back in the seventies, critics

were saying, no limits. You know, anyone who thinks they're limits, they just don't get it. In the eighties they're saying, oh, actually there are limits, but they are very far away. We have nothing to worry about, nothing to lose sleep over. And then in today nineties, the limits are no longer at are no longer is distant. And then the supporters of growth they chiming with, oh, well, you know the limits are close, but no worries. You know, the markets

and technology will swoop in and fix everything. And then you reach into two thousands and it becomes clear that the tech and the markets might not cut it, and then a narrative spins again. Regardless of whether not the markets or tech and cut it, we still need to push for growth because that's the goal and ticket to the resources we need to tackle lot of problems. It's basically a game of justification hopscotch. It's almost a cult

of progress that any and all growth is good. That don't matter the consequences of on our finite earth, we can just expand and expand eternally. A lot of the responses I get to my discussions of the growth or post growth or whatever, it's like, yeah, but you can't do that because then the GP wouldn't grow and wouldn't elevate people's unders of living. And you know, it's not fair that global.

speaking from a not rich country. What I'm saying is that the what I say to this equal is that the path of development these rich countries took it's not sustainable. It is literally dooming us all. Yes, the entire population cannot strive for the level of consumption that Americans strive for.

Do I think the development days take place, absolutely, but not on the trajectory, not following in the footsteps of these rich countries, this global North, and it's like I see of decimating the world, you know, places like India, place like the Caribbean, places in Africa. You know, we do need to, you know, improve housing, and improve access to water, and improve access to education, all these different things.

But chasing after this sort of careless economic growth narrative and path is just going to accelerate all of our destruction. I agree with the need for reparations from global North to global South that will allow us to reach the level of we could reach the quality of life that

I think every human should have access to. But I don't think that that is the same thing as saying that, oh, well, you know, every country should have their own equivalent of Britain and the US's Industrial Revolution, And who cares that that ship has sealed, that window of opportunity has passed.

You have to rely on growth as this thing that you can't actually like predict its It's you can't actually predict a real endpoint for it.

you know in much less time as well. But the reason why they're all continuing is that they have the people have it have this idea in their heads that if we just if we just keep accelerating, if we keep going, we have to go faster and faster and faster, because we'll find something along the way that will magically

fix the problem. Well, if the only way to fix the problem is to continue accelerating, and we'll find this thing that doesn't currently exist, but we'll find like this like supernatural device or discovery that allows us to kind of fix the little problem we've made for ourselves. And it is a very like religious belief that if if we just keep going, we'll like get some like deep this, some like some like deep special insight.

our current point of view, almost irreparable. But there's this, there is this belief that if we owe that the only way to fix it is is if we keep going, then will somehow stumble across the magical the magical thing that will fix our problem.

and we could have done with less. And I know it's really I really hate having this kind of conversation on the internet because I think it's very difficult to get into the left of nuances necessary because then I know people will say, oh, well, I'm from a week in class background from this and that I've also faced livel deprivation. I get all that, but then there are other things where I'm like, you know, can we live in a world where everyone has access to Amazon one

day ship in two day shipping, you know. Can we live in a world where everyone owns a car, even if it's an electric car. I think there are certain standards of I guess lifestyle or milestones of lifestyle that we've come to accept that I think in retrospect, we will look back and say, Wow, that was an aberration of human history that we were even maintaining that sort

of infrastructure, even maintaining that level of consumption. You know, I'm sure a couple of generations online people will look back and be like, wow, do you tell me nearly every household had a car and that everybody was just on the roads driving all the time, and we built our cities or infrastructure around vehicles when we knew very early on, when the oil companies knew very early on that eventually we would run out, we just didn't care.

I'm kind of all over the place with this, but you're gonna say something, well.

it's that's not The United States isn't one place. There is a difference between living and like a five thousand dollars apartment in a downtown like city center, versus living on the outskirts of town in like a house that's falling apart right or living on the street, or or living in the middle of Utah versus living on the coast like there's or living in like a montane like there's.

There is such a large difference even for people in the States, for like many many like not everyone is able to live in this like very are arguably very very unsustainable, very like hyper hyper modernity. Way there is there is, there's millions of people that of course, like no, I'm not saying that against your point. I'm saying, like

this is this is also part of the problem. Like we have we have tricked ourselves into thinking that if you if you live in the United States, that must mean you are like you are one of the elite few. But there's millions of people who are living in like the like some of the most some of the harshest conditions in the world, even in the richest country in the world, like it is is anti.

and get you invested in their culture progress. Hook you in is through that sort of temporarily embarrassed to millionaire mantra. They hook you in by saying, yeah, they're coming for our stuff. Eventually you get to my level too, and then you wouldn't want people to take your stuff away either, you know, like my tech development is gonna right, We're going to bring all of us up, you know, and

you shouldn't let these people stop you. Rather than no, well, obviously these rush guys are going to get brought down a peg, but by bringing them down a peg, everybody will have a better quality of life. But instead of recognizing that, they deceive people with this techno opim, they bring people into this trap of capitalist realism that either you live in the deprivation of the worst of the worst of people's livelihoods and the capitalism, or you live in the excess of the best of the best of

people's lives and the capitalism. And there's nothing beyond those two options. And so obviously the de growth people want you to be living in the former option, and you should oppose them because of that. Another response I see is that there are a lot of people who are just completely like have complete faith in our leaders, who believe that, you know, once we get just the right people in office, things will work out. The truth is, of course, the system corrupts even the best of intentions.

Politicians are a class and to themselves, and their actions reflect ultimately their own interests and the interests of their backers. Nation states, governments, rulers. Is their job, it's in their job description to maintain structures that ultimately harm humanity, and there's only so much they can do to affect the

status cho placing our salvation in their hands. It's an exercise in futility, invest in your future and the confines the electoralism is a waste of time, but it also demonstrates whoy effectively mass media and schooling has broken down and limited our imagination. I like to call that status realism, the idea that there's no alternative to this hierarchy of rulers and rule, that people just need to submit to the wills and whims of others rather than organizing for

themselves in their communities. There's, of course, the response of apocalypse worship rather classic response around those who end up obsessing over collapse and honestly that the worshippers of the apocalypse are also houl to a form of blind hope. You know, the accelerationists, doomsday preppers, cultists, extreme survivalists, zombie

video game enthusiasts, believers in the end times. They all seem to have a whole so they seem to have a real excitement for collapse, or they fixate really heavily on the ideal version of the end of the world, like they can't wait for the world to end. They embrace the sort of we're all on our own mantra, barricade themselves, bunker down, stockpile weapons and essentials. They get en up for a violent future because they anticipate that others will react to the situation similarly to how they

intend to react. So they're taken like a page from ad Max and like, yeah, I'm going to be immortant Joe, so I don't end up a thrall of immortant Joe.

more in our fate. I mean, according to those in despair, there's nothing that we can do to affect our future, and in my eyes, those on this dumor pillar just as misguided as those who are hyped up with blind opium. I think it's okay to admit that we don't know what's going to happen. You know, I don't claim to your profit. I don't think anybody should. The IPCC reports, for example, are a consensus of scientists and their understanding

of the situation. Some scientists are going to be more conservative in their report in their reporting, others are a bit more catastrophes. But either way, I really don't think we need to get into the weeds of just how bad it is or exactly how it's going to happen, but matters that things need to change some way, somehow. I think it's important to try and understand as much as the situation as you could not to the point

of obsession. To take note of how we respond to the issue, To look at the various responses I covered and see if you fit into any of those camps, and to recognize that the worst case scenario is far from inevitable. My advice is ready to prepare for the worst in whatever way you can, and put hope and build for the best. Build community, build connections, build your skills, build your strengths, and push in any way that you can in whatever's fare you find yourself for meaningful change.

Because say it with me now, it could happen here.