It Could Happen Here Weekly 128

go mad. We live in a transphobic society. All it takes is one bet day for an aspiring comedian to fall into a vat of estrogenizing chemicals and emerge a jokerfied harlequin. Filmmaker Vera Dru's new movie, A Multimedia Queer Fever Dream titled The People's Joker, takes this premise and depicts what it's like trying to make a living as an irony poisoned trans person in a Gotham city where

comedy has been made illegal. This isn't just an unauthorized transgender parody of DC comics, though it is that as well. The film is a wholly unique collaboration of dozens of queer artists utilizing fair use to tell a trans coming of age story with the gothic, queer coded imagery of Batman. If you know anything about my tastes, you probably know

that this is incredibly up my alley. So in a departure from this show's usual doom and gloom, I'm putting together a few episodes on what it means to be a queer artist in today's political climate. More episodes will come out next week, but I wanted to get this one out right now, in time for listeners to catch the theatrical run of The People's Joker, hopefully in a theater near you, right now or in the near future.

Last week, I was lucky enough to chat with the clown Princess of Crime herself, Vera Drew, about the making of the People's Joker.

But yeah, he was complaining about woke culture, as is his right. But in my co writer, the person who ended up becoming my co writer, bri LeRose, actually just kind of jokingly commissioned me on Twitter to re edit Todd phillips Joker and actually venmowed me twelve dollars, and yeah, I started doing it. Like in earnest, I started like

actually re editing the movie. And I had worked at Absolutely Productions for years as an editor and had kind of come up as an alternative comedy editor, so you know, at that point it was probably just going to be like a lot of bart sound effects and woosh noises

and slips and slide whistles. But as I was working on it and kind of just making this like big piece of bound footage video art, like a narrative kind of just like fell into place and it kind of just came in an instant and I was just like, oh, okay, I think I actually want to make like a coming of age film, but I want to make like a parody of The Joker, like in that process and kind of just like tell like a really earnest and super personal autobiographical story about my life and growing up in

the Midwest and coming out as trans and comedy and you know, my relationship with my mom and toxic relationship I was in and stuff, but kind of process and mythologize all of that through through Batman characters. So that's

kind of the origin of the movie. Guess I had also kind of been kicking around an idea for like a body horror, like a trans body horror movie before that that was basically like about a drag queen who was physically addicted to irony and like couldn't like survive without it, but it was also like destroying her from the inside out. The two ideas kind of like merged together into this sort of I guess.

appear in mass media. I showed my co host Mia the film last week to get her thoughts on the movie as a piece of queer art, since her and my own tastes often greatly differ. What did you think of the transgender clown.

about T boy swag. They do not know about like all of this stuff that's happening in this And yeah, I mean, I think that's the thing about it that's really interesting, because you know, transcoming of age story is like one of the few kind of stories you're sort of allowed to tell if you're trans, less so in film, more so like in writing your stuff, allowed to do

this specifically. Yeah, Yeah, And it's really interesting the way that this movie starts with a you know, for the first maybe ten minutes, it's okay, this is like a pretty standard coming of age story, and then it hits the real shit in a way that doesn't ever show up on this stuff.

never really like shown or discussed. I found that to be incredibly resonant and very like tastefully done.

That the fact that that's in that's in film, and you can see all of the people, like you can see sis people like not getting it, like they just they don't they don't understand what's going on. And that's really incredibly powerful in a lot of ways.

from Oz. And it is with all of these like adult swim asthetics, because ver Drew has been an editor on a lot of like starting with like Tim and Eric stuff to like Nathan Fielder to Tim Robinson, very entrenched in this like layered allage like adult swim style. So that's present all throughout the movie. It's extremely visually unique. It's it's kind of like like it like an It really is like an Internet meme, like brought to life

and like puppeteered by like an uncanny unseen hand. I think it really embraces the aesthetics of like an ill fitting Halloween Harley Quinn cosplay costume. It's like taking that and like deeply interrogating what that visually represents and looks like and why someone would wear an ill fitting Harley Quinn costume. It deeply understands all of like the aesthetics sensibilities behind an image like that. Extremely extremely fun. I

think it's worth talking about, at least in brief. The trajectory of this movie's release because it is a very comic book. Joker fied story from the idea of this film to its premiere at a film festival, to all of the uncertainty and legal chaos that came along the way. So an earlier cut of this movie was originally set to premiere at TIFF, the Toronto International Film Festival back

in twenty twenty two. Right before the first showing, Warner Brothers sent a vaguely worded but threatening letter which resulted in the People's Joker being pulled from the festival save for one late night screening that got rave reviews. With its legal status uncertain, the movie kind of went into limbo. Here's Vera drew on what happened after the first Tiff showing.

You know, maybe I would have shown it to like my Patreon or something, but like it was, uh, you know, after a certain point like it, you know, once we had that like premiere, it was just like I need to like I can't just post this to YouTube. I can't like just dump it somewhere or like shelve it.

And what felt right really was like taking the movie out just to festivals and kind of doing like a secret screening tour, which is what we did, and that was really exciting and kind of like a jokerfied way of sort of getting this this movie out there. And I was just surrounded by other filmmakers and the genre community and you know who would see the movie at this festival and be like you need to just wait. The person who's gonna help you is gonna come.

who will physically attack you for being Asian. And who will say shit and who's whose level of verbal racism will be less than the racism that's just in this movie as a gag. Sure, and you know, and so you get and eventually, like throughout the twenty tens, we sort of got like, oh, there's like Asian Americans and movies now, and that was kind of happening with with with sort of you know and prickoling cartoons, things like owl House. That was kind of happening in media with

queer people. And then there was the sort of the twenty twenties backlash, and that's like you you can you know it's it's in the same way the Huntress. Thompson has this line about like you can see exactly where the standing in Vegas. You can see the line where the sixties receded, Like you can see the line where all of the queer stuff just is like gone. And

this forces everyone. You know, you if you have two options, right, you can fucking go back into the closet and you can fucking work on whatever dog shit show that's just going to be completely sisse hat now, or you can just you can make the people's choker. Just to say, you can just make you're just you can just go and do it and you can make something. And I think there's something that's very different than a lot than

the sort of wave that have come before. It is it like this is this is the transmedia that is made by trans people for trans people. And there's some like trapping stuff for SIS people to sort of like walk them along a little tiny bit, but.

heavy thing. And that's something that DC Comics has definitely shied away from intentionally and having something that so blatantly embraces that well, not not just like does it for like fun representation, like actually interrogates like queer relationships through that, through that extremely like troubling power dynamic is really really fascinating.

dresses up like a bat. I was lucky enough to catch an earlier cut of the People's Joker at a Canadian film festival last year, dressed in one of my many Harley Quinn costumes. Again, if you know anything about me, you know I love Batman on Gotham City. I do my yearly queer Batman returns watch parties where I dress up like Michelle Feiver's Catwoman. But the social groups I'm often in can sometimes be a little bit weird about

Batman stuff, because he's like a fascist or whatever. But I've always thought that Gotham City is really queer as a concept, and I love that someone else appeared to share that opinion and decided to explore Gotham City as an aesthetic zone to operate in as a queer artist. Here's Vera Drew talking about the connection between her queerness and Batman.

and it's always just felt very queer to me. I mean, I guess most in like a subtext way, but you just think back to like all the iterations, Like, I mean, my my entry point into Batman was Joel Schumacher Batman like I saw Batman forever when I was six and I it was like, literally one of the first times I realized I was trans was that moment was just seeing Nicole Kidman. I wanted to look like her. I

wanted to be perceived how she was being perceived. I wanted someone to look at me the way Batman looks at her. And that was all very confusing for a six year old, you know who up until that point was pretty sure they were a boy. I grew up in the nineties, so I didn't really have like my

representation was the Jerry Springer Show and Howard Stern. That's where I saw trans people, and I think like comics were just this space where I could I don't know, it just feels very queer like and it's it's not j subtext. I mean there is, there's a lot of subtext obviously in like the Schumacher Batman's like his his Gotham City just is a like gay Neon nightmare of beauty. We're definitely like taking that aesthetic kind of in the People's Joker like that was always kind of my vision

for Gotham. But even the sixties Batman, despite how absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, it's it's super conservative, but like it's it's so colorful and like it's.

I found incredibly funny. When I was watching it, I felt like a big strong sense I felt was like, this is what a piece of art would look like if it was made like within the DC universe. It feels like something that comes like from that point and is like somehow like emanated into our world.

itself has a sense of inherent queerness. I think there's a lot of reasons for that, the fact that it's a collaborative project from dozens of queer artists sending in background pieces, characters, voice acting, music, set design. It all creates a very like DIY queer zine kind of feel, but in a moving picture. So I wanted to talk a little bit more about this difference between just queer

representation and queer art. You kind of touch on something previously where like the difference between queer representation and like art that is that the is queer. These are like two very different things, and the movie actually is in conversation with this as well, being like the difference between hiring a trans person to be on the SNL cast versus a trans person doing their own comedy show, right, and how those are two very different things with very

different politics. And I think this movie is a large statement against that assimilation is to drive that a lot of people kind of fall back on for like self preservation reasons, self coping reasons, and like financial reasons. Sure, it is extremely critical of that notion and reifiz like this like diy approach towards queer people making our own art.

what good has this done for Asian American people? And mostly what it's done is that Asian American cinema there's it's a wasteland, right like, and you know, and you could see like there's a there's a version of sort of of where the twenty twenties go that's different where the assimilationist drive kicks in and we don't. And this happens to Quimbidia where it's just this yeah, nothing, it's just this void of sort of formless content that gets sold to the sist people.

I mc fairy excited for I saw the TV Glow coming out next month, but we have a lot of other independent trends filmmakers starting out quite young getting into filmmaking also not quite young, like into their thirties, who are working to actually produce films and media that don't just get thrown up on YouTube. That producing art that does not just become another transgender video essay that floods

the site. Right, it's finding other ways to actually engage artistically besides the very comfortable ways that we've gotten used to, whether that's like, you know, what your average trans DJ trans like electronic music or a trans video essay, which feels like, really the only two ways to make art is a trans person reliably are making YouTube videos making music, both of which can be very good. Absolutely, there's of

some fantastic trans musicians. There's a lot of great video essays out there, but the artistic landscape is so much bigger than that. And being able to watch people realize that this YouTube thing is so self limiting and trying to grow past that is incredibly cool to see. I know there's stuff like Nebula, just like this streaming service kind of built on YouTube but trying to do more of its own things. That's been interesting to watch grow.

But also a lot of people attempting just to actually like take movies to film festivals and actually like engage with this as like art and like having it be recognized as arts. Like it would have been so easy to turn the people's choker into like a YouTube fan film, right, yeah, fucking thousands of fucking Batman fan films on YouTube.

make the giant media monster. Yeah, we can go stab it and force a bunch of these like random CIS critics to be like to try to figure out a tea for tea relationship, but just blow it.

is our blah bla blah blah blah. Yet it's just owned by like two companies who control everything about it and don't allow the public to actually engage with these as cultural thinkers and say no, we actually are going to find a way to use these characters in relation to someone's own life as an artist and using it to talk about queerness and comedy and working in the comedy industry as a queer person to create a very unique piece that yeah, literally could have there's no way

wouldever be made. So this is this is this is a piece of art that could have never happened any other way. And now we have it playing in a local theater near you, and I think that's very cool. Here's Vera Drew again talking about the theatrical run.

Much of the information I gathered is thanks to the scholarship of Lucian van der Walt, a South African anarchist and professor of sociology. Particularly, I'll be looking at the work on anarchism and Cynicalism Southern Africa from the International Encyclopedia Revolution and Protest and Anarchism and Cynicalism in the

colonial and post colonial world. Without getting into the lengthy and storied history of the region, I do need to provide some context, so we'll start in the mid nineteenth century, where the region that became South Africa was considered marginal to the world economy. You had the poet of the Cape of Good Hope and Port Elizabeth, which handled me

in the agricultural exports. And this was during the second period of the British Cape Colony's existence, after it had briefly fallen into the hands of the Batavia and Republic during the Napoleonic Wars. None of that is particularly necessary to know for our sake, but you know a little fun fact. At this point, once again, under the British, the land was broadly agrarian, and Britain's farms were worked

by colored and African workers. The neighboring Natal Colony, also under British rule, had its plantations worked by indentured Indians. The rest of the interior was under various Africana republics

and African kingdoms. For those not in the know, so African in this context refers to obviously Africans, Black Africans to be specific, Indians referring to the indentured laborers from the Indian subcontinent, Africanas referring to the Afrikaans or Dutch speaking white South Africans, and then we have, of course the British, which are you know, white British people, and the colored as a designation as a group as a self identified ethnic group referred to the people of mixed

European and African heritage that had begun to develop their own identity in their own community. Because the settlement of South Africa had started centuries before, so other than the agricultural export and ports providing a respite for trade between the West and the East, the Southern African colonies weren't

particularly high up on anyone's list of priorities. But then the economic landscape of the region transformed with the discovery of diamonds in Kimberley in eighteen sixty seven and gold in Woodwater surround in eighteen eighty six. To make a very long story short, this led to the rapid centralization of mining activities and the growth of towns like Johannesburg, one of the most well known towns in South Africa.

Imperial interests intensified, resultant in the British Wars and Africans and Africanas and the lablishment of the Union of South Africa in nineteen ten. An extremely diverse and polygoth society under British rule. By nineteen thirteen, almost half of the world's gold output came from with waters Round area and with Watersrand Minds employed one hundred and ninety five thousand Africans and twenty two thousand white workers. The working class

clearly faced many racial and ethnic divisions. It was primarily composed of various Africans, which had their own divisions between them, and there were also divisions between the largely skilled white immigrants from Europe and the largely unskilled local white africaners. The marginalized African and colored middle classes that began to form from the few free laborers involved in various grown industries would come to lead early nationalist movements while grappling

with segregation, discrimination, and linguistic challenges. As van der Wald said, and they lived in a situation where a cheap African labor formed the bedrock of the mines as well as state industry and the crowing commercial farming and manufacturing sectors, and where the cheapness of African labor was primarily a function of the black's historic incorporation into the country as a subject to people. In this sense, local capitalist relations

of exploitation were constructed upon colonial relations of domination. Fast forward to the eve of apartheid in nineteen forty eight, when African and nationalists took power and extended the segregation policies in the first four decades of the Union even further, you get two responses to the national question preceding the development of apartheid from the organized labor crowd at the time.

The first response, known as white labourism, was associated with the mainstream white labor movement leading back to the nineteenth century. The South African Labor Party and South African Industrial Federation were key proponents of white labourism, and both organizations were born from the exclusiveness of early craft unions that later

evolved into more pronounced racial exclusiveness. This white laborism approach combined social democracy with segregation, promoting job reservation and preferential employment for whites, urban segregation and Asian repatriation white power for white workers. Basically, the other races can figure out their own deal, of course, on the reservations that we

put them in. So it's no surprise that the apartheid government in part mainstreamed this white laborism movement, but the second response to the national question was linked to the Communist Party of South Africa the CPSA from nineteen twenty eight, when it adopted the Native Republic thesis under pressure from

the Communist International. This approach advocated for the establishment of an independent South Africa Native Republic as a precursor to the Workers and Peasants Republic, separating national liberation specifically in the fourth of nationalism and then socialism into distinct stages. The CPSA initially considered leading both of these stages, but later abandoned this idea and opted for a united front with the African National Congress, aiming for a unitary, democratic,

and capitalist state with land reform and partial nationalization. But there's a hidden history that goes unnoticed prior to the rise of apartheid and the CPSA. All the way back in the eighteen eighties, Henry Glass played a pivotal role in establishing the local anarchist tradition in South Africa. He was an Englishman born in India with a background in radical London circles. He moved to Port Elizabeth in the eighteen eighties and engaged in various jobs, including working on

the Witwatersrand minds among African people. He contributed to the Cape Labor Press, translated key works by Kropotkin into English, and distributed anarchist materials through various organizations. Glass seems to have taken a good look at clonalism, saw how Africans were treated, and didn't shy away from calling it out

now self. His writing did idealize pre capitalist cultures, for example, pointing out in a letter to Kropotkin that you can still find amongst them the principle of communism, but his main focus was on pointing fingers at an order that treated Africans like second class citizens, and going even further to champion the idea of a working class movement that

bridged racial divides. He understood the foolishness of white workers to try and pursue their liberation alone while sidelining their colored comrades, and though Glass spent his time agitating in Port Elizabeth, this was also a perspective shared by the Social Democratic Federation or SDF, based in Cape Town, which despite its name, was all about pushing anarchism and syndicalism. Actually, maybe more precise there was a dominant wing within the

SDF of Cape Town that emphasized anarchism and syndicalism. There will also moderate and status elements in the SDF as well. Cape Town was quite different at that time from Port Elizabeth. Port Elizabeth was mostly African and white, but Cape Town had a significant colored population, which created a situation where much of Cape Town's working class was free labor rather

than bound to some form of slavery or dangure. Coloreds were facing growing official segregation and popular discrimination from the late nineteenth century onwards, though, so there was a growing discontent as the working class fractured even further. But there was a key figure in the Cape Town SDF that pushed anarchism and syndicalism, and that was Wilfred Harrison, another friend of Kopotkin, a carpenter, a trade unionist, and an

ex soldier. He was known as a very dynamic speaker and a staunch anarchist communist who pushed for a future where workers owned and controlled everything. With Harrison at the Helm, the SDF set up shop in Adelaide Street, where they were organized in talks, events, and even standing in elections for propaganda purposes. The sdf's events attracted thousands, creating truly uniquely integrated public spheres that would bring Colors, white and

Africans in some of the same spaces. They were holding speeches in Afrikaans, which was the most popular language of the colors, and in eastingt Closer, the language of the Mooser people. They had bookshops, reading rooms, refreshment bars, beach trips, choirs, and even a few socialist christ Nets. At the various

talks they welcomed controversial figures, including a young Gandhi. Harrison's wing of the SDF further sought to remove union color bars, unionize colors, secure equal pay, and build unions that would unite all workers, regardless of race. In the early nineteen hundreds, socialists and with Waters Round launched the Weekly Voice of Labor, led by Archie Crawford and Mary Fitzgerald. The paper saved to connect socialists across cities from Duban to Kimberley, to

Cape Town to Johannesburg. Archie Crawford was a staunch anti segregationist, pushing back against the South African Labor Party for its policies and organized in the neglected colored workers. In nineteen ten, the SDF hosted British synicolist Tom Mann, whose tours the region would inspire the founding of the Socialist Labor Party

or SLP. In Johannesburg. They adopted the ideas of Daniel de Leon, the American leader of the International Workers of the World, and were followed by the Industrial Workers Union, which linked with the IWW in Chicago. The IWW's ideas spread to Duban and Pretoria, but it was Johannesburg where they flexed their muscles with successful strikes and challenges to

labor laws. The IWW's position carried the same as its forebears, fight the class war with the aid of all workers to whether efficient or an efficient, skilled or unskilled, white or black. IWW organizer Jock Campbell would be the first to specifically make propaganda amongst the African workers in which waters Rand. But don't get me wrong, these efforts do

not mean that they necessarily succeeded. The IWW and SLP's struggle to recruit to cross racial lines semms not primarily from prejudice, but from their overall weakness as union organizers outside the tram sector, where they saw the most successes, and of course, the practical challenges of organizing the predominantly

unfree African workforce underwit Water's Rand. So they talked a good talk about reaching across racial lines, but not a massive success because they didn't have a strategy in place to actually establish those actions between Africans, colored and Indian workers in this regard. Actually, the SDF in Cape Town was a lot more successful. However, something did happen in

witwaters Rand. In May nineteen thirteen, a significant general strike erupted on the witwaters Rand, initiated by white miners and quickly spread in across industries. The strike was marked by riots and gun battles and escalating on what's called Black Saturday, July fifth, resulting in twenty five deaths at the hands

of the imperial troops. Subsequent strikes by African miners and Indian passive resistance campaigns further intensified the social unrest, with the failure of a compromise in the aftermath of the nineteen thirteen strike led to a second general strike in January nineteen fourteen. The state responded swiftly, declaring martial law, mobilizing forces and suppressing the unions, resulting the arrest and

deportation of key activists, including Archie Crawford. Then World War One further disrupted things, with the country joining the British side. While some organizations suspended activities to support the war efforts, hardline African and nationalists launched an armed rebellion, leading to split within the SDF and the South African Labor Party.

Although anarchism synicalism played a role in these turbulent events, the actual syndicalist movement on the Witwaterstrand was weak and divided by nineteen thirteen, despite attempts to forge unity through the United Socialist Party the USP, it fell apart due to existing divisions and ideological differences among the constituent groups. While organized syndicalism struggled to lead the strikes, syndicalist ideas

and slogans gained considerable traction in labor circles. The strikes and war issues reinvigorated existing anarchists and syndicalists, radicalized new activists, and sparked widespread interest in radical ideas which would lead to an new development. In September nineteen fifteen, the Industrial Socialist League the ISSL emerged as a prominent syndicalist formation, comprising of the syndicalist veterans and anti war South African Labor Party activists. The ISL quickly became the largest left

political group before the Communist Party of South Africa. The ISL rooted in the ISWW tradition, advocated for the organization of workers on industrial alliance irrespective of race, and envisioned in an integrated revolutionary one big union for national liberation and class struggle. The ISL criticized whitecraft unions for the divisive practices and advocated of industrial unions to confront the

challenges posed by giant corporations and trusts. Racial prejudice, according to the ISSL, served the ruling class's interests insuring a study supply of cheap, unorganized African labor at the same time that the ISL was actively opposing discriminatory laws. The ISL also doubted the efficacy of African nationalist programs in genuinely emancipating the black masses. It contended that national oppression was rooted in capitalism, making national liberation unlikely under the

prevalance system. The ISL aimed to reform white unions, but while leading efforts to organize people of color, they faced challenges, of course, in the form of opposition from white workers, electoral defeats, and hostility from established unions. They were evicted from Trades Hall in nineteen seventeen for resistant discriminatory policies, but continued the activities cultivating links with people of color,

particularly through its passionately anti Zionist Yiddish speaking branch. The ISL played a pivotal role in establishing unions among people of color, launching the Indian Workers Industrial Union in Durban in nineteen seventeen and later through night schools for Africans, initiating the Industrial Workers off in the same year, both of which would be led by their own constituents. In July nineteen eighteen, there would be another general strike, this

time primarily by Africans. Earlier that year, one hundred and fifty two African municipal workers were sentenced to hard labor for striking, leading to protests organized by the Industrial Workers of Africa, the International Socialist League and the South African Native National Congress and the South Africa Native National Congress the SANNC, which was the precursor to the currently ruled

In African National Congress the ANC. The Joint Action Committee proposed a general strike on the Witwatersrand for the release of the sentenced workers and better pay for African workers. Although the strike was canceled last minute, several thousand African miners participated anyway, resulting in arrests for incitement to public violence. The rested individuals included ISL members and a member of

both the Industrial Workers of Africa and the ESSAYNNC. A year later, in March nineteen nineteen, ISL members played a role in their civil disobedience campaign against pass lords, which required non whites in South Africa to carry documents authorizing their presence in restricted white areas. That resistance campaign led

to nearly seven hundred arrests. That same year, in Kimberley, the ISL established syndicalist unions among colored workers, such as the Clothing Workers Industrial Union and the Horse Drivers Union. These unions achieved significant successes, including wage increases in Cape Town. ISL members City Way and KREI aimed to organize the

Industrial Workers of Africa on the docks. They collaborated with the Industrial Socialist League the ind SL, a syndicalist breakaway from the SDF, and played a role in the major strike on the docks in December nineteen nineteen. Now the strike ultimately disintegrated, but it's still mar significant event. All in all, the ISL, heavily influenced by syndicalism, would play a major role in the strikes of the late nineteen tenths.

The ISL's influence extended to the formation of the Communist Party of South Africa CPS, alongside the SDF and the INDSCEL and a few other groups in the nineteen twenties. That party would go underground after the Anti Communist Act of the fifties and re emerge as the South African Communist Party the SAACP. For most of its history, it has been explicitly Marxist Leninist, heavily influenced by the Bolsheviks. However, when it first started, syndicalist concepts still lingered within the

party for many years before was eventually excised. The internationalist and multi racial vision of the syndicalist movement was later taken over by the two stage strategy of the cpsa slash SACP, which sought to establish an independent, democratic capitalist

republic as a precursor to a socialist order. This, of course, diverges from the earlier anarchist and syndicalist strategy, which viewed the anti colonial independence and class struggles as interconnected and didn't see national liberation as solely the purview of nationalism, a view which to me is more sophisticated and revolutionary than this one track status view that Marxist tend to

adopt contrary to the organizing efforts of actual working class people. Interestingly, Van der Walt argues that while CPSA undeniably contributed to working class struggles since the nineteen forties, a critical look reveals that they made consistent cricketures of the pre CPSA left. They sort of established themselves as the true vanguard in

the fight for South Africa's liberation. So they portrayed the pre CPSA left in two main currents, the Proto Bolsheviks considered true socialists and everyone else The pre CPSA left was deemed a failure, with the Proto Bolsheviks credited for pioneer and socialist work among black workers. According to their narrative, it was only in the late nineteen twenties the CPSAS adoption of the Native republic thesis and Marxist Leninist ideas

that the national question was adequately addressed. Anarchism and syndicalism are portrayed as marginal and bothersome predominantly white movements that at best underestimated the significance of national oppression were at worst endorsed white supremacy and segregation. This interpretation, of course, positions a CPSA slash SACP as the sole bearers of revolutionary socialist solutions the national question, while ironically erasing the

history of early African socialist and syndicalist radicalism. So wrapping up a bit here, we delved into the intricate history of anarchism and syndicalism in South Africa, uncovering a movement that played a significant role in Southern Africa from the eighteen eighties to the nineteen twenties and consistently grappled with

the complexities of the national question. We've seen a multi racial and internationalist movement marked by a steadfast opposition to racial discrimination and a commitment to interracial labor organization and the unity of the Wigan class. They had a vision of a society rooted in class solidarity, of an industrial republic distinct from the conventional nation state and in lockstep

with an international industrial republic. Now, despite the decline of anarchism and cynicalism in the years following the founding of the CPSA slash sacp Anarchism is still alive today in South Africa. The Zaba Laza Anarchist Communist Front or ZACF is a specific anarchist political organization based in Johannesburg, South Africa and founded on May Day in two thousand and three. The organization operates on an individual membership basis by invitation only,

emphasising theoretical and strategic unity among members. The Zaba Lazas, a line with the anarchist communist Platformists and a specifistic traditions within anarchism, subscribe in to the idea of an active minority pushing anarchist ideas within larger movements. In fact, unlike the anarchisynicalists, the Zablazas don't aim to build mass anarchist movements, but rather to participate in existing social movements,

spreading anarchist principles within heterogeneous organizations. Zablaza advocates for direct democracy, mutual aid, horizontalism, class combativeness, direct action, and class independence. It emerged during a time of political closure within trade unions which were controlled by the African National Congress government. It oriented itself towards emerging social movements such as the Anti Privatization Forum and the Landless People's Movement, aim into

advance anarchist principles within these movements. Sablas's work includes popular political education, combatant reformists and authoritarians, tendencies, an advocation for the independence of social movements from political parties and electoral politics. So that's the story the history of anarchism and cynicalism and South Africa. Obviously this is a summary, but it goes to show the influence that these movements have had in shape and the history of that often forgotten region

of the world. Thanks for joining me once again, or Powell to all the people.

this episode is something a little different. So there's an element of Trump's Agenda forty seven that we didn't really talk about in our episodes. That's actually a pretty significant amount of the material, and that's Trump's trade policy. And this is sort of surprisingly a very large part of his pitch. The sort of gist of it is that Trump's appeal to like the white working class TM is Okay,

we're going to do a bunch of protectionist terrorists. This is going to bring jobs back to the US by imposing costs and manufacturing in other countries, etc. Et cetera. This will bring jobs back to America and it will make America greater or some shit. Now, the center piece of this is what's called the Reciprocal Tariff Bill, and it's not that complicated. Basically, what it says is if a country imposes a tariff on an American good, the

US imposes an identical tariff on that tariff. It's designed to basically automatically start trade wars. Now, the reason we didn't cover this in the original Legenda forty seven slate of episodes is that even in the worst case scenario where Trump takes power like a coup, and you know, the sort of power of anyone to oppose the magnificantly curtailed.

I don't think you can get this one passed. And the reason I don't think you can get this one passed is because, you know, as it turns out, this package and we're going to sort of explore this a little bit. Actually seriously, messing with tariffs is something that is really really going to piss off a lot of corporations that actually matter. Now, Okay, So like I could have just done the episode anyways, led with that and just given a sort of you know, just given the

disclaimer that like it's probably not gonna happen. But I think there's a more interesting story here that hasn't really been talked about about the origin of basically the framework of modern American politics, both on the right and on the left, because they both emerge I think from a series of arguments about trade that has been kind of

broadly forgotten. I think that's to our detriment. And the product of this is that there's been a sort of raft of arguments and I've seen this as much from the leftist from the right, that Trump's support for tariffs and particularly the sort of trade spat he got in with China from twenty eighteen to twenty nineteen marks the end of the sort of like neoliberal free trade regime and the emergence of like new nationalist protections against free trade.

That's like the neo economic system that's replaced neoliberalism. And I am very skeptical of this. And the reason why I'm very skeptical of this is because I, like when I was coming up as a leftist, I spent a bunch of time seriously became involved in like irl left organizing around twenty seventeen. I'd done some stuff in like twenty thirteen before then, but that meant that, you know, a lot of the stuff I was reading was accounts of what was called the global justice movements, which was

alter globalization, anti globalization. There's like it has it has a million names, but it was it was a series of mass protest movements against the sort of raft of free trade agreements coming out of the nineties. So and you get a very very different picture of the history of free trade that is sort of broader and more expansive in the history of the resistance to it. Then you get if you just sort of like, you know, assume neoliberalism has been the same always and Trump is

the sort of aberration to it. Now, Trump's status as an aberration something that I question. I mean, you know, the trade war that he got into is something, you know, it's it's it is different. But I think there's a lot of there's a lot of sort of hype around Trump's like opposition to free trade. And like one of the big things you know that Trump ran on was pulling out of NAFTA, and he did. He did pull out of DAFTA. However, COMA he then set up a

new trade NAFTA. By the way, it's a North American Free Trade Agreement. It's really shit. We're going to talk a bit more about what exactly it did later, but you know, it's broadly seen, I think rightly as something that smashed both huge portions of what was left of the American manufacturing economy and you know, the parts of the economy that had been rebuilt in the eighties and also just absolutely annihilating the mechicangy cultural industry. For reasons

that we will we will explain it a bit. It's now becoming extremely deeply unpopular because unbelievable numbers of workers lost their and you know, the the jobs that they got afterwards had shittier wages. You know, entire communities are ravage, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So Trump, you know, famously campaigns I'm pulling out of this deal, but he replaces it with something called USMCA. Now here's the thing

about this deal. This is basically just NAFTA with slightly stronger carve outs for the auto industry about like what percentage of the parts of vehicles had to be produced in the US and some like slightly stronger labored like protections, which is like fine, but it's it's basically the same deal, right, So you know you have to take this whole sort of like a Trump is like the anti free trade thing with a grain of salt. And look at again

this deal they negotiated, which is just NAFTA. It is literally, after all of the hype of him pulling out of NAFTA, he did NAFTA again. Now this something very interesting that I don't think people remember. Obaba also opposed NAFTA, and they came into office and then nothing ever fucking happened. The NAFTA, So, you know, the sort of like the rumors of naftas Dubais have been greatly exaggerated. But Comma, the story of the building of opposition to NAFTA is

very very interesting. So something I don't think most people understand is that the modern American left is descended from the Zapatistas. Very specifically. We're gonna one day cover the Sapatista uprising in some detail, but the sort of cliff nosed version is that on January first, nineteen ninety four, the Zapatistas, who are you named after the great Mexican revolutionary hero Melio Zapata, staged in uprising in Mexico. They

seized a bunch of cities very quickly. They were sort of driven out of those cities, but eventually they took control of a decent part of the territory of the Mexican state of Chiapas. The Zapatisa stage is uprising for a number of reasons. The most famous of them is that January first, nineteen ninety four is the year the

NATHA took effect. One of the things about this free trade agreement is that it in order to ratify it, the Mexican governments changed the constitution, and the part of the constitution they eliminated was the part that had secured collective ownership of a bunch of land for indigenous people, and this would allow corporations to seize and control the season, controlled the indigenous lands, exploit for resources, kicked the people off of it, and kill them. Now, this obviously was

unacceptable to the Zapatistas. They go into revolt. What I think people don't realize is the zapatisis what the Zapatisis did next, which is holding these a series of these things called encuentros like encounters. Sorry, my Spanish is not as good as it once was, and it was never great, but you know, in which they invited you know, sort of leftist activists from all over the world to get together.

And this is the thing that re built the left after the absolute catastrophe of the death of the old left around the collapse of the Soviet Union, which sort of annihilated like the sort of old left like communist political parties and you know Usherton, like the pure era of the march and neoliberalism, and the activists that came out of these encounters go back to you know, go back to their respective countries and they start and you know,

they're they're organizing against these trade against you know, these series of free trade deals, and they start doing what's becalled what's become known as summit hopping. I think the most famous of these in America is what's become known as the Battle of Seattle, the nineteen ninety nine giant protest against the World Trade Organization summit. Yeah, and this sort of you know, and this starts from about nineteen

ninety nine to nine to eleven. There's a huge wave of these well, I mean it goes on after nine eleven, but nine to eleven really damages it. But there's this massive it's like really the first sort of real like mass mobilizations and social movements like in the US sense, like there's a stuff in the anti nuclear whom of the eighties, but this is this is the first really

big sort of like resurrection of the left. And I think importantly for us, like the people who people who found occupy like David Graeber for example, is someone who starts doing politics like during this period dream alter globalization, during these sort of protests, and those people, those are the people who build occupy, and you know, occupy for whatever whatever else you can say about it, Occupy is the single event that brought that like drag the American

left kicking and screaming out of irrelevance and all of that shit. Everything, you know, every all of the sort of organizational tenets of occupy, all of its sort of ideology. That stuff is all stuff from multi globalization, right, and you know, the sort of tenants of like direct democracy, of the sort of like the sort of economic egalitarianism,

this opposition to free trade. This you know, this whole thing about the way that the World Trade Organization and the World Bank, you know, use sort of economic structuring deals to devastate economies and like turn entire nations into sort of debt peons. This is all ault globalization stuff. And this movement is very, very powerful and very successful.

Even the sort of arch like you know, by by by by the time you hit twenty sixteen, right, this has reshaped politics in the US to the extent that like arch neoliberal Hillary Clinton says she's openly in fa like openly says she's in favor of renegotiating NAFTA and opposes her own trans Pacific Partnership, which is the last of the sort of giant free trade deals that would

eventually like die and go up and smoke with Trump. Right, I'm going to read a passage from David Graver's piece to Shock of Victory about what actually happened UH dreamed this movement. This is section about free trade agreements. All the ambitious free trade treaties planned since nineteen ninety eight have failed. The MIIA was routed the FTAA the focus of the actions in Quebec, and Miami stopped that in

its tracks. Most of us remember the two thousand and three FTAA, some mainly for introducing the quote unquote Miami model of extreme police respression against even obviously nonviolent civil resistance. It was that, but we forget that this was more than anything, the enraged flailings of a pack of extremely sore losers. Miami was the meeting where the FTAA was definitively killed. Now no one is even talking about broad,

ambitious treaties on that scale. The US is reduced to pushing from minor country to country trade packs with additional allies like South Korea and Peru, or at best deals like caf TA uniting its remaining client states in Central America. And it's not even clear we'll manage to pull that off. And this is what we've seen from you know, sort of projecting forward from the future, from the two thousands when this is written. Free trade was not killed by

Trump or shijianping. These free trade agreements, if anyone, was killed by the Zappatistas and the global justice and the global justice movement. That the that, you know, the sort of like in contros and the Zappatista is built.

But much of the modern right is descended from the sort of ross perrot like right wing nationalists backlash to the same stuff. I think probably the most the most famous link between that era and this era is Alex Jones. This is the reason that like Alex Jones, and people like him screaming about like scream constantly about globalists, right, because you know, the global justice movement has two kind of wings. There's or you know what was called anti globalizition.

It's two wings. One wing is a sort is a leftist wing, which is like, okay, we actually support like the we know, we support the global like movement of ideas and people, but we but you know what, what what globalization and free trade actually means is locking people down in their countries with militarized borders while capital boost

freely between them. And we think that's fucking bad. There was also another you know, there was also the right ring reaction, which is this incredibly right ring nationalist reaction, which is that like, ah, like these these like rootless cosmopolitan globalists are uh are like like you know, taking all of our jobs and moving them to like Mexico, and you know they've like sold they're like sold out

the American people. And you know, like obviously this stuff is just it starts anti it starts like as anti semitic dog whistles and just gets I mean like like okay, these are like the loudest dog whistles of all time. Right, But you know, they get increasingly anti semitic, and this is the kind of stuff you know that Alex Jones is doing. And this is the kind of sort of writing politics that winds out over so sort of like

neo conservatisms more like sort of hoorah free trade. We're going to use like the might of the American empire to like you know, spread sort of like this very specific model of capitalism to other countries. And you get the sort of Trump style like fuck every other country, We're gonna kind of do tariffs and stuff. Now, what

I think is very interesting. So what Trump eventually sort of winds up, you know, producing as a discourse, I guess you could say, is is this is this image of Okay, so, like the thing that's holding back the American worker is China because all of our jobs are being sent to China, and so if we just put more tariffs on China and we defeat China geopolitically, everything will sort of like be great in the American nation.

Like you the white worker are going to have jobs again, Like everything's going to go back to the way they were. And what's fascinating about this is that, you know, as the trade war's intensifying, and then mid Light twenty tens in China, there is a parallel discourse which is almost identical, where Chinese nationalists will do this thing where they talk about like breaking through the Great Ming as a solution to evolution. We talked about involution on the show before.

Is this concept that's very popular in China right now, where you know, it's becoming increasingly clear that like a working hard is not going to actually get you any more money than you're getting now, Like you're not going to get ahead in life. You're just sort of stuck. And so you're stuck in this condition of putting more and more effort into nothing. And the Chinese nationalist argument is that if you, if you can geopolitically dif feed the US, China will sort of like break out of

its wage stagnation and economic stagnation. And so you know, what you have is this very very dangerous collision of these two sort of like right wing nationalisms that are like offering these really sort of categorically false assertions that if you just follow their sort of nationalists geopolitical agenda, then all of the sort of class issues that everyone's

dealing with will suddenly magically work themselves out. Now contra this and contra I think the argument that even that sort of just you know, the argument that I was talking about before, that like Trump and the sort of nationalists like economic policy and discourse from China like represents something you know, seismic, like a seismic change, and like

trade policy, that signals the end of neoliberalism. I want to come back to the point of will Trump actually be able to implement any of the stuff even if he had sort of near dictatorial power, And I think the answer to that is no. The reason I think the answer to that is no is that, you know, one of the old observations about quote unquote free trade from the global just movement is that, Okay, if you look at what quote unquote trade is, right, international trade,

huge amount of it is literally the same company moving its own resources from one place to another. Now, the problem is the more expensive it is for corporation to do this, the more pissed off they get. Right, and this means that this kind of like tariff war bullshit, And this happened through the Trump administration that pissed off a lot of people. And if if you know, and Trump is you know, his intention is to start an

even larger and more powerful series of trade wars. This is going to piss off a lot of people who actually matter in the sort of in the American political system, which is to say, a lot of shareholders and a lot of CEOs, and you know. And so I think the fairly obvious inclusion is that what actually happens here is you get exactly the same kind of shit that happened with Trump's like quote unquote pull out of NAFTA, where he makes like one or two symbolic gestures and

then everything continues as normal and he declares victory. Now, the second problem I have with people looking at this as a sort of new regime is the way that they're thinking about this sort of like tiff and subsidy regime as something that's that's not a part of neoliberalism, right, Like the sort of theoretical ideal of neoliberalism is countries aren't supposed to do tarriffs. Countries aren't supposed to be

able to do like quote unquote protectionism. So we're not supposed to give subsis and manufacturers and everyone's supposed to like compete on a free and equal trade playing field. This has never been true and in fact, what free trade has meant in practice, and this has been true since the founding of the World Trade Organization. What it means is that Western countries get to impose terriffs and

manufacturing subsidies and non Western countries don't. Right, even in the WTO, there's a bunch of random carve outs for like fucking like random workers in Germany and stuff. This is also a part of like literally a part of what start of the Zapatista uprising. I mean we talked about, you know, the primary cause, like the elimination of collective ownership from Mexican constitution. But another huge problem is what what NAFTA was going to do is force a bunch

of Mexican corn farmers to compete with American corn farmers. Now, okay, if it was literally just corn farmers from these two countries competing, like Mexican corn farmers probably eventually cauld out compete American corn farmers because Americans are fucking dogshit at farming. But under the terms of NAFTA, and this is again the thing that's been true of free trade this whole time, they have to compete with subsidized American corn. This is impossible.

Mexican farmers got fucking annihilated. All of their land was seized by corporations, and you know, it has brought sort of devastation and ruined to the Mexican economy ever since. This has been absolutely great for the ruling class because all of these farmers who suddenly like you know, can't afford to keep their farms anymore, were forced into sort of like labor and a bunch of shitty sweatshops that were set up from NAFTA. So this worked great from

the perspective of American capital. But again, if you look at what actually happened here, right, all of the sort of like rhetorica of free trade, you know, like sort of like fades into myst and face of the reality of one of the great industrial policy programs in the in the history of world economies, which is the American

subsidization of its own fucking agriculture. And you know, this isn't considered in the quote unquote industrial policy or like industrial like government planning or whatever, like largely because people have this weird bias when they talk about government planning that it only is supposed to apply to like, oh, government planning means when like someone like plans steel outputs or some shit, but like, no, like the actual large scale economic plan that goes on the US is the

unfat like billions and billions of billions and billions of dollars will be pour into the agricultural industry every year. So, you know, if if you look at the stuff that everyone's claiming of these sort of new innovations that are like the end of neoliberalism, right, it's like, oh my god. Other countries are putting up like protectionists subsidy things, Like they're having their you know, people are like trying to make microchips and they're having like state sponsored programs to

do microshrips. It's like, well, they're just doing with microchips what the US has been doing with cord this entire time. Right. What's really changing to some extent is that, you know, the deal had always been that Western countries get to impost Harris and AD manufacturing subsidies and non Western countries don't.

And I think part of what's weighing people out is that, like, you know, China has actually been kind of attempting to break the West monopoly on being able to do with industrial policy, and this has caused a bunch of people to really severely overestimate the extent to which like this is an actual break from previous regimes of trade and capital. Now, another point that I want to make that I I've talked about this before on the show, but I want to kind of briefly touch on it again because I

think it's really important and it's really badly understood. Is that for all of the sort of discourse about how like a China's like entering into economic competition with the West, and it's like increasingly using the party to like pursue nationalist aims instead of like following the market, if you look at what's actually going on in China, despite all the hype about like China and the US are decoupling their economies, or like China is trying to make its

own domestic silicon industry, the actual tendency in Chinese economic policy is towards further integration and increasing foreign otoship. China has a lot of provisions about foreign companies needing to be in partnership with Chinese companies in order to operate

in China. There's always been massive restrictions on how much stock a foreign company can own in Chinese companies, and these restrictions in sector, sector after sector after sector are being lifted, and so you have to sort of look at this, you know, the sort of like surface level nationalist narratives about like, ah, we're entering an era of like warring like like warring mutually exclusive economic trading series, with the reality of China being like, no, please foreign capital,

like you can operate here without us. It's going to be great just to keep keep keep pumping more capital in if we all, if we all work together, all of the sort of porgeows you will keep making money together.

And I think all of this leads to something the last thing I want touch on, which is what's actually happening here and the thing that's actually happening here and the problem, the thing that's actually causing all of these sort of like all like the sort of focus on trade itself and the sort of Trumpian nationalists, we can

solve all your problems by trade competition. What's happening is that after about the nineteen sixties, because of sort of structural manufacturing of a capacity under consumption production, you know, industrial production is zero sum, right, you can't increase production rates in a country without that, you know, without that production coming at the cost of another country. And this is this is because and wow, stop me if you

heard this one before. This is because of fucking capitalism and what Trump is trying to do and what you know, to a lesser extent sort of xihiping, and what to you know, these sort of Chinese nationalists are trying to do is turn you know, they're trying to stand on a beach and order the tide to recede in order to stop the coming class war. They are trying to say, no, we can go back to the era where production wasn't zero s. We can do this as sort of terrorists.

We can go back to the golden age of both corporations and unions making moor corporations and workers like making money together and the sort of like national collaborationist project. And they're doing this in large parts because they are watching the same thing that you and I are watching, the same thing. That's the reason this episode is being recorded at fucking three in the morning, is at of a normal time, which is that all across the US,

and you know, increasingly all across the world. You can fucking see the working class starting to organize again. You can see it starting to wake up, you can see it starting to mobilize. And this whole fucking thing, all of Trump, right, this entire sort of racist, senophobic nationalist project, is just utter dread that Ferguson and the Black Revolution

put into the fucking hearts of these people. And if we fight hard enough, we fight smart enough, and we fight organized enough in Shilah, we will see the fucking day when these people's nightmare comes true and we never have to hear another word from these fuckers again. It says been it could happen here. Hi.

political movement as well. The Opposition underperformed last year. They were not able to defeat Erdowan as the polling and the sentiment in the country had suggested that they would, and the pro Kurdish political movement also underperformed as well.

They did not win as many seats or as many votes as they usually do, and a lot of that was attributed to the very complex Alliance decisions they made, choosing not to run their own presidential candidate and instead ask their voters to vote for the CHP, which is the main opposition party that has a history of being very nationalist and violent and exclusionary towards Kurds. Though things have changed in these past twenty years, voters didn't understand

that a lot of voters weren't happy with that. And then there were some local level issues with selections of candidates as well, and then of course the climate of very severe political repression, and had the opposition one there was a lot of hope that it would have started

to change things on the Kurdish issue in Turkey. You know, from what I'd been hearing from people, there were prospects of political prisoners being released, of contact between the state and of delah Ojalon being re established, which could have been the opening of a new peace process if you follow this. You know, the PKK declared a ceasefire prior

to the elections. They initially said that it was following the earthquake in order to not allow the conflict to intervene with humanitarian efforts, but they did very explicitly extend it through the elections. And the discussions around that that I heard in Iraqi, Kurdistan, in Northeast Syria and in Europe made it very clear that that was an opening to hopefully be able to leverage it into a larger piece process were there to be a political change happen.

So for Kurds, the situation did not improve. Ardwan continued his crackdown and his military aggression against Kurds in Iraq and Syria, and for democracy in Turkey, for the condition of the opposition, for the condition of all the groups that pressed under Aerdowan's regime, whether that's women, whether that's workers, whether that's the earthquake victims that have been left behind,

things didn't get better. So these elections were an opportunity for people to register their disapproval in a way that I think many might have wished that they could have a year ago. And that disapproval was registered for the first time. Air Dowon's party, the Justice and Development Party or the AKP, was not the first place party in Turkey.

The main opposition CHP actually overtook them the pro Kurdish People's Equality and Democracy Party or the DEM Party, which used to be the HDP, So if I call it the HDP, I'm sorry. Went Actually their results were much more in line with what they had done in the past.

They performed you know, right on standard, they actually won more municipalities than they did in twenty nineteen, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for change among Kurds, among supporters of the opposition, you know, among people who I think had wanted to see things start to move in a more democratic direction last year. So that was a very big deal for that reason. And it also shows the fact that Airedowan is not necessarily as invincible in twenty twenty eight as people feared he would be.

unfair playing field for the main opposition as well. At Kreme Mamoluh's the very popular mayor of Istanbul, who just won reelection by a very large margin, as a criminal case against him that could have him banned from politics, So this was very difficult in the Kurdish regions. There

were many many irregularities on election day. One that a lot of people were discussing were these so called mobile voters where the government actually sent members of these security forces predominantly from Western Turkey into Kurdish cities to vote

in large groups for ruling Akap. You know, there's a lot of videos taken by local media, local politicians and activists challenging these people, asking them where they're from, and then videos of them all crowding into the airports and back on their buses flying back to Western Turkey the next day, so you know, they're not even making a pretense of being local voters. That shifted the results in

some districts. In Chernock, which is a very heavily militarized province where the government bases a lot of its military campaigns. You know, into the occupied regions of Iraq and Syria from the pro Kurdish political movement alleges that these voters shifted the outcome. So you had that kind of outright attempts at theft in addition to the context of repression.

And then most brazenly, just one day after the election, the local provincial election board denied a mandate of victory, you know, essentially the documents certifying that a candidate has won the elections and will be allowed to assume office to the pro Kurdish candidate of Billa Zaidon in the province of Vaughan, which is a heavily Kurdish province where the dem Party won all fourteen district municipalities and the

metropolitan municipality as well. So the local election authority essentially said, no, you can't run. There's been a last minute legal finding that you're unfit to run for office, as there always is, right, and then they tried to give the municipality to the candidate from Erdowon's party, the AKP, who got less than half of the number of votes.

and that violent military campaign in the cities. But last night they were out in full force, and very notably, they weren't alone. There were protests in Istanbul and solidarity as well, you know, carried out by Kurds living there, but also by leftist parties, by feminists, by Kurdish religious organizations, by all the segments of civil society that have sort of oriented around the pro Kurdish political movement, and there was also a pretty significant reaction from the main opposition CHP,

which is not known for radicalism. You had the CHP party leader Osgara Ozel saying that it was illegitimate for the government to deny a candidate a mandate, and then you had Imamulu in Istanbul also criticizing the decision, saying it was illegitimate and calling on the government to respect the popular will. So at the same time you had this outcry across the Turkish political spectrum, you had tens

of thousands of people out protesting, braving police violence. You know, there were armed pro government vigilantes caught on video shooting into crowds. There was very, very harrowing videos of beatings and torture of civilians. Journalists were attacked and prevented from covering the protests. This was a very difficult situation to watch, and a lot of people that I was speaking to were worrying about a return to the level of violence

that seen in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen. Were things to escalate, But you know, sometimes there's good news in

Turkey and Kurdistan. Not always, but sometimes you know, in Turkish you'd say da dyne kaslan Achaz will win by resisting, and in Kurdish you'd say behludan Jiana resistance is life and that sort of Those are very famous protest slogans that proved really accurate last night, because today Turkey's Supreme Electoral Council actually reversed the attempt to give the election to the losing pro government candidate and gave the Dun

party candidate his mandate back. So they've said that he will be allowed to assume office, and I think they looked at this huge street protest, they looked at this opposition coming from not only the pro Kurdish political movement but many different political forces in Turkey, and the state decided to back down. They decided not to pick this fight now. And you know, that's not to say that

voter suppression in other provinces wasn't an issue. That's not to say that there are still outcomes that are being contested. You know, the government's doing a lot of very unfair things right now to try to take districts from the

CHP and from the pro Kurdish political movement. But what this does show is that when people insist on a democratic outcome and when they are willing to stand up for it in large numbers and face the consequences the difficulty of doing that that even regimes like air dons, these very you know, autocratic, far right governments have a

point at which they will back down. And I think that that display of resistance and solidarity getting a government like that to back down is something that can be very hopeful for people around the world right now.

the government's abandonment of the peace process itself. Then in twenty nineteen after the local elections where the government lost control of Istanbul and Ankara for the first time. That was very quickly followed with the appointment of state trustees to Kurdish municipalities, and then the invasion of North and East Syria following Ardwan's agreement with Donald Trump about that.

And so this does look like the kind of context in which he has lashed out against Kurds in Iraq and Syria before, and given these threats that you mentioned that he has been making. The diplomatic traffic between Turkey and Iraq, Turkey and Iran, Turkey and the US and Europe. They do appear to be preparing for something now. I was just on the ground in North and East Syria and in Iraqi Kurdistan, and I heard from many people

that they're concerned. The threats that the government has been making appear to suggest that they might try to go for a geographically larger military operation this time. There's a chance that instead of only conducting their typical spring offensive into Iraqi Kurdistan, which usually gets them nowhere, they might also attempt to invade northern Syria as well. Of course, that's very internationally contingent. They would need a green light from the Americans and from the Russians to be able

to violate those cease fires and go in there. But the threats very real. It's something that people are very concerned about on the ground, and I think that it's worth paying attention to, and particularly for those of US and countries that are allied with the Turkish government making noise about, you know, opposing trying to get onto the agenda so that permission is not given here and they're not incentivized to do this.

But this is one of those like be right to your your rep things like that, that doesn't a lot of shit isn't going to get changed with an email to your elected officials, but especially like certain officials who are on you know, foreign relations, to committees or something, as well as as like other forms of political activism could help here, right like, especially in an election year like that. That's a way to stop that.

NATO countries that are allied with Turkey. There's a lot of leverage and you know, pushing to end that military support is something that could be done right now, that could be very important. And really, you know, this is something where one feels almost when one makes these calls, like once constantly asking you know, you should do this for these people because they're being oppressed and your government

has a say in it. But we really benefit from this too, Right if you look at what the Kurdish people and their allies in Turkey have done and standing up for democracy in getting the government to reverse this attempt to steal an election, you know, that's one small example of the very powerful democratic tradition that they have.

That is something that we can learn from, you know, whether you're in the US or in Europe, in many different countries around the world right now, the threat of authoritarianism and the sort of far right politics of which Airedwan is an example, it's an international threat, and you know, standing with the people who've been able to resist it is something that you know can benefit us all around the world as well.

The one more thing I wanted to cover with we're jumping around a little bit was but like I think people will probably have seen at least maybe their social media timelines are different than mine, But there was a lot of violence against Kurdish people in Northern Europe recently, right in Belgium, I think, I think maybe in Germany as well. Explain a little bit of that. Like it's we get into a little bit of like like Turkish fascist politics as well, but can you explain what was going on there?

You have the Gray Wolves, which are a fascist paramilitary actually the paramilitary wing of the party with which Airdwan is currently allied and with which he has a majority in parliament, the National Action Party or the MHP. You know, this is a group that's been responsible for murders and assassinations and all kinds of attacks on Kurds, other minorities, dissidents, and has been responsible for violence in Europe as well.

You have the government encouraging religious fundamentalism through its network of religious institutions in Europe and trying to make that very extreme and very politically instrumentalized vision of religion popular amongst the Turkish community. And then you have you know, Turkish intelligence assets able to freely operate and conduct all kinds of attacks on Kurdish dissidents, you know, within the very center of Europe.

to come out. And then, just I believe yesterday or maybe the day before, it came out that a Belgian court found alleged Turkish operatives responsible for planning attacks on two very senior Kurdish diplomats in Belgium who are members of the Kurdistan National Congress, which is sort of like the de facto foreign ministry of the Kurdish diaspora in Europe. You know, these individuals had been spying on the Kurdistan National Congress building, They'd been in contact with Turkish officials,

They'd been planning assassinations very senior politicians. This is a real problem. You know, these groups and the state itself are able to freely attack civilians, plot murders and do violence and really cause chaos. And that's something that's very dangerous, not only for the Kurdish community, but for really anybody living in their way.

which is certainly good. And obviously, you know, we saw a lot of calls for a restraint, you know, from the Kurdish community, a lot of calls for or these European governments essentially to do their job and prevent these groups from you know, importing their nationalist campaigns against a persecuted minority to a place where you know, these cords have fled to be free from that sort of thing. So it's stopped for now, but it's very much not over,

you know. I when you see the Kurdish community in Europe and spend time with them and look at the security precautions that they have to take just to hold conferences and cultural festivals, Yeah, it's really quite disheartening.

religious fundamentalist regimes that are on the rise everywhere. These are political trends that are growing around the world, and Airdowan and his current Turkish government are a very clear example of the danger that that causes, not to just the population of a country, but to neighboring countries, to diaspora communities that have left, that have gone elsewhere, that maintain their culture and maintain their interest in political organizing.

So these are threats that people are going to be looking at around the world, and I think it's very important to be following the situation in Turkey for that reason.

But at the same time, looking at how the Kurdish people and their allies in Turkey, you know, on the left, in workers' movements, in feminist movements, in all of these sort of grews that have also been victimized by Erdowan's regime, we're seeing that resistance is possible, that people can stand up for democracy and they can win and that look right, nobody's giving up on their work. You know, the KMK doesn't stop advocating for Kurdish interests in a diplomatic capacity

because their members face threats. You know, these people go to work every single day, you know, in Wilsheva, in North and Eastsyria, in Iraqi, Kurdistan, Kurdish groups, you know, Kurdish political organizations, Kurdish politicians and activists, they continue building up their project. You know, I said, I was just in northern Syria. It's extremely difficult right now. People don't have electricity, people don't have water because Turkey bombed all

the infrastructure. But still they're celebrating now Rose. You know, they're talking about their upcoming local elections that they want to hold and how to hold them in the best way. You know, they're talking about their new social contract and how they can implement it. They're moving forward constantly despite the threats that they're facing. And I think that you know, many of you listening to this are people who are probably looking to improve and change the society that you

live in. And so when we look at what's going on in Turkey and in Kurdistan, we can see both very clear examples of what it is that people who want change are up against, but also what they can accomplish even under those conditions.

happy to do it. But like it would be nice to see some of that solidarity come back from the US, right, So are they're like, I mean, I guess you can come down to the border and help Kurdish people literally any day of the week if you'd like to do

that all the time. But what concrete actions people take, especially with regard to like helping their self administration in North and East Syria, right, Like they're facing constant attacks, power stations get bombed, Like all my friends there are always struggling to have power, internet or even like electricity, and they got flooded recently on top of all that. Yeah, so like their concrete actions people can take to help to be in solidarity Oh absolutely.

situation like this live. They want expertise. There's a lot of problems that they're facing that they simply because of the war, don't have the capacity not only to solve, but even to start thinking about how it is that one solves a problem like this because there just aren't

that many societies in the world going through it. So any kind of in addressing energy issues, environmental issues, these kinds of problems, the second and third order effects of the attacks on infrastructure, on oil and gas, on power facilities, that would be very important. They really do need that, and that's something you know, you can write to us at the Kurdish Piece Institute. We can connect you with people. If you have contacts on the ground there, you can

talk to them. That's one thing. Then at the end of the day, you know, they have these elections coming up that is a big step for them. They've just put out a new social contract. They're really trying to listen to some of the internal criticisms that they get and really build up the civil, social political side of

their system. You know, there's a belief among many people there that I've talked to that because of the existential nature of these wars that they're fighting, they haven't been able to really pursue the political elements of their revolution to the degree that they want to. And they're trying to do that now. They have this new social Contract. It's an incredible document. You can read it. They're going to hold municipal elections on May thirtieth, I believe is

the date that was announced. So any if you know a lot about electoral systems, if you have done election observation before, if you want to help them do that right and get international attention for what it is that they're doing. That's another way that people have been telling me that you can help. And then finally, you know, if you're here listening in the US, Airdwan is coming to the White House on May ninth. According to reports from Turkish and international media, there is going to be

a demonstration. There will probably be a lot of campaigns around that demonstration as well, on things like conditioning and ending arm sales and security assistants on calls for peace, on calls for the US to end its support for and enablement of Turkey's occupation of Iraq and Syria. It's repression of its Kurdish people at home, and so anything that you can do to join those actions in those

campaigns would be very helpful. You know, this is going to be an opportunity to let both Airdowan and the White House hear what the American people think about US support for what the Turkish government is doing. So be there, get involved. That's one way that we can, you know, make our voices heard and try to push for a change in policy.

and that would concretely stop. Like I spoke to a mother who lost her son. He was a little I think it was like fourteen fifteen, a little football player. They had pictures of him all over the house, right, Like, it was really heartbreaking stuff. And I know that this happens a lot in other parts of the world. I'm not saying that's not important too, but yeah, it's it's always hard to talk to parents who have lost their kids,

and you can stop that happening. Like, if we don't sell them the f sixteens that do that, then they don't have the ability to do it, at least not as much.

they're on the same side. We don't always know that we're on the same side too, And so I think that getting together and pointing out the patterns and standing against you know, these arm sales and security assistants in the context of Kurdistan, alongside many other contexts where they're also very destructive is an important way that we can sort of amplify our efforts to do that.

English language. If you're looking for resources on the ground, you can follow North Press Agency which publishes in English, the Rojeva Information Center, which publishes in English. And then you know, get involved with your local Kurdish community in

a lot of major cities in the US. If you're in New York, if you're in Boston, if you're in the DMV area, if you're in California, like you know, there are active Kurdish communities, and you know, go to a cultural event, go to a demonstration, you'll find both great ways to get connected and really get plugged into solidarity efforts. But also you know, a wonderful community and a wonderful culture that I think, you know, anyone would be.

I've certainly been, you know, very happy to have experienced.

like Columbia. There's like CSU, Humblet, University of Texas at Austin, Ohio State, Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, some university in Italy, Emerson, Tuft's, MIT, NYU City, University of New York, the New Schools, University of Rochester, University of Pittsburgh, USC, University of Minnesota, University of Michigan, Vanderbilt, UNC, Chapel Hill. I mean, there's so many of these. By the time that this goes up,

there will be more of them. Yeah, it's been wild, there's been a lot of I mean at Humboldt, there was a lot of very intense fighting with the police. A bunch of kids occupied a building. They beat the shit while Okay, that's going a bit too far, but they barricaded it, kept the cops from coming in, cops ran off of campus. So, lots of incredibly wild stuff happening. Yeah, which I guess brings us to the Gauza. The I

guess the original one, the first one. They got a lot of media attention, the Gauza Solidarity acampment at Columbia.

suspended a number of pro Palestine advocacy student groups. They were very slow to move their feet about targeted attacks against students who were demonstrating for Palestine, including an incident where someone was allegedly sprayed with a chemical irritant or people were sprayed with a chemical irritant by former IOF soldiers who are also students here, and just this, you know, building tension of there is a actual genocide occurring, and

universities are being forced to and towards the people committing the genocide instead of standing on the right side of history, or they're actively choosing to do that too, because their whole thing is not about actually educating people and preparing them to be tomorrow's leaders and managers or baristas, but to get people, you know, to give them money to fill their coffers and portray this image of you know, exceptionalism and elitism and whatnot.

And I think the reason why this stands out is because this is an elite university where you can't say, oh, well, these are just dumb TikTok kids. These are kids who have like the these are like adults who have you know, they have incredible resumes, really high academic excellence. They got into an extremely difficult school to get into, and they are joining the ranks of the you know, frazzled fringe, stinky anarchists and the silly kids who are being brainwashed

by TikTok. And they said like, no, those people are right, like this is bad and you need to disclose and divest and we're not going to stop until you do. And I think that that stance from a position of

privilege really shook things up. What followed also set a tone of the university deciding to call the police and claiming that this encampment was it posed a clear and present danger to the safety of students on campus, which, you know, anyone who has spent any length of time in or around the encampment can plainly see that that is nonsensical.

breaking things or assaulting people or anything like that. And they're just using this to call attention to their cause, which is divestment from genocide and from you know, war profiteering, and to and the school's gentrification of Harlem, and to you know, at institute, an academic boycott of Israel and Israeli campuses that are in community with Colombia, like their satellite schools that bring the IOF soldiers to Colombia to

commit harm against students here. And you know, so these are these are very basic asks and they were met with state force signed off by the president of the school, and seeing that, I think is what provoked a lot of other schools of like, well, if Columbia's doing it, than we definitely got to because you have a major elite institution taking this step, making clear that this is not just a cause that you know, the scrappy little weirdos at the bottom like me care about, you know.

And so I think that's what set it off. And the fact that they returned they just took over the other lawn while while their classmates were being processed after being arrested. They just took over the other lawn and they're like, all right, we're going to set it up here was such a hilariously like based move that it

was like the defiance and the determination was undeniable. And when you see a group like with the students at Humboldt, where the cops with the riot shields are trying to barge in and they're pushing them back and they're screaming get the fuck out, and they're bonking them over the head with the empty water jug, when you see things like that, Yeah, when you see things like that, it's very like there is an energy to this that has always been there, but that has not been very easily

seen by the masses, and we're now seeing it show its head of like, no, we're not fucking around, like you need to listen to us.

not surprising for people who've paid attention. It's a relief for kids who are here and who have been involved, and who have been silenced and ignored and written off this whole time.

the student protests that I had been involved in. I'm just going to say that, and I can remember like the reaction by students when seeing that fellow students being assaulted by the police was like, Okay, fuck this, Like you know, like Georgio Wah has this thing about like when I see a real flesh and blud worker of

fighting is natural. Letting me the policeman. I don't have to ask myself what side I'm on, did you find the same thing with students where they were like, okay, I wasn't out here, And now I've seen the way the university and the cops have responded to this, and now I'm coming out because it's not okay.

on the lawn at risk of being arrested. After they were arrested, more students came onto the other lawn and have continued to occupy that second lawn so absolutely it was a strissand effect.

Physical harm is a threat to cease whatever it is that you're doing, of academic harm. These are things that are trying to get you to stop doing what you're doing. And when you know that they are being deployed as tools and tactics. You're not gonna stop because they're not scary to you.

I wanted to ask about. I've been seeing a lot of stuff floating around about the negotiations that are happening between the university and the students, and I want to know what have you actually heard about these because the statements that have been coming out don't seem to really be matching anything else I've seen going on on the ground. Do you know what's happening?

But my understanding is that the students are very much holding their ground, very firm, and their their demands are very reasonable. It's saying like, tell us where your money comes from, so we can look into it and see that you're keeping your nose clean. This isn't a difficult to ask. I think if you ask to see my receipts, I could jump to you. Although I'm not an elite university, but I'm also not you know, profiting off of weapons manufacturing.

And so the university's stance is very much trying to kind of spook them into quitting. And there was a statement released by the president last night at four am saying that the students made some concessions, two of which were things that they're already doing. One of which was an easy adjustment that's not a concession, which was just making the camp more ada accessible and in compliance with FDN Y regulations for fire safety, which I think would

be crazy if a fire broke out at this camp. Anyway, I was a tangent. And then there was a thing saying that they're going to be ending negotiations in forty eight hours, and with the students reported out from those negotiations at the time was at the university at around midnight threatened to call in the National Guard and to

call in the NYPD, and that shut down negotiations. And it was only after they put out these widespread calls and thousands of people gathered on the lawn in support of the encampment that that was changed and the university agreed in writing to not call the YPD and to not mobilized National Guard, which I don't think they have the authority to do regardless, but it was this written concession from the university, and their perspective of it was

that the students provided concessions. And I think it's kind of it speaks to who each side is speaking to. The students are speaking to the movement that they have kind of shepherded into existence, and the university is speaking to their donors and their trustees and the right wingers who are having nuclear meltdowns on Twitter.

does it for them. So they wouldn't really be on board with the National Guard mobilizing here either. The school doesn't have the authority to do that. It's only the governor. The governor hasn't made any indication, and Mike Johnson is

doing conservative stunt work. He was joined by Elie Staphonic, who is a conservative, and you know she regularly disseminates disinformation and inflammatory propaganda to demonize unhoused people, migrants, queer people, so it's no surprise that they're you know, banging this drum, which was also pushed by Shy davidy or however he pronounce his name, who was an assistant professor here who attempted to hold a rally in the center of the Cause of Solidarity encampment with a slew of Zionists and

his ID card was deactivated and he found out in real time in front of a bunch of cameras that he called to come watch him. It was It's one of those things that you witness in real time that you feel like you're you're living in a movie. But it was great, and he had a nuclear tantrum and claimed that it was because he wasn't safe on campus when he was told that his protest was not safe

for their students. So, you know, I think it's we're seeing a lot of rhetoric and a lot of saber rattling from the far right, from conservatives, from people who have never had any kind of support for Palestinians or for the cause of Palestinian liberation. You know, Mike Johnson makes he receives over a quarter million dollars from APAC.

You know, these are these are not people whose statements should be taken seriously in the context of what is possible, what is reasonable, and what is you know, reality.

particularly in the US, is like their safe space. And I think the reason that they're so mad at this is that they feel like it's not just that it's happening, it's where it's happening, and like that that's called them to have these massive tantrums like you've reported on.

grandparents are in the Arian Brotherhood. So it's it's one of those things where it kind of depends on the day about how they feel about really elite campuses of higher learning.

to its inception of the Palestinian people. And in the IHR, in the IHR definition of anti semitism, it is any criticism of the State of Israel, which would include people who are living in Israel criticizing their own government, would be labeled as anti Semitic. And they're trying to redefine reality in real time by claiming that these students who just don't want for mass death to be occurring and they don't want their university to be responsible in facilitating

that are somehow anti Semitic. Meanwhile, a large number of them are Jews themselves. Who you know they held satter at the start of Passover.

Columbia University to antagonize people. They brought thick wooden poles with flags fixed to them to a demonstration on Wall Street the week prior to this encampment launching, and they were antagonizing people. They were getting in, they were trying to, you know, instigate arguments with people, and you know, they were just kind of trying to incite, and then they claim to be victims when people respond to their inciting behavior, and it's very much like an abusive mentality that they have.

But in terms of like actual anti Semitism, all of that, all of that rhetoric ends up being a distraction from actual instances of anti Semitism. And the more that you try to fuse the political ideology of Zionism with the prejudice against Jewish people for being Jewish, the more you try to fuse those together as one thing, like, you know, fusing Jewish identity to Zionism, the more you see instances

of anti Semitism actually anti Semitism. So if anything, like the students who are coming in cheering on Israel and boasting about the murderers of you know, tens of thousands of children, the starvations, and the displacements of millions of people, the more that they do that, the more that that teaches people like, oh, maybe all Jews are like that, maybe all Jews are bad.

that we've seen a lot. It's like this idea of like the universe, and this happens at every protest movement right like the state, the university, whatever, will seek to appoint people leaders and allow them to negotiate on behalf of everyone, even if those people have not consented to be negotiated for, and then they'll use that to corupt the movement, offer concessions that these particular people might want, and in doing so kind of defang the original sort

of protest. Is that something that you've seen happening or the university's tried to do to like divide people or to kind of pull people out and appoint them as leaders.

those SJP chapters have been suspended. So, you know, I think in terms of the possibility of the university having any sort of in to build some sort.

to organize. The literacy of it is just phenomenal. You know, there's people who are just they're all very like clearly knowledgeable about what it is that they're organizing for, what the risks are, what the history of the movement is, and they've spent a lot of time learning those things to make sure that when they decide to take a step forward, that they are doing so fully informed and fully empowered and trying to break that down is something

that has not been successful. And we've seen that, you know, time and time again. They have this chance. The more you try to silence us, the louder we will be. And it's true, and these institutions should probably start believing it because it would save them a lot of trouble by you know, trying to write this off is something that you know, people don't know what they're doing or you know, whatever it is, because they are they know everything,

They know everything. These are kids that all they do is study, you know, like you're talking about huge nerds joining into a massive, you know, decades long social movement.

And there was a huge faculty walk out from both campuses that gathered on the Low the steps of the Low Library, and it was easily hundreds I would say, maybe like five hundred people and.

multi layer of solidarity emerging in these spaces. And I think it's you know, even if the even if professors and faculty don't necessarily wholly or wholly understand they're not fully on the same wavelength as the student organizers, necessarily, they're still showing up on the basis of like, these students of the right to express their opinions and they should not be getting met with severe academic or state

discipline for doing so. Because we've seen these same campuses open their doors to people like Charlie Charlie Kirk and Gavin McGinnis, and you know, like white supremacists and white nationalists who are able to go on their campuses and spread hate and you know, right going disinformation and try and recruit people through their you know, young Republican school chapters.

Those chapters aren't being disbanded. You know, there's there isn't an urgent rush to prevent the hosting of white nationalists and white supremacists, and you know, people who are actually politically and intense anti Semitic to an extreme, they're not doing anything to actually like prevent those people from appearing

on campus. So I think that there's there's a lot of layers to it, but there is a very strong surge of faculty saying like, hey, this is this is fucked up, and we're not We're not going to let you think that this is just kids that you're picking on, Like you're also attacking your own staff, who you know, has a longer relationship to the university, has a you know, as hard as it is as it is for these kids to get into the school, it's harder to get hired to work.

But you know, there was there was a security person who sent an email to the school at Barnard saying, like I quit, Like this is this is inhumane, this is undignified, this is crazy. You're giving these students fifteen minutes to uproot themselves from their rooms. They might not have another place to go. These you know, these might be students who don't have a family's house.

And then there's also the fact that a lot of people just generally understand that genocide is bad, and it's gotten to a point where there's a lot of rhetoric trying to obscure that and obfuskate like what is genocide? And you know, Israel isroid truxs and all this other like bullshit like propaganda and disinformation and you know, fear mongering and all these things.

stay was on some dumb shit. Those protesters were right, and it's good that they didn't stop totally.

I have like a PayPal and a Venmo and all that other shit on my Twitter account if people want to send a couple couple bucks that way, and you know, another way to support is send me tips if you if you decide that you're gonna do something, feel free to you know, email and bio.