Also media. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
Hi.
Everyone, welcome to the podcast.
It's me James today and I am very lucky to be joined by Azad, who is fighting in Mianma Chinland specifically with the AIF. Welcome to the show, Zad, thanks for being here.
Yeah, thanks for having me on of course. Yeah.
This has been a project that I've been following from Afar for some time, maybe several months now I think. But for listeners who have not been following, can you explain very briefly the role of the AIF in the struggle in Miammah.
Yeah, sure, getting right into it.
Yeah, first, I like give a little bit of a spiel about like the context of the AIF maybe for people who aren't so familiar. Yeah, in Burma already for decades, there have been some kind of established president of we can say foreign volunteers of some kind or you know, ex military personnel or you know, somebody who is somehow drawn to the conflict. There has already been the president for some decades of people coming in a very limited capacity and helping with this group or that group. But
it mostly has been participation of two big characteristics. The first characteristic is that, of course it's been an individual basis, like whoever individual had this idea, they organized it themselves, they handled it themselves, with the exception of like the Freemam arrangers, but I wouldn't classify them as like, you know, foreign fighters or anything.
They do very very.
Good work, but yeah, slightly different role. Yeah yeah.
The people who did this kind of stuff were mostly coming as individuals, you know, kind of on their own progative. And secondly, they were overwhelmingly we can say non political or you know, ex. Military guys from Western nations or you know, from neighboring countries who were somehow drawn to the conflict and wanted to use their skills in that
kind of light. The AIF, on the other hand, is absolutely by no means like the foreign fighter organization in me and more or it's not like the foreign battalion, or that's also not what the goal in the mission is. It specifically came about after twenty twenty three twenty twenty four, there were slowly more internationals in the country, internationalists we can say.
Yeah, who were here on a much more yeah.
Albeit at the beginning individual it was the same where people were organizing their own ways, organizing their own routes and connections, but with a much more different perspective of this kind of more intentional anti fascist internationalist perspective yeah,
which led over into the name. So kind of as a result of discussions between me and some other people who were here and also some other people outside the country, the idea to set up a formation or an organization like this was floated, and of course after talking with like local partners and local comrades who anyway were involved with on the ground, there was a lot of enthusiasm on both sides, both from people outside the country, both from people inside the country.
So kind of.
Within that context, the idea to take a step forward in a more organized, explicitly consistent yeah, to use a polite word, consistent perspective for internationalism and Meanmoir, that was kind.
Of the goal.
Yeah.
And if people aren't familiar to see Anti Fascist Internationalists front, right, the AIF has a really cool logo with the peacock tail and the three rows and the like the white star in a red background. I thought that was I really appreciate your logo.
Yeah.
So yeah, I think people will like when they talk about the conflict in me Ima, they will be like, oh, why are they why I say, not more internationalists and why is they not more international volunteers? Something that you and I have spoken about before, it is that like, this has always been an international conflict, right, and it's
always been an anti fascist conflict as well. Do you want to explain that to people who because I think sometimes it's easy for people to fall into these orientalists of somewhat colonialist constructions of the conflict there, and I think you and I both agree that those are not the lens through which we should view it.
Yeah.
I mean, of course, the history of let's just use a big term, the history of conflict in Burma is of course very deep and very complex and has a thousand different ethnic and political you know branches that you
can go down. But if we're really focusing in on this post coup situation, which even though it has its roots and its context and of course the pre coup with you know, the existing ethink resistance organizations and the democracy movement, if we're really looking at the conflict post twenty twenty one coup, fundamentally it is not any one nations struggle. It is not anyone's people struggle. It is not even like a national struggle of Berno, we can
say it is fundamentally a fight against fascism. It is an anti fascist people's revolution. Where after, of course the coup and after these initial stages of protest and uprising, the people were faced by a choice of do we accept dictatorship, do we go back and do we live like normal? Do we accept fascism, do we live under fascism? Or do we prepare to sacrifice everything to fight against fascism?
And that was the fundamental calculation in that So insofar as it's to fight against fascism, that makes it an international struggle in itself. I mean, without even you know, going on too much about how anyways, the so called nation of Burma is dozens and dozens and dozens of different ethnicities and religions and cultures, which I mean, if you aren't thinking in the traditional nation state sense of internationalism and more thinking in the kind of brotherhood of
cultures and traditions. Then yeah, of course, without the flashy you know, foreigners coming, it's already an international struggle against fascism. But I think, you know, on a more intentional level, the dictatorship represents fundamentally the same fascism that exists all over the world, fundamentally state oppression. So yeah, in that regard, it's very much an international struggle.
Yeah, And something we've spoken about before is like the links of the inspiration I guess that comes from the internationalist struggle in North and East Syria and Rajava, and how that's very much been like a source of inspiration for young people in the MR. I've spoken to tons of them even two years ago, especially young women there right looking at the women's revolution in Rajava and seeing like that this was a possibility, that this was something
like on the horizon that they could strive for. Do you want to explain like your own perceptions of that inexperience of it.
Yeah, sure, Well, first, you know, not to overstate things, while of course the Rojava is a big inspiration I think not just for the people here in me and mar but truly like a beacon of hope in general. Yeah, you know, you know, a little biased, having spent time in Rozebah as you also have, I think, how can we say, I'll give a bit of context. In twenty twenty three, I think this message went out from the can DF to the forces in Rajaba, and I was there at the time.
So was I really what?
Yeah?
Yeah, I was stared to say we were there.
We were both there at the same time. Everyone started hitting me up for book recommendations. It's like October, I didn't know that. Yeah, okay, right off Joctoba seventh, I think.
Okay.
Anyways, so yeah, when this came out, like some friends sent this to me and was like, hey, can you translate this? And I like, not only me when I saw it, but also all the friends in the leadership and you know, all of the comrades there were like very one surprised, but also very excited and very happy to kind of see a message like this. And I think also when the message was returned, you know, some of the friends from the leadership you know, recorded this
video message and sent it back. It was very much like a very pleasant, happy surprise for everyone involved, and it really showed the degree to which fundamentally we are fighting the same struggles, even though you know, maybe you know, materially we're not talking about like guns going from one place to the other. Fundamentally we're comrades on the same very very long frontline. Now, I think what that looks like locally, especially, I'm happy that you mentioned, like specifically
the women's situation. You know, I myself sometimes when I'm giving training here, I like to show videos from certain parts of Kurdistan where they're very effective, we can say, and of course that naturally includes like the very very heavy participation of the women's guerrilla units as well as the men's guerrilla units, and specifically here and me andmar we see a very difficult situation in the revolution in regards to like the position of women, where because of
I mean, it's a very new revolution. Lots of these people are you know, a couple years ago, they were just in we can say, liberal society. They weren't in any kind of you know, maybe at best activist context. But it's not like these people had a strong revolutionary platform, and then they said, okay, let's launch a revolution against the dictatorship. It was a natural evolution from protests to resistance to revolution.
No.
So because of that, the same social structures that existed in liberal society were in a large part transplanted into resistance organizations, which means that, Yeah, of course, thousands and thousands of women from all over the country have traveled to these camps, you know, have prepared and have ready themselves to fight against the dictatorship. But in a lot of ways they're still facing off against you know, the
patriarchy that is inherent in all of our modern society. Yeah, so I think Rajaba into much as like I think anybody can take Rojaba as an inspiration. If there is anybody who, more so than anybody else, can take as an inspiration, it is women and youth. As that is, of course, like the revolutionary focus of the entire paradigm
of the Reva revolution. So I won't say that it's like, you know, like the leading inspiration for the people of me and more or something, but definitely the people who have interacted with it or interfaced with it in some
capacity be it official or unofficial. Of course, have gotten a lot of inspiration from that, and us as internationalists, both me as well as some other people here, you know, having had that in person experience with the Java revolution, of course for us is eternal inspiration.
Yeah, and it's a really beautiful thing to see, like you said, just to see people like when we think about alliances in conflict, right, if we look at the extremely interactional way that the United States enters inso those alliances, right, it's willing to allow the people who approach Java to die for it in the battle against I say so Dash that it's not willing to stand by them when they're being bombed by Turkey, right, something right, and you and I have both seen. But to see something that
is said begins with genuine solidarity and admiration. And one thing I really liked was when the k and DF replied to the video that came from Rajava, they said that they still had a lot to learn, especially with regards to gender. And it's so rare to see revolutionary movements submitting their faults, especially during the struggle, right during
the moment of revolution. And that's something that I've been so impressed with in Myanmar for a long time, is their willingness to look out at the world and see things that they think are better and adopt them or to at least consider them. It's the thing in Java too. Some of the one of the friends in Rajaba said that they were excited to learn more about Meamma because they hadn't worked everything out, and that they thought that there might be some solutions that they could learn from there.
And so it's really special to see that that solidarity that comes from a very genuine place and not just it's not just rhetorical. There are people such as yourself who have made the journey to fight on behalf of the revolution in me Mma. But it's really a special thing.
It's really a wonderful thing to see, especially like with the world seemingly getting more and more isolated and more and more nationalists as supposed to internationalists, like, it's a really beautiful time for it to happen too.
Yeah.
Absolutely, And I think I mean not to make the podcast, you know, a democratic and federalism ideology lesson or something, but yeah, I think insofar as the revolution in Rajaba considers itself a force on the side of democratic modernity. I think it's important to understand that they really mean it, like they really do see the conflicts that we're facing today against the capitalist system, against capitalist modernity.
They really do see it.
In this all encompassing light, that even though something is happening all the way over here in me and more and that maybe you could only tangentially connect to what's happening over there, they really do believe it when they say we are comrades in this same struggle. And that's why the solidarity is so beautiful to see, because it's that real solidarity. It's not just like, you know, pendering to some internationalist kind of sentiment.
Yeah.
No, it's very real and it has a very genuine basis in sharing more than common interests. I will say, so, for people who are not as familiar with the struggle where you are, which is in chin Land, would you explain a little bit of I mean, obviously we can, and we will at some point explain a little bit more of the history of chin Lan, because I think it's very important and it sometimes gets marginalized from even
narrative of the revolution. But can you explain like the groups and the struggle as it has been since twenty twenty one. In many ways, Chinland is where the revolution, the arm revolution began, right, So can you explain how we get to a place today where in recent weeks we've seen massive victories in Chinland.
Yes, So, as you know, the political situation at least between the groups is somewhat complicated. So I'll try my best to like most fairly but also somehow accurately described. Yeah, I'll start from the history. We can say, as you described in and around Mindot at the time of these protests, this was kind of like the catalyst and one of the first places that actual armed resistance to this dictatorship started.
And that wasn't armed resistance like with guns or something that was armed resistance like with the shotguns like double barrel shotguns from India, muzzle loading, traditional hunting rifles and air guns and things like this, and with that kind of weaponry, they were going and attacking police stations and checkpoints.
So it really was a sign for everyone like not only the bravery of the people that are willing to do something like that, but the willingness and the risk that these people are able to take, and the seriousness of their opposition to the dictatorship that look, this isn't just a protest anymore. Even we have only sticks and stones, we will.
Dis may this dictatorship.
So yeah, that was a very inspiring early period. And I think even before the involvement of some of the bigger ethnic armed organizations, there were already local CDFs, which stands for Chinland Defense Force, which is kind of just like PDF. It's a moniker that a lot of groups share.
There were a lot of.
Different PDFs and cdf popping up just in the days following the coup in Chinland. So yeah, like from the very beginning there was the precedent in the history of revolution there. Now these towns that were the beginning of the revolution have now been seized. So min Dot as of last month was taken by the Chin Brotherhood Alliance as well as you know CDF, min DOT and alliance partners. So the progress has definitely been made. The current landscape
looks a little bit like this. In Chin State, there's two big blocks. We can say, one block is the Chin Brotherhood and one block is the Chin Land Council. At first there was only one block called the ICF NCC, which sends for interim Chin National Coordinating Council or committee. I always forget the last ceime and that was like
the political big umbrella organization. And there was the CJDC, which is the military big umbrella organization that sends for Chinlin Joint Defense Council or Committee.
Again Lessie always in big use. So yeah, for a.
Long time it was everyone, including one of the you know, very old ethnic resistance organizations, the CNA CNF, the Chin National Army, Chin National Front was kind of involved in this one big umbrella organization and everywhere there was resistance against the dictatorship and on some level cooperation both with Chin groups as well as with the nug In twenty twenty three, political events occurred and as we can say politely, a disagreement in the political future of Chinland separated into
two groups, with CNACNF withdrawing from the CJA and forming their Chinlen Council, and the groups that kind of subscribed to that vision and subscribed to that path they joined the new Chinlen Council and all of the groups that remained in the CGDC in the ICNCC continued to hold on to the ICNCC as a kind of platform and umbrella organization for the people in Chin State that didn't want to subscribe to this new path, and then Chin Brotherhood was formed as the new practical military alliance of
those people who remained, we can say, and since then, in only one year, I mean, both sides have have had very incredible victories. No, Chinlein Council has been able to in the north of Chin State liberate Chika and Tunzong Town, and then of course in the south of Chin State, Chindler has been able to take Matupe and Contellette and Mindot. So definitely victories all around.
But yeah, I'll.
Stop myself before I comment too much more on that. Yeah, but victories, it would have been unimaginable.
Three years.
I mean we're almost exactly three years from the beginning
of the revolution. Four years guy, yeah, twenty twenty five, god, yeah, yeah, four years from the beginning of the revolution when, as you say, like those videos, that was when I first became aware of the post coup resistance, was seeing videos online of people with those traditional muzzle loading hunting rifles but taking on police checkpoints or attempted to organizer arm resistance, and those little air guns with the made of the blue plumbing pipe, like they it was incredible, like the
bravery of the people and their commitment and their willingness to risk their lives and sometimes lose their lives because like as one revolutionary doctor told me a few years ago, he said, like, my grandparents died for democracy, and my parents' generation died for it, and we don't think another generation should have to die for it, So like we're all prepared to go down fighting for this, which I thought,
you know, was really impactful. And then he was right that their willingness to risk their lives and to be so brave is unparalleled, and the revolution wouldn't have got to where it's got to. But it's such a beautiful thing that it has. I wonder like it's a crucial time for the revolution now right, like the revolution is as successful it's ever been. We're reaching the fifth year.
Can you explain like the role of the AIF within the broader revolution, because I think people get really confused by all the acronyms, and it can be easy to think that these groups and it's an alphabet stup right, I'm writing a book about this and Spain, and like I've spent most of the last week just trying to write the dictionary of acronyms that goes in the back of the book. But like, can you explain that these aren't groups that are necessarily sometimes they are opposed to
each other, they have different visions for the future. But can you explain the role of the AF within the broad anti hunter movement.
Sure?
First, I'll say, I'm reading a book right now about like the history of the communist part of the in Burma, and that history goes from like of the thirties all the way to the nineties, and every single page has at least ten different acronyms, and it's absolutely insane.
Yeah.
Yeah, Yeah.
About the AIF, the Anti Fascist Internationalist Front, which I'm hoping everyone just recognizes as AIF because it's kind of a mouthful. Our perspective so far has been that especially as foreigners, especially as like foreign foreigners, you know, like Western foreigners.
Yeah, we really want.
To avoid as much as possible the perception of we're coming here, you know, we've got military experience, or we've got this knowledge, or we've got that knowledge, and now it's time. Now it's time for us to tell you what to do. Or now it's time for us to train or something like that. Yeah, I would say our perspective is much more closer to the perspective of the you know, the international structures in Rajava. Our goal is recognizing that this enemy, the SASC dictatorship, the SAC junta,
is fundamentally a fascist, anti human enemy. That makes it also our struggle, and so not in some kind of like prison way, or not in some kind of like imposing way, but in a very genuine and organic manner. We want to come here and implement ourselves into the revolution. Now, we have some friends who are coming who maybe have previous experience with this or with that, and in their capacity,
of course they give training. Because the people here have the comrades, have been overwhelmingly receptive to training like this. You know that there's been no pride or no like, oh, we don't need the help.
Yeah.
Quite contrarily, everyone at all stages, even the nug is saying I'm not talking about us, I'm just talking about publicly, you know, to everyone is saying, whatever help we can get, we appreciate it.
Yeah.
But you know, we're not just bringing people who are you know Rajava veterans or veterans of some conflict where they can come and give training. Fundamentally, it's an anti fascist conflict, which means even people without experience are able to come and not only participate in the revolution, but in a less transactory way, not to say like, oh, I have something and I will give it to the revolution. In the most important way is to come and to learn from the revolution.
Exactly as you said.
Even a revolution like Rojava, which has decades and decades of history and tradition and culture and ideology and is steeped in this yeah, I would say, you know, one of the most powerful, prominent revolutions of our time, Yeah, is still able to say a revolution like this, of course we can learn from it. We need to learn from the struggles of our comrades there, We need to
learn from the developments happening in this revolution. Our perspective in AIF is very much the same where yeah, okay, maybe we have some limited material things we can contribute, but ultimately it's about organically participating in this revolution which is against fascism, and in our own ways to take the lessons of this revolution, to take the fundamental meaning of this revolution and be able to translate it for ourselves and for of course the future works.
Which are ahead of us.
Shall we say, Yeah, I remember as much much younger
talking to veteran of the International Group, an anarchist veteran. No, it's from the International Brigade to correct myself, and I have him to explain anti fascism to me, and he said that for him, like when someone devalues humanity like the hunter does in Burma, Francoist did in Spain, right, like I did in Syria, it debases his own humanity, and like anyone who attacks humanity in that way is attacking him and all humanity, And therefore it's the responsibility
of all humanity to defend humanity, to defend compassion in kindness. Absolutely. Yeah, I think what you're doing in Myanmar is part of that desire to defend humanity against inhumanity, against whatever we want to call it. What are the struggles that the revolution faces, Like I know you guys have recently been doing a fundraising campaign, for example, and the revolution is almost unique and its complete lack of solidarity from the states of the world. Right, there is not a state
that is backing this revolution. It is entirely the force of the people of Meamba. So can you explain some of the struggles within the revolution perhaps because of that.
Yeah, I mean as much as some people you know, like to say CIA or something like this, of course, the reality is that, you know, I've heard the term crowdfunded revolution.
I think it's incredibly accurate.
Yeah, because no, in the af we recently did a fundraiser for vehicles and equipment and things like this, but that's on our scale. On the scale of these organizations, I mean, they are fundraising from the diaspora millions and millions of dollars to be able to wage this resistance. And of course even like local people who themselves maybe don't have a lot, are giving everything they can or or any way acting any way they can, or doing anything they can to.
Help the revolution.
So we can say overwhelmingly it is a popular resistance, even I would go so far as to say it is fundamentally a people's resistance against the dictatorship. That of course represents itself in a lot of different organizations. But these organizations enjoy the like ninety five percent support of the people against the junta, you know. Yeah, So yeah, in that regard, the challenge, of course, is always resources and always the strength of the enemy. No, we're still
going up against jet fighters, helicopters, mortars, artillery. Yeah, you know, they have a lot of AMMO.
Us not so much. So there's like lots of these practical problems.
I think the how can we say cynical kind of as you mentioned earlier, Western outlook has been to paint this struggle kind of in Oh, it's a tribal struggle. There's all these different groups, they're all fighting for their own area. What's going to happen after they win? Now I disagree with that assessment obviously. I think you know
yourself as you're familiar with the conflict. I think it's much deeper than that, And even across these many different identities and cultures, there's very deep, very real coordination in cooperation where I don't think it's just like chaotic. But on the other hand, that is a you know, not
to give the the cynic's credit. That is a question which going forward will politically very much be on the AGENTA because I mean, now, as you're seeing, most of the country is no longer in the junta's control, and the parts that are in the junta's control are contested, and then you have the tiny sliver of land which they can say they somehow without any kind of you know, contestion control. So very soon the onus will be on revolutionary forces to answer that question. Okay, how are we
going to consolidate? How are we going to transfer these winds on the battlefield into something that is more permanent and more lasting. And I think you know already as you're seeing in Chinn State that I can speak of and that people are seeing and elsewhere that I can't speak of because I don't know. There are definitely frictions. You know, I'm not going to say it's perfect. Everyone is smiling, everyone is working together, and there's frictions that
will have to be worked through. But fundamentally, I think the trajectory as it currently is is positive for the resistance. We can say, yeah, definitely.
I was talking to someone yeah, yes, today in another part of me Emma, and I was saying, you know, I'm going to come visit you hopefully soon, and he was saying, like, oh, you'll have it. Like just to be in the liberated zone is so special. Talk to us about like liberated chin Land, right min Dat's just been liberated. Large areas have been under the control of semi control of a dictatorial regime that has been extremely oppressive to the Chin people for decades. Like how are
people receiving their liberty? How are they governing themselves or attempting to take care of one another in these liberated spaces?
Sure well, I think the first thing I'll say is maybe to contrast to other parts of meanwhile, we've been relatively lucky in Chin State, and that even you know, for some years already the junta, due to the mountainous nature of Chin State, has anyway, been reduced to the cities for years, like all of their checkpoints, all of their like external places. The last of those were cleared in twenty twenty three, and most of them anyway in
twenty twenty two were gone. So by land mass, even before these towns were seized, the junta controlled if you were to add up all of the area that they actually physically control in Chin State, maybe a couple square kilometers, you know, just the area of like their bases and something like that. So because of the nature of Chinn State, they never had the of course they did these atrocities and massacres and things like this, but on the kind
of like you know, fascist dictatorship level of oppression. Since after the revolution they had not really had the opportunity to impose themselves too much. They were the ones kind of cowering in their corner. Yeah, but I think especially after these towns are being seized now, you know, take Ricodar, which is the border town on India, or take Mindatom or Tupi. These towns that have just been recently seized. These are towns which people are wanting to live their lives.
I mean, Chin State has always been autonomous even in British rule, in colonial rule, it was just labeled as unadministered, you know, and there was a very rich democrat tradition or how can we say, maybe not democratic in the traditional sense, but tradition of self rule and autonomy in Chin State, and the removal of the junta from these areas is allowing those relationships to much more naturally flourish.
And I think the aspiration of a lot of people both abroad as well as internally displaced from Chin State is to return to those places where there's been fighting and to continue their lives as normal, which I think finally now that not just in Chin State, but all over the country, we're slowly seeing these alternative systems of you know, let's not call them like communist or revolutionary or anything, but fundamentally they are alternative to the state administration system.
Yeah, and I think that narrativit you pushed back on already that like, and we've seen it from so many every think tank, every analyst, ever, every so called expert has said the eros will only fight for their territory. When they've reached the limits to what they consider to be their like ethnic homeland, they will stop. And that
hasn't happened, right, It's not happened anywa where. But the fact that even if it did, right, or even if some of these e ros have visions for the future which is not as liberatory as maybe you and I would like the fact that there are parts of Bamma that are free now and that where people can live their lives as they wish will never change, and that will mean that those places are always there for people
to go to. And like, I'm sure lots of people you're fighting with and alongside have come to Chinland, right like, like, not all of them will be would have spent their whole lives. Yet they'll have come there from but my majority cities maybe is that correct?
Look like not to give any specifics, so I'll just make a very broad term to exaggerate the fact. You can say that I have met somebody from almost every single group in me more Inchinsta.
Yeah.
Now that's just to say. That's not to like, you know, be shocking or something. That's just to highlight the level of interconnectedness logistically, materially, militarily, you know, even if it's just someone sending someone to say.
Hi from somewhere.
You know.
Yeah, it's not like, oh, everyone's in their corners fighting. I mean, I promise you there are soldiers here which are giving their lives for the towns and Chin State, which maybe they never even thought about Chinn State before this revolution.
You know, they're coming from opposite sides of the country.
Yeah.
Absolutely, it's fundamentally a fight against the dictatorship. It's not the fight to liberate Chinland or to liberate Kadenny or something like this.
Yeah. I remember speaking to Mandoalate pdf a while ago, and they were saying to me like they were really scared when they first left the cities because they've been told that like wild people lived in the mountains. Yes, yeah, at that now we're wild people. We like the wild
people like. But yeah, this narrative, I mean, James C. Scott talks about this right in the art of not being governed, this idea that these mountains were never really places that are amenable to state control and that now there are places where people can go to avoid it.
But it's also important that this revolution.
Extends to beyond the mountains and into the cities and that people living there don't have to live under the boot heel of dictatorial state, which is what's happening right.
Yeah, absolutely.
People will be listening to this, I'm sure and like thinking this is laudable, this is incredible, and a they'll be shocked that they haven't heard about this, maybe especially the newer listeners. And I do want to say that, like you can go back and listen to our other coverage on MEMA.
There is a lot.
But like in terms of conflicts, right, conflict is always messy and war is never inherently a beautiful thing. Beautiful things can happen, it was, but we rarely see wars where there is so much good on one side and so much evil on the other. And why do you think that the especially the Western media has largely overlooked the conflict in Mema.
It's a good question.
Yeah, I will say, just on a very base level, without getting into any kind of like you know, pondering or something like that. I've spoken with a few journalists and you know, before anything, before we even talk about politics or something, there is just the material calculation that these outlets are making. From what I understand from what I have heard, people don't care. Now that's really unfortunate.
But like these like big networks, you know, CNN, whatever, Yeah, I have to make the calculation of the people they send and the risks to send them, and the actual exposure that these news articles will get.
From what I.
Understand conversations that I've had with some people that are you know, involved in these networks. Right now, there is not on like the executive board level. There's just not a lot of push to cover me in market and that's you know, that's really unfortunate. And I think one really bad side effect of that is whenever there's a tragedy,
the media is there. Yeah, you know, like whenever there's some massacre, or whenever there's some you know, intertribal conflict, or whenever there's something bad to report about, or maybe you know, on a good day, they're really big, like a win like in last year that we saw, you know, yeah, okay, yeah, for these big things that Western media will be there.
But I think even from recording these very like click baity eye catching things, it seems like they're not getting the exposure that they want to get out of this content, which is putting them off of covering the you know, in our opinion, much more meaningful wall to wall content.
That exists, I mean every day in me and Mark.
Yeah, it seems like this Western eye is only interested in the suffering, we can say, which is really unfortunate. But you know, even if the media is not paying attention, we can say, for better or worse, the governments are paying attention absolutely, I mean almost like hawks.
You can say.
There are every single regional government as well as foreign governments of course, keeping a very close eye on the situation, circling looking at developments, I mean China especially no being being very.
Involved in the process.
Yeah.
So yeah, Well, unfortunately, the kind of liberal media eye is not so much you know, giving me and more the coverage that it deserves as a popular revolution. The powers at b are definitely watching its progression, we can.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
I mean it offers an alternative for the world that like it's distinct even from Java, like the building of a revolutionary movement, like you said, the crowdfunded revolution, the revolution that like entirely I mean at points armed itself
using guns, it downloaded off the internet. You know, it offers sometimes I think when I'm thinking about, you know, my background in studying anarchists in Spain, and like obviously I've looked a lot at the past, but it gives me a vision of the future, like and it's only in covering the small parts of the revolution that make
it truly a revolution that we can see that. Like you have an Instagram and on there you're posting about training sometimes when you're doing the trainings and there are women who are coming to train, you know, with rifles to be I was gonna say, Marx, Marx people, I guess like people.
Yeah, on the US military, guys are weird about calling things snipers.
Yeah, there're snipers.
Yeah, Okay, Yeah, let's do that, Okay, in the moment that they receive that training and become like efficient with their weapons, like a revolution happens for that woman. And it's only through like following those those little revolutions that happen every day that make up a big revolution that we truly understand it. And I'm sure that's something that like you're seeing on a daily or weekly basis, right, like people's world's opening up and their horizons changing because of the revolution.
Well, listen absolutely now, of course, you know, as as leftists involved or interested in this revolution studying it, whether you're a socialist, whether you're anarchists, whether you're a communist, whether you're upper wist. You know, however you like to describe yourself whatever flavor you are, you know, without pontificating too much. I think fundamentally this revolution is a symbol
of hope that it can be done. No, Like, I'll give an example from the conversations that I've had with the comrades that have been involved in this revolution since it was just a protest movement in the street. One thing that I've heard a lot is that at the beginning of the revolution, when it switched, you know, when the police were fining blows into the crowds, and when people made this decision that Okay, now we have no choice but armed resistance. We have no choice but to
fight the dictatorship. When that calculus was made, when that decision was made, it was not made based on the kind of analysis of the situation that they could even win. Yeah, it was not even that like, Okay, we're going to do this and we have this strategy of guerrilla war, and then we'll do this, this and this, and then we'll achieve the victory. The calculation that was made was a moral calculation. It was saying, we have the choice.
We can go back to our life. We can accept this oppression, we can give up this struggle for democracy that we've been waging in one form or another, or we can make the decision to fight even if we won't win. It's the moral imperative to resist dictatorship. And I think what this revolution is showing not just for the people who themselves were surprised at their capability and we're themselves surprised at what they could accomplish when they
actually stepped up and fought and sacrificed for revolution. Fundamentally, it's a message to everyone. It says, look, these people at the beginning were going at checkpoints with like double barrels and air rifles, and at the end, now they are like threatening to overthrow what was previously assumed to be one of the most powerful militaries in Southeastern Asia.
I mean, now, like everyone.
Jokes on the top of dow because they're obviously garbage now, But like at the time, that wasn't That wasn't the analysis. You know, it would be the same as saying like, oh, you know, we're going to overthrow the USA or something like that. It was fundamentally people didn't even envision the victory, but on the moral principle to resist, they've resisted and from that moral position they were able to materialize the victory that they had.
Previously not even imagined. So, you know, for me, that's what I take away.
There's no books, there's no ideological books here that you can study and understand the underpinnings of the revolution. You know, there's no classes that you can go to that the
PDF teaches you about what their revolutionary paradigm is. Fundamentally, it's a fight of the people against oppression and against the dictatorship, and while of course there's some strengths and some weaknesses that we face in the revolution, ultimately in the same way as Rajaba, in the same place as other places in the world, it's a beacon of hope for democratic people who envision themselves fighting on the side of freedom and the symbol that actually, yeah, you can win.
Yeah, it's given me so much hope, Like at a time the last few years when we've all desperately needed something good to happen, Like something good is happening and incredibly good through them.
Yeah, Like it's breathtaking.
Like I went in twenty twenty two during the first year of the revolution, and I was shopping around this story for months, right, I knew these guys who were doing the three D printing, and I went to every major outlet. I was like, this is the story that's going to make people care, and no one bought it until eventually Cool Zone did and here I am. But like even twenty twenty one twenty two, talking to those guys,
I was like, they might all die. It's still been worth it for them, but they might all be gone in a year. Unfortunately, familiar with that from my line of work, but like to see it succeed, it's so
like incredible. It's obviously war is terrible, and terrible things have happened in the war, but like it's such a beautiful thing to see people refuse to accept tyranny and just through the tenacity of their refusal to create liberated spaces and to now threwn to topple like you say, one of what had previously been a feared army in the region. Like it continues to amaze me every day, every every time I see people dancing in front of a captured military headquarters or I don't know, it's just
such a such a remarkable revolution. Is that if people wish to be in solidarity, if they wish to follow the aif if they want to learn more about the af where can they do that? Are their places online or are there ways that they can support you aside from obviously like being part of the struggle, Like how can they help you?
Yeah?
Me personally, my information platform is mostly on Instagram, where I post updates about you know, either insights about what's going on or news updates or something like that.
And that's a zod underscore AFA on instagraram spat out aside to fit the known courage speakers.
Yeah, azad a z a d IF you will, Yeah, Thanky underscore AFA on Instagram. The AIF also has an Instagram for like official posts.
It's AIF me and more in.
General about the AIF, especially at this early stages. Right now, we're involved in some frontlines in Western meanmore and so because of that, we don't really have a lot of information presence out right now, but in the coming weeks, in the coming months, definitely when things get published, when more things like that come out, they will come out from kind of the existing distribution circles that have been going around, like libcom. There has been like statements going
out as well as Instagram perr things like that. Yeah, and recently we just completed a fundraiser. Our goal was ten thousand dollars for the vehicles and the equipment that we will needed to get started.
Yeah.
For listeners who don't know, maybe yeah, maybe they're not aware. This only started in October of last year, so we're still in the stages of consolidating and getting our equipment. We set the goal for ten thousand dollars and we exceeded it. We raised over thirteen thousand dollars for that nice, so yeah, we're very happy to say that. But in the future, of course, there will always be more opportunities.
As you know, revolution is very expensive. So yeah, on all fundraising platforms we have PayPal, cash app and venmo and all of those are aif me and more. And yeah, in the future, hopefully we will have more news both about what's happening in me and more are both how we specifically are involved, as well as just very exciting footage we can say we hope to share soon.
Yeah, that'll be great to see and I hope you'll come back and join us again, and maybe we can delve into a little bit more of the history of the revolution and the revolution in chin Land specifically, because I think these are things that that we need to cover more and I'd love to give people a place.
To learn about them.
Yeah, absolutely great, Thank you.
So much, Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. I am once again your occasional host, Molly Conker, and I am joined today by Spencer Sunshine, the author of Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism, The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege. It's available now in paperback. I have my paperback copy from Routledge Press. So Spencer, I guess let's get right into it. What is Siege and why should we still be talking about it?
Well, unfortunately, we should still be talking about it because it's still influential. It was a book originally published in nineteen ninety three, but that is an edited version of newsletters published in the eighties by a fellow named James Mason, who is a lifelong neo Nazi. He joined the American Nazi Party at age fourteen in nineteen sixty six. He
is still an active ideological believer in national socialism. It's a book that in it he makes the argument that any kind of normal legal political activity was pointless for Neo Nazis to engage in and like forming organizations, holding marches, making the traditional propaganda, trying to build up parties, even guerrilla warfare. At the end of it, he becomes very cynical about and he says through what are essentially dramatic
random acts of violence, of terrorism or murder. He even goes into praising serial killers like Joseph Paul Franklin, we can destabilize the government and society and after this neo Nazis can come to power. This has become a very influential idea. More recent he was rediscovered. It was a pretty obscure The newsletters were very unpopular that he never made more than one hundred copies. The original book had a print run of one thousand, so it was a
sort of obscure text. It was known amongst neo Nazi circles for some unusual reasons. It became mixed up with some countercultural figures and that was actually what made it more well known. But it was revived in twenty fifteen. It was found by these younger aspiring terrorists, let's say at the time, around a message board called Iron March.
It became the bible of the Atom Offen Division, this neo Nazi group that its members and associates killed five people, and out of that everyone in the Adam off And division had to read Siege, which became the hashtag, and out of that grew this whole sort of network, first of groups and now really totally decentralized, like propaganda channels on telegram to terogram promoting these same ideas, and so it's become very influential today. It gets named in like
terrorist manifestos. The school shooter, I think it was in Nashville, Tennessee that just happened. He makes a reference to people who are into siege in his writings, and more and more I've documented before him at least twelve murders or either by the amount Adam Waffin Division, by people inspired by siege culture, or by people directly linked to terogram.
So if we want to look at the main text animating neo Nazi terrorism today, which has now spread around the glow of those groups in Latin America, there's groups in eastern Western Europe. It's even influencing groups in the Middle East or people in the Middle East. They're called accelerationists. They want to accelerate the collapse of things. And if there's a single ideological text today that's influential on this scene, it is by easily James Mason Siege.
And what I particularly am enjoying about the book I just told you before we started recording, I haven't finished it yet. What I'm enjoying about this book is so you know, you were saying that James Mason started writing this in the eighties, right, but nobody was reading it. It was very sort of niche. It wasn't popular, even with it its own niche. He was not a popular man. He had a lot of beefs with other leaders in the movement. It's rediscovered in the twenty tens. It's big
on Iron March. It's the animating force behind Adam Waffin, And so all of a sudden in the last ten years, people like us researchers of the far right, mainstream journalists, people are talking about Siege, they're talking about Mason. But this, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is the only book sort of tracing it.
Back to its root.
James Mason did not come into existence in twenty fifteen on the pages of Iron March. Right, they sort of dug back up this writing that was at that point thirty years old. But this book, I mean, it's an incredible work of research, but it's also sort of a picuresque, right. It follows James Mason through decades of Nazi history. Right, he wasn't just a guy who wrote a newsletter. He was a guy who was in a lot of rooms.
He knew a lot of people. So through the lens of James Mason's life, you can follow the orange of the modern neo Nazi movement back to the sort of splinters and sects and rival personalities of the seventies. Right that you can't understand modern neo Nazi organizing if you don't know the history that goes back to the sixties and seventies.
Well, thank you forgetting that. I had someone write a review and it was an interesting view from the viewpoint of literary criticism. And he's like, well, this is one of these books about a book it's not And I'm like, yeah, it kind of is, but it's really and I started after I started writing this which has an unusual origin, or just maybe it is a usual origin, Like the first half is about neo Nazism in the nineteen seventies,
which is incredibly undocumented. There's a huge problem with a documentation about the far right in general before twenty fifteen. Probably more books have come out in the last ten years about the far right in the US before twenty fifteen than came out before, and certainly about neo Nazis, who are almost always when they are written about American
neo Nazis. It's usually in a history of the white supremacist movement, and there's no differentiation made between them, and I would say the National Socialists are quite different from other white supremacists for a variety of different reasons. So there is no book about Neo Nazism in the nineteen
seventies in the US at all. There are only two documents I can really name, and they're both written by National Socialists actually, one in Australia and one the head of the New Order, which used to be the American Nazi Party. It's actually not bad. It's an eight part series by Martin Kirk. So the first half is really reconstructing what happened in the nineteen seventies, because this is what Siege is coming out of. This Siege is an answer to the questions that faced neo Nazis in the
nineteen seventies. And then the second half of the book is even I would say, less about Mason. It's about these four countercultural figures who discover Mason, help publish him, and eventually published and disseminated Siege itself.
And part of that is I.
Was just around the scene these people were part of in the nineteen nineties. Like I saw one of them, boyd Rice Play. I had many mutual friends with another, the published Adam Parfrey of Farreal House. So like, I was like right around what these people were doing as part of the nineties counterculture. So I became very interested in that because these people always denied their background, you know, or s left it off or something. And I found
just so many smoking guns in this. And so I will say how this started is right after Charlottesville, they Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Always you say these things and then just you give the name of the thing, and people are like, wait a minute, that's like where I live. You know, we're more than that, you know, I was in Seattle. I was like, oh, I was at Seattle, referring to this nineteen ninety nine demonstration, and I'm like, people are here, weren't even necessarily born then,
and just saying at Seattle doesn't mean anything. So after Younite the Right, there was a spike in popularity in Siege and the hashtag read siege because it looked like the rally followed what he said, and he said, no one in an American society will allow neo Nazis to succeed, and a lot of people don't know this, but what happened at the initial rally is that it wasn't the street fighting people might be familiar with, even that's dating
from memory. Was before it was supposed to start, and when it was supposed to start at noon, the police, who had been standing a block away and letting everything unfold, marched in and forced everyone out, meaning the rally never happened.
Nobody ever gave a speech.
Nobody gave a speech. As we know, the car attack happened like an hour or two later. I got to look at a timeline, it's all like garbled now right, Yeah, that sounds right. And the book is co dedicated to Heather Hair I just want to point out. So it seemed to coincide with what Mason said. He's like, you can't do legal work, you have to do a terrorism right, And so there was a spike and interest in it, and Adam often had been doing more and more. Adam
often people are committing murders, strange murders. They're all very strange murders, which I think speaks to a lot of the personalities who are involved in this and other forms of violence, even in more structured political movements. I think it does attract tends to attract fringe people, except at certain times where people are intentionally using it a strategy as part of a bigger mass move And anyway, these are questions for terrorism studies, and so there was a
spike of interest in it. So I was going to write a short article for a think tank I used to be associated with, which I will not name because I had such a bad experience with them, and it was going to be an article. I couldn't get the facts to line up. As I said, there's terrible scholarship about this period, and so I used this very sophisticated research tool called Google, and through that I found that Mason's papers There was a huge collection of Mason's papers
at the University of Kansas and Lawrence, Kansas. So I decided I'd go there. I thought I'd just straighten these things out. There were some documents I needed, some very obscure fanzines and stuff.
That'd be the end of the day.
I got through. Well, first I discovered it's not easy to get to Lawrence, Kansas. You have to fly into an airport. And then I think I took an uber for like an hour.
There was like one.
Bus a day or something. Anyway, I got there and started poking at the papers. It was sixty boxes of his correspondence. He had letters incoming and outgoing since the early nineteenth sixties. As you mentioned, he was an insider to the neo Nazi movement, so it was with all these people he had kept carving copies of his outgoing letters. It was a unique slice of national socialist life.
In the United States. Never seen an archive like it.
People didn't keep their papers because they were doing illegal activities. The government sees them and has them in a warehouse somewhere or whatever. This is even in the pre Internet. I can only do this because it was pre Internet and there were paper copies of stuff, and of the age where I grew up doing all research on paper and in archives. And I quickly found out what I had.
And there were two things. One, as I said, was that there was this whole story of American Neo Nazism, of when the American Nazi Party splinters then called the National Socialistory People's Party in the nineteen seventies, and all these groups come out of it, many of which we know parts of like William Peters who wrote to Turner diaries, and the Skoky incident which is parodied in The Blues Brothers.
Some people don't know this just.
So Paul Franklin shooting and paralyzing US publisher Larry Flint, and some other things. And I was like, Oh, these are all people who came out of one thing, a splintering of the party. And I realized that there basically was a terrorist wing that came out of the splintering. And people knew Mason and people knew Pierce, but there was like a couple other groups or people, but people didn't put it together that they were all like the
most radical wing of these splinter groups. So there was that story, and then, as I mentioned, there was a second story about these countercultural people who had always denied that they were involved in national socialism or the level of it. It was just a joke, all these things that we hear today almost word for word. AND's how I found all their letters to James Mason, and they're adorned with swastikas and eight aids, and they're helping him.
Had they reveal the extent that they helped him, and the funny thing is a lot of this stuff was actually available.
And out in the open.
It was in published books, but it was like little pieces of flakes of gold scattered around everything. I started picking them up because I realized you could put them together. And so one article turnout was supposed to be one article, and then it turns two articles. And I sat down to write it and turned into a book. And then five year years later I finally had the manuscript done. Then took another year at the publishers, and then it came out last year. So it's been seven years of work,
and I've been going around doing talks. I did seventeen talks and support of the book, and as many podcasts and stuff. So I'm still the book is still part of my life, as much as I would like to sort of put it down.
But thank you for having me on the podcast. This is not great that you have me on the podcast. Not against no diss against you, no shade, no shade no.
And I'm so I'm so jealous of your trip to Kansas to see the archives.
I only recently.
A year or two, discovered that his papers existed in those archives, and so I wrote to the archivist and I said, like, you know, are any of these digitized? I would love to see them. And they're like, you know, we've only digitized like one box. And they sent me a couple of a couple of scans, but most of it has not been digitized. So you have to go to Kansas if you want to read this old pedophile Nazis letters to Charles Manson.
Well, I do have thousands of pictures I took of this correspondence. So yeah, if you were quest to digital copies, they won't tell you what they've digitized. And so it's like you know, trying to like randomly throw darts or something. If you get the right file they have them.
And I was like, I was begging and pleading.
I was like, please, just like any letters you have with Bob Heyite, I just I just want the Bob Hike letters.
But I can give you the Bob Hyke letters.
I would love those.
I think they'll they'll digitize stuff for a price.
Though, I'm sure I'm sure if I pay for it, they would do me the favor. But that's the thing is that there's so much interconnection here because these stories always get told episodically, right like the story of James Mason and Adam woffin the story of William Luther Peers, the story of the founding of the National Socialist movement. But nobody takes those pieces and slots them together because
they interlock. They all interlock, right, And so this idea of the lone wolf, I mean, I guess James Mason's life's work is to perpetuate and motivate the lone wolf. But is it really a lone wolf if he's training them.
Well, the lone wolf question is is a long question. A lot of people know Metzker moved to the lone wolf strategy after a war was sued by the SPLC and collapse, but Mason was advocating this beforehand and was very tight with Metzker. So there is actually a book describing what you've said, putting the pieces together, and it's called Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fast exactly. It's the I think, which you can buy today.
I mean, like I said, it's the only book that I know of that fits these pieces together.
No, it is the only book. Actually, I've been in contact with James Mason, and he said when radio interview, it's not the first of its kind, but it's the best of its kind.
High praise from the book's Nazi pedophile subject. Why did he donate his papers to the library, because, like you said, most people are not not only not preserving these items where they're not preserving them at all because they know what they've done is illegal or harassing to everyone involved, and they're intentionally destroying the evidence of these kinds of communications. But he not only saved them, but he wanted to make sure we could read them.
Did you talk to him at all about why he did that?
Well, he sold them. He was a wheeler dealer in especially American Nazi party memorabilia. You know, he sold furniture on the side, like antiques. He'd go antiquing and he if you've seen pictures of his apartment, it's filled with Nazi nickknacks, right, he's got a knife collection.
I mean, it looks like it looks like the Area Nation's booth at the Tulsa Gun Show.
It looks like my apartment, but like the in the inverse and fewer plants. So he was a collector. So he was already on My understanding is he was already selling George Lincoln Rockwell memoryabilia or whatever, papers and such. Two Kansas. They have this collection there called the Wilcox
Collection of anti extremist stuff. This guy, Laird Wilcox, had been in early students for Democratic Society before they took like Marxist turn and then decided that the left and the right were the same, like in the seventies or something, and started collecting all this material. So they were one of the they're probably the biggest collection of far right material. And as I said, at the time, libraries weren't collecting
it and people weren't writing about it. They were like, oh, these are just a bunch of kooks and wing nuts. They're not important. And some of this is because, like as I say in the book, the first neo Nazi mass murder wasn't until the late seventies, like it was what we know as neo Nazism today really only emerged in the seventies, is one of my arguments in the book.
So the papers were there because he sold them. The second thing is he is unique, I think, not unique, but very uncommon because he is an unabashed neo Nazi. He does not try to hide it. He is not like the NSM, which is actually a party he co founded, shockingly, but left over it as they turned because originally it was to promote violence, and then as it turned to
a more traditional Hollywood Nazi party, he left. But it's the same one that was at Charlottesville, and Jeff's Scoop was the head of I actually taught Jeff Scoop about how the.
Party was founded. That was very interesting. I interviewed him for the book.
Another one of those dishonest actors.
Well, the guy who had made him the head of the party, who was actually the second head, Harrington, cliff Harrington. Clifford Harrington did not give him the truthful account of the parties founding. Harrington claimed he was a co founder, and he wasn't. He claimed a different date. This is one reason I spent so much time on stuff. Also that I found all these things that had been printed that were wrong. The bi scholars and others that were
and it wasn't their fault, they were taken. It was hard to get these harder to get these documents, especially when a group is moving. And so Harrington claimed he had been a co founder in nineteen seventy four or whatever, but he was lying. Mason was one of the co founders and not him. He only became the head in the eighties. So this is some of the stuff I found. Anyway, I was going to say the NSM at one point, god where not neo Nazis.
Were National Socialists.
I was like, get the fuck out of here, like really, like, come all, your flag is a swastikonic ah, I mean, this is absurd, but people will do that, right, It's like the dead parents git in Monty Python. If people know this and so. But Mason stands out because he's always been very upfront about his views. He's very proud of them. He's not ashamed. And if this it's embarrassed other people, they didn't belong He's as he told to me, they didn't believe in the One True religion.
So I asked him.
About these counterculture figures who have denied they were ever involved in this stuff. At the time, he was convinced they were National Socialists and he was like, well, they believed in something else other than the One True Faith.
I think that's the word he used.
So, yeah, he is nothing to hide. He's very open about it, very open about promoting terrorism. As you know, and maybe some of the listeners do young neo Nazis go to his apartment and he tutors them. They take pictures with him. This included Sam Woodward, who murdered a young gay Jewish man Blaze Bernstein, recently sentence to life in prison. There's pictures a Woodward in Mason's apartment. So yeah, I mean he wants he's proud of his lineage and he wants it documented. And I know I did him
a favor by writing a book about his movement. I mean, they don't have the intellectuals and the resources to in the trained people to write historical books, and I did it a pretty straight up book. Even Mason was like, I kept waiting to read the smear. I kept waiting for the smear. There was no smear. I was like, yeah, I just wrote it as a history book. And so in a way I've given them an insight into their
history which wouldn't exist otherwise. So this stuff is always a double edged sword when you cover as you know, when you cover fascist groups, they want the publicity.
By and large.
I was told sometimes at the SPLC, like groups contact them and they're like cover us, give us coverage.
Sending them their press releases. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I mean I think someone like Mason, I guess he doesn't see the smear because, like you said, he's proud of himself. So this is I think is an honest appraisal of his legacy, and most people would see that as a smear, but he's proud of it.
Well, it's not a smear. I don't need to say anything bad about him. He's there promoting Nazi terrorism. What's the point of, like, you know, denouncing this or something.
I mean, Whereas I think someone like Pierce, I think sometimes when people write honestly about Piers, obviously he's been dead for twenty five years, but he resisted the characterization that he was inciting terrorism, even though he, like Mason very much was Oh.
Well, Pierce is just a liar. I mean, all these guys exactly.
That's what I mean.
But I think a book like this about Pierce, I think he would not have enjoyed, whereas Mason is at least honest about his legacy.
You know, there is a terrible book about Pierce by one of the sickaphants who is a professor actually Griffin.
Yeah, and that again, that is one of those dishonest histories. I think we were talking before we started recording that the problem with archival research trying to write a history of these movements is they are dishonest actors. And so Robert S. Griffin he wrote what is it the Fame of a dead Man's Deeds?
Yes?
Is that what it's called. He went into it saying like, I'm going.
To write this neutral appraisal of this figure of the movement, about William Luther Pierce, and over the weeks that he spent on the compound to write it, and he spent time with Peers on the compound in Hillsboro, became radicalized and is a Nazi. Now are he still alive? I mean, he could take issue with that characterization if he wants. But yes, I'm sure you've read the book. It's not neutral. It's a has giography of Peers.
Yeah.
There's actually a book by Pierce's son too, which is interesting.
I've read that. It's quite good.
Well, unfortunately a lot of it's copy pasta.
But I think his insight into his relationship with his father is very unique. It's called The Sins of My Father by Kelvin Pierce. I mean, that's a window you don't often get, although I guess now we do also have the Klansman's son by Don Black's.
Daughter Black's daughter or son she has transitions.
Oh, I did not know that well, Mazeltov.
Yeah, yeah, I remember reading their work before Trump, and they actually wrote one of the most moving resignations from the movement that I've read, very much, taking you know, being accountable even though they were raised in it. I feel like children raised in this are not like as accountable as adults are, right, especially like they were in college at the time.
But it was like a true interesting.
Working through it, and I felt like heartfelt apology for it. And yeah, actually this is a fun fact. You may know a member of the Aryan Nationalist Action A and A. This terrorist there's a bank robbing group from the eighties. I think became the first person to transition gender.
From Donald Langyen.
Donal Langen was known as pretty Boy Pedro when she was the head of the Aryan Republican Army. It's a bank robbery gang out of Allaheim City. Yeah, she was the first person to win a battle with the federal government to transition in federal prison.
To get surgery.
Yeah, and just recently. Actually, there was a filing in her case. She's trying to get the way the case is titled in the court records it's still Peter Lean in her dead name, and the judge denied her petition to retitle the case. But she has transitioned and is in a women's prison.
Is she in Texas?
Oh gosh, I could look up in the BOP where she is.
Texas bans prisoners from changing their names.
She is in FMC cars. Well that isn't in Dallas.
Yeah, that's why. That's why.
So she's still in the BOP system under her dead name, but she was allowed to physically transition. So that's again just a strange twist of history, right that the person who won that legal padel for us was a Nazi bank robber.
Well, she has also long repudiated those politics. So I think she's been the only person to have surgery transperson has surgery who was in prisoned at the time, because I think that was recently and then everything, you know, everything they changed. They I know that they slowed down their trans policies waiting to see the results of the election. So for strange reason, I you know, actually a bunch of the stuff about trans people in prison.
So anyway, no, I mean it's a remarkable, remarkable history.
Yeah.
Yeah, So you started writing this book after Unite the Right because there's this renewed interest in Siege. I mean, I guess what has the experience been, like, you know, over the course of spending the last six years of your life working on this, realizing that it is only becoming more relevant and not less.
Well, the problem is is like for people like us who watch the far right, like our work is only important or people are only interested in it when there is a big upswing, and then like that's when people are interested and that's when it is more important. So on one hand, it's good that I didn't spend five years and then no one remembered what siege was and it was just a blip. I mean, that's good for me, But I'll have to say what's good for me is bad for society.
And so I mean, I think.
It would have been an important work of history regardless. But I guess as you're working on it, realizing that the body count is only growing.
Yeah, it's it's I don't know, I don't really you know, what do you say about that. I call these people empty people spreading emptiness. Like it's hard for me even to get mad at the more aggressive neo Nazis and white supremacists. Like often they're young, and I just see like sad young people who can't deal with their problems, engaged in like hurting other people who are often not so different than them, you know, I mean there's a
trans man who was in Adam. Often you know, like they're yeah, numerous stories of people being you know, of not white descent, either they're hiding that they're not, or they're a mixed race descent and they're sort of passing as wide of being Jewish and being queer, all this stuff.
The movement's filled with these people.
Sometimes it's the people are even like how many straight white men are there in the movement, Like and it's just sad. You're like, I see you're being attracted to this because you're so alienated or you're so your identity is so shaky that you are attracted to this idea
of a firm, strong identity. And I mean sometimes people forget Fascism in Italy and Germany arose and basically the last two countries that arose and solidified in Europe, Like those were countries that wasn't clear what Italy was going to be. There's such differences between the north and the south. There's no reason, Like it was unclear originally whether Germany was going to be Austria too, you know, and so
they were. It's a way part of fascism is shoring up that national identity which was very fragmented, and it works the same I think with people's identities. And one of the one of the things that attracts people to neo Nazism, I think, is this strong affirmation of an identity, and people with mixed identities or conflicted about it or filled with self loathing are drawn to this for that reason. One of the many reasons people get drawn into these things.
And they recruit so young.
I mean, I think in the book you're talking about this, you know all the way back to James Mason's origins that he became interested in the Nazi Party as a fourteen year.
Old, joined it, joined it at fourteen.
So he's a child, right getting into this movement, and now that he is an old man, he is in turn in doctrinating children, right that Adam Woffen members are very young, I guess were Adam Woffin technically doesn't exist anymore, but most of the young men who spilled blood for Adam Waffen.
Were twenty years old, nineteen years old.
And you know, someone pointed out the founder of the feuer Krieg Division when he founded it was twelve. He was arrested when he was thirteen or fourteen, but he founded it at.
Twelve, and which tragic, obviously tragic, heartbreaking, disgusting. But imagine being one of the adults who is in that group and finding out that your fear was twelve.
I grew up in the South in an extremely Protestant area at the height of that like eighties fundamentals Christian Christian right thing, and there were I knew about. These are kind of an older thing. Child preachers. Have you ever heard of child preachers? This was a big thing during.
The Yeah, they speak in tongues and they sort of parrot the cadence of the way adults speak.
But if you listen carefully, they're not saying anything.
If they've memorized the way that adults give these barn burning you know, adul Protestants, Evangelicals give these barn burning sermons, but they don't necessarily understand what they're saying. And so, I mean, I think it's pretty common people adults will do this. They honestly believe in what they're saying. Maybe they understand it a little better. I think there's a bunch of post structuralist academics who don't even understand what they're saying.
But that could happen too.
And so I think people like, well, I don't know, I was a pretty smart twelve year old. Maybe I would understand it better. But you just need somebody repeating it. It's the slogans and the narratives have already been formed by others. You're not necessarily innovating on it. As long as you can repeat the dogma, it doesn't really matter who's saying. It doesn't matter if you're if the person is gay or Jewish.
And I mean, the Estonian twelve year old was not a one, you know.
In the Ethan Melzer case a year or two ago, Ethan Melzer was a US Army private who was trying to set up his unit in Turkey to be attacked by Middle Eastern terrorist groups, and the person he was communicating with online sort of goading him into these acts.
Was a child. It was a child. He was the Order of Nine Angles though right he was Ona.
He wasn't a near Nazi, right, I always try to distinguish there's some nine A's who are not.
He was at the bleed point of Adam Waffin's splinter group and Ona he was involved with rape Waffen, was he. Yeah, the lineage of these groups is so messy. I think some of them don't even understand the ideological lineage of the sect they've ended up in. But but Melzer was at that sort of bleed point where Adam Woffin was becoming ONA.
But I think what we're seeing now and definitely in these last two school shootings in the last month, is a syncretic murder. Cull the guy who just said the naspau one was black. But if you start looking at both of their manifestos, there were French to all different kinds of things, some of whom are white supremacists and neo Nazis, many of whom aren't just other school shooters, and they don't seem to have a real ideological, necessarily
connection to some of this the political stuff. It's not become an O nine A. They are founded by neo Nazi and many of them are neo Nazis, And so I was going to say they're not. They don't have to be, and all the people aren't even if you were supposed to be there, they aren't all And so we're just getting through these various online forums on Telegram and elsewhere. Sometimes they just spread over all kinds of the different platforms. We're getting just this syncretic mix of
these things. And this is one of the things that made Nina and Siege culture are parallel Mason's ideas because Mason's not a Satanist, and in fact, he's recently denounced Ordered nine Angles. And when he was around Satanists, they
were atheist Satanists around the Church of Satan. That when you start saying, hey, we need to commit random murders in this goal of destroying the like suppose a Jewish controlled society so there could be a White Arean revolution, Like, it doesn't matter if you have a really political reason or if you're thinking that these heretical acts will destroy somehow the consensus reality, you're just trying to go people into these violent, random acts of terrorism and more random murders.
Right, and the end result is the same.
They're thinking is the same, and the end results is the same. So they start cross pollinating. And then what's the difference between the school shooter cults?
You know?
And now we have groups like the Maniac Murder cult who are ostensibly political, ostensibly neo Nazi and Order of nine angles been a reality or just like go attack old people from behind. I mean, it's just pathetic stuff. Go, you know, beat up homeless people and stab them. It's like, at some point I often say this and my speeches as it's become more and more real, is like everything blends together in our society.
I think.
You know, you start with like school shooters, and it's hard to distinguish them from like a political mass shooters and from political mass shooters. Right, at one point, it just becomes this one thing that's like all mixed together because we're having in the United States, we're having these constant attacks and constant that often the body account is very high. Like what becomes the difference anymore? Does it
really matter? Like the Allen, Texas guy who was a Latino neo Nazi who killed a bunch of people in an outlet mall, this is really a neo Nazi action, like he was, like clearly if you look at his stuff or an article called Nazis of color about this dynamic. But was his action? How is his action necessarily any different than like a school shooting or whatever, or just like you know, it's just like he's going somewhere and
killing random people, Like what is this about? So I think we're seeing this syncretic murdercal is really I know other people have different ways of posing this that is sprawling out on different online platforms and appealing to very young, alienated people, probably whose whole lives are you know, online. I think especially younger people who went through COVID zoomers and I guess people younger than that would be Generation
Alpha spend more time online than any other generation. Obviously they must, and this becomes especially when they're much younger, the horizon of other world right, and if they're in cells and they're not really connected to other people and they're not connected to their family, like it just it just drives these impulses more and more, and they don't have the maturity to look outside of it or to think about the repercussions of it, or think of have
the empathy to think about how it's going to affect other people in their families.
And so when it comes to Siege, what would you say its current role in this sort of evolving syncretic murder culture that we have, is it is Siege's legacy now just that it's ideological lineage lives on in sort of the terragram milieu.
Or is it still itself influential? Oh, some of this is a question of ideas. I think sometimes Siege acts as a symbol. People can gesture that their neo Nazis is a serious neo Nazi four hundred and fifty page tone.
They didn't read it. They didn't all read it.
Yeah, I know read Siege, just like how many of you have read Siege? And I found out doing the work that there's like an edited one hundred page version, and then there's like a little pocket version. And then someone even made the ten tenuts of Siege.
There's the spark notes murder called.
Well adam Off the division apparently had a test on Siege to get in And I'm like, I know these people didn't write. They're like a lot of very disturbed or you know, people who aren't going to like it's a boring text. I mean I read it twice in like.
I've read portions, but I'm not going to sit here and say I read the whole book.
It's four hundred and fifty page.
Man, I read every newsletter and the book and it's yes, no.
Oh.
So it acts as a symbol to be like, look, we have a serious intellectual thing.
How many Christians have read the Bible? Let's be really sort.
I think, yeah, I think that's the right analogy, right, that it is a foundational text, but they're not all sitting down and digesting or even understanding it.
Yeah, I mean, how many Communists have read Dos capital No, even just volume one, which I have, I would like to say I have. Actually, is it more or less boring than Siege? It's more intellectual? And so there's that, and there's also like the conclusions are there, right, the whole argument is developed in Siege, But you really just need to take the conclusions, which is you can't do
any political work, it's hopeless. You need to go out and commit dramatic acts of violence to help inspire people, and then you know, maybe afterwards there'll be some aran blah blah blah. Frankly, that's all you need to know about it, because that's what it advocates. You just need the praxis that it concludes. And most activists aren't intellectuals.
Like I always say, like a movement can have three slogans and what you need to do on the left, you need to make sure those are the right slogans pointing in the right direction, because somebody who flows into activism, who's young, who it doesn't matter if they're young, doesn't have a background of politics, is going to take the thing seriously that you say. And you can only say
so many things to people. Political movements are stupid. I mean, this is why we are The ninety nine percent was great.
It was great. It wasn't true.
I mean half of Americans are like it, you know, support the Republicans, but like it's like one thing and then the person can think about those things. They're not going to have complicated ideas. So what is what are the slogans that come out of something? What are the basic what does it boil down to the things you're saying And people have inherited that from siege or inherited it secondhand, you know, because Terogram is very well versed
in what Siege is about. I mean, Adam often had to read it, so they were more I think, into it as a text. And then as it's gone out, you know, Tarogram people, the Tarogram collective certainly knew what was in it and stuff, and so people are being affected by it even if they don't know, even if they haven't read, or even if they don't know. That's the origin of those ideas, right.
So Teragram is directly downstream of Siege.
Right.
So Siege was a newsletter that became a book.
People read the book, and the people who read that book turned it back into a zine.
Right, So it's it's sort of oh to someone, Right, it's moving.
Through its phases and now it's regressing back into sort of mimetic zine form.
But people who join these movements who want something more intellectual, because everyone who joins a religious or political movement, some people want a more rigorous They're like, well, what's the reason for this? Well, I have these questions. How do you answer them? What is why are we doing this? Want more rigorous? Some people want a more rigorous background. Can turn to siege, and as they get older will turn to siege or move out of it. And they're like,
what were the ideas behind this? Why did we have these ideas? And I think that's it's normal. I mean, there are all kinds of weird intellectual groundings for white supremacists. A lot of it is theology, which is sort of curious, and I kind of conclude it at some point that you just needed something complicated because they couldn't use race science anymore, and they weren't people who developed social science other than someone like a londabenoist who's saying something much
more complicated than most white supremacis are. And so like theology just allowed something intellectual for people to chew on, you know what I mean, Like, people are real smart who are very analytical want something to chew on with the ideas, whether it really changes their practice or not. And I think there has to be something that serves that need.
And so I guess, wrapping up, because we're supposed to keep these daily shows short, what is the takeaway that you want people to to come away from this book with? I guess, especially in this political moment.
I think there's two things The book has two things.
One, I just want to have people have a better understanding of neo Nazism in the US and.
How it developed.
It's just one big blur. It's part of other things, and I see it as a distinct strain. And I want people to have a just a better understanding of that political movements origins, which is maybe a more scholarly thing. And I am My next book, I hope if I can get a contract, is to write a history of national socialism in America, because again, there's not a single
book that describes that, which is very strange. Certainly not a history post war, and there may be a pre war one, but not one that puts it all together. So there's a lot of ignorance about this movement. And the second part about the cultural actors, is about the danger of taking a radical cultural movement and to use impulses like transgression and turn them into the very toxic politics, into terrorist politics. At the end of the day, I had a discussion on Blue Sky. It was amazing. You
could see, it wasn't twitter. I had a useful discussion on Blue Sky and where I learned something. It was just fabulous, and it was this woman posted that, which is like essentially in Matzau I read it. In the twentieth century, there was always this assumption that transgressive art, avant garde art was implicitly progressive. Sometimes it was ideological, but even when it wasn't, even when I had some dodgy elements, the impulse of it led to progressive, left
leaning politics, and it's very transgression was progressive. And I mean these guys I'm looking at are and working in the eighties, and you see it now, we've all seen it with four Chan like that was never that isn't true, and that was never true true, right, I mean those of us in the punk scene in the eighties and nineties, it could see this, even if we certainly didn't put it that way. With like skinheads in particular, it was contested terrain where people were trying to take the subculture
and pull it to the left and right right. There were so many Nazis, but there were anti fascist skinheads too, Sharps. Sharps to some extent, Sharps were a lot of them are rgling nationalists. They just weren't a Nazis. This is a common There was grips like rash Red and anarchist skinheads who still exist, but there was a contested train where people trying to pull it in different directions. This is still the case in neo folk and heathen religious circles.
And that's sort of you.
There's an implication which I don't think I can only like put it into words now, that like the transgressive elements of these subcultures didn't necessarily go one way or the other, and it was something you'd have to fight over, like they could go and have any direction. And I think it was clear on four Chan early on. I once was mentioned very early on in four Chan and someone chimed.
In and they're like, leave them alone.
He's my friend, and I'm like, no, which of my friends are on four Chan and defending me? But like four Chan didn't have to end up the way it did. You know, the earlier Internet culture wasn't like this. It was progressive or libertarian, or a more decent libertarian for reading of libertarianism than we have now. So that's the second part. I mean, other than these guys, if you ever were in the industrial or neo folk scene and you heard the beout, there's Nazis, I have all of
the receipt in detail in the book. If that's of interest to you.
Yeah, Boyd Rice will tell you he never meant it, but I've read some of the primary documents that lead me to believe otherwise.
Yeah.
And I even made a video of him creatively entitled Boyd Rice New Nazi Collaborator.
And I know you're like, Spencer, what are you really getting at here?
And I show the letters and stuff, and just if you're not familiar with these figures, I know a lot of people there were very obscure movements at the time,
and you know, people are not familiar with them. But I think are familiar enough with this idea of like a super radical cultural movement about step by step by show how it can move into fully politicized a transgressive movement can move into a fully politicized, super toxic neo Nazism that is espousing terrorism, and that that this is something that we always have to watch out for in our own religious movements and our own cultural movements and
occult circles. I just did a podcast with some you know, ac cult style esoteric podcast, and I was talking about Satanists to become Nazis. Satanists are sort of I would say split these days, but there's definitely a Nazi, you know peace in there are a very visible one.
And so some of it's just about these things.
That's an important takeaway too, that you know, in any subculture, especially the sort of transgressive subcultures like you know, counterculture music and art and you know, occult spaces, you know have a magical practice.
That you engage in. People who engage in, you know, practice.
Pagan faiths in all these subcultures, you need to call out these bad actors early and often push back. Don't let them bullow you and push them out of your spaces.
Absolutely, and Nazis ruin everything. They intentionally go into all these spaces and sometimes don't intentionally. Actually, this was a comment on Stormfront I learned from talking about Nazis and the animal rights movement, and they're like, Spencer doesn't understand. We're not infiltrating these movements. We're just vegans. We're just also Nazis. Like, but we're not vegans because we're Nazis. We're not coming here from some other reason.
Well, you can't let them sit with you either way.
Well, this is a funny story. I don't know if you have tied.
But I heard this story from a friend of mine that they were in a vegan group in southern California, I think, and they had a unofficial party, like a barbecue. It's people from the group, you know, from the group doing it. People brought their partners. It wasn't an official group function. But this white member of the group brought her husband, who was Kevin McDonald. Oh, and they were vegetarians or vegans, and people were like, holy fuck. And he was like, I mean, I feel a little sympathetic
to me. He's like, hey, man, I don't know. I'm just I'm a I'm a vegetarian or whatever. I'm here with my wife.
She's going to a party.
Like, no, you're not allowed to have friends. You're not allowed to have friends, You're not allowed to have hobbies. You can't be here.
Yeah, But he's like, I'm not here to recruit anyone. I'm here, you know what I mean.
It's the barbecue is over with the race scientist shows up.
Well. This became a big discussion in the group about whether to push him out or not. But you have to do these things, and if you even if you don't want to they're my friend, or everyone's welcome or whatever. What is gonna end up happening if you don't push
the Nazi out, is that more Nazis show up. Well, if it's a single person, people are gonna start leaving, people of color are gonna leave, Jews are gonna leave, LGBTQ plus people are gonna leave, and you're gonna end up defending this one person losing many more So, even just on your own, you know, in life and self interest, if you want to keep your group together, and I've seen this again and again and again, and then they're like, you're defending a Nazis, so you're one too, So yeah,
you've got to kick these people out, even just for practical reasons. I have a very low bar for people these days, and I try to appeal. I try to appeal to the Baser reasons sometimes with people you know.
Well, if you would like to learn more about how a couple of guys in the counterculture movement in the eighties are responsible for the publication of the book that serves as the bible for modern Nazi terrorism, you can pick up a copy of Neo Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism. The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege by Spencer Sunshine from Routlige Press, and it's available I think wherever books are sold. I bought my copy directly from the
publisher Routledge Press. I think it was only twenty seven dollars. You know, a bargain and a steal, So pick up a copy of that and where else can people find your work?
Spencer?
Thank you for now that you mentioned that.
I am on all of the social usually at Transform sixt seven eight nine.
Have a web page if you want, if you have an RSS feed.
If someone has said this recently, they're like, it's actually one of the better ways to keep track of people. I was like, your followers billion people anyway, Spencer Sunshine dot com awesome. If you'd like to support anti fascist research and get a warm, fuzzy feeling, you should sign up for my Patreon for as little as two dollars a month. You can help me out with the rent and get some exclusive content.
So yep, hell.
Yeah, thank you so much for joining us today.
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. It's been great. Welcome to dick it apt here, a podcast where the singular it is seemingly irrelevant now because everything is happening all of the time. Host me along and one of the many, many, many chaotic things that has been going on over the last two weeks since Trump's power has been a bunch of funding freezes to the US federal
government grant system. And I think to a lot of people that doesn't sound like an enormously big deal, but that is unbelievably catastrophic for like I would go so far to say, is like the survival of the human species for reasons they will get to in a second, but unbelievably bad for the quality of life of everyone
on Earth. And to get to kind of a sense of exactly what this kind of stuff does, what these funding freezes do, and what the sort of threat, particularly to the future of American science is, I have brought in two people who are intimately familiar with this Arguvon Salis, who's a surgeon and professor of medicine, and friend of
the show. Yeah, come on, yeah, definitely. I don't know why I had such a hessidant friend of the show, because it wasn't in my notes that was that was that ad living it, But yeah, front of the show kave Hoda, who is a Gas show entrologist and the host of the podcast House of Pods, and both of you two, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having us.
Yeah, thank you.
I'm excited to be here for your most Persian episode ever.
For sure.
We may have done episodes of like that were like about a row.
Yeah, this is a Persians a bit too Persian doctors talking about Trump is about as Persian as a good and you're not You're not overselling it. This is a large scale attack on the healthcare infrastructure of the United States on a massive level, So you're not lying. It is a serious, serious issue, not just for us, but for the whole world.
Yeah.
And one of the mean the places I want to start, I think is with because it was happening I think in n s FNIH a bit before this happened. But the OPM, the Office of Personnel Management, sent out this memo last week that was a it was nominally a
response to this very weird Trump executive voter. That's him being like every single program that has to do with civil rights, which is like, so my my description was anything it has to do with civil rights at all, like gone His description of it is like DEI woke, So like anything it has to do with queer people, anything that has to do with like racial inequality, And they were supposed to like go through and review every single government grant program for anything, but.
Don't forget he also included the gender ideology, which is a meaningless praise and the Green New Deal is.
All part of it, yep, yep, yep, you know, and this is part of the raft of executive voters, particularly the anti trans executive voters. But OPM's response to this, again Awfulist Personnel Management's response was to just freeze literally every single grant program in the country. And this was everything from pell grants and like work study for college students, to like food aid for single mothers to my personal favorite.
And I don't know why this never made it into the press because I'm apparently the only one who went through and read the list, but one of the things that he froze funding for was security patrols for nuclear weapons manufacturing sites. So like we almost like, why, yeah,
why is that included? It was because literally what happened was they found a list of every single grant that like anyone does like and any like program that gives out grants and they froze all of them, and so like another one of them that when I said this is like, this is a threat to all life on Earth,
I was not I was not joking here. One of the other ones was defunding one of the very important like international nuclear non proliferation organizations, like specifically the one that's there to make sure that like random people don't get like enriched uranium or like obtain nuclear weapons. So like we we dodged a like giant nuke sized bullet. When when like most of these programs got their money back after a judge was like, well, you obviously can't
do this. This is so unbelievably illegal that it's astounding, like the Constitute should like very blatantly says that the power of the purse is Congress, not the President.
Eight like stop, yeah, but I would just want to clarify for the people listening here that it wasn't just grant specifically, it was like all federal assistance. So one of the things that was very confusing and chaotic was this question of does this mean Snap is gone, Does this mean Wig is gone? What about Headstart? What about meals on wheels. I mean, there are tons of federal assistance programs out there, and they had only made an exception for Social Security and medic care in the memo,
but not Medicaid. And what happened the next day, but the Medicaid portal went down right.
Yeah, And it's it's chaotic too, because like all of the programs you just named were on the list of like programs that they were putting a freeze on, but then it wasn't clear what was going to happen with them end And it's still not right right.
Yeah, we just have a judge.
We have We found one judge with a backbone in the entire country so far, and he said, no, you cannot.
Yeah.
Yeah, I am surprised actually that Trump hasn't gone out on the attack. Maybe I just missed it, like attacking that judge, you know, but it is, I mean, what's so confusing to me is, you know, I get it, at least in some part of their weird internal terrible logic, transphobic logic. I get why they're doing some of the things they're doing, but then some of them don't even
make sense within their own whack internal logic. Like when they scrub, for example, the CDC for all the terms that they didn't like, gender terms, transgender terms, things like that. They also scrub things like following maternal morbidity or opioid use, things that don't, at least on the surface, even fit with their attacks on woke ideology. So it seems like it's a complete mess to me what's happening. And it's what's terrifying about it is not just that it's a mess,
but it is happening. I mean, they are doing it, they are pushing it, even though they clearly don't even seem to really know what they're doing or even have a great sense internally of what they're doing.
I think that's the danger of this right now, is that this is revenge.
Right.
They're lashing out in sort of in pure anger and pure hatred, and they have been given control of an apparatus that they don't understand at all, Right, Like that, that's how you get defunding a nuclear police. That's how you get them defunding like the very Goldwater Memorial grant thing that gives money to kids who're writing essays about
bury Goldwater. They don't understand what the state is and what it does, and they're just trying to take the whole thing apart, and they're just trying to sort of rampage their way through it. And it means that we're in this situation now where like for a long time, the line on like trans Rice was like, well, you should defend trans Rice because they're going to come for you next, And that's no longer true. What is actually happening here is in order to kill us, they are
willing to kill everything. They're willing to let all of you die in nuclear fire. It's like specifically in order to hurt us, Right, That's the sort of line we're at where you know, all of these all of these sort of complicated systems and all of these sort of complicated funding mechanisms are just getting lit on fire by people who don't understand what they're doing and don't care. Right, just out of Spider or something.
For sure, out of fight and hate. But I want to just take a step back and think about the fact that all of this is happening because of two versus three executive orders, depending how you think about it. But they're literally executive orders. They are not laws in the books in Congress does not pass anything. It's like this elderly man woke up and said, hey, let's get rid of DEI and DIA for example. Those are the terms they use exactly without saying what DEI is or
what DEI A is. And then just I feel that we need to pause for a moment on the ADI A and they spell out, you know, as for accessible, wiping out everything related to accessibility is directly in violation of the ADA and makes no sense. And it is cool and all of that, but also just like legally it makes no kind of sense, and they're going to go after the ADA, which I'm guessing is part of their plan to the extent that there is a plan. But the two key executive orders here are the sex
and gender. One that's not defending quote unquote defending women, that basically dictates that sex must be only male and female, thereby erasing intersex people completely, and that there's really they're essentially saying there's no such thing as gender and that the only genders that they see are willing to recognize are male and female. They're by erasing trans folks, intersect people, non binary folks, cutter a gender, queer, gender whood all
of those people. So for them to go into like the CDC data sets, take them offline so that they can binarize whatever is there eliminate I'm assuming I don't I mean, I don't know that this was something that I'm assuming that that's what they're doing, taking any sex that thought male or female out of there, and then removing gender as a varia le because they've said that no grant funding should go to any assessment of gender period.
So that's when you're talking to me about like how they're willing to throw everyone under the bus just to pursue this transphobic agenda about what you're talking about. They're willing to take huge lots of information off of the Internet so people can no longer research, or physician anyone else can no longer access this information, just to make sure that there's no hint or reference to anyone who is transgender. That seems to be like the key thing
that they're trying to do with all of this. So they have thrown the entire government and take chaos and the lives of millions of people into chaos, all to remove the t in LGBT.
Yeah, and the stuff that they're doing like the destruction of this research data, the way that it's been just like taken down and destroyed. Little parts of it have come back up after the sort of backlash, but you know what they're what they're doing is staging a digital version of the nazis burning all of the books at the sexual research. Like that's that's exposedly what they're doing.
It's literally the same stuff, like it is research on queerness and trans people that they are lighting on fire.
Yep.
And you know you know who else lights research on queer and trans people on fire? It's it's the sponsors of this show. It's the products of services.
Yeah, that's the way you get those big bucks.
That's how you do it. That's professional broadcasting. And we are back. So I want to move from that to kind of the next phase after we got out of the sort of OPM like suspending everything phase, which has been this kind of this uncertainty around a whole bunch of the other funding agencies for science, the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health. Can you talk a bit about what's been going on with grants there before we move into like how this whole process works.
Yeah, So the first line that something was materially going to change after these executive orders. As I recall, I'm living this along with everyone else, and what is time. But the first thing that I recall is the study section being canceled. The study sections are meeting where scientists come together. They each will have read various grant proposals and scored them on a number of different dimensions, and
then they come together and discussed. They don't discuss all of them, by the way, They only discuss the ones that have that seem to have the most merit, and then out of those they make recommendations for which ones they believe should get funded. So these are a critical part of the process by which the government gives out funds for research. If these meetings do not happen, people grants are not getting evaluated, assessed, and recommended for funding.
That means they're not getting the funding. That means they're not hiring people, or they're having to fire people they already had in their layoff, people they already had in their lab. They're not able to continue the important work that they're doing. They may lose their job. Like really truly people can lose their job because they were not able to secure enough funding to support themselves and their labs.
So these are really really important meetings, and those have been canceled for both the NSF and the nih for at least the last couple of weeks, And as of yesterday, I saw doctor Megan Ray said that her or not maybe not her, but that study sections were canceled yesterday that were due to happen today. So there had been some communication around perhaps the free of those activities ending on February first today that we're recording as February third,
and those study sections for today were canceled. On the other hand, NSS, which is obviously a separate organization, has informally i've heard, decided that they were going to resume from study sections, although they haven't rexamned just yet.
And if I did add, just to be totally clear with your listeners, these are incredibly important organizations for discovery of new medical breakthroughs and for pushing science forward. For the NAIH, for example, the nih IS is a big
part of the reason we have mRNA vaccines now. They were the ones helping to promote that research for decades before we were able to turn them into vaccines, and because a lot of what they did that we're able to do that when we're looking for a new breakthroughs and we're looking for something where patient comes to us and they're like, isn't there anything We've tried everything, isn't there anything that we could at least try or some trial that we could be involved in. That's where we
find these things. These are the things that we're talking about, these really important healthcare infrastructure that we're discussing.
Yeah, and you know between NAH and National Science Foundation and you know, Department of Energy is having a similar thing to this because Department of Energy funds all like hy energy physics research, so all of your sort of like particle accelerator or stuff like that. It's not just sort of like the National Labs for example, that they get funding from these places, although you know National Labs are like, you know, you get your funding from grants
like everyone else. But you know, I mean this is this is all the way down to the level of like undergrads and college chemistry labs, like they're they are getting paid out of these grants from National Science Foundation, from the National Institute's for Health, like all of these all of these institutions pay out everything, and it's like this is the basis of how all science almost all science.
Like there's some private sector stuff, but the thing is like the giant private like Bell Labs right, like you're your old school giant private sector. Here's our giant R and D thing. Like that's all kind of gone, so you know, like the only people who are getting funded by this are like weird startup guys. And it's like, Okay, look look look what they've invented in the last like
fifteen years. It's like cryptocurrency NFTs, which is cryptocurrency again, Arranos, don't forget Yeah, sarrados, the metaverse, juice row, like they're doing great. It's really great. And people will be like, oh, they invented a ey. It's like no, so National Labs were using those AA algorithms like a decade and a half ago. It's like, yeah, the generative blah blah. Okay, we're not We're not here to get into me complaining about generative AI. Go go go go listen to edgit runs entire Like yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think the bottom line of what you're trying to communicate here is that a lot of scientific and medical breakthroughs have come from labs and from researchers who have been funded by the NSF and the NIH and I will just say as an academic, these are certainly the kind of premiere funding opportunities.
That we have.
Like it also is really critical in the careers of researchers to be able to show that their work is worthy of this kind of funding. And that's part of why I would think people's jobs, yes, the people we pay off of our grants, but also people like me, our jobs can be really dependent on whether we get this funding or not.
And it's a generational thing too, because the students also need this funding. And so people people who undergrads, particularly people who are like doctoral students, like their research, right, like the stuff that they're doing while they're in graduate school, like getting PhD so they can become scientists. That's all
also like funded by these grants. And if that stuff goes away, like, it's not just that you're obliterating this generation of science, like you're decapping the next like three generations of scientists, right because each one of them down the line suddenly doesn't have for the research experience that they're supposed to have. Exactly, yeah, right.
And also, who would want to go into science if it's going to be invited, right, if they's just going to be like some random person who goes into the White House and never mind, we're not doing that anymore. Who wants to be exposed to those kinds of winds.
A lot of the smartest doctors and scientists I know that tend to be risk averse people. I mean, there's a lot of people the CDC that could try to maybe sue for you know, for not being able to use the terms that they want to use and study the things they want to study, and they might even I don't know, maybe they could win. You talk to Laurier about that. Seems unlikely because they're not private sector. But to them, they're not going to because they're living
paycheck to paycheck. To some of these people that are at the lower levels, people that aren't making a ton of money and they have livelihoods that they're trying to maintain, they're not going to try and rock the boat when it comes to these things. It's putting them in a really tenuous position already. They're already worried about their next grant, their next however, they're going to fund their labs.
Yeah, And I just want to highlight that postdocs I think are particularly vulnerable because they are often like the NFF where You's actually demonstrated a girl, they aren't as said like, they're definitely often living paycheck paycheck. And what the NFF breeze did was that it made it so floks could not get their next paycheck because we were this was happening at the end of the month, right,
so it was delaying people getting their next paycheck. And in particular, and talking about postdocs, yes, it can affect graduate students as well, but a lot of postdoc funding, like one of the grand that I have actually we worked directly with postdoctoral and some predoctoral, but many postdoctoral training programs that fund postoc And to the extent that any of those grants are put on hold, that is threatening the income of people who really don't have buffer,
who cannot afford to not get paid.
And also, you know, and this is another aspect of this too, and I really doubt they understand this, but you know, there's also a lot of postocs who are not from the US right there, who are either international student or international students who are just who are you know, coming in from other countries and those people, if you suddenly don't have a grant, you don't have a job, and that is really really bad for your immigration status. Like that, that is enough to get you kicked out
of the US. And this is the thing that's constantly leveraged in sort of labor organizing, right or like one of the threats that universities will make. Usually they do it implicitly. Sometimes they'll just go out and say it very legally, will be like, Okay, if if you this postoc like you, this grad student like tries to like join this union, like your your legal status in the
US is going to be compromised. But that's that's another sort of risk from this is like those people's ability to stay in the US and not get imported basically exactly, yeah, exactly.
And then then we talk about bringing in you know, I know there's a lot of internal debate right now between the publican party on you know, bringing in people to work these jobs and bringing in these minds. But this is a clear example of where the United States has excelled in the past. We've been able to bring in great minds from all over the world to help us work on research and to help us come to work in these labs. I mean you go to like USA Staff and Stanford and you see these people working
these labs on important stuff. And that's another like, that's that's that's something we're going to lose. And I hope we don't lose it permanently. I hope it's not, you know something like you say, well, last generations are worth of damage, but it's hard to see how it won't at this point.
Yeah, I was just.
Looking up one hundred percent agree and to your point about how much of the science and even other amazing things that are done in the country are done by immigrants. I think it's over just over a third of Nobel laureates from the United States have been immigrants to.
The United States, you know, And it's sort of a nationalist thing, right, but like for ninety nine percent of the time for better like, the US has been very very good at absorbing other country scientists when you know this like we got up you know, okay, so like it's hard to take too much credit for it because we also took a bunch of scientists from the NAZS, like from the actual Nazis, but we also like a bunch of very famous US scientists, Like we're in the
US because they were fleeing the rise of the Nazis, And you know, like we are looking at a situation where we are going to be the opposite of this, where like our scientists are going to be fleeing everywhere else because our government is being run by these people.
Yeah, and I wanted to highlight I think that's liter all really great points about the effect of not getting the funding and who it trickles down to. But I also wanted to highlight that there's two different kind of ways that the funding can be withheld. The one is just that review process and not actually reviewing grants. Right, So, like I personally submitted a proposal in the fall, who
knows if when that will get discussed. There are people in that kind of position where they maybe were dependent on or really hoping to get funding this round, and now they don't know if or when that proposal will get reviewed. Of course, you never know if you're going to get funded, but to not even have a chance at review is an unanticipated barrier. Then on the other side, there's people who have been funded and are in the position that I'm in, which is not knowing whether I'm
going to receive the next payment. Because the NIH so I have a five year grant and we are currently in year three. Every year you have to submit a status update on your project, and then they determine based online of different things, including what budget they are given from Congress, how much of the funds that they had
originally projected they'll be able to give to you. And there are as you can imagine, a lot of people who are doing work that's related to health disparities, help equity, women's health, LGBTQ health, et cetera, who now do not know if our work falls under quote unquote DEI or deia or gender ideology or all these vague terms that the administration is using, and so we actually don't know whether, Like for me, I don't know if I'm going to
get my next set of funds. In July, so I was in the process of interviewing to hire someone to join my lab, and I genuinely don't know whether I should hire someone at knowing that I may lose funds in you know, five months, or do I just try to make do without and then that's a job that no one gets. And if you play that out over the three hundred thousand people were funded in various ways by the NIH, you start to understand the scope of damage was being done.
Here.
Can you tell people what your current grant is? And because I think that is pertin into this conversation, yes, yes.
Yes, you're right. Okay, So my grant is called ending sexual Harassment Teaching of Principal Investigators at a Q acronym E stops. So our goal is to try to help people intervene when there is sexual harassment, with the ultimate goal decreasing the amount of sexual harassment that's happening in biomedical research.
Oh they don't, they don't what you do with that?
Like?
Oh, no, right, because one of the great terrible ironies of this whole thing is that their argument is that they're doing a lot of this to protect women, the sanctity of women or whatever this is. You know, I am hopeful that I'm wrong for you. I hope that this is not the case. But I could see them very easily saying that this somehow fits underwoke ideology, and even though it's something clearly that is designed to help not just women, but a lot of women could benefit from this, you know.
Yeah, and to your point, like everyone is at risk for hearing things sexual harassment, it's just that the majority of folks who experience that are women or sexual and gender minorities. And so yeah, I've really, obviously, as you can imagine've been thinking a lot about how they are interpreting these words that they're using and whether sexual harassment, which by the way, is a form of discrimination, Like is that DEI is stopping discrimination?
DEI?
I believe?
Who?
Yeah?
Well, you know, quickly, if I may, I can go over this. There was this email that was dispersed from the CDC about terms that were no longer going to be used, that were going to be scrubbed from the CDC's databases, and they included words like gender, transgender, pregnant person, pregnant people, LGBT, transsexual, non by binary, non binary.
They use both to one with the hyphene hyphen.
Signed male at birth, assign female at birth, biologically male, or biologically female. So anything that terms like that they're gonna scrub Wait, let me, can.
I just clarify that, because actually it's even worse, I think than what you just described because what they actually said in that email, as I understand it, is that there's all these researchers who work at the CDC. So they said, if you have submitted a manuscript for publication to any scientific or medical journal that has any of these words in it, you must retract that manuscript. So it's even much much broader than just what's on the
CDC's website. It's any work that anyone employed by the CDC has done, any research I could say that they've done that they are in the process of publishing. They have been asked to rescind that work so that they can remove these god awful words, right. That are actually words that are used routinely in science, but they can no longer have them in their manuscripts. And how nonsensical would their manuscript be without the word? I mean it, Yeah, it's terrible.
The other thing that blows my mind about this is how incredibly inefficient. Maybe that's the point, is how ridiculous it's going to be. Who's going to be doing this, who's going to be looking over this. To my knowledge, there's only been one political point e in regards to this, and that's that the CDC it's Susan Moneraz is the acting director there at the CDC, and it's all going to go through that one person. All every study is going to go through that one person. It makes no sense.
I don't even understand how it's going to be enforced. It's a ridiculous thing. I'm sure they're going to try to make some examples out of people, but how are they even enforced this. We're gonna find out what your grant.
I guess.
Yeah.
I think the bleak thing about specifically the fact that you study retractions and it's just you know, this attempt to ban anyone from doing any research, right, is that like the problem for them with medical research about trans people is that everyone who's doing this who isn't a like unbelievably rabid anti trans person from the beginning, you know, looks at everything that they want to you to trans people and goes, this is going to kill unbelievable numbers
of us. And I think like part of what they're doing here is they're trying to before any of this stuff come out, they're trying to stop the scientific apparatus from revealing the fact that they are trying to wipe us out and that's yeah, an unbelievably bleak thing to live through.
I guess, like, yeah, so sorry. I mean, honestly, I wish I could say something more. It's really terrible.
I won't say this like Jenny Wineley because it never happens. Obviously, the best the best thing you can do for trans people is like something that involves the follow the regime. Like the second best thing is like hire us, because
no one does it and we can't. No one can get jobs, right, and but like like the third minimum thing after like money or like housing, is like like check in on the trans people in your life because nobody actually ever does it, and it means a lot, and it's not going to like stop the wrath of the state. But like, I don't know a lot of people feel us alone. This has been to be a trans public service announcement. It's now over. I think that's great advice.
In other friend of the show, Margaret Kiljoy, she also said, you know when you hire people, you hire trans people, put them front of house, make it visible, and then when you go and you frequent these places, let them know. That's part of why you do it. I like that you guys are doing this. I'm here to support that.
I mean, because we're talking about money, you're talking at people's livelihoods or at stake, and we have to show that these are people that are not only employable but could benefit your business.
Yeah.
Honestly, I don't know what to say about it either, aside from everything that they're doing is atrocious. It is a scientific it is in humane, It will it will harm people.
Yeah, people are gonna die. People probably have already died. If you're transit, you're listening to this, fucking don't die. Think about how good it's going to be to get a piss on these people's graves in like eight years. It's gonna but.
It is.
It is.
I agree, it is in dad to Argawan's point, it is dumb on every metric. I can't think of a single metric, and that these actions are not hurtful and going to harm us in the long run.
To close this out that this is something that I think is very important because no one in the US apparently seems to understand this at all. How does the grant process actually work and what is it? Because you know this process, the difference between you like having clean water to drink and like that study that was going to determine if your water is clean or not not happening.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you know, first thing I will say is that the word grant applies to lots and lots of different opportunities. And there are grants as small as like one thousand or five thousand dollars in grants as large as multimillion dollars. And the processes actually are I mean, they're analogous, but they can be pretty different because that you can imagine for a smaller grant, the amount of work that you have to do to earn
that grant generally is a little bit less. But I can speak in the most detail to the NIH review process and specifically to these grants that they call ro one because are like kind of their fanciest grants that go to individual researchers with their team, but it's led
by an individual researcher often. And the way this works is, first of all, I want folks to understand, it takes a year from the time that you apply until the time that you get money, can take up to a full calendar year, and so you put in in an immense amount of effort so I'll use myself as an example.
I apply for a grant in October, huge amount of effort I don't know how many hours leading up to that brand submission, and then I just sit and wait for months, months and months before there's even a study section, if study section happens, and then after that, it's still a couple more months before I might get information.
It depends.
Of course, there's some variability there. But it's a long, long process, is what I'm trying to say. And the way the process starts is often you will send what called the letter of interest to the agency that you're applying to. So I've you said earlier it's the National Institutes of Health. So every institute has its own notice of funding opportunities or no foes that are like, here's what we're actually asking people to submit for at this point in time. And then people will send a letter
of interest to the program officer. Each grant mechanism will have its own program officer, and you will send a letter of interest, maybe you get some feedback, and then you move forward to the actual grant itself. And I just want to say that it is more work than probably anything else I've ever done except maybe my dissertation, and so it's it's a huge amount of work. The ro one includes, for example, a one page specific aim page, which is you have the entirety of the study somehow
magically summarized in one page with your three aims. And if that doesn't get the reviewer's attention, and if they don't think it's compelling and interesting and important, that may be the end. You may have done all the of the work and they may only read that, and then you have a twelve page These are single space pages. Single space pages happen toward twelve page research strategy. I don't know how many thousand words, thousands of words that
it's I'm just telling you twelve single space pages. There's a lot of effects about your research, and it's like one of these puzzles where it like has to be exactly right, and you have like these figures and you have to get them exactly the right size and the exact right place on the page with the legend and everything. So that all matters in these tall pages because if you don't do it right, they will literally reject your
grant for formatting problems. And so you may have spent months writing this grant, and because you had the wrong size or the wrong margin that they can literally choose not to even read it, and then you're you're then having to wait till either six months later if there's another opportunity, or sometimes a full year later before you can try again.
Also, it's worth noting you also have to like do a bunch of science. Like if it was just you must do twelve you must write twelve pages of stuff in formatta, it would probably be okay, But like you also have to do science, like both for it and also while you're doing it.
It's incredibly hard to get these. When someone gets a grant, we all celebrate it for them because they're all so excited because we know it's not easy. What's funny about that is the Republicans make it seem like all you have to do is put in a couple of terms, like you know, non binary, and you automatically get a grant. They're like, no, idea, how like challenging it is?
No, It's like the only thing that could even potentially work like that is to say say, whatever you're doing is cancer research, Like that's the actual thing, right, Like sometimes you could like defraud the DoD by telling them, like, whatever research you're doing is camouflaged, like it's not it's even that is like it makes it like one percent more likely that you're endless hours of work.
Yeah, I wish I could just by woke ideology. Yeah, future bulk pages and they're like ghetagrass music. But yeah, to your point, you have to part of what's in those twelve pages is what is the work that you've done that builds up to the work that you're proposing to do. And that's the stuff whole section called preliminary studies, And what's in there very is depending on what kind
of research you're doing. If you're doing animal research, it might be various animal models that you've tested different things on that demonstrate, for example, that you are able to work with the specific animal model that you're proposing to use in this study, and that you have the specific methodological skills for whichever type of sace cellular analysis or whatever it is that you're doing, that you have those skills, that you have the equipment that you're able to actually
carry out that research. Because part of what they're evaluating is can the person who's proposing to do this work, actually do the work. Last thing they want to do is give you millions of dollars and have you fall out on your face because you don't have the skills that are needed. So you have these pages. Part of those cult pages like often a page two three pages about what you have done to prepare for the work that you're proposing, and a lot of times to your
point that work may or may not be funded. You may have to if you're like an academic institution, you might be using your startup funds, you might be trying to get smaller foundation grants or something to be able to do that work so that you can prove to
the funding agency that you're able to do it. And then in addition to this culltation thing, there are a bunch of additional documents that are required, Like there's currently this will probably change, but currently there's like a diversity plan, there is a how are you going to treat participants to our women and minorities. There's like an age document, There's a page about resources and facility these there's all these additional documents which again all have their own specific
formatting requirements. There's a project narrative which is shorter, and then a project summary which is longer. I think I could have those backward way ways the way it's all these additional pages. It's not just the specific games and just the reach of strategy.
It's all of this plus the budget and the budget justification, and like you could just go on, but I think you start to understand that there are many many files that go into a single grant application, and it represents often months of work for an individual and their collaborators.
And if you have, for example, another institution you're collaborating with, they all have to do a bunch of this paperwork as well, and there's a contract between the two and all this is done just to have a chance of getting counted.
Yeah, and you know, the disruptions to the funding system, the disruptions to the studies, the disruption to just the payout means that like all of this work that you're doing, you know, you have no idea whether whether like again, all of this in some cases unpaid labor that you have been doing for months and months and months like
could just not happen. Yes, And also like it's worth noting too, like you also have to like when you're figuring out what you're going to be doing next, like working out whether or not you're grant even as a chance of getting approved like that, like is something that is that is that is a long term decision that determines like what like you know, what colleges you go to, like what institutions you end up at, like all of that kind of stuff, and like that thing being all
the stuffing up in the air.
And for people who run labs, yeah, trying to figure out like can you so I don't personally work with graduate students, but a lot of people do. So can you afford to bring in and sponsor another support another graduate student? Can you afford the support of another postdoc? These are all long term decisions. These aren't just like oh, Okay, I'm going to hire some for two months until I find out the next thing. It's like you want to
commit to people, especially trainees. So it makes it very difficult for people who run labs to make those decisions to bring people in because we don't want to let people down. And so I think the kind of intuitive and natural concept is that people will bring in fewer people because that's less risky than bringing in more people and then having to either cut their funding or let them go or whatever later on when you don't get
the resources that you need. And I want to just point out that institutions here have a major role to play. And not all institutions, and by that I mean higher education institutions, and not all of them are equally resourced, obviously, but we all know that there are quite a few in this country that have massive endowments, and so are what is the plan there and what is the support for the folks at their institutions. And I'm not trying to be I'm not trying to oversimplify what is in
fact a very challenging issue. But it would be nice, it would be fantastic if some of these institutions came out and said, we understand that this is a very challenging time where you being committed to supporting the work of our faculty, our graduate students are postoc et cetera, and we will and we will fund anyone who's funding is withdrawn or withheld.
Let's just say it'd be nice if some of these very important, prestigious academic institutions showed maybe at least the same backbone as COSTCO.
Yeah, it's all I ask.
Okay too, I want to highlight too. It's very early yet in this game. But Brown did come out, I think it was yesterday or sometime over the weekend, stating clearly that they remained committed to their values of academic freedom.
Right.
So that's the way to say it, right, like, we support our staff and employees and students. Fact, we're doing whatever work they think is important. I think that that was their roundabout way of saying, we're not abandoning the principles of DEI. But who knows, but that's what they said. But but to Princeton, Princeton actually put out their annual report on DEI at Princeton and I forget the exact worrying and I don't have it in front of me, but their president talked about how important it is to
support people from different backgrounds, et cetera. So that that's two that are trying to do something.
Yeah, I remain hopeful. I remain helpful. Yeah. Also, I got I got to put in my word at Costco hate here, which is they're currently screwing over their unions.
So I thought they resolved it.
I thought they actually gave them.
No, they didn't. They did in the page increase.
Yeah, it's not resolved yet.
I thought the hot Dog was still win fifty though, so that's important for me. Read Jamie Loftus's book Raw DOGG.
I'm a doctor. I can't do that by law.
Yeah, but even the NFL came out today and said that they're not going to end their d programs any typetube.
NFL known for being all right, I mean that is a thing though, right if if, if you want to understand why the NFL is doing that, like look at who the current heads of the NFL Players Association are and like who their past heads for the last like decade have been, and that will give you an indication of like why it's like that. So yeah, MIO follows football pretty closely. I can tell it for unfortunately, if
we're coming from feed all. Also, I kind of owe the NFL Players Association because they did they they did put out a statement in support of our unionization drive. So yeah, it was very sweet.
That's nice.
Well, I do want to say one more thing about the grant process, which is that often people are submitting the same grant over and over and over because the funding rates are so low and so often they will submit it the first time, get feedback, make changes, resubmit later and again. As I pointed out, it's not like this is a rolling submission process where any day of
the week you can submit I think for most mechanism. Again, there's going to be some variability from institute to institute, but it's at most twice a year, so like if they're if they reject it, hopefully they give you feedback. By the way, sometimes you don't even get feed because if you weren't one of the top grant applications, you don't even get discussed, so you may not get feedback. But let's say you get feedback, then you try again, and then maybe you try again, and then maybe you
try again. So sometimes they can take many cycles of this entire terrible process before you get funded one. And to Covey's point about efficiency, clier like, I mean, if you think about it that way, that it's extremely inefficient system.
But the point I just wanted to make is that people work really, really hard to get these grants, and for some of the folks right now who are kind of in limbo waiting for study section to resume, this might be their third or fourth submission of something, and they were really hoping this was going to be the chance, because at some point you can't keep pursuing unless you have some other independent income, like often, at some point
you cannot keep pursuing a specific line of research. So you have to think about what breakthrough is being put on hold or will never be identified because of all of this, because someone might have been waiting and maybe they can't wait for however long it takes to resolve this freeze, and maybe they end up switching their career
path into something completely different. And I'll just say, like, even on a smaller scale, I had a grant that a colleague and I admitted several years back that got funded. That was a very competitive grant. It was not a federal grant, it was a foundation, very competitive and we were delighted. We were i mean just thrilled to get funded. And then we could not in the end take the grant.
We did not do the work of the grant because he ended up not being able to find an appointment that was going to work for him in academia and so he went to industry, so that work never got done. To this day, that work has not been done yeah, I would love for it to be done. But those are the types of consequences that we're talking about when we're looking at like what's happening with these funds and the delay of distributing the funds and the chances that
funds will be revoked from people. They really changed the course of not just individual lives, but of science.
Yeah, And I mean, like the most visual example I could think about this was I knew some people who wanted to work in a coronavirus lab in twenty nineteen and couldn't do it because they didn't their PI didn't have funding for We're got a coronavirus thing. It's like, oh, what have been useful if they got that grant? Uh So I think this is a decent enough place to
wrap up. I do have one thing that I want to plug, which is something you were talking about earlier, which is putting, which is these institutions like coming out and backing their scientists right, And that's that's a thing that you can do. You can put pressure on these institutions to do the right thing. And so it might be over by by by now, but like literally as we were recording this, there was a protest going on
at NYU's Hospital. Yeah, because they've cut off care to transuse they cut off Yeah, and so you know you can do this the people who actually run these systems, and you know, and the entire federal government, right people running the federal government are relying on everyone just sort of sitting there being shocked, not knowing what to do,
and doing nothing. And you know, you can go show up to the administrators, the offices of the administrators of these places, and you can confront them and you could be like, Okay, you're you're either right here right now. You're going to be a coward and you're going to go along with this, or you're going to go back own people.
Yeah.
Yeah, And that's something that you could do right now.
And I just want to add we didn't talk about this earlier, but when we talked about the CDC and everything that's been removed, one thing that's relevant to that is that there's an Office for Research on Women's Health. It's the only resource dedicated to women's health in the entire national Institutes of Health. We do have a National Institute of Children's Health. We do not have a National Institute of Women's Health. We have an awful for research on women's health.
Right if we love the US government, Jesus.
Yeah, it gets worse. So the National Academy the Science is Engineering in Medicine, which is like, I would say, one of the most prestigious kind of academic organizations that existed. A review of funding for women's health research at the NIH,
and they put out a report in December. It's pretty scathing if you read it, and they shared that from twenty thirteen to twenty twenty three, research for women's health was like eight point eight percent of the entire NIH budget as a reminder, women are the population, and they called for almost sixteen billion dollars of additional funding to go to women's health research in the coming five years
and the creation of an Institute for Women's Health. So what happened last week with almost everything on the website for the Office of Research for Women's Health was deleted.
Jes Christ it's gone.
So they're funding. An opportunities page is gone, Their bios about their staff are gone, their updates on advances in medicine for women over the last twenty five years gone, their pages on maternal morbidity immortality gone, The importance of including women in minorities and clinical trial gone, their page
on health equity gone. You get the picture. So all of that except for just a very bare minimum landing page and kind a link to the office of I forget the official in the office that's an office that works on autoimmune diseases. Like everything else is gone. And so I did create a script. If anybody wants to call their member of Congress, I have a script for that, and the CDC pages that people can use in terms of actions. That's something I think that is about as
real as it gets for us at this point. And I think that the more we are emphatic in our messaging that none of this is okay, that we demand to have these resources back online, that we demand to continue funding research on health disparities for all the different groups affected, I think the better the chance is that that actually happens. So that's out there if anybody.
Wants that, Yeah, well we'll put links to that in the description. Also, I'm going to put it a personal plug to call your congress person to yell at them about all of the anti trans stuff, because they are legitimately in a flux point right now where the party is slipping back and forth between just being like, yeah, whatever, we'll pass a defense bill that like banchanz people from the military, and we're going to stop things from happening.
And so this is the thing that can go either way, and getting yelled at by their constituents legitimately does help with us. So yep, absolutely, yeah, do that too. When you're called. While you're calling, what the CDC, multiple things, different calls even, Yeah, you.
Might just want to put them on feed though and make it, you know, on your drive if you go into work, maybe every day on the drive you're just calling, Hi, here's the issue of the day, because there's no shortage of issues that we need to be communicating now.
So, speaking of things in bios, where can people find you two for stuff that you want to promote the way you do, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, I'm on all the things, even the terrible thing, which is most of them are terrible, But I'm on TikTok. If you just put my first name, usually all come up TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, I know, I know, and blue Sky and I'm not the only one I don't really do is Facebook.
You're too cool.
For that.
Oh, I have a subset. That's where the script is by my subset. Now, not too cool for Facebook. I'm just too lazy for Facebook.
I mean, I mean listen, if you're on these things, you're not too cool for anything. That's the really cool kids are not on any of these things. You can find me at on Blue Sky, at cave Ka V E H M D. And more importantly, you can listen to my podcast, The House of Pod. It's a relatively fun, informal look at medicine. We tried to make healthcare more relatable, you know. Sometimes we'll take an aim at medical quackery or griffs and that sort of thing. I think your listeners will like it.
Yeah.
Our guests range from doctors like Peter Hotez or Argavon here to musicians like Portugal the Man or a lot of the Cool Zone family that you all know and love, Prop and Robert and hopefully me as soon. So find it anywhere you get your podcasts, The House of Pod. Yeah, and you can find all of that.
We've talked about like a staggering number of the other shows that we do in this one, but yeah, you can. You can find our other shows where there are podcasts and yeah, think god, I'm so bad at plugging these things. You think it's my living but now can't do it, so you're out of ted. Absolute failure. But yeah, thank you to both for coming on. And I hope you get your grand arka pod because fuck that, like Jesus Christ.
Thank you.
Well.
If I if I don't get my funding renewed this summer, I will, I will.
Let you know.
I mean we can talk about it.
Yeah, yeah, I'm down for a podcast. Yeah, this is this is big. Could happen here. I go harass your legislatures, your local administrators for universities, your local police departments. I make sure they do not bad stuff and do good things.
Hi, everyone, I'm welcome to it could happen here today. It's me James and I'm joined by Nevdon jam Gochian. We're here to talk about Azerbaijan, Armenia and the increasingly genocidal rhetoric from Azerbaijan.
But I want to start off.
Nevdene, we're talking about COP twenty twenty four.
I guess can you explain.
I think people will be sort of somewhat familiar with these series of climate conferences but this one was held in Azerbijan, right, and can you explain a little bit about you've specialized in like these greenwashing, sports washing, various other sort of forms of laundering legitimacy.
Rate, I'd love for you to start off there and.
Explain how this particular conference was used as a means of laundering legitimacy for what is it like a genocidal project.
COP twenty nine, which was just concluded in Azerbaijan, is the deadly serious and vital conversation about climate in the United Nations, which we absolutely need to have. But from
the beginning it was a clown show. And the way Azerbaijan, a Petro dictatorship, was able to proture this for themselves was at COP twenty eight, which was held in Dubai, another questionable location for the climate conference, where they had a pavilion as reported by Political EU, where they had a giant advertisement that said Carabach is the first place to achieve net zero emissions in Azerbaijan, and that was one part of them getting the bid for COP twenty nine.
And the way Zerbaijan was able to achieve net zero emissions in this particular location was they committed a genocide against all the people. If there's no people, there's no climate emissions. And that's probably not even true that it's a net zero emissions because they've engaged in so much of the eradication of any trace of Armenians in this place that Armenians been living in for at least two thousand,
five hundred years. Destruction of buildings, of course is one of the huge source of pollution, and they've they've raised something like four cemeteries, thousands of the monuments, four churches have demolished, entire neighborhoods have been raised historical neighborhood so it's probably not even that zero, but that was their
advertising claim to get the bid. The top twenty nine was originally supposed to be in Europe, but Russia was vetoing every European bid, and Armenia, who Azerbaijan is currently occupying two hundred and fifteen kilometers of Armenian territory, was blocking Azerbaijan. Tell Azerbaijan offered to give up thirty two Armenian hostages, so we've got to there, we've got the
gangster hobstage situation, which they did. They gave up thirty two members of the Armenian military, and they made Armenia give up two other basignons that were reheld by Armenia because they had gone into Armenia and killed a local security guard trying to steal his car. They probably were lost and they killed this guy and they were trying to escape. But then just one of them had been sent to life imprisonment. But that's what Armenia gave up in exchange.
To allow this climate conference to happen.
That's correct, So let's stoom.
Back from this climate conference, right like in this I think it's a really interesting place to start. The site of our genocide is a net zero area, and it's a very bleak vision of the sort of greenwashing future.
Let's expand a little bit of the history of the conflict between these two countries, and also, perhaps more broadly, I think people will probably be familiar with the Armenian genocide if they've listened to this show, But of Armenian people as a subject discrimination and hatred for centuries.
Right, well, you know, I mean, Armenians are one of the ancient people of that area, Greeks, Jews, Persians, they're one of the people that have kind of stuck it
out for a long time in that neighborhood. The Turkic people are more recent visitors to the neighborhood, and there's nothing wrong with migration of people, but there's something about populations that have been there for a long time that really strikes a nerve if we want to be very mild about it, with the Turkic people, Turkey and Azerbaijan in the sense that they've been engaged in a policy of destroying any remnants of Armenians, including physical people, for
least in the eighteen eighties. They've been making them second class citizens since they came in in the Ottoman Empire. There's this myth of the a multicultural society, which is interesting Azerbaijan is also trying to promote. But it really was a second class situation where the minorities in the Ottoman Empire had a lot of extra taxes and duties and persecution than other people in the area.
Yeah, so let's talk about this this area then, specifically this area which would be called depending on who you asked, art Zach or Gona Krabak, Right, I think probably it is. I don't know, if I haven't looked on Wikipedia, but like what would the more commonly used terms for people wanting to look it up right in American English. But let's explain why there is a conflict in this area and then what has happened since. I guess we can go from like the fall of the Soviet Union would be a place to.
Start, or I mean we talked about earlier. That's the tough thing about talking to rannions, like where I would start with the sixth century and the fall of the kingdom Ratu. Okay, but I guess we don't have that much time. So basically, and I do have to put this in there because there's a big Azerbaijani narrative that Armenians are effective people, they're effective presence. And I'll deal with that in a little bit. Ye, But you know,
it's just been recorded by Greek. I mean, I don't know why I should have to prove our existence, but we do. Yeah, So anyway, I record to history that it's where the ourar media and alphabet was invented. These people have been indigenous to the region for thousands of years. They've got a deep connection with the land fall the Soviet Union. Fast forward, there had been under the territory of the Azerbaijani SSR as in a autonomous oblast, as
they called it. It had been given to the Azerbaijani SSR because of Stalin, who was the Commissioner of Minorities. Calin has this big project to divide the people, the minorities in the Soviet Union to fight each other, which is ramped up in the nineteen sixties when the Soviets start inventing fake history to pit people against each other, which is wild, but Sloviet Union is crumbling. The people of Artsak, which is the armeniandigenous name Nagaro Karaba, is
generally acceptable as well. That's that would be the colonial name or the name that the as Ais call the region. They are fed up with not being able to learn their language because of Azerbaijan. They're fed up with not being able to have any of the rights as Soviet citizens because the father of the current dictator of Azerbaijan was ruining Azerbaijan since nineteen sixty nine and his policy was to try to get as many armedients to move
out of the region as possible. So they're fed up with this and they're like okay enough, they legally seceed from the Soviet Union. It's allowed in the Constitution, which of course infuriates that Azerbaijani SSR. You know. So there's a bunch of conflicts. There's the pogroms that happen against Armenians and cities of Baku and Sungate and at which point they seceed fully from the Soviet Union, one of the first areas to do so in nineteen ninety one.
They actually left the Soviet Union before Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan with the Soviet Union's troops in bay there's this bloody mess it's called Operation Ring where they're killing Armenians in the area. There's a war that erupts when everybody seceedes. Armenians in Artsak get the upper hand due to they really cared about it and also probably because of racism within the Soviet Union, where they trained Armenians a little bit better than they did Azeris. It's a humiliating defeat for Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan is pushed back. Armenian sees about nine percent of Azerbaijani territory beyond art Soak, and that was a stasis until twenty twenty.
Yeah, really yeah, sort of thirty years of right, but it was always disputed right this area was there as we don't continued to lay claim to the Attak region.
Is that correct?
For some reason, it was never recognized by the UN US being a real country similar to some other places. Why that is is confusing to me because they did leave earlier than anybody else. It is an ethnic minority that chose to leave the area, but it was they weren't considered legitimate by the UN by Azerbaijan, And secondarily, we have this brutal dictatorship that's held together by ethnic hatred. Really, I cannot overstate how terrible the Alif regime is in Azerbaijan.
But you know, Urmeni forces committed at least one war crime that I'm aware of during that time in the place that called Joli, where they killed one hundred and eighty to six hundred Azari civilians. And they've used this event and I think one other, to really hold their country together in this pit of brothing, broth of it than hatred. So not till twenty twenty does that really coalesce, Do they become strong as a petro state? To take back large portions of the country.
Yeah, talking of taking back, I'm going to have to take back thirty seconds to everyone's time for an advertising break here, So let's do that and we'll.
Come right back. How it we're back.
One thing I think that it might be illustrative to hear is that, like in the first Adzak War, Turkish I guess it, regulars or mercenaries or what you want to call them, people associated with the Gray Wolves fought on the side of Azubijan right and keen history understanders will know that there is some history of anti Armenian sentiment among the gray Wolves and then indeed in Turkey as a country. So preps, this is a good point to talk about the international involvement here, because I think
it's very misleading to do this. As we're seeing in Syria right now, people want to do the world into blocks, right with like this sort of Cold War narrative that we have of Russian interests in US interests, And I think this is an excellent example of why that is not necessarily a great way to perceive the world. So can you explain the international involvement in Artsak and in this ongoing conflict, which we'll get to it beginning again in twenty twenty, I think in a second.
In addition to Turkish forces being used in that twenty twenty war, which I guess we'll have to get into a little bit. Yeah, there, Syrian mercenaries were used as well. They were acuted, they were put on the front lines. It's kind of candid fodder. They're given something like one hundred dollars bonus that they beheaded a civilian, a two hundred dollars bonus that they beheaded in Armenian soldier there.
But of course, Israel is the primary supplier of Azeri weapons in weaponry, going so far to test some of their drones on manned Armenian outposts early on before the war started. It's fair to say that Azerbaijan could not have been so successful without the aid of their ally, Israel. Israel has been deeply involved in Azerbaijan for a long time. They use Azerbaijan as a listening post against Iran. Israel stages raids from Azerbaijan on Iran and has to do
with the ethnic minority in Iran. There's a lot of Azaris down there. Israel get something like forty percent of its oil from Azerbaijan. Right after the Palestinian genocide started, Israel awarded two contracts to the state oil company SOCAR in Azerbaijan that's right adjacent to the Palestinian gas field and the Lebanon oil field to SOCAR to explore. It cannot be overstated how complicit these two groups are with each other. They really really need each other in the region.
In the United States also liked Azerbaijan as well. They see it as a friendly Muslim country bulark against Iran as well.
Yeah, I think they also have some Turkish drones. Is that right the bay Car Yes, absolutely. So let's talk about that twenty twenty war, because that was a war that relied heavily on these drones, right, some major means of destroying Armenian armor and pushing that offensive. So what happened in twenty twenty along this disputed border, Well.
You know, it's called mountainous Karaba. It's an area that's great defensively if you're fighting in a pre drone world. Yeah, but you know, as you've discovered your Kurdish friends, the drones are amazingly destructive against people hiding in caves, which is what the Armenian response had been. Armenians had been a bit lazy. They've been relying on Russian tanks and weaponry,
whereas Arbaijan's is buying from Israel. They're buying from all, you know, many many, just different sources, which reflects the wealth of Azerbaijan, of course. So in twenty twenty, there's some indication that Alif, the dictator of as Evaijhan, had been planning us for a while. He had this playbook called Operation Azeri Smile twenty twenty. The troops move in, they encounter more resistance than they thought, and they get most of the Armenian held territory of Nicardo Karaba back.
They're stopped at the last minute, probably by Russian intervention.
At this time. The Armenia was a member of the Russian Alliance at that time, which they're leaving just because it's the Russia has failed to live up to its treaty obligations anyway, and it left a kind of a skeletal state of Artak left, which was only supplied by this one road called the Latchin Corridor, that was only one road from Armenia to supply the one hundred and twenty some thousand Armenians who lived in Artzak left, which brings us to twenty twenty four, twenty three, twenty.
Two orl Yeah.
So yeah, you have this situation where we now have this massive area that I guess occupied a lot of people. People began leaving at that time right through that Latching Corridor, like people didn't feel like they could safely remain there.
I mean, the indigenous people of art Sock have this profound relationship with the land and the people. I am an icon painter, and I was talking to my priest and he was comparing the people there to the elves and the lord of the ring. You know, they whistled to the birds. You know, they've just been living with the land for a long time. So there was a drade, but it's not as big as you would have fought, just because there's this intense millennia old connection with the
places of art Sock. So what Ezerbay John did, and this is I think unprecedented, is they had a fake equalize protest. Oh wow, that stopped the Lachin Corridor from supplying food in medicine to the people of Artsac, so they starved those people. They denied the medicine, people had miscarriages as areas, were firing at farmers in the field that were trying to collect food, and that went on
for nine months. And what stopped what fether By John claimed it was a group of ecological protesters who were stopping trucks of food coming into Artsock for any any reason, which you know is enough of the smoke screen for the Western world to really throw up its hands.
Yeah, fascinating. So they literally have a blockade of these protesters.
These protesters blocked it. There'sn't The Russian troops that were the peace coopers refused to disperse these protesters. They were these old appraching kind of looking people wearing fur coats. They were identified on social media as actually being members of the Zari military and they had these printed signs that said things like protect nature, stop pollutions, very generic,
wildly generic things. Ostensibly, they are against the gold mining operations in artsk which is nuts because a protest is not allowed. And Azerbaijan and THEI there had been an actual protest against a real gold mine that was owned by the daughters of the dictator and they were brutally shut down, you know before, So anybody who was paying any kind of attention to this knew that it was fictive. But I think the EU in particular needing enough of
the smoke screen not to support these people. EU. Of course it's getting its gas through Azerbaijan. Yeah, because they've said they don't want it from Russia. But Russia's just feeding its gas to Azerbaijan, and then Azerbaijan is selling it's Azerbaijani gas to the EU. So they were just trying to do that.
Yeah, we've just created a pass through and like someone who could live off that rentier income. So let's go to twenty twenty three. Okay, well we see happening in twenty twenty three.
So the eco protesters they kind of run their course and then there's a lightning operation art sucks attacked positions overrun. There's this massive exodus of people, people who have to leave their houses immediately. The road is blocked. People are dying on this road on the way out, fighting each other, you know, just to leave their houses. In twenty twenty, Azebaijan has said, sure, you know, our Meetians can come back. We're just taking back a territory. You live here, you
can do that. But when Armenians did, there's this one case of a sixty nine year old farmer who went back to get his possessions. Very troops cut off his head Jesus. They put it on a dead pig, and they put all those images on social media. They raped and tortured anybody that they could find left behind, and they turned it into means on stickers that were you know, something like down like twenty thousand times in the five
days that were being monitored for this. So there was absolutely no question that people could stay behind.
Yeah.
Zero. Yeah, So there's no Armenians left. And so there's literally been daily ritual that's been going on for a thousand, seven hundred years that it doesn't go on anymore, and there's a tragedy in that.
Yeah, yeah, it's been lost.
Like yeah, it's hard to quantify that, like you know the meaning of that loss. I think, especially for folks who aren't familiar with people and their culture and the like that connection to these things. Talking of quantifying things, I need to look at the amount of time we got here and pivot again to advertisements.
And we're back so what we see.
In odds, especially in twenty twenty three, is a project of ethnic cleansing, right, genocidal violence, whatever however you wish to phrase it. I mean ethnic cleansing is not a term that has really like a definition in natural law. Genocide does often very much like in this incidentce I'm using them to mean one and the same things, the removal of people, either through killing them or forcing them to leave or starving them.
The International Association gene Side Scholars, the Lumpkin Institute, Luis Moreno Campo is a founding prosecutor the ICC. You on your RESTR. Mendez a special advisor to the Pacer General on genocide prevention. They all call it genocide, so we can call it that, Yeah, we can call it really safe.
Yeah, there have been many genocide of products in history. Like what is Azerbaijan's goal with this? Is it the removal of Armenian people with the areas such as as the repeople can occupy it? Is it access to the resources that are there? Is it settling a historical school?
If you look at a map, there's this idea of pan Turanism. Is that something that's you're familiar.
With yeah, can you explain that to listen to a not Pan Turanism.
Is this Turkish idea of an ancient Turkish state that stretches from the Bosphorus all the way over to Mongolia, and there's one little country in the way that is blocking this, this empire that should exist according to the Pan Tyrannism. And this is an old idea, it's a nineteenth century idea. It's blumping in with every Nazi and race junk scientist idea that you have. But that's the idea. And the secondary thing is, you know again Alief is
raping his people. He's in presenting every journalist, he's any scientists. It's it's really on a level with truth Mngistan or what was happening in Syria or North Korea. And he needs ethnic hate to keep his country together. He's made an ethnic hate theme park. It's not called that, but that's what it is against Armenians. So yeah, so really I see it as a consolidation of power. He needs an enemy, he needs to move forward, which is why he's threatening to invade Armenia proper. Next.
Yeah, and like I think one of the things that happened with the with the conflict in art Zac. I'm just I'm thinking about this, this Panturkic stuff because I see it every single day and their applies to my post on social media. Right. In my case it's with
reference to my time in Kurdistan and in Rishaba. This information played a massive role in the in the twenty twenty three contract, in the twenty twenty conflict too, right, And I think people who are hearing about this sort of first time are at massive risk for finding that some of that differ information. Right. They hear about this driving to work today on our podcast and they go
to google it. There's a lot of crap out there, right, So can we address that the role that it's played and continues to play.
The load of crap or the pan Turanism or both?
Well, the pan Turanism generates a lot of crap, right, Like I'm convinced that some of the accounts in my replies are not real human beings.
Oh yeah, that's been a well established phenomenon, the number of bots that as of by genre to a lesser except Turkey, because I think Turkey is more secure and it's genocidal aspect, whereas and it's really really going for it you know, so not only the bots in the replies which has come up. No matter what you put in a keyword, there's going to be lots of mentions
on your social media. Not to mention there's a pretty vicious campaign out there to dos anybody who talks about this is that's happened to me before and it's not pretty.
Yeah.
But also there's this thing called mirror propaganda. I don't know if you've heard of that, but there's areas will take something that Armenians say like, oh, our Armenians should go be able to have a right to return, say they drub this huge cloud of they'll take actual documents that have been produced by I don't know, Freedom House, right, yeah, and then they'll copy the entire doc document in format.
Things the right of Azarias to return to Western Azerbaijan, which is their new concept, and western iver Dejan is the country of Armenia. So they have these maps where they renamed all the towns of Armenia with azari names. They claim Armenians only came to the region in eighteen twenty eight with the Russians, that they're fake people. Another tragedy of Artsak is they're taking these monasteries and places, not only destroying them but chiseling off ancient inscriptions to
prove that Armenians didn't exist there. They've already done this in this other place called Natchivan, which is they call it the largest cultural genocide of the twenty first century, where they destroyed thousands of medieval monuments in stones with buljos and sledgehammers. So they're just wiping them out, any record of our medium, anything in they're claiming Armenia. It
is really should be called Western Hazeraijan. And anytime Armenians talk about arts that going back, they're like, well, we.
They made cookbooks, they've got a television show Western Basan, and it's just it's what you're laughing and I laugh too, but it's it's so ugly, so scary, but it's funny too.
Yeah, And if these things are intil it's your grandma or have you been beheaded?
Like yes, it does seem it does seem obscene, and it's so obscene that it's funny. Right, But like this is a concerted state project, right that, Like it's easy to get caught up in, and it's easy to get caught in this disinformation machine, not just from like like like a botty in your replies, but from news like you say, news outlets, or like doctored reports or things that look very convincing.
Search results that go to the top. I mean, you know, on this course started with the writing andocide which ors Turkey and Azebay. John in Pakistan for some reason say it was fake. If you search for that, the top results are going to be our means are lying, they committed to genocide with us, And then they'll throw these numbers like, oh yeah, ARMANI it's killed three million turns, Like what are you talking about? These It's just like like words have meaning.
You know, but increasingly less and less.
Less and less. You know. There's that great Hannah Art line about constant lying is not aimed at making people believe a lie, but ensuring that no one believes anything anymore, and that's what they want. We're an obscure part of the world. This will say a bunch of shit, and people throw up their hands and walk away.
Yeah, oh it's too complicated, and so.
They too complicated, right yeah, Or you know, they'll say, oh, it's ancient hatreds and like that's bullshit. It's not ancient hatreds. It's a very modern thing. These are real people who have real understandable issues, you know, like in Gaza, it's like it's very clear, Yeah what's going on? Yeah?
Yeah, I have the different sterias that have received a lot more coverage and longbow attention. So where does this leave us now?
Right?
As ab Giant has just hosted this conference, and like it's important to recognize that this conference is it's a project of kind of global liberalism right to the cop conference, and like it conveys legitimacy, and in this case, it's a means of kind of laundering legitimacy right for this Carabuck project in their case, right through the lens of protecting the planet. Where do they go from there?
Well, So what makes the dictatorship as Down a little bit different from these other dictatorships I mentioned is I think they care about what people think a little bit. They bring in F one racing, the Eurovision. They really do these projects because they want to be seen as a legitimate state, where I think those others like North Korea, they don't do that. Like, no, it's going to like us no matter what we do. Yeah, giving up they want to play on the international stage. So that's one aspect.
Another aspect, it legitimizes themselves to their internal critics. People as their Bajana smart they know what's going on, but they say, oh, the world is coming to us. The world accepts us. They must, you know, accept the brutal dictatorship that's cracking down anybody's gay, lesbian, anything you know, orchure is a feature of this regime. So it legitimizes themselves internally. Yeah, and what they fear, I guess is people were getting angry that they invade Armenia. So it's
just I think it's that chene. Now we could argue whether that was effective because COP twenty nine was an absolute train wreck for them, but I'm not sure that matters to them right. Matters to the environment, Yeah.
I think probably these COP conferences are not going to be the way we solve our our issues with climate change. But that's an another conversation. And going forward, like what is the status of odds? What can those people, those people who were able to leave, Like what does the future hold for them? Are they sort of refugees in media?
Now there are refugees are Armenia Amenia is a poor state, doesn't have the oil reserves. The Azerbaijan just announced that they're increased their military budget by twenty percent. It was already incredibly high last time I got statistics. The flights from of Dah, which is the Israeli military insulation for flying equipment to Azerbaijan, has ramped up. It's higher than it was in twenty twenty before their invasions, on par for twenty twenty three. So that's a pretty clear sign
that they're getting all their equipment from Israel. They stopped before copp and so I haven't been able to get data on that since then. Azerbaijan just issued a declaration that parents cannot visit their children in the military, and that's a bad, bad sign. So the question is not if it's win, it is winter or I mean, he has a lot of mountains. Those are pretty good defend people are figured out. Sure, you've talked to your friends of our Java. They figured out drones a little bit, how
to deal with them better. I mean, he has reached out to France, who's been helping them a little bit. Azby John says there's some conditions for peace that are insane, you know, like change your constitution is one, get rid of all EU observers is another. Don't get any new weapons, and then give us the what's called this Zuger corridor, which is like this road that goes to their exclave Naccheban to the to the west there, and it's just like you can't stay. No country is going to do that.
Oh and they've got another claim, which is they say, allow the UNESCO to visit Armenia to bick out erased Azerbaijani sites, which is just a mirror propacanda insanity because Unesca's already in our media and Armenia asked that of UNESCO for Azerbaijan.
But yeah, of course they just copy that right and say well why do you do it?
Yeah, right, which you know is not a real thing. But anyway, so those are a conditions piece. So it seems probable that Azerbaijan will invade, possibly in spring because the snow will melt it away. Possibly now, because Alia seems like he's very angry that the world kind of paid attention to Cop twenty nine is figuring out that he's a dick, and he's ramped up in arrest in his own country. He does arrest an entire television station of people that were you can it's it's one of
the least press free countries on Earth. But I guess people were doing something before that. And they'll either take the southern half of Armenia or they'll take all of it, because they say Yerevan, the capital of Armenians, is historically
part of Azerbaijan. So that's a state where we're at there, And I really think any other perspectives are wishful thinking, and I'm Sartaly so grim about that, but it's I think it's a very real possibility that there's Armenian genocide, that it's killed literally, you know, accountable millions of Armenians since the eighteen nineties and ramped up through nineteen fifteen through nineteen twenty three, and then socide a little bit is ongoing and their project will be completed in the
next year.
Yeah, that's pretty bleak.
How can people they want to be in solid director if they want to support I think this is something that doesn't get reported on right in the US, even though they just want to learn more.
How can they do that? Where can they go?
There's a good site. This has learned for art SoC that's a good site. There's a bunch of Armenian web sites that people can go to. May I post some some links on the show notes? Would that be that'd be good? Yeah?
Well absolutely, Betters in the show notes.
Yeah, yeah, I would be very happy to do that if people want to donate things. But it's similar to Gaza or other places, like what what does awareness to do? I guess it could slow things down, Yeah, but really we just need state actors to respond to this. Our meetings get very cynically used in France and in the United States by right wing politicians who claim that they're protecting Christians. But I don't think that's something that will actually happen.
Yeah, I mean people think the same thing for a sad right that he protected Christians in Syria while he Yea murdered to gas his own people.
Exactly.
That's a best a cynical thing and a worse justification.
I mean, what have you seen that's effective in terms of world action for these things with the Kurds or other people?
I mean, look, and we talk about how the Kurds have defended themselves from get a state project to eliminate them. Right, in some areas they haven't been able to, right, and when they have it's through their own armed initiative for the most part. Right that they were very fortunate to have the support of the United States. But that was
only ever in the battle against Isis. It wasn't when genocidal violence, right, this genocidal project in a free and where we're seeing it right now in powerfact, the US didn't stand beside them there. And it's not in its
nature too. And I think this is a really difficult situation that we find ourselves in all around the world right now, right, we see we've seen this in Africa too, Right, it's not really in the nature of the United States, not in this century, to intervene simply for human rights reasons, simply because it because genocide is wrong.
We had a person that Sam had the power, who wrote a book on how genocide is wrong and we should intervene. And then what happens when she's the tower with Obama and Biden.
We draw red lines and then less sad walk over them, like it happens all over the world. And I think, yeah, we're probably in a post hedge and monic era, But that doesn't mean that people deserve to die because we're in a post Hedge and Monic era.
I know.
Look, if I look at the other genocide, which I've spent more time with than most genocides, the weird thing to say, it's the genocide in Meammar. Of the range of people, they are still facing genocidal violence now, even from anti hunter groups. But I also see Muslim people in the current National Liberation Army. I see them fighting with the k and DF, and the way that those people liberated themselves was like from the bottom up, and I think that, like I find some hope in what's
happening in Kurdistan and what's happening in me Ammar. And I don't see very much from the Community of States, so much of the thing that even fucking exists. I don't really believe that state to have a conscience. And yes, I don't think it's in their nature to care about people, because people are inherently valuable. But I do think people do, and I do think it is in the nature of people to care.
So I guess we have to continue to hope.
And there has been some positive statements by your Java regarding our Medians and there's a lot of solidarity there, which it was great. You know, Kurt's helped commit the first Armenian genocide and they've apologized, and so I'm seeing a little glimmers of hope in terms of the solidarity of people who see what's right and wrong who aren't state actors. That's absolutely right.
Yeah, one of the things people, there's another thing that will be deployed very often. The Kurds are responsible for the Armenian genocide. Court if people were part of the Armenian genocide, and they will acknowledge that, and they've tried to make amends for it.
Yes, exactly right, and that's all.
Yeah, like we're here now, we're not prisoners of our history, but we have to acknowledge it so that we can move from it.
Thank you for sharing all that, Yes, thank you.
Is there anything else that we've failed to address, so you want to get in quickly before we I mean, yes, estousands of you as of stuff.
But you know, visit Armenia. It's still called one of the safest places on earth. Is it's been rated safer than Japan. It's a beautiful place, it's a struggling democracy, but it's the only democracy in the area. Try to pay attention to the news, you know, is Hackeys. It seems right, your senator, you know, like I just feel wrong saying that, but what else can we do? Right? If you're in Britain, the UK is an incredibly agregious
supporter of Azerbaijan through British petroleum. Really, you people probably can have the biggest effect because the UK is the biggest enabler of those dirt bags. And thank you for the time. I really appreciate it. And I don't feel like I've done justice to two thousand, five hundred years of history, but thank you so much.
No, I think it's great. Is there any way people can follow you online if they'd like to?
Oh, absolutely not. I'm tired of getting docs.
Excellent, Yes, pretty fit event.
You know, And that's why I pin icons. This is because it's it's anonymous, you know.
Very offline.
But yeah, but thank you so much, great.
Thank you.
This is it could happen here.
Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling of our world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison David today, I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This week we are covering the week of January twenty ninth to February fifth, and oh boy, has this week felt like a month. I am absolutely exhausted. And let's start, I guess by talking about what Trump did.
Tuesday night.
He had a press conference with both himself and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin and Yahoo to announce that the United States would quote unquote take over the Gaza Strip, resulting in quote unquote long term ownership Previously. On that day, Trump also signed an order pulling out of the United Nations Human Rights Council and cutting off aid to UNRA. Let's start with this topic. Hopefully we will have a later episode maybe next week, covering what's happening in Palestine.
But you know, this is, as of right now, the current most development.
This is one of the more like crazy things that he's like, like you could see Netanyahoo even like in the room clearly finding out about this for the first time.
Yeah, there was a real, oh shit, really vibe.
I'm not sure how long Trump and Nan Yaho actually had this like entire thing planned that that is a distinct possibility that like this has been Netanyahu's goal for a while, and this was like impacted his negotiations with Biden, like knowing that he wanted this to be like the outcome where the US basically just takes and holds the territory of Gaza as a US territory, like indefinitely.
I think Babe knew that Trump would give him a positive outcome in any number of ways, right, like to include just saying like bomb it off the map, Like I think it's reasonable to assume that.
Well, and I mean something like this was I think the obvious outcome as soon as Trump, I mean from before Trump won, right, Yeah, net Yahoo never had any intention of letting things go back to the way they were before October seventh, and Trump has a vested interest in giving Netanyahu whatever he wants the most, Like it's a I don't know, I'm not surprised by it. I guess I'm a little bit like, Okay, at least now we know what they're going to do next.
It's in line with the manifest destiny territorial expansion and Trump has been talking about the past few weeks. Yeah, I mean Joe Biden laid the groundwork for this by giving like Israel the actual like bombs and materials to to like do the demolition side of this project. And now Trump continues to discuss relocating Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan, while promising to turn Gaza into quote unquote the riviera of the Middle East. Level it out create an economic development unquote.
He has also said that he's gonna again said he's going to withdraw US troops from Syria, which would leave two thousand people in saintcom to deploy to Gaza.
I guess if that's what they want to do.
Yeah, I mean I feel like there's no possible way this can go quote unquote, well this is going to be a fucking catastrophe. The basic plan here is to do genocide. And then well mean this is this is part of a genocidal operation. Yeah, it's like this is like what we're doing a second law or your genui side. This is like the finishing touch.
Yeah.
But you know, like on a sort of practical level, it's like, Okay, the US couldn't hold Afghanistan, right, like and like obviously like this is this isn't like a quote unquote easier occupation. But it's like, this is gonna be a fucking shit, like a nightmare, like and I don't know. I mean, my assumption is that this is going to be just like if if he actually, like you know, does a deployment of US troops, this is
going to be hideously unpopular. People are going to be coming back in body bags and it's gonna fucking I don't know, it's going to be a nightmare for everyone involved. And yeah, it's a absolutely terrible idea.
I'm more scared that they're going to get away with it. I think it's I'm more scared that things will go find for them and this just becomes like an actually stable US territory in the Middle East.
There will be significant pushbacks not the word right like that there will be gerrilla warfare, right Like. It's very hard to take and hold significantly large urban areas, as the US has found out for twenty years. Whether or not people would accept that, I think I think they might, Like I think Trump kind of needs an enemy, you know, and a war and and like a quote unquote, you know, he can he can paint almost anything as a win.
And I think people might be more willing than we'd like to think to accept people coming home in body bags.
From that, I'm not really sure. I think we're actually going to see the kind of troop deployment that people think based on what Trump has said as opposed to expanded support for what the Israelis have already been doing, which has like done a significant job to depopulate the area as it stands. Like, Yeah, I think we have to be hesitant to draw too strong a line between the rhetoric and what Trump is actually going to do.
Which doesn't mean I don't think that it's not very likely that you're going to continue to see massy population in Gaza. I think it's just that, like, I don't know that. I think the only way that happens is something that looks like most of the occupations of the last century have looked like from a US point of view.
Yeah, and the new model is this Syria model, right, make a relatively small footprint, and then in the local partner force at the IDF pulling security for US contracts and in US money like.
That, right, the IDF and a lot of third party corporate PMCs. Yeah, PMCs, you know, like that's what that we've we've got guys champing at the bit to do that. And yeah, like I that looks a lot likelier to me than the tenth Mountain Division, you know, occupying large chunks of Gaza.
Agreed. Yeah, Eric Prince is ready to ready to get sadly all.
Right, let's uh, let's transition to our new segment titled Stinky Musk, which I came up with last night. Delirious and yes it's bad. No, I'm not going to fix it. South African Gang does a hostile takeover of the United States.
Yeah, you're hitting.
You're hitting today, Garrison.
Elon Musk at a gig of overly online gen z interns are doing an oligarchic cyber coup of the federal government meant starting with the Office of Management and Budget and moving on to USAID, A General Services Administration, the Treasury, and as of Recording Noah, as well as many other agencies, smaller agencies, bigger agencies that they are infiltrating both physically
and digitally. Yeah, employees of these agencies have been locked out both physically and digitally as the DOGE team ransacks various departments and accesses sensitive data with no oversight, and that's like government data about you possibly in the hands of a literal Nick Fuentes, pilled Groyper. Intern security officials who tried to resist Musk's seizure of classified materials have been fired, and DOGE personnel threatened to call the US
Marshals to be let into buildings. I have some more info on this, as we will as we will go on, but I guess this is this is an okay time just to discuss.
Yeah, I think the response to this is one of the more hopeful things going on right now. And kind of what led me to think that is looking at twenty looking at the fallout from twenty twenty and what worked and what didn't, largely what didn't work, and thinking like, okay, well, if we're going to actually get any kind of functional
resistance to what's happening, what does that look like. And it doesn't look like the same cruise of people doing the same thing that they did four or five years ago, Which is why I've got some hope in the fact that you've got a different crowd of people who are radicalizing and taking to the streets, and you know, we have central employees, federal employees, right, and you've got a lot of like, yeah, most of them are still current, but you know, it's a mix of former and current
federal employees. And these are these are the people who do a lot of the nuts and bolts stuff at the Office of Personnel Management, Office of Management Budget like. These are the people who like make keep things functioning at like a ground level, and a lot of them are are pissed off in a way that I don't
think we have really seen before. And I think there's a potential And who's to say, Like, right now, we just had a big protest in front of Treasury about a full city block or so of people, many if not the vast majority of whom we're federal employees, rallying alongside a lot of Democratic members of Congress. And you know, that's that doesn't accomplish anything on its own, but it's
a potential start to accomplishing something. You know, if you get those people out in the street, it provides, among other things, a lot of cover for everyone else. And it also is the start of you know, what you might call a reverse January sixth. You know, if January six was a bunch of random people taking and occupying government buildings without any knowledge of like what they are
or how things actually function inside of them. The kind of thing that we might be looking at in the near future is the opposite of that, where a bunch of people who absolutely do know how those organizations and buildings function trying to take.
And occupy them.
And that's the feeling I got because I talked to some folks who are at the Treasury protest. One person that I talked to most extensively as a federal contractor who was present in twenty seventeen at the travel ban protests if you remember those, which is back when Trump announced his first Muslim bound and a bunch of people started occupying like airports and stuff like I was at
the LAX for that. This person was at some of those protests and it was out in front of Treasury, and the quote that I've got from them there was I was expecting it it being this protest, the Treasury protest, to feel like the travel ban protests.
It didn't.
It was a lot angrier than the travel ban protests. The travel ban protests were kind of an in defense of another person sort of anger, and this was narrowly focused anger at a very specific group of people. There were a lot of people yelling and screaming outside of their congressman's offices and the like, and like, there hasn't been that much disruption compared to what we're going to see, right,
Social Security payments haven't stopped going out in moss. So if we're seeing something like this at this early stage, I think there's a lot of potential there. And the thing this person brought up repeatedly is like, when we start seeing congressmen kicking indoors is when things are going
to get interesting. If that happens, Like, that's kind of the stage at which there's a lot of potential for this to turn into something that could actually cause change, Like if you actually start getting government employees who are willing to do more than stand outside of their offices, like who are willing to take direct action to occupy those buildings or stop other people from and you've seen little bits of that, right. One of the things we did see is as these doge kids came along, federal
employees refusing them entry, keeping doors locked. Now that was not illegal because these were literally, as it's been described in me by multiple people, just kids showing up demanding entry without any kind of a badge or evidence of who they are. Right when you get people who are willing to escalate from that and refuse entry, that's when we might actually see something start to seriously shift here.
I mean, based on how much of what Musk is doing is just like bypassing Congress and doing like like a very kind of like typical like like Ola Garkic co coup, Like he's doing all those steps. And if you look at like what happened in South Korea a few months ago, we are not at the point where congressmen are literally like like you know, climbing over like fences barricading doors.
We're not in South Korea territory yet, but yeah, but.
Like their lawmakers like we're willing to do that.
And and there is like I think waiting from people to like wait and see if our lawmakers are going to be willing to do the same to like protect the actual like functional aspects of our government, and like things are already happening, like we we are in some ways kind of already at this point. The USAYED website is now like completely removed, leaving only a note that claims that all personnel have been put on administrative leave,
including overseas personnel. But this essentially leaves a whole agency shut down, but all done with like without an Act of Congress or even like an overstepping executive order from Trump.
It was just it was just the unelected Elon Musk who decided to and carried out the closure of a government agency, which like should be like like should actually be like a criminal like there is like statutes that aren't designed to stop this from happening, just no one's enforcing them because they control almost every aspect of government. Musk has also closed the IRS direct file tax system, which has now forced taxpayers to use third party paid services.
It's like he's doing this like one by one. I think the weakness that they have right now is that because you're causing so much chaos, because they're you're gonna talk about the FBI pers they're trying to do like you know, the thing that they're relying on is everyone is just going to let them in and just let them get walked over. But it's like, Okay, the thing about acting this muscleside the law is what guys with
guns do you have who you can use to enforce this? Yeah, that's the thing where it's it's legitimately like, if there's serious resistance to them, they might start to crumple. Because the reason you work inside of the legal order or you have your own paramilitaries is so that you can have have like the guy with the gun to make
you open the door. Yeah, And the more people who are willing to just be like no, fuck you, like and like force them to actually like find guys with guns who are willing to do.
This, the odds are lower that you get a positive shift because people engage directly and aggressively with the cops. Then you have when some sort of like mid level military functionary is asked to drive a tank over a school teacher. Right Like, Historically, historically, if you look at when regimes fall, that happens more often than the waving
a flag on top of like a pile of corpses. Yeah, right, Like demands are ordered illegal illegal orders are given to people with guns and they're like, no, I'm not going to shoot at a bunch of teachers today. That's not the only way this kind of thing happens, but at least, like for my money, that's the likeliest positive outcome, right.
Yeah, and if you look at the last world historical empire run by it incredibly unpopular genetocracy, it was the Soviets, and look at how they fell apart.
That's that's more or less what happened.
Yeah, Yeah, And like it's interesting that if we use a Bavarian definition of the state like that has the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, right, that they've dismantled their apparatus for state violence as well. And this could just be like the blunt instrument of apparently offering every federal employee. I know, I've heard that they've tried to unretire Worldland firefighters who accepted their offer of retirement.
Is extremely funny, but like it's it's very Yeah, if you're going to work, you're going to retire a bunch of FBI agents or fire them because, like Mia said, they are going to need hitters. They're going to need to use coercive force at some point, possibly very soon, Yeah, to get what they want to do done.
And I think when it comes to that, the question is like which hitters. Yeah, because the the FBI and the CIA I mean are getting are getting gutted at the moment right now, Like so you're looking at like the NSA, you're looking at local police, Federal Protective Services, Apartment of Homeland Security, you know, and the marshals. Right, like these are kind of like the shooters Trump has to play with, and the military will remain an open question until the critical moment, right.
Yeah, I mean, FPS is infinitely expandable and it's mostly contract threat orbit and aspected about it before. But like that's the one that has a lot of potential to grow. And I think within local especially sheriff's departments, you got some people who weren't bat annihilated.
Some of those Oh no, no, no, absolutely not. And I do think that, like sheriff's departments are kind of what haunt me the most. But that's also it's not purely a matter of like which agencies and organizations are going to back Trump in this, It's also a matter of like geographic location and DC. In DC, at least he can count on a lot less of those guys because like the Capitol Police aren't thrilled right now.
You know, essentially what Elon is doing right now is exactly what he did to Twitter, except to the entire States of America, and like by the end of this process. It still might function on some level, right, Like Twitter still kind of functions, but it's just worse in every way. It's worse. It doesn't have the quote unquote good features it used to. It's it's buggy, it's full of Nazis.
It's just it's it sucks more Like the previous version was was already bad and harmful, but the new one is just worse and without the aspects that made it
semi worthwhile. And like, I'm going to do an episode like next week, like it kind of about about this, like specifically, and how musk is Twitter afying the entire government using like all of the same tactics, like refusing to pay leases on buildings, installing beds in agency headquarters to make employees sleep there overnight, having teenagers review code of like long standing employees. It's the exact same process.
And if you didn't like what happened to Twitter, that process is now happening to the government itself.
I can't wait for the Irs to send me a letter saying my pussy and io like that.
That will be.
Hey, now you've now you've gotten me back on the Trump trained. You know what I'm piacing out for the day.
I'm on board.
Now.
Before we close this segment and pivot to adds, I do want to shout out the work that Wired is doing right now.
Man.
Yeah, Wired magazine is doing for some fantastic reporting on this. The DC Attorney is currently promising to go after individuals who post about DOGE employees. They might end up going after some of these Wired journalists who identified this gen Z Doge team that is wreaking havoc throughout the government with no oversight. Wired provided what should be you know, legally required, a necessary identification of public workers who Musk is trying to keep secret. The DC Attorney and like
Trump's DOJ, is very mad about that. They might they might end up like going after these people. But fantastic work coming out of Wired right now. If you want to keep up to date on Musk's takeover, I strongly recommend checking out their work. I'll post some of those sources below. Let's go on a quick ad break and then come back to talk about the continuing kind of fake trade wars and immigration sick.
All right, we're back.
I'm going to pivot towards James and Mia to discuss tariffs and immigration take it away.
Yeah, So on Monday, Trump sort of averted the market collapse that he had set off with his declaration that there are going to be twenty five percent tariffs on all goods from Canada and Mexico and also ten percent tariff on China. So let's let's go into like what actually happened. So the tariffs on Mexico and Canada are on hold for a month. However, the ten percent tariff on all Chinese goods did go into effect, and we'll get some more about what that's going to do in
a second. But much more important, Trump eliminated the deminimus exception, which allowed like people and companies to ship goods from China that were worth under eight hundred dollars and not have to go through the formal customs process and you know, pay tariffs on it and also have to spend all
of that time paperwork and shit. And before we get into the sort of devastating effect this is going to have on businesses, I want to make it clear that like regular people in China use this to send things to people in the US, like that that's a very normal thing. Yeah, that is now really really difficult.
And about a third of YouTube ads are supported by people who run companies that make use of this loophole.
Yeah, okay, so on the business side, this is actually really interesting because I think it's one of the I mean, not the first one. I think it's going to be a very very early example of Trump completely fucking a base that's been very very supportive of him, because this is going to liquidate huge portions of the drop shippy economy, right like all of all of the stupid YouTube shirts, like all of that stuff is just going to be annihilated.
Can you explain drop shipping if people aren't familiar mere just like ten second versions.
Yeah.
So drop shipping is a thing where you do an order and instead of having like an inventory, normally you'd have a warehouse a had shirts in it. Drop shipping you don't do that. You are now the intermediary and you have these manufacturers like print to consumption basically, and you can do this very cheaply, and then you can run the entire markup. But it works because of how cheap it is to get these like sort of small scale Chinese firms to like make stuff for you. Those
people are screwed. Companies like Temu and Shian are either going to have to just completely eat shit or they're going to have to figure out a way to move their entire supply line through countries like Vietnam, which is going to be very difficult. I mean because Temo even getting stuff to the US has been kind of hard for them because of how the logistics network works. Yeah, and so obviously, like I don't think most people who listen to this show are that sad about Schian and Temu eating shit.
But no, it is like a mixed bag because a whole lot of the MLM industry is going to take a header as a result of this.
Yeah, yeah, there's some stuff to like fuck them. But on the other hand, there are a lot of people who are going to eat shit who are not those people. And this is there is a huge, like range of industries that are run by very very small businesses, like it was even just like an individual person who like makes crafts and sells it, and those people are also screwed because they rely on getting the resources in from China.
And there's a lot of sort of you know things like like people who build like hand like retro handheld consoles, oh yeah, and like I don't know, like custom ariosoft rifles, I do you talk about, Like there's a whole bunch of industries like that that are these like small scale production things that are just screwed that rely on this stuff. And so the ripples of this specific part of it are going to keep playing out basically no matter what
else happens in this trade war. Yeah, it's also worth noting that tariffs on Mexico and Canada aren't gone, They've just been postponed for a month. So there is a real chance that we end up in exactly the same place that we were going into the weekend, where no one knows where these terrifts are going to take effected, basically blow a smoking crater in the world economy, and we get another round of the negotiations that James is
going to talk about. It's already setting off a really sort of staggering right wing I mean not even necessarily right wing, just like a nationalist backlash in Canada that's kind of been like tearing up this sort of international right wing alliance and nationalists because suddenly Trump's coming after them and now they're they're really mad about it.
Well, and because Trudeau announced that that he would be targeting, you know, like retaliatory tariffs is specifically at red States. We now have people calling him dark woke or dark Trudeau, you know, for very different reasons than they used to call him Trudeau.
Yes, yes, all right, all right, shop up high, right, all right, you're going to get canceled if you're not careful that outstanding.
Speaking of getting canceled, what hasn't gotten canceled is the ten percent tariff on all Chinese good which is just now in effect. It's just happening. That's bad. It's going to increase inflation. It's also it's you know, it's it's sort of the opening round of this escalation to a
trade war. China has retaliated with tariffs that are not a very big deal on US goods and some product control stuff, on expert control stuff on some rare earth minerals actually do with the rare smills, but like minerals you need for production stuff that isn't a big deal yet but could be.
I mean, and we were all expecting Chinese tariffs. Having twenty five percent tariffs in Canada was not something I thought was like a looming.
Milh Yeah, yeah, I mean I thought they'd do Mexico. I didn't know about.
I'm very worried about the offshoring of Chinese labor and the impact that will have in places like Myanma, where China has these special economic zones, and it's something we will cover.
We obviously have a lot of soci.
Yeah Monday, Yeah, yeah, on Monday, we're recovering this spot. So I think something that's import to understand about these
tariffs is that these terrifts are not economic policy. This is the mistake that all of the capitalists who backed Trump made is that they assumed that just like every other president who's made promise us like this, like Obama's promised to renegotiate NAFTA, they all assumed that because of economic policy, they'd be able to just like get Trump to be pro business and then he wouldn't do it. The mis calculation they made is that these are not
economic tariffs. These are directly foreign policy, geopolitical tariffs.
Right.
Their international relations are to the deal bullshit and the goal of it. And he's been deploying this against like I mean, Columbia, Denmark, He's threatening the EU. Now he's going to keep doing this with China. The goal of this is to directly use American consumer power as a weapon of imperialism to make these countries fall into line. Yeah, and now I will pass it the jame to talk about what he was specifically trying to get out of Mexico and Canada in this round.
Yeah, so, like we expect about falling into line there. I think it's probably a good place to start. Like this kind of Trump brinksmanship is very typical of his style. Right, Nearly every media outlet, I think, fell for it this time that it did in his first term, like we got this, like this is going to cause the crisis. Trump was very nebulous in his goals for these tariffs, and as almost always like, he talked a lot about like America being treated unfairly. Right, he talked about the border,
and he talked specifically about fentanyl. Soon, let's begin by talking about fentanyl. It just to be clear, it is true that some fentanyl comes into the USA from Mexico and to a lesser degree or so from Canada. The vast majority of the fentanyl that enters the USA from Mexico, about eighty percent of the convictions made as a result of that fentanyl entering the USA are made on US citizens, right, And ninety percent of the fentanyl that is seized is
seized at ports of entry. So this idea that there are like Mexican nationals backpacking fentanyl through the desert, that exists, but it is not what is bringing the bulk of the fentanyl that is killing the people in this country into this country. There are multiple cases of DBP agent
taking bribes to allow the drug into the country. I will link to two of them in the show notes, but know that there are more of them, and given the relatively high bar for cbpagent, anyone in DHS to be investigated, right, we can assume that there's something that happens on at least a semi regular basis. So what did Trump do to stop this fence not coming into this the country? Where did he get He got this promise that Mexico will deploy ten thousand troops to its border.
In reality, this isn't much of a concession at all. The Mexican National Guard has been deployed to the border for years. Specifically, it's been deployed at gaps in the US border wall for more than a year, so people will remember our coverage of the open air detention sites in the cumber Andese County San Diego. All of those open air detention sites correspond to gaps in the border wall where migrants would enter, surrender to border patrol, and
then be detained in open air. Each of those gaps now has a Mexican National Guard checkpoint in front of it, and they're there in conjunction with IM the National Institute of Migration in English, the INM has camps for the migrants who do come there.
Right.
This is something that Biden obtained in I think late twenty three, early twenty four, and that's why we aren't seeing open ed attention one of the reasons, the other reason being Biden's a sylum band. We aren't seeing as
many people crossing the border right. Mexican border towns also tend to be areas where the Mexican military deploys its troops because often they are places were organized crime occurves due to their proximity to the border and the market for drugs, and the fact that weapons from the US tend to flow into Mexico and that that's where large
numbers of weapons for organized crime come from right. For more than a year, I've received press releases from Tijuana constantly talking about new unit arrives, Special Forces arrives, Army arrive, and then they'll have pictures of a parade.
Right now.
They never tell us when those units are leaving. They just keep telling us they're coming. So it's very hard to get a sense of actually how many troops are there. Sure, but the idea that Mexico is suddenly militarizing its border is kind of fascical.
Yeah, and I want to There's been a lot of sort of cheerleading of shine Bomb, sort of like standing up to the US. And I don't think people in the US really understand the securitization on the Mexican border, and so something that I'm realizing that I don't think I just assume people knew about this, but I don't think everyone made into the western press much.
Is that.
So Like a few months ago in October, the Mexican Army just like opened fire on a convoy of like on a convoy of immigrants and this was on the border of Guatemala and just like killed six of them, shot twelve other people. So like and like there are massacres like that, like not infrequently right, like this is not a this is not a Mexico is pro immigrant like the US is anti immigrant thing.
Like.
Part of the part of the reason why Trump can, like, you know, sort of declare victory without getting any concessions or whatever is because of how murderous the Mexican armies, like border policy is already.
Yeah, and then the Mexican leaders have succesfully been able to paint themselves as leftists, exclusively being two inches to the left of a further and further right regime in Washington, DC. People can listen to the last episode of My Daddy and Gap series for an idea of how Mexico is constantly deporting migrants to its own certain states. I want
to talk a little bit about the Canadian concessions very briefly. Again, ten thousand agents and a border spending that really doesn't change much in what in terms of what was already becoming a more militarized border.
There has actually been.
A significant flow of migrants from the US to Canada in the last couple of years, specifically a Francophone African people who would take that route. I'm aware of several TikTok influencers as one guy or following Chad who or he's in Canada now, but he's from Chad and he makes these videos explaining to Challian people how to go from Mexico into the US and then move up to Canada obviously where they can speak French, and that makes their lives much easier, right, It makes it much idio
for not to not have to learn a language. Trudeau did agree to list cartels as terrorist organizations.
That seems to be from what I can tell, the big move.
That he made.
Yeah, so it does allow for some economic sanctions, right if they attempt to use that Canadian border and sort of get around the United States. It's much less significant than a US listing, which we believe is coming. Canada's not going to use it to do covert operations inside Mexico. I don't think Canada's not going to be drone striking anyone.
But when Trump listed the Codes Force, he then structs its leader, right with a drone I don't think Trudeau is going to be I don't think Canada's going to
be doing that. But nonetheless, that is a concession, and perhaps there is some plan for that right, it certainly allows for, and I've said this before, at the economic sanctioning of people who provide material benefit to those organizations, or potentially the arrest of people who provide material benefit to those organizations, which is a large number of businesses in Mexico which end up being extorted or paying protection money.
Right.
So we don't know what is going to happen with that, but it's one of the tools that Trump now has to use as another cudgel against it against Mexico. The last and perhaps most sinister of all development is this deal that Marco Rubio is struck.
With boukele in de El Salvador. Right.
El Salvador has said it will host US citizen criminals and deportees from any nation in its jail system. So I just read Boukelly's tweet.
It's very short.
We are willing to take in only convicted criminals parentheses, including convicted US citizens into a mega prison second, in exchange for a fee. The fee would be relatively low for the US, but significant for US, making our entire prison system sustainable. If you're not familiar, it means CHUAC terrorism confinements enter into Spanish.
For people who haven't heard about this.
It's the largest prison in the world that Bukelly opened in twenty twenty three, and it's a terrible place.
There are cells of one hundred people.
In that cell, there are eighty bunks, two toilets, and two basins. They are extremely confined. I think they get six point five feet of space per person. They get thirty minutes outside a day. They're forced to shave their heads, their ankles, and risk a chain. People are arbitrarily detained there. Sometimes the things like looking like they might be in a gang. Multiple human rights organizations including that, well, the State Department.
It's not a human rights organization. Sometimes it's the opposite of that.
The State Department itself has raised concerns about human rights abuse due to the quote unquote state of exception which exists in El Salvador, which allows the government to do these things without really any human rights ob sight. The US has already seemingly moved some migrants to Guantanamo Bay, to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center, and satellite imagery has shown tents going up there. Very few at the current time, and it seemed to come from Fort Lewis mccaud, which
I couldn't work out. But there are tents. I guess I think I was washed. The Post had these satellite images of tents being constructed there. I'm trying to keep an eye on that satellite imagery. Of course, Biden open the door to outdoor attention. It's not impossible that we will see that again. But this Kaelic plan, this plan to send people to Al Salvador, especially US citizens, Evidently
this is unconstitutional. The courts get to decide how much that matters, right, we don't, but this is deeply concerning.
We're all waiting on the courts and we're all deeply concerned.
Yeah, well, there you.
Go, one final break and then we'll come back to end and discuss Trump's targeting of teachers in relation to
gender ideology. Welcome back. So, last week, Trump signed an executive order titled Ending Radical Indoctrination in K through twelve schooling, and part of its focus was to prevent teachers from calling trans students by their names and preferred pronouns, even promising to inflict legal punishment for doing so, basically like mandating dead naming, misgendering, and forcibly detransitioning students, and this order specifically took aim at quote unquote social transition.
Right.
This is like the non medical social aspects of transitioning, like changing gender, names, pronouns, you know what facilities you use, socialization and like this TOYFF has historically been, you know, the most common form of transition for minors. It's the easiest to do. You don't even need you like your parents' help. But this order blames schools for indoctrinating children in quote radical anti American ideologies unquote, which they include gender ideology.
As a part of the order, tries to mandate a national school bathroom band, restrict participation in school sports, and states that within ninety days, the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Attorney General shall provide Trump with a quote unquote ending in doctrination strategy to protect parental rights and eliminate all federal funding that directly or indirectly supports gender
ideology and doctrination in K through twelve schools, including curriculums,
teacher education, certification, licensing, employment, and training. Quote from the order, quote, the Attorney General shall coordinate with state attorneys general and local district attorneys in their efforts to enforce the law and file appropriate actions against k through twelve teachers who violate the law by one sexually exploiting miners, two unlawfully practicing medicine by offering diagnoses and treatment without the requisite license,
and three otherwise unlawfully facilitating in the social transition of a minor unquote. So basically, the goal is to try to make calling a student by their name and pronouns illegal and wrapping this in either with some form of ex sexual exploitation, practicing medicine without a license, and using those as justifications for making this practice illegal.
Now.
In response, school districts in Columbus, Ohio, Harrisburg, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland announced that they would not comply with the order and continue to defend their students, according to journalists. To Aaron Reid, Seattle Public Schools published a statement reaffirming their commitment to protecting LGBTQUS students and staff, and later the California Department of Education pushed back on the legality
of Trump's order. Other Blue cities and states have stayed quiet in the week since the order, with teachers and parents calling on places like the New York City Public School System to take a stance on if they will stand up for their transit students. So this is one side of the coin right now. The other side is healthcare,
which we will close on now. In relation to Trump's executive order from his first week entitled Defending Women from gender ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government now, some hospitals have begun complying in advance by
canceling patient appointments for gender affirming care. Denver Health and University of Colorado Health sacrificed the care of their patients for Trump's promise of continued funding by announcing that they would no longer be offering care including blockers and hormone replacement therapy for patients eighteen and under. The Virginia Commonwealth University and Children's Hospital of Richmond have also seen providing
gender affirming care to those under nineteen. This past Monday, thousands of people gathered outside at the NYU Langan Hospital in protest of the hospital's choice to proactively comply with Trump's order to restrict healthcare. As the cancelation of two appointments for transpatients under the age of nineteen. Now, after these protests, which saw thousands of people protesting out in
the streets. After this, the New York Attwority General sent a letter to the state healthcare systems saying that the state law requires that hospitals provide gender affirming care and claimed that the federal funding would not be impacted by inexecutive order. And like this really hammers on the point that like none of these executive orders are self enforcing, these all require proactive implementation by local actors. Doctor Jeremy
Bernbaum was quoted in the New York Times. He's at pediatrician at the state run University Hospital of Brooklyn, and he was quoted as saying, quote, I am willing to go to jail to continue to provide your care, unquote. And you really can like protest hospitals that that comply in advance. The same thing with schools are these are targets that can provide actual pressure. And there's probably people on staff who are very sympathetic, and they just might
be too scared to take a stance. Right now, and we have some breaking news as of this morning, State Attorney General from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Main Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Nevada, Vermont, and Wisconsin released a statement saying that Trump's executive order banning trans healthcare is unlawful and the hospitals have a duty to provide care. So this is like the the most optimistic thing that
we've seen so far. Now, obviously these these these are blue states. This is not going to impact red states who already have these types of bands either in process or you know, are going to have them down the line. At Georgia just put out a trans healthcare ban this morning for you know, a bill that'll reach our Senate in the next few weeks. But this is this is
the current situation. Protests seem to have applied a degree of pressure that has gotten the state's attorney general to actually make a statement on this issue.
Yeah, I will say, like so, I still teach, right a teacher at a community college, and sometimes through that we also teach high school students. If you are an educator or someone in healthcare, now is the time to be talking to your union about like how you meet this because like, the stronger we are the better we can confront this. And the only way to confront this
is we all need to do it together. And like, these are conversations that we need to be having right now, Like we do not have time, and our unions are a very valuable tool for preserving our rights.
Yeah, that's actually part of I was going to say. I've talked to a few union teachers who are like, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna go do this, We're going to go fight. So I expect in the next couple of weeks we're going to see more movement from the teachers' unions.
And I think there's you know, there's an under I mean there's On the one hand, there is the threat that you know, these people do want to privatize the education system, right, so there is a chance that this is you know, trying to draw a backlash out of this is something that they're going to try to use
to just completely eliminate like national federal education. But also, you know, this is something we've I want want to close this episode on that we've been talking about this whole time, right, is that this this whole coup is being carried out by a bunch of people with laptops and pieces of paper walking up the bureaucrats, and the bureaucrats doing what they're being told. Right, this is this is not a coup that's working with like an army
that is showing up on your street. And you can go, like find the local bureaucrats who are the people who are supposed to enforce this stuff, and you can protest them and you can put some steel in their spine and make them make the administration actually try to do this. It's not that hard and they'll fucking cave.
Yes.
Yeah, yes, that's that's entirely what I was trying to get at earlier, and and you know, it ties into what James was saying, is like, this is the time to be making connections across as white a swath of the country as you can, including like everyone you can get in touch with who is not someone you would normally organize with, Like this is a moment of potential, and it's during moments of potential that you should be widening the swath of people that you connect to, because
otherwise there's just no getting through this sort of shit.
Yeah, we will be covering all these topics more in depth in our regular like daily episodes. I have a mind boggling, very frustrating episode on musk and the Trump campaign's promises of abolishing different departments of government, as well as a deep dive on like affirmative action and DEI wokeness in the coming weeks, and I'm sure we will all be focusing on different parts of this in our continuing episodes. But that does it for us today. See you on the other side.
We reported the news.
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death.
Of the universe.
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