It Could Happen Here Weekly 20

show started, Garrison. Hey, we're gonna be talking about Canada again, so yeah, um, and to discuss Canada and politics and the happenings here. We have another journalist who writes for I Believe, Anti Hate Canada and like the Canadian Antia Hate Network and also Vice. I believe right, I've written for Vice. I'm currently researching full time and extremism researcher or. It's a new initiative called the Online Hate Research and

Education Project. It's actually partnered with Canadian TI Hate Network and it's it's under the new Burger Holocaust Education Center, which might be renaming very soon. I'm I'm very excited for you guys to get into a Twitter fight with James Lindsay can't wait. So, yes, Dan here has joined us to talk about Canada because I've gotten a few messages about this thing that's happening. My mother, who's in Alberta called me a few days ago to talk about

this thing that's happening. So it's been, it's it's I'm getting a lot of things and it's definitely worth discussing, specifically on some of the rhetoric that people are using around this. So I'm actually I'm gonna I'm gonna hand it to Dan to talk about what like how did this thing like what is it and how did it kind of get started? Yeah, well, so Garrison is not alone, by the way, for anyone not in Canada. Every single person's mother in the entire country is called and asthen

about it. I just got another message literally right now, like literally this second. Moms of Canada have been activated. Moms of Canada have been activated, but not in exactly the same way that they're being perceived to be all the way. So the quote unquote trucker convoy, which I might get into a little bit later, but I'm kind

of like against even calling it a trucker convoy. Yeah, it was started on January and by a former Wigsit party now called the Maverick Party member Tomorrow Lich and a group of like very active far right grassroots protesters. You do a lot of organizing like this, uh, and most of them, most of their activities kind of go back to Yeah, they go back a decent a decent amount. Yeah,

like this. I mean there's links to people that have been doing it in the nineties in Canada's movement right now, but a non binding motion against I think it's a M three a few years ago really mobilized people and it's kind of been more consistent since then of the same groups of people. Yeah, that's that's when we talked about in our first Canada episodes about kind of how we got to that point and now like those same people are still kind of behind what's going on right now.

So yeah, there's this alleged caravan of truckers of all the truckers in Canada going going to Ottawa, um in Canada, all the truckers, and so this thing was kind of originally organized by some like known far right figures and the people associated with like the Canadian Yellow Vests, which kind of died down, but it didn't die down. It just morphed right, morphed into a very strong anti vax

presence in Canada. Right now, the anti vacks movement is getting a lot of popularity in Canada, and it's run by these guys who were doing Wexit, which is like West Exit, but for like it's it's it's like for Alberta NBC to go away from Canada because the rest of Canada's too liberal. Um so what exit and the Elves have really changed all their focuses into this anti backs thing as a way to do recruiting, and they've prompted this kind of movement of truckers going to Ottawa.

UM for a few specific reasons which I think Dan probably knows a little bit more about than I do. Like I I know the gist of it, but you've been focus on the on this slightly more than I have. Yeah, I guess the main reason is it works, um like, just from the perspective of getting attention and being able to get a message out. Um. There's been a lot of traction on this that these groups don't normally get.

I think the last trucker convoy um that was done under this sort of umbrella it had like nine I think was the total amount of like trucks that made it to Ottawa the last time this was trying to be done and it was basically the same demands in the same reasons. So this one was started on January and it didn't get that much buzzed. There's a couple of days. The original goal was set at a hundred

thousand dollars. I don't remember the exact time, but once it hit that pretty fast, and it hit the first million pretty fast in ways that like these fundraisers really really don't like the last big one we saw in Canada that was quite alarming in that fast cap out at under four hundred thousand dollars and that was um for a barbecue for a barbecue that got defied protests last year and UH ended up getting like all it's it's a bad door shut down. So there's a lot

more money now in this one. Yeah, because this this fundraiser, which was supposed to go like hand in hand with these truckers protesting the vaccine mandates because they're upset that they're not allowed to truck into these states because they're not vaccinated. So they have decided to all truck into Ottawa as like a pseudo strike slash like blockade type thing, because they're saying that they were not going to do our jobs and we're gonna kind of block off access

to these roads, um until this mandate is is removed. Now. Of course, the funny thing here is that the man date that to enter to not being allowed to enter the States to do your trucking. That's not a mandate by Canada. That's done, but that like that's the rule in the United States because you're the United States, they're the States is actually the ones to be the blockage of the Canadian government has no control over this. Yeah,

it's not like it's not actually the thing. The way to get them out and support is incredibly effective because something I think like twenty percent there was a survey recently of Canadians are against the mandate, which is like really huge um for like Canada's anti vax movement to kind of get that like support and like a lot of people are mobilized too. By there's a trend of posting. It started from four chain and twenty team, but it's getting revived a lot again now of people posting like

empty grocery stores. Even a Conservative member of parliament recently posted an empty grocery store. And as for people's emails to try to like change the laws, it turned out to be from the UK. It was a stock photo. Uh. And there's been like even like the stories themselves have had to come out and make statements being like we're not we're not empty, we have we have, we are in the process if we restocking. That's happened the US to where it's like we're literally emptying that shelf to

move stuff with shelf. We've had really bad snowstorms for a lot of the real photos of like empty shelves and it's just like, oh no salads tap out and the stories just make a statement it's like, yeah, we had two snowstorms a day in a row in ock.

But like the narrative that they're trying to push is like these these mandates are causing these shortages um and and the propaganda is working even though it's all at a false premise because first of all, it's not like that that those aren't that, that's not causting that and second of all, complainly to Canadas, that's not the Canada's not the one who's making the restrictions in the States are the one that's that's lucky from doing this. But

but it's it's not actually about these issues. It's that's not the reason why you're getting all these people driving to Ottawa because there is a lot of people. There's not many trucks, but but there is there is a decent amount of people. You know that it's that that are that are going this because it's not it's not actually about these specific issues. It's this general um like seething hatred of Trudeau and like a generalized grievance that

has gotten this broad support. It's gotten enough financial backing the fundraisers what like like over six million dollars now um. And it's it's not like it's just what it actually is is an incoherent kind of intention just to go to the capital and cause problems, right that that's what they're actually that. That's what like the underlying thing is for a lot of a lot of the like explaining

why it's gotten so picked up. Some some official demands like have been put out and they would be even more confusing like to read than like some of them are. There A couple of the most recent ones are just very general like stop this divisive nature that our government is imposing kind of thing, like I'm paraphrasing, but it's it's really quite bland. Um. Some demands from sagittal groups involved. One they say they won't leave until Trudeau steps down.

Others say at one point said until every politician stopped down, stepped down. I think that was when before something kind

of pushed in more realisticals into the movement. But like in terms of like what they're talking about, for like the rhetoric surrounding it, We're seeing a lot of rhetoric around the sentence being like we this can be our version of January six, but like they're saying that like in a good way, like that's that's the thing that at least some of the organizers, and then it's being carried out into like the generalized rhetoric is that this this should be our own version of this, which is

which is interesting on a few ways. But like also like this would not have been said like seven months ago, but it's being said now, which means like there's been a shift in how January six is being viewed. There was this initial like really distancing and now it's like it's becoming almost like more acceptable to acknowledge that it was is maybe a good thing in your eyes, And it's like, that's an interesting rhetorical shift that that's been

going on. But then it's also concerning just like a regular level to be like, yeah, these people wanted, these people are saying they want to do their own January six. That has obviously physical implications for all these people trying to drive to Ottawa um do either blocking off roads or just like making the government inoperable. Yeah, a coat streamer or a streamer in what's called the plat Army.

And now that's sometimes kind of just being rebranded as like Diagalon network quote unquote, which we can get into more, but it's it's gonna be sillier. Yeah, they're they're kind of their own they're their own issue for later. Yeah,

they're their own issue. But it was one of their streamers who is very tangently connected to like a lot of the the far right people that are involved in this protest movement, leaning up to an in fact, Pat King, who is officially one of the organizers of the convoy

until he wasn't and then he was again. That was a whole dramatic thing for a like he streamed alongside Plaid Army guys before um so someone on Plaid Army said, and I would quote, I would like to see r O in January sixth event see some of those truckers plow right through that sixteen football and on January that was put up on CTV News made it live, and it's kind of scare a lot of people. I think at that point, former Conservative leader Andrew Sheer had already

voiced support for the convoy. There's been a lot of other like members of parliaments voicing support for the convoy. H some of whom really didn't seem to know like what was involved and really just kind of heard like in passing, Oh it's against these mandates and I opposed these mandates too, and it's like, if it think it's true, DEALU based well side out, it's gonna help you. You're gonna help your political career. Yeah, yeah, it's completely true.

So have they actually started like blocking roads or is it just a bunch of random people driving down to like driving. So there's there's a few different like converging points of the convoy. I think I would say probably the biggest one. Um, but it's it's hard to kind of keep track. Started in British Columbia and it's going so for this, I'm sure not everyone knows like math for Canada. So like Burtish Columbia is like our west coast,

that's our our California. UM, and Ottawa is it's close to the west and it's in Ontario, but it's on the border of Quebec and Ontario and that's where our parliament is. That's our capital city. So it's coming from every which way, but I think the largest contingent comes from British Columbia and it just basically goes eastward to Ottawa, picking up people along the way. Yeah, yeah, it's it's

it's it's it's heading in that direction. Um, how do we know about I know some people have kind of already some people have kind of already sort of arrived in Ottawa, but most mostly people are expected to more arrive in the next Like, well, we're recording this Thursday night, so this episode will probably come out on Monday. Um, people are expected to arrive on Saturday is the day that expt people expecting like everybody to be there at

least that the understanding of it. The convoy itself arrives Saturday. Um, there are people like coming from further east who are like staying overnight in town and kind of just showing up the parliament event. So like, by by all accounts, the parliament show will probably be a lot bigger than

the so far. Yeah, I guess we haven't mentioned numbers yet. Sorry, numbers, nor like what what they actually really plan on doing once they get there, because it's it's been so much talking about like why this got started and what's the like driving motivational factors. But yeah, like their their goal is to get to a place and do a thing, and that's the Yeah, the thing is that thing? It's

mostly unclear. I have seen discussions about like blocking on like doing like trying to assemble like a trucking strike, um, and then like blocking off accesses so that the everyone is forced to obey their demands or else like the country will shut down. UM. Then some people maybe are just kind of doing it as a one day protest. It's it's it again. It is it is. It is pretty unclear, but people are headed to their UM. What what is the what is the numbers? At least from

where we can see, like online and stuff. So their numbers have been the number of fifty tucks people became trucks very quickly. Um, and that same number. I think Rogan repeated it, I know said it. Yeah, yeah, Joe Rogan said it. THEO Fleury went on Laura Ingram and repeated the fifty thou numbers. He said, fifty thousand truckers,

not trucks specifically. Um. As far as I know, THEO Fleury has no official involvement Convoy and it's just a fan and it's just repeating some numbers that like organizes themselves have kind of echoed. Um. This is also complicated for me because this is very troubling in a lot of ways. But also I'm a huge fan of the song Convoy, so this is really devastating. Please continue, It's

all right. Yeah, So Canada spurr It protests movement has kind of habited doing this in February of Kelly and Farcas, who's like a mainstay of the anti mask anti backs movement. Uh, and in between when I'm talking about and right now actually dated Pat King for a while, who's kind of the most outspoken person organizing The current convoy claimed that a hundred thousand people were coming to Parliament for what was then like an anti mask demonstration. Before the event,

data will look changed to fifty uh. And I was actually there, it looked closer to like two people. I had friends that had counted like a hundreds and seventy people, so not quite fifty uh. For all intents and purposes, the current one will be longer. Reporters doing great journalism along the way have estimated up to like four hundred people so far um, including I think fifteen trucks outside the Bass Pro shop in Toronto this afternoon. I was counted.

Side note, if nothing else, got to give them points for stopping at Bass Pro in Toronto. It's a pretty sweet bass do little good bass Pro shop. My favorite is the one they built into the Giant Pyramid. Yeah obvious Nashville baby, so the best pro in Toronto if you're ever in town, Robert, it's the only place around that I've been told it sells sub Sonic twenty two rounds. So if you're like in the woods, so I feel like in the woods, but like you don't want to

like scare your neighbors because the woods aren't bad. Big. Yeah. I used to have some friends and I used to go shooting in a suburban neighborhood with two because it's technical, don't don't do you can definitely it was there was it was legal. Oh right, Canada doesn't I do not. I don't endorse the you might have might have to cut this part out for regional sharing. Go leave this all late, just a bunch of words, make it nonsense with bleeping please continue. Yeah, so only fifteen trucks were

counted by CBC at that point. Um, and like videos and stuff have been yeah, yeah, slightly short. But I think by the time by Saturday, I think there's a decent chance that there might be maybe around fifty trucks to a hundred trucks. If there's anything more than like five hundred, all of the media footage will look like there's fifty. That's enough trucks, Like nobody's cameras going to

be able to show the extent of them realistically. And then yeah, once they're there, it's unclear what they want to do. Some people just want to do the function up thing. Some people want to carry on the tradition of like what the most of the anti like vacs anti mass protests in Canada have been which have been pretty big, but it's been, it's been, it's been mostly

standing with signs UM. So it is, it is. It is really unclear because again most of the truckers in Canada probably are not going to be there nor to necessarily endorse this idea. UM nor is like right because they're pressing the they're they're initial issues, not even based on an actual like thing. So it is. I'm not sure how many people are really gonna show up because I don't know even how specific it is to an issue.

UM one one just really interesting, funny, interesting thing that I thought about is like with with some of these people UM you know talking about you know, going to Ottawa and not leaving until the mandates are dropped with the entire government resigns. Like these people who are talking about this like block engine shortage and stuff are also like the same people who get very angry and indigenous people for blocking off roads and trails um for like

oil and like pipeline protests. A lot of them, Yeah,

some of them. Some of them are indulged in pretending and stuff like pat king back in September, um kind of went on like a kick where he just let a lot of people believe he was indigenous and claimed someone not correct then that is that is weird, and a family member of him went on Facebook and like bombarded people with information that he was not in fact indigenous, and it was all very weird and a lot of people held them to comments in the past where he

talked about Anglo Saxon's having the strongest bloodlines. Uh yeah, that is I think Pat Pat King probably deserves his own little deep dive on one of the pods. But but yeah, like it's it is like with all the people talking about blockads and stuff all you most of

them coming from like the western side of Canada. Um it is it is uh yeah, like you're you're talking about all these things, and like there's really big pro oil sentiments and all of the in all of this crowd because a lot of it is connected to financial and political stuff, not necessarily even this vaccine issue. It's been more like a symbol to represent their general kind of upsettedness at the way at the way things are going for them. It's interesting to me. So when I

first heard about this, my I was. I was like, oh, okay, so this is gonna be like the Chilean truckers. And

I was like, okay, well this is really bad. But it's like it's interesting to me, like how you people they've been able to mobilize, Like that's like not a large number of truckers, Like HiT's yeah, it looks like a lot of like vehicles when you when you see like footage photos and videos like like in I'm gonna like a lot of like Telegram and Facebook groups of just people just like sharing pictures and photos of the rally of the convoy passing through their talent and like

it's like what Robert said, like it's here when it fills out both sides of the camera and you have a wide depth of field, it looks huge and it's it's really hard to count. Uh. The money is preposterous, also said note on on the money um. The funds were frozen a few days ago on the twenty five, but today one million dollars was released back to them because they gave go fund me a pretty clear plan allegedly according to go fund me, for for how they're

gonna distribute it. The rest of the it's it's I think it's like six point seven million. Now, so the rest of the five point seven million I think is still frozen. Okay, it is, it is, so it is so much money. Uh, yeah, we should do something like that. They could They could actually buy truck nuts for fifty tho truckers, which is the most I've seen them. Guests truckers are coming. They could buy twenty truck nuts off Amazon for all of them and still have the vast

majority of their funds left over. Yeah, but see, that would be an act of actual heroism, and they're not

going to do that. The reason why I wanted to talk about this is one to like acknowledge that it's happening, right, acknowledge the tactics that they're using in terms of trying to go into an urban area and block off like trade routes essentially um, And then I wanted to talk about like, first of all, it doesn't matter that like the fact that this is happening is divorced from any kind of direct cause, right because they're they're actual grievance

is false and their grievance doesn't really actually matter. It just needs there needed to be some kind of cultural or propaganda push in order for this physical action to happen. And that's been done. It doesn't even need to be like coherent. Um. And then escalation people driving here doing

this thing. And then I know there was this one interview, UM I forgot on what news channel, but the interviewed this one trucker guy part of a part of this part of this convey in my hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Um and he's he said, UM, I advocate civil war. If people don't want to step up, we have guns, will have some we'll stand up and we'll bring them out. But like, so that's the quotes, Like in the fact that you're just openly saying I advocate civil war in

relation to this movement is like my goals. My goal here is being like people fantasize about Canada as being a place to escape, you know, like Canada is like the other from the States, and like, no, it's the same, like we are like where you cannot escape away from fascism. There is no really there's no real away at right

now in terms of there's no safe ground. It can spread to where you are and for people living in Canada, when you have people on the news on like Global News saying I advocate civil war within the context of this of this like, um, you know, a convoy movement, it is, it is an actual thing worth paying attention to.

It is an actual problem. It's it's huge and earlier today and I might pronounce his name on but del MANUK, doc from CBC Toronto tweeted a story because he on behalf of CBC contacted an actual organizer of the convoy. They have different regional organizers and and their website list them all um and it had Patking funny side done, It had pack King listed as an organizer while they're go fund me had a statement saying they had no

connection to him, which was very funny. But yes, so CBC Toronto pack contacted them and the guy responded enough lies you quote slave blooded trader, evil will get its due in the end. And after a little yeah after yeah, after it back, yeah after it, back and forth, very brief back and forth. Uh and just like a couple of questions, uh, the organizer ended with, you know, you toe the line for the global corporate coup taking place under the guys of public health. You can't be that

dumb traders will swing in time. Oh boy, Yeah, I do think Americans don't fully understand how much the anti vax movement is tied to far right politics with in Canada and it's like been like the driving force of far right politics for the past two years and it's gotten so much larger. Um it is, like it is,

it is. It is a thing like when when you have when you have people on camera saying we want to January six, I advocate a civil war, talking about not leaving until the government either resigns or mandates are dropped, and then threatening physical violence on top of that. Um yeah,

like it's it is. It is a thing that could happen there, and that's kind of why I wanted to talk about it is like yeah, when I have my mother calling me dozens of message just from random people like worried about this, then yeah, it is an issue, like, um, it's it's it's not it's not not a thing, No, it it is. And the rhetoric is so universal against anyone they perceived to be leftist too, that it is really dangerous. Like there's been a little bit of talk

of like counters in Ottawa. Um, when the numbers are this big, like there's no safe weight for people to to stop that sort of thing, especially when all all the vehicles are on that side, Like it's a it's dangerous. There's a lot of violent stuff, um even uh, like I was looking today the People's Party of Canada's they got like five percent of votes in our last selection. They had a little bit of a scandal during our election,

which is at the end of last year. UM, where a writing director for I think it's uh, it's the Great Area of London is Elgin, Middlesex, London, so they're they're writing directors and not their member of parliament writing um was revealed to uh post like sculpt mask Nazi memes and memes comparing Bernier, the leader of his own party, to Hitler, so like probably not a negative comparison, um. And he was not fired for it, but he was fired after it came out that he was being charged

for throwing rocks at our prime minister. Yeah, he actually rely, he recently said on a live stream. He was asked he was currently on trial, and he said, yeah, I mean as far as I know, Like he's been posting images of like trucks running people over and that's just like one connection to h to the legitimacy of it all, um, like you I mean the plat army guys, the ones who talked about driving the truck sixteen feet. They're also

connected with Bernier. They've had Randy Hillier on their podcast before, who's a sitting politician, remember provincial parliament which is kind of like our state senate equivalent over here. Um, They've they've had him on and like there's some like legitimacy to it getting on and when you just talk about the broad movement in general. Former um Conservative Party of Canada leader Andrew Shear, who had kind of a rocky departure from the party because he allegedly his campaign funds

to pay for his kids private school. So I note like he had already signed on and endorsed and been interviewed. Erin O'Toole, the current leader of the of the Conservative Party, uh just today actually said he was going to engage with them. Earlier this evening, Sergeant in Arms Packnents McDonald sent an email to our parliamentarians ahead of Saturday's trucker convoy protests and quoting Justin Link's twitter here. There have

been attempts to collect MP's home addresses. As such, the Sergeant at arms is advising to avoid the rally and go somewhere safe. That apparently wasn't listened to Erin O'Toole, who said to do it anyways, and Justin Link tweeted later tomorrow, I will be meeting with truckers to announces, right after Parliamentary Security warned MPs to avoid the protests entirely. So it's not great. Yeah, I mean again, this will probably come out after Saturday, So if we don't talk

about this again, then that means probably it's good. I mean, they showed up, they protest, and they kind oficipated if we're following this up in a few days with another episode,

that that be something bad happen. But again, even even at this point, it is still worth talking about in terms of like the generally like this is like the kind of like the net of why this is so important for everybody is what you were saying about, Like, when you've got this many people, this many trucks coming from an outside and moving into a city, there's very

little that can be done against them. Um, like there's not there's not really much of an effect the counter other than trying to get another massive people in cars to confront them, and that's um, you know, potentially dicey situation. So this remains a very powerful tactic. We've seen it used all over the United States too, like, and it's this idea of like blockading a city. Even though this is kind of the earliest step in taking that is this is gonna be the last time people try to

extend to this logic. Yeah, So that's that's kind of the surrounding cultural reasons and shifts and rhetoric and like applicable nous as like an act of like an act of like protest or like like revolt or insurgency whatever whatever you want to use. Is there's interesting because like a lot of these other interesting thing about the States compared to Canada is like the States we have like we have like an actual like far right movement, like we have like we have like conservatives, when then we

have like the far right movement in Canada. That that distinction is not much of a thing. A lot of a lot of there is there is some far right figures trying to push stuff for it, absolutely, but a lot of like the space in between conservative and far right is kind of a little bit more fluid. A lot of these people who are showing up are not

like far right protesters. They are kind of regular conservatives, but they're still getting sucked into saying I advocate a civil war like that is just a regular conservative dude. He's not a member of any kind of political thing. He's It's like, it's that is just that is just kind of what this culture on the western side of Canada really really like a kind of defaults to almost when when you start going into this kind of like anti Trudeau territory, because that's the their their their main

their main politics is anti Trudeau. Like that is that is what they are. So anything that gets to that point is allowed, whether that is conservative or that is like more far right, as long as it's anti Trudeau, then it's it is a valid politic. And that's another distinction in the State that that's a thing in the Canada that I don't really see as much in the States.

It's very familiar to me when you talk about how anti Clinton is um fed into Trump is um like that that is I think a worthwhile comparison to me, because there were a lot of American conservatives who could get in bed with anybody if they were staying against Hillary or Bill. Um, cool stuff. Well, this is all fun.

I hope to not talk with you about this again. UM, but there is a chance, there is a chance people have conversations, um, if you wouldn't want to after af this episode airs, if people want to see what happened, right because this this air is probably Monday, UM, and the convoys set to arrive on Saturday. Where can they find work talking about that, whether that be like your Twitter feed or um, if you know if any articles

are planned. Yeah, so I'm planning on live tweeting. UM. I can't make any promises because safety is always a thing and I want to know what it looks like until Saturday happens. But I'm planning on live tweeting. My twitter is a at spineless L. That's the words by Less and then just the letter L. So yeah, you can check in on his account to see if he

has a thread by the time this episodes out. Um, And yeah that's how that's how you can kind of figure out what happened if you're just listening to this now and then in the meantime, there'll be a lot of attawa media covering it. If you just want to see the fallout, I imagine the Canadian Antia New Work might talk about it more. They put an article today on it that that covers more of the kind of problems that the far right that we talked about today.

Then the most other media will go into they did. Uh, that was a very good article. And then also today um I Elon Musk tweeted and support of the Canadian truckers.

So just in terms of let's just as as a good example, I think this situation is a really great way to start thinking about politics and culture um and how they relate to each other, and how this type of thing succeeds, and how it succeeds um and why this rhetoric is so successful in bringing in so many people in Canada, uh and raising six million dollars almost seven million dollars. But anyway, that is that is the show.

One more plug dance so people know where to find you. Uh. I only really am active on Twitter, so again it's at spineless LU. The word spineless is then I don't have a spine. And then the letter L on Twitter, you plug your getter account, You're you're getting Wow. Yeah, real Real get her user vibes coming off of Dan on social media platform that Joe Rogan looked at and said, Robert's just trying to get me to plug my stock

puppet accounts. Yeah, everyone, this is fucking off. You could follow all my sock puppets at Fascist Wizard dot c a of anyway, that is uh that that doesn't for our show. Thank you for listening, and yeah, convoys, Canada can't can't escape? Excellent, Thank you. It's the New Year's again. Whoa, Yeah, welcome,

Welcome to the Year the Tiger. This is a special special lunar New Year's edition of It could Happen here, a podcast that he is today just about well it's still about sort of things falling apart and things being rebuilt.

But I wanted to specifically, you know, do do it do it do a special luniar New Year's episode and spend some time, I think talking about Chinese nous and how what sort of being a part of the Chinese diaspora in sort of in the US and Canada is like and you know how how that how the influence is, how we organize, how what what we're afraid of, what we're sort of proud of um and with me to talk about this. We have j n who I think first time I ever returning guests. Yeah, who is it works?

With laus On? Hello j n Oh what an honor. Thanks thanks for inviting me back. Yeah, thank you for coming. And we also have Jane She who is a queer Chinese settler living in unseated traditional and ancestral territories and the Mosquian Sasquamish and slave with tooth nations in what is falsely and fakely considered Canada. Um. She is a poet, writer, editor, and an organizer and does many other cool things. Hello Jane, welcome, welcome to the show. Hello, thank you for having me.

UM just wanted to share that it's musquam, squamish and tooth. Yeah. Sorry, I Fortunately I do not live up and so my my pronunciations of tribal names are even worse than they are for the tribal days that are around me. So my apologies. Now. So al right, before we get into a bunch of extremely grim stuff, I wanted to because this is the this if you will be listening to well, okay, unless listening to this on Monday night, in which case, uh,

congratulations on beating time. But most of you're probably gonna listen to listening to this on on lunar New Years, and so I wanted to before, yeah, before we think it's completely dark. I want you to know what you choose favorite Chinese New Year's food is, because this is like maybe my favorite holiday, and it's basically my favorite holiday because in in Grand Chinese tradition, it's just an

excuse to eat a lot. So yeah, opening the floor up, Yeah, I think you're the expert here, Jane, so feel free to I am not like to laid down the knowledge. I am not an expert just because uh I full dumplings does not mean I'm an expert. But I mean I haven't spent like lunar New Year's with really that many other people in a very long time. So my sense of like breath of food has really really narrowed

to what is available to me. Um. And I also have been really struggling with the dumplings that I've been making because of like carpal tunnel issues. But I've been thinking a lot about jellyfish lately, Like I keep thinking about jellyfish, and I keep thinking about like the sesame anything with sesame in it. Yeah, and like just boil dumplings I feel like are really great for me at this particular moment. Yeah, my favorite is uh in Cantenese, it's called nan go, which is it's really yes um.

And the way my mom used to make it all the time was like dipping it in an egg first, um. And so it has this kind of like eggy crust on it, which is really really awesome. And I've been making up of the past couple of years myself where I am and I can't get to go to the grocery store and grab some because it's only available around this time. I guess they don't really produce it any

other time. And last time I went to visit my mom, she like loaded my suitcase full of them and that was able to eat them fast enough, unfortunately, and some of them went fast. Oh no, we have we have one in our refrigerator. I think it's I think it's it was in the freezer. It's now I think in the refrigerator and all incredibly excited to cut into it New Year's Yeah, do you do you guys do the because I know so we don't really have red bean ones I know there's like brown sugar ones or something

that are like plain. Wait, I just wanted to check, like is it nanongal Yeah, or at least so like the sort of like flower thing that is like shaped like a semicircle. Yeah. Wait, yeah, I feel like there's different circle. Yeah. We usually cut them into like like square strips, but I think that's just like a cooking ease of cooking thing. Yeah, and it usually comes up like a date or something on top. Yeah, when it's packaged.

That's so interesting because I feel like the nanal that I grew up with doesn't usually have a lot of things on it. It's kind of like sticky and kind of plain, and I'm just this is this is a new thing. Yeah. Yeah. The ones we usually get just has red beans in it, and then there's like the one day on the top. Oh, I don't know if you're thinking of like towning Go, which is like a different type of dish um where it's like white rice cakes and then you you can like it's like saucy

and then yeah, like different ingredients in it. Yeah, I think it's a different Ours are just that they're like they're they're pretty close to the yeah, I think I think I'm talking about the just regularly and golic. They're just like like they're they're they're they're basically plain, but there's some red bean like stirred into the dough and then it's just like the flat brown thing that you like fry. Yeah, all right, this is we've now done

dessert chat. I would honest, honestly much much less grim time than most of the stuff that happens on here, and you have all been now subjected to it. I go eat Chinese New Year's food, it's great. Ah. Yeah. So on two things that are somewhat more grim um. I think there's there's two big things I wanted to talk about that's sort of related to, like, I guess

Chinese diaspora nous um. I guess we can start with talking a bit about anti asition violence and police violence, because I mean, it's not like so my sort of into this is that my my someone Okay. So one of the things that's happened in the past about two years was this the huge sort of spike and anti

aition violence. But then you know, part of what happens politically around that was there was a huge attempts to essentially turn antiation violence as you I guess like the anti PLM, like especially in the US, but I think I think this happened elsewhere too, where there was as it didn't I don't know, it worked in some places

and didn't work in other places. So I went to the Research Chicago and a few is a few months ago now maybe it's a couple of a month that you ago, a Asian Chinese international student like got shot on campus and this turned into a huge sort of

like bring more cops on campus. That there was a huge petition that got signed that was that people were like asking for security cameras and asking for our cops and like the u c p D like a couple of weeks later just like shot a dude, and so that there there's been I've been seeing this tension a lot. I was wondering if YouTube had also sort of run into similar stuff and what your thoughts. We're on it, um.

I mean, I feel like, unfortunately with Canada, there's like this dynamic where we looked to the States for news and validation in this weird way that I find really delegitimizes the unique struggles that are here, that are different um there are there's a different kind of police system. There's like the politcal police like Vancouver Police Apartment UM. But then there's also the RCMP, the Royal Mountain Canadian Police,

which are in other the municipalities. And the RCMP was created specifically UM as a tool of settler colonialism to enforce the Indian Act, which is UM, I guess the most succinctly way I can put it as segregation UM of Indigenous peoples from settlers. And there's a lot of displacement of black communities across Canada. But and there was also slavery in Canada, even though we like to pretend

that there wasn't. And so against this background, I guess UM and ongoing like police brutality, whether it's in what's atten territories or just the police killing people. There's a lot of mainstream Asian Canadian and Chinese Canadian institutions that are very very much complicit in the system. Like there is an organization, an immigrant Chinese Canadian organization in Vancouver who one of the board members is a cop who

is married to a a city councilor. And a lot of the discourse that institutions not people themselves necessarily, but

institutions create around. For example, the revitalization of Chinatown or the preservation of the culture is around Oh, there's graffiti in the neighborhood Chinatown, and Vancouver is in the downtown Eyside was just considered UM, the poorest post is considered the poorest post a cold in Canada, and it's like a tight knit community with a lot of Indigenous people's, black people, people in poverty, struggling against the poisoning massacre UM.

Wherein the government is not providing UM safe supply and where the police just kind of like are everywhere pointing guns and everyone displacing the tens cities and so when there is an easy and not an easy but just like a demonized group of people that UM, the general

public doesn't know enough about UM. If you walk through the downtowning Side and talk to people, you would talk to people about their experiences with residential school, their experiences with missing family members, experiences with poverty and in the in the broadest terms, it's like the way that try and Town is being gentrified. People tend to blame the poor UM and there's like this divide and conqueror mentality within the Asian diaspora, whin the Chinese diaspora specifically, and

so similar to what happened with Um Michelle Go. Similar to her UM, there was a South Asian elderly woman who a group of people who lived in the tensity had killed pretending to be cops when they knocked on her door, and the council, one of the city councilors UM in Vancouver was like this, we need to stop indulging in these tense cities. Um. Meanwhile, there's a lot of like marginalized people in these tense cities who who who can'ts UM, who need to live there because it's

COVID times, and society has abandoned them. So it's like anti Asian racism and violence has also the hate, the so called hate crime thing has so apparently increased, UM. And I don't think that it's hasn't increased. It's just that like the way that the media, the way that the institutions within Canada is also jumping onto the police wagon, the police the hate crime angle, rather than learn from abolitionists. Rather, Yeah, this is a long way I'm putting it. It's like similar,

it's similar, and I know a lot of details. Yes, yeah, I mean I think that, Yeah, I think that tracks. I mean the targets are slightly different just based on such a snears, but on the sort of local context.

But I think that, yeah, that tracks a lot with what we've been seeing here, as I think there's a there's another thing that I don't know, so I I really don't like the term like because the did the Twitter hashtag is stop Asition hate, Like I hate that framing of it as sort of hatred and not racism.

But even the sort of the anti Asian violence framing, which I've been used a lot, I think has problems because you know, I mean, this is one of the things you were talking about, one of the things that

I've seen a lot. It's just you know, any time, like you know, there are genuine sort of racism attacks, right, but then there's also just like I mean, one of the sort of scare things that happened here was it was like a bunch of people's, like a bunch of restat Chinese restaurants got broken into and robbed, and everyone was like, well, this is anti Asian violence, and it's like, well, no, like this is just theft and and there there's there's

been this sort of like collapsing of something bad happens to an Asian person with specifically sort of like targeted racist attacks, and I think that's been well, I mean, that's been a problem. And there's also the secondary problem of you know who even who even gets included in

this in the first place. Like one of one of the biggest things I've been frustrated about is, you know, the sort of the selective inclusion of South Asian people, like I there there was there was a shooting at the fed X facility last year by a guy who was like very much, very far right, kind of like pilled online guy, and it killed a bunch of Seak workers, and there was never there was just nothing, even like

no one talked about his anti Asian violence. But then, you know, selectively, you get inclusions to South these Asian people when it's like it's it's it's like people get folded into being Asian when it's like useful to call from war police. But then when it's you know, not useful for that, or when it's you know, especially when it's working class people getting killed, there's just sort of nothing. And I've been I don't know. I've been really frustrated

by this dynamic a lot. Um. Yeah, And Jan, I want to know what you think about this too, because I have no talks slong enough about Yeah. I mean, you know, wasn't there there was a hate crime build that was passed in Congress, right, uh, And there was supposedly, quote unquote supposed to be addressing all this quote unquote anti Asian eight stuff. And you know the only thing that accomplished was it created like some some government organ to like oversee these efforts to address hate crimes and

then more funding for the police. Right. So I think it was it was a very kind of direct impact. We could just see how this discourse transformed into exactly what a lot of you know, organizers had said would happen, which is more funny for the police and not making communities safer. Right. So, Um, I think the real conendrum for me, and I think that really kind of you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about this, and

I get I get kind of frustrated. Is um you know, whenever these these attacks happen on you know, Asian heritage or Asian identified people. Um, the response, I mean, it's it's a good natured and it's well meaning, and I agree with it, but you know, the response is always like the telling folks who have been victimized or those who know them, um, that more police is not the answer, right,

And you know, I think that's true. But then I think what I'm struggling with is how to make this message resonate with those folks, right, because I think there's a way that in some ways that can alienate them even more and make them even more reaction right, because

that's you know, the media has often spun that argument. Uh, they use further instances of violence to spin that argument of like when when people say the answer is not more cops, it doesn't make it safer, the media is able to spend that to say, look, this isn't working, right, It's that things are actually getting more dangerous all the kind of like scaremongering tactics with crime statistics and all

that stuff, which are usually false anyway. So I think that's what I'm trying to figure out now, is like, you know, because in in Chinatown, l A, where you know, where I've done some work, there was community meetings with c c D, the Chinatown Committee for equitable. Uh, what's

what's the de stand for? I always forget development. Um. They had some meetings with community folks to kind of like you know, hear what hear what they wanted to do to address this, and they kind of like a lot of those organizers had, um, you know, they're coming from that viewpoint that calling for more cops is not the answer, and so some of the mail they're from

the community, but they're not. They weren't part of the kind of like senior population of Chinatown, which is you know, it's like what incomes seniors is kind of like are the folks that are being pushed out and by developers and all the gentrification happening as well. Um, some of some men were kind of like, okay, well we should

start kind of like arnged neighborhood watch um. And you know, I think in some way that taps into this kind of like we protect us type of ethos, right, It's it's not relying on a state or government or whatever

police paramilitary force. UM. But then I think the question that some folks had I heard the secondhand, was that, um, you know, are are these people actually from the community and are they actually doing this to address the needs of the folks who are most affected by it, right, And so I think some folks were uncomfortable with the idea that there should be these kind of like street patrols, UM.

And so there's there's just so many different ways to approach this, and I haven't you know, I'm not laying way or anyone, but I just haven't seen an effective way to counteract that call for more police. Yet. That's a really good point because I feel like in when especially um Asian women, people who experience like various forms of sexual violence or um street harassment, UM, that sense of unsafety is amplified when we witness other people getting

murdered in public spaces. And so I think in a way it's like understandable why people want to grasp for any kind of solution and and also why that kind of trauma can be weaponized or like taken advantage of immediately, Like just because I'm like, who asked for you to be street criptials of Chinatown? Who decided that you make the communities safer? Have you consulted the seniors? Have you have you talked with all of the seniors, all of the elders to ask them like how would you feel

if I did that? Like where is that suggestion coming from? And I think that like the other argument is that like mental health resources is an alternative to policing, even though UM, policing and mental health systems are very, very very connected. UM Edward Wong has an article about that

in Upping the Antie And I don't know. I just think that, like there has to be like a way to talk about this without invalidating each other's trauma and invalidating UM people survival instincts as well, because I feel like UM, for years, as someone who's done work in the anti violence sector, it's not that I wanted there to be more police. It's just that like a lot of survivors might be like, hey, I actually do want to use the court system because this person is dangerous.

Like that's like, as somebody supporting a survivor, I can't just go up, no, you're wrong, less cops, right, Like that's that's not a compassionate response. And it's also not a compassionate response to go, hey, you're making this like all about yourself and you should likely be talking about like black and indigenous people like like like that's that's

also really insensitive. So it's like, I feel like there's a way that there there is like a way to talk about abolition that really needs to respect every survivor or every like communities like trauma. And it's not an easy thing because it's not like our communities have had a good way to respond to trauma, like we haven't

really like we're still breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma. Yeah, and I think this this kind of comes back to another sort of difficulty of this whole project because you know, a lot of the sort of the abolitionist framework is about like transitioning things towards community solutions, but like what is that you know, like, what does that even mean when you're dealing with you know this this is this is part of the problem with well, okay, you have

armed self defense groups, but you know what happens when inevitably and this is this is just something that happens just you know, this is this is this is the nature of security forces, right is eventually you're going to

get abuters in it. And it's like, okay, well what happens then, and what happens when you know, like the abuses of people inside the community and and this is compounded, I think by this problem of like what like what even you know the I think I think there's there's there's there's a broader problem of like what Asian nous is, And there's a broader and this is this is also sort of localized problem of like what even like is

the Chinese community at all? Because you're dealing with something that's incredibly fragmented, You're dealing people speak differ languages, You're dealing with people who have been in these places for you know, some people have been here for century, some people who have been here like two months. And I think that makes it really difficult in a lot of ways to sort of like even even just bring together

something that could be a community. And I know, I know what happens, and I know you know, there's there's there's lots of different sort of like fragmented communities. But but I think it makes this harder because there isn't a sort of like ready made thing you can turn to and go, Okay, well this is how we're going, like this is a group of people and this is the sort of like social sphere, and this is the community that we're going to turn into sort of deal

with this stuff. There's just this kind of a bunch of amorphous different groups. And then also you have the problem that like you know, if you're gonna talk about like political forces, nation communities, like the business associations are extremely powerful and you know, we have different objectives and they do, but they're also like extremely well organized in a way that most other sort of like Chinese groups aren't. I don't know that that's that's that's been where my

thinking has been going on this. Yeah, I think, um, this there's some residents with what you're saying and the kind of dynamics that you're identifying and what I've kind of witnessed and experienced in like Hong Kong asport organizing and which I think, you know, there's a lot of overlap with that same type of like small business organization type of thing that usually dominates China towns across North America, which is the case in l A. And actually c

CD spends a lot of time fighting the small business organizations UM because they are very friendly with developers UM and they're usually pro um you know, pro securitization and anti for folks and all that kind of stuff. So there is that that element right where a lot of the times, you know, you are fighting against people who

might have to like same heritages for example, UM. And you know, for me personally, that's that's very much the case with Hong Kong aspert groups, right because you know, many of them are very conservative, are right wing and not only just kind of held personal beliefs, but advocate a lot for these kind of you know, these policies and politicians and all these different things that I really

can't stand and I'm aligned against um. And you know, I think it's a lot of folks want to take the kind of pregnantious root of like we'll work with you on things that we where we have points of unity, otherwise we don't, Whereas you know, I guess some people see me as as a little bit more rigid in the sense that like, I don't want to work with these folks at all, because um, I see them as kind of themselves as as a force that is causing more hard than good, especially if with these Hong Kong

aspert groups, the usual mantra is like Hong Kong first, like everything that we do is is serving Hong Kong um, and that you in the desper that usually means kind of like non partisanship, lobbying, congress, all those different things, UM, and then kind of like completely ignoring or being agnostic of local and domestic issues. UM to oversimplify a little bit. So, you know, I think it's been on my mind a lot.

I know your question was about Chineseness, but I guess for me that that kind of filters a little bit further down to like what is being a Hong Kong. Right. It's really difficult to organize with your specific quote unquote ethnic or diaspora community, and the the meaning of diaspora

is not a cohesive community but people's memories of home. UM. It's like a difficult thing to kind of but I butt your head against because it's like you have your UM diversity, equity, inclusion framework of organizing, and then you have the every day like what what what these frameworks can't simplify, which is the tensions between your communities. Like I didn't grow up it experiencing overt racist violence when

I grew up in Richmond. UM. Richmond is an extremely East Asian and Chinese suburb UM that saw first Um, not first, but just like at some point a wave of Hong Kong diaspora because of and then afterwards more like mainlanders UM, and so on the playground, somebody was like,

are you from Taiwan mainland or or Hong Kong? And that was when I was like seven, And that was my introduction to what it means to be in diaspora in this particular kind of way, and UM being like just right like in that and in that, and and figuring yourself out within that and seeing how there was just an absence of community me because of how like these different geopolitical experiences have like separated us UM and

made it more difficult. UM Like when we filter our parents political beliefs onto each other, it's kind of like this awkward thing. But but I think that like UM in in trying to contend with that in the in the present, it's sort of like, um, we have these older institutions that other people that that the older generations have built. What new things can we build? What things

can we um? Because I feel like I'm I'm really rigid too, I'm like really not great at talking across the stile, and when I do, it's not it's not really about anything substantive it's like, hey, like, hi, it's good to see you know, Like, when you live in a place you you don't want to make like make enemies,

but like, it's it's a really hard thing. Um, and it's even more heartbreaking when you find out slowly that people are just taking advantage of you, right like and I don't know, it's it's a it's a really difficult thing to organize against when you're like you all hate me, great love it. This has been they could Happen Here. Join us for part two of this discussion tomorrow. We're going to more detail on the state of the left.

In the meantime, you can find us That Happened Here pod on Twitter, Instagram, and check out the Cool Zone for other shows that we need. Welcome Day Could Happen Here podcasts are recognizes that Lunar New Year's is not, in fact just one day, and in that spirit, our special New Year's episode is going on for a second day. So there's the rest of our conversation with Jane and Jane.

You know. The other thing I wanted to script touch on like this is I think kind of deferenting off the topic, but I think is also something that I've been running into a lot, which is that like, you know, you have this kind of like you know, you have this kind of bind, right because on the one hand, you're stuck between you know, like a lot a lot of the organizing and sort of in Asian communities has

all of these problems. And then you know, okay, well, you know the other thing that's happening is is the sort of mainstream American left and the mainstream American left. I think the Canadian left has problems similar problems with this is that like it's a bunch of just like it's a bunch of tankies, it's a bunch of people who love the CCP, it's a bunch of just we are genocide deniers and like people who think that every Asian person who like doesn't like the government is a

cia psi op. And I don't know. This is something that I've like, I mean, I've I ran into a lot trying to i mean help people do in Hong Kong.

Organizing is something I've run into just in like every organize, like I've run, I run into this an anarchist spaces to like it's it's just I don't know, it feels really bad because it's like like you're you're just sort of caught between and I guess it's sort of this is three way triangulation, right, because on the one hand, you have this sort of like you have the local dynamics with you know, the sort of the sentence of

the sort of reactionary small business owners. You have this, you know, the Chinese community also being sort of split in between like pro and anti CCP factions, both of whom have like are absolutely chock full of fanatical right wingers.

It's like, well, okay, it's like the CCP verse epoch times, and it's like I don't want any of them to win and then use them out, and you're caught in the middle of this sort of they're caught in the middle of this sort of I don't know, I think it's sort of like a fox geopolitical struggle, but like one of one of the big sort of ideological conflicts being between both the CCP in the US sort of like using the specter of each other to sort of

like disturb their basis. And I don't know, I am incredibly frustrated by I'm incredibly frustrated by the way that these groups have expected like the ant CCP, like the pro CCP groups are sort of selectively been using and like selectively been using anti Asian violence, as you know, they basically making the reguments of the importance of anti

Asition violence. Is that while this only happens because people say many things about the CCP, and if no one didn't like the CCP, then there wouldn't be any violence, even though like anti Asian violence here predates the existence of a communist party in China by centuries, like we we like the we we invaded, we invaded China, like how many times? At least twice, maybe three I think at least twice and maybe three times, like before there

was a communist party, And so I don't know. I I feel trapped a lot between these dynamics and ways that are very frustrating. And yeah, I guess I want to open the floor to talk about that. I guess I see it as like co optation partly um, but I guess I also see it as how power works. Like I there's like this local paper and I was researching sort of the history of Chinese diaspora organizing locally, and there was a spat in the paper between two people who one of whom is from UM, a newer

Hong Kong diaspora. There was like a whole spat um in the paper about his history, and there's the history of like those tensions are like written in the community itself, Like it's it's it's not a new thing that people argue about what happened on June four. It's not new that people are really mistrustful each other and that there are actual like government forces that infiltrate and create a like basically deny other people's struggles like UM when that

the that government is themselves perpetuating it. And I guess it just is really hard when fellow organizers that you otherwise really like I want to get along with our our like uncritical of the state that has oppressed your family, because you're just kind of like you're kind of like, wait, so are we have we had a conversation about this, Like we clearly haven't talked eno if this is what

you believe in. And it's just a little bit hard because it's like community building is not assuming that we're in solidarity. Community building is actually like doing that hard work, like what is your community experiencing and what is my community experiencing? How are we being like weaponized against each other? Like yeah, how are these governments like manipulating like communities?

But that's like really hard when trust has been probably broken like the immediate Yeah, I think you're so right that it's it's really about cauotation and a lot of it, like what I've witnessed as really so much about UM. And this is like, like you're saying, Jane, this is a much older dynamic than you know just the past couple of years. Is like, uh, states being able to use this kind of home and desper of framework to um demand loyalty through like targeting desperate people's guilt UM.

And so there's so many like guilty desper people I know who are like you know, usually from usually from a class perspective, right because they had the their family had the resources to leave or uh they were not born in the home country or whatever because of their family background, that type of thing, and they want to subsume that by taking this radical you know, anti U s anti Canada stands um, which is fine, Like obviously being anti us and anti Canada is a good thing,

but um, the thing that's really kind of frustrated me the most is seeing these kind of like radical folks in North America, especially queer folks who are like they'll take the most reactionary positions against women and queer and you know LGBT folks in China, for example, by supporting

a state that is repressing them. Right. So it's it's such cognitive dissonance to me, Like, I don't understand why these folks can't see, um that they're kind of perpetuating this violence in the service of this kind of overarching imperative of not ever saying anything bad about China because it will help, it'll it'll bolster the US propaganda war machine, which is like, there's absolutely a way that I mean that absolutely happens if you do that uh un carefully, right,

if you just kind of repeat um us media narratives and stuff like that. But I think there's absolutely a way to do both right and um. To me, the way to do that is to not um support the state discourses that demand loy else from the dask broke, but to actually, you know, it's the grassroots thing, right, It's just kind of like we support career folks around the world who are struggling under oppression from their governments

and that type of thing. Um, and being able to very carefully say that with nuance, UM, and to be against both at the same time, for example, UM, well that's really really difficult, right, um. And people have very kind of the triolic reactions when you try and do that. Um. As you know, she set up talk Chris, So I

don't know this. This is still the contrum for me because I tend to take the more rigid stance against against these folks, but I know people who are very kind of they take a more compassionate stance, which is like these these are newly plus politicized youth. Um, they're just coming to a lot of these politics and positions. UM. And you know, being anti us is better than not being anti us, is It's what a lot of folks say,

And you know, I agree to a certain extent. But then it's also like if they're being miseducated in these histories, UM, that's okay to a certain point when you're exploring and discovering these things and becoming radicalized. But you know, like Jane said, there's also these kind of material, direct impacts that you have on people that you work with, that you organized with, that that are your friends or loved ones,

um that you know. That kind of explanation of like oh, they're just learning is like it's insufficient in that kind of individual way because you're still hurting people and threatening people around you, right, So I think there has to be a balance and like being able to steer folks in into these like non Stalinist, non statist directions even while they're discovering. I hate how we're even having to be like steering people into a non sell list perspective.

I'm just like, I'm not a horny for stalent I

like to think that pisces me off about this. It's just like like they're not even Illinist, Like this is the thing that's frustrating, Like if if, if if they were merely twentieth century Stalinists, we wouldn't be having this argument, because you know, twenty century Stalinism is like well, yeah, okay, like twenty centy Stalinist or anti market economy, and it's like no, they've they've somehow found a way to take literally the worst aspects of Stalinism and then be like okay,

but what is what if what is stalinism but also capitalism good at the same time. And it's just like,

how how did you do this? Like how how did you come up with an ideology that like I don't know, I mean, I I think I think also I think that's been frustrating to me about this is like it's a way of sort of of of it becomes this way of channeling you know, you have the diaspora guilt in the one hand, that you have just random sort of like white leftists sort of white guilt, and it becomes this way of like channeling that into this sort of follow anti racism where you know, you get you

get people who are like actual professional like hacks, right like Roger Day for example, being like, uh, you know, to doing things like wow, if you, if you, if you, if you criticize this time you state it all that sinophobia and like you're directly leading to people getting killed.

And it's like, no, that's not how this works. And there's this kind of it's it's it's it's this problem of they have this this fundamental inability to see Chinese people as people and not a sort of undifferentiated mass that can be sort of rallied behind in ideology, And I don't know that's been I think weird to deal with because you know, like yeah, like you you're always just in in the Chinese communities, like you're always just you're just gonna have like you know that there's gonna

be a few people who are just sort of like pro CCP right wingers. Right, that's just that's just a

sort of defelo political position. But there's there's this way in which you get this, you know, people adopting I mean just things that like if you said this about any like white American for example, if you if you argued that any like a white American making a thousand dollars a year wasn't in poverty, like you just couldn't do it, you like, you know, it's it's it's literally impossible, like you you'd be laughing out of the room or you know, like you're you would you would you'd be

like ratioed until the cows come home. But you can just but everyone and people just say this constantly, like this is just just a thing that was like well, if you look at poverty production, it's like, well Chinese China's eliminated absolute poverty. It's like, yeah, Okay, they a

thousand dollars a year is outside of this now. And I think there's these ways in which it it'd be comes hard to intervene in this stuff because like every every Asian person, specifically we're Chinese person just becomes a sort of token that like you know, you just sort of like throw at each other as just like oh, well, yeah, here's the Chinese person who says that the CCP is good. It's like, well, here's another Chinese person who says that

it's bad. And it's like you never It's like on both sides, whether whether the process people realize it or not, it's their agencies being sort of stripped by them, and they've they've been turned into this sort of instrumentalized like you know in the in the same thing that they're also doing to us is that they're turning into sort of these instruments that you can use to like back your own sort of brought in political agenda. And this, I don't know, like this has gotten me to just

I I just don't work with these people anymore. Like we tried it, it was a disaster. They screwed us over. It's oh, I don't know, but but but I think that's that's a that's a lonely stance in a lot of ways. Like you know, if you take this kind of like hardline position, you're not gonna most people, even other people who don't support it, probably won't follow you there. I don't know, it's weird because I find a lot

of organizing is really lonely. It's like it's not like like I want to boast around being like why aren't you all donatings? But that's not that's also guilt, right, that's like projecting guilt onto other people, um, and that's not an effective tool. And I think that like like so right, and addressing both the white guilt but also the diaspora guilt, and also just how frustrating it is to organize against the state when it's like two people, like three people doing it in a little group project

for lack of a better word. But it's sort of like, how do we make this sustainable when it's so lonely? And how do we use the resources that are available to us two not replicate these systems yet again? And I guess when it comes to the left or progressive in Canada, it's like so frustrating because it's like there isn't actually a lot of community outreach to like racialized communities. There's no translation. There's a lot of like nonprofit work

that is frankly very draining and co optive themselves. Um Like, it's it's a bunch of social service organizations in a trench code and a bunch of political organizations that don't work together or talk to each other in a trench coat. And um so I understand why youth would join like leftist like radical organizing, but it it's just really heartbreaking when it's you're they end up reading in reading groups where they're reading historical or so called historical texts that

erase your histories. Like it it's just such a like like reading is great, like political education is incredible, um but I'm like it's hard not to grow resentful. So when the guy at the top is a university educated white dude and they're reading texts that literally erase your entire family, and it's, um that like yeah, for me,

it's like just really personal that way. It's like there are people who are suffering in the present and you're reading a text by a white sociologist from the eighties, like like not like I'm like, it's not that like I I don't think that we should do that political education. It's just that like at a reading group, will you

listen to me when I call you out? Yeah, I definitely you know, both of you saying that this work is really lonely, especially if you take if you stand up for yourself, for you you really kind of stand

by your principles. It's I think that's so true. And um, you know, not to speak for everyone in laws on, but just my experience has been like you know, everyone just everyone hates us, like it's you know, we got hate from the right, we got hate from the left, um and from Hong Kong, asper from Hong Kong locals

like it. It's just sometimes it's really hard to see, you know, because we're we're trying to stay true to our principles, but it's hard to see sometimes whether there's an impact or whether we're just kind of like in a little echo chamber with twenty other people, you know

what I mean. And um, it's hard to find that balance because I don't want to become more and more pragmatists where I'm just like, all right, well you know, I'll work with these people, but I don't agree with them on these fundamental issues just on this one campaign or whatever happens to be. I don't know. I know that's a part of like building power quote unquote like that a lot of uh, certain socialist groups like to do or they're they're really focused on that kind of thing.

But I don't know if it's too much of an academic view too, to be like, if you're going to do it that way, you're you're you're changing the outcome already, right because you're not addressing these kind of fundamental issues

from the start um. And I think that view can sometimes lead to like a lot of non starters where you're just like things don't ever get off the ground because you insist on whatever fundamental principle that you that you want to stick to, uh like anti nationalism for example. So yeah, just just kind of reiterating and commiserating with you all on the long laitness of that. People think that like not working in these sort of united different

things is this like sort of purityological position. But like you know, I mean so when when Occupy Ice was happening, right, Occupy Ice wound up being a kind of big friend thing, and one of the groups involved with it was was the Party for Socialism Liberation, who are this sort of like very much sort of like the basic tanking cult.

Like there's not a lot of other horrible stuff that we will talk about at some point, but I mean, one of the things that happens, you know, Occupy ICE is that they you know, in Philadelphia, they destroy the atmant like they convince enough people to just leave and do this completely pointless like march they can do a photo op of like people in front of the Mayor's office and they do it, and they camp collapses because

suddenly there's not enough people. You know, they don't even get a majority of the people, but it doesn't matter because they pulled enough people out that you know that

the camp couldn't be held against the cops anymore. And I think that in some senses this is kind of microcosm of what they what these people actually do, which is that you know that these people will never have any actual institutional power, right you know that they're they're never going to create their like salentist state or whatever like that, They're never going to get this. They're they're

never gonna hold any power. What they can do is there are enough of them, they can they can siphon off enough people from actual leftist movements into this sort of just like white room pro capitalist stuff that they can they can cause Peopen's to collapse. And I mean they've done this. They did a lot of this stream the uprising, and there is a lot of them, you know, intentionally leading people on pointless marches. There's a lot of

cop werting with the police and stuff like that. And I think that, you know, it's it's it's like having seen that like multiple times, right I I you know, I you know, for me, like not working with him is an incredibly pragmatic position because we tried it and

they blew it up. But it's this problem especially you know, you have people who are radicalized in and it's like, well yeah, I mean, I don't know, like a lot of them never saw this stuff, right, don't know who these people are, and their first instruction to the left is just like incredibly well financed I like media blitz, and I think that has you know, I think that has consequences both for us as sort of like people on the left doing like Chinese people on the left

doing our own desport organizing, and it has consequences for the broader left, and like you you can see other sort of versions of this right where you know, you have a sort of right wing we've been infiltrating left to spaces and destroying them like they're they're like there were there was thing do cream Resistance basically blew up a like an anti lithium protest of the u S by just like going there and just hammering transphobia constantly.

And so I don't know, I think there's there's this sort of dilemma because fundament like they will say a lot of the same things we do, but we have fundamentally different goals and that manifests itself at you know, on the level of of of organizing individual campaigns. But it's something that's really hard to get people to see.

I think we've lost a lot of movements because of it. Yeah, And not to be you know, not to pile on the synicism or anything, but I think I honestly do think, uh, you know, as all those new Cold War stuff brants up, which is like completely independent of what a lot of folks, like grassroots folks are even thinking or advocating. It's all is kind of up to the the two uh, you know, Chinese and US governments as they ramp up their own tensions.

I think it's really going to start, like people are going to start these people who are um, you know, tankys or whatever, are going to start narrowing our choices further and further, right, like, you know, as soon it's going to be an athema to to not you know, take the into us position. And that's it, you know what I mean. And I think that's really scary to me. I don't I last year, I thought there was still

room for intervention, but things are closing so quickly. And you know, my personal opinion is that a lot of these kind of bigger groups like No Cold War UM and others like Code Pink are are definitely being you know, they have much more funding than a lot of other

groups who are boarding more nuanced positions. And so like you're saying, it's just like these media blitz is that these shiny events and all those different things are very appealing to newly radicalize folks, right because I think that this this is where the power is and this is where we can actually make a difference, um and yeah, things to meet things look pretty bleak in the near future.

I mean, it just takes one. Yeah, yeah, I will say I think I think they made one major Sita's mistake, which is they tried to do the the push the giant like new cold warward China thing at the exact moment of the US and Russia were like heating up in actually, and this left them like kind of off balance because they've been for the last two years the whole things when the US is going to accelerate tensces with China, usentions with China, and then it turns out

that they're not doing that and in fact, like they're gearing up for just more proxy word stuff with Russia, which the thing they've been doing for the past decade.

So I think, like, I don't know, like I think they their problem essentially is that they run into reality and there are certain points at which, like, you know, you you can lie a lot, right, but when when when the lie that you're pushing is about what the mainstream media is going to say, and the mainstream if you just pivots and it's just completely about something that's entirely unrelated, Like I think I think that hurts, and I think the everything that the other problem they have

that that makes me hopeful is that the way there their base is getting split by just the anti vax grifters, because so many of their media people just you know, are just are just full on drifters, and you know, and you're you're seeing splits right now and gray zone

about like basically between pro and anti vax factions. And I think that also will help us in the long run, because you know, say what you want about most leftists and even most tankies, like anti vax is like a bit far even for them, and because you know, and the other things like the the it's it's hard to do t vacs without beginning to take positions that just like it's been baked into just sort of anti Chinese racism in so many ways that like you can't really

like you know, like you can't simultaneously be pro incredibly CCP and then also be talking about how the US is trying to implement social credit, right, you know, these are these these positions are just contradictory, and I think that's something that plays to our advantage and I think is weakening them to some extent because they've they tried to have their cake and eat it too, and now they're sort of I don't know, they're they're their conspiracy

theory base is interfering with their like left base in ways I think you're helpful for us. It's just so interesting how like the anti vax position is literally rooted in races um and ableism like. Um there's an article in The Conversation called the inherent racism of the anti vax movement that has like really good history around white settlers being afraid of African medicine um um. And then there there's also just the able ism of assuming that

your kid will get autism if you get vaccinated. That was that that's been a huge thing before the pandemic, and that was part of how this was effective in the first place. And um yeah, and obviously the anti Chinese um like uh anti Asian like scapegoating as well. But um, I guess that also ties into just how broadly ablest the left is and how like disability justice is not something that a lot of people know about um or care about. And it's yeah, I don't know,

it's a huge problem for me as a disabled person. Yeah, I wanted to add really quickly too. I mean, I totally agree with you, and you know, I think one of the pernicious things that I've noticed though, is like these kind of big, you know, quote unquote anti imperialist accounts, like on Instagram for example. Um, they take this anti vax position precisely by saying that it's anti racist to take that position, which is like, it sounds that sounds

very count intuitive. It is not that does not reflect reality. But they will point to instances of you know, anti black us um US medicine for example, bowl you know, like the Tusky experiments, and then say this is why we shouldn't trust the U. S. Government on any of this, right, because look what they've done in the past. And it's like that logic makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways, right, But you know, they obviously ignore the impacts that you know, anti vax UH and COVID

has had on you know, black and other POSD populations. Right. So I think I don't know if it's exactly like, I don't know if it is appearing as hypocrisy to those people and then their audiences too, right, because I think they're able to spin it in this in this way. Yeah, but I think I think my my my argument here is I don't think those are the same. I don't think those are the same basis, Like, I don't I don't think that the majority of the Tanky base are

people who are anti factors. And you know that you can see a line of this right of of you know, like one of the big things that like they're they're they're obsessed with sort of like with the Cuban health

care system, right and like Cuba's Cuba vaccines. You see this stuff from them a lot, and you know, and they also talk about like, yeah, like China's doing really well accating COVID, And I don't think those positions are like I don't think those people are the same people who are also turning around and then talking about how like you know, talk doing the experiments the vaccines are

actually like racism thing. I think I think there's some overlap between them, but but I don't think that those basses line up enough for it to you know, not have the effect of just kind of like tearing them apart. As their media people flip into into one of the

sort of camps. And I think the other thing like you know, if if you look at what's happening with like, uh like Max Bluemadal right now, is that he's just like full on like like he's just full on touring with like just straight up right wingers to an extent that even like even people being habituated by the sort of like Syria false flags stuff into sort of working with right wingers, Like you can't look at these people that you know, there's just these actually just like Republican

and operatives and be like, well, okay, we're we're on the side of these people and also like support Cuba. I just I don't know, I I have I have some faith in these groups being separate and they're being there being a point of cognitive dissonance where the system braced beause I guess I've seen people who have gotten out of tanky is M by having to interact with the actual CCP, and and that that that that gives me hope that there's there, there's there's a point of

cognitive dissonance at which it falls apart. And I don't know, maybe maybe I'm just sort of like hope am in here, But I feel like it's so interesting how like there are a lot of people for whom politics is a parlor game and not their every day like lived experience, Like I would not be so like like if I see my communities struggling, um, and when people are dying or people are really like struggling with intragenerational trauma, I'm

not gonna sit here and pontificate and theorize about like, um, things that don't impact my communities. Um. And yeah, Like the angle about classes so important here because it's like a lot of people can't insulate themselves from like the

broader communities around them. Like if you're going around saying untruths in the media and your communities are like, hey, that that makes no sense, Like, um, if you're actually connected to both, like like you would hopefully unless you're just a big asshole, um, you would hopefully take some

accountability for what you're saying. Um. And yeah, I just I just worry because this pandemic has also like really isolated people, like they people are not like talking to each other, and that makes it more easy for people to to be like, oh, I'm I'm just right, like this is my perspective, and I just yeah, I think about that the conditions in which we come to certain conclusions, like the conditions under which we become more vulnerable to

culti type things or like oversimplified like understandings of history. Because like, I feel like the the anti vax uh like not taking the vaccine being uh anti racist is a very like manipulative like argument because it ignores the fact that these experiments um on black and indigenous people in North America and beyond, or like about neglect and are about um deliberately deliberate ongoing genocide and how like it's completely understandable for for people to not trust the government.

But but like when the vaccine is actually a tool of protecting people, Like, there's not a lot of like campaigns other than people who are uh rooted in disability justice saying, hey, vaccines are like here to protect us, and how can we make how can we make like a like, how can we resist the medical industrial complex enough such that we can make people feel safer taking them at vaccine? How can we bring people in as opposed to fearmongering? Because I think that fear is so powerful.

It's like, once you're afraid, you're you're not gonna You're not going to even look into the research, right, So I don't know. For me, I just think of all of this as like manipulation and human psychology on a on a like broad social basis, because it's like the stage is a big cult and these little groups are little cults. Yeah, do you have any other things you want to say before we head out? Happy new here? Yeah, you're the Tiger. I'm looking forward to retweeting art like

actually Obruary not January one. Yeah, yeah, we should, I think my okay, okay, closing less depressing question. Yeah what what what do you think is the etiquette I'm retweeting? I like you every retweeting like you're the Tiger art before the actually before like Lunar New Year's. I've been torn on it because I just I like the art, but also I'm like, it's not the years yet, I haven't seen any I guess. I guess I'm lucky. I have been either guilty or just not guilty, depending on

how you see it. Like I have retweeted all of the tiger art on January first because I did not care. I wanted to see the tigers, um. But I hope that I see more tigers like in the coming days, because if the tigers aren't coming or if we aren't retweeting it, that that is an issue. Like there needs to be like a second like a like a like a like like a like a second wave of the

tiger art sure to all of the artists. Well alright, So if if people want to find you or work that you have that you want people to find where where where can they do that? Or if you also do not want them to find you, that is completely also valid. The Internet is terrible and a mistake. Yeah, I mostly and do not perceive me mode um completely valid. If you want to check out a low song stuff feel free Low song collective dot com, it's good work.

My social media is um keipakal poetry um on Instagram. I uh um. I have this graphic that I've turned into a sticker and it's raises funds for families who were affected by the fires and floods. Um. It's a sticker that says, immunocompromise people are worth protecting and it went viral multiple times. So I guess I cannot help but be perceived objections. So yeah, I don't know, Yeah, petreat, Yeah, this this is what happens when you create things that

are both incredibly politically powerful and also gorgeous. So yeah, be be be cursed with the reward for good work, which is also being perceived. Yeah. Yeah, well you can you can find you can find us at Happened here pod on Twitter and Instagram. There's the cool zone. You can find it. Yeah, go go, go, go retweet Tiger Art, I go throw a brick at your sheriff non actionable and yeah, destroyed the American and Chinese States. Happy two years? Yeah,

it could happen. Here is the podcast that This is about things falling apart and how to, how to, how to maybe unfollowing apart. I'm Robert Evans. Your your your host, and your other hosts are Christopher and Garrison and our producers Sophie. How's everybody doing today? Great? How's every how's everybody feel about war? Oh? Yeah? Now, if you were to get us, based on your knowledge of history, what generation of war we're in right now? What would you? What?

What would y'all guess? I feel like war isn't it's it's it's newer in relation to like human beings, like

the idea of war. I'm guessing like there's been like battles, but like the idea of like war, I feel like isn't super old compared to how long there's been humans walking around, So I don't know this is maybe I mean, I know the answer, but like it's it's like I don't like that's that's definitely we definitely passed through like at least a couple of stages, and we're at least a couple Chris, like gotta be at least twelve twelve.

At least twelve you were way ahead of William s Lynd, who spoilers is the guy who came up with the concept of fourth generation war, which is what this episode

is about. Right. One of the things when we talk about things falling apart is um the unsettling growth of a number of different hybrid conflicts, Ukraine being the most like blatant modern example, Syria being the deadliest example in our lifetimes, but like these weird hybrid conflicts that are a mix of shit happening on the Internet and like

disinformation going out all over the world. You could even think to like what was happening in Bolivia a year or so back, and like all those weird accounts that were like based around Langley, Virginia claiming to support the

military coup. And you can look at like from the same this disinformation brought out by like the Russian state that is usually as part of like a conflict either you know, they have disinfo operations and Syria disinfo operations around the conflict in Ukraine that are kind of designed to muddy the issues and to detract international support and also to like drum up support within for like in the in the case of Ukraine, you had like this

media blitz against the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state in favor of like a more UH like traditionally Russian um UH style of government in the East, and like that led to this breakaway republic that was supported by the Russian government. And like so these are like hybrid conflicts, is kind of how these are referred to. And there's a guy named William S. Lynd who in nineteen eighty nine wrote a book with a couple of US military analysts, Like he was an analyst for the military. He was

not serving in the military. The other guys he wrote this this thing with we're serving at the time, and they wrote this this book kind of trying to be basically what Lynde was doing. He was very influenced by our loss in Vietnam when I say, are here, like the loss of the American state in Vietnam, and he was trying to determine, like number one, kind of like find a way to codify and explain the changes that

were happening to warfare in this period. Was also influenced about what was happening in Afghanistan with the Russians were experiencing UM and find a way to like move forward and allow the United States to win wars again, right, Like that was William S. Lynd's goal UM, And so he came up with this concept of four or he and some other guys came up with what they called fourth generation warfare UM, and first generation warfare is like

Napoleonic Arab warfare. So like as Garrison was saying, he may note that he kind of starts his pretty that's pretty late we had. Yeah, that's this's a lot of stuff that leads up to like, yeah, if I was going to try to categorize front types of warfare, that

would not be the one I start with. Well, and like the reality of course, as we'll talk about like when you start looking at different kinds of warfares, there's wars that look remarkably like the ship going on in Afghanistan and Ukraine that are occurring like several thousand years ago, um like like like in the same places to like it's just like if you wanted to if you wanted to talk about like kind of the modern style of wars that we saw on that we've seen really in

the last like hundred and fifty years. They're not all that dissimilar in a lot of ways from like the kind of conflicts you saw between Rome and Carthage um, which are these really like big nation states style conflicts and and have a lot of similarities. But but William S. Lynn described the first generation of warfare is beginning after the Peace of Westphalia in sixty eight that ended the

Thirty Years War UM. And it's the kind of warfare where you have these like big, tightly ordered groups of men marching towards each other and like firing very inaccurate weapons and mass together. Right. Uh. This is ended by the era of the machine gun and the semi automatic rifle UM or on the bolt rat can rifle. I should say that leads us to second generation warfare, which is linear fire and movement with heavy reliance on indirect fires.

That's still huge groups of guys charging, but they're not marching in close order, they're not like firing in volleys um, and they're supported by heavy artillery like World War one kind of ship right um. Really we start to see this in eighteen seventy and then World War One is kind of the height of this kind of warfare, and over the course of World War One were merge in again.

This is William S. Len's way, we merge from second generation to third generation warfare, which is where you've got infiltration tactics to bypass enemy defensive lines and collapse it, which is kind of the Germans and their altrugs tactic and stormtrooper tactics are really kind of pioneering that you've got the idea of defense in depth um, and so this need to bypass the enemy and like this leads to blitzkrieg and leads to all sorts of ship um and then that kind of starts to collapse and Len's

estimation around Vietnam and you get what's called fourth generation warfare. Fourth generation I'm actually just going to read a quote from a military history wiki that I thought had a pretty good description of all of this. Fourth generation warfare is normally characterized by a violent non state actor fighting a state. This fighting can be physically done, such as by modern examples Hezblah or the liberation Tigers of Tamil

illam Um. In this realm, the v N essay, these violent nonstate actors use all three levels of fourth generation warfare. These are the physical actual combat, which is considered the least important, mental the will to fight, belief in victory, etcetera. And the moral, which is the most important. LYND says and includes cultural norms, etcetera. Um, So obviously I think that this is kind of nonsense. There's a lot of people, So there's a lot of folks, the people who buy

into this, and it's very popular on the right. Well,

we'll look at like what's happening in Ukraine. It's a perfect example of fourth generation warfare because you have Russia flooding the zone using spot Nick and a bunch of other kind of media organizations to drum up um discord and like anger between East and West and Ukraine and support for potential Russian action at the same time as you have them backing this dictator um, and then you have like the West sort of supporting the people protesting

against those dictators, and like so you've got like this this digital conflict, this information conflict that eventually leads to

fighting on the ground. One of the areas in which I think Lynda is really off is talking about like the physical as the least important, especially if you're going to consider Ukraine an example of fourth generation warfare, because if the Russian military had not intervened, there would not still be a conflict in Ukraine, the separatists would not still hold land, and in fact, the separatists were on the edge of getting completely wiped out by the Ukrainian

military because they were a bunch of nonstate actors with minimal support and minimal weaponry before the Russians moved in brigades of active duty combat troops and armor um, including like gigantic fucking missile launchers which they used to shoot down that Malaysian airlines flight like that. It's it's just not I I don't think that that. What what Linda is saying is very um very well describes what's actually

going on in the world. But it is important to understand the concept of fourth generation warfare and fifth generation warfare, which we'll talk about in a bit um, because it is so useful in the way in which particularly guys like Steve bannon Um conceive of conflict, because that you will hear the term fourth generation warfare constantly, and it's also something that has used a lot within our military establishment.

Now a lot of people hate it, and within you can fight a lot of papers buy dudes writing like analysts who are working for the Defense Department for the army actively like shipping on Lynd and talking about how he's at best is kind of like reinvented ideas that have existed in warfare for thousands of years, and he's kind of summarized things in a way that that is needlessly flattening, and like some people will say, you basically like ripped up like added the Internet to Klauschwitz, uh

and pretended that you'd invented a new style of conor that you defined a new style of conflict. Anyway, that's like an introduction to the idea of fourth generation warfare, right, And there's a lot of things that he gets again like if you're if you're a history, a military history look, which Lynde pretends to be a lot of ship that he gets wrong. Um. So one of the things that he says, like one of his famous phrases, that every

military eventually craps in its own mess kit. Um, the idea that like every military that that is great eventually like has a gigantic funk up because they get too used to doing the same thing, which is true. Um. And he describes it as like um. The Prussians did in eighteen oh six, after which they designed and put into service a much more improved model mess kit mess

kit through the Sharnhorst military reforms. The French did in eighteen seventy, after which they took down from the shelf and old model messket the mass draft Army of the First Republic and put it back into service. The Japanese did it in five after which they threw their messket away, swearing they would never eat again. And we did it in Korea, in Vietnam, and now in four new wars so far we've only we've had the only military that's just kept on eating. And that's a really dumb statement.

That's all really historically inaccurate. So for example, it's true that like the Prussians had a great military which then got its butt kicked by Napoleon and they had to completely redesign it, and by the time eighteen seventy came around, they were extremely dominant in the battlefield against the French. Number One, he's crediting the military reforms of like tactics and strategy and ignoring things like Krupp inventing an entirely

new kind of cannon that was utterly dominant on the battlefield. Um. He's also ignoring the fact that this Prussian army. Um. He's saying, like the US is the only army that does the same thing over and over again and fails and keeps on eating. Well, the Prussian Army is the army the Germans took into battle in World War One and two and spoilers, they didn't learn enough from either

of those wars. Um. He also talks about how like the French had their you know, crapping in the mess kit moment in eighteen seventy after the Franco Prussian War, and they changed their army and it was much better. Like, well, they didn't win World War one, like they were on the side that one, but if it had been them against Germany, they would have gotten fucking steamrolled. Like it was not going well for them for quite a while,

and they lost a whole generation of young men. So maybe and and again this is like what he's saying is basically we because we're losing so constantly. The reason that we're losing is not because we are picking bad conflicts. It's not because we're picking to engage in conflicts when we shouldn't at all be engaging in conflicts. It is not because we use military force and like a fundamentally venal and corrupt way in order to benefit a small

cabal of military industrial corporations. It's because we we don't have good battle doctrine, and that's why we're not winning in these conflicts, which ignores everything about the reality of the conflicts that like he's talking about, Like the problem is not a lack of combat dominance, which is is what you were seeing with like the Prussians fighting Napoleon.

It's what you're seeing with the French fighting the Germans in eighteen seventy, right, Like in those cases, the Prussians had a massive failure of combat dominance against the French, and the French had a massive failure in combat against the Germans. Their doctrine was just worse. Um. US soldiers are great at getting into gunfights and great at winning gun fights. The problem is not a lack of combat ability. The problem is that there's no way to win the

conflicts that we're getting into. They are unwinnable wars that were never things that like, no amount of change in doctrine would have made Afghanistan a success because it was stupid war like its like if if that were true, like coin would have worked. And yeah no, like yeah, yeah, just complete total and utter failure, like enormous numbers of people dead, enormous numbers of like people traumatized for generations,

and the U S still just lost both wars. Yeah, just and and and and if you really dig into Lynd and others like him, what they're actually saying when they say that, like we need to reform like the way the military works with new battle doctorents. We need to be killing even more people. We just didn't kill enough in Vietnam, like the five million we bombed or so that wasn't enough. People like that that's the reform

that he's really talking about. UM. And when one of those people who like rants a up the like the the the al Salvadorian option, UM, I'm sure he does. I don't know exactly what he said about al Salvador. He's a fascinating kind of fascist. Um. He is absolutely a fascist. He was the director of the Center for

Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. UM. He wrote a or he helped to popularize a Declaration of Cultural Independence by Cultural Conservatives, UM, which is like these there's a lot of the seeds of the ship that we're seeing today, right that like American culture institutions are being collapsed because of like liberal decadence and conservatives. Cultural conservatives should separate themselves and like set up parallel institutions where

Bannon comes in. And that's where Bannon comes in. That where like fucking Andrew Torba and gab come and they all advocate this ship. Yeah, because they're all they all adhere to that kind of uh. Yeah, like politics has culture and and like there's downstream. Yeah. And there's some weird differences with Lynd Like he's a huge mass transit and urban ray advocate, which I guess I agree with every once in a while a bad person does have a good opinion. He loves he loves him some fucking

city trains and stuff. Um, but he's also he was a major factor. He was one of the earliest, like prominent conservatives who was like yelling about cultural Marxism and kind of the modern political period. I mean that makes sense because he was real into it. Sounds like he's

real into metapolitics. So yeah, that's super in the metapolis. Yeah, so like all of this stuff makes a whole lot of sense if you're yeah, if you're if you know what, if you know what metapolitics are, it's also kind of explains how he developed the different generations of warfare using

it through a framework of metopolitics. Actually, if you believe like Breitbart famously stated that like politics is downstream from culture, and if you also believe what Claus I think it was class wits that said that like war is politics by other means than like you can make cultural can cause wars, and like, yeah, like that's a lot like

kind of I think the thought process behind Lynn. Yeah, because this this really defines what he means by fourth generation warfare of war being handed out specifically by the culture instead of having it be abstracted to be like people marching towards each other with guns, because he's, he's, he's, he's putting the he's putting the culture kind of back

into it. Yeah, and he and he's and he's and and obviously culture was never not a factor, and of course not like every single war has been a major factor. Like all of this ship he talks about is being characters to go. Fourth generation warfare has been happening in one way or another for thousands of years. But it's not that these things are done in like temporal succession.

It's like because because like a lot of the stuff that makes up fourth generation warfare, like the more like guerrilla warfare aspects, come way before people with guns marching towards each other, Africans doing that to Alexander the goddamn

group for the Birth of Christ. A lot of a lot of this fourth gender stuff is actually like kind of more similar to what original warfare probably would have been, Like Yeah, which I think I think to to his credit, I think he does actually reckon as at some point in his writing now and and and the thing about this is, well, we can pick at it, and I

think there's a lot that's ridiculous in his attitude. It's it's close enough to the way that reality works that if you're going if you're thinking about conflict in this framework, you can be very successful. It's not like it's inaccurate in some ways because he's he is wrongly describing why certain things work. I think is a lot of what

he's doing. And he's wrong about winning wars. I'll say that, um, if if the American military were to make the fucking lend the Secretary of Defense and give him total power, like he would keep on losing wars as hard as

we've been losing wars for everyone listening to this is lifetime. Um. But in a cultural sense, the kind of culture jamming, which is a term we'll talk about more in the future, and but the kind of like the propaganda arms and stuff in order to the the the the media warfare in order to either insight or justify real conflict or or and this is one of the areas in which they have been really effective to alter the dimension, to

alter how internationally a conflict has responded to. So one of the big successes of people like this has been effectively eliminating any kind of left wing support for liberatory movements in the Middle East, UM, for liberatory movements or for like just like what's happening in Ukraine. That's kind of like reflexive. Well, if there's uh, if there's a movement for liberation among the people of a country, it's probably the c I a like like carrying out some

sort of op UM. That's Lynda and his people, UM and people influenced by him have been a big part of pushing that. UM. It's why Steve Bannon is in and is so friendly with like some guys on like chunks that they call themselves the left and whatnot. It's because um, there's there's a lot of uh, there's a lot of ties there, and that is an area in which they've been successful because international support really matters. UM.

You know, it's it's it's uh. And I think like the death of internationalism is one of the bigger successes that these these thinkers have kind of had. But yeah, I don't know. That's that's that's that's a chunk of what I had to say. You guys want to know more about William S Lynd because he's I certainly want to learn more about William william S Lynd cultural conservative, right big on the traditional Christian values of America. You want to guess who he considers his ideal leader. Uh

jfk No, the House of Hohan's all learned. He's a

Prussian monarchist. Wait oh yeah, politics. He's certainly into Hegel, and he thinks that the Prussian the Prussian monarchy was the best government there ever was and was like unfairly crushed by the rest of the world and like should have won World War One and everything would like he's he's and so he's he's very much like a conservative monarchist um and a weird kind because like, my god, dude, if you're looking at like monarchs who were like the

Hogan's Allerns had like in the modern era, like the first Kaiser Wilhelm was broadly competent, but like it went to ship as soon as the second and he blames all of World War One on the fucking Tsars like it's it's very silly, Like his ideas of history are like very stupid. I have an incredibly silly theory of history based on Hagel, which is that like every everything Hagel. Briefly, for the listeners I know, do not, this is this is, this is, this is the thing. Okay, okay, this this

is this is. This is my crank theory of history based on Hagel, which is that every about forty years someone attempts to apply Hagel. Someone like takes charge of an incredibly large state and tries to use Hagel to run it, and every single time they don't understand the dialectic. It doesn't work. So this, for example, like if if you can take this at a very sort of grandy level, right you have Mao Mao has no idea what a

dialectic is. You can you can read Mao's work. He has no clue, Like he just doesn't he like, he doesn't. He doesn't get it. He thinks of a dialectic is when one person with a bat hits the other hits the other side, and then when you destroy the other side, the dialectic is resolved. Right like that That's not what it is, right, maw like. Because of this, the entire Chinese revolution just implodes. Everyone dies, It returns to capitalism.

Is a complete failure, right, you know, and and like a lot of the Nazis are very much into Hagel. They have again incredibly similar failures. The other group, people like Lynda think is part of this is that all of the people who planned the Iraq War were like enormous Sigelians, right, but they've gotten to Hagel through this weird like they they've been doing this, they've been doing these kind of insurgency stuff and so but they're kind

of insurgency stuff. Was they read Mao and you know, so that they're so they're they're they're reading Hagel, but then they're also reading Hagel through Mao and now doesn't understand what's going on either. And so when they try to apply the Hegelian dialectic and they're like, okay, well, at the end of the end of the end of history, the end of the Higgelian dialectic is the United States were just going to impose this on a rock and catastrophic failure. So the war listening is, do not attempt

to apply Hagel. You will completely annihilate your entire political movement, like every every everything, everything you love and dream of, everything, like every ideology you've ever had. Uh, it will it will crumble beneath you. And yeah, you will watch your cities and you watch your cities and armies burn. That's that's fine because the last time my resistance movement, we're

just gonna be postcanty and object oriented on ontologists. Throw a bunch of names, and I'm gonna get like eight of people are just the funk am I hearing about these dead people? The thing I actually wanted to to bring up on this is like how fourth and fifth gen are the idea of the fourth and fifth gen get applied onto like more insurrection based um like revolts

or groups. Right, you can see like groups like the Earth Liberation Fund and Animal Liberation Front of Pick and Shoose, elements of the fourth and fifth generation were fair to kind of to see how their groups formed or were operated um and even you could argue that like Ted Kaczynski was like a fifth generation warfare because he was completely autonomous and the actions. Let's let's introduce the idea of fifth generation because we just talked about fourth generation warfare,

which was Lynn's idea. Fifth generation warfare is a concept that has come up. I believe Daniel Abbott is his name, UM and The idea was that, like, it's a new type of warfare that like characterizes a lot of conflicts in the modern era where almost everything is non kinetic UM, but it is still military action UM, so military social engineering, misinformation, storry or attacks, not just like decentralized, but like states actually using UM organized and often fighting non state actors

who are using kind of the singing yeah. And this in a lot of this would involve artificial intelligence, fully autonomous systems, systems not just botan nets, but like algorithms that can like handle a out of the quote unquote fighting UM. William S Lynd hates the idea of fourth generation, fifth generation warfare because he's a narcissist and he doesn't like anyone using the head of the dialectic it keeps going.

So what I was what I was thinking, is like is like a lot of you can apply fifth generation warfare to like these types of groups who are mostly like they do some they do some fourth gen tactics in terms of like terrorism, right, like they try to make political statements through terrorism and have terrorism an influential thing, but they're demands like you rarely like fifth generation stuff has not been around a long enough and no one's really been super successful at it in the past enough

time for us like to like recognize that, right, because you can look at a lot of a lot of like an instructionary type stuff around like the Again, I'm just gonna use the Earth Liberation Front as an example of like a group that attempt to kind of these types of tactics, um and they may have succeeded in the physical sense, but they did not succeed in like

the cultural sense. Really um So trying to like look at these types of things and how they relate to like specific you know, if you're gonna use like the Ta Kazinski example, same thing, except he's not a group. He's just one person, which is kind of more of a fifth gen thinks he's like fully autonomous, whereas I think, uh, you know, stuff like the ELF tried to have that kind of militant group dynamic that is more similar to

fourth generation warfare. So it's like this picking and choosing of like trying to trying to do physical action than trying to do cultural action. And it's it's not like the things that have succeeded. Let's take for instance, some the defend the Cascadian forest thing who just got just got um this the specific action they were working on

to protect a specific chunk of the forest. Uh. The judge of approved their approved their motion because they were they actually were sick sucessiful because they did not form this militant thing right now, they were just doing the cultural and it actually really succeeded um as opposed to just you know, burning down buildings and stuff to try

to get your action forward. So just trying to look at like examples of when when like the goal is kind of the same and certain times succeeds, certain certain types don't. How that might influence like organizing and how to selectively use like insurrection, but have it not be like a default mode for like always your group is

better if it's insurrectorary. Mhm. Yeah. And I one of the things that does characterize that I think is useful if we're because again I have my criticisms of the value of any of these like phrases as kind of discreete concepts. But one of the things that I think is useful about the concept of fifth generation warfare that does talk about something that is legitimately new to conflict, that has not really existed before before. The Internet is

omnipresence UM. That that the inflicts are not limited in geographical space or in time, and in fact, it is like a constant factor all around you at all times because of the way the information sphere kind of actually functions. UM. You know, you can look at kind of like the mix of street fights and information warfare, doxing and whatnot between fascists and anti fascist for the last few years.

It's omnipresent. It's always going on UM. And the battle space is kind of potentially everywhere, even though it's fairly rarely kinetic or physical UM. And I do think that that's an area in which, UM, it is really worth having a new term, in kind of defining a new term, because that's one of the few things I think that has legitimately changed. The Internet has made all of this stuff that's been happening for thousands of years faster UM. But the thing that it's really created that was not

present before is this the this omnipresence UM. So I do think that that's really useful when we like I would like to on how conflict is different. I would like to kind of like think about like January six with in these frameworks, right of how of how disinformation and information was used relatively successfully to get a lot of people to actually move towards the more of you know, kind of backed by half the state, backed you know,

not backed by well the larger majority. And yeah, how like it's a it's like a synthesis of the fourth generation of fifth generation ideas, which is why you know, there's a lot of overlap with these terms specifically, um, but seeing how like one leads to another, and it's not they're not necessarily inclusion exclusionary. Yeah, I mean, it's like the result is whether they win or lose. Right, that's that's like that that's what makes it a war. Is is the is the is like you decide afterwards

based on the result. Yeah, I mean it kind of Yeah, that's certainly like how more modern wars happened, Like with Afghanistan, it wasn't so much like a clear like World War One, there's an armistice and like negotiated end of the war

and at a certain date at all ends. It was a lot we haven't done that since we haven't done that for the state, Like you know, I've never known the States to do that for a month, because if you don't do that, you don't have to admit you lost, right if you just kind of like leave and ship

gets real fucked up. Um, you can just be like, for one thing, you can say like, if we'd stayed and spent more money on that war, we could have we could have pulled it out, um, which is one of my like there's a lot of great criticisms of how the Biden administration handled things in Afghanistan last year, a thousand of them. But at the end of the day, it's like it was never kind to be good, like it was always it was this horrible war. We were

killing way too many people. Um, we weren't achieving anything. And that fact was made really clear by the fact that as soon as we pulled out our guns, um, everything collapsed. And that was always going to happen. And you can needle around the edges of how we could have, you know, better taken care of people who had made promises to or whatever. At the end of the day, it was always going to be fucked because it was

a thing we never should have done. And that's that like this idea that Lynd has that like, no if we fix our doctrine, we have better tactical doctrine. We have matter like we have that. One of his big ideas is um he came up with this concept called movement warfare that's been hugely influential in the way the

Marine Corps functions. UM. And the idea behind movement warfare is like you should always have a bias towards action, and Lynda is very consciously UM trying to make this basically the evolution of of a German tactic called alf Strug's tactica, which is like individual unit tactics basically. So it's like midway through World War One, the Germans start to realize, like, all these mass wave human charges aren't working great, UM, and we should probably like figure out

a way to get around these defenses. So they start training what are kind of the prototype of special forces, these like stormtroopers whose job is to like sneak in and not be seen and jump into the trenches and like you know, fucking axes and clubs and automatic handguns and UM fight in a way that like soldiers had

not really fought in a long time. A lot of it was like melee, It was this really and there were a lot of technical things had to get around, barbed wire had to not be seen, how to like deal with machine gun nests um. And one of the keys to it was like the German started to retrain their soldiers to were like you have to have like these individual units of five and ten men have to

have like total autonomy. And then unit commanders have to have autonomy, and they need to be will able to like We'll tell them, we need you to be in this this place at this point in time. But it's up to you to figure out how to do that. Because if you're if you've got this one guy who's three miles back giving the commands, everyone's just gonna get mow down by machine gun fire. Needs to be more

nimble UM. And that's part of why in World War One, in and World War two, because the rest of the people fighting the Germans, like even the US, had not caught up to this kind of battle doctrine by the time World War Two was over um to the extent

that the Germans had. And it's part of why there's such a lopsided casualty ratio in favor of the Germans in that war is they had what is very close to because all modern combat tactics are based on what the Germans started doing at the end of World War one UM and had really like nailed down to a

science in World War two UM. And Lynda is saying that, like we need to extend that and like that's the thing we've gotten too far away from and we need to have You need to have like this bias towards movement and this the like officers need to be super aggressive and like always pursuing these kind of kinetic options. And again, as the Marine Corps battle record will show, this is very effective when you were getting into gunfights. But when was the last time the Marine Corps was

on the side of a winning war? Like again, it doesn't we can all needle about how to make our troops better at like killing people, but at the end of the day, we're losing wars because we're getting into wars that are not winnable and that's not something you're going to fix with battle doctrine. And and Lyn doesn't understand that because he's a fascist. And I think it's just like this, this is the real like weakness of their politics, which is that was like, yeah, well, like

it's they're they're they're trying. It's like they can't tell the difference between war and like they don't think there's a difference between war and politics, right, and that means that they think that there's a military solution to every political problem. And it's like, no, there's not, and like this is this is how and this is why is how they keep destroying themselves, right is that they you know, like like this is what happened to the neo cons. I mean, the neo cons a sort of held on

in this kind of rump shell. But it's like neo conservatism project. Yeah. But but it's like, you know, like they don't they don't have like like even the people who used to be their base, like aren't there base anymore? Like those those people are all moving yeah yeah yeah, And it's it's it's like maybe they could have maintained it if they hadn't just like literally blown it apart like trying to conquer a rock. And it's like they

all do this. They all eventually are like, well, Okay, well we'll find a military solution to this, and it blows up in their face because it turns out that no, you can't actually do this. I mean, I think all this syndicates a general progression into the more meta politics idea and culture as politics ideas that we're trying to solve all these political problems at least like locally within us, you know, we're trying to be trying to do them

culturally and choosing them in selectively in other countries. Right because the more kind of the idea of like let's just keep entering wars, which we're also doing the same time, only for very very very like like very specific regions. But I mean the trend of like first, you know, like Trump's not necessarily and like Trump's notn't really cannogn He preferred the cultural jamming like that was that was his preferred method, and I got him relatively far in

four years. And there there's an argument that Lynde is a big person who that he learned a lot from Lynda, even though I don't think he ever read his books. All the people he surrounded him with where fans of Lend. There's a picture of Trump and Lend together and like a copy of or at least Trump together with a copy of his book UM, which is titled Uh, the Next Conservatism Um and I'm gonna read a quote at this point from The American Conservative, which Lynde has written for,

that describes this book because it's it's it's uh useful. Um. The Next Conservatism offers a comprehensive agenda of what Lyndon Wayrich, who's his co author on this, call a cultural called cultural conservatism. While the book aims higher than mere policy, the specifics mentioned are Trumpian reductions in legal and illegal immigration in America, first trade policy, and robust investments and domestic infrastructure, particularly street cars and trains in a less

Trumpi in vain. It also promotes homeschooling and incorporates some ideas of from the New Urbanism as part of a broader program called retro culture. Of its connection with Trump, lynd says the book runs parallel to what he has been saying, but he doubts the billionaire's familiarity with its

more philosophical ideas. Now here's the part that is going to be really unsettling, and this, I think is what lynd may actually be going for, rather than any kind of reform in the military to improve its ability to win foreign wars. Quote. In nineteen ninety four, an article appeared in the Marine Corps Gazette by Lynde and two of the authors of the nineteen eighty nine piece where he introduced the concept of fourth generation warfare. It ended

on a dire note. The point is not merely that America's armed forces will find themselves facing non nation state conflicts and forces overseas. The point is that the same conflicts are coming here. The next real war we fight is likely to be on American soil. So that's what's going on here. Like, and that's the thing where biased

towards action and increased killing power. If all you're really trying to do is murder everyone who disagrees with you using the military very quickly, well that might work for you.

People should know about this. He has a fucking fiction book called Victoria, which actually if you go to like TV tropes, um the there's a TV it's not just TV tropes anymore, but like there's a trope page from my book After the Revolution, and it's directly compared to Victoria, as like they're the opposites of each other, because Victoria is like a book about a civil war in the US that these like weird fascist uh like monarchists win

and like it's, uh, it's pretty fucked up. Like the problem is that like like like all of these like the Northwest is controlled by like environmentalists, like leaders who get like eaten by these animals like wolves that they reintroduced to the to the society. And like California is so feminist that it's illegal to have sex and make babies, um. And the South fails because it's it's too multicultural um.

And yeah, like it's it's all so the person who wins the war is like the governor of Maine who's a retro culture practitioner um and considers himself a subject of the Kaiser. I maybe getting a couple of details wrong, but not that part I know. But it's it's a fucking nuts nuts So I've only read like little bits of it. Maybe one day I'll get through the whole thing.

But that's that's the thing with all with all of these like cultural gambers, like they try to put on like war aesthetics, but all of them were the nerdiest fuckers. He'll ever he's so stupid, and I like he's to All these guys are so is so nerdy, all of them. Yeah, and like lend. Everything about him makes sense when you understand that his primary guiding directive is anger over the

fact that there's no longer a kaiser Um. He's a little but also like again, he was not lying about there's a picture of like Trump of this fucking book. He's not lying that. Like fucking everybody who was like pilled in that White House knew about Lynn's ideas and have been He's been hugely influential, and not just among like the American right. His books have been found in

like al Qaeda hideouts and ship like. He makes sense though that that that that like all of all of that really tracks because yeah, like the barrier between like terrorist action as a part of fourth generation and in some ways fifth generation warfare and then the type of like culture jamming, those things go hand in hand. Like that is like that is the goal of it is

to make it work that way. So that doesn't surprise me that those types of terrorist groups would be reading his books for advice so or for like to like figure out how the other side thinks. Yeah, all right, well that's probably enough talking about william S. Lind for

today and cultural and the fourth generation. We'll talk there's a lot to dig into about how these ideas have influenced chunks of the right and now they're currently still being used for like these omnipresent conflicts that are going on right now. And again I do think particularly the idea of omnipresence is really useful for understanding modern conflict. I would I would go as far as to say,

like crucial. Um, so this is necessary background information to people to have, for people to have for like some of the other ship. We're going to be continuing to talk in this about in this series as we you know, as we talk more about kind of kinetic conflicts or at least building towards kinetic conflicts. Um. But yeah, I think this is this is a useful kind of grounding. And now I'm going to send Chris and Garrison off to write an episode explaining who Hegel is and everything

he believed. I Yeah, it's gonna be great. You're gonna you're gonna hear you. You will watch me go mad in real time. It's gonna be great. Yeah. The other option is I can just read the Wikipedia page for Hegel with like a really offensive German accent. That's better than that, Actually better I'm gonna go to I promise you one thing, which is that I will wind up either Russian or Australian by the end. I can't stop that drift when I whenever I start doing you know,

Oh I am a good German. Yeah, my name is Mr Hegel. The absolute that happen here, we're in follow up cool zone media. We're gonna stop that right now. I probably should Oh my Crown, great timing. M hmm, I love oh my Crown. I'm Robert Evans. This is it could happen here a podcast about Greek numbering schemas. Garrison, What do you? What do you? How do you? How do you feel about? Oh Macron? This has nothing to do with the topic we're talking about, So this is

this is an update. A few of right last week were earlier this week we discussed the the trucker Convoy scheduled our episode recorded before the truck convoy for after the truck Convoy had already done a bunch of things, which was really good. So we we recorded to talk about the trucks that were that we're going to show up at Ottawa and the thing things did happen. Maybe

not that not because like I've been listening. Some of their claims are like and Alex Jones is parenting there now that it was like eight hundred thousand to a million truckers and there's three hundred thousand truckers in all of Canada, like, but it was, it was. It was a lot of people like not to not to downplay what happened. So we're to give an update on what happened there and kind of discussed maybe any ramifications that

stuff like this could have going forward. But to help with that, um, we have Dan who came on last time to help discuss Hello, thank you for coming on again to talk about the same thing. Thank you for having me. We last less off with you saying that you hope I don't come back on again because that would be a good thing and it would mean that the bad things did not happen. So sorry to be

here under such circumstances. Yeah, you want to go over the bad Yeah, So let's let's briefly do like a recap of like what this thing was like, like why why was it happening, and like what was the idea? When we last left Canada, a bunch of truckers were angry that they had to present evilations evidence of vaccination. This spiraled and as I'm understanding it, at some point

then rejecting all public health measures. Yes, actually the the exact demands are for the federal and provincial governments to quote terminate the vaccine passports and all other obligatory obligatory vaccine contact tracing programs uh, to terminate COVID vaccine mandates UH, and quote respect the rights of those who wish to remain unvaccinated. UH. And here's where it gets weird. UH See a good devisive rhetoric attacking Canadians who disagree with

government mandates. Kind of hard to say when that one's fulfilled and finally ceased to limit debate through coercive measures with the goal of censoring close who have varying or incorrect opinions. That's what the convoys for. I mean, do you all know what a government is? Evidently I was at some debates in with the state that went a lot uglier than it looks like this. One went oh yeah, yeah, we we we can talk about that. This this the stand off has been well, there's been just that it's

been a standoff in that regard. So it seems like they've kind of hooligan around a bunch of towns and threatened a homeless shelter if they didn't give them food, and that they left trash everywhere and set up a checkpoint on the border or just a blockade on the border. I think it's probably more accurate. There's been blockades going on and up the border. I think the most noteworthy is an Alberta and coop right now. But I might

be pronouncing that wrong. And what was the police It was something along the lines of we don't think there's like a policing solution to this problem. Oh yeah, so you're totally up to date that that happened today. Yeah, so a little after two pm t D. On lafter two pm today, the Ottawa Police Chief Pewter slowly said in a press conference that quote, there may not be a policing solution to this demonstration. Is it really that easy?

It's evidently it's that easy if you wait till kind of like the media has had a few days and most of the coverage is just like breaking bad things still happening. Uh so it's it's not great. So what what was the lead upon set? Right? Because they were all. They were all all the trucks and caravans and stuff. We're supposed to rive on Saturday. What was the lead up on Saturday like and like what what what happened like the actual first day. Yeah, so Saturday was technically

the first day, actually Friday. Throughout the day a lot of people started arriving. So the occupation has been we're recording now Wednesday. Um, it started on Friday and the main like the largest contingent of the convoy was staying overnight Friday night in a nearby town called Armfire west of Ottawa, and they moved in from Armpire to Ottawa on Saturday morning. At the same time, people converged from

other parts of Canada. UM to Ottawa's east is Quebec and to Quebec's east of the Maritime provinces, and three thousand people at least came from Quebec and met with the convoy to on Saturday, kind of coming in from different parts the day between Friday night and Saturday afternoon, and Saturday was kind of the big day, the big party, Uh, the main point of contention, and the main thing that happened was some major streets are gridlocked by vehicles moving

into the city, into the very crowded core of Otto of my hometown and staying stationary on busy roads. Both commercial and residential roads are part of this. Driveways for both businesses and residences were blocked off, fire roads are blocked off, and Wan's routes are blocked off. Local businesses that stayed open had to close throughout the day Saturday, largely UH, some managed to not, and many of just stayed closed already because they knew what was going to happen,

and this happened. Closures that happened on Saturday are mostly still going on today as I'm speaking to you. Wednesday night.

UH closures followed patterns of harassment, some alleged assaults which I ever mentioned before else happened at a homeless shelter in downtown Ottawa, and pretty much everyone I've spoken to I've I've been in Ottawa, visiting it to my hometown, and pretty much every what I've spoken to who lives in the downtown core is that a slew of story since Saturday of either harassment at work or just harassment

walking through the streets. And the worst part of it all is that right now there's not a clear ending in sight. What is it like on the ground there in terms of I know, there's like kind of like a blockade around the border. But they're like, what else is like around Ottawa? What's like? What like? What what is what's it like to walk around in these places? And like how big is the area that these people are staying at? Like where are they staying at? Are

they all sleeping in their trucks? Who staying at hotels? What's like? What's like the It's an excellent question. There's there's a mix of hotels were booked up the week leading up to the weekend. As as the new cycle kind of exploded, more and more people called into hotels in Ottawa. A lot of people actually brought tractors. People are also sleeping in their trucks. Uh. Of course people have like family and stuff staying in Ottawa. Sometimes they're

staying with them. Um, it's a mix of everything. Actually, I know a guy who even his car was like blocked off in the parking lot. He has to parking because he's downtown. He doesn't have street parking or driveway parking, Like it's in a public lot and he couldn't get his car out for over a full day because an RV camper set up near him and just blocked him off. So it's a mix of everything. Uh. Starting on Saturday, there's like a lot of partying, a lot of music,

a lot of kids. Uh. It's gotten a little bit more chaotic and less condensed since then. And also the area is hard to gauge because streets are actually constantly as vehicles move out for one reason or another. Streets are kind of being re taken back organically of the city, but then sometimes throughout the day getting retaken again back by the convoy. So the occupation has been a little

fluid on some of the outside streets. Wellington Street, which is the street outside of Parliament in Ottawa, has been consistently occupied, to my knowledge, blocking off kind of not actually blocking off, but you have to walk past them as a pedestrian to get onto Parliament Hill. So that's where the kind of the core is, the action of the action is, and everything else spreads out from that. And near hotels, uh, there's a little more action because

that's generally where people are staying. How has members of Parliament and like local politicians has been reacting since Saturday. I know there was there was some videos of like I think one of the MP's from Alberta was giving an interview that gained some traction online. Um, but yeah, it's kind of curious, like how the like different government

officials are talking about this. I'm actually so glad you asked that because as of today, the divide in member of Parliament has actually led to some pretty incredible political ramifications. So last time we spoke, I think Erin O'Toole had just earlier in the day endorsed conpoints that he'd be coming down. Erin o't tool, for those unaware, is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. He's a real, real o'tool. Wow, whoa mind blown? No one, No one

could have seen that joke coming. Every every Canadian listener just like collectively rolled there. Yeah, so Erin o'tool and just endorsed the convoy. He'd been getting some tough questions about it. Following everything we just talked about and more, Erin o't too will walk that back and said, you know, he didn't approve of the way that the convoy was

acting in Ottawa. This led to a swift referendum on his leadership and earlier today, Erin o'tool was voted out as the Conservative leader in Canada and that does have pretty big ramifications. I know I talked about Erin o tool a decent amount in my previous Canada episodes for cadapin here. Um, so, yeah, that'll be really interesting to see who uh what's do you have any idea of when the new person is going to try to get noted it? Like, when when do you think that process

is going to happen to fill that spot. I'm actually not sure. I haven't looked up when it's gonna happen. It feels like there's been months before where there's an intimaters of the Conservative Party. The main concern right now for those outside of Conservative politics is because Erin o' tool was considered relatively moderate. That you talked about in the Fascism Canada episode, how Erin o'tool kicked out Darren Sloan from the party for being pretty coy on donations

from neo Nazi Paul Front on his campaign. Uh. Overall, like that's a pretty great thing that Erino tool that kicked him out of the caucus. Like, regardless of other elements of leadership. Uh, there's worrying that that kind of there will be continued forward, especially because Sloan was also in the leadership race and Sloan has only gone further right since then. Yeah, it is just despite air no tools, not great aspects, which there are lots of. He did

he did, he did take it. He did kind of hold back some of the more problematic uh conservative like elements, whether that be you know, people from you know, from his own party, like like Derek, and then also keeping kind of the people's party stuff at Bay Um. Yeah, and that will be an interesting kind of power struggle now, that will be something to observe. I think the thing that concerns me most about all of this is the

implication of the implications for this is a tactic. We saw a version of this that was more limited in scope and time in Portland when this huge Trump caravan rolled through downtown, blocked off big chunks of downtown and like just maced and shot people with paintball guns at random, and it was kind of like, I think everyone there was surprised at how many folks they got for it. Um. This is a much more evolved version of the same tactic and it's kind of stuff we talked about in

the season one of it could happen here. This idea of like people coming from these conservative majority areas in a place where the vast majority of people are liberal but centralized in the cities UM and blocking those cities off or otherwise disrupting their ability to transit UM, potentially their ability to get things shipped in like food UM,

like their ability to use free movement UM. And we've seen pieces of this again in a bunch of places, and in Oregon during the wildfires, you had these rural communities setting up checkpoints and stuff looking for people from the cities that they could bill as Antifa. And it's this it's this world worrying trend for a couple of reasons. Number One, when you get people to do something like this, even if the city has hundreds of thousands of people,

that's effectively too large a group to police UM. And the police don't want to police it anyway, so there's not even really an attempt to stop them UM. And it's a way in which the vast majority of Canada, at least based on the polling i'm aware of UM, is not in support of the causes these guys are backing. Was it of the country supports some level of like vaccine mandates. Um, if I'm remembering correctly the last one I read. So this is not a popular movement. It's

not even super popular among the truckers. Like the actual it doesn't matter how many people in the cities you can get. If you can get fifty six people to do something like this, the police won't will not take action, and you can negatively impact the lives of a huge number of millions before it gets radical, right. That's when these guys are not coming in with guns with the express plan to eliminate people or trying to specifically block

up food. They're just kind of sucking around now. But it's this kind of is this thing we've talked about where you have this is the thing in Canada and the United States, you had liberals kind of outsourcing the protection of society to this group of increasingly heavily armed and radicalized people who are now in a lot of

cases fascists. Um. And that means that when there's a problem with a large chunk of people who hate everything you stand for, the people that you have completely outsourced protection to are all unfavor of fucking with you because they hate you. And it's it's a problem in Oregon, It's going to be a problem in fucking New York City or whatever at some point, it's a problem in Ottawa. Um, I don't know, Am I am I off base here? Am I am? I am You're not on base at all?

And uh, like there isn't there isn't anything to to really elaborate on pass what you said the last time we spoke. I think Robert, you said there's not a whole lot. It was what you said that could really really be done with the vehicle occupation actic and unless a lot of people are willing to meet them with an equal force, which unfortunately Ottawa didn't have. Like it's an Ottawas. Ottawa's a relatively large city in Canada. It's

there's over a million people that live here. It's also by land mass, I think, the largest city in Canada, like east to west. It's it's very spread out, so it's a low population density. So even the affected area downtown is actually like pretty small in relation to the city itself, which is pretty unfortunate. And like it's not

a particularly packed downtown for a large SCE downtown. I am, I am curious kind of on the violence aspect um has Like I know, there's been like um increase in the death threats to members of parliament, like specifically liberal members of parliament, specifically liberal members of parliament who are women who are maybe not white of So I would curiously if if you have any more kind of information on that side of thing this and then how how violence has popped up in a few places throughout the

past like a week. Basically, yeah, there's been a lot. So I mean, even if you're going by what's reported like right now, there is by most estimates under a thousand maybe at most a few thousand, very far spread out people as part of the convoy. As of yesterday, there's thirteen active police investigations, the police of the city,

the City of Ottawa said in the An Oppressor. We obviously know when there's like thirteen active investigations in anything this big, there's way more that's not being reported, not being investigated. Um, like they took you know, like these things are going to thirteen is going to be resultful of something bad. So some of the things that happened Robert mentioned before the alleged assault on a houseless person inside of Shepherds of Good Hope in which a security

guard was also called a racial slur. Uh. There was a house that played displayed a rainbow flag outside of it that had harassment and poop thrown at it. Um. They have been we need to get a hundred thousand people together to throw their own poop back at these people. It's the only way they'll learn. Yeah, fighting fire with fire is that that expression? I'm sure just emerged from

just tossing poop at each other's strategy. It's meant for this. Yeah, there've been suggestions all of our social media channels on like here's how you can poop in snowbanks without getting caught. Businesses have been harassed, they've been violence, So like what I think maybe some context uh that isn't always known. In Ottawa on Saturday and until recently, dining in in

restaurants wasn't allowed. We were actually in relatively strict lockdown following around the chron wave and a lot of people even coming like didn't know that. Like I spoke to people on Saturday who were like, hey, do you know like when the restaurants around here opens so we can

like sit down for a meal. And I was like, there's no sitting down on auto this So what people were mean they were going inside cafes like two burns and stuff, and they were just refusing to leave and eating their food there anyways, And if there was no seats, they were just like eating in line. It was also minus twenty eight degrees in Ottawa on Saturday and very

very cold on Sunday. There was an extreme cold weather warning, so especially when people brought their kids, there wasn't a lot of other options other than like swarm the malls and swarm restaurants. And even then the mall, the main mall downtown Rito Center, was closed part way throughout the day because it was not a safe place. So I already talked before about routes getting blocked. Also not physical violence,

but honking has been keeping people awake. There's been endless honking if you watch video footage from it, and even in the background right now I'm coming from Ottawa, like I can hear honking in my background. Um, some people allegedly parked and then urinated on the tomb of an unknown soldier, which is yeah, this isn't political, is even the wrong way to describe a lot of the what's fun about this these people, it's that they suck. Yeah,

it's fucking it's just silly. It's just fucking hooliganism. Uh. And that's yeah, it's it's fucking cooliganism. There's gonna be a lot more stories coming out, for sure. Uh as things progress, um of stories of arassment. Like I've talked to people who have gotten a cat call in the night. People getting violent altercations, street fights, and I'm sure are going to break out. It's kind of at a very

tense point right now. And auto we're at that point, we're like, Okay, we're seeing some signs like coops getting thrown at the houses. What's gonna happen next? Because the police are saying they don't have a plan, and the truckers are saying they're not leaving. What's it like outside of Bottle Wall, across across all the other places where there's like similar activity happening. They're all looking to us

and being concerned. From what I'm talking to, Uh, anti fascists and Alberta are are particularly concerned right now with the Goop protests. There's ongoing to uh, it keeps seeing popping up like US Canada border activities. In the same there's a few attempted convoys by Americans and even before in Europe there was a few attempts. Some got turned away. Some Americans got turned away at the Canadian borders. They

weren't vaccinated. M Yeah, which is you know, like it's like you think, because that's the reason they're saying they're protesting, they would have remembered that and thought maybe that's gonna like come into play, But I don't. Yeah, I don't know, because there is a certain point where if you get enough people going, it would be interesting to see people

really do just try to like drive through the border. Yeah. Yeah, And I mean there's been people like you look at social media channels, a lot of them saying like the borders are blocked right now with thousands of truckers supporting our cause. So if you saw that and you believed it, and then you went to the border and your turn away reading vaccine, you meant thought, well, I thought I had you know, nine people the same causes being we're ready to use worst, which begs the question, well, what

happens when you do exactly? I don't want to find out. Yeah, that's yeah. That's the thing is like if if if they do, if they did have what they say they had, would they just start doing those things and not even think about it and not even think about like the politics of it. They're just doing it to do it. Yeah. I should also mention too, we talked last time about

a Plaid Army slash Diaglon members comments. Uh. They were broadcast on the news about doing another quote January six, uh, and it came out the news to do was first reported by Frank magazine and I think by the Canadian Anti eight network that he was arrested on fire up stridges in the Scotia before coming here. Worth noting he was reporting live on Info Wars on the Alex Jones

Stones Saturday before this came out and Derek Skid coverage. Yeah, Derek Sloan and Nazrael event were also on the same program, So I mentioned Info Wars before. That's that's great. That's what's going on there. Can you see any like beyond the conservative leadership, what other kind of political implications are people thinking about in Canada. It's really tense seeing what's

gonna come for other cities. Also, Otto was expecting a second wave some other people in other places that kind of didn't think the first one is going to be duge eccess. We're saying, well, now that it's an occupation, we're coming, and police are even saying there's a second wave. It's a very tense place right now. We don't really know what to do. Community places are taking direct community members are talking about taking direct action because it's been

so long. This isn't something that the City of Ottawa is particularly used to, unfortunately in my lifetime, and so the ramifications of the future pretty jarring. But what's alarming is how successful this occupation was with a relatively small number. I think the highest estimate it was eighteen thousand people into a city of over a million, which isn't really that many when you think about it, but the strategy

was very very effective. Do you think about how many fighters it took for Josh to take control of mozl if people if there's not resistance, like, there's only really a few areas of a city that you need to occupy in order to have a great deal of control over what can be done. Yeah, And that's the tough part is they have a lot of control over that small area in residents lives. They don't have a lot of control over Parliament, which is what they're protesting for. Yeah.

I'm also just to see has the Canadian military said anything about these protests and the situation. So the Autawa police chief in his pressure day was asked a lot about that, and he's still shying away. He's still saying he doesn't think military is the only option, which if you're an activist on the other side of things and worried about police escalation hurting you in the future, that might be a good thing to hear. Yea an a see of shitty news. I'm not convinced that the military

would fix the problem. I'm not either. And also Ottawa had other police forces coming to They said they're spending eight hundred thousand dollars a day, uh initially to just cost of policing. Yeah. They also said they've only, like bylaws, only had a hundred fifty tickets since this whole thing started in the occupied zone. So it's it's unclear what a lot of them did other than you know, keep up appearances. Uh. Like I was walking around I saw

York Region police officers walking around with their patches. That's hundreds of kilometers away from Ottawa. So the police presence, especially on the weekend, was not low. We we had plenty mhm. They either didn't know what to do, I thought it would die later, or a mixture of all the above. And there's been talked to mixtures of Some police officers have not been happy with it, but there hasn't been really anything in the news yet because no

one's come forward. A lot of like tweets of like from reporter saying I have an anonymous source in the auto police. It says they wish more actions were taken, some saying otherwise, it's not really united it right now, And yeah, it's scary. Is there any counter protests being planned for Ottawa? If I knew, i'd say so, because by the time this error is it would have happened, so I could be safe to talk about. But fortunately I'm not really insure. I'm not actually sure, but it

might not be the best person to ask. Okay, Yeah, we're keeping an eye out. Well. The good news is that all men die, and so long as men die, liberty will never perish. Right, that's good. It's an upside. That is an upside, it's an up positive shot. All right, Well, that's gonna do it for us. We'll keep an eye on this and um what what results from it, because it's all pretty concerning, um and worth having having an eye.

And I'm particularly curious is to just like what kind of direct community responses to this develop because I think that's gonna wind up being the only long term solution. You know. It's kind of what people saw in Portland that there's a there's a degree to which like the only thing that really works as a response is is out numbering them. Yeah. On on that note, it might be maybe not the smoothest transition, But there are actually some Autowa Mutual Aid funds and then Advocate Secrets that

are doing some some cool stuff. And there's that there's too many of the list for everyone, but others have compiled lists, and I'm gonna point to you there So ROSE Ottawa which stands for Rainbow Autowa Student Experience as serves two s l G B t q I A plus post secondary students on unseated algonquin on a Shnave territory. No, they have closed op donations for themselves following a wonderful

spike recently. They have a list of black lead and black empowering organizations on their website with donation links and you can reach that at Rose Ottawa dot org slash donations. Uh, there's a cool little Instagram account called Transit is Beautiful O T T O T T stands for Ottawa and that's all one word. It's been plugging small fundraisers for queer folks affected by the Convoy, including housing support on their Instagram. Again, that's trans is Beautiful O T T

on Instagram. Uh. Something we didn't get to talk about, which is ram Ranch Ram Ranch dot c A r A n dash Ranch dot c A a website was set up in the name of trolling the convoy zelo chats and has been doing a fantastic job about There's a whole army of trolls in the truckers Ello chats and it's been really entertaining to tune into. They've compiled the list of charities on their website. You can check that out at ram dash Ranch dot c A and

clicking on the Rancher's donation zone. And yeah, where can where can people find you? On the internet? People can find me on the internet some super active on Twitter at at spineless L where it spineless the letter L fantastic. Well, hopefully, hopefully this gets all resolved and I don't need to fly up to Canada to go to a protest, and if if we do, that'll be fun. I've been wanting to go to Canada for a minute. Yeah I can, we can. We can take drugs at tim Morton's. That

would be fun. Yeah. God, you know, I haven't vomited in a Tim Horton's bathroom in a long time. Our local McDonald's that got famous on the internet for a fistfight that someone pulled a raccoon out of their backpack during had to actually stop being twenty four hours after the mayor pleaded with them because it was using up too many police resources. That is the best kind of

place in a year. That's so dope. Oh god, yeah, I want to I want to set up somewhere on the border in the East coast to tim Horton's, directly across the street from a waffle house and just let them fight. Uh well, yeah, we we do. We we do miss that here. That's that's in the year. You'll have to bring that for you have to bring that over, bring a waffle Houst finds. Over all you need to do is watch a man get stabbed and then spiritually you're at a waffle house. That that that ties back

to the future of the Convoy. You're right, Well, that does it for us today, everybody, We will see you later. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. Or more podcasts from cool Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.