It Could Happen Here Weekly 220

five students, one teacher, and finally her self. Two other kids were critically injured with gunshot wounds but have survived. The shooter did attend tumblr Ridge Secondary School years ago, but dropped out for the past three to five years. It's kind of unclear. Jesse identified as a transgender girl. Tumblr Ridge is a very small town with just twenty four hundred residents in northeastern British Columbia. This was the

worst school shooting in Canada since nineteen eighty nine. The sequence of events during this incident were very similar to the Lelouche shooting in Canada ten years ago, where the gunman killed two family members at home before going to a school. During our conversation, Lance and I discussed the spread of misinformation, how the online writers tried to weaponize the deaths of these people for their own political agenda, and how the shooter's online activity shows a growing fascination

with mass shootings this past year. Here's that conversation.

been asking for. So the victims from the tumbler Ridge Secondary School shooting are Abil Wanza who was twelve, Ezekiel Schofield, who was thirteen, Kylie Smith who was twelve, Soey Benoit who was twelve, Takaria Lampert who was twelve, Shanda avey Iguanda Duran who's thirty nine, Emmitt Jacobs who was eleven, and Jennifer Jacobs who was thirty nine years old. So I guess I'll start with Garrison. How have you been processing and or tracking the story since it happened.

the shooter was, you know, around that same time. Things have gotten pretty clear now a few days later, but I mean, it's been a nightmare to sort through all this stuff, especially all of like the political opportunism being done by a variety of right wing influencers and you know, quote unquote news agencies.

which has a very corrosive effect. And I think but like by the time we're talking about this right now, I saw that like Donald Trump Junior, the son of the presidents of the United States, is doing an entire I assume, blowed out of his mind rumble special on the shooting just uniquely going after trans people the entire time.

Bondi's Epstein hearing. So there's been a lot of other stuff happening, So I don't think they've gotten as much like concentrated attention on this as some of the online right has like wanted to, or you know, like the Matt Walsh types, lips of tech talk that sort of thing. But they're definitely giving it a go. It's gross, right, It's it's gross to use the deaths of all these people.

you gotta be quick to point out. But I feel like the Matt Walshes and the libs of TikTok have and it's a horrifying thing to say, but like they're perfect narrative, right. It's it's kind of like a twisted way something that're actually quite pleased about.

you move on from that? And then immediately it was well, now there's just an overwhelming, very apparent right wing mechanism gearing up, and it's going to be kind of devastating for a country like Canada that doesn't really have maybe or isn't as used to having the eyes of the world from the transphobic, you know, turf side of the internet.

loves living in a small town. I really hope the hate I see online is just bored old people and not true hatred. Do better and educate yourself before spewing bullshit online makes you look dumb evolve. I normally don't say anything. I normally don't go on shit book to see the keyboard warriors. And I know I can't control or shield my kids from everything, but please, for the love of fuck, can you get your shit together so we don't have to bring our kids up in a

world full of hatred. Do you have any idea how many kids are killing themselves over this kind of hate? Please stop the bullshitunquote. So pretty soon after the shooting, based on an early active shooter report describing the shooter as a quote unquote female in address with brown hair, online right wing accounts started trying to identify who this possible shooter was by looking at trans people in the

area of Tumbler Ridge. They misidentified one person who is a relative of this shooter, but put out photographs of them claiming that she was the shooter. This person is now having to like lock down all of their accounts and is scared to go outside do the horrific wave of harassment they're facing.

of a mass shooter or monster. And then in addition to that, like now, I'm wondering how much of this is going to be something that they're capable of containing,

especially considering that it's been still proliferated. Like I saw an account called bricks News, which I assumed would be about bricks, you know, the economic lines between a number of different nations, and instead was publishing the false photo of again a completely innocent person and sad like I think at the time, seventeen thousand likes, you know, hundreds of thousands of impressions. It's really dangerous.

The cruelty is part of part of the point, and you know, blame gets laid at a you know, a combination of trends enabled mental delusion SSR rise and hormones, saying that those things are causing the shooting, well before we have any evidence to determine what types of medications someone could be on who they actually are, or any

possible motive. One kind of crude thing that I've seen a lot is right wing accounts like you know, end wokeness, allegedly Jack Posovic saying that you know, the shooter qute unquote gunned down thirty five kids to make it seem like, you know, massacre of such a such a large magnitude, right The number of kids that have been killed and

other other people as well obviously is like horrific. Thirty five people were not shot in this shooting, though there was twenty five people with non gunshot related injuries as a result of the incident, and that is the number that that people are framing as being you know, total number of people shaw, which just isn't true. And then they also very quickly start sharing you know, unsourced graphs.

I'm sure you've seen stuff like this, right, saying that you know, trans girls make up the highest demographic of mass shooters per capita. You see these things go all over the place.

a lot of media attention. And the other issue that I've talked about a lot in previous shootings is there's a lot of different definitions of a mass shooting, you know, mass shooting versus a mass killing versus like a school shooting. Right, all these are different terms. Even the term school shooting can be used to refer to a variety of very different incidents revolving around gun violence.

shootings at like you know, a college dormitory. It's interpersonal violence. There's you know, neighborhood shooting set effect, but aren't targeting the school like drive by shootings or even something like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which some people have categorized as a school shooting because was on a college campus. Right. But these are all very different types of violence, right.

These aren't like you know, intentional you know, mass shooting violence where someone who's trying to shoot as many people as possible and then usually kill themselves.

very different stats. And depending whether you're measuring your injuries versus deaths, you know, specific weapons like knives versus guns, and how many years are being sampled, or if there's connections to other violent activity, there could be very very different results in how you categorize, you know, mass killings or mass shootings. The Mass Killing Database has six hundred and thirty one incidents in the United States since two thousand and six, of which about one to three gets

kind of unclear. One to three are done by people who have been reported as transgender, which is an under represented ample size. The Violence Project has one transgender mass shooter in their database of about one hundred and ninety five mass shootings, and according to the Gun Violence Archive, which also measures gunshot injuries not just deaths, fewer than one in one thousand mass shooters over the past decade

have been identified as transgender. According to a Gallop poll for twenty twenty three, about two percent of gen Z identify as transgender, and if you also count like non binary people, it brings it up to four percent. But you can have all those stats on hand, if that

doesn't really do very much. Once you're arguing about statistics and like semantics of terms, when kids have died, you're kind of already starting to lose the emotional battle, right, Like I can say all of that, but like that's not actually going to be helpful, right, Like fact checking doesn't work to dissuade disinformation, And when you're dealing with such an emotionally charge incident like kids being murdered, having to read off a paragraph like that just doesn't really help.

balancing Canada. These are all stuff based into states. But for you know, the culture war, it's not that hard to you know, move that border up five hundred miles to include things that are happening in Canada in a rhetorical sense, for you know, your Matt Walsh's wokenesses, even you know your Fox News anchors, right, yeah, this thing that people are talking about on the right about this,

you know, epidemic of trans violence. What this is also done is created like a counter reaction from trans influencers to whenever something horrible happens like this, to blame these other groups like you know nine A or seven six four. Right, this has become something that's also now been very consistent. You know, there is a kernel of truth in this.

This is based on a real thing that has happened before, but the invocation of this has often you know, expanded greatly beyond it's actual Like, can you explain.

they talking about here? You know, Adam Waffin Satanic Nazi pedophile cults. I said, you know nine A seven six four right, these are originally you know, Ninea is this older group, but as as contemporary Internet lore, it is seen as this neo Nazi occultic organization that grooms people into sexual exploitation or into doing violence like mass shootings. Seven six four is a extortion ring that operated mainly on Telegram and Discord, which tried to get kids to do self harm produce.

a real group anymore. Arguably, but it exists as like lore, and there has been no instances of A seven six four affiliated people doing public acts of violence. So in this case there's been people who have you know, trans people online or you know allies who have have said that this shooting is another one of these instances where these online groups of you know, Nazis and pedophiles have you know, groomed someone into doing violence, and they have

produced some evidence for this. There was a Twitter account that allegedly belonged to the shooter that had a profile picture of a son and rat on top of a transflag, as well as the face of the christ Church shooter. This account had posts glorifying white supremacist mass killers and promoting the idea of creating a white homeland in the

Pacific Northwest. This was a Canada based account, but in reality this was actually just another Nazis account who changed their user name to match that of the Tumblr Ridge shooter. And this was an attempt to troll people and just spread disinformation, and this even fooled the ADL, whose research

standards have dropped dramatically the past three years. But a few days ago, the ADL put out an article where They credited posts made by this Twitter account to the tumblr ridg shooter and claimed that a quote unquote preliminary investigation showed that the shooter had showed interest in white supremacy.

But this was not their real account. This was just someone who also is a fan of mass shootings like the shooter was, as we'll soon discuss, But this was someone who was just trying to troll other other you know, researchers on Twitter and see how far their disinformation can spread. This is the consequence of an organization like the ADEL doing preliminary research based on Kiwi of arms posts and not actually verifying the information.

you know, normal and good. If anything, it does point towards, you know, significant factors that are causing kids to do shootings like this, and we can trace it to a number of shootings that have happened. But the O nine A seven six four thing is more so like a meme at this point that people similarly deploy the same way that you know, the right deploys, you know, this

epidemic of trans violence. This has to become like a counter meme to say that every time a trans person does something bad, it's actually the fault of nine A seven six.

are uniquely vulnerable and are looking for community. But I mean that is the majority of kids affected by seven six four are people who have been groomed into self harm or producing a child techtropies material to circulate among like the organizers of these of these groups.

targeting that community. So you know, you can understand why there's a pushback.

that is seemingly linked to no political ideology. It's much more like like nihilistic and scattershot, and that's like a comfortable it's harder to understand like the causal forces producing that rather than just saying, you know, oh, it's another Nazi, right, that's easy and at this point sadly easy thing for people to understand because of you know, a very high number of neo Nazi mass shootings that happened in the

past ten years. But it is not twenty seventeen anymore, and the circumstances that are inducing shootings like this have have changed.

of factors. But uh yeah, I do want to talk about that. That's the kind of the I've kind of like two sections that get into that, the first one based on her actual online footprint, the second one on more like you know, basic societal forces. I think is getting people to go so far to the social like margins that pushes them to places like where the shooter

hung out online. So in twenty twenty one, Jesse's mom shared a link to her kids YouTube channel where quote he posts about hunting, self reliance, guns and stuff he likes to do on quote. This YouTube account shared the user name as Jesse's Reddit account. The earliest posts from

twenty nineteen were about like roadblocks gaming. Then in twenty twenty one, Jesse started posting about firearms and shared a photo of her Chinese sks, which is kind of like an a case forty seven style gun, which she used for hunting. Around twenty twenty three, she started posting about quote unquote, starting MTF transitions soon and as well as her phobia of needles. The police say that she started transitioning before this, but the early syndication we have from

her online activity plus this around twenty twenty three. On other posts on our slash Trends, she asked for advice on girl's clothing, what to expect from HRT, and talked about body dysmorphia. Her very last gender related post on Reddit still refers to herself as pre HRT. Jesse made a single post on our slash trans Guns in October twenty twenty three, sharing a video of her firing a

Desert eagle handgun at a shooting range. At this point, around like the end of twenty twenty three, almost all of her posts switch to being about psychedelic drug abuse, asking how to vape or smoke weed without leaving a smell in the house, being scammed by an online psychedelic seller in Canada, and and asking if you can get high off drinking the urine from a drug addict, and asked on Reddit if it's safe to do five neo DMT alone after she returned from the quote unquote psych ward.

She was admitted to a psychiatric facility after attempting to burn down her home with account of aerosol while on three grams of mushrooms. Jesse also said that she was diagnosed with ADHD, autism, major depressive disorder, and OCD, and it was prescribed a mix of different SSRIs, as well

as an antipsychotic for sleep. In one comment on one of her multiple Reddit posts asking about trying five MEODMT after being arrested for arsen she wrote, quote, it is a wonder I'm still alive yet I am speaks volumes, But how much I've been trying to keep breathing when all my effort goes towards keeping alive unquote. Her Reddit activity drops off in April of twenty twenty four. This could mean that she just stop using Reddit around then, or that she has deleted a whole bunch of posts.

She did scrub some of her online activity prior to the shooting.

Jesse has posted a number of different photos of guns, and we still don't know which exact ones were used. We just know that there was a long gun and a handgun recovered. So though the shooters like Reddit activity ceases in early twenty twenty four, her online presence moved to darker corners of the Internet, which demonstrate a declining mental well being and a growing fascination with mass shootings.

The past year, Jesse was active on an Internet form called Watch People Die, which is pretty much what it sounds like. It's the website to host footage of real life gore.

And you know, there is there is some crossover, you know, there is some seven six for people who are also you know, active on this form, people who used to be seven and six four, because that group is also you know, not really what it used to be, but this form is its own thing rather than being linked to you know, explicit Nazi groups, you know, the occultic O nine A or the child's exploitation rings like seven

six four. That the shooter is verifiable online footprint suggests much more of a nexus of involvement with what I've been calling the school shooter fandom. They call it tease or the true crime community. And in the past two years we've seen an increase in shootings based on this, like Neo columnbiner variety Right people doing copied cats of

other school shootings. The Abundant Life Christian school shooting in December twenty twenty four by Columbine caused player Natalie simitha Upnow, who the Right falsely labeled as trans. There was also the Catholic school shooting in August twenty twenty five by Robin Westman, who did at one point attempt gender transition but later regretted it and originally planned to attack an

LGBTQ music venue. Westman was similarly obsessed with mass killers and wrote the name of Repnow on one of their rifles. Last April, a twenty two year old man in Florida was arrested for threatening to commit a mass shooting on Discord. The FBI believes that he was in communication with Samantha Repnow prior to her shooting, and they both discussed with

each other plans for their mass killing attacks. In September twenty twenty five, a sixteen year old named Desmond Holly two kids before killing himself at Evergreen High School in Colorado. He also idolized Samantha Rupdown, replicated her selfies, and was active on the same forum Watch People Die that rep Noow herself was active on, so Jesse was on this form, but Jesse also displayed other traits similar of the TCC group.

Jesse created a mass shooting simulator game on Rodblocks, which was set in a mall where you act out a shooting and killing people in the mall. I'll talk a little bit about this this forum specifically now right like, this forum essentially exists to desensitize people to extremely violent content that glorifies mass killings. Jesse's very first comment on Watch People Die was on a compilation video of mass shooter footage, and she wrote quote, I appreciate this post.

She also commented on another thread of mass shooting footage quote, I love these first person perspective type videos. When a shooter records his or her own actions, it's always the most worrying. Comment is something that you know, if police were aware of, should have should have been cause to prevent this from happening. Came about five months ago. In a thread on Watch People Die about the psychology of watching Gore, she wrote quote, I find it addictive. It's

hard not to watch violent content. I'm just drawn to it. I don't think much of it, though to say it doesn't affect me is likely naive. I'm sure maybe subconsciously it does. It just doesn't feel like a big deal. I'm drawn to substances too. It's easy to get high and just to zone out into videos of this stuff. Does it impact my mental health? Eh? Mine's probably already fucked.

I tried to stay away from watching this type of thing before because it really sucks me in and it's a massive useless time dump, but I never really saw any benefit. I think the r words in the comment section are more father some mentally than the videos, so I try just not interact with dorks x D. And these sorts of these types of sentiments are not, like uncommon among people who regularly engage with this type of content.

further into the concept. It's like almost like hypnotic. Very similar writing done by this other other shooter. So one other post I'll reference that she made on this forum was a video of a father hanging himself in front of his children, and she claimed that her stepdad attempted the same thing, trying to kill himself in front of her when you know, she was just a little kid, and she wrote, quote, I wish his bitch ass would have died on the noose then, and there probably better

than beating your kids unquote. So obviously, you know this person had like long standing issues that at certain points seems like better, right, Like around twenty twenty one, they seemed to be doing better, right they were they were making you know, YouTube content at about guns and hunting, and felt like they had some more of like a

had more of a stable social outlet. And then around twenty twenty three, with you know this this like abuse of psychedelic drugs leading to this mass shooter obsession it's like a pretty a pretty clear picture of like a

mental spiral. Two months before Jesse's own shooting, she did visit the Watch People Die profile for Samantha Ruppnow, and if we're going to talk about like a causal factors, right, and especially like in reference to you know this this this idea that you know, parents have where you know there there has been a sequence of trans people doing shootings. You can argue about you know, the per capita percent rates or like stats again, but that doesn't go so far.

But at a certain point, I mean, we have to all be comfortable or maybe comfortable is the wrong word, but we have to like, you know, realize that like, as more people, you know, transition right genders, is not this like immutable thing. As more people attempt transitioning, there's gonna be some trans people who do bad things. This happens with every social.

that the self was incapable of inflicting in isolation. A lot of the mass shootings and with suicide or trying to get the police to kill you through through suicide, like like the public shootings like this have a very strong suicidal component, and some people might not be able to do that themselves, so they need to create a

social context in which they feel like they can. And at least in terms of the States and to a smaller degree in Canada, like these shootings like exist as like this like cultural ritual, this like ritual of destruction of the self, and destruction of the self can include the social apparatus that makes up the self. And for like a young person, that's what that's that's their family

in school, the two things that were targeted in this shooting. Right, this this network that makes up like my sense of self as a seventeen year old, eighteen year old, that's going to be my family, which is you know, uh for Jesse, that's that's her mom. She's been separated from her father for a while as well as her stepbrother. And then also this school that she used to used

to go to. Right, that's the sort of that's the network that makes up your idea of this social and like I said before, like as the trans community, grows, there's gonna be some overlap between antisocial you know, mentally unwell individuals who act out a mass killing as a suicide, and disintegrated and socially underregulated people who try transitioning as

a way to ease tensions, both internally and externally. And if anything, I think transitioning can often be maybe one of the healthiest ways to attempt to relieve some of these tensions. But like being trans is like a marginal position in society, right, and the people who commit school shootings and suicide through mass shootings are at like the very very extreme end of social dysregulation and like marginal isolation, and some people in those latter categories will also try

transitioning as a method of social regulation. And in Jesse's case, like considering all their posts about like mental health and drugs, never once is being trans cited as like a point of their distress, Like that's the thing that's causing them

the distress. It is it is a method of relief, at least according to like their own writing on Reddit, like this the cause of the distress or all these are these other things, and like people can blame mass shootings or mass killings on like any number of specific factors, right, such as access to weapons, whether that's knives, firearms, bullying, substance abuse, mental health and lacking mental health services and

like mental health oversight. But like the common base factor across you know, most of those things is that there's like social disintegration and deregulation happening. That that's like a failure to balance like egoism and altruism, right, like a healthy individual sense of self as well as a place of belonging within a larger social group, and like we need a mix of freedom and available structured paths for

social life. Ritualistic outbursts of suicidal violence against society happen when these things are extremely unregulated and someone falls out of the social fabric. And like marginal classes like trans people can be particularly affected by social disintegration and deregulation. And like it's important to note here, like this isn't caused by some like vague medical condition like gender dysphoria, Like that that's not causing the violence, right, prescribed estrogen,

it's not a causal forcedness. We don't even know if Robin Westman or or Jesse was even on estrogen. We don't know, but these things aren't aren't causal, but you know, these are social positions that include you know, these larger social factors that affect large populations. One of those populations can be trans people. There's a lot of social disintegration that affects the cists men currently, they do a lot of shootings and yeah, the overwhelming majority. You can also

graph these things on class lines. Lots of people who go and do public shootings either themselves or their families are suffering from economic instability or or people in like the middle class as well, which it has this this this other problem in like Durkheim's med methodology of suicide, which I'm kind of pulling from a little bit here, is like this thiss, this sense of like overregulation can

also produce in unhealthy balance. So it's either you know, very overregulated people you know, like like Elon Musk has too much freedom, has too much too much like access to like money and possibilities, that he's then a very dysfunctional person. This can happen you know with some probably like you know, like middle class kids as well. Uh,

that can produce violent outbursts. But a lot of the time it's you know, lower middle class or lower class conditions that can lead to violence, and sometimes sometimes it does not go to the extreme of doing you know,

a mass killing. It can often just result in like petty crime, which is do you arguably a more healthy method of regulation compared to something like a mass shooting, which is like, you know, the most desperate, the most marginal, like active suicide that we could like envision as a society.

these these are world building. It's it's it's similar to seeing someone basically trying journal out their thoughts, right. I think in that she was building these these mass shooting simulators, that wasn't her being influenced I say, by some kind of like template that Roadblocks had. That was her showing yeah, creating something to express something else.

The fact that TCC is attracting like a wider net than just cis males, I think is interesting, but it points to these other social forces. I think condensing it down to being like a certain mixture of SSRIs and HRT is what's causing this.

own mortality. These things can exist within a healthy equilibrium of the social but they can also exist in an unhealthy non equilibrium, right. And I think the types of ways that Jesse was writing about psychedelics online, I think demonstrates a very unhealthy use of these drugs, especially as like you know, like a sixteen year old, right, Like.

work into. If you actually want to start solving this problem, you can get into you know, larger, larger things about you know, the alienation of like quote unquote late stage capitalism, which you know also can be a factor in this.

communities that encouraged this sort of thing. I think that's the way that I'm framing it as opposed to you know, radicalization makes makes you think of politics and like ideology.

that she was taken from him. Part of me is also really fearful that this is going to be maybe the future of the the Matt Walsh lips at TikTok circuit. Right here, we have the case, like the number one horror story that every right wing you know, personality always talks about, right.

social services can can be an aspect of this. Having more comprehensive mental health care, you know, free healthcare check ins, you know, if that's a big thing in the States. Canada has that to some degree, but still there's obviously room for improvement. But I mean, yes, solving these like larger social problems, that's like it's the question of the twenty first century.

you know, social isolation. How much how much time your kid is just spending alone on the internet and you might not be knowing what they're doing. So solving that's you know hard because because the solution for a lot of a lot of you know states is just like increased surveillance on platforms like you know, discord age verification.

But those types of you know, guardrails don't exist on a forum site like watch People Die, right, you can you can have a very you know, safe regulated discord which just pushes people to you know, even more niche even more dangerous parts of the internet. You know, Watch People Die started as a Reddit page that was you know, taken down like seven years ago. Now it's you know a far a far less regulated, you know, thing that that kids are spending a decent amount of time on.

But you know, being aware of you know, the risks of this type of like social isolation, you know, is also also a start. And ideally we do not have a forum site, you know, dedicated to glorifying mass killings. But banning a website is not so simple. It's easier than done, you know, figuring out a way to take that down, right, I mean, same problem with you know, like eight kun or like you know eight chan back in the day four chan.

KUN for a while. But yeah, I'm actually unsure if the current the current like setup that Watch People that has Yeah, I've been talking about you know TCC and this the school should defand them increasingly the past two years.

And it's really tragic that it is something that i've that is you know, a pattern that is that is continuing right, this is like the really the main force across these shootings, whether you're you know, assist girls, this boy, a trans girl, trans guy, whatever, whatever demographic you know, racial. You know, there was the the Antioch school shooting in January twenty twenty five that was done by this like black ironic neo Nazi, similarly linked to TCC as well,

Like whatever the demographic is. The through line that we're seeing is this is this just like nihilistic obsession with like the act of school shooting and this like fandom that has developed around it.

kind of in the margins. My monitoring is is in the margins, but those margins can have you know, very very uh destabilizing social effects. But it does take a while. I mean, same thing with the FBI, right, It took them years to get on top of seven six four, even though people were like reporting this stuff in like twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, But before seven six four was even that organization. There was previous iterations called the CVLT.

But like you know that that style of thing was was was a problem for years, and the FBI did not really get on it until much later, and the media then followed suit. Right, I do think I just don't have trust in you know, the current the current American enforcement that retty to really be on it right now.

You know, I can't. I'm unsure of how that works in Canada at this point, but certainly certainly I don't think Cashputel's FBI is going to be you know, on this one super super well, even though they been trying to, you know, push some stuff like the nihilist violent extremism label, which does cover stuff like this.

you know, bring this up because you mentioned Cashptel. You're trying to push that narrative that he was in fact trans or inspired by trans ideology or inspired by furries or furry culture, et cetera. They've tried everything, and now now we're at the point where it's like the loosest of connections. It's like, well, there may have been a lover who is or is not may or may not be trends or non binary.

Lambeth Mutual Aid in South London. You can follow us on Instagram at Lambeth Mutual Aid and you can follow me on the Hellhole that is ex at Georgio con conn is Ko and not conn as in a conman. Yeah, that's I think the key information.

shed the lights on what happened there. The main accusation is that the Army of Republica Srbska, which is an entity within Bosnia and Herzegovina, that they charged lots of moneies for tourists to come over and shoot at civilians, which is yeah, obviously horrible, Yeah, horrific. Nowadays, Bosli in Herzegovina has divided into two parts, which is like the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the republic A serb Ska, which is essentially the territory that the republic A Cerviska

Army gained during the war. Because I don't want to be there any confusion as to who the parties are, but it's pretty much two entities living in one nation state. Yes, So, after I've given some context on what happened during the Balkan Wars which led up to this event, we're going

to be talking with Georgio about the documentary. Unfortunately, the documentary is not available with English subtitles, so I'm glad we were having you with us, Georgio, to illuminate us a bit more So, I also want to preface that obviously it's not a thorough history of what happened there. That would be way too much information to condense into

one episode. Also, while this episode will focus on the plight of the Bosnian people, I do want to note that pretty much every site in this entire conflict did horrendous things committed atrocities, and I think I would be britmiss if I didn't mention that. So we're going to start with, like so many things. The Second World War around the formation of Yugoslavia as a communist state, with the Serbian city of Belgrade being the center of power.

The Balkans were a major point of conflict during World War II, with a lot of different parties and state actors trying to gain control over the region. Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Albania as some of the main actors. A variety of alliances and other entities were formed, which will later be used in ethnic and ethnic nationalist discourse as

a way to highlight the specific ethnic grievances. As a federation, Yugoslavia contained multiple ethnicity Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrants, and Muslims, which would later become the called Bosniaks. And that's how

I will be referring to them. So at the end of World War two, Joseph Tito would be the dictator of Yugoslavi Ivia and he would try to counteract all this ethnic descent and friction by promoting something that he called brotherhood and unity, which sort of buot Tito on a pedestal as a fatherly figure under whom everyone from all the different factions and ethnicities would be equal as

Yugoslav people. This was only partially successful. The friction was never really resolved, and after the death of Tito in the eighties marked the beginning of the end. It coincided with an economic crisis that sort of made all the different republics where all the different ethnicities were centered beholden to themselves became a bit of a free for all. So after that point, like ethno politics and nationalism became the focus.

who came to power late eighties in Serbia. Ethnic rhetoric would be the focal point for his politics and a sense to power. He would say things that would turn into slogans, and with that kept sure the vital part of the the animosity that a large part of the Serbian population would feel phrases like a weak Serbia means a strong Yugoslavia, hinting at the decline of Serbian power and the way they perceived this sort of slow fracturing

that Yugoslavia was going through. Another one was in response to a Kosovari Serp was allegedly beaten by a Kosovari Albanian, and Melosovitch said, no one should dare beat you, meaning that by virtue of being a Serbian they should be granted some sort of additional status or some sort of untouchability because they were ethnic Serbs.

not they were going to secede. They chose to secede, and in March of that year, Serbian forces attacked Bosnia and claimed towns in terrain that they deemed to be Serbian territory. Near the end of May, the Yugoslav People's Army attempted to gain control over the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, but filled to do so completely at this when the battle became a prolonged siege that would last until February

of ninety six. Just to add a little bit more about the location, Geographically speaking, defending sa Rijevo was really difficult. The city lies between several mountains, which made it very easy for Serbine forces to set up artillery, ordinance and snipers. These would have very long lines of sights and greater range due to the elevated positions that they were set

up in. If you look at a map of Sarajevo with like the terrain a for Google Maps or something, you can see how much elevation there is all around the city. Roads and passes leading out of the city were blocked by Serbian forces, and once they had full control of the airport, there was little to no way

for foods, medicine, or reinforcements to be deployed there. Within the city itself, Serbine forces also controlled a majority of major military positions, with additional sniper's being positioned around them. Multiple areas became incredibly dangerous to cross or approach, particularly the main road leading towards the air courts. It became known as sniper Alley. And I think it is in

this context that we should start to discuss the documentary allegations. So, yeah, anything to add from either of you.

who was then the Prime Minister of the UK. It's also the kind of language we heard from mitteent in France and to some extent in the Clinton administration. After Bill Clinton read that horrendous book Balkan Ghosts by Kaplan, his administration's rhetoric began to change and sort of framed this as this inevitable, you know, claud between these perpetually fighting tribes in the Balkans. You know, the legacies of

that rhetoric are still heard in today's journalism. You know, I can't count the amount of times in even left leaning, supposedly Western journalistic publications, I've seen the word Balkanization being thrown around, you know. And this is what I'm talking about in terms of the intersection of dehumanization, exoticization, and oppression that particularly Bosnia and the Muslims of Bosnia Bosniacs have found themselves at. And so you had that on

the one side coming from the right. And by the way, the Serbs nationalists knew this. They tailored their rhetorics so so so effectively to present this case of we are fighting Europe's battle again Islamist extremists. But at the same time you had the Western European political left, and by political left, I mean your Marxist Leninists, that sort of tradition within the political left in Western Europe, sort of buying into this co opting of anti fascist discourse from

the Miloshevich regime. Yeah, you know, Mike reference the Noah Wunschel dare Vitu speech in Kosovo, which was actually in response to a at best hyperbolized, at worst fictitious claim that the Kosovo Serbs were basing this institutional violence, and that co opting of that rhetoric that the Milashovich regime did so well as these anti imperialists fighting against the the you know, evil acxis of the West did kind of work to some degree when we're thinking about the

response of the political parties on the left in Western Europe that were very sort of anti any intervention. And we can have a conversation about you know, NATO intervention and how problematic that was. But this very black and white thinking, very black and white rhetoric coming from those political actors in the West, well, this has nothing to do with us. Don't buy into the rhetoric that there are bad things happening. Is you know, everyone's doing bad things.

Therefore we shouldn't do anything to put any pressure on the Muoshevich regime. And so the reason why I'm bringing this all up is because if people can understand that, then it becomes more understandable how Bosnia was left to burn, how the Bosnian Muslims in particular, who are being targeted by sub forces and Croat forces both on the basis of their religious and ethnic identities. They found themselves completely abandoned, and obviously that abandonment really is embodied.

thing as neutrality, blah blah blah. But this was really how it became possible for such a high number of people, the vast majority Muslim people, to be killed while the genocide was being televised.

putting human killed. And it's going back to this what you're talking about in terms of here are two communities that are already fighting each other, and we lose sight of everyone's humanity as a result. And if they would just stop fighting, if they were just you know, stopped for a second and look beyond the labels, then the world would be a better place. And it's all, in my opinion, tied up in the same illogic as that book was getting it.

Ottoman Empire. The Muslims in Bosnia, And in fact, you know, I always go to a piece of footage from the eleventh of July nineteen ninety five when the General of the Army of the Republic Assavska Ratkomladic, who is serving a life sentence for genocide, his forces entered. They invaded sore Brnitza, Serebrenitza had fallen, and he says to the camera, we have come here to take revenge on the Turks.

And I think that really embodies what I'm trying to say here, which is that these legacies of this clash of civilizations that were sort of prominent in the various wars against the Ottomans came back and they were redeployed. They were reactivated by sub forces in particular, but also crap forces to a lesser degree. And you know, I go back to what I was saying before, John Major, saying, this is a painful but inevitable restoration of Christian Europe

on some level. On some level, Western Europe was buying into it on some level. So yeah, I don't think it was the start of the vilification of Muslims, but I think that it was intertwined with previous legacies that were reactivated.

sort of the discourse after Fukuyama. Sorry to mention Fukuyama, but like people didn't want there to be apart from him, like an end to the conflict of how to organize our societies and because that's a ludicrous thesis, and so they they're very much I think a lot of the sort of fear that plays such an important role in politics in many of our countries was remobilized in this orientalist packaging towards most of the people that, as you say,

built on centuries of bigotry. My only engagement with the conflict when I was much younger was that somebody who I knew through cycling had previously been a football hooligan. I think that's probably how we would describe himself. There was a great deal of exchange in fan violence, I guess would be the academic between the former Yugoslavia and the rest of Europe, which is so interesting and not a great way to learn about things.

the public. These allegations and the narrative of the documentary is presented through witness testimony, including an anonymous former intelligence agent, and the film and the sort of the testimonies that are part of the film claim that this war tourism, or this safari, this hunting human hunting game effectively business,

was a sophisticated, organized and secret operation. One of the most shocking allegations that the documentary brings to light is that these non Bosnian forists want of a better words, would pay even more money to shoot at children. Now in total, I mean that we don't have exact figures for various reasons that are very complicated. It's estimated that over eleven thousand people were murdered in Sarajevo from these snipers.

So the fact that this documentary is presenting these allegations that it wasn't just a Serb affair and that there were other nationals taking part in these crimes is huge.

That is all shocking. It is shocking that the peace agreement that brought a formal end to the conflict legitimized simultaneously the political project of the Republicaska by recognizing the entity. All of these things are shocking. So for me, the allegations of the documentary all into this broader abject failure and complicity of so called international community in the crimes that were being committed in Bosnia. So that is why I'm not surprised. I was shocking. The content is shocking.

The fact that it was able to happen is not surprising, and I think the documentary speaks to the broader complicity of so many layers of society in the atrocities that were being committed. You know, let's be real, let's be really really blunt here. The countries from which the tourists came are not the only countries that are implicated in the atrocities of the war and genocide in Bosnia. You had far right volunteers from Greece who were being trained by Ratko Mladtch's army, who.

social media attention. It's the one happening in Gaza for pretty obvious reasons. People are probably better placed now to understand this in the context of a genocide than they would have been five years ago, even right that the project of a genocide has happened so in the open, and then they have seen nations which claim to be opposed to these things, and institutions which were created to

stop genocides do nothing. So I think it's probably easier than ever for people to understand the dehumanization that happens

and the way that these things progress. But I wonder like it's just such a like you said, make like it's one thing to go to war, right, and it's another thing to have war come to you, Like I have traveled to report on wars, but the you said, like, war isn't trying to be violent, and in this particular war, acts of inhuman violence happened often and from a great deal of actors, right, but like, it's one thing when it is your community that is under threat, your family

have been killed, and then you respond with violence, Like it doesn't make it right, but that is how war is. It's another thing to pay to hop on a flight and go and shoot a child like that is particularly craven.

So I wonder, like it seems like the cases that the prosecutions are mostly focusing on, like people from the Italian far right, do you have an idea of like this was for them part of that project of like like doing a second a conquista right for want of a better term, like purging Muslim people from Europe, or if it was simply the thrill of killing other humans.

against the Muslims. And I suspect that it wasn't too dissimilar in the political imaginary of the Italian far rights, and not just the Italian far right, I mean, as we said, from all the other countries where they were coming from. So yeah, I think there was a framing that was behind a lot of this international participation that the Serb nationalists were very aware of, and they were very deliberate in the discourses that they were producing. I'll

give another example. When I was working at the Memorial Center, I was read in Cere. I was reading the transcripts of the Assembly of the Publicska during the war, and in those transcripts I can count on one hand the amount of times that Serb nationalist officials referred to Bosnian.

full core and whatever. I don't like talking in that way, but I will try to keep it as accessible as possible. When people produce discourses, it's to create not only a sense of what is true and what is false, but also it's to create this feeling of truth.

referred to as illegal immigrants. They're often referred to as members of the Islamic state for Iraq and al Sham, which shows a fundamental misunderstanding of those last two words. But it's important, I think, to see these commonalities because we should be able to identify these things and then like see how dangerous they are.

happening in terms of tourists non combatants. I am not aware of other places where it was happening on a large scale, like in Sarajo, So yeah, I'm not perhaps the best place to go into more detail about that, but I will definitely talk to my contacts in Mostad about the allegation any allegations there.

least it's a movement. But on the other hand, right, like the deaths of their family members have been played out in this documentary and it must be very difficult to understand just just how like, I don't know, casually like life was taken during the this genocide. Yeah, do you think it helps healing? Like I guess I'm struggling to phrase out as a question, but you know, like I'm interesting to know how this this this lands. From that perspective, I guess.

sort of there's a lot of cynicism around that. And we saw this in particular in regard to cor Valdis either I'm not sure if you both watched that, but that recent one was that twenty twenty one, maybe a few years ago, which if anyone who hasn't watched it is a film that depicts the genocide Insteadza and you know, and that won some awards that I can't remember the titles of them, but you know, the sort of response

among particularly the Bosniak community was one of mixed emotions. Yes, on the one hand, it was, you know, something that they were willing to support, you know, they would hold screenings of the film, they would you know, collaborate with the director. But on the other hand, there was this

sense of okay, and now what. And I think from the conversations that I've had with Bosniaks and from the articles that I've read in response to this documentary, there's a similar sort of mood of yeah, this is really important, and we have been making these allegations for a long time. Or we've been aware of the allegations for a long time. Why is it getting attention now? What's going to happen now?

Can we trust that the Italians will that Italy will actually carry on with this investigation and that justice will be had? And also, you know, the notion of justice is so fraught in Bosnia as well. I think that sort of to imagine that we are on this path towards you know, this linear path towards absolute healing and absolute justice and reconciliation, I think is a sort of a notion that that comforts a lot of wet an NGOs.

It's not necessarily reflective a reality on the ground. So yeah, I don't think I would reconnecting this with any sense of healing at this stage.

are aware of it. Every now and again someone writes something about it. But like those people are no closer to any form of healing. You know that they still kin't of even many cases have not returned to their homes.

everyday violences don't go away because of a film. And I think that Bosniacs that I have come to know in living in the entity of the public Aska really carry that sense of we're dealing with shit every day. Every day, we are facing material battles, and we're doing it alone most of the time. So yeah, it's very difficult to put an optimistic, hopeful twist on on these things.

truck driver. Yes, this is something that that had come up. When I was writing everything.

the whole idea that it was wealthy tourists only. But let's also remember that in terms of domestic participation, there was a lot of capital to be gained by serving the publica Sakska project. I mean, you had everything from civilian Serb civilian truck drivers who helped to deport civilians Bosnia activilians. You had Serb civilians who were hired to

dig secondary and tertiary graves, mass graves. There was an array of positions capital that was created for people who had very little and I think that's important to bear to bear in mind. Obviously that's what that's in reference to the domestic to the participation of civilians within.

but they're not. Like the struggle against a domestic right in Italy was basically the same thing as the or at least you know, shared the shared shared an enemy with the attempts to fight back against this genocidal violence there.

interview or double check. He has said that himself and the Bosnian Intelligence Agency first informed the Italian Intelligence Service about what they believed what they had evidence was happening in terms of the Sarierisafari. They first informed them in nineteen ninety three, and then a few months later, in March nineteen ninety four, the Italian Intelligence Service informed them

that the matter had been closed. So that's just some interesting context to sort of think about in terms of perhaps some of the skepticism and cynicism that Bosniacs have about where this is going and the potential for change that could come as a result.

But they are a group of young activists from all ethnic backgrounds, all of the three major ethnic groups in Bosnias that Serb Croat in Bosnia, who take an explicitly anti capitalist approach to their work, so they are very interesting. And the fact that they're doing what they're doing to fight against the corruption of the PUBLICABSKA authorities and ethno nationalism, and they're doing that within the entity, I think it

is really quite extraordinary. So you can also follow them on Instagram and keep up to date with what they're doing. I mean, they're always there's always either a march happening in solidarity with Palestine, or there was recently a reading of names of all the murdered children of Sarah or alongside all of the murdered children of Gaza in the

recent wave of the genocide in Gaza. So there's a lot of very interesting stuff happening which people from all around the world can at least follow on social media. And if you're in or around Bosnia then of course you can meet some of these people in person, which is great.

how the course of these things can go. With a strike that will look shockingly familiar to anyone who has lived through this year, which is to say, this is a strike that starts when an occupying army has taken over a city and starts fucking killing people. So a little bit of background about what is going on in China in the nineteen twenties. Nineteen twenty five is in the middle of what is called the warlord period in China, which is a period where I don't go listen to

the Bastard's episode. The short version of this is that after the nineteen eleven revolution that had overthrown this Chinese imperial system, China became split between a bunch of warlords composed out of different sort of parts of the armies. Now also in this period, large parts of China are under the direct control of foreign occupiers. These are countries

like Japan, the UK, France, Russia. I think there's an American concession sort of in there somewhere, and these countries just own parts of China and for our purposes, they also own parts of Shanghai and these things both the territories they occupy sometimes literally, you know, the occupation is they own a rail line. When I say they own a rail line, it's not just a company or even the country owning the rail line. They physically own the territory,

so it's theirs. Like this rail line belongs to Japan, and so the land around the rail line belongs to Japan, and they can enforce their laws in it. And this is how it works. Also in Shanghai, inside of these concessions there is an armed occupation. And in Shanghai there are British or friends or Japanese police and military personnel there who do law enforcement and we'll just kill you where my dear listener, have we seen this before? I leave that as an exercise to the reader. Listener, Yes,

I guess, I guess you're the listener. Now, this state of affairs came to a head in May nineteen twenty five when a Japanese foreman was meeting with Chinese union organizers and what was basically supposed to be a contract

negotiation session. There's a team of Japanese foremen and business people there and a group of Chinese union organizers, and the details of what exactly happened are very very sketchy, but a brawl broke out, and the conclusion of the brawl was that a Japanese foreman killed a fairly well

known local union leader. Now, the police had also arrested several of the workers who have been in the negotiations, and continued to hold them even after a massive demonstration for the Chinese organizer who'd been killed funeral so on May the thirtieth, protesters gathered outside of a police station run by the British to demand the release of their comrades. This set off a climac to confrontation that changed the face of Chinese history forever. The British open fire on

the crowd killed ten people and wounded fifty more. Now half a decade ago, when I first wrote about this for a Cool Zone, I read a quote from the great Chinese author and anarchist bad Jin. This is quoted from author Waldron's book from Warden Nationalism, China's Turning Point nineteen twenty forty nineteen twenty five, and I want to return to it now for reasons that I think will immediately become a parent. This is about a student who

witnessed the killings at the entrance to Union Road. He saw the child who had been killed a short while before he thought about half an hour ago, the crowd was marching peacefully towards the police station to ask the police to set free students who had been unjustly arrested. They thought the police were human beings, endowed with reason and human sympathy, that human blood flowed in their veins. They thought that uniforms and weapons could not have destroyed

their human nature. But reality proved they were bloodthirsty beasts. On the most crowded street of the city, they deliberately slaughtered unarmed people. For this, there was no precedent in Chinese history. The imperialist oppression that had endured for so many years ached like a deep wound in his heart. He struggled inwardly. He felt the time for patience was over.

He felt he wanted to spill his blood, to sacrifice his young life, that he might show that not all among his people were lambs that allowed themselves to be led without resistance to slaughter. He looked again at the corpse of the murdered child. His eyes shone with fire. His whole body began to burn, as though on fire, his heart be violently. You, dear listener, understand this. When I first quoted this passage in twenty twenty one, it

was about George Floyd. Now it's about Renee Good and Alex Pretty you understand the horror, the suffering, the rage, the overwhelming fire to do something. You understand that they are like us, and you understand why they fought. What followed was the largest to that point general strike in the history of Shanghai. Two hundred thousand people walked off the job almost immediately in the first wave of strikes. The strike spread to almost every major city in China

in some form or another. Massive student protests began tire cities Roses one, two hundred and fifty thousand people went on strike. In Hong Kong, students, workers, business owners, and gangsters stood precariously as one to drive out the armed men occupying their cities. In an instant, the world changed. Things that were impossible the day before suddenly began commonplace. People flooded the streets, they were attacked by cops, fought back,

and for three months they held on. Now this was a much rougher time than even contemporary twenty twenty six America. We are in a little bit going to get to the part where a bunch of people's heads get put

on spikes by the government. And you know, unlike nineteen twenty five Shanghai, for example, American cities are not, contrary to the beliefs of a significant portion of the American conservative population, run by networks of organized crime who control every facet of political life and also economic life and also social life, to the extent that if you're a union organizer in nineteen twenty Shanghai, you are effectively a mob organizer, both in the sense that you probably have

to belong to one of the organizations and to the extent that the people you are actually organizing this time are like you're organizing the mob guys who bring in workers to serve as the mirgant worker population. This is also actually an important aspect of the strikes nineteen twenty five, which is that much of the labor population in Shanghai are mirgrant workers have been brought in from other parts

of the country by organized crime. Now obviously that's not it is not really how migrant labor works in the United States, but you know, to some extent, the pressures of the labor discipline are very similar in that right, the threat that has held over the heads of migrant workers is that armed men will come in the night for you. And right now what we are witnessing is

the armed men coming into the night. But you know, as much as I talk about sort of the differences between these movements, I think the immediate question for our purposes is are there things that we can learn from this movement? And I think the answer is yes. But in order to get to the what can we learn from this? We have to talk a bit about how the movement collapsed. So I said that the movement held

on for about three months. That was in Shanghai. The history of some of the other cities is different, and we kind of don't have time to. For example, divert talk about general strike in Hong Kong, where the primary method that people used was they simply left the city and went back home, which solved some of the problems that we're going to be talking about in a little bit. But okay, in Shanghai, what happened to this movement and

why did it fall apart? So I think there are roughly three factors, and I think the first two are actually more important than the third one, which might be surprising when we get to them. But the first two factors were people being able to eat and the pressure that that put on the unions, and secondarily, betrayal from the business elites that they had allied with to get the strikes to work. And the third is pere repression. And the scale of the peer repression here is astonishing.

I mean some of the like one of the guys who runs this strike is just executed by the state. Again, we're going, I'm promising we're gonna get to the heads on pikes in a bit.

the Communist completely and even later than that. They're in a very very uneasy alliance with left wing student and workers who are rapidly becoming left wing, because this is also a city that was not enormously politicized until now and suddenly becomes politicized in ways it seemed impossible like

a few years before. But there's a tension between them because initially these sort of patriotic business owners are really really pissed off that the foreign occupiers are murdering people in their city, and sort of nationalists and communist leaders are able to sort of broker alliances with them, and they're able to broke her alliances with organized crime, which

is less important for our purposes. I cannot emphasize enough how important the organized crime people are in the history, to the extent that like Chen Kai Shek, who you may know as like the leader of the Nationalist Party and the guy who's eventually going to run Taiwan after losing the Civil war, Chenkai Shek was an organized crime guy like he was in the Green Gang, So, like you know, very important to their story, less important to

our story. But they act in a very similar way shoot the business owners, which is that in the beginning, and this is something that we saw in Minneapolis too, tweing their one day general strike, which is that a lot of business owners, either out of you know, just actual genuine rage and grief over just the raw fucking horror of these monsters grabbing people from their homes and shooting people in the streets, cooperated and shut their businesses

down for the day. Now obviously there are other business owners who do this because they are producers? Am I allowed to say that? They look that side and were like, it doesn't take a weatherman to see which way the winds are blowing, right, you know, they saw what was going on, and we're like, Okay, either my workers aren't going to show up, or if I don't publicly support this, it's gonna get real fucked for me, because everyone else around does. And that meant that there was a lot

of cooperation from businesses. But we also saw very quickly after like a kind of a whole bunch of businesses and like sports organizations too, like signed a thing that was like, ah, we need to restore order, do do do do do maybe and the occupation, but also please stop causing disruptions protesters.

fundamentally is making money. There's a Marx line I wish I had here about like what the national character of Britain was, that it turned that it's only fundamental principle is land rent, and that that's like this, right, Like, at some point these people are like, okay, well, given the choice between imperialist occupation and me losing money and

my workers gaining power, I will choose imperialist occupation. And this is something that in cross class movements like this, specifically, if you are trying to do a general strike, you're eventually going to have to deal with this, which is that a lot of particularly large businesses, and you know, some small business owners will fall in line with this too, right, will eventually get to a point where they're like, I would rather keep making money than you know, not have

my neighbors taken away. And that is unbelievably fucking bleak. But that's you know, like that's one of the things that killed this general strike in China. And eventually, in the face of this, right, we come to the second problem,

which that people needed to eat. So the union federation that's set up had been just sort of giving people money so that they could eat but they eventually start to run out of money, and they don't really have a way to organize the sort of production movement and logistics of providing ifone with food without relying on the

bankrolling of those business owners. You know, this becomes a problem because it means that they're suddenly getting attacked by portions of the workers who aren't supposed to be their base because they don't have food. And those people also just start like walking up the Chamber of Commerce meetings and walking in and beating up the Chamber of Commerce people for not paying them, and then like eating the banquet food the cheap room commerce is a great story

in the book called Shanghai on Strike. While Elizabeth Ferry, who's the renowned scholar of Chinese labor history, about this very funny. There's lots of absolutely wild stories from this strike. What are the sort of recurring themes of this period of union organizing it? Again, this is a really rough time, right, Imagine like gangster movie nineteen, like twenties New York, and like that's Shanghai, but like the gangs are way way,

way way stronger. So like the way politics works to a large extent is that people beat the share out of each other, and like hall hits on each other, and the city is technically speaking, it's run by like what is a warlord army, and then beneath the warlord

army there are all of these organized criminal organizations. But like, you know, the unions have this thing called dog beating brigades, where the dog beating brigades, like if you like publicly started scabbing you very publicly were standing against the strike, Like the dog beating brigade would show up in the middle of the night and it was just like a bunch of guys with hatchets and it would just like

beat the shit out of you. And this was just like a normal thing that was happening between these strikes. So this whole period of Chinese history is nuts.

repurpose it towards you know, keeping everyone fed. And I will say this is something that actually I think we are better at than they were in the sense of we are better at running to logistics of getting a bunch of people's food and the stuff that they need to survive. And that's something we can look at in Minneapolis where and this is obviously coming from people's money, but a lot of the organizing in Minneapolis is about

getting people who can't leave their homes food. We've also seen in the last day or so tenant and labor union leaders are talking about a rent strike in Minneapolis, which can help people, you know, not get effected because

they can't go to work. But it's also something that if you're going to do a general strike, yeah, you probably also have to do a rent strike, but if you want to keep a general strike going, and this is something that we're going to get to a lot more in later episodes, the Seattle general strike is a very large.

But what it does is politicize the entire city, and it politicizes all of China in a way that is going to shape all of the politics in the country forever. I guess, like it's the thing that creates modern China is the politicization that comes out of this period. You know, it's what sort of transforms Chinese politics or something that was purely the almost purely the domain of worldlords into something that's now the domain of the nationalists and the communists.

And obviously, you know, the military conflict is a large thing in this that we don't really have time to get into. But you know, this period transforms the entire

politics of China. Right, People who had never thought about politics before, people who had never you know, who had never like heard the words imperialism or like heard the words like militarism, right, are suddenly in the streets talking about it, and they're talking about general strikes, and they're talking about how how can we run these occupying armies out? And I want to sort of mention how this whole thing ends, right, which that people keep organizing and they

keep fighting. And one year later, in nineteen twenty six, the first of the uprisings begins, now, the first uprising, and these three uprisings are all sort of like hauled by the Chinese Communist Party and their unions.

up the coordination of it, but it did also. The second one was a three hundred thousand strong general strike, and the third stry was an eight hundred thousand strong general strike, and they stays the intrection and they run the warlord armies out of the city, and for a sort of brief glorious moment, Shanghai is in the hands of its workers, and theyre subsequent betrayal and slaughter by the USSR and Shang Kai Shack, mostly Shang Kai Shak.

And if we learn the lessons of both their time and ours, if we use that knowledge to act in the moment of crisis, we can win conscience, history, and the cries of the suffering demanded. So let's go win the war. We have a world to win and nothing to lose but our chains.

to review a new flu vaccine from Maderna. In February twelfth, Tom Homan announced that Operation Metro Surge has concluded and quote significant drawdown has already been underway this week and will continue through the next week un quote. Zarmmdani has ordered a new audit of city agencies to ensure compliance with sanctuary city laws in New York. And Stephen Colbert says that CBS refused to air his interview with Texas Democratic Senate James Tellerico, citing the FCC's equal time rule.

Despite this rule historically having an exception for late night talk show interviews. Last month, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened to enforce the rule regardless of the well established president that excluded talk show interviews. And finally, the owner of a warehouse facility in Hutchins Texas so so that they won't sell or lease the building to the federal government as a detention facility. The city's mayor and council all

opposed the project. Seizure by eminent domain is still possible.

And he got into a fight in Marty Gras, which is just just just a fun little bit of news. My favorite part of this is that he assaulted a guy. He was repeatedly restrained by members of a bar, and whenever they would let him go because they just wanted him to leave, they didn't want to call the cops, he would then continue to attack the guy he was assaulting until they forced to. They were forced to call

the police and have him arrested. And I've been in Marty Gras over the last few days, and let me tell you, getting arrested by the police during Marti Gras not easy. I don't have a lot to say about that other than I was surprised by the number of very political floats that I saw, particularly at least one that was entirely paper mache ice GY's in a very like non flattering way. There were a lot of like

costumes and a number of references on floats. There's a couple of pretty hideous caricatures of Trump on floats, and they all got like a widely positive reaction. And I

find this interesting. And I'm bringing this up because the research that I've largely been doing for the EV this week is trying to get a handle on, like where Americans are polling right now and how popular or unpopular is the president and his agenda, because like we see articles every week about like Trump's polls hit a new low, or the most recent article that I think it's gallup is no longer going to be doing presidential like popularity polling.

But I wanted to get a look at, like how the actual like part and their agendas are holding up. And it's a pretty shocking gap between September October, like fall of last year and today. So in September of twenty twenty five, per Yugov, the Democratic Party had about a sixty four percent unfavorable so like sixty four percent of polled Americans didn't like the Democratic Party and a little less than thirty four percent of Americans had a

favorable opinion of the Democratic Party. And if you actually look at the graphs for those that you GOV presents, they're basically making like a wineglass shape, right, So what that means is unfavorability is moving up and favorability is moving down rapidly, Like at the time at which those bulls were taken in September of last year, Meanwhile, the Republican Party. Neither party was popular, but the Republican Party the wineglass shape was a lot more muted, more like

a shot glass. Fifty five point four percent of Americans pulled by Yugov expressed a unfavorable opinion of the Republican Party, at about forty two point three expressed a favorable opinion. You can compare this to October twenty twenty five polling by Pew Research, which showed something similar. Sixty four percent of Americans were frustrated with the Republican Party, seventy five percent of Americans reported being frustrated with the Democratic Party.

Forty nine percent of Americans polled replied that they were angry at the Republican Party, fifty percent reported being angry at the Democratic Party. Similarly, Republicans, thirty six cent of Americans felt hopeful about the Republican Party, twenty eight percent of Americans felt hopeful about the Democratic Party, and then twenty seven percent of Americans were proud of the Republican

Party sixteen percent Democratic Party. Those are pretty bleak numbers for the Democrats coming in the fall of twenty twenty five. Like that is kind of black pilling. Stuff. Right, This was in the fall of last year, pretty rapid change from where things had been about four years ago. For example, in September two, only twenty one, about sixty four percent of Americans had expressed frustration with the Democratic Party as opposed to seventy five percent four years later. So that's

all fall of last year. Now, between when the polls that I read to you came out and now we've had a cup several major things happen. One of the more significant was the long shutdown, which was disasters for Republican favorability and for Trump's own favorability. And we also had a significant I mean, obviously in LA and in Chicago, Ice had been doing very terrible and very like you know, I guess I should say, like documented crimes, like horrible

things that were spread widely on social media. But that has also accelerated massively in the first couple of weeks of twenty twenty six. And what we're seeing now in more recent polls taken in late January and from anywhere from like kind of early January to late January and

early February is a significant reversal. So NBC News is Decision Desk coalated a bunch of different polls like Daily Mail, Marquette, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo, YouGov, Fox News, Emerson, and over the last month or so, you're looking at an average spread of all of these polls of about negative nineteen point nine percent favorability for the Republican Party and about negative twelve point eight percent favorability for the Democratic Party.

So when you think back to those numbers from last fall, that's a pretty dramatic change, and it kind of correlates to a dramatic change in Trump's own favorability, which has gone down by about twelve percent per the average of those polls that kind of aggregated by NBC News Desk their article notes quote. Ipso's polling released in late January found fifty one percent of Americans say Trump' immigration policy

is on the wrong track. Amazingly, just a year ago, American said Republicans have a better plan, policy, and approach than Democrats on immigration by a twenty two point margin. Now that advantage is down to five points pints. So while Trump is underwater with immigration, his and the Republican Party's policies towards immigration are still more popular than the Democratic Party's response. Is to immigration, but they have also

collapsed in terms of like. The gap between those two things, again, twenty two point margin to a five point lead is a is a pretty dramatic narrowing. And one of the things that has come along with this is an increasing agreement among Americans that ICE has not only gone too far, but needs to be if not abolished entirely, then severely curtailed, and a lot of Americans, this shocking amount, currently support

abolishing ICE entirely. A PBS News, NPR Merist poll released recently found that a majority of Americans feel ICE is making the country less safe and has gone too far. Six in ten Americans disapprove of what ICE is doing, only about three and ten approve of it, So by a two to one margin, Americans disapprove ICE's operations to approve of their behavior. This is a very like political breakdown. About ninety one percent of Democrats disapprove of Ice, sixty

cent of Independence disapprove of ICE. Meanwhile, seventy three percent of Republicans approve of ICE, but even that number has dropped fairly recently. Right In fact, the percentage of Americans that believe ICE hasn't gone far enough dropped from eighteen percent to twelve percent over the last year, and only about twenty two percent of Americans feel like Ice is doing a good job compared to twenty six percent of

Americans a year ago. So we're seeing like pretty unequivocally Americans rejecting the Republican tactics on immigration, and they tend to be blaming Ice for it, right, Like, That's one of the things that's most interesting to me is that both Ice and President Trump have seen the most dramatic collapses in public support. Would suggests to me that, like Americans are kind of tying these two things together. Currently, per Yugov, as of January twenty fourth, twenty twenty six,

more Americans support abolishing ICE than oppose it. Now, this is not mean a majority of American support abolishing Ice. I've seen some people mistate that forty six percent of US adults, as pulled by Yugov, somewhat or strongly support abolishing Ice, twelve percent are not sure. Forty one percent somewhat or strongly oppose abolishing Ice. Yeah, that's still pretty striking.

sense at all, no sense at all. And what happened is that once you take that enforcement piece out of that agency, they then start to answer to nobody, even though ICE technically, statutorily their responsibility is just supposed to be on immigration enforcement. They are now expanding their data collection to US citizens, to everyone on this soil. They are waiving these phones around and saying that they're implementing facial recognition technology to a centralized database. We have to

fight this tooth and nail. We need to defund We need to not allow this to be collected by private companies. A lot of what we need to do is not just revisit Section seven oh two. We need to abolish ICE, and we need to have comprehensive.

So that's what we're doing through the appropriations process. No, my position has not changed. I still think that the agency should be abolished.

And broadly speaking, the Democrats didn't do anything to stop it. But I also, like, I guess where I am on this is I think it's kind of counterproductive at this point. The failures of the Biden administration, I think are quite manifest in what the Trump administration is doing right now.

And what I want to focus on is the fact that we've had, in the space of several months, Americans become more than twice as likely to support abolishing ICE, which is both a fragile coalition because the fact that the number has changed so rapidly means that it could potentially change back. Like, I don't feel solid in counting on that to be the permanent state of affairs, but it introduces an opportunity, and it's an opportunity to build

support to destroy this agency. And I think it's probably too much to hope for DHS as a whole and anything close to the near term. But the fact that during the Biden administration so much got punted on. I don't know, like we're past that. We have the opportunity, now, we have the anger. Now I do I retain my worry And I would say almost one of my biggest political fears is that twenty twenty six and twenty twenty

eight go well for Democrats. They do again what happened under the Biden administration.

I don't think we will ever see support like this again for legalization of undocumented people, for dreamers, right, or people who are impacted by deferred action for childhood arrivals, which is a policy that became to place under Obama. Like, now is the time for substeps actual immigration reform. I say this knowing that this will not fix a problem.

Like more than most people you know, I have seen the horrors of our immigration system firsthand, but like there is a moment right now that we could change things.

right now. Like both, we need increased pathways and we need increased resilience to promise people that hey, if you go through all of these hoops to become a legal resident or a citizen or whatever, it can't just get pulled away the next time a Republican wins office.

doesn't give us Berlin. It's like, well, but these are steps, you know, you try to damage and reduce the agency's power and ability to function, Yeah, while you're continuing. And I guess the worry about that too is that if you do defund ICE, if they because we've had some Trump has made a couple comments about worrying that, like we need to reduce kind of the tempo at which

ICE is operating because it's bad for them. So that is kind of one of my concerns that maybe if they, if they pull back on the throttle a little bit, the rage will decline enough that there's not this kind of motivation behind abolishing. But I feel like that's just a fear you kind of have to eat, as opposed to not trying to stop and reduce the harms the agency does in the immediate term while you're working long

term for abolition. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did want to talk a little about other numbers, because immigration is obviously a major issue for American voters. It's an issue people pick who they're going to vote for the presidency on. It's one of them, but it's not the main one. As a general rule, throughout most of modern political history, the kind of the top issue for Americans is the economy. And if the economy is bad, it is very hard

for your party to stay in power. If the economy is good, it is a lot easier for your party to stay in power. Right, Like, these are fairly basic facts of political life in the United States, always with some caveats, but that it bears looking at how do Americans feel about the economy and who do they blame for the fact that they feel badly about the economy? And per Politico, which carried out a recent survey, about forty six percent of Americans say the cost of living

is the worst they can remember it ever being. This includes thirty seven percent of people who voted for Trump in twenty twenty four and Americans pretty like significantly agree that this is a Trump problem. Inflation, the fact that they can't afford things is on him because he's the present. Again, forty six percent of Americans say it's Trump's economy and his administration is responsible for rising costs. And this is true both among Republicans and Democrats, which is very interesting

to me. A percentage of Americans, based on the vote in the twenty four election, fifty three percent of Harris voters in twenty twenty four say the cost of living is the worst they've seen it, and again, thirty seven percent of Trump voters in twenty twenty four feel the same way. So that is it's an example of something that we've talked about and wondered about on the show a lot, which is like how much does reality break

through the fever swamps? And this is suggesting that, like to a pretty solid degree, that actually Trump is I still think he's got a floor of somewhere around thirty percent of Americans who will follow him into the pits of hell, even if it means shoveling themselves into it. But that number used to be like forty percent, right, and it does seem to be declining. This is being treated as a five alarm fire among the Trump White House,

which is interesting me for a couple of reasons. You know, anytime you talk with especially people and left about but also increasingly a lot of Democrats about the midterm elections in the twenty twenty eight elections, I think you have to deal with his people saying, but are there going to be elections?

that those will be competitive elections. They are worried about the economy, they are worried about their polling, and they are taking actions to try to mitigate the worries that they have, which they wouldn't be doing if they were already sure there's never going to be another election, right,

And that is important to remember. It doesn't mean there's not a danger, doesn't mean they won't try shit if they lose but it does mean that they are treating these political issues as political issues that they have to deal with via messaging. There was an article in Fox News recently about Trump's team huddling to decide on midterm messaging.

I'm going to quote from that now. The meeting, which was confirmed to Fox News by sources familiar with the gathering, was hosted by White House Chief of Staff Susie Wilds and Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who is steering Trump's political strategy. According to sources, the message during a slide presentation by chief polster and Chief Strategists and strategist Tourney Fabrizio, was that the economy will be the top issue in the minds of voters, and the White House

needs to spotlight its efforts on easing affordability. The meeting was held as the GOP ares to defend their control of the Senate and their razor thin House majority in November's midterm elections. Republicans are also dealing with the presidents continued underwater approval ratings and a slew of surveys, including the latest Fox News pulling, that indicates Americans are pessimistic about the economy and publicly. The administration's claim is that

Americans are happy with the economy. The economy is the best it's ever been. Look At how good the doo is. It's over fifty thousand, right. But everything we're hearing internally, like all of the reports that from people inside the administration about like what's going on day to day, is that they're wide awake and worried over the fact that their economic numbers are completely fucking dog shit. Now, what

does this mean for the midterm elections? Well, very few people that I have found who are like credible analysts don't expect the Democrats to retake the House, right.

about forty one seats. There's a couple of reasons for this, right, And I found a good article in The Hill that's kind of analyzing like why we shouldn't be expecting some of the exuberants that you're seeing on social media about like early elections and how bad Trump's numbers are is maybe making people overly optimistic about like flipping all of Congress to Democratic control, which is not currently the likeliest outcome.

And there's a couple of reasons for this. One of them is that as unpopular as Trump is, and I've hit on that quite a lot, the Democratic Party's overall favorability is at about thirty three percent, which is nine points lower than the Republican parties reability and you know, depending on the poll, five to ten points lower than Trump's own favorability. This is based on a Marquette Law School poll. Right, So Trump is very unpopular, so with

the Republican Party. But people don't like the Democrats the Democratic Party as a whole. People like individual Democrats, a lot of people like their Congress person, a lot of people like whoever it is they want to see as

the presidential candidate. You know, you can look at you know, you've got folks who really like Mamdani, are really like pritzkerp But as a whole, voters, including Democratic voters, don't feel very positively towards the Democratic Party, in many cases more negatively still than they feel about the Republican Party

that started to turn around. But if you're kind of hoping that there's going to be like a full on switch that makes it immediately possible to successfully impeach President Trump, that is extraordinarily unlikely to come in twenty twenty six, right, which doesn't mean that it's unlikely to have a good result. Republicans losing control of Congress is a good result.

can flip. And I don't think Republicans are likely to lose control of the Senate, right, And the polling shows

things being pretty razor thin there. Democrats have about a four percent advantage according to economist you gov polling right now in the congressional midterms, and there's a three point margin of error, so you're looking at like a lead, but not enough of one for a complete fucking blowout, right, there has been some more positive data, like kind of right before we came on to record this, Like I looked at some charts by Focal Data that was kind

of breaking down midterm voting and tensioned by groups and looking at like likely voters, And this is always kind of a little bit like voodoo, right in terms of how you're trying to, like, well, how likely is a likely voter and how do we like factor in realistically are they going to show up anyway? If you're kind of assuming that like people who self report as likely voters will only actually vote about a third of the time. Per this study, Democrats are ahead by about seven points

in a generic house ballot. So you know, that's kind of where we are right now. I think we're looking at a midterm season that's going to go well for the Democrats. But I don't think we're looking at a midterm season that delivers us from the Republican Party being able to ram through legislation. I think our kind of best case scenario is one in which they have to give major concessions because the Democrats have you know, flipped the House at the very least like and that's big,

but I don't think. I don't think Trump's going to get impeached starting January of next year.

election turnout. And also the Democrats have been absolutely obliterating the Republicans in all the special elections that have been happening recently, or even in the cases where they're lose, they're losing by very small margins in.

and killed. Like that's kind of the background and it makes people angry, but like it's these these these specific actions which seem to shift public opinion dramatically. All Right, So on that topic, I guess we should talk about the quote unquote shutdown, and specifically the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. Right. I guess the first thing to clarify is this isn't a government shut down in the sense of the shutdown we saw last year, right that lasted like forty plus days.

Management Administration, the Secret Service, and the Coast Guard. Some TSA workers will be working that they will likely not be receiving pay. This is pretty common right that they're deemed does quite unquite essential workers, and that means that they will be expected to work. What we saw last time was that as the shutdown dragged on, people were calling in sick or not coming into work because they were taking other jobs right because they had bills to pay.

The reason this is happening is because Democrats successfully managed to get Trump to separate DHS funding from another spending bill which passed through and founded the rest of the

federal government. They are demanding an end to masking. I should clarify specifically like masking in the dents of law enforcement officers wearing gators over their faces, a return to opposites displaying their name, badge, and ID number, increased oversight of detention conditions, coordination with local law enforcement, and end to the detention of US citizens, targeted enforcement and not roving patrols, and a unified use of force and uniform

conduct policy for CBP and ICE. And then an end to raids using Form two point fifteen and just going to note here them moving before we're going to refer to that using it it's that name, and not call it an administrative warrant because an administrative warrant like kind of implies the action of a judge. But these are forms that are filled out right that it is not the same early aspected as a warrant, and that's a

judicial warrant. The Republican counterproposals so far have shown pretty little common ground on this, aside from other body cameras where Gnome did implement body cameras. As I said, ICE and CBP will continue doing what they do right. I was at the border on Saturday and I saw tons of CBP patrols. They do not seem to have slowed down with their wall construction. That that may overtime slow down. They won't be paying like the workers week by week

on those contracts. They will be paying a contractor who might be paying a subcontractor, so that would take time to slow down. The things that will slow down are things like the oversight functions to DHS, potentially administrative and hiring functions, things like that, right.

that's under the DHS. Yes, so they like considered veterans, but they're not on the DoD or the DOW as you can now call it. The NBC has a piece suggesting that there is, I guess a split in the Coast Guard between lower ranks and higher ranks, and specifically they're talking about feeling that Coast Guard is moving away

from its court mission, which is search and rescue. They highlight one incident in February of last year when a Coast guardsman went overboard and a Coast Guard See one thirty was detailed to participate in the search for that Coast guardsmen.

called alien expulsion operations. According to two US officials and a Coastguard official, as a result, what happened is that local Coast Guard officials in San Diego scrambled to find two C twenty seven's that could fulfill that deportation flight. In doing so, that freed out the sea one thirty to then go return to participate in the search.

towards doing more border enforcement. Right under NOME seven hundred and fifty flights have been redirected from their regular work to instead deport migrants. This comes after she removed a high ranking Coast Guard official from her house so that Nope could live at the house. Wait what Yeah, yeah, she kicked the Coastguard person out of their house.

Coylewandowski reportedly sheltered at the Coast Guard flight staff and demanded they turn around before attempting to fire the pilot, who fused to do so.

what they joined the Coast Guard to do. I will just say that there are very few areas in which the United Kingdom has worked shit out, but the lifeboats are one of them. They are mentioned in Mutual Aid. The Royal National Lifeboat Institute has an article on for Popkin on their website incredible and it is. It is one of the really genuinely good things about Britain. By contrasting, they are not part of our government security apparatus.

but survived their injuries. In the aftermath of the strategy, people across the right and the left have both used this shooting offensively and defensively in the culture war because of the shooter's general identity and far right conspiratorial politics, even though evidence points to wards this being targeted domestic violence. The deceased or the shooter's ex wife and eldest son, and the deceased ex wife's parents were critically wounded but survived,

as did a family friend. The shooter's other son was on the ice playing hockey while the shooting took place. Ordinarily, we would not talk about an instant like this in the news because there's a lot of domestic violence shootings that happened across the United States every week, and not all of them become national news stories. This is news because of its weaponization in the political culture war, but under most methodologies like this incident would not even be

categorized as a mass shooting. Yeah, because less than four people died, it does qualify under the Gun Violence Archive criteria, which counts injuries not debts, in which this would be the forty first shooting in the US this year. But after the shooting took place, right wing accounts and influencers started using this as a part of their trans mass shooter narrative. On Monday night, the Pawtucket Police that they believed the shooting stemmed from a family dispute. The shooter

was fifty six years old with six kids. About ten years ago, the shooter started identifying as a transgender woman and used the name Roberta Espisito. The legal last name is Dorgan.

marriage unquote. The shooter was extremely active on Twitter, made anti semitic and conspiratorial posts, and frequently interacted with a large assortment of mega influencers, as well as far right, neo Nazi, and conspiracy theory influencers like Nick Fuentes and Alex Jones. Dorgan also shared pictures of a massive like ss toten CoV tattoo on their right arm and wrote on Twitter quote postop trans to the right of Hitler and quote you can be pro LGBT and pro Trump unquote.

From looking through their Twitter, it it mostly appears to be someone who is suffering from extreme mental distress. It's hard to, you know, chart how much of the political beliefs that can be just split on Twitter are like genuinely held versus how much they relate to long standing mental health issues this person suffered from, which I'll get into in a sec I'm still a little hung up on the name. The name also, I think relates to just this person's very very not well.

non source claims about a statistical epidemic of trans violence. But laying blame on Make America Great Again and the MAGA movement doesn't really get us much closer to understanding

this violence. We're so used to defaulting to this heartizan culture war like ideological explanation for the cause of public violence, whether that's you know, for the right, trans ideology or neo Nazism, even though both in this case and the shooting in Canada last week, which I talked about a few days ago on the show, this was like anti social, unstable and self destructive individuals who killed family members and then created a deadly public situation leading them to kill themselves.

Despite Nazi tattoos and Twitter posts, this hockey game shooting was not ideologically motivated violence. This was targeted interpersonal violence against family stemming from extreme mental health issues. This goes beyond like right left politics. This shooter just seemed to be drawn to anything seen as extreme or anything that

produced anti social effects. The daughter of the shooter briefly spoke to local news on Monday, saying that the shooter was her father and that the shooter had quote unquote mental health issues and was quote unquote very sick. The Rhode Island Coalition Against Mister Violence said in a statement Monday night. Quote, while details are still emerging, we know that violence within families and intimate relationships can have devastating

and far reaching out impacts. Domestic violence does not stay behind closed doors. It affects children, extended family members, and entire communities.

always give our bloodline a chance unquote. So this incident of arson the black church is definitely ideologically motivated.