It Could Happen Here Weekly 37

can make your own decisions. Welcome to It could happen here, the podcast where we spend all of our time talking about skincare now personally and a lot of people say this is a bad idea. I enjoy using concentrated chlorine with a little bit of ammonia. Um, it just cleans the pores, It cleans the grout, It gets all of that pesky code out of your lungs. Um. You know. An entire generation of British and German and French boys all agree chlorine gas does the trick. How are we doing?

What's this episode about? Hi? Welcome Welcome to It could happen here? A podcasting about things falling apart and how we can maybe put them back together. I'm garrison, Um, I'll be I'll be leading leading this swed um with me is is is Chris? And uh this this random person that we brought on from the street named Robert Um and we'll be talking about some things that are

not great and kind of current problems. So I I spent I spent a lot of my formative youth lurking, studying and kind of documenting some of the some of some of the bad places on the internet, you know, Nazi chat rooms, chance sites, Facebook, hate group you know whatever, all all of all the things, um. And you know, growing up in Portland, Oregon in like the twenty teens, this was this was something that felt kind of foisted upon me as as a kid discovering my own queerness

and coming out of an extremely homophobic, like insular Christian community. Um. Meanwhile in Portland having you know, self described fascist march alongside gay hating Christians on my city streets, Nazis murdering people on our public transit. You know that. Uh, that that that that put a lot of fellow fellow scrawny gay kids, uh to put on black black hoodies and balla lavas to mason fight far right extremists that were

like two or three times their size. Um. But the problem is, of course what what what one dred pound Depressed teens aren't aren't necessarily the best brawlers, um under under some circumstances, although they can handle uh the fire extinguisher filled with paint pretty well. That's true. But a lot of us also started doing like online research and stuff um to find like the names and dresses of like fascists and members of hate groups and all all

that kind of all that kind of stuff. I still remember the kind of the the thrill and the buzz of my first like big find as as a as a baby online lurker. Um it was I think it was. It was the leader of the hell shaking Street Preachers who was living at the time, fucking prick that that was.

That was the first guy I did UM. And I remember being very excited being because yeah he was he was a massive asshole of so yeah, he's he's like a you know, very extremely homophobics quote unquote street preacher, just a big old show. Yeah. But a lot of like this, like online research work wasn't wasn't just crush referencing social media posts with the White Pages, property records

and voter registrations to send nice postcards to hate group members. UH. Time was often spent tracking the use of like memes and cataloging and sharing fascists plans for projects and events, keeping keeping tabs on like their current propaganda trends that online white supremacists were. We're trying to we're trying to push and UM. One of one of the things that I came across about about two years ago was called Operation Pridefall. This was this is one of the one

of the one of one of these like. It was an organized campaign ran by people on Fortune, Discord, and Telegram. I I came across it a few a few days after the the plans were published online. And if you already know what Operation Pride Fall is or or heard that term before, UH. And if you're you know, like me, and we're on similar online spaces, you've you've probably found

the past few months of antiqueer propaganda. The massive increase in the gay and transpeople are groomership and the shutters can get pride discourse to be all very very predictable, a strangely familiar, like the worst case of deja vu, and in large part of the result of years of work behind the scenes by social engineering online bigoted trolls

and self described fascists. So we're gonna we're gonna talk today about kind of the overlap between this this thing called Operation pridefall uh, the Groomer discourse and how that kind of feeds into kink It Pride discourse. So three things that are not great, that don't go great but actually do kind of go great together. So a first, first of all, a little a little background on the whole recent Groomer thing, because we haven't actually discussed the

Groomer stuff in depth on the pod yet. Sure haven't you know why we haven't. I'd be like, whenever like horrible things happen in the news, I try to push back on just releasing an episode immediately covering it in case we have something like actually good to say. Um. So we've kind of waited to talk about the group of discourse stuff for a long time. UM, And I think now is is totally is totally fine to do so because we've had we've had months to let it

to let it simmer. Look at like the types of things they're encouraging, look at all of like the physical action they're trying to do, and with Pride Month approaching, we're going to see a resurgence of it in the

next few weeks here. Um So, as mentioned in our in our week long War on Transpeople episodes which was released like right before the new wave of the groomer ship accelerated, but in those episodes, we talked about the long history of conservatives and evangelical organizations promoting the false narrative targeted at parents and like concerned citizens that gay people, especially gay men, are more likely to be child predators than their heterosexual counterparts, along with the idea that queer

people are out to quote groom you're definitely on straight child into being gay, right, uh so in insinuating that that that they can then like have sex with them or something. Um, it's but yeah, they're trying to scare parents to be like gay people are out to get your kids. Um So, the actual like idea of what

being a groomer means changes based on who you're talking to. Um. In part two, I'm gonna going to quote a conservative writer who like admits this as as such, but still defends the use of the term um Because at the very least, if they used grooming within the context of turning your again absolutely completely heterosexual child um into a gay person. Thus they would, you know, begin to hate you and resent you as a parent for your godly

Christian values. They also consider that grooming. Um, it's not, it's not, it's not. Actually, just as a general rule, the attitude is if they do not turn out to be the exact kind of weirdo Christian as their parents, they were groomed by somebody, and it's merely a matter of picking the topic of the person to blame. Yeah, And all of that sort of rhetoric was extremely popular

through like the eighties and nineties and the early two thousand's. Um. But then came the knots in the twenty teens and this this this kind of had an attitude shift and some of that started to go away. Got we got a queer eye, we got ellen uh. The rate of conversion therapy started to decline. It was getting banned in more states. There was more queer acceptance in certain in

certain sects of the church. Even of course gay marriage went national in and eventually being like aggressively homophobic became like not a good look. It did. It was not you were not able to do that anymore, um, and still be able to have and and and and do it as like nonchalantly as you were as you used to be able to, whether that's in your like TV show, or whether that's you as a corporation UM, or you know,

some random other sectors of public life. But then, of course Trump got elected year after gay marriage went national, and then there's this resurgence in far right extremism, and the more commonly accepted kind of nonchalant gay bashing of old gets passed down to the next freak down the line,

which is trans people. So with that, the the adage of like the disgusting groomer freaks are going to turn your kids gay turns into the gender ideology freaks are going to turn your kids trans. It's all the same stuff, just passed on to the next to the next thing, um. And so we have that like anti trans and therefore anti queer hate festering for a few years, And this

inevitably opens up the door just a revival of classic homophobia. Um. Even even liberals like Front of the Pot at J. K. Rowling um and lots of the original Turfs got to apply the same homophobic rhetoric to trans people, um and gender nonconforming folks, which then obviously results in that propaganda and rhetoric being used to attack LGBTQ people on a whole once again. So it's it's resurrecting these old homophobic tropes and just applying it to a new generation of

queer people. Um and uh So for this next part, we're gonna we're not gonna talk about lives of TikTok because they did play a big, big part in what's what's some current discourses today? And I promise we'll get to operation I'd fall here shortly, just just hanging there with me. But before we talk about again, other friend of the pod, lives of TikTok Um, do you know what else it wants to turn your kids gay? Oh? Are you talking about the Washington State Highway Patrol? Because yes,

they absolutely do, Garrison. That's the one guarantee the Washington State Highway Patrol makes. They'll make your kids gay. Okay, Lives of TikTok joins the fight today, And I let's just take a moment to acknowledge how fucking frustrating it is that we have to discuss seriously TikTok that matters, like the worst. It's terrible. It's terrible. People always criticize the show for being like why do they talk about

all these dumb social media things? So like, yes, I know that they're stupid, but the bad part is that they actually matter. Yeah, I mean maybe, Yeah, we talk about them because of the seventeen year old trans girl in Texas who just got assaulted by like five dudes.

Is she was blamed on the shooting, and she was blamed for the shooting because in part of a lot of ship that Lives of TikTok helped to stir stir up, but because they proved there was a market for it that if you're like a right wing shit grifter, attacking

trans people is a great way to get an engagement anyway, Sorry, Garrison. Yeah, So, Lives of TikTok is a social media account turned to social media campaign started in April one by a Brooklyn area real estate agent named Chaia Chickum, who, by the way,

attended the January six attempted fascist insurrection. Um when when when violence broke out that day at the Capitol, she actually tweeted a play by play on a previous Twitter account of hers uh, posting videos from the crowd and talking about tear gas and rubber bullets being like shot right next to her um. And then after she left the riot, she she tweeted on Twitter that that the the event was peaceful compared to a BLM protest. So

that's yes, anyway, five five people died. You know, we we've we've we've now reached the part of we're now in tragedy of as farce of the thing that happens in every single state that goes fascist, where all the fascists trying to do a coup and it fails and then nothing happens and then they take over the state. Like seriously, our version of that instead of like, I don't know, weird fascist yakuza guys, it's the libs of TikTok.

It is the limbs of TikTok. So the Limbs of TikTok was around like the third attempt by right check to start a vital social media account. Uh, you know, the saying third times the charm, but in this case it actually was. So the account's gimmick is reposting and often grossly misrepresenting select clips from quote unquote libs on TikTok,

big big shocker, big big surprise. Uh, But more often than not, that really just means posting videos of queer kids and transpeople, uh, captioning it with something reactionary, and then leading a targeted harassment campaign against those individuals. On on May thirty one, so just about a year ago, she made her first grooming related post, just tweeting stop grooming kids and all caps. This is the first time

she tweeted anything related to grooming. Um. The day before that, she tweeted a video of a transperson um alongside the vomit emoji and a caption that just says men should not wear dresses. You can't change my mind. Her first super viral video related to LGBTQ people was later in June next month during Pride, by posting a TikTok of a kid explaining the concept of gender fluidity. Pretty pretty basic concept, uh, but she lives lives a TikTok commented

this is so messed up in so many ways. Her Her post racked up half a million views and indicated to her that the way to grow her little social media project into a right wing viral sensation was going to be with homophobia and transphobia. Uh that this is how she decided to continue her online career. Essentially, she called the prominent lgbt Q youth suicide prevention group the Trevor Project a grooming organization, and towards the end of two she kept using that term grooming groomer uh at

a at an ever increasing rate. Right It's it starts starts in like May and June, continues throughout the summer and fall, and then in the fall and winter she starts really kicking up all of the stuff around around grooming and queer people. I mean, all of her posts are already mostly about trans people and like trans people at schools. Obviously she was a big part of like the the whole school board thing from last year. So, but towards the end one though, is when the groomer

thing started becoming more of a recurring trend. Quoting quoting slate uh. Towards the end of one and into the new year, right check found her rhythm with memes and videos calling LGBTQ people and those who supported l g b t Q youth quote unquote groomers. She has even attempted to smear one of the most prominent gay men

in the country as a groomer. In a deleted tweet, right checks account accused Transportation Secretary Secretary Pete Bud's husband Chastin, of grooming kids for his work at at supporting lgbt Q youth organizations. This isn't fair. But I hate that his name is Chastin. I know, I don't like I

don't like that name. I don't like that name. I'm not a big I'm not a Chaston's stand either, but but but yeah, it's like finding the most prominent libby gay men and being like, hey, these people probably groom kids, and you know that that obviously riles up their base. Um. She's she's called for any teacher who comes out as gay to their students to be quote fired on the spot. Uh, which actually has happened since then. Uh has has has been multiple times since since since this account has been

has been launched. Um. The account's popularity grew alongside last year's racist, homophobic, and transphobic attacks on school boards across the country. She would often posting videos of queer teachers and lying about them grooming kids into being gay or whatever.

She was promoting organized harassment campaigns against those teachers, uh, interspersed with tweets and screenshots of news articles about teachers who sexually assaulted students, importantly not posting the article, but just like a screenshot of the headline, along with comments like funny, how this keeps happening, which is like neglects to mention that, like all these incidents are from heterosexual teachers, uh, or like that one story from last year of a

cop and his wife who was a teacher working together to sexually abuse children, Like none of them are actually about gay people. It's all. I mean, I'm not certain if a school resource officer has ever stopped a mass shooting, but I know that something like fifty of them have

been fired from a lesting kids. Yeah. It's it's it's it's really it's really insidious because she's she's posting all the stuff about you know, teachers grooming kids, uh, you know, and into being like queer teachers grooming kids, like alongside headlines of teachers actually like sexually sexually assaulting kids. But those headlines are all of stories about heterosexual teachers. Like but you know, so she posts both of those things.

So it's like to like to have this correlation for her audience, despite them not actually being related, because yeah, Lips of TikTok shore ain't posting about how cops should be kept away from kids for the safety of the children. Um, they're they're they're They're never going to post about how many people who grooping stuff have been arrested because like several of the organizers of of of this whole like gave people like grooming kids things like, have been arrested

for child abuse since this started. Which yeah, no it's not, it's never it's ever gonna matter, but you know, posting and lying about queer teachers grooming children next to headlines about teachers sexually abusing kids to manufacture this correlation, which is of course false, but it's still highly effective. Now.

Believe me, I would love to not talk about Twitter nonsense, but unfortunately to Witter, accounts like Lips of TikTok actually do play a massive role in shaping offline conservative politics. Lips of TikTok was very soon being interviewed by New York Post, being boosted by Joe Rogan going on Tucker Carlson.

Other Fox News hosts like Jesse Waters began featuring content straight from the lips of TikTok twitter feed uh, and Tucker encouraged his viewers to follow the account before it's a band if you want to know quote what may be happening in your child's school lass March, when Lives of TikTok posted the video of a woman teaching sex ed to kids in Kentucky like you know, preteens or whatever,

she called the woman a predator. In the next evening, the same clip was featured on Laura Ingram's Fox News program, with the host saying, when did our school, any of any schools become essential become what are essentially grooming centers for a gender identity radicals. Um so, yeah, this is the content straight from Liza TikTok being put onto the most watched news programs in the world. Um and as we'll see, also being taken in by some of the

most powerful conservative politicians. Mainstream conservative politicians quickly joined in in the tuting of the lips of TikTok grooming horn. Uh. Obviously around as Santis is a big, big part of this. Of one of Florida Governor Rhoda Santis's top aids and press secretary is a huge fan of Lips of TikTok Um and is in frequent communication with them. Quoting the Washington Post quote by March two, lips of TikTok was

directly impacting legislation. Rhonda Santiss. Press Secretary Christina Pershaw credited the account with quote opening her eyes and informing her views on the state's restrictive legislation that bands discussion of sexuality or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Referred to critics as they don't say gay bill. The bill has been unquote. So this bill has has already been used to get middle school teachers fired for for for

saying that they are not straight. Um. And you'll notice that middle school is not in kindergarten through third grade. Uh So, remember when we were all saying, hey, the actually it actually doesn't matter that the bill says it's only up for kindergarten through third grade. It's just gonna be applied for anyone. Yeah, it turns out we were right.

Uh So it's this. The bill has already been specifically cited in the firing of multiple teachers from Florida for for just not not you know, conforming to the heterosexual Christian hegemonic worldview, and lips of TikTok is still currently among the most prominent influencers, affecting actual material conditions and

shaping both the rhetoric and propaganda while impacting legislation. UM friend of lips of tick talk and descentences, Press Secretary Christina Preshaw has said, quote the bill that liberals inaccurately called Don't Say Gay would be more accurately described as an anti grooming bill. If you're against the anti grooming bill, you probably are a groomer, or at least you don't denounce the grooming of four to eight year old children. Silence is complicncy. This is how it works, democrats. This

is how it works democrats. And I didn't make the rules. So yeah, see you see how we have. See how that works. You called you called the dope Say Gay bill a anti grooming bill, so than everyone anyone who criticizes it is now a groomer? Is it? Is it that a fun way to play with words? Isn't that nice? That is a fun way to play with words? Garrison love it. So the past few months we've seen this.

You know, queer people are groomers meme reach seemingly never never before seen heights, and uh at least is and at the very least is the highest and most me medic has ever been in the past two decades. You know, It's it's really building off of all of the Killer Local pedophile ship, right it sure is. It's it's the Robert do you want to briefly, briefly talk about Killer Local.

I mean, it's a bunch of bumper stickers. It's a slogan like I know dudes who are not at all fascists and say that because they're like New Dad's and they're horrified at the But like the whole, like the core of it is this right wing and it kind of started off in like the sort of libertarian gun nut communities. But it's it's, it's it's really used a lot as sort of it's a group that you can talk about doing anything too. You can talk about killing,

you can like fetishize murdering um. And if you can then like define other groups as inherently pedophilic, then you can do anything to them, right Like, that's the basic idea is if you can get people saying it's always okay to use vigilante violence against this group. Um, and

obviously no one's gonna defend child molesters. But then you start making the case that people who are not in fact molesting children are somehow pedop files or you know, or somehow related to pedophiles, and then suddenly it's okay to kill them. It's okay to massive social groups like

all of gay and trans people. So if you conflate these two things are able to make these things represent the same thing in someone's mind that makes homophobia now not a bad thing, but like a moral imperative, like you have to be homophobic because these people are grooming children, yep, And you can get you get this interesting thing to which like there are people who are like not quite

as far in who will do who will say? I see things a lot where it's like someone's like, oh, well, I don't have a problem with gay people, but like they shouldn't groom kids, And it's like this is that's not what's happening, bro, Yeah no, do you know do you know what else doesn't groom kids? I mean, the Washington States definitely does. But let me tell you, if you want somebody to groom your children, the Washington Highways

State Highway Patrol will do that. But you know what they won't do is protect those children in the event of danger because that might endanger them. So look, look, sometimes sometimes right someone who's someone who's killing your kid and you need to get pepper sprayed, and when that time calls you, you will beg for the Washington Highway State Patrol. Well, you'll beg for a different police department.

But when those police get in trouble because of their failure to act, than the Washington State Highway Patrol will show up to protect those cops. Anyway, here's here's the bads. We're back. Um. So as the queer people are Groomer's ship was reaching the most memetic and the highest rate of of of trending that it's has had in decades this past April, at the height of the recent increased

wave of antiqueer legislation and anti lgbt Q rhetoric. Um. This this is when some terminally online teenagers tried to start kin get pride discourse once again. And I do not want to talk about this, but I've written stuff about it, so I'm going to this Legitimately, what I was like thinking about I realized I was gay, and I was like, oh my god, I should come out. And then I would like. One of the things that I spent a long time thinking about was does this

mean I have to do can't get pride discourse? And for a long time I would have said no, of course not, I'm never going to do this. Well, but here we are, so anyway, uh doing kick doing kink get pride discourse? Uh? Then, and even still now, while the antiqueer onslaught is accelerating at the highest pace it's had in years, sure seems to be like dumping fuel on the fire. Uh what's up with that? Kids? Why?

So anyway? Uh, the discourse itself revolves around whether kink apparel or paraphernalia render the pride space unsafe for minors or quote unquote non consensual observers. Uh heavy heavy quotation marks there by the way. Uh. But also it is heavily rooted in assimilationist and respectability politics and a push for LGBTQ people to be seen as more acceptable or

more normal while still existing in a heteronormative society. Um. And now, obviously I'm not a fan of this discourse happening in the first place, especially now, like why are you doing it now? During all the groomer stuff. Stop it, that's stop it, don't do that, quit it? Why are you doing this? Uh? But first of all, I also want to point out how this entire discourse runs on the same train of thought that fuels all of the groomer stuff in their first place. It's it's it's picking

at the same part of human brains. So here's I'm going to read this post that went super vital about a month ago, that that's sparked, that sparked the new wave of this uh much much frustrated discourse. Quote l g B t Q, youth being uncomfortable with kinks at Pride is not homophobia. Kin set Pride might have been fine if this was still the nineteen hundreds or adults were the only ones attending Pride, but it's not the nineteen hundreds anymore, and now kids are way more involved

in celebrating our identities. The celebrating our identities part there is really important, and we'll we'll talk about this more soon, but look, largely in the past like twenty years, there's been this shift with queerness and sexual orientation being less about who you fuck and more like a personality aspect or a social identity with a branded aesthetic. Um, it's it's this, it's like it's it's which is in some ways good, like in some ways good that people are

more able to express themselves however they want. But you know, kids at school aren't getting bullied for being gay anymore, which again is good, less than they were. They're they're getting bullied less somewhat depending on where you live. But it's also kind of it's made people forget the whole like, uh, like gaze bash back or gaze don't bash back, but shoot first. Like it's forgot, we don't have that. That's not as a core component of queerness anymore because queerness

is now able to be kind of more safe and sanitized. Uh. And it's it's a right, it's like it's and it's it's it's a personal identity in a way that it's not it's not just about who you fuck anymore. It's like this like personal identity aspect um, which I'm not saying is bad. It's just that there's this thing that's

happened that's changed the way we talk about sexual orientation. Hey, quick pause, This is Garrison from the future here, just popping in to clarify a bit on what I mean regarding this note on identities and identifying as various shades

of queer. What I'm getting at is that when observing some of the baby queers around my age or maybe a bit younger, queerness is seen as a more available option for young people when putting together their personality or sense of self, and more separated from the nitty gritty details of who you fuck. Now that queerness is generally more tolerated. Now, don't get me wrong, I do like the idea of being free to choose queerness. In many ways,

I consider myself as having chosen to be gay. The thing about framing that as your quote unquote personal identity as opposed to simply choosing to be what you are, is that the former lets you wield that quote unquote identity against other people or other queer people that disagree with you. It's it's this thing where queerness is filtered through the lens of brands and like brand recognition, which is definitely made worse by social media, dating apps, personal profiles,

and personal bios. And it's part of this cultural push to like have everyone create their own personal brand, and like, I don't want to identify as gender queer, I just am gender queer. I don't identify as gay. I just like catboys. Therefore I am gay. It's a different ontological framing and one that I think is less susceptible to heteronormative assimilationist ideas, and like the capitalist marketing to queerness

as a brand or as a market demographic. If your queerness is a personal identity that's more sanitized, more approachable for a heateronormative society, then you get to use your identity to attack gay people whose queerness is more based in deviant sexuality and alternative communities. I'm gonna I'm gonna read the the follow up tweet to this, to this thing that sparked the new discourse quote. Not even all lgbt Q adults are comfortable with seeing kings at Pride.

There's nothing from there's nothing stopping you guys from adjusting or having after events strictly for adults when they're partaken that y'all need to adjust that every lgbt Q person feels comfortable attending. So let's let's just do some like queer history here for a second. The first Pride was a riot um on on on on that night in June in the nineteen sixty nine nice Uh, the police raided the Stonewall in, one of the largest private private

gate clubs in the US at the time. The patrons of the bar, you know, trans women of color, homeless, queer teens, drag queens, lesbians, and leather daddies fought back lots of trans teenagers through bricks at cops and like a fair number of those trans teenagers were also sex workers. Uh. Kink including you know, like leather daddies, and lots of aspects that are we now views as like kink or b d s M has been a part of Pride since it's literal inception, like way back in nineteen sixty nine.

Um And while like, while drag isn't considered king now in two it still is considered it's actually deviant. But back in like the twentieth century, uh in in nine, you know, in nine, New York City still had laws that prohibited cross dressing, So drag used to be way more kinky than it is now. Uh. And like basically all queer sex used to be unacceptable kink. It was literally a crime. It was a crime in Texas until, like,

do you like? I think right around when I graduated high school two thousand three was when the Supreme Court also, it's no longer an enforceable laws and it's illegal. It's still illegal to own more than five dildos. Yeah, I think it's five, but it might be six. So, like all queer sex used to be unacceptable, kink and many logistical aspects of gay fucking used to happen in public. I'm gonna I'm gonna quote an article from them dot us quote. For some people, gay rights and gay liberation

do not hinge on particulars of sexual desire. For years, I've heard that we aren't just our irotic identities, but for many of us, it does begin there, and it does revolve around the ways we organize our erotic choices. Before lgbt Q plus people had pride parades, our community spaces were not just bars, but cruising spots like bathhouses, dungeons, and public restrooms. It should be no surprise that many queer folks find their sex lives and their sense of

community to be intertwined. B D s M. Subversive sexuality and leather culture have enjoyed a long history within the lgbt Q rights movement. They are inherent expressions of queer culture and sexuality. Being free to signal your sexuality out in the open within a queer context is the entire

point of pride unquote. So, like all of this discourse around pride and kink, it pride reflects a modern but regressive idea that sexuality is inherently damaging to see, experience, or think about in a public con text, especially if

that sexuality is inherently queer. And there's this other idea that we see a lot of in this type of discourse, and it's mirrored a little bit with like the groomer stuff too, that if you see someone quote unquote engaging in kink, and like in the case of pride, that's like what wearing a collar, harness or a pop mask, that just the act of observation is somehow a violation of consent. And it's really frustrating because indication of sexuality in a non vanilla sense while in public is not

a violation of consent. Like I didn't consent quote unquote consent to see the rainbow cops, right, But public indication of sexuality is not a consent of violation. And again, indicating sexuality is like the entire point of pride. Weaponizing quote unquote consent to call out people that we see but don't interact with, who are quote unquote dressed too sexual in our own mind is bad for multiple reasons. It also potentially dilutes legitimate claims of non consent in

cases of actual sexual violence. And it's it's like this thing like if you look at someone in a pup mask, there is no consent violation there. That's a really weird thing that people that people talk about, and it's not It's not like I'm not trying to start fights on the internet with like these tender queer children, um, because like and I I don't want anyone to find like these, like you know, months old posts and start harassing these people.

But that post has like over thirty thousand likes and thousands and thousands and thousands of retweets, and it basically just repeats like old queer bashing talking points that conflate kink and queer visibility with public sex that endangerous children, and like conflating gays being visible and semi clothed with being like dangerous to children are the same talking points that it gets you used for book bands conversion therapy,

and they don't say gay bills. Right. This idea that if you look at a gay person shirtless that's dangerous to a kid, that's the same, that's the same underlying motivation that fuels all of the screwbery discourse. Uh, it's it's it's the whole thing where it's like, I'm okay with gay people, I just don't want to see it. Right, It's like that that that that idea in and of itself is like is still like exists on that you know, I didn't consent to look at it type of thing.

You know. This This is other other tweet from somebody being like forcing people to see kicky stuff without consent is really weird. I'm sorry, but I don't want pop masks at Pride events for families. I saw that ship in real life and it made me uncomfortable. Don't involve other people in their kinks. I if they don't consent, and like looking at someone in a mask, it'sn't involving you in any of these kinks. You're if you're looking at someone in an other mask, Like, if that makes

you uncomfortable, that that's your problem. You don't have a right to not be uncomfortable with how people look or are in public. Look, every time I go out into the world, I see something that makes me uncomfortable. Um, I see a lot of people with children. Now do I think it should be legal to have children? Now? I do think that it should be. It should be illegal, exactly. So I like, look, we all have to deal with things that make us uncomfortable. Look like we have a

clear solution here. The way to deal with events not being family friendly used to get rid of families. That's it's exactly right. We have to eliminate the concept of the family. Yeah, come on, come on, come, Communist manifesto? What this is? One oh one ship people? You were you were? You were quoting from the Communist manifesto. Okay, that's interesting. That's that's not where I got it from.

But I I feel like I feel like a lot of these people, many of them like young teens, who are complaining about being forced to look at unquote inappropriate things that pride. I've never actually been to a pride because most of most of modern pride is like really

sanitized and chill like it's like it is. It is overrun with corporate sponsors, politicians and cops Like you are you you are way more likely to see armed police at like a Pride march then you're then you'll be likely to see like tits or like gags or whatever like most It's funny to me because like I started going to these and this is before the internet was what it was or moral panics were what they were.

But like in Texas, I would go to these events where there would be people of all ages and families. These are like little burning regionals. People would be like at like on the big night when people are doing like the fire shows and the firework stuff, people would be like fucking and like manning flamethrowers, like while having sex. There there were like there was a whole chunk of it that was just like the kink row and you could walk down and watch people get like whipped and

fuck a sibian and stuff. It was just like I don't remember any of this fucking. Like the only discourse was like, well, okay, we should probably like make sure that people know where that kind of stuff mainly happens so that like they don't have to walk around it if they don't want to. But like it was, Yeah, it's like this idea that like not even full nudity, but like semi nudity within a queer context is inherently more dangerous to children if it's if it's in a

queer context than a straight context. Right, we have all of these even like queer kids can like complaining online about being forced to see things at Pride just like they would see way more skinned if they went to like a beach in the summer. Like it's it's there's it revolves on the same homeophoblic idea that like if if you look at these things in a queer context that is like more adult than it looking at it

within a straight context. Yes, Um, it's I don't know, frustrating, it's frustrating and like another another reason why that I think many of these like baby leftist tender queers are who are who are crusading against kink at Pride and complaining about like leather and or like sexy underwear. Um, lots of them even uh, first of all, most of them, I think lots of them haven't been to Pride because there hasn't really been Pride for the past two years,

and lots of these people are like fifteen years old. Um, but a lot of them also just like admit to never be going to Pride because they're too terrified to see a pop mask. Like they openly say, like I've never been because I don't want to see these things. Like sure, you're allowed to do that, but then don't make don't like, don't campaign against King Pride, which will result in your posts getting used by like homophobic trolls

and bigots. I don't because I don't want to see a deep dish pizza, but I don't try to ban them, like I understand that that's the thing you people, like, Like the first time I saw pop mask was that fucking Comic Con. Like it's like like like it's not you don't see like band pup masks from comic con, Like what Like these these people, like these kids are are basing their fears off of like a few viral

photos that are often shared in a disingenuous context. Now, well, we'll talk about these photos in a bit, but you know, these these people are like fifteen years old, have never been to Pride, and are just like simply terrified of like actual sexuality, like they enjoy, they engage with queerness is like a personal identity and stuff. But once they get into like the nitty gritty of like sex, that makes them really uncomfortable because their teens, because their kids

that that's okay. You can be uncomfortable with sex that makes sense, that is that it's appropriate for your age. But then don't make your entire online presence about trying to shut down this massive aspect of queer history. Um because like the kinky stuff that I've seen at Pride is yeah, on par with what you see at Comic Con. I often will see more more nudity at Portland's Comic Con than I than I will at any of the

Pride events I've been to. Um, Like all of them more like openly like fetish folks or kinky folks are really responsible and act pretty appropriately at Pride, and and the people who like say otherwise online generally just have

not actually been to Pride in their entire life. Um because like this complaining about quote unquote like inappropriate fetishes or like kinky conduct, it's basically code for I am uncomfortable with you being positive about the way you view sex, and I want you to not show it, and I want you to not and I want you to not talk about it, which is the same underlying thought process that people use to be homophobic. It's the it's the exact same thing. Um. Now, a lot of this discourse

oversimplifies kink and b D S M. Um. Right, queerness can be about it can be about love, it can be about it can be about sexual attraction um and both uh or sometimes for like a sexual people in lacking one or the other um or both uh. But but by that same token, right, kink leatherin b D S M aren't all exclusively about sex to a large extent,

they're also about community building. Um. And I just think these these like earnest think of the youth arguments are very silly because even when it comes to youth, because if you're uncomfortable things, that's totally fine. But in a lot of cases, like queer teenagers also have sex generally with other career teenagers, sometimes even in a kinky context, and that's okay. Pride is about celebrating everyone's individual ability

to do that. And I don't like it when when people just rehash old home of public talking points to to especially during during all of this, all of this groomer discourse, because a key key part of key part of kink, a key part of like queer sex, is consent. And once you're start you start complaining what consent is by saying that me looking at you wearing a collar is a violation of consent. Once you start undermining what

consent actually means, that's like not a good thing. It's actually not that is actually a bad thing, especially right now during all of the during all of all of all of the grimmer stuff. So that is we are we've gone kind of over on on time here. Um, but we're gonna make We're gonna make this a two parter.

In the next episode, we'll talk a bit more about like tender queers and we'll actually get into the plans of Operation Pride Fall and talk about how we kind of got to this point because man, there's a lot of kids sharing sharing pictures online and oh boy, do those pictures originate in some dubious, dubious places. Um, So that that that does it for us today. We will we will see you tomorrow. Um, Pride is fun. We should not police what other people do. So Yeah, anyway,

Bye bye, Welcome back to get Happen here. This is part two of our discussion on Operation Pride Fall and they kick Get Kick Get Pride discourse and the grimmer stuff and how they all combine in the really horrifying, really the way that I wish they didn't because it's

pretty frustrating. So, uh, last episode I talked towards the end, I talked to a decent amount about tender queers um, and I actually would like would like to define this term here um and kind of get into why these why these people are boosting these specific like talking points that are just kind of regurgitate old types of homophobic stuff. They claim it doesn't, but like it does. You're using this exact same logic, you're just kind of reframing it.

So tender queers are this this the type of like there's kind of like an in joke for like the

queer community of this personality type. Generally, the tender queers are like a you know, typically a gen Z or a millennial queer more likely to be like fem, whether that be like a woman non binary or fem person lesbians, Uh, you know, fem bisexuals, pan sexuals or like queer soft boys kind of they feature this like combination of personality designation an aesthetic, and they're known for being especially adapt at using like watery language of therapy as a means

to like get out of most things. Um Ever, everything's about like holding space and healing and intimacy, and it's like it's wrapped up in this like jovial pastel bubbly package. Right. If you throw in some astrology, some like corturoy overalls, shaved heads and round glasses, and you've got yourself like

a basic tender queer. And a little quote here from an author named Daisy Jones from an article that they made quote just like the straight soft boy who uses performative sensitivity to get away with being a little shit, sometimes so does the tender queer. Tender queer generally refers to a trope in the queer community of a queer person who presents themselves as being sensitive, hyper vocal of their feelings, sometimes thought of as prioritizing feelings and hyper

intentional language over their own harm and privilege. So they kind of use like identity politics to avoid accountability. There's like this um competitive oppression and self victimization. They center themselves and their feelings in social or political movements that aren't necessarily about them. They kind of they prioritize in

effective methods of self care. They utilize like gaslighting and dumping the emotional labor of dealing with your own self onto onto others, like to Tender queers are kind of they're they're known to like mask toxicity and manipulativeness in

the performative language and aesthetics of social justice. They have this like performative soft hypersensitivity and use identity politics to kind of call out or avoid things that make them uncomfortable and will like and will publicly declare those things as problematic and in an attempt to force others to

conform with their own will. So that's why I describe a lot of these like younger younger teens um who who use these talking points against against quote unquote kink at pride as tender queers, because like, they're the people who are really sensitive about what makes them comfortable, and they avoid any they try to avoid or campaign against anything that makes them uncomfortable, and they use all these like performative turns of phrase and talking points to to

avoid having actual discussions about it. It's just like weaponization of their marginalized identity as a shield to avoid accountability or to deflect against people challenging them for abusive behavior or in in the in the in like the Pride case, this like internalized homophobia. Uh there's there's the these little little tweet exchange for some from some people on the

superviral kick a Pride post from a month ago. Um, I'm fourteen and I don't want to see a half naked person in leather straps and a gag and an event. I take my family too. And someone replied, like, try glancing Eddie Marty Gros or even a public beach before you apply homophobic double standards. And then they the poster replied, you think I'm homophobic, I'm literally a trans non binary lesbian. So again this is this is this is this is what I mean when I when when I when I

talk about title queers. Right, there's someone's calling them out for applying this homophobic double standard on how they view like public semi unity, right, not even like full nunity, just like how they view public semi nudity like a bikini or something right, and then they respond by saying, I'm literally a trans done binary lesbian um and then went out to say also, people at those don't wear kinkshit, and that's why I don't go to Marty Gras or

large public beaches. It makes me uncomfortable seeing a bunch of adults and kinkshit being sexual just physically makes me ill. People at Marty Garras and public beaches don't act sexual or wear kinkshit, And so like, I feel like you haven't been to Marty girls like you will see way

more skinned at a public beach. Most kicks should require, like requires covering your body and a lot of extra stuff, Like if you're wearing a harness or like a latex full leather outfit, you're like showing way less skin than someone wearing a spido or a bikini. So maybe you're just uncomfortable with people expressing their sexuality, which, in case, don't go to Pride, because that's what Pride is all about. That's the entire poot. But yeah, little the whole, Like

I'm literally a trans non binary lesbian. Like that's like such a perfect encapsulation of what the tender queer kind of trope is um and like not not not not Many people like self self identify as as Tinder queer as it's kind of this joke that the more kind of punky queer community has kind of it's like an we're putting a label on this, this behavioral trend that we've observed, and it's it's kind of a joke, Right, I'm not trying to call out specific people. I'm not.

If you're soft and emotional sensitive, cool, whatever, do whatever you want. I'm fine, Just don't don't use these things as a shield to justify forcing your will onto other people. It's cool to not It's totally fine to like not like people being publicly affectionate or like doing public like It's perfectly fine to be uncomfortable with that. It's perfectly like. That doesn't mean anything bad. It doesn't mean you're a prude,

it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you. But like, there's nothing wrong with people wanting to be public with that at a public event, celebrating the fact that it's they are now less oppressed for doing that thing, like yeah, or a beach or Mardi Gras, and like, make sure you're cognizant if you're engaging in any kind of like socially normalized ideas of like straight stuff is inherently less sexual than gay stuff, right I always, I mean, I

advocate people being able to like get into their own head and figure out why they think certain things like this. It's it's this idea of uh meta thought, trying trying to think about why you think about things. Um So, if you if you're if you're more uncomfortable with two men kissing then you are with than one man and

a woman kissing, you should think about that. You should be like even even as like even as a trans non buyinary lesbian, if you if you if if you're more if you're more uncomfortable looking at two men kiss you should think about why, why, what social conditioning has caused this to happen, Because that's something that people have been pushing for a long time, is that, yeah, gay stuff is like more adult or more mature than queer stuff.

I think that's a big part of of of these types of things being at prized like pushing back on that idea. Um So, like I think and the reason why we see more of these now is like there are these baby tender queers who grew up in a world where you were less likely to get fucking assaulted for being gay, while also growing up on the Internet

in the age of Tumbler and Instagram. Right, these kids were able to construct their own comfortable, safe bubble the versions of reality online, only being exposed to what they want when they want, right they get they get to only view it things that they find esthetically pleasing, and the pandemic certainly heightened this right with people being forced

to solely exist in their self catered online worlds. So now with the outside world opening up, some of these soft baby tender queers are going through puberty and are dealing with their quote unquote uncomfy feelings um and the added notion of being exposed to things that you have specifically not sought out like that that causes them to be uncomfortable. Right, if if you're if you're if you're a FEMI person who has just attracted to other FEMI people,

having to having to look at dudes be affection. It may not be your cup of tea, but and you may not like enjoy it, but that's like it's just as queer as you are. So if you shouldn't you can't prioritize your queerness over somebody else's. Um it's it's it's it's it's It's like there's this collection of baby gates that gets uncomfortable being reminded that people, like especially people whom they are not personally attracted to, have sex.

It's like if they're reminded that this happens and they don't like it, Um, it's like it feels like they have this sort of like anxiety just about about just looking at something that they perceive as sexual in nature. Right, and for this for them, this includes other but two differently queer people wearing leather or being semi nude, like dudes being shirtless or women being shirtless, for like think that that's a whole other double standard that should be

uh pushed back upon. Um. But like, again, it's pride. It's not any more naked than people at the beach. Uh, So you're not, it's not. Actually if they're very selective in the types of things that they that they will they that they will focus on, and it plays into this notion that's used by all like anti gay legislation, that gayness is inherently more sexual than being straight, Right, it's it's it's it's more sexual, it's more mature, it's

more adult. Uh because for a long time, being gay was exclusively seen as like a hyper sexual dving act um. And now, especially among gen Z baby queers, being queer is now less tied to specifically the act of sex. Right. Queerness is much more of an like an overarching personal identity now, especially as like as an intersex with like gender and stuff, right, you know, whether that being on binary or this other stuff like pan sexual, bisexual, what have you. But to kind of circle back to the

Kinker Pride stuff, people want us dead for being queer. Uh, it doesn't him mad if someone's parading around in a collar. If you're uncomfortable, you should maybe learned to fight, actually fight back into people who actually want to kill you. Like Pride was a riot, you should you should sort out your uncomfy feelings elsewhere or director or director uncomfy

feelings that the people attacking us. So maybe maybe don't prop up can get pride discourse When accusations of queer people being all groomers is that is that an all time high and there's fascists organizing to like shoot us at Pride marches, So maybe consider that before you do discourse on Twitter dot com. I'm I'm gonna do one little quote and then we will have an ad break. Just gonna end this section with a quote from them dot com again quote. Kinks, sex and protests are all

inherent parts of Pride. One of the core tenets of Pride is liberation and working against cultural shaming. Calling to quote not perform your kinks and fetishes at Pride because some miners are there and King can quote sexualize the event unquote uh implies that celebrating sexuality and kink is openly bad, and normalizing these things should be a goal

of Pride. B D s M subversus sexuality and leather culture have enjoyed a long history within the lgbt Q rights movement, and such public space of sexuality are driven by much more than libido or countercultural impulses. They're an inherent expression of queer culture and queer sexuality, and as such deserve a place at Pride as much as anything else. Okay, and now it's time to actually get into what the title of these episodes is about. Uh, the Operation Pride

Fell stuff. We're gonna talk about this thing that sucks. Um. So, whether you're looking at the conservative groomer discourse or the tender queer kink it Pride discourse, you'll see a lot of the same logic as well as a lot of the same photos. We've We've talked a lot about memes on the show, and I'm not gonna get I'm not gonna get into like the powder memes very much right now, but suffice to say that like a picture can stick in your head a lot easier than a bunch of

words can. Um And throughout the Groomer and kick It Pride shit, there are a few select photos that people use to demonstrate their opinions on how gay people are a threat to children. Um. Either either there's just pictures of adults and like kink associated garb, usually like full latex body suits or pop masks UM or uh. And there's the specifically like uh. There's these two specific pictures of kids just like standing next to adults who are

wearing pop masks that get used a lot. There's also there's also a lot of pictures of like drag queen story time and whenever, whenever I see any of these very specific pictures, I flashed back to when I first came across the original Operation Pride Fall four chune thread back in because these are actually all of all of

the exact same pictures. Um so. Operation Pride Fall was a cyber harassment campaign started on Fortune, targeting the degeneracy of the LGBTQ community by attempting to sway public opinion against queer people by linking being gay to grooming and pedophilia. So checking back in two oh boy, Oh boy, has

has things happened? So? Initially organized on Fortune, Discord and Telegram right before Pride Month, the campaign set out targets and methods to flood the social media platforms of gay venues, Pride sponsors, and LGBTQ people or supporters with spam and t game memes and media, usually photos intended to imply a link between being openly queer and the grooming of children, uh and operating online under the banner of Operation Pride Fall.

The campaign started on May tense, when an anonymous four chan poster posted a thread on poll outlining Operation Pride Fall, which was pitching it as a crowdsourced campaign aimed at damaging the LGBTQ community during the month of June. The plans centered around quote unquote red pilling users in the commons sections of companies that support l lgbt Q causes

on social media. The four Chan post read quote. Every June, hundreds of massive corporations banned together to smother social media in posts in flavor of Pride Month, a code word for the degeneracy that is lgbt activism. Many of these accounts are rather small and get very little engagement, yet they continue to post without backlashed beginning on June first. The goal of Operation Pride Fall is to get on Twitter, Instagram, etcetera, and drop a ship ton of disturbing red pills on

homosexuality on the comments of the lesser known pages. The bigger pages are okay targets, but posts tend to get unnoticed in the sea of other comments. Commenting on smaller pages once with less than one hundred likes and so means anyone who've used it will see the posts and

companies will reconsider their pro pride posts afterwards. Unquote. So if you scroll through the archived initial like Pride Fall thread, you'll see a crowdsourced collection of pictures that they intended to flood the internet with under in the comments section of posts discussing pride or discussing LGBTQ activism or whatever. Um So in this, in this like crowdsourced collection of photos,

we see a lot of drag queen storytime stuff. But many of these pictures and memes are now the same ones used both in the recent Groomer thing and in the past two years of kin get Pride discourse. It's it's the exact it's the exact same photos. Um It's there's like, there's there's hundreds of them. There's hundreds of of photos of like you know, people in pop masks whatever, like waving waving pride flags. It's it's just there's a lot. There's a lot of them, and the specific ones get

used for so much of the Groomer ship. Uh. And they really started to gain much more visibility during after the Opertion Pride Fall thing got launched. The Opertion Pride Fall four Times thread also instructed users and how to set up fake phone numbers to make burner accounts to to comment on these on these social media pages. Um There's another really interesting part that the Oppertion Pride Fall planning stuff detailed was on on on discord on the

Opertion Pridefall servers and channels. The users were planning to repurpose cringe e TikTok videos while relabeling them with anti lgbt Q captions and hashtags. Uh, here's a here's a quote from there. From there, from their planning planning discord, an additional idea, we can read pool zoomers on TikTok and literally build a fucking puppet army to funk the ship out of millennials. We should expand this operation to as many social media outlets as possible in order to

maximize effort. Let's operate like this on TikTok, convince any gen z sibling or relatives to do some kind of shitty jester charade slash horror dance, and then add lgbt Q critical captions on top of it and reposted under

trending hashtags. So you see elements of this exact strategy mirrored one year later in lives of TikTok by getting videos of people being I don't know kids and like kind of cringe e because kids are kind of cringe E. But videos of kids on TikTok and mischaracterizing you know, TikTok videos and adding adding lgbt Q talking points on top of them. Uh, just sway the public opinion of queer people. It's the it's the exact same strategy as

as a similar idea. It was also implemented alongside setting up fake dating apt profiles do not only spread their anti gay kind of grooming memes, but also to form vital content by catfishing gay people and getting them to

like be an embarrassing interactions. Uh. Another quote on Tinder, Bumble and Grinder set up freak profiles with legit convincing images and descriptions that criticized lgbt So it's this, it's trying to catfish queer people and like, then I guess span them with pictures of these like grooming memes, um and see what their reaction is then post it. Right. It's so the whole operation private file strategy might appear

pretty simple. Right, it's like basically glorified ship posting, setting up a bunch of fake accounts and demonizing queer people in the comment section of small corporations and influencers. There

definitely is a lot more to it. Than that, right, there was there was this element of like planned escalation, starting off first as like appearing as a reasonable comments, right, acting in very good faith, just as somebody concerned by kids being exposed to to sexual materials would, whether that be you know, people in drag at a library reading

books or people at a Pride parade. Right, So instead of immediately going on like full gay bashing, uh, saying that we should you know, kill all deviant trans people, which a lot of conservative common hitters just say now like Alijah Schaeffer who just posts memes about wanting to kill trans kids. Um, these these these board fascists on Fortune try to coordinate a slow, more insidious approach which they would hope would just gradually turn the tide of

public opinion against queer people. Here's a here's the snippet from one of the Pride Fault organizing chats. Quote keep it normi, palatable and friendly. This means no Nazi or Hitler ship. The goal is to make them question whether what they're supporting is really the right thing. So as as as Pride progressed the the the Pride Fall participants coordinated on four Chune Discord and Telegram to slowly increase

the frequency and intensity of the campaign. Another quote from the organizing chat quote, think about it as waves day one is simply questioning homosexuality, and then as the days goes on, it will get worse and worse until the end of Pride Month. So uh. In terms of physical things that actually had uh, I believe opportion. Pride Fall resulted in a few gay events getting shut down. There was like this event and I think it was it was like a like at a queer nightclub in the

UK that that got shut down. There was a few other like like obviously like material results that that they had by doing this harassment campaign against venues and corporations. But I think there's they were more successful in first of all, spreading specific memetic images that are now commonly used in their grooming stuff and in the kink of Pride stuff some some of which these images were not really used in discourse before but now are common place.

I think that's really where more of this idea succeeded. So over the course of the month, they will want to get more regular people to start associating members of the LGBTQ community with pedophilia and in order to do that. The way they see it is by just gradually shifting this discussion. Uh, and then as public opinion alters, they hope that brands will distance themselves from the LGBTQ community

and stop doing more more pride shit. Um right, It's like that was that was another big part of what their intention was. And they may not have done all that stuff immediately, like they may not may not have succeeded in that, but they definitely did succeed in the prevalence of the images that they were trying to intentionally spread, because that absolutely has happened. Do you know who else loves implanting ideas into your brain? That's that's that's right.

The products and services that sponsored this podcast, go go buy, go buy their product or get a job at one of the you know, you know that what I'm talking about. Anyway, here's here's the ads and we are we are back. Wasn't wasn't it fun reading about Operation Pride Fall? Didn't

that just bring bring joy to your ears? Me too? Yeah? So, as we mentioned, a big part of their attempts to sway public opinion, it's by spamming photos and memes that attempt to showcase just how dangerous gay people are to children, whether that be drag queens doing story time at the library, photos of gay people doing quote unquote can get Pride um. You know, basically basically they're trying to say, how could

any reasonable person or corporation support pride. It's essentially a grooming parade, right that that's the that's the thing that they were trying to implant. And one of the things that Operation Pride Fell was successful in was popularizing a few of these can get Pride photos, many of which were then subsequently used last year during can Get Pride discourse um, and used this year as well. Uh, most mostly by some some like anti sex people on the left, um,

and some of these young tender queers. Uh. And you know that this this the same photos are used in grooming stuff and in Pride Fall stuff and and can't Get Pride stuff, because it's the same based psychology at play, right, the idea that sexuality in a queer sense is dangerous and way more deviant than sexuality in a heterosexual context. Right, Like straight people kissing is rated, gay gay people kissing is rated PG or PG thirteen. Uh, it's it's it's

that idea but accelerated. Another correlation between the openly homophobic groomer talking points and like the tender queer stuff is this is this idea that I'm only comfortable seeing expressions of sexuality that I can relate to or also find attractive. And another interesting thing about a lot of these photos is that a lot of these photos that they use aren't actually photos of Pride. A lot of a lot of the photos that they use are actually from the

Fulsome Street Fair, which is like a kink festival. It takes place in San Francisco every year. Hard to exaggerate how horny the Fulsome Street fat. So it's very horny. But also, obviously because gay people have sex, gay people also exist at the Fulsome Street Fair. Um. They may even wave a Pride flag shocking. Um. So a lot of these photos that that that they use in the grooming stuff and the kink it Pride stuff are actually

from the Fulsome Street Fair. There are actually photos of Pride parades, of it's and it's it's and of course anyone who's been to Pride we kind of know that because Pride is not like the Fulsome Street Fair, they are very different to vents. And that's another an indicator of how a lot of these people who prop up this discourse online have never been to Pride either, because they're sharing photos at the Fulsome Street Fair and saying it's Pride. Um. Obviously, lots of these Nazis on fourtune,

I've never been to the Fulsome Street Fair or Pride. Uh. But they they also share these same photos because hey, it's it's people who look gay doing sexual things in public. That means it's at Pride and it's a danger to children, even though a lot of them are actually at the Fulsome Street Fair. Um. So if then, if if you're a queer person and you're reposting these fulsome Street Fair pictures and claiming to be from and claiming that they're from a Pride parade, uh to bash like kink it

Pride stuff? Uh, reconsider that because you're basically just doing the work that neo Nazis wants to do. Uh. Just you're just doing it on your own time, right Like it's you're repurposing the exact same photos that they were that they were putting out there within this context and just not even not even knowing where these where. These

where these pictures are from. Um so stop stop that I can consider not if if you have to, like if you're gonna go to all of this work to denounce queer people for like existing, maybe you should consider

why you're doing that, because wow, that's that sucks. Because calling the fulsome street Fair a pride parade and then demonizing it because then then and then and then demonizing pride because there's people who act like pretty kinky is not not great because that's not what anything is happening.

You're none of none, none of that is accurate. So that's it's really frustrating to look at to look at all of all of the ways these things, these things combined, because you get you get intender queers sharing fulsome street Fair pictures, you get conservative politicians sharing them all calling them pride stuff. To begin, like a lot of the stuff you see there isn't even like a lot of them isn't like a lot of pictures don't even have

like full nudity. Um so that's not necessarily like's not it's not even super important, but it's you're conflating these these things in a really disingenuous way, and you're just repeating the exact same things that Nazis have been trying to get you to repeat for years, and you should consider why that happens. So all of the grimming stuff obviously has gotten has gotten worse in the in the

past few months. Uh definitely definitely ballooned around the around the don't say gay bill, and this got tied into a whole bunch of stuff happening in Florida with the Disney Corporation, and a lot of the grimming stuff got tied to conservatives attacking Disney now um and calling Disney a grooming organization. We've had We've had far right candidates show up in front of in front of Disney World to do protests. We've had Nazis show up in front

of Disney World to do protests. You've seen a lot of mega people show up at Disney World to do protests, UM, all against Disney's grooming of children by including anything not street in any of their materials, which has already like

so little um, which is also just extremely funny. I like imagining you bring Walt Disney, Disney come on, like it's all on the same side here, Like yeah, and like I don't know like do you I don't know if I really actually think that, like do you do all these all these people actually think that millions of teachers, democrats, corporate entertainment creators are all complicit and it's in a long term planning of like to to sexually groom miners.

Some some might believe that, right, that that kind of that kind of overlaps with some to and on stuff in the paranoia around like child trafficking. But I think others understand that they're kind of being hyperbolic and they're being inflammatory to get people angry and to get people like very very like active in their in their hatred of gay people. Right. They needs to old school homophobia kind of became a bad look. They need to find

a new way to rebrand it. And now it's with this groomer stuff and like a gay teachers, trans teachers, right, gender identity stuff, right, a lot of it is now wrapped up in like trans issues. Um, But I I want to read this quote by a right wing writer named Rod Dreer. It was it was, it was. It was cited in the Atlantic, and I think it's actually a really good look at how the people who are smart on the right, Um, how that they are intentionally

using this grooming label. Quote about the term groomers, it's usually used to describe pedophiles who are preparing innocent kids for sexual exploitation. I think it is coming to have a somewhat broader meaning an adult who wants to separate children from a normative sexual and gender identity, to inspire confusion in them and to turn them against their parents

and all the normative traditions and institutions in society. It may not be specifically to groom them for sexual activity, but it is certainly to groom them to take them on a sexual slash gender identity at odds with the norm which really I think that that quote, that quote

really showcases what's going on in their brains there. Yeah, well, and this is something I think like Drere, like Rob Drear in particular, doing this, I think it's a really bad sign because there's people who don't know who Rob Drere is. He's like a weirdo Catholic guy. He's been like a right wing like Catholic. I think he's a roving Catholic calumnist for a long time. And like, you know,

if you go back to like two seventeen. His big thing was his whope was a thing called the Benedict option, which was basically like, okay, so like secular society has become corrupted, like Christians should just pull out of it, right and go live with their own communities that can be sort of like like you know, we we like we we we we've we've lost this world. We have to like create a new world which we can live

around and sort of like Christian truth or whatever. And he he was in this long running kind of like battle with a sort of like I guess like openly philangious kind of like openly fascists, I mean, not quite openly fascist, but like people people who are reading uh, like what's his name, people who are reading Schmidt, and like the Nazi lawyers who were like, okay, well we you know, instead of as opposed to this thing of like word Catholics, we're going to pull back from the world,

their thing was we're going to use We're going to use like the states to enforce Christian doctrine. And Drere had sort of like fought that. And the fact that Drere is now just full on in this grooming ship,

right that is really bad. Yep. And and looking again, you know if even if you want to go back into his history, right, like, this is this is the kind of flip that happened that brought the evangelicals into the political scene, right, Like, you have this flip from like people being like while the raptures coming insidees and peers who are not gonna become be politically engaged too. Oh hey, look we can use the state to just like destroyer, pull lenemies and create the kingdom of Heaven

on earth. And yeah, this is this is not good. This is yeah. But I think specifically that quotes a really good insight the smart conservatives who know what they're doing, Like they know it's not actual grooming, but it's if they can if they can use that word within the context to being like it's about getting it's about getting kids to adopt a non normative sexual identity. Again, it's like non normative, right, It's it's confusion in them turning

them against the institutions in society. Right, all of all of these things that is that is mirrored across lots of the groom discourse, the Kinker pride discourse, all this kind of stuff it's it's it's the same, it's the same thing. It's like a non normative sexuality is more sexual than a normative sexuality. It's this whole idea, man, And it's not great because it's not going to stop with kids either. Uh, it's not gonna we we I

talked about talk with this a lot. How how once they ban you know, trans health care for miners, they're gonna bump it up to then they're gonna bump it up to no one has it at all. And I have, I got, I got an update on that front. Um. So, first of all, for a recent legislation, there's the Alabama Felony Healthcare Band for Trans Youth, which forcibly detransitions teams across the state. UM. That that that that that that's

gonna enacted. And in Missouri there's a similar bill in the works, officially titled the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act um. And it applies to into individuals younger than nineteen years old. UM. And it would it would inhibit Missouri UH physicians and healthcare providers and prevent them from providing gender affirming healthcare

to patients. And it turns out Missouri la Is lawmakers a few weeks ago, we're debating the bill seeking to restrict access to gender firm and care for miners and and they also suggested that access to medical interventions like hormones be withheld from transgender and non binary individuals until

at least their twenty fifth birthday. During public in Missouri's for House Bill to six four nine, Lorie Haynes, a psychologist, testified that she believes young adults under the age of twenty five are unable to fully comprehend the dramatic and drastic and irreparable changes their body will go under if they receive gender affirming medical treatments like commaunity blockers or hormone therapies. Hayes also said that she's supported getting conversion

therapy for trans kids. Yeah, I'll bet she thinks that eighteen year old should be able to buy join the military, join the So it's already happening. We already have lawmakers and we have psychologists being brought in to testify that this is the case. People they want that this is there going to be the next thing. They want this

to happen. Um, now I'm just gonna say, obviously, uh, recent started You, published in the Journal of America in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that receiving gender affirm and care including beauty blockers and hormones between the ages thirteen and twenty associated with six lower odds of moderate or severe depression and seventy lower are odds

of suicidality. Another study published late last year by the Trevor Project found that among transgender and non binary miners, hormone therapy was associated with nearly lower odds of recent depression or a suicide attempt over the last year, and a lot of the effects of permitty blockers and even hormonal placement therapy actually are reversible and are not damaging. Um So, I mean, but we we all know that there's that horrible uh Matt Walsh trans documentary coming out soon. Yeah,

and you definitely I know. In the trailer he says that, uh, one of the drugs used to give puberty blockers to miners is also used as a chemical cast racian for sexual assault perpetrators, UH, which is kind of true. But it's castration in the sense that you need to take the drug always for its to work. It's like it's a hormone blocker. It's tops the sausterone from from being produced. If you go off of it, it's gonna happen again.

It's not a permanent castration. It's gonna suppress testosterone. You know, a popular medication for people with heart problems is also a highly explosive compound. Oh no, can be used in different ways. It's yeah, like like cancer victims are found with dihydrogen monooxide in their system. Like so, but yeah, anyway, we're gonna see a lot of We're gonna see a lot of lives about HRT coming up soon because that this Matt Walsh talking about is going to be stupid.

But again he doesn't understand the science. Obviously, he's a propagandist. Um. But the last thing I want to talk about, here's what's gonna be happening in cord Aline Idaho. Um So, taking taking their cue from the I'm gonna be I'm quoting, I'm going to quote an article here by by Daily Costs. Uh. They did a really a really really good write up. David new Wars wrote it. David David NewART for the record, Like the thing that he has been this beat that

that we're in like writing about these people. David's been doing it for like thirty years. He's he's amazing, He's incredible. So I'm gonna I'm gonna qute from him here. This is the last thing we'll We'll close with UM taking a queue from the incoming tide of far right fearmongering about grooming and an lgbt Q agenda in schools and libraries.

A group of Idaho biker militiamen are planning to show up to confront people celebrating pride at an event in downtown Quarta Lane, Idaho, and in a public park next month. Two men from the leadership of Panhandle Patriots, a militia

oriented bikers club but east to northern Idaho. Justin Allen, the group's vice president, and Jeff White, it's sergeant at arms, told a recent gathering at a church hosted by Republican state house member Heather Scott that they plan to have a gun driven event next month in Courtly in Idaho, the same day as this city's pride celebration at a park less than a mile away, and they planned a confrontation. UM. I'm going to play a clip of them announcing this,

uh and yeah, give it a listen. These parades or government funded many of them. You aren't aware. Right now, in court Alayne, on the tenth of June, there is Family Day, and in Family Day they are promoting family values,

activities and everything. The very following day they're having Gay Pride Day in the very same park the very next day, where they will be allowed to parade through all of Court Alaine, drag, queen dancers, education, our making all this material available for all the kids in a park that is designed for kids. We are having an event the very same day, that very same day, we actually intend to go head to head with these people. A line must be drawn in the sand. Good people need to

stand up. As she was talking about the repercussions, we say, damn the repercussions. Stand up, take it to the head, Go to the fight if you can possibly. We know a lot of you are monitored. We live in Bonter County. We are fighting in multiple counties. We are asking for all of you to come stand with us. Our event is advertised as gun to Lane because it's an anniversary of when we stood to protect our community. We're standing

again to protect our community. We shifted our date to be available to go head to head with these people. They are trying to take your children. This fight is not just paper, it's not just words, it's not just politicians. They have to see people standing in there facing no more. So. Wow, that sucked, uh and is entirely entirely expected. Um so. The the meeting at this at this church, read by a Republican House member, was titled the Game Plan to

Remove Inappropriate Materials in our Schools and Libraries. It was It was held at a Calvary chapel in a small town north of Sandpoint, Idaho. Scott is a long history associations and identifications with the far right patriot movement, specifically in Idaho. And it was bad. Um. Heather Scott, the Republican state house member. About an hour into the night, Uh, Scott invited the tumblsh of dudes up to the podium to speak and they said that so yeah, it's in.

In a flyer posted by the Panhandle Patriots advertising their planned conversation at at at at Pride at at a flyer that they made shows shows a drag queen reading at a public library and urges people to join in and standing up against the indoctrination and grooming of our children. And if you don't protect children, you are part of the problem. So yeah, they're planning to take a hole bunch of guns the same day as a Pride parade, and we'll see what happens. Um. I love that. That's that.

We're just going to see what happens. And I genuine very incredibly deeply hope we're not reporting on the result of that because yep, ye. So anyway, before you share king at Pride discourse, I think this is what happens. This is what happens when you engage this in this type of rhetoric, that career sexuality is inherently more dangerous to kids. Because anyway, I'm sad. Now, yeah, this isn't really an upper of an episode. Um, you don't say,

but it's it is important to talk about. Um. So if you're going to Pride this year, please be careful because there's a lot of a lot of worsening attacks on queer people. Bring an iffac. You shouldn't have to you shouldn't have to do this, but this is anyway, well that doesn't for us today. It could happen here. Hopefully it doesn't happen here. Um, but it could. Welcome to to make it happen here a podcast about something that did happen that sucked enormously. Um. I'm Christopher Wall

I'm the host. Also with me is Garrison and Sophie. Hello, were just in the morning, just really starting off positive there it's look, it's it's this episode in the next episode. I mean, I guess this episode kind of ends in a high note. But that's great to hear. I'm so happy. I totally believe you. It kind of does, all right. Yeah, Sharene is also here. Hello, Hi, Sorry my fault. Keep going. So this is this is the thirty third anniversary of

the Caamon Square massacre. UM. Tomorrow's episode, I think we'll actually be going out on I guess the day that it started kind of starts like the night of like June three. Um, and okay, I'm curious what you twoose like I don't know, like received like cultural memory of Channeman is because I don't know. I think I got a kind of weird one, like being from a Chinese family, but as a white Canadian, I have zero amount of my knowledge about the tam Tannaman Square massacre not really

about Tanneman. Uh, it's just yeah, that is something I never never have really learned about. Yeah, I know that it happened in that's that's the American Uh lesson we got on the history of that massacre, that it happened in nineteen really mediocre. Yeah, Okay, Well today and tomorrow we're gonna we're gonna go, well, we're gonna talk. I think less about what happens there specifically and more about

the sort of broad at history that's in. But I guess I'll start out so in sometimes there's there's really three Channeman's. Um, there's there's the student protests that's inside Tianamon Square itself. There's this part of Beijing like around the squares, like a bunch of blocks are taken over by workers. And then there's a bunch of protests in

other cities. And unfortunately we're not gonna be talking about the Protestant the other cities because like basically nothing is known about them other than that like they happened, but the people who would know aren't talking so for some somewhat obvious reasons. Um, yeah, and the students themselves, I think, like the normal version of tianament is is like these there's the students and they're like protomocracy protesters, right, but

they're way weirder than that. There's there's like this weird ideological grab bag thing going on. Um, they're they're they're basically what they're piste off about is that this thing is called the perform and opening like isn't going fast enough? We should talk about what that sort of is. So performing opening is it's this period in China and sort

of the eighties and songs of the nineties. Um. And on the one hand, you have these sort of steps to like ease restrictions on speech and like rehability to intellectuals and like allow for a broader public discourse. But the other half of it is that like they're they're being they're basically they're bringing markets back to China, right, And this this is a ship show in a lot

of ways. If you want to hear about like the CCP reinventing debt ponage in about five years, um, go listen to my Baschard's episode and the poison Milk scandal. It's a it's a trip. But on the other hand, you have you know, so you have kind of like opening up, right, you you have just more discourse. You're they're not persecuting intellectuals again, sort of that there, they're

they're they're de persecuting the intellectuals that they had persecuted. Um. But on the other hand, you get this absolutely draconian sort of like a set of crackdowns on the social sphere.

You have the one child policy, you have this like really powerful tightening of one man rule in the factory, and you have the sort of the destruction of these for what we'll get into this more later, but like the the sort of limited decision making capacity that workers have had in the factories, um, just is sort of dismantled.

And so you see these sort of gaps beginning to form here, right, Like, on the one hand, you have these students who want market reforms to go faster, and they want more freedom of speech, They like kind of want democracy, but like mostly what they want is to be in charge of the party so they can crush the sort of like bureaucracy they see as holding market

reforms back. And it's worth noting that like a lot of these students are involved in what becomes known as neo authoritarianism, which is the sort of ideology that holds that like the strong central party should take full control of society and destroy the factions in the bureaucracy and so you know, and then that that's how you can lead development and this stuff like that stuff like ne authoritarianism survives the protests and goes on to become like

a pretty major faction in the CCP itself, and then now US in two thousands, and you know, this is this is where things just get weird, right, Um, the student movement itself is very hierarchical, and it gets to the point where like but by by by the end of the student movement, there these the student leaders are like kidnapping each other over like who has control of the microphones and like the stages in the square it is.

It is extremely bizarre. And you know, and in terms of like the protests actually like if what their torches are trying to do is you're trying to influence this factional fight inside the CCP over like the speed at which reformers are going to go, and this it doesn't work. It's like stunningly ineffectual. The guy they're trying to defend, like winds up getting outed and put in her house to the rest of the rest of his life. So

because so those are the student protesters. But the part and that that's the student protesters are the part of this that like everyone knows, partly because some of those people escape to Hong Kong and you know that they're very influential sort of shaping the memory there. But there's also the workers that I mentioned earlier, and the students basically like hate the workers, um for for for most of the time this protest is going on, and this

is the this is months, right. They literally will they will not let any of the workers go into the into tenement square like that they have. They have this whole system and like in order to get into like increasing like like closer to the center of the square, you have to be a student and then you need to get to the senator of the squere you have

to be like a member of the leadership. It's very weird, and you know, and like one of the things that workers are trying to do is they want to carry out a general strike and the students are like, no, absolutely not, do not do a general strike because largely because okay, so if these people start doing a general strike, like that's not something that's not under our control, and you know, okay, So this raises the question like if the relationship between the students who are at tenement and

the workers at Genemen are this bad, like why are the workers even there? Um? And And there's a few answers to this question that the sort of the simplest and most immediate one is that like the workers are initially they come out because they're pissed. They see how badly like the cops in sort of like the party is is treating the students in the square, so they

get mad. But but but there's there's other stuff going on to the late eighties is the ladies in China is sort of a mess economically that there's rampant inflation and the sort of rapid increase in prices is a threat to you know, the sort of like cheap supply grain, which is like the sort of main subsidy that if you're an urban worker that you get. And meanwhile, you know, you have marketization happening, so at the same time that every prices are increasing for everyone and they can't get

access the stuff that they need. You have just like CCP princelings like racing down the street and imputed sports cars and like these are like the only these are the only cars, right like people people I don't know, like like people are starting to get bicycles and mass sort of in this period. But then you know, I was like, hey, here's here's this like party boss guy who was a sports car. They're like spending years salaries like umbling at race tracks and people just get piste off.

So they they start organizing. And I'm going to read from a section of a piece by JOHANNS Jong about what what they were doing. Um During the struggle to obstruct the military, workers started to realize the power of their spontaneous organization and action. This was self liberation on an unprecedented level. A huge wave of self organization ensued the Beijing Works Autonomous Federations. Membership grew exponentially in other

workers organizations both within and across workplaces mushrooms. The development of organizations led to a radicalization of action. Workers started organizing self armed quasi militias such as picket cores and dat or Die brigades to monitor and broadcast the military's whereabouts. These quasi militias were also responsible for maintaining public order so as not to provide any pretext for military intervention. In a sense, Beijing became a city self managed by workers.

It was reminiscent of petrograds self farmed workers organized in the Soviets in the months but beween Russia's February and October revolutions. At the same time, Beijian workers built many more barricades and fortifications and on the street in many factories that organized strikes and slowdowns. A possible general strike was put on the table as well. Many workers started to build connections between factories prepare for a general strike.

And yeah, like this is the part of it that like people don't talk about because it wasn't in the square.

And I mean the other part of the other faction, like the fact that that's going on here is that like so the press Corps is like sitting in the square, and this is why Channa ministers this sort like this is massive spectacle, right because all of this, everything that's happening here inside the square was happening like in front of the entire Western Press Court and like people are like, you know, like people are just like pointing cameras at

their window, right, and you know, but on the other hand, the people outside of the square, like the workers outside of the square are the workers are getting more organized and this is like, this is absolutely unacceptable to the party. And so yeah, on on on night of June three, the army just starts killing them. Um they There have been a couple of attempts earlier to clear to to to clear the sort of fortifications, and it hadn't really worked.

But this time, like they they they're they're able to bring in builtering units that aren't from Beijing or like aren't from around the area, and they kill an enormous number of people. Um yeah, And and I think it's I think it's important to note that, like both in terms of the killings that happened immediately and the political persecution like after that, it's it's mostly the workers bearing this,

especially in the initial massacre. Most of the killing happens as the armies like fighting its way into the square. And you know, I mean they kill people in the square too, but you know, and eventually they get into the square, and this is where you get like tank man and like the sort of the famous account of

the massacre. But like but that, but it's basically over right, because one of the other things has happened is that over the course of this protest, a lot of the students have left because they sort of they sort of gave up after the like factional conflict like stopped. But so so most of the people like who are there, are are are on the outs, are like other workers on the outside of this car, trying to defend it.

And when those people get killed and the art the army gets the build the square, it's it's the whole things are ready over and you know, these protests get crushed and you know, but before the last bullet has been fired, everyone everyone left standing is trying to create

their own narratives. But what just happened? Um, the most common one is that Chinaman is this like clash between democracy and authoritarianism, and like, okay, to some extent, that's not wrong, although I mean, you know, we've already mentioned that there are a lot of new authoritarian students there. I but like, you know, okay, this is this is

kind of a fair interpretation of what's going on. Like there's a lot of other protomocracy movements in this period, like the region, most famously there's Tawan and Korean Um. But the actual question of what's happening here is is really a question of what kind of democracy there's You know that that these people are fighting for the students

at Tianamens. You know to the extent that their democratic principles are sincere and not a cover for a sort of like deeply authoritarian version of liberalism that's you know, demanded by like in the sort of new class of intellectual so evercing market reforms to the extent that they like, they actually believe in this right. They believe in a very narrow conception of political democracy. And you know this this democracy is sort of political democracy operates the level

of the state. Right, It's based on free citizens who are equal before the law, participating in elections. The chief representatives, you like, past laws and you know, oversee and manages state bureaucracy. But you know that this model of political democracy, which is this is the one that we live under, right, It really gets the workplace to a a separate economic

sphere into which democracy doesn't extend. The capitalist firm or its state owned equivalent remains the absolute dictatorship of capitalists and the banagerial flunkeys, and even even the sort of progressive wings of the pro democracy movement in like Taiwuana,

South Korea, like maintain this private, this private dictatorships. You know, if if, if, if you're a worker in one of these states, right, you get rights, you get you know, you get the ability to form unions, you get access to the welfare state, you get these sort of limited protections from the worst like physical and psychological abuses that

your bosses can inflict. But no, no matter how progressive the pro democracy movements actually are the legitimate Jesus sorry, the legitimacy of the dictatorship of the bosses, which was not up for dispute, you know, to to to to these sort of protmocracy movements, right, like democracy means a democratic state and not a democratic workplace. And this is this is the huge divide between what's happening at Tianeman

and what's happening like everywhere else in the world. The workers a Tienemen are the only people left in this entire sort of like run of protmocracy movements that disagree.

They are standing against not only that like every there's stending not only against their own governments against a lot of the students who are who are also like at these protests, they are standing against literally the entire type of history itself bye bye bye, you know, by by applying the principles of the protomocracy movements like their own concerns, right, which is skyrocketing inflation, mounting debts like rampant corruption to

government officials like spy, rocketing and spiraling inequality and petty bureaucratic oppression. Beijing's working class had reinvented a old and now like largely forgotten tradition of democracy and the factory that I'm gonna I'm calling it democratic worker self management because there's no good name for it, and they're all kind of clunky. Fair. I mean, this is based on who these people were at the tide of the because

said all of their names for things were pretty clinky. Yeah. Well, the thing is that they don't name like like this. And this is one of the things about Okay. One of the real problems with studying chairman, right, is that like, Okay, so we have really good accounts from the students, right, because some of the students flee and they're able to make it out. We have like jack shit basically from

the workers we have. But what we do have is we have some of the we have some of the documents they produced, and we have a lot of interviews that we're done with with people there, and they I don't know that they have very very idiosyncratic ways of expressing what they believe, and so you know, you'll get things where like Okay, they're like, okay, wait, we we believe in the rule of law, right, and then the next sentence will be like, uh, we we we have

calculated the exact amount of surplus value that has been

distracted from us according to marks. And it's like what because Yeah, the thing that they're doing is like that they're they're they're synchronizing this new they're synchronizing sort of like a political tendency that's trying to address the sort of duel to Kadiships are dealing with right like there, because they're they're dealing at the same time with like this political to Katishi at the party has and also the fact that their bosses now like completely control everything

that they do. And because of this, they you know, they they wind up being like the last or I guess technically second to last because Argentina happens, although that that's sort of convoluted method itself. But they're they're in the twentieth century, like they are the last people who are fighting for democracy in the factory. And this, like to a large state, is what Tiannem is actually about.

It's it's the culmination of a century and a half long war between the democratic wing of the classical workers upment and like every single other ideology that exists, and these guys over over that century and a half long span, they're going to fight communists, are going to fight capitalistic, going to fight liberals and fascists and monarchies and republics and social democracies and theocracies, and at Tieneman are going

to lose one more time. And that defeat, the fact that they lose here, the fact that these people get slaughtered, the fact that like their crushed so effectively that no one even remembers what they were, don't even remembers they exist or like much less like what they were fighting for. This defeat is the origin of the modern world. That one man ruling the factory, like the the individual single boss who has total control and power over you, is in in its sort of thousand forms is the author

of the hell that is twenty one century. And when we come back from this commercial break, we are going to look at the international part of the struggle that Chanaman is sort of like the conclusion of. So here's some ads. Maybe here the job working at their distribution center paying gig, and we're back to look at why you two also must live in the the the absolutely

one man dictatorship in the factory. So it's it's not not not not not as much on man, it's the one algorithm you have to you have to listen to what your iPad tells you when you're walking through the Amazon distribution center. That's true. Yeah, they have. It is funny because it's like they've somehow made a worse version of it. It was like okay, yeah, it's like it's it's yeah, it's like okay, now, now now you were ruled by a computer whose whose job it is to

make one person an extremely large amount of money. It's even for further like depersonalized and further disjointed from actually being a human. Yeah, it's it's I don't know that there's there's there's some metaphor here which if I wasn't like sick out of my mind about how like power depersonalizes, the dehumanizes you until the point where you replaced with the machine that you can make here. But I I don't know one in one in every two days the room or randomly starts binding on me. So yeah, I

can't actually't do that. The lesson here, The lesson here is is that when you're thinking about factories and how bosses suck and how it's not great to work at a factory, just have a boss that tells you what to do. The lesson is that it can always get

worse because it could always be a computer. Yeah, anyway, continue, So okay, So to get a sense of like what this fight is and like how how we got to Tiana, men, we need to go back to the Revolutions of eight, which is at first glance not like not an incredibly obvious place to start. Um. Okay, if if you want like a really detailed, like blow for blow account of the Revolutions of eight, go listen to the Revolutions podcast. It it's good. I am not gonna do it here

because oh my god, there's so much stuff. But the very short version is that so in Atean forty eight. Across Europe, there's a bunch of revolutions that are collectively known while sometimes known as like the Springtime of the People's and this is this is the first revolence. This is the first wave revolutions where socialists are like a real thing. Um like Frederick angles, like if that angles like the marks and angles Angles is like on a

barricade with a rifle. Fighting in Prussia, there's like, yeah, I'm not gonna sadly, I can't get into Augusva willage here, but like go go, go go google Augustva Village's he's wild. There's a huge revolution in France where they like that they finally deposed the king and you know this, there's this question here and as these revolutions look like they're winning, there's this question of how far democracy is going to

go and what it's going to mean? Um, and yeah, you have a large thing you have in this This is in a lot of voice, very similar to what you're dealing with with in in China. In the nine Inside of France, you have to split, right, you have the split between you know, like the people who are like who are like French radicals, but in the sense of like the original French Revolution, who are you know, Okay,

they want like they want an elected democracy. They absolutely do not want to like deal with the fact that that the workplace is not a democracy. And then you know, and you have you have a bunch of socialists, and the socialists are like, hey, can we do something about like property relations and like the fact that there's a bunch of poor people with no jobs, and you know, and the socialists gets slaughtered, but you know, they don't die.

I mean, okay, you just said they Okay, so a lot of these people get horribly slaughtered, but a lot of them escape and like and and a lot of the lead well, I mean there's an interesting story here,

Like a lot of the leaders like live on. A lot of these people, like, for example, a bunch of people flee to the US and they wind up being like the like a lot of the officer core of the Union Army and in the Civil War is made up by these by these socialists who like had to flee after the revolutions failed and like Prussia and stuff. But yeah, so but many of them do in fact

die die. Yeah, it doesn't go great for them. And and you know, and you get to see one of the other things that's going to happen a lot, which is that. Okay, so like the the sort of like the French like like the French radicals who are like pro capitalism but also pro democracy, like allied with the conservative factions. And then they also all get killed when Napoleon,

Napoleon the Third takes power. But man, it's it's really it's really it's really hard to root for someone here and that yeah, I know, it's those it's like and then this is really like like the revolution produces his own grave diggers ship, Like, oh, hey, what did you expect was going to happen when you allied with like the Landlord's end I Napoleon English, this good thing, this mistake will never made again. No good good thing. Yeah yeah,

pay no mind to the rest of the episode anyway. Continue. So, yeah, you have the split between people who want electoral democracy but you know, doctorships in the workplace and these people

who want like democracy in the workplace. And this also prefigures to split inside of socialism itself, um for for you know, for for for the and this isn't even I I like in my script, I say, like for for for the most radical factions of socialism, you know, like in control over the means of production, which is like the thing that you want. Means that like production is controlled either by like free associations and workers like

you know, direct democratic unions. This is later called syndicalism or like workers councils, and that that's you know, I say, it's the most radical faction like that. That's a very popular conception of like what this is going to be. Like if you read marks like Mars is like, oh yeah,

free associations a workers. Sure. But you know, as as the sort of like eighteen footies roll into the eighteen sixties and the eighteen seventies, there's this faction of the movement that becomes just like obsessed with with the bureaucratic technologies of the states, and you know, like they they they they watch the state really get involved in the economy in a way that it like kind of hasn't before.

Then they they over the course of sort of industrialization, they watch with like incredible envy as they see like these incredibly elaborate like planning schemes. They see the state building roads and canals and railroads and then entire cities with these like complex electrical grids and like gas lions

and plumbing systems, and especially trains, like specifically trains. This drives them all completely insane, and they become they begin to believe that like a single centralized planning body, like non amercrat association of workers, like a single centralized state planning body can like you know, bring about the long saw after like cooperative commonwealth of socialism, and all all these people get they get obsessed with like such a planning right, and this becomes this starts to sort of

like consume more and more of the left um in Germany, which is home to like the powerful German Social Democratic Party, which is like probably the most powerful socialist part in the world. This point, the socialists become divided into two camps. There there's the revisionists led by Edward Bernstein, who like he like renounces Marxism and revolution and like entirely in favor of performing capitalism in the state from like within.

And then you know, you have these orthodox Marxists that are like led by Kola Kotski, whose whole thing is that he hates Bernstein and like the only thing that these two people, that these two groups agree on is that, I the only thing they agree on is the bureaucratic state planning is the thing you're supposed to be fighting for and not like democratic workplaces. And this leads the STP to like they they do a lot of things

that are like disastrous. Um, one of the things that they wind up doing a lot is like actively working with the bosses to like destroy the like workplace autonomy for their own unions. So like they'll there'll be things where it's like like there's like there's a famous examples, Like there's like a like a I think they're like an they're on beta workers and I think they make

knives or something. And they have a lot of control of the production process, right, they can control like how much life gets produced the process like how it works, like what they're actually doing. And the STP is like, no, this is bad because it's inefficient, and so they like basically crush their own union and this this goes in

really disastrous directions. But we're still the single person who becomes like the most obsessed with like the potential of bureautic state planning is uh one, very very very obscure guy named Vladimir Elias Lenin, who I don't expect anyone to have heard of front of the Pod. I just

had len Oh, that's funny. Yeah. So, as David Gravord points out, Lennon's obsession with like the German postal Service is such that like, okay, so he writes a very famous book about like what a future social state is going to be, called State and Revolution, and like almost all of it is a lie. But he also says this in it Um. A witty German social democrat of the eighteen seventies called the postal service an example of the socialist economic system. This is very true. At present.

The postal service is a business organized along the lines of a state capitalist monopoly. Bab the imperially, this is the whole thing about imperialism is making everything off of this. But so to organize the whole national economy on the lines of the postal service, so that the technicians, foreim and bookkeepers, as well as all officials that received no salaries higher than a workman's wage, all under the control and leadership of the armed proletariat. This is our immediate aim.

And if you think about what this means for about five seconds, right, what he's saying is that socialism is

the entire economy being planned by a bureacratic state. And you know this this like this sits off this like massive series of confrontations with the part of the workers movement who you know, like what to control the work that they do, and you know, like like make I'm like you know that the people who like who think that like the revolution means that they're actually going to be able to make decision over their work and not you know, just like work for like a slightly different

set of bureaucrats. And this struggle between you know this the sort of like new socialist bureaucrats and like democracy and the workers movement is you know, it's it's it's an enormous part of the struggle that happens here. And there's there's like another version of it happening between the workers movement itself and the capitalist state like in the eighteen eighties, um, the workers movements in like in Italy and Germany and like Frances that's the extent that they have.

These they form these parties that are called like states within a state, and you know, these things are these

massive networks of these workers institutions. They have like free schools, they have workers associations, they have like friendly societies, they have libraries, they have theaters, they have like unions, have co ops, they have like neighborhood associations, they have tenant unions, initial aids societies, and you know, and these things are all run democratically by like by by the workers who formed the associations, and you know, and like the people

who are doing this are like you know, the hope is that like this is going to be the basis for the new social society. Right, It's like, okay, we we can just come together and like do this stuff. We can do it democratically, and we can administer this stuff ourselves and the and these things are enormously popular. Um, and you know, and this like terrifies the sort of

old ruling class. Um. And Otto von Bismarck, who's the guy basically running the German state in this period, like his solution to this is to create like bureaucratic state run versions of like all of these things. So he creates like state run library, state run theaters, like state run welfare services, and he's using these as as like

a replacement to the sort of workers institutions. And he has this great line where he tells an American observer quote, my idea was to bribe the working classes, or shall I say, to win them over, to regard the state as a social institution existing for their own sake and invested in and interested in their welfare. And like this works.

This is this is an enormous success. This is one of the greatest propagandic ures ever because like it's it's so successful in convincing people that the thing that they're fighting for is like the state bureacratic version of this thing, and not the version where they do it themselves. That like when when the socialists like take power, they confuse Bismarcks, like literally the welfare state bribe thing that he liked made to buy off the movements, Like they confused that

with socialism itself. And like to this day everyone believes this. It's like it's it's I don't know, I lose my mind constantly over this because all of these things that bisinbarg developed like specifically to destroy the socialist movement. Everyone was like, oh my god, this is socialism. It's like no, no, please stop. And you know, and this is really effective, particularly on the leadership of the movement. But like the actual like people in these parties, like in these movements,

don't forget it. And and as as the sort of like twenty cent drawstore closed and you get like the so as as the nineteenth century draws too closed, and you get like the twentieth century. The workers who are like doing the uprisings are are not sort of like like the you know, the workers who are doing the

uprisings haven't like drinking the kool aid. And the thing that they do immediately when they start doing uprisings is they start building these democratic institutions, but particularly workers councils um the most famous of these are like other workers councils that form sort of spontaneously in the Russian revolutions of nineteen seventeen. These are like this is actually like this is what like the they're called soviets because soviet

is just like the word for council in Russian. And these things are originally these like ad hoc strike committees, and then they eventually become these like formalized elect like elected bodies of representatives from like the various factories who are like coordinating a strike and okay, so not you know, five they lose and they all die, but inteventeen, uh, they do this again and they form the Soviets again, and this time the councils start to take like a

larger role in coordinating production directly and you know, coordinating between different factories and industries, and they they turn into this sort of like counterpower thing to the new government. And this kicks off this open period of warfare that stretches like literally from Italy to Argentina between the different socialist factions who like people like the different factions of

this movement who want democracy in the factory. And this like a lot newly formed like anti democratic alliance of like social Democrats, Bolsheviks and capitalists who like you know, are like okay, well some of them are in favor of like you can have Okay, there's a whole range

of this thing, right, Like. The thing that unites all of these movements, the social Democrats, that Bolsheviks, the capitalists and later the fascist is that they like emphatically like do not want democracy in the factory, and they're willing to put aside their differences to make sure it doesn't happen, but you know, there's still there's still a huge fight that happens to between between nineteen y you get works councils in we get workers councils in Germany, Poland, Austria, Ukraine,

Ireland and Ireland. There's there's these like two giant revolts by synthicalist workers unions in Brazilian Argentina, and these all get crushed um in Italy. Italy has like one of the most intense conflicts between these like a lot of cynicalis in the Italian state, and they have this this really famous like set of factory occupations where instead of like so like before those people would go on strike, right,

you go on strike and you leave your factory. And in Italy they were like, okay, well what if we just stayed in the factory and took it over so that they couldn't like just like a restarted production with scabs, and we now control the factory. And there's this huge wave of it in in Italy in the late nineteen writeen like teens and twenties, and you know, it looks like for a little for like a bit like it really looks like they're going to bring down the government,

but the factory occupations get crushed. But they don't. They don't get crushed by the government. They get crushed by the Italian Socialist Party and like their union, the General Confederation of Labor, and like this is how fascistm wins

in Italy, like to a large extent. It's that like when when like you know, and it happens in Germany too, It's like when and when when the sort of the social democrats and the capitalists are faced with this possibility that like workers could take over the factories, the social

Democrats turn on them and just kill them all. And the problem with that is that like okay, well who who who who do you do the killing with the answer is the fascists, and then the social Democrats like themselves all get exterminated by the fascist It's it's just like you know, it is it is a is A is a terrible cycle that we're going to see like literally over and over and over again. Um yeah it's bad. Um that sounds not great? Yeah yeah, do do do

you know who else will slaughter your your factory council? Oh? Oh, I actually know this one. M alright, Carrison, go, we have a few options here. There is are our good friends at the Washington State Patrol. Um, if you're trying to set up a highway business next to the highway and run run video workers, cancel State Patrol come up,

be like not on this highway. You're done. Um probably also like Amazon or something, who knows, and we're back to see you know, okay, okay, well we are back to see like the worst defeats that they're going to have, that that like the people who want like a factory council are going to have in this period, which for once actually has nothing to do with Amazon or the capitalists whatsoever, which is that like the worst balling they're gonna get is from Lenin and the Bolsheviks, who I

don't know how many people sort of like know the history of Russian Revolution, but like the factory councils are the people who like basically put the Bolsheviks in power in the first place, like to a large extents, like they're there's a there are the people who like were the shock troops of this and like literally the moment

Lendin takes power, she starts under buying the Soviets. Um he publishes this thing like like like three or four days after that trial revolution, he publishes this thing called the draft to cree on workers control, which is like, you know, he he basically is like he's he's trying to like shift power from these councils to the bullshit party in the state. And this doesn't really work initially

because these groups are like pretty powerful. But in you know, he publicly Lenin's like, no, we draw drive power from the Soviets, like where where where the people who support these councils, But then like Lennon's, he's like shipping away from them. And then in en he writes this thing. He writes this this this paragraph from the Immediate Task the Soviet Government, which is like one of the wildest things I've ever read in my life. I was just saying a lot, it's it's wild, it is She's okay.

Unquestioning submission to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of labor processes that are based on large

scale machine industry. Today, the revolution demands and the interests of socialism that the masses, unquestioning lee obey the single will of the leaders of the labor process, which is like what what how how about you explain to our good viewers why that is so bonkers, Like okay, some of them might just hear that and be like, oh leftist words cool, moving on, even just the first two words unquestioning, Yeah, makes me like that, but like a

questioning submission. The whole thing about like the masses must unquestionably obey the will of the single leader. Like what this is like, like what is happening? This is you know, and the thing that's happening here is that Lennon. Lennon is being really candid about what it means for there to be a boss, Like what it means for there to be someone who's position is above you that can order you to do literally whatever they want, and if you don't obey them, like bad things happen and you

start or get shot. Yeah, she's she's she's incredible candid about this, right like this, this, this, this is what like having a boss means. It means like questioning submission to the single will of the leader. This, which is like this, this is how I talked about Sophie all the time. Yeah, well, shaking her head, I'm with you, Sophie campaign scare that Yeah, You're welcome, whatever you say, Sophie.

Thanks scare God. I'm thinking about this. There's this line, um, it's sort of sent actually related to the story I read this thing once about so the workers who took over the surban actually think it was the students shore of a bunch of students like take over this uh, like like the like the like the big academy in in Paris, and they send this like I think it's a telegram to like the Chinese embassy, and like the end of it is I think if I'm remembering the

exact words correctly, it's uh, the revolution will not be complete until the revolution will not be complete until the last capitalist is hung with the entrails of the last bureaucrat predibly hot yet was wild. That's that's the thing

this brought to mind for some reason. But you know, I mean going back to sort of Lenin and his like unquestioning like submission to the single word, like he's more candid about what like one man rule in the factory or like having a boss you have to obey like means, but the system is describing like isn't different than any other political system, like Bolshevik rule in the factory like isn't really different than capital, social democratic or

fascist rule. And you know, the movement for democracy and the factory as you know, as as as these people are crossed, especially in Cross the Nation twenty one, like from for Democracy in the Factory is faced by four implacable enemies who are willing to put aside all those their ideological differences to ensure that like no one ever like gets to control their workplace. And you know, and as as the twenties blend into early nine thirties, like

the movement seemed to have disappeared, but they didn't. They absolutely didn't even know even though they got murdered by the fascist, the communist, social democrats and the capitalists, they're gonna be back next episode to do like twelve more revolutions and yeah that that that's that that that that that come come come back tomorrow for us talking about like why these revolutions happens, what the ruling class did

to stop them. And then yeah, the lead up to Tianamen Square to see the sort of like the the final standard of Chinese working class and yeah, like get to what Tianeman actually was. What a Cliff Sanker pod cast. Yeah, that that counts as an intro. Look, yes, we've we've we've now started the podcast. The podcast that we are starting is it could happen here. And I it's me because for long I'm I'm doing I'm doing the host thing, and I have a bunch of other people with me

who do a lot of things. I have Garrison, Yes, I have suren Yes, and I have Sophie, our lovely boss. Sophie lictor bed all phrase on high your words, not mine, so weird. I did not enjoy that at all my takeover. So so Sophie unfortunately, fortunately, unfortunately lacks to sheer ruthlessness to crush the workers movement. Well we will see. Yeah that relates to be determined. I don't buy it, so Sophie,

Sophie is very sad. I'm sorry, Sophie. Um So, when when we last left off Lennon, Lennon has, like in theory, crushed last sort of remaining factions of like the workers but who want democracy the factories. But unfortunately for the Leninist like literally no many how no matter how many workers they kill, and they are going to kill enormous numbers of workers. The demand for democracy and the factory

like just refuses to die. But for over a hundred years, the development of the sort of mass factory system and logistical infrastructure that you need to support it, maybe most importantly coal mines and railroads that use the transport stuff generate this incredibly militant working class that sees you know, democratic control over the workplaces like the fundamental aspect of

its liberation. Um. Ideologically, this is you know, this is this is manifested in like a series of interlocking beliefs about like the nature of the working class and like what class society is um, all of which are sort of necessary components of this. Like it becomes this like incredibly like this like instinctive formation of workers council at the moment like an uprising happens. And this is something

that that's very interesting about about the twentieth century. Is it, Like yeah, like what when whenever there's like a crisis, someone someone like like everyone in the factory is like, okay, we're we we've taken control of the factory now like we we were forming a council, were forming a giant assembly, and like we don't do this anymore, and we're gonna come back to like why we don't do this anymore?

But like this hasn't happened, Like the last time it happened was like in Argentine and two dozen't one and I don't even know if Garrison Garrison might have been alive for that, thanks, But like it's well, I will say. The other time it does happen is when after after a recording session, when our boss Sophie leaves me, me and Chris will stay on the line to talk, usually about Star Wars, and that in a way kind of is a workers council just for the factory of podcasting. Yeah,

we talked about Star Wars in front of me. I feel so bad for next next next time, puppy face, it's okay, featuring your petite borshebat tactics won't work on me. Oh god, we all all the people on the separddit who think that we hate Sophie or going to just have a field day with this episode. Concy is my favorite recurring conspiracy. That's a real conspiracy. O. Man, wow, I have a lot of cutry up on to you. You do not know, you do not because it's not true.

Run away. So meanwhile, meanwhile, so in the period when people actually like did this seriously, you know, there's a lot of sort of ideological things that come together to make it so that when people like you know, like when when bread prices increased too much, this is what

people do. Um. And a lot of this has to do with the physical experience of what being a worker is in like you know, the centuries, like you have these like these these these these incredibly rapid like technological expansions, and you know, the people who are who are doing this stuff like see themselves as the creators of the

new world, right like. And this is like literally this is sounding like these are the people who are literally like they are building the cities, right like, all all of the sort of the infrastructure of the modern world

is physically being created by them. And this creates this you know, like if you're the person who is like who has transformed like this fishing village into this giant industrial city, right um, you know you you you see yourselves as the creator, like literally physically the creator of

this new world is being developed. And then the second belief that that it produces that drives this movement is that the people who produce this world should be as inheritors and so and this this, this sort of this is what drives the workers movement in this period, which is that like, okay, so if if you if you are literally physically creating the new world, and you think

that because you have created it, it should be yours. Uh, the next that the thing that you do because it's not yours, right, like you don't like yeah, you know, like the people who build cities are not the people who owned the cities. And you know if you see this, yeah, like yeah, okay, like in the city is actually owned by like three real estate speculators and like a bunch of cops, and more applicable examples like the people who build the cup podcast is not own the podcast. Yeah no,

we don't own the podcast. Like we we are exactly a plicable result that you know, that kind of you know, everyone understands that example. Yeah, every we I actually don't think the people understand that we don't own the podcast. It's actually unclear to be I. I people people have weird things about how podcasting works. But yeah, we don't own the podcast. We just create it and we do all the work. And then Sophie sits in her leather chair looking to out at the leather chair chair over.

I think it's all my podcast creations I have created and then usually so bad. How could you think I could sit here on an eight five degree day in a leather chair going to sulpie. At least get your facts right, my word a chair? Continue, Chris. Okay, So for the people who are like actually watching their boss, like sitting around smoking a giant cigar in a factory while they pound like hammers, or like work at a hospital and get a watch like just started a massive

cigar and a comically large to give to prop. But because for the record, whenever I do hang out with my other boss, Robert, he often does in some chair smoking a cigar, and I do think it is in fact leather. Okay, So we're describing Robert before me, the slave away in my laptop writing scripts and yeah, work in the podcast minds. Yeah, it's it's it is. It

is really hard out there and continue. So okay, So, like the belief that you produced the world and that if you produce you should own it is like this This is not unique to the part of the workers movement that like, you know, thinks that also you should like have a democracy and the factory and like you should have the autonomy to decide how you do your

work and what needs to be done. Uh that those beliefs like broadly comprise the ideology of like the entire workers movement, and by you know, by by the century, the workers movement is really really broad, right, I mean it stretches from sort of like really mild social democratic trade unionists to like the intellectual heads of these like Leninist vanguard parties. But what makes the democratic wing unique is that the r concern is the fundamental alienation of

factory life. And and this this is I mean, originally like it is very much factory life, but like this this gets expanded out as this goes on into sort of the like the fundamental alienation of labor itself, which is just this condition of being reduced to an object by bosses who use you as a tool to do something. And you know, and this this is a concern for everyone in some sense, but but for the Lenins and social democrats, alienation is just like a product of ownership

or distribution. Right. So you know, if if that's what you believe, the way you defeat alienation is through the working class of productive capacity, not in it, not in sort of like any kind of like innate human like humanity or creativity. Like all you have to do is like, well, okay, you flip a switch, right, and the factory is now owned by the state instead of being owned by like JP Morgan or something like, Now your alienation is gone.

That's how it works. Yeah, Or and and your social democracy. It's like, well, okay, so you you you, you flip a whitch and taxes get higher, and now you have a union, but you're still working for gold You're still working for the Goldman Sachs. But you know, but for for for for for the wing of the workers movements that you know actually cares about democracy. This doesn't solve anything, right, Like, as long as the fundamental relation of being the like

of being an object rights. As long as like you, fundamentally the worker are not are not a human being who has agency and control and autonomy over their life. As long as you're just an object that you know, like you're you're like you, you you're a living human tool that the one man ruler of the factory can like you know, can can wield around to do whatever they want. As as long as that persists, changes in ownership structure and need like health benefits missed the entire point.

And this kind of the degradation that comes from just being a tool can only be solved by returning agency and autonomy to the working class. And that means like actually giving the class control over the production process. And you know, in in in notty six and Spain, workers are like funk this and decided to take the entire thing into their own hands. And they do this by just seizing their workplaces and mass and this becomes known as a Spanish revolution um and it is one of

the most extensive sort of experiments. And like workers democratic self managements or like whatever whatever you want to call people making their own decisions in the workplace like that has ever happened, like especially in the modern era. Like everything from like public utilities to like bakeries to hospitals to shoe factories like falls under the direct control of

these like democratic unions. And once their bosses have been like you know, chased from the premises and like flee and terror uh, these workers set about like transforming the entirety of Spanish society along democratic lines. Like they pulled their resources together collectively and they allocate them democratically for the benefit of like siety as a whole, and for

a brief moment this works. They have this incredible, like this triumphant experiment democratic self managements, and output increases dramatically and social services are expanded, and like in in In in the span of two years in the middle of a civil war, like the workers of Spain are able to create a universal health care system that expands karento like like rural areas of Spain where like you couldn't

get it before. But you know, the problem is once again is that this is happening to the civil war and and a lot like you know, and using sort of like nominally anti fascism like as as they're sort of like you know, they're using the threat of the NIED too post fascism as as a sort of front

like a French for what they're actually doing. You get this alliance of liberals, liberal socialists and Stalinists who just like brutally stamp out any attempt that you democratic self management and like you have like Soviet cadreastion like NKVD, like Soviet secret police guys like literally leading armies into into these cities and like like killing like killing the workers and then physically like taking control of these factories that people had sees and giving them back to the bosses,

which is you know, this is this is great. This is a great communist stuff. And yeah, the you know, and this this this ends exactly how you would expect it to end with. Yeah, like this this the Stalinists get everything they want. They murder all of the people who want like a factory council, and then they all get killed by Franco. But you know, undeterred by sort of the casualty tolls of these like massacres by people

who want bosses. Uh, this just keeps happening, and you know, by the time you get to the sties, like all this stuff is back. Like there there's there's factory councils again in Hungary, you get them, in Italy and France and the Chichoslovakia N eight there's like like they're there there. There, there's councils being like there, there's there's communes being formed

in like Vietnam. There's like they're that We've talked about the cordonation UH in Chile on this show before like these things are happening everywhere, and I think Hungary in particular is a really interesting one because so there's a revolution in Hungary against sort of the Soviets in six that's it gets a lot of the same liberal mythologizing that you get with Tenemen, but like kind of more

egregious here. So I don't know, I think, like I I got taught this revolution in schools is like one of the few ones that we actually get and they taught it as this like this is like the Hungarian revolution was just like kind of nationalists, like liberal democratic revolution for people who wanted like democracy and freedom and

like free markets. And then like you know, if you go read about what the people were at but people actually doing the revolution we're saying, you get quotes like this, this is a direct quote from a member of one of the Hungarian workers councils. The time when the boss is decided, our fate is over, and it's like these these guys, these guys do not seem like I don't know, these guys don't seem like liberal democrats. Something weird is

happening here. That's something that's actually happening, is that like Hungarian workers like sees control of their factories and like the workplaces, and they formed workers councils the overs of

the government, and then the Russian slaughter them all. But you know, like this is not liberal democratic revolution at all, that this is a revolt against the tatorship in the workplace, and there's an identical revolts breakout across both the capitalist world and the communist world, and in the newly de colonized society start seeing them too, and you know, and to the sort of like dismay of both the communists and the capitalists who are both like, oh my god,

why is and we keep holming workers councils like this solution to alienation, Like it's not like an ideological thing, right, Like it's it's not that there's like a group of people who are like secretly infiltrating these countries and being like, okay, you needful workers councils. This this is this stuff is happening in places where there's just like none of that. So like one of one of the sort of like movements that that does stuff like this is is the

revolution in Algeria. Um, you know, and they're like they're they're there are like Algeria like does have a pretty high level of political education, but the political education they're getting is from like it's it's from the National Liberation Front, which is like asofar As, it's any one thing. It's like it's a nationalist vankard this movements, which is you know that they're the people who like fight the French colonizers and beat them and their ideology like asofar As,

you can describe one out the Allo egion. Like the thing that they want is like the state having this decisive role of national development. But you know, immediately it's

taking power off. And BenBella, who's Algeria's first president, like discovers that, you know, he's not actually going to be the one like making the decision about what the country's economic structure is going to be because he takes power and a whole bunch of like French people who lived in Algeria of flee, and basically what happens immediately after is that all of like all of these this property that have been originally like held by by by French

sort of like colonists, like it gets immediately seized by the Algerian working class and you know, they build their own workers councils, and you know, BenBella is like, Okay, I guess I guess we have like workers councils now, like I guess I guess we have sort of like autonomous democratic production and BenBella is like kind of trying to undermine them. But he doesn't really get a chance to because once again there's a military coup and Bembella

like he I think he escapes and doesn't die. But like the fact that the council's all sort of get dismantled again. But like the number of times this has happened is getting just like completely out of hand, and it's like yeah, okay, the it's like yeah, okay, so

every time this happens, they murder everyone. But like you know, the revolutions keep happening, and they keep happening, and they keep happening, and you know, even even as late as like the late seventies, like it's not clear that that that like it's it's not clear that the people who want one man role in the factory are gonna win. Like there's this moment in Italy nineteen seventy seven where it's like this just like giant student student and worker

coalition almost takes power. Um, Like in Spain even after like fifty years of of like Franco and like the fascist octatorship, like the c n T, which is the anarchist union that had done the revolution like reappears in the seventies again even though everyone thought it was gone, and like, you know, this is a real this is a real source of strife for especially the sort of capitalist managerial elite. Who are you know they this stuff

keeps happening. It's like okay, like it is an unacceptable risk that one of the one day one of these groups is going to win. And so they start looking for a way to like dismantle this sort of like systemic things that like create that that caused people to do this. But you know, but they're but they're trying to do it in a way that doesn't involve the

giving up their power. Um. So Yeah, as Vicky austen Whild points out, this sort of like this like instinctive embrace of like democracy in the factory, like as a political program, it's only possible as long as factories, as long as like the factory functions is the point of encounter her. I think it was her term for was She calls it a darker Gora, which is like, so Gore is like like the sort of like the Greek

marketplace in the center of town. Everyone goes there and you like talk about things, right, and the factory serves as this kind of like it's this sort of like dark version of it. Were Like, on the one hand, you know, it facilitates these interactions that allow people to sort of like identify with each other and like you know,

create collective meaning by like interacting with each other. But on the other hand, it exists to exploit you, and it's like terrible and you're just getting you know, you're getting physically and socially destroyed like every moment you're in it.

But you know it's it's still is a place where you can like assemble an identity as like like you and a bunch of the people around you can go like, hey, like we are workers, right, like we are the working class, and this this is like a shared political identity that you have that allows you to do things. And so the thrust of sort of the attack against this takes the form of this attack on like the shop floor as like a side of like formation of identities that

that can allow you to mobilize stuff. And so this takes like a number of forms. Um most famously, there's there's it's the industrialization and this sort of like spatial relocation of factories. So like like part of what's going on right is that you have a you have a bunch of people who work in a factory, and then they live like around like right around the factories. Right were they work in a coal mine and everyone lives

in a town around the coal mine. And this means that everyone sees each other constantly, and they're like constantly like running into each other and like physically talking to each other. And you know, this is a really good

way to create radical politics. So what what happens is you these factories get sent out to the suburbs, and this allows you to to create places where you know, workers are isolated from each other and you know, and the other thing you can do is you turn workers into homeowners and you sort of like buy them off with this combination of like cheap credit and this promise that like their houses would not be a financial asset.

And so as the sort of eighties rolls on, the sort of the the like the herald of democratization of finance or places democratization, and the factory is sort of the capitalist class. Like the other thing they do that's like really insidious. They they tied like the remaining union

pensions into the stock market. This is stuff like you see today with like four o one case, and it means that like if you want to like have a retirement, you are like physically literally invested in the stock market, which ties you know, which ties everyone sort of like into the system. And corporations start to turn workplaces into

these like enormous propaganda apparatus. Is you get like like Walmart in particular, has these like like these vast ideological like programming things that they run that are designed to sort of like get you to identify with the corporation itself and not with like the other people you're you know, like the other people you're within the class as a whole, and you know, and like the other thing that they're able to do is the fact that capital is mobile

and workers like aren't allows you know, combined with logistics advances, and it means that like if workers ever start getting in upper hands somewhere, capitalist can just leave and the process that you see, is that as the sort of the total number of people working in the like in industrial work keeps decreasing, as a center of the population that keeps decreasing. And as this happens, capitalists are just like, okay, skirt, we're gon, we're gonna, we're gonna pick up our tools

and leave. And this spits out like enormous populations who are just like kicked out of atitional workforce entirely. And these developments, this is what actually like eventually destroys the classical workers t mouvement is the abilability to leave from the sort of destruction of the factory is like a site of stuff. But in order for this to work, the one thing they need is a place to move

to write. They need somewhere with this large exploitable labor supply that has been like crushed enough that it won't revolt against them. And the capitalist class finds that in our products and services, and we're we're we're back, We're we're back, and we're we're back to China. And Okay, so I've been talking about the way this sort of like this this whole system, like this whole factory system

mass production stuff like develops. But China is weird because this is the one place where the fact your system works like really differently than everywhere else. Um, there's a lot of reasons for this, one of which is it like so change like stayed on firms. It's like almost impossible for them to fire someone because I mean there's a lot of reasons for this, and one of them is that like people's entire sort of social sphere is

built around their work unit. And like their work unit is like it is the is the company you work for, and there's this whole sort of like legal apparatus built around it, and its like you know, and like this like unit gives you everything from like your retirement, like it like feeds you, like there's often entertainment stuff like tied into it, Like you get healthcare, you get like

childcare from it. And the CP also gets rid of the peace rate system, which is just like this is this thing that like I mean, it's so there's a lot of capitalist places to work with this word's like okay, so the peace rate system is you pay people for like every unit of something they produce, so like you get paid by like I don't know like how many like how many pounds of like cherities you can pick. And so the USSR brings this back because the USSR

and the US are really not that different. But China is like, nah, this like sucks. This is capitalism and you know, okay, like I'm not gonna say the Chinese factory system is great, but like because they don't have the peace ray system is because they can't fire people. You get this very you get this weird thing where it's like the people who run the factories like don't

have very good ways to force people to work. And because of this, they like they sort of like have to allow this degree of participation in the worker process, like in the labor process that like you don't really see most of the places and the everything they have that I luckily Garrison and I also have this is we have the ability to criticize our bosses. Although we we have more of this these guys. But one day ahead, one one okay, we we we've got it. We don't,

we don't. We don't have our big character poster yet, but like one day Garrison and I are going to show up to the office with like giant big character post with your faces on it. They like have specifically, Roberts are gonna have a list of crimes on it. My favorite part of like big labor protests when they

make those giant like puppets. If we just make a giant's tech puppet version of Robert and Sophie that we just prayed around the office, that's long as mind's bigger than Robert's, that's fine, we can do that, right, full support.

So we were got to do this in China, It's it's weird, like you have the ability to do this, but like it's like run to the party and so if someone gets unpopular enough, like the party will like start a campaign about how bad like that one boss is, and then you can show up to like the meeting and go like, hey, I hate my boss. This guy sucks.

But they're just replacing with like another boss, right, So it's not like it's not actually a democratic system really, but the way that it works ensures that like the people who are managed years are like pretty popular at least to some extents, like are popular and people don't

like really hate them. And this means that, you know, because there's all of this stuff that makes the Chinese factories different from like the other systems, and also because of like structural stuff in Maoism that I mean, I could talk about that, but I don't like talking about Maoism. But basically the product of this is that like you have in China during this period, a lot of demands for democracy, but they're really they're not they're not tied

to the workplace at all. They're they're they're mostly like political demands for like democracy in the party or stuff like that. And that means, like you know, at least in the cities, this system like kind of works okayish until the Cultural Revolution where everything falls apart. And this means that it is at long last time for me to do the cultural revolution rant, which is something I have been planning for, Like, yeah, I excited about this.

I've been waiting for an excuse and I finally have one. Okay, So the cultural revolution rant is that everyone gets the cultural revolution completely wrong, Like everyone every like it's like it's it's one of the rare events where like it's misinterpreted in like exactly the same way by both people

who support it and the people who oppose it. Um And Okay, the first thing to understand about this, right is like Okay, So the the initial the very very beginning of the culture revolution, like it's basically a bunch of like teenagers kind of like it's like middle schoolers essentially, and they're attacking these they're attacking like other kids at

their school. And these kids are kids who have what's called a black blood background, like black blood, which means that like they're they're the children of people who were from like quote unquote bad class backgrounds. And this is

really weird for a number of reasons. One because you have you have a sort of like a pseudo class system based on like who your parents were, right, you have people who have red blood who had like good class backgrounds, like your parents are workers, or your parents

worked with the Party or something. And then you have people who are from like bad class backgrounds quote unquote, who like are persecuted and like, okay, like I don't really care that much if you're like persecuting like a Shanghai oligarch who like collaborated with the French and Japanese imperialists or whatever. But like a this extends to like the children of these people, and a lot of the children these people weren't even alive when their parents were

like you know, like doing stuff that was bad. And the other thing is that like the term bad class background this is really loose. Like I I know people whose families were declared like declared like black class backgrounds, who have black blood and like you know, they're they weren't allowed to hold in the government position. And the reason that this happened to them was that her dad had made bird feeders before the revolution and they considered

that like petite bourgeois. And it's like this is like this is like like what, like what what are you doing? Like you you you reproduced, like you've turned class into like a pseudo race thing that's like her like you like inherit from your parents, even though like their parents

don't own property anymore. Because it's it's really bizarre and and and what's what's happening here is the kids from the red class backgrounds are are are you know, they're they're the kids of the new of the new Chinese elite, and they're just like picking on attacking the kids who are like now this this sort of like like my minority class. And so what it amounts to at the beginning of this is a bunch of privileged rich kids who are like attacking the bunch of kids who are

being persecuted for stuff. It's like not their fault at all. And you know, part and the other, the other part of this, like this is the part of the people. I think. Yeah, it's like Mao is trying to like play power game inside the party blah blah blah blah blah. But you know, things get more and more chaotic, and you get you get circuiting his attacks on like CCP, bereaucrats and cadres and stuff, because ma was trying to like male was trying to solidify his place in the

party and he's blah blah blah. There's other stuff that's happening. Um but then it gets really interesting. Um. So, so this starts in six right, and at the very beginning of six seven, there's something there's something called the January Storm, which is where a bunch of rebel workers just seize control of Shanghai and like they run the party out, they run the other they run I think they run the army out too, and you know, and now like

they they control the city of Shanghai. And this is like an oh funk moment from Mao because you know, now he has to like deal with this city that has been taking over by its own working class. And I found this this incredible line from Joe and Lai who's having a meeting with Mao and they're trying to figure out what to do about the fact that like this, this, this, like that Shanghai has been seized by by these workers

and I'm just gonna read this. When asked whether the new leadership should be elected from the bottom up, Joel replied bluntly that quote, anarchism is bound to develop if we immediately implement direct elections of the Paris Commune type. And I think this is like this is this really incredible, like like the thing you can find right, because it's like, okay, well,

there's two things that can happen here. One is either like, okay, you you you you give these people democracy and the ability to vote, right, and Joe and Lyon Matt look at this, and you're like, that would be anarchist if

we can't do that. And the second thing is you don't do that, and you oppressed them, and they take the second line, and you know, okay, like it takes them a bit to get this ramped up, right, It takes them a bit to get the sort of kind of revolution thing they're doing to like stop all of this rebel stuff that they've they've started to to get

it takes them about a year. But but by the students and the workers who had like you know, done done this sort of uprising stuff so are getting slaughtered,

like just mastered, killed on an unimaginable scale. Uh. This is this is where everyone gets the Culture Revolution completely wrong, because everyone the entire memory of the Cultural Revolution is from basically the first two years of it, right, which is like all the stuff about like like you know, like professors being marched out onto the street and dunce caps and like students like humiliating the professors and like like party officials being like marched around with like placards

on them, and like people like that's something like the chaos of the revolution. Like that's that's stuff everyone remembers. That's the first two years of this. There's still like I mean, you can are like there's there's there's the short the short quote unquote short culture Revolution, which is like the high point of the activity goes from nineteen six nine, and then there's like a longer one that goes to like the death of Mao, depending on how

you want to count it. But almost all of the actual violence in this period happens in this in in in the third phase, which is the so the first phase of the Didicial uprising, and then the rebel groups start fighting each other. But then phase three is when the state like cracks down on like start starts like

starts trying to crush this like rebel student factions. And I'm going to read from Walder who did ah, so is the guy in Walder who who went to He did a bunch of work in the Chinese archives, which he like went and like found the death tolls. And I'm gonna read like he like he go hells a bunch of archives. He goes to a bunch of state archives, and he like like tracks down the death certificates and tracks down like who died where? And this this is

what he wrote about it. More than three four of all documented deaths and local animals are due to the actions of authorities in the in this third phase, and then more than of those persecuted for alleged political crimes. So what are he's saying here is that seventy five percent of all of the deaths the entire Culture Revolution weren't done by like the revolution parts. They were done by the state, murdering the workers faction, the rebel factions.

And not only that, nine of of the actual political persecution was done by the states and not by the rebels. And when when when when you actually look at what this means, Like this means everything everything anyone ever talks about the Culture Revolution is completely wrong. It wasn't the the thing had happened to the Cultural Revolution. Wasn't that sort of student radicalism got out of control and they

started killing everyone that preaches all this violence. The thing that actually happens is that there's a student like uprising, right, But what happens is that the sort of conservative and state factions just slaughter them. And I Walt Walter estimates that the total number of people dead, it's somewhere between one point one and one point six million people. And again, like seventy five percent, and I think it's actually slightly higher from that, like percent of the people who were

killed in this are killed by the state. And you know this, this has an enormous effect on I mean just everything that happens in China and Chinese society from then on, because on the one hand, the popular memory of the Cultural Revolution persists as this thing that was, like, this is what happens if you like if people outside the party and like students in radicals like start like making trouble, is that you get all these people dead.

But then you know, you have the people inside the state who like know how many people they had to kill in order to hold on to power, right, they kill they kill probably more people than like that, you know, they're there's there's there's a very famous massacre of like communists or like suspected communist Indonesia that it doesn't get called a genocide because it was technically on political lines, but like it was one of the worst anti communist

massacres in history, and they killed more people from that during this period, and that like that level of violence and the fact that the people running the state understand what they had to do, it means you get you get an elite that's incredibly paranoid about like anything that

like smells like organizing happening outside the party. And the other thing happens is that like the most radical students and workers of this period, just get that they're all dead, right, they killed, they killed like they they killed like a million people the you know, for for for for for every one person who got killed, there's about nineteen people who were like persecuted in a lot of way. And that's like a lot of people are tortured. A lot

of these people are like sent to prisons. They're like like really horrible stuff happens to people. And this process keeps going like through through the seven Like there there's a huge spike in like state killings nineteen seventy, and by by the end of the seventies, like anything that's sort of like could have cohered into into like a movement that like wants democraty in the workplace, for example,

it's just gone. Because all of all of the radicals, like and anyone, anyone who wanted anyone who wanted democraty in factory, any of the people who were like even sort of like just like sort of rebellious, like these

people have all been killed. And the consequence of this is that throughout the through the eighties, he gets politics that's driven by this like sort of like intellectual liberal like liberal democratic politics that ignores completely ignores work lass entirely, and you know, and these these people start to take power and you get Dansha paying well, I think I think it's it's like right before he takes power, but Danjo ping wise up implementing the one child policy, which

is this like incredibly draconian and really success still attempts just like re established the states like patriarchal control over the household and strips like hundreds of millions of women from like like of of of autonomy over their own bodies, and you know, and and and and and it really looks like through through the through through through like the late seventies and the eighties, it looks like like the Chinese ruling classes succeeded, right like they finally destroyed that

they finally destroyed like any opposition to them. But then you know, things get very weird, which is that Setiman happens, and you know, but by by nine, like the whole like like as as a rule, like in general everywhere the sort of classical workers neo meant that was like at demanding tomoxy the factory, like they're basically done and so they're they're unable to sort of do their own revolutions. Now the only thing they can do is sort of

like latch onto other stuff. But the problem that the party has is that so they've had a lot of measures in place to to make sure that you've never got these kind of movements in China, and they kind of worked. But when it went through the nighties, like China starts implementing a market economy, right, they start, they

started they started like cutting this the welfare state. They start like destroying the sort of like limited control that works has had in the factories, and they kind of like unknowingly reproduced the conditions that have been producing these revolutions in every other country. And you know, as this massive inflation wave hits, they turned China into this powdern keg and this, you know, and this combined with sort of like the liberal democratic students moving gets you this

really interesting and weird ideology that these workers happen. I'm going to read it from from an interview with with with one of the workers, who was that gentleman, Why do a lot of workers agree with democracy and freedom in the workshops? Does what the workers say count or what leader says? We later talked about it in the factory, the dictatorship. Sorry, in the factory, the director is a dictator.

What one man says goes. If you view the state through the factory, it's about the same one man rule. Our objective is not very high. We just want workers to have their own independent organizations in work units. It's personal rule. For example, if I want to change jobs, the bus company foreman won't let me go. I ought to go home at five at five pm, but he tells me to work over time for two hours and if I don't cut my bonus, this is a personal rule.

A factory should have a system. If workers wants to change jobs, they ought to have a system of rules to decide how to do it. Also, these rules should be decided upon by everyone and then afterwards anyone who violates it will be punished according to the rules. This is rule by law. Now, we don't have this kind

of legal system. And Okay, that's a really like I don't know, I think it's a really interesting sort of like fusion of a whole bunch of stuff, right because on the one hand, like the sort of like ruling discourse that's happening the things as you're talking about it is like that we need the democracy, read the rule

of law. And but you know, the workers in these factories are looking at are looking at like the situation they're facing, and they're like, ha, we don't have a democracy like here either, right, And so you get this, you get what's a really conservative framing of the sort of a very sort of very classical like critique of woman rule in the factory that has been happening for like,

you know, like a hundred years. But what she's just think about this is that like any actual attempt to like do this right, get gets you to workers control,

like democratic workers control in the factory. And as Walder who well, Walder also wrote another like he's a guy who went and interviewed a bunch of the people who have been a workers who have been involved with this and as as they point out, like this unlike really like any other time in Chinese history, like the it the people who are part of like the Beijing Autonomous Workers Autonomous Federation, are you know that they don't they

don't have an intellectual class like this. These are these are just a bunch of workers and they have very little connection like they don't they they have very little like political connections, right, like beforehand, like to to the lberal circles are just sort of hearing what they're reading. And this is this means like what you have here is like it's not like an intellectraal like this is.

This is just a bunch of workers and for you know, for for for like one final time, their instinct when they when the revolution sort of like starts, is the demand democracy in the factory. And this demand, like above

all others, is completely politically unacceptable. And you know, and when when the army markers on Beijing, it's it's these workers that they wipe out, and they wipe them out so thoroughly that the fact that this is what these people were fighting for is it's it's scrubbed for the record of the CCP, it's scrubbed like the protomocracy move but doesn't remember it, even though their entire thing is memory.

And yeah, and this this ensures that the meeting of these actual events, what the people were fighting for, what they were trying to do, has been almost completely lost. And I think at this point we can finally ask what what what actually was tianaman Um And in some sense in the in the Chinese context itself it's a

transition between two different Chinese working classes. These protests are sort of like this is the last like political sort of like mobilization of like the of the old Chinese working class, which has been these people who had been in the cities, who had been like they had been the beneficiaries of this old sort of like socialist period welfare state, and these people in in the street around channemen, they mount the last attack of the of the classical

workers studments. And when they lose, this entire class like this, this this entire urban working class that had been around since like the twenties, that have been sort of the driver of Chinese radical politics, that had been like that have been have been fighting and striking for like seventy

eighty years. They they're they're gone. They're completely destroyed, and over the course of the economical structure in the nineties there they ceased to exist as a class, and they're replaced by a new Chinese working class, which is drawn from sort of these rural and sort of semi urban underclasses of the old social system who are like dragged into who are dragging the cities from from their villages, from their towns, and who now fill Actually, well I

don't I don't know what the numbers are today because it's weird because of COVID. But like there were two and seventy seven billion of these people of this enormous market worker like force who formed the backbone of like the entire Chinese working class. And these people who they have rural house registrations, and this means that they don't get any of the benefits, like the sort of like welfare benefits that you would get from living in a city.

And this means that they're you know, the they they constitute like an entirely new class of of workers. And instead of you know, like whatever sort of privileges that had been like carved out by the old working class, this one gets nothing. And the other thing that they get is this entire raft to sort of capitalist ideology that's based into like every aspect of the workplace culture.

This this is massive attempt in China to get people to buy homes and you know, the like when where the old working class could at least like positive the factory is like a place where you could have democracy, where like life could be improved by like different controlled factories, Like this new working class like the thing that they want the most is to leave the factory and become

a business owner. And you know, like this this probably sounds familiar to like us, right, like this is this is the old joke about like about the about the American working class, which is that everyone sees themselves as temporarily temporarily embarrassed millionaires and like, yeah, you know, in modern China, it's like yeah, okay, it's like people consider themselves to be like temporarily embarrassed small business owners and

this stuff. This, this this ideological self conception of like I'm going to work in the factory, that I'm gonna becme a some business owner is completely inimical to the formation of like the classical or reservement. And there hasn't been that kind of formation in China sense. And this this is not really unique thing, right that the death of that workers movement has seen a sort of like complete and total collapse of the demand for like democratic

self management like everywhere across the entire world. And you know, incredibly stubborn lee like the working class like refuses to sort of cohare itself in the factory. And so in this sense, China is really just sort of late to the game. They they they got slightly early, they got they got slightly later to the point that we're at now. You said there was gonna be a happier ending that they had. The happy ending was last episode. Uh, this

episode is this episode ending is really depressing? Well, I mean, okay, they're there, there, there there, Okay, there's a slightly less depressing note kind of Okay. The thing that's less depressing here is that for my entire literally my entire lifetime has been the US learning from one economic lapse so another and the world, the world like the international economic system.

Like I think I was born in like the middle of like the dot com collapse, and then I got two eight, and then like there's been a bunch of economic classes in the last like three years, and you know, the whole systems like learned from crisis to crisis to crisis. And that means that there's been an incredible, just like a rapidly increasing number of revolutions everywhere, even though the sort of like darker gore of the factory like has ceased to be this thing that like creates the working

like the identity of the working class. And this means that you know, Okay, so in order to have some kind of mass move but you needs some kind of collective identity to to mobilize around. And you know, if if you can't make this in the factory, the place where it's going to be made instead is the street.

And this means in the last you know, like twenty yees years, like with with without the sort of positive identity in the workplace to to to to hear itself around, workers are really only able to sort of mobilize on a mass basis, like indirect opposition to a threat that can that can that can confront like everyone at the same time. And this is the only thing I can do.

This is really the state. And you know, the state has the ability to to increase the price that basic commodities and slash welfare benefits, and that becomes the only available enemy. And so yeah, if if you look at what revolutions have been in the last twenty years, it's a constant fight against the police, because fighting the police is the only thing that can that can allow you to create a new social identity, like a sort of sort of collective identification. And you know, and so this

means that collected like modern revolts. Like everything we've seen over the last like four years. The four him that it takes is mass street movements and you know, continuous confrontation with the police. And you get to literally see this with with occupy, right. Occupied was originally like the like the slogan occupy was about the Dargentina in factory occupations and in two one, but then you know that stops, like that's the end, like just one like that that

that's that's the end of the whole cycle. There's there's no more factory occupations actual astitude. You get one in Bosnia has A Govia, which is funny because it's like they occupy a bunch of factories, but like they don't know what to do with them, and so you get just like a regular like occupy, like like in the sort of like score occupation you'd get in like New York or whatever, where everyone's sort of like sitting in a circle talking about stuff, but it's happening in a factory.

But but they're not like trying to run production, they're not trying to do any of that stuff. They're just sort of like they're in the factory. Isn't is no longer this sort of like space of like creation and possibility that could be turned into something new. It's just like a place where you go that's like indistinguishable from like a square. And you know, the last ten years it's like people people. Originally it was like it doesn't

left right, everyone's everyone's occupying squares. But you know, by by about a dozen fourteen, people have figured out that you can't, like it's it's almost impossible to hold a square if the police attempt to run you out. And so this gets your place with running street flights with

the police. But this, you know, this places everyone who's trying to do this in this incredibly dangerous bind because you know, the like the old workers councils were able to bring down states, like largely they got crushed by outside militaries, but they were able to bring down states because you know, there is an enormous amount of power in being able to control production. But the problem is that like you know, if you're in a square, right, like,

you don't have the ability to do that. And with without the sort of without the factory occupations alongside them, there's been a lot of general strikes in the last four years there's want of peruse one in France, there's someone in Hong Kong and Soudan, and every single one

of them has been crushed. But you know, but but this is a real problem, right, because the current labor conditions aren't going to produce another way of factory occupations, and so the way forward for anyone who, like you know, wants to have a democracy in the workplace is completely unclear. And I think I think that's the actual legacy of Tianamen.

The workers who are assembled outside Tianamen Square had already left their factories, and you know, for for for all that they spoke the language of the old workers movements, right, they spoke a democracy in the factory and one man rule. They stood and fought and died like we do in the streets. There's this bridge between sort of the classical workers movements and us, and you know, they face the same revolutionary crisis that we face, the crisis of Popula

and Palestine, Columbia, Iran and Myanmar, Hong Kong. Of this, this crisis of victory that's just beyond the horizon can't be grasped. You know, I don't think the people at Tienamen have any answers to give us like, I don't think they do. I think they rent. They headlong into the crisis that we ran into, and they all died. Yeah.

I think expecting answers from the dead is demanding too much of those who before and after us died finding for liberation and all we can really do now is find our own way when, with the names of the dead in our lips, build the world they died fighting for. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could

Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.