It Could Happen Here Weekly 50

wherever you are. I am your host for this episode, Andrew of the YouTube channel andreis Um. I'm joined here with Chris and Jeames lou Hello. Hi, thanks for having us, Thanks having me the guest. Well, you're gonna walk us through this. I'm very excited to learn more about it. Yes, so I really see it as a as a key

component in our restoration of the earth. And so I find it necessary that regardless of what direction your individual practice is going in, we're we're looking to specialize or whatever, couldn't quote specialized. I think it's still important to think about where food comes from and think about way as that we can enhanced and in large our food autonomy, especially considering the multi layering crises that you know compounding these days. Puma culture was first coined as a tomb

by puma culturist Bill Mollison. It's a portmanteau of permanent agriculture and permanent culture, and it's the conscious design and mainstenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems MS which have a diversity, stability and resilience of natural ecosystems. It's a way of integrating landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and other non material needs in a sustainable way.

And just to be clear, the concepts, the ideas, the principles that make up puma culture have existed long before Bill Morrison was born, have existed in cultures all over the world. Bill Molson is just someone who has, I

guess given it a spin for a modern audience. But these principles, these ideas are things that have been in practice for thousands of years, tens of thousands, even from the approach to land management and settlement designed to the whole systems thinking approach to nature which can be seen in a lot of animals practices. It has a long history, and it's one that people who practice Puma culture today

research Puma culture will inevitably uncover in their learning process. However, Bill Morrison first coined in the nineties seventies as a response to the oil embargoes they were taking place at the time. By bringing together the traditional knowledge of vastery of indigenous cultures and combining them with certain modern design and layouts, it created a movement that is now um spreading across the world from every on every continent. Honestly, the way that Puma culture views um the world the

views systems. It comes with an outlook that recognizes it all biological material is a potential energy source. The aim is to try to trap energy on your land and to use that energy the most efficient way before a degrede to create circular economies and cycles of energy. That how for actual sustainable agricultural practice, which unfortunately has not been the aim of agriculture, especially industrial agriculture, and Superma

culture represents a challenge to that status cool. The ethics of Puma culture are primarily focused on care for the earth, that being all living and on living things, care for all people, there by promoting self reliance and community responsibility, the sort of we all have access to the resources necessary for existence and care for community, and specifically communit t that allows us to be to think of an approach our society in a way that benefits all people

in all life, recognizing the community is not just our neighbors, it's not just the people who live in our city or town. It is all the living things that incorporate our surroundings and beyond. The way that puman culture approaches um design, it's a lot of his emphasis and mimicking how the natural world would attempt to stabilize. Of course, these systems take thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of years two fully develop and age and

reach some kind of stable state. But public culture seeks to learn from you know, these old growth forests and these healthily ecosystems, and accelerate that process to establish things that will last generations, to established spaces that will provide for the needs of people hundreds of years down the line. When it comes to approaching pumic culture design practically, first things first to recognize is that anybody can take part in pumic culture design. Anybody can take part in constructing

these sources of systems, and it can be established. The basic principles can be established regardless of your circumstances, your individual climate or biosphere, because the principles are based on

following what nature was doing anyway. One of the first principles involves the recognition of the connections in a local Asian seeing that a web is stronger than a single string, meaning that all of these different parts, the different moving parts, coming together create something stronger than if each individual person, each individual creature trying to move by itself. It also

looks at the connection between waste and resources. We all on the old adage just says, you know, one man's trash is another mantas of treasure, but when it comes to ecosystems, we should really be taking it quite literally, because the waste of one part of the system directly feeds into the resource of another part. Decomposing plants and animals directly feed into the fungal networks and flourishing of the next generation of plants, animals, as and in at

web in that network. In those connections, we can also recognize for principle too, that each element performs multiple functions. If we are for example, keeping chickens. They can be a source of eggs and feathers and protein, of course, but they also produced mania, and their daily activity helps to aerate the soil. And they also provide insect control um, allowing your plans to food and flourish banana trees. They

provide bananas, of course, they provide fruit. They also provide starch and mulch and protection and shade, and they hold water quite well. Actually, when I had taken a puma culture design course a couple of months ago, one of the things that I had learned from the guy who was running it was that he had told his story and he had done this this project in Barbarous and in Barbado was he was called to restore sort of like an old sand mine um because it run out

of sand. Well, it's close running out of sand. And so the community that was reliant in that sand mine didn't really have any direction um because their economy, their local economy, been so reliant on those jobs. When he came in, it's just like and he showed the pictures, it's just very very barren landscape, very dry, very dusty, And I was honestly in disbelief that something so dead, so destroyed, something so devolved, could be as radically transformed

as he had transformed it. Unfortunately, this is a podcast, not a video, or otherwise I would show you the pictures. But the transformation was stunning. I want of the elements that he had used to transform that dry lands ape into a lush food forest was banana trees, because surprisingly,

banana trees are very effective. Well, unsurprisingly, banana trees are very effective at growing quickly and providing shade to other plants, and so as these other plants are growing up, they have the shaded banana tree to protect them from the

harsh sun and to the banana trees. While they may not be the top doors to the forest in the end, by the time the forest is fully established, because banana trees don't get that tall, they still vital in that early stage in providing that function of shade that allows the rest of the forest to establish itself. That's really cool. It's very very very cool. Which all pictures after, it's like a place people could see them online like Instagram, they could look up or something. Yes, so um, if

you go on Wassamaki Puma culture dot org. I believe he has the pictures up there that'll be w E S E M A k I Puma culture dot org. And if I remember correctly, he has the pictures on there. Yeah, was it like a sand mine before or something? Yeah, it was a sand mine. Yeah, jeez, wow, it looks like there's no goodness in the soil and the first one and then yeah, yeah, to go back into the recording aspect when it came to that project, a large part of it was just getting that life in the soil.

So they were taken. They were getting mulch and manua from wherever they could get it, just to give some life for that soil. They would grow sitting like hardy, fast growing plants and then chopped them down after they'd grow in sufficiently so they would die right where they lay and provide nutrients to the soil. And that process was what helps to build up that soil even before

you started planting the bananas and other stuff. And were they able like you're saying, they were getting some of that stuff wherever they could get it, like, and were they able to get that that was it like considered a waste product? I guess better people they got it from, and so like I know, I have chickens and they obviously produced like manure, and I'll put some of it in my like vegetables to the grow. But I'll just give it to anyone else who wants it. It is

that a thing that they were able to do there? Yeah, I think people are donated UM. And I mean I would assume at least in turn, I don't know what the cases in Barbados, but in turn that they are bush trucks which pass every once in a while to collect whatever, you know, branches and cut grass and whatever people have puts out um from their yard will go whatever.

So I would assume that they would have asked the bush truck people to you know, bring some of that stuff to the site to help out, because a lot of people, you know, they just put that in front of the yard waiting for the bush struck to pass. And so a lot of very good potential sources of like UM ecosystem building, that sort of that so called waste really resources gets wasted when it could really see UM,

a lot of these kinds of projects. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, yes, something that like I don't know if if you ever

read UN documents about like stopping climate change. Like they always have a giant section about circular about circular economy stuff, but about sort of I mean, basically doing this stuff and then nothing ever happens and no one ever does it, and so yeah, it's it's really cool all that, like this is a place where those ideas which like are if there's if we are going to survive as a species with like most of us alive and doing well,

we're going to have to do exactly. I'm I'm kind of reminded just on this sort of topic of I was in Rwanda and February, and one of the things that really struck me with this system of agriculture that they've devised where um, they have patties that they grow rice right like submerged, and then in there there are living fish and then above them they are like little hutches with rabbits and I'm so like the rabbit manure helps to fertilize what's growing beneath, and then like it's

this kind of circular thing where I think they can feed some of the things that they cut off the plant to the rabbits and it's sort of like and the fish will help keep the water clean. I think that like filter fish, I can't quite a plan to

keep it clean for the fish. It was fascinating. I was like, this is amazing, Like they're not as opposed to I grew up on a farm and I'm very familiar with some of the larger arable sort of grain, but like grains in the UK, and how you're relying on a ton of exogenous inputs, which I was just so impressed with the fact that they devised a system that didn't require those exactly exactly you really want to.

Of course you might, we will have to get external sources, especially in the beginning as you're trying to establish the system, but the aim is really to have this system continuously establishing itself and expanding itself and maintaining itself. Yeah, would it be a system that works mostly with like a plant based food stuff, so I guess that seems generally to be more sustainable. Absolutely. I mean, man Ya's a

really powerful source of fertilizer. And I think you can keep animals without you know, eating them or using them anyway if you just want to, you know, because they make good companions and stuff as well. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, I would say a plant focus system could definitely but and to sort of rhyme or aligned with principle too, which said that each element performs multiple functions. It's also

important to have each function supported very multiple elements. Right, So you don't want to get all your food from one source. You want to have a mix of trees and roots and short crops and cultivates. I mean having all your food coming from one sources. Basically what we do now with you know, these mono cultures, with these this industrial farming that has these fields and fields and fields that are so susceptible to pests and disease that we have to basically drench them with chemicals just a

lot to survive. Because and the same guy who did the course, he explains it me like this. He said that when there's a system in nature and it's not in balance, they basically send out a signal saying, eight, this is not in balance, come and fix it. And so these so called pests, these bugs and stuff, they come to these aberrations, these freaks of nature, these massive fields of crops, and recognizing that this is not sustainable

um establishments in the landscape, they try to try to optimize. Right, he calls them. He doesn't call them pests. He calls them optimizers. So if you have, for example, uh, excessive amount of a certain pest in your system, something's wrong with that system because those so called pests, those optimizers are only able to flood your system because they don't have the mechanism. System doesn't have the mechanisms in place

to keep them in check. So you don't have the fauna, the larger insects and stuff in your system that will keep those pests in check. There's an imbalance in place, and that's something that needs to be rectified, and there different ways to rectified depend on this situation. Another example, and this isn't um from the pooma culture poom culture course.

Another example was the this I believe someone was talking about the presence of wolves in some of the parks in in the US and how reintroducing those wolves did so much too regulate the rest of the ecosystem, the ripple effects that had an arrest the ecosystem UM stabilizing the day of populations and stabilizing UM the beaver populations, and stabilizing all these other different plants and animal species that you would think are not even connected to the wolves,

but still their presence creating a significant rule in maintaining that balance. Yeah. Go go watch how wolves change rivers. It's literally five minutes and it rules. Yeah, it's amazing. It's just like the concept of rewilding. Is that what

would that be a similar thing? Yeah? Yeah, rewilding is basically it's puma culture had to be more focused on sustaining human communities in you know, in a balance with the rest of the natural world, whereas rewilding is more focused on helping to rebuild ecosystems outside of the human sphere at He says, I understand it. Yeah, yeah, that makes no sense to me. So with principle three, which was three or rate, was that each function should be

supported by multiple elements. You would want to get all your food from one source. You just want to grow like rows and rows of trees or rows and rows of corn. You want to grow a mix of trees and roots and short crops and cultivars and all these different species and variations that would make up like an actual forest. The food forest is approach that a lot of prima culturists would advocate, and within a food forest,

you would have I believe seven major groups. This sort of seven levels that creator sort of a beneficial system. On the top layer, you have the canopy, which consists of large fruits and nut trees. They provide the most shade and they keep the whole area they'll climb into the area stable. On that second layer, you're gonna have the low tree layer, which has the dwarf fruit trees.

The smaller fruit trees would fall under the canopy. On the third layer, you would have the shrub layer where you would grow you know, your berries and other small you know plants. And below that you have the ubecious layer where you would grow different houbs and spices and

things like that. And then below that you have your root vegetables, and below that you have well, you can really go below the roof vegetables, but next to those three vegetables, you would want to grow your soil surface crops, your ground cover um like they're sitting running beans and stuff. That would help to create a groundcover which protects the soil and prevents the establishment of undesirable plants, which we quote wheats. And then finally the seventh layers, the poutical layer,

which consists of the climbers and vines. It would establish themselves on the low tree layer and the canopy. So if you have that sort of food forest system in places all those seven layers, you're not getting each function supported by one element to getting it supported by many elements. The same goes for water. You want to get all your water source coming from just like the pipes and whatever water the government sent you, you want to have

water coming from the rain. If possible, you might want to tap into the water table, or you might want to depending on your situation. You might have extreme or you might be on a hill, in which case you'd have water flowing down, and you want to find ways to trap that water and to consive that water so that is distributed throughout your system. Unlike regular home garden.

Part of the aim of a puma culture um system is that it just like in nature, it waters itself, it takes care of itself, and so you're going to have to want You're gonna want to have all sources of different sources of water elements in place to provide that water. The same goes for energy. You would want to get all the energy from one source. You want to combine you know, human power, animal power, hydro electricity if possible, soul of power if possible. Basically, redundancy is

very important. Redundancy is very important, and I'll see it again for emphasis. Redundancy is very important. The next principle, principle number four, is that you want to approach puma culture with energy efficiency in mind, particularly your own energy. So on the more practical side of things, if you you might want to do what my mentor my guide had done, which was a zone and sector analysis. So basically,

you draw like a map of your space. You outline your daily patterns and the energies that come from outside your site, like wind and rain and flood and fire and pollution and noise and smells and all these different things. You want to look at how you move through your space. Want look at how the sunshine passes over your space. You want to look at the view and you want to try to harness those good energies, whether it be the rain or wind or whatever it maybe the sun

and plant. Accordingly, you don't want to have sun sensitive plants on like the south side of your property of your space wherever the spaces, and you wouldn't want to have plants to eat a lot of sun in the shade. You also want to divvy up your space. Once you've you know, on that map of you space, you're wanted to get up into zoons. So I first zone not

be your immediate live in space. The second zone would have an intensive kitchen garden sorry first soon it would be a place of consumption and processing of whatever it is that your system is producing. It doesn't necessarily have to be a house. It could be uh community kitchen, or it can be uh campus clubhouse. I don't know. It could be any space that you're using for consumption and processing. The next zone is going to be intensive

kitchen garden. It's a place where you would want to grow the plants that cycle through more quickly, UM, the spices and the herbs and the different things that you would use on a regular basis. The next zone I would want to have its focus on local support, community support and surplus. So this zone UM, the first zone

is actually technically zone zero. The second zonner Zone one as a Zone two, which is that sort of local support space that orchard is we want to grow, UM, your fruit trees, your ornamentals, UM, I want to raise raise animals there and you basically wanted to be a space where you can provide for the local community, separate and apart from your own produce. Zone three would also have the emphasis on production. Zone three probably the space where you have your main crops, the crops you spend

a lot of time focusing on. Zone four would also have a lot of investment in establishing a sustainable sort of life cycle um for more long term plants, and Zone five would be a space of wilderness, of forest of wildlife, orridors that allow spaces of free wilding even within your mall constructed site. Having your system split into zones helps you to reduce the amount of work that you put in, the amount of resources use, the amount of maintenance you'll need, and it also helps you to

boost to yields and to recycle resources most effectively. The fifth principle is the use of biological resources natural insecticides, timber, nitrogen fixers, whatever the case may be, you want to be using the systems that have evolved to fulfill those rules. To fulfill those rules, you may or may not be afraid of certain creatures. I myself, personally, I don't like frogs or toads or really I don't like most animals personally,

I just survide with them. However, Comma, I recognize the importance right, So frogs and bats and snakes, all of these creatures helped provide like a stable system, whether it be a snakes dealing with um crats or bats stealing

with insects, or frogs also dealing with insects. You men want to use companion planting as well, um like the three sisters method, which is a combination of beans, corn, and what's the three one again with squashes, right, and squash and that would help to establish you know itself and maintain itself. It's sort of like a microcosm of the Bronda Puber culture concept and one that has been in practice funititive years. The sixth principle is the practice

of energy cycling. Trapping sunlight through greenhouses is making the most used basically out of the energy that flews through your system before it leaves your system, recycling the organic matter that passes three system so that produces no real waste um. When I was at the site at the Puma Culture forest, I witnessed compost toilet for the first time and was immediately grossed up by the concept. However, Comma upon being blown away by the product of those

compost toilets, I changed my tune very quickly. And although I would not I probably would not use a compost toilet on a regular basis. I think it has some benefit, um, because we're flushing away some some real power, some real nutrition stuff. Um. Of course, there are risks associated with using human mania, but the process that he had put in place involved using human waste um. And then for every certain amount of human waste, you dump sawdust on

top of it. And that sawdust helps to deal with the smell um so much so that I actually didn't smell anything when I opened up those those compost toilets. But it also helps to create that balance between the carbon and the nitrogen that is required for compost. And so after that, after a tub has been filled compost toy, the toub has been filled, he seals it up, leaves it for a year to break down, and by the

time it comes out it's just like regular soil. However, of course safety prequestions, I believe he only uses it for his orchards, so only like fruit trees and other kinds of trees. I spent a lot of time so far discussing these sort of larger systems where you know, I'm basically assuming you have several acres of land like this guy does. I don't have several leakers of land. I don't have an inch of land um, and I

feel like a lot of people listening don't. So there are elements that you can incorporate on the small scale, such as grew boxes. You can have deep litter beds, you can have aquaculture systems, and that's actually one of the things that he Foost established um which is like a series of aquaculture systems, and it's actually one of

the main focuses of his project to this day. But I was quite surprised as to the yield that could be produced from something as simple as a couple of pipes put together with some to me to plants grown out of it. So I mean, don't underestimate yourself or this pace available to you, because it might not be able to plant to whole forest, but you can do a little something. Coming back to the food forest concept, the eighth principle is the use of natural plant succession

and stack. It you are a group plants together, they would give a continuing production over time and both the short term and long term. And like I established, you want to have those layers in place, the roots, divines, the trees, etcetera. The ninth principle encourages diversity, encourages poly culture, which is something that I'm sure you would have picked

up on by now. The tenth principle is increasing the edge within a system by creating unique niches that allow for the more rare, the more vulnerable corners of life to sustain themselves. And I think that's something that a lot of pum and culturists do in terms of establishing

their own systems. They have like a special food cocus, certain passion project to certain species that they just love and want to see flourish, and so they create these niches within their systems that allow allow for those creatures to flourish. Principal eleven employers that you observe natural patterns.

Nature rarely goes in a street line, and you may want to make that pattern, whether be spirals or waves or branches, whether it be patterns over time from you know, the week to the month of the year to repeating patterns in the weather or the seasons. You want to be observing these patterns and adjusting system continually. The early parts of establishing a puma culture system is certainly the

most difficult part. But even five to ten years down the line, when the system is more established, more sell sustaining, he still want to be playing that role of tweaking it as you go along. And I think that's something that more people need to recognize about humanity. We didn't just spring on to hear like some sort of alien parasite leaching off of the youth, right, We just like every other animal, like every other creature on this planet,

have a role to play in the ecosystems we inhabit. Unfortunately, a lot of that activity has been destructive because of how all socio economic system has been structured. But that's something we have a role and changeing. And part of that is recognizing that we are stewards. We we we can be good stewards. We can't help to facilitate the flourishing of life. We don't have to be grim reapers

upon the systems that we are a part of. And so even as you're late, couldn't quote in these long term projects twenty years, thirty years, you're still going to be tweaking and cultivating and hopefully expanding these systems over time. Principles twelve reminds us we gotta pay attention to the scale of these systems, to the long term of these systems, recognizing that this is something you want to establish over generations.

And finally, Principle number thirteen is be positive experiments small, learning from your mistakes, scale up, bringing more people, get involved, get more of your community, of your social circle, of your family, of your affinity group, of whatever the case is going to be, get more people involved. Um in imagining this complex, beautiful revolutionary project, we have a long way to go, but a lot of prom as could be made in a short space of time, and a

lot of projects already going on. With this ended mind, I would sugg just going online really and just switching for the different Pooma culture projects happening around the world, whether it be the food forests that Jeff law Turner is working to establish in Morocco, or the puma culture Pumablitz systems that people are putting in place in Australia and or the greening the Sahara projects in the Sahel region across Africa, or the many small skill projects taking

place and large scale projects taking place across the America's there a lot of people putting in this work, and there's a large community, um willing and able to support as you hopefully embark upon this journey. That's about it for me. Yeah, that's that's fascinating and I'm really interesting is that. I think, Yeah, it's it's massively missing in our discussion about like I don't know how to phrase this rightly, but like making a better world, just to

give it a really broad sort of phrasing. And when we often think about like political discourse and when we think about political systems, but without food systems, we really like the hierarchy of needs is not satisfied, right, And I think that folks listening can make a really positive change, really really quickly and in their own lives and spaces if they sort of spend some time with this stuff. Yeah, absolutely,

and it's cool. I think, um an important to to reference that like so much of this like we're like the person you named a start who's name I'm sorry I've forgotten, but like, um, I think, yeah, it's important to a reference that these are indigenous ways of knowing and doing and being and living and like you said, they've existed for millennia and like going back to that, it's good as part of the largest sort of way of respecting indigenous cultures and land rights and all the

other things we need to do. Ah, it could happen. Here is a podcast that you're listening to, and you know, mostly we talk about problems that you should be aware of. Sometimes we talk about solutions, and today we're kind of going to talk about a solution. Today is one of our famed good News episodes. So everybody, everybody celebrate and also give your name for the folks at home. Yea, I'm James, Yay, I'm Gare, Yeah, I'm Chris. Wonderful. That

was perfect. That was that is completely natural, just just like we practiced. Um. So the thing that the thing that is noteworthy and the thing that we're celebrating and also explained today, is that this summer we were recording this what like a day into September, two days into September, UM, so we are we are. Yeah, it's September one. So we have officially gotten through the summer um without a right wing rally in Portland that degenerates into a gigantic brawl.

This is the first year that has happened since two thousands seventeen. So starting in two thousand seventeen, Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys and other affiliated groups would vary regularly and they would do it throughout the year, but particularly during the summers, um hold protests and marches, and these all had different themes. They were the Second Amendment rallies, rally against Marxism rally and support of the fucking cops, the hymn to rally, all sorts of stupid, stupid fucking

names um. But the main problem, the main purpose of them all was so that there would be gigantic fist fights between you know, Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer brawlers

and anti fascists. That was the reason to hold these events, and they got increasingly gnarly and increasingly violent, until everything culminated in the summer of this massive Trump caravan through the city with like thousands of trucks, people shooting paintballs and spraying mace and throwing shipped off the back of trucks, and then a Patriot Prayer member named Aaron Danielson got his ass shot to death by an anti fascist during

a somewhat unclear altercation outside of a parking garage. What I can say is that everyone involved was heavily armed. UM and yeah. After that there were some more very ugly fights. But UM, an increasing like thing that happened was that there would be gunfire at these protests. And the next year UM, at an anniversary fucking fistfight thing, a right winged administrator fired into a crowd of anti fascists in downtown for Portland, who returned fire and drove

him off. He was arrested. UM. A bunch of there was a big stupid fight at a kmart in another part of town the same day debandoned kmart parking lot that held a massive brawl and several of them got Several of the proud boy types got real nasty charges from that one. After the police, as they generally did, chose not to take any kind of action. UM and then you know, things kind of peat it out, UM and nothing. There have not been any right wing rallies since.

There was one mass shooting attack on a weekly racial justice protest in Portland earlier this year, UM, where a fascist fired into a crowd of women who were doing corking duty. Um he killed one woman, um, and he wounded four other people and um, yeah, he was taken down, shot twice in the hip by a protester who was armed security for that march. And after that there hasn't

really been anything. And this is the interesting one of the things that There's a number of things that are interesting here, but one of them is that this has occurred while Proud Boy chapters are recording record recruitment. There's more new chapters of the Proud Boys than there were prior to January six, and there have been at least two hundreds something right wing gatherings around the country with like Proud Boys and other affiliated groups in attendance since

January six. UM, So nationwide, the kind of rallies that Portland's been sing since got more common, and they didn't happen at all in Portland this year. And that's what we're here to talk about today. I think there's a couple of things that are have contributed to the current state of affairs, UM, which I think broadly can be described as the right is kind of scared to do big events in Portland. There have been a couple of

like sputtering attempts. They drove through town on their way to Washington real quickly as part of this caravan once, but they didn't go through downtown again. It wasn't like one guy did fire it people on a bridge with a handgun, which the police did nothing about. But they're not willing to like hang around. And I think there's a few reasons why they've been scared off. Number One,

they keep getting shot UM. That has happened several times now. UM. Number Two, the physical resistance to them has been gnarlier as of the fights. UM, people have gotten smarter about how they do some aspects of the fighting, involving like a lot of property, like spraying paint on people's fancy body armor and ship, which is expensive. And then after five years of ignoring it, UM, the state has actually started charging right wing brawlers with felonies, which has scared

I think a lot of them off. UM. And yeah, so that's that's kind of where we are now. And I think one of the things people should be paying attention to is what Portland's had to do and and both how long it took, but also like what kind of things were involved to actually get to this point, Because other folks are going to need to be willing to do some of the ship people had to do in Portland for years, which includes like fucking strapping on

gear and going out to confront these people in the street. Yeah. I think, Um, it's really interesting because I just I know you've written a piece about this for New Lines recurring Me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll be up by the time the ser this runs cool. Um, yeah, I just

read it. I thought it was really good. Um. It reminds me of like when we talk about anti fascism historically, right, We we sort of talked about the high points a lot, and the one that at least I see most people going back to is the Battle of Cable Street in London in six which people will probably I know you've had it in Bastards episodes before, yes, and it's it's very similar thing, right, Like it's a broad intersexual coalition of people who are like, we will not let you

do this ship in our space, and we will physically fucking stop you, and if the police try and protect you, we will stop them doing that as well. There's incidents between most of these fascists and anti fascists, like throughout the thirties and a lot later in British history. But it's a very similar kind of play book, I guess right. It's like physical force opposition to fascist gatherings and not

letting them feel safe in your space. Yeah, not letting them feel safe and not letting them go unopposed, because I mean, one of the things that was kind of repeatedly a factor in Portland is that when the anti fascists out numbered the right from the start, and significantly there was a lot less violets on on the days when that happened, um, And so it wasn't always a matter of people needing to show up to literally fight.

There are times when like a show of force can work, and I think a good example of that in recent times in Texas in the DFW area obviously is a hot point for different right wing groups, including the Proud Boys harassing LGBT events stuff like drag Queen Story Hours and that sort of thing, and members of the elm Fork John Brown Gun Club who we've had on the show and and other affiliated groups have been showing up armed in an armor, most recently to protect like a

drag brunch um that was being counter protested. You can see like photos of like here's a proud boat with a bat with fucking barbed wire wrapped around it, and there there and in this like, you don't show up with the bat wrapped in barbed wire unless you're hoping you're gonna get to bash somebody's fucking head in. And that guy wound up standing off at the sideline all day long because a bunch of people were there with rifles. I think that guy may not legally be allowed to

possess firearms. Yes, I also suspect that guy has a felony record because he also had a nightstick and like several other like more ninja like meamed here weapons. It was yeah, yeah, say to me and look if if I'm going to be totally fair, meme to your weapons. No, no side in this fight. Because for a long time in Portland, there was an individual who would bring a pair of Samurai sorts everyone stations and we're we are talking gas station grade samurai. Did they have the oil

slick effect? They must have, they must have. No, he never drew his blades because of course then he would have had they would have had to taste. That's the rule. Yeah, that's the legal ramification that also it's impossible to take the swords that when you have them mounted on your back, it's literally possible to take the tactical back screen. It's

an offensive position. But no, I think it's worth talking about the types of other cities where there have been a sizeable amount of far right protests this summer, especially targeted at queer people, um, and how Portland is one of the cities where that did not happen. I mean, we've seen a lot of stuff in Dallas, and the people have been doing a pretty good job and both denying the right ground to gain but also denying them any of their like fight footage that they love to gather.

They've they've done a really good job at balancing that aspect, which is very, very challenging. It's very challenging and it takes a lot of discipline. And obviously, when we think kind of tactically about what guns mean in a situation like this, they're tools that have up. The downside of guns is that if things go wrong and everybody is strapped, the potential is for things to go very fucking wrong. Indeed, Um, the upside is that when you have a line of

people with rifles. The dudes with knives and batons and ship are a hell of a lot less likely to want to start a fucking fight because it's the the consequences are immediately obvious. You could look at it as kind of like the protest equivalent of mutually assured destruction of sort of the old like of of how the US of the Soviet Union managed nuclear tensions. Um. But it it. It has been very effective in Dallas for

that reason. And I think it's I think the fact that protests became increasingly armed in Portland and also that there are by my account at least three cases of fascists uh being run off or injured or killed by protesters with firearms. That is part of why they didn't want to do that ship so much anymore. M hmm.

I think part it's important too, because, like I I think there was a real danger after written House that right wing protesters We're gonna see this and just be like, no, we can just shoot these people, right, because you know, you have a situation where suddenly becomes very clear that the state is not going to prosecute people if like

right wing protests for shooting people. But you know, okay, if if the if the desterrance is not to say, if the insurance is if you get here to get into a gunfight, you're gonna lose and get shot like that, that I think has been extremely effective in a lot of ways. Yeah, early so sort of hadn't. I think it's probably worth noting as well that like where it's been effective, it's been effective because it's been organized and like I don't want to use the word discipline because

maybe discipline imply the authority that that doesn't exist. But like there's been some kind of collective restraint in agreement on rules of engagement and stuff, which because I've also seen folks try to do this unilaternally, that does not fucking end well, Like if you're if you're the one person I've been carrying and expecting the state where that's not legal, like you're just to one person going to prison. Yeah, and obviously open carry protests only work in states where

that can be done legally. Yeah, doing that in Texas is different than doing that in California. Yeah, That's what I'm here to tell you. But yeah, I think it's a it's a force multiplier, right, Like these guys have I think especially people on the right have like absorbed so much like this sort of like there are types of male as delineated by the Greek alphabet bollocks, and they've convinced themselves that they are Alpha's and they can win a fight. Now, James, I've seen more Sigmas than

Alpha's protest so many sigmas. I've seen a few epsilons, Man, I don't know that's the type of male. I met a real Sigma at an anti mask protest in who brought his a r in a sixty round drum and brag that he had five hundred rounds loaded into magazines as he as he protested masks in front of the state capital. And it was like the people he was protesting were specifically like about a dozen nurses who were standing around. Let's say, it was like, you got do

you need those five bullets for those unarmed nurses? Where signs telling it a mask he's ready for when the ship hits the fan romic, I'm guessing. Oh, I I don't believe I saw a med kit. I used to try to make a note of it. I will say the right. In the last year, I've noticed more med kits and pictures that I've seen so good good, I

guess yeah. But yeah, like if you are a person who's not like physically enormous or like, like I said, these guys have convinced themselves that like they somehow like top tier brawlers, even though seen the Patriot Front videos they're very funny, like it's like a false equalizer. I guess right. It allows people to sort of enter that

space without having to be massive dudes. I don't want to focus too much on specifically firearms because I think that's less important than and not that the primary lesson of Portland, which is what is necessary to stop these

people from showing up, is consist shows of force. And I think one thing that I just kind of always don't intellectually interesting is that you know, when you when you read about like military strategy, right, um, for every like guy who's actually kicking indoors getting into firefights in the field, you have you know, nine or ten people behind him who are responsible for logistics, right Um. That's

the only way in modern military works. When you don't have a logistics train set up like that, things go like they did for Russia start of the advansion, where you have like hundreds of tanks without fuel and ship UM. When in Portland protests, an average for a large protest, I would say the average was around a thousand people.

Now that's a large protest. Often they were smaller. But when you would get these big hyped for a couple of weeks the Proud Boys are coming to town, you'd easily get a thousand or two thousand people counter protesting, and you know it would be probably ten or fiftcent who were who were showing up specifically ready to kind of throw down um and ready to throw and also with some experience doing it, and a much larger number who were Some of them were there as medics, some

of them were handing out water or other beverages, they were handing out food. Uh. There were people who were there just to yell and chant with signs to like be you know, moral support. There were people they're doing transport blocking roads. UM. People they're doing you know, UM intel and stuff, filming things UM. People who were there, uh you know doing stuff like um covering up live

streamers cameras with with bubble rap sheets. Or we used to have a band full of people who dressed as bananas who would kind of kind of try to distract and drown out the far right. There was one beautiful individual I saw a couple of times who was in black block, except for they wore a kilt and they

carried a pair of bagpipes. And when, like you would get a couple of fascists approaching a protester and like trying to get into an argument, he would walk right up and he would just start playing the bagpipes so that they couldn't have an offensive. Yeah. Yeah, it was beautiful, um, but kind of more important than the specific you do need and I don't want to like distracted this. You always need a core of people who are willing and ready to get into a fucking fight when you're doing

this kind of activism. But the biggest thing is that people show up consistently. Um. And one of the things Portland's had a number of different organizations like pop Mob, Popular and more Mobilization that kind of existed to organize less radical um or at least kind of and not

not necessarily less radical. Sometimes people who were just like because of whatever in their life, were much less interested in the actual getting into a fight thing, but understood that the more people show up the safer it is, and succeeded in ensuring that there was like a larger body of people at all of these events, and that along with more rat groups like Rose City Antifa, who kind of particularly earlier in the fights, was a big street presence as well as did a lot of research,

and then other kind of newer um and often kind of smaller anti fascist collectives that would organize people to straight up fight. It was it was this mix of all of that that allowed it to be that whenever they showed up, there was always a group confronting them, and it was nearly always larger um. And it got to the point at the height of you know, there was this right wing protest before time hand, nobody quite

knew how bad it was going to be. Garrison. You and I got there right as things were starting, and it was the anti fascists were outnumbered kind of at the beginning of the day, and things got really violent very quickly. Within an hour or two though, about somewhere around a thousand people had showed up on the anti fascist side and we're organized and fighting. It was a

very impressive response time. Yeah, and I think it is it's the actual it's the I mean people used the word like the term to diversity of tactics often just to kind of defend actions that are more radical. Um. And there's the there's the other side of diversity of tactics, which is pulling in all of the background support that creates This is the sustainability for more radical actions like showing up and actually being a frontliner to get into

fistfights with proud boys. Then there's all of the other stuff, like whether that's like medics, other support teams, people playing doing like queer dance parties to push fascists out of areas. All those types of things not only make the environment more sustainable, so people can show up over a larger period of time because they don't get so burnt out because all they're doing is fist fighting. Um. So I

think those actions are another our thing. That's it's it's worth not just ignoring those and not just discrediting those, because once you have that type of presence and people know that you're gonna that, those are the types of environments that you're able to create when you're outnumbered by fascists and you need to call and need to need to put out a call for support if you if you have this kind of reputation that can that can help get a lot of people out very quickly and

help with the That actually is like popular mobilization that right, that that's what that's what that's what that actually means. So that's how you can get at the anti fascist side to outnumber the fascist side, like we saw in um despite that not being the case. When when when when it started? Yeah? And I think because the main thing that ended that fight was the was the anti fascist side just moving as a massive, massive block and

just pushing the fascists out of the area. Like there's as soon as the fascist line broke and you have like hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of people in Portland streets directing the flow of movement, you can't you can't stop that. The force. The force is too great, um. And that requires there to be a large amount of people, including people who are not gonna get into a fist

fight with someone three times their size. Yeah. I think another thing, um that that maybe it's important is that like and it's kind of at the core of anti fascism, right, It's it's it's possible for people who have done just different tactics, but different opinions, like to create this broad based alliance and not get a cross with each other for not agreeing on everything. And yeah, or at least, um, stop fighting with each other long enough to drive the

fascists out. Because Portland's, by the way, another thing we should acknowledge, the Portland anti fascist community can be quite messy. Um. There are a lot of different factions and disagreements, and there have been a lot of arguments up to the present day. But you know, as a general rule, when the right showed up, people mobilized and and threw down

against them. You know, despite the fact that it was a mix of folks who were libs and folks who were radicals and folks who were you know, um something in between. Um it was And again I don't this was never a particularly clean process, and it didn't have to be. You know, you could point out and and if we had longer, we could point out all number of different like flaws and shortcomings and like things that

we're done, that we're wrong or unfair to somebody. But what was kind of more important than any of the ways in which the movement was flawed was at the end of the day, that it persisted, that it kept bringing people out, and that it kept resisting, and that the right seems to have kind of blinked before the left did. Here, like that's what what matters more than anything about Portland's people felt comfortable enough to continue to

come out and it felt worthwhile enough. But for the anti specifically for the anti fascist protests, they were able to create those environments that people that that families were felt totally comfortable coming out to UM and people felt that it actually was worthwhile, Like there was it was it was worth it to take an afternoon out of your day to show up and say no, and and and if you're able to physically display no, you can't,

you can't come here. Yeah, And that was um. You know, obviously when we talked about the difference between doing that against the police as opposed to the right, you know, the police have more in their current form hundred and fifty have had a hundred and fifty years or so to dig in. You know, Um, it's a harder target. But yeah, I think the fact that um, I think the fact that one of the strengths of the movement

in Portland was that as a general rule. A lot of people who had a pretty diverse set of beliefs all felt this is a thing I can do and

should do. This is worthwhile and important. These people need to be opposed in the streets, and that's worth some time out of my very limited fucking free time to go do um and that That is kind of I think the primary lesson if you want to know what other cities should take from Portland's, it's the importance of developing a community like that, a community information network like that, but also just like a community where people can all kind of where where people feel like, yes, it is

actually it is worthwhile for me to show up and participate in this right Like. That's the hard thing is getting across When there's, um, you know, a book reading at a library, the Proud Boys are going to show up in protest. It's it's getting getting the message out to people in the area and getting a couple of hundred folks to show up, Because if you can get two hundred people to show up to something like that, there's never gonna be that many fucking Proud Boys at

the event. It's gonna be thirty or forty of them or less. Maybe a dozen. And if you're a fucking library and twenty proud boys show up to like cause a problem, and you've got like a dozen kids inside getting read a book or some shit, or it's a brunch, and yet thirty proud boys show up, you have a huge problem. People would get really hurt. They could get fucked up heading to their cars, they can get harassed.

It's scary if that number of Proud Boys shows up and a hundred a hundred and fifty people show up to counter them. Um, then suddenly number one, all of the people who are being threatened by the fascists get this feeling that like, oh my god, I'm actually supported by the community, that like people are willing to come out and defend me and defend people like me. And number two, the proud boys get to feel it like fuck even even here, we're even in Dallas right where

we we might be outnumbered. You know, I think because a few other cities where protests have continued and where they haven't, they haven't in Portland, I think yet we've we've seen a decent amount of activity this year in Salem, um a lot of blood and there have been far right protests in Salem ever since seen as well. Yes.

And the other place that because because I just because I just did a deep dive into this is there's been a lot of people from the Portland area from Vancouver UM planning to go up to port towns in Washington and it's been interesting talking with the people up there about this is the first time they've really seen

a large influx of people. And it's it's people who don't it's the proud boys who are not comfortable showing up to Portland anymore, but instead they're going to drive three hours to go to this small town of ten thousand people. UM. And then watching people in this in this low laria figure out how they're going to respond to this has been super intriguing. There's been a whole bunch of people. There's been affinity groups in the area setting up medic trainings for for queer people who live

in the town. UH. There's been meetings between bipoc groups and like more like gun based queer groups about how they can mutually support each other as the far right descends on their city. UM. And in some cases, you know, there was people in certain groups who at at previous

protests that's happened the past month. They did not feel comfortable going out to the front lines of this type of thing, but they were able to work with other organizers to set up kind of uh like support kind of like uh support like areas and even kind of kind of like they described it as like a picnic that's like a quarter mile away and it creates like a buffer zone in between people who want to go to the front lines and this whole background of people

that's supporting you and it's gonna help you out if you need anything. Um So, all the various ways that you can, you can incorporate a diversity of strategies and different type of groups into countering something that's moving to

your city. Now. Um just an interesting note based on how much I've I've heard people talk about you know, proud boys coming up from Portland and and and Vancouver just ending up feeling they have to drive three hours to other cities to get you know there whatever whatever they want to do. Yeah, the ideal thing is that they walk away not even beat up as much as demoralized and feeling like it was a waste of time

and money. Ideally, they in their gear, get covered and fucking paint or something, um, and they lost six hours of time on a fucking Saturday. And if that kind of happens repeatedly, maybe they'll stop, you know, which is which is again the goal is for them to uh feel like it's not worth coming out, you know, like that's what like people. It's often said like, you know, make racists a freight again is a statement you heard a lot, particularly after But it's a little more complicated

than that. It's not purely about fear. It's also it's hopeless. You want to make them hopeless. You want to feel make them to feel like there's no fucking point in showing up. And that's the most valuable thing, is a victory condition. That's that's above everything else, is making them feel like there is no hope for their movement. I think that the most recent as as a time of recording, there was there was this protest on the UM that was a mix of like turfs and then a mix

of far right people. There's this guy from Vancouver called the Common Sense Conservative who runs a little like video blog thing um that he was organizing some people to go up and I don't know, it's it's it's there was like, yeah, it's like thirty people, lots of them from out of state who traveled up as a part of this, like Turf Anti transside, and there was like three hundred to four hundred people from the local area who showed up and we're like, no, you're not gonna

to this of And ever since then there's been a lot of infighting between the Turfs and the kind of more far right people because it sucks. It sucks that you have three people from the actual city that show up and go no and try to like physically remove

you from this space. And I think you can sort of see mirrors of this and like the way left, just like protest work right where it's like it's it's a lot easier to hold together coalitions when you're winning, and the moment you start losing, the moment things start going wrong, like all of the infighting comes back and

you know the entire movement will just tostegrate. And this this works the same way on the right if you can if you can actually beat them consistently a few times, and you can start like holding on long enough for their their internal group dynamics to unravel. Like this, this is a way to beat them. Yeah, yep. Um, well that's about all I had to say, not a complicated topic anything else, all right? Well, well as uh yeah, anyway,

go up, go go yellow the fucking Nazi. Um, go go damage a fascists body armor by spraying them with paint from a great distance. You know, go go. Uh, I don't know, do something else? Uh? By what's kyling? Your Written House? Oh? In in our in our Centenius Cultural Center. Ya remember Kyle written House. Remember Remember that night where I spent way too much time online finding that kid's name, and then he was arrested a few hours later, and then he got off after murdering these people.

Remember when that happened. I do. So you're saying that you're in some way responsible for what we're going to talk about today. No, this is not. This is one of the most truly cursed things that I have ever seen on the internet that that man has ever existed. So I know people are just learning about this now, but I've known about this for a while because I kind of have a personal obsession with Kyle Rittenhouse for reasons that should be obvious. Um uh yeah, I've been,

I've been. I'ven't about this for a bit. I just have never found a good time to bring it up. But I guess, I guess, I guess we've now found it, which is it's Kyle in time. Yeah, it's time to talk about the central cultural Kyle Rittenhouse, which exists in Argentina. As part of I think maybe we'll explain a little bit about like what the broader contact of these central sits, like what they are if people aren't familiar, and then what the fuck this abomination is all about? Right? So

these exist across Latin America more or less. Also, I've seen him in Spain, the Spanish speaking world, but I think that's like a reflective thing, going back to Spain. And they're like community spaces. They they're very hugely but I've been two different ones. They've nearly always left this or at least progressive, and their spaces where sometimes people can go and meet, right, communities can meet. Sometimes they're

like cultural events, talks, you can borrow books. Often like their associated with neighborhood movements or what we might broadly call like anarchism. But sometimes it's yeah, explicit, sometimes it's it's not. It's like a communally center type thing. The closest thing we would have here would probably be like info shops, but those kind of differ based on what kind of anarchist infoshop you're at. Um. But yeah, they're like like community gathering places you can pick up books

or whatever. And this one's a little bit a little bit odd. Yeah, yeah, because it is very much not left if it claims me, Argentina's first openly right, it's cultural center, and it's run by this guy called Josse a dead Man. He is a poster, right, This is the guy who many people will have become aware of today. I have spent most of my day watching his content on the internet. Good for you, it's great, and I love my job. I took three days off, I went camping,

and then I just retoxified my brain with this ship immediately. Yeah, it's okay, So obviously dead Man right. The reason that we are interested in him today is a because of his truly cursed posting history and be because the anti terrorist police in Argentina raided the Central Court rittenhouse last night. I've got some audio of the raid which they went. We have to we have to play the studio of the race. Yeah, yeah, there were flashbangs, So we're there

were guns. There were a lot of guys in plate carriers. That's wild. Just the that's like the first real time anything related to cal Writon House has faced any sort of consequence, that's right, Yeah, based Argentinean cops. Well, again, they can only do things that are funny, that's true. And this is and raiding a Kylendhouse themed cultural center is funny, is very funny. This is extremely funny, Like, this is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

As they go in, you're going to see some some of not only artistically offensive, but really offensive in every way murals. So they're really bad, Yeah, very incredibly bad. The right is not good at street art, no, I mean, and this is this is this is the real problem that they have. As is sort of like strategy of like trying to mirror sort of left wing cultural spaces.

Is that like as as annoying as like left wing cultural spaces are like right wing cultural spaces are like the worst thing to be and you can possibly imagine because there's nobody like every single one of these people is completely insufferable. And again, let left left left wing sort of like social rude, but it's always buffered by the fact that they have an incredible number of very talented artists. These guys like the Donald Trump with the squad head is I don't think you would describe it

as as as quality artists. Responsible for the for the murals at the Kyle Written House Cultural Center, Yeah, he did them himself. There their videos. So do we want to talk about what before? We before talking about like why this was rated? Wan to talk about like what this actually is and like whysts like like where did this come from? Okay? So this comes pretty much out of this. He seems to some of his earlier posts about centership of Dragon Ball Z like oh my god, yeah,

which I will not profess. I've probably it's probably Z, isn't it? Okay? Okay, alright, so I've I've given myself away as a non anime understander at the outset. I don't know why it was censored, and he claims that it was. He uses a phase like Femi bolshi a lot Femi bolshe which I'm guessing is a portmanteau of feminist in Bolshevik, and he is a card. You're probably right, Yeah, so he's definitely an in. So, yes, the feminists are censoring DBZ and this means I need to start a

fascist hangout spot. Yeah, that's that's the journey of this. Yeah, well more or less, I guess it seems to really come out of the lockdown. It seems to come out of him being unemployed from March. There's a big anti lockdown group in Argentina called fuerts Ony Dadda Argentina, which he's part of. And that that's if you look. Actually it says like Carl written House Cultural Center, and then it has fuess ony Daddia written underneath um, and so that seems to be a large part of it. It

opened relatively recently. I was looking for an exact date, but I couldn't find it. But it is within the last year, Yes it has. It has been within the year. I remember seeing something about this earlier this year. Um, just to recap some of the art, maybe because it didn't like art's a strong word, paintings depictures. Yeah, art requires a few a few things to make it actually art. I don't think the stuff qualifies as as art. No, but and some of them I genuinely was unable to

discern who are they supposed to be? It's really difficult, Like it's it's kind of hard to tell who Trump is and it's Trump. This is this is this is this is how. This is the level of artists we're dealing with. Your Yeah, trap looks like someone out of Minecraft or something like. His head is entirely square. The width is equal to the height. Yeah, which, but they've they've got One of the guys I saw was this

guy called Malvo. Do people know who he is? Perhaps not? Okay, this is probably one that we won't include the video of in the podcast. But so he was. He went to prison because he tortured leftists as a copy in Argentina in the seventies, right, and then he escaped and in two thousand and eight, the cops come to his house to take him back, and instead of going back to Jaila Live TV in front of his wife and children,

he shoots himself. Like they just keep rolling, the reporters like five feet away and they're like, oh, he shoves up in the head. He's down, and now he's immortalized by Yeah. That looks like a five year old in cells finger painting on the walls. This is this is what happens when people follow their leader. Alert. Yeah, it's true. So there's there's other people there. There's Heavier Malay. I think he's called he's like he's a classic chud libertarian.

He's an Argentine politician. They of course have a Confederate flag. They have banners from the Argentine Civil War. There's an imperial Japanese flag. Yeah, next to Donald Trump, like the kind of I'm just looking at like the front like banner thing or like the front like mural at the editor's horrible horrible picture of Kyle Rittenhouse wearing a suit that it looks so funny. It's like it's the the the image is just amazing. It's god they have they have Okay, I will say it looks like I drew

it blindfolded with my left hand. Like it looks so bad. The one thing, okay, I I think they're well, okay. Their depiction of Bollsonaro, like it's fine. It kind of captures the grotesqueness of him. But he's doing finger guns guns with the Brazilian flag behind him. Remember remember this started with DVZ. Here, Yeah, written houses like giant thing has like what what is it? The two holes, the two blacks on his face eyepatch, But no, it's not. It's like two or three black circles on the inside

mineral of written house. It looks like he's wearing an eyepatch, like some kind of night vision optic. Maybe also as a Kyler written House expert who spent hours coming through the clothing he was wearing. They have his hat completely wrong. They have here like a reddish pinkish hat. That's not the hat that he was wearing. He was wearing a

tan hat with with a white back mesh. Um and the hat was the reason were able to figure out who he was because it has a little tear in the front and we were able to compare that to get an exact match onto the suspects Facebook profile. Um, so the hat is completely wrong. So already they've they've dropped the ball here on any semblance of accuracy by the completely rung hat for this picture. It's I'm insulted. As someone who spent hours figuring out what this guy's

name is, I'm insulted. Yeah, there's all kind of cursed stuff. This Abascale, the box guy from Spain, like anyone who you can think of he's just like a culture warrior is depicted in finger painting style by this guy by Hosy death Man. So he he came to the attention of the author well, actually he came to the attention of the authorities before. It will shock nobody to find that he has been sending untolisted images of his genitalia to women for a very long time. So he's been

sending got a lot of are you telling me? The dragon ball z in Cel, who started a Kyle written host cultural center, has been sending out unsolicited dick fix. I wonder if what Okay, hold on, hold on, I just I think I think I just had a revelation about this guy. Did you just crack this case wide open? Hold on, hold on, Yeah, I can't wait to hear what you've come out with. I am on the edge of edge of my seat. I am thrilled. All right, I only have to hand them on their Facebook page,

which is toxic as hell. Yeah, their face. Their Facebook is pretty funny. They have a video of a woman in the side of the culture yea. When the woman comes in there, like just to prove it's a woman. People say women don't come here like we have a woman. They've filmed like of like a like a five minute video of this woman sitting inside, just so there was proof that there was a woman inside this building. Yeah, they were so shocked. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's very clear

that like they had not been expecting it. So he's actually been to jail for gender based online violence. I think I figured out how this connects Dragon ball Z. My Okay, I'm not a percent sure about this. My guess is that this guy is like a hard line. Um, I've never actually heard this guy's names out loud. Vic Mignagna like truth or guymig Vagot is like this. He was a voice actor who was on Dragon ball Z who like sexually harassed and assaulted like a ship ton

of people. Um, And in twenty nineteen, like the stuff came out and there was like a huge right wing backlash around him, And I really wonder if this is the fucking thing that he was mad about. He was this voice actor that got canceled because his favorite voice

actor got canceled for sexually Celtic people. Yeah, well so so Vic tried to, like the voice actor guy tried to sue a bunch of people for defamation and got fucking apps lutely owned in court, and then all of the ship that he'd been doing for like decades like came out. So it would not surprise me if this was like part of this guy, like if this is part of the thing he was sucking screaming about with dragon ball Zy being censored. But the feminist Bolsheviks, Yeah,

that's the worst thing I've ever said. This is the worst organization ever had in my life. Yeah, that's a kind of I think a large part of this cultural center and the kind of the stuff behind it stems out of a whole bunch of like the anti communist groups that have existed in Argentina for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, his like so all his videos he has his backpack with like a hammer and sickle with like that no

you know, the circling line through it. And he then that he stages that everywhere with him, and he has like something he has like a bunch of anti communist graffiti that he also you'll see him in his h like in his Facebook profile it used to say sometimes anti social always anti communist, and it had like the yellow and black little thing and yeah, and he's he's betrayed. I think the tweet that first announced it betrayed them as like libertarian and caps, which like they have like

better dead than red. That's not a fucking ang cap. But like these people are trying to revoke the era of violence against the left in Argentina in the nineteen seventies, right, Like that's where they're going for here. Yeah, I think like in case people are not aware of this, Argentina had a like an incredibly brutal military data show killed the ships on people. Also like went around Latin America

trading other death squads. They had this group called the Triple A, which was basically a fascist death squad that sort of actor as a pre military for other wings of the state. They killed one of people. Eventually they kill the governments. Um, they're one of the people involved in Operation Condor. They drop people at helicopters. Also they yeah, it was really fucking bad. And and and these anti these like anti communists they basically fascist death squads or

some of them fascist literally fascist. Yes, are like the style of slogans. The propaganda that they're using for this center is in the same vein as that they're carrying that tradition in Argentina, and I think people are familiar

with the Nazis. People should also probably probably somewhat familiar with the the the whole thing with tons of tons of Nazis fleeing to Argentina um and Argentina being very welcoming to a whole bunch of like like like like like German Nazi like actual like Nazi Nazis, like like with membership God, not Third Reich Nazis. Yeah. So one thing that the that he did, one thing that dead man did or he they posted as we on their

Facebook page with last mathday's dela plaza da mio. They are like these mothers who made this weekly protest I think it was weekly, and they wore white handkerchiefs, right, and they were like where are I disappeared children? And they sort of mobilized maternity in this way that made it very hard for the state to crack down on them, right, especially a state which is all about like quote unquote

traditional gender roles or whatever you want to call it. Um. So these mothers are like held up as a great example of peaceful protest, of peaceful protests against dictatorship, right

of forcing them to acknowledge their crimes. They're they're looked up to by a lot of people all around the world, and he and his bros went out and vandalized a monument to them and then posted about it on their Facebook like pretty openly, like we did this, look at us go so generally pretty much piece of ship guy. And he claims that the real he was radicalized by torturous sexual abstinence, which is enforced upon him by the

government with the COVID nineteen lockdown. Aha, So he's claiming to be a var cell and not an him cell or c that's have said this too long, I mean, and if it's first on by the government, then it is involuntary. Yes, yeah, okay, I guess I guess some men right here. We don't need to continue the conversation. It actually doesn't matter. No, he was unable to find intimacy with the people he wanted to and therefore decided to send them pictures of his penis instead and then

start a cultural center themed after Kyle Rittenhouse. That's correct. Yeah, I'm trying to think of like I did a lot of stuff on like the aftermath of the Written House shooting as well, and we immediately saw a whole bunch of a big wave of written House stuff in the better Dead than Read and anti communist action type like memes, And I think that this very much stems out of that tradition as well, at the cow written House being this like symbol of here is a shining example of

someone who actually put in the work to kill communists

quote un communists obviously. Um. And I think that with with the whole kind of like anti communist death squad framing of this, that matches up with a lot of the kind of the memes that we're that we're circulating in the weeks after the original shooting in Kenosha, And we can see this as like a physical manifestation of that type of mimetic messaging, like this is like a it's a it's a physical version of that of course incorporating into just a larger kind of right wing populist politics,

uh you know, veering onto fascism um. And I think it's but specifically with like the anti communist action and better Dead than Red type type memes that were using written House, that is a very a very clear kind of uh nexus point between these two things, Like why is someone in Argentina super into Cowritten House. It's it's because of this we already have this big strain of anti communist stuff inside Argentina. Kyle and how was used me medically in this way? Very easy thing for the

right there to use. I think, I don't know. I think, Um, James, do you have Do you have any other fun facts about this? Yeah? I do, Yeah, I do. So there seems to be another guy who does most of the speaking for them when they speak to the media. He only gives his name once as do like ju, but then he also wait for it because he claims to have Jewish ancestry as well, and therefore they can't be anti Semitic. So very troubling. Maybe I'm pronouncing that wrong,

but you know, I can't think of another way. It's only two letters, so extremely troubling. One thing that I did know is what is there's a whole lot of quote unquote gender ideology talk right, and a lot of cultural Marxism talk. So here's a guy who's extremely online and is parenting these kind of Ben Shapiro American Right talking points. You can also like One thing that's very funny is there appears to be a punk band called war Pigs who are selling I think it's figurines, like

World Cup figurines preps which they are selling. Mundy, it's the word he used. They seem to be basically pretending to be him online selling these figurines, pretending their fundraising for his center, but then they're obviously using the money for their anti fascist efforts. That is incredibly bad. Shout out to them, war Pigs, look him up. Yeah, they give him some money if you can buy so funny. He gets so fucking mad about it. He made so

many videos about it. And then his parents were like he talks about them as heroes of the Marxist movement and like leftists and revolutionaries. So he's thirty eight now, so his parents will have been young in the seventies perhaps but certainly certainly like around in the period in their teens and tw empties. And he talks about like how his parents recruel to him, and how the supposed Marxists like bullied him, how he he says at one point he has Tourette's. They forced him to do treatments,

which he claims curtails his opportunities to meet women. But he only mentioned this once and he sort of goes off on these weird diversions. Yeah, it's a lot of very basic kind of online and cell type stuff. I want to talk a little bit about the sort of trans ale on this too, because I think so one of the things I think like is not very well known that at some point I will do a full episode on when I find when I'm able to like get enough stuff together and find people who are like

really qualified to talk about it. But Argentina has had one of the world's most powerful trans movements for a long time. And I mean they have stuff there that like like there, there's there, there is a law that passed um I think last year or that that like that they have like a hiring quota, so all for public service job, there's a one percent hiring quota of people who have to be trans. Like. Yeah, they're like

they they have stuff. They're like they have done stuff there that is like like not even like on the agenda for like any other like trans woven I've ever seen.

So Yeah, they're they're they're very strong, they're very well organized, and the government has sort of like has done like a bunch of like genuinely very good, like pro trans stuff, like under the pressure of this movement, and I think that I think like in that context, I think his this fact that he's obsessed with like gender critical ship makes a lot of soundse because that's you know, that's like one of the sort of right wing things in

Argentina is opposing this ship. But like it doesn't. I don't know, they're kind of losing that battle insofar as like you know, people people have done a really really good job and fought really really desperate and sort of horrible battles for decades. But yeah, they're they're they're sort of bearing fruit in really cool way. Is respect nice good job, and so what else is bearing fruit is his posting because he has been rated by I would urge you towards this video. I'll tweet it so people

can find it there as well. But a metric ship ton of our police. And the reason they're rating him is because he's made like a public threat. Basically he made this say. It's about eleven and a half minute video. Notably, he says our total to support to the Brazilian hero who tried to create justice for all Argentinians and goes on to talk about this. This is with reference to the assassination attempt that we saw what last week, Yes, so so so last week this this fascist tried to

assassinate the vice president of Argentina. And we're going to get more into this in our upcoming week of content titled Assassination Week. Assassination Upcoming, We're gonna be a whole week of whole week of episodes about fascinations. Um. But in brief, this this, this happened, and then the people at the Cultural Center made this livestream celebrating the attack

and calling the perpetrator Argentina's Brazilian hero. Yes, it really was just he also like tells people to rise up and stuff like, there's some very clear course direction in there. In the raid, they found a mortar shell and one eight four minument a mortar shell, a drone, and they they've confiscated a bunch of hard drive which I do not envy the person who has to go through his

phones and hard drives. There. They're going to see some balls, they're going to see some pain, but hopefully that person can get some therapy. And this isn't the first like, this isn't the first time that the state has tried to come after them. They actually there there were discussions about like denying the crimes committed under the day Tater ship and how he can be prosecuted for that, because that was the thing that they were very clearly doing.

So it seemed like he'd kind of been in the crosshairs of progressive legislators in Argentina for a while, and then he went and made this batchet crazy video where he makes calls to violence. He says the left can't ask for non violence. He says the left doesn't respect democracy, and he calls the vice president a rat and a murderer and says that it's just a shame that she wasn't blown up and it's only because the weapon malfunctioned that this hero didn't get to do justice for a

largent times, I should have been the guy like I'm sorry. Yeah, look, we're like, he's just he's just built different. Yeah, she's he's built different because he got sabotaged by all of his esoteric Nazi or something, which we will get more into in the upcoming assassination week. Yep, we just got to record the theme music and then we'll be there. He cut together footage of all of the great assassination.

This is gonna be half an hour constant assassination college. Yeah, these guys are extremely curse that there's more curse stuff that they've done that like we probably shouldn't go into. I didn't think because I think you could just understand this is a lonely in so guy who's been on the Internet too much become more and more radicalized and like surrounded himself with people who agree. And it's been pretty funny to watch people prank him for a while,

like scrolling down their Facebook page. It's very funny to see people consistently like he doesn't seem to be an intellectual giant. But it's also worrying and obviously he's advocating for violence against people. Wouldn't emoginized. Whenever someone starts taking things that are online out into the physical world, like making basically a monument like a physical place, Um, it's always concerning. It's always it's always one of the big

big red flags. Yeah, and I think, like specifically, the fact that he had both a mortar shell and a drone is incredibly alarming. You don't say, yeah, I just want to say, I just want to put that all the record for a second. Yeah, if he'd posted a little bit less, you're going to have made it into assassination week. But here we are, and they cocked by your own posted tail tail is all this time. Yeah,

if he'd stuck to tradition and not posted him, they did. Also, I just want to sell secondhand clothes at the center. I don't know why. I don't know what they were going for there, but they did that. So coffee really Yeah, well in Argentina and you want some secondhand clothes and coffee, I can tell you where not to go. Don't go to this place because these odds are you're gonna get rated by police when you're there. Yeah. I didn't think

there's much of dis place left now. I think it looks like the door has not recovered from their entry, judging by the fact that they've taped bin bag for it in the photos here. Yeah, hopefully someone can squat this place. Maybe the war pigs can get it and just toast a collection of figurines there that would be based. That would be so sick. Yeah, they need money, just let us know. We'll do a fundraiser. So I hope this is a good lesson in knowing when posting goes

too far. Yeah, try try to keep your cringe online if you're going to do it, because you don't want to be this guy. No, you certainly do not want to be this guy complaining about track and Bolz and posting that results in the police raiding your car and house steamed hangout spot. Yeah just yeah, truly one of the weirdest pivots from online to the streets that I've ever seen. This dude probably should have been jail a

long time ago. They probably worth noting that, like gender based violence is like the common denominator for people who do add terrible ship, and this is not not an example of that. Yeah. Who who could have thought that the raging and cell misogynist would also have bad politics? Yeah, to keep doing Fammi Boushi ship, you have a full support. Indeed,

Well that isn't for us today. To tune in next week I think next week, right next week or maybe the week after for our upcoming week of episodes titled Assassination Week. Yeah, it's gonna be great. Of course, not not endorsing any political violence, assassinations any kinds. AH nine eleven is in a couple of days. I'm Robert Evans. This is it could have happened here a podcast about nine eleven. Um well, as as Garrison said in the intro that we're not using it's about things falling apart,

and boy did that happen on two things that fell apart? Yeah? Um yeah. So this was originally going to be a slightly cruder episode than it wound up being. But I'm just gonna I'm just gonna delve into the script and uh, Chris Garrison, you guys just buckle in, because the reason I have you both as guests on this is that you are both too young to remember nine That's not true. I remember, I remember, I remember. Were you like four?

I hope so yeah, I was four. But I remember my mom like so she she was trying to explain the Pentagon, right, and so she has like a coaster on the ground and she's making an airplane with her hand is just going into anyway. So, as I said, neither of you properly remember nine eleven. I don't remember it.

Love it. I I was at the age where every moment of it is burnt into my into my brain, as is the reaction so I wanted you both on this because we're gonna talk about how nine eleven kind of became a cult um and how to maybe how to maybe deal with that, and then we'll be chatting about Glenn Beck's nine twelve project, which is something I'm

sure neither of you are very familiar with. Now. In its sixth season, the popular cartoons South Park ran an episode in which Jared Fogel, who was at that point just a subway spokesman and not a convicted child molester, came to town and announced the start of a new program to give everyone AIDS. Now, he was talking about dietitians and personal trainers to help people lose weight, but everybody heard AIDS the disease, which led to wacky hijinks.

That's the episode. It ends when everyone realizes they'd misunderstood Fogel and they all laugh. Uh. This leads them to realize that AIDS is finally funny, because things that are tragic become funny exactly twenty two point three years after they occur. That's the joke in the episode, and went on to become a minor little internet joke that, like, you know, once you hit that twenty two year point,

you can laugh about something tragic. We are now at like twenty one year and change since September eleventh, two thousand one, and I think if we're all honest, most of us can admit that we've laughed at a lot of nine eleven jokes. We're recording this the day the Queen died, and people are like photo shopping her face to be the Twin Towers, and it's so it's quite a time on the old Internet. Now. I think the first, I think the hardest, at least, that I ever laughed

at a nine eleven joke. I'm sure it's not the first time was this picture of Trump Tower that was posted to Twitter like right after he got inaugurated, with the text George Bush do you thing? Um, it's still an excellent nine eleven joke. Now, the first person with any kind of platform to making a nine eleven joke was the recently deceased comedian Gilbert Gottfried. On September twenty nine, two thousand one, he took part in a roast of Hugh Hefner at the New York Friars Club, And I'm

gonna play you the audio of that right now. I have to catch up flight to California. I can't get a direct flight. They said they had to stop at the Empire State Building Park there. Extremely tamed joke. Honestly not a great joke. UM, but it went onto it was It's probably like maybe the most famous and like kind of stand up history like bombs. Um. God Freed and said himself said that he lost the audience more than anyone else ever has. UM. I think it caused

some career problems for him. Um. He later said, like a few weeks after. This was days after. So this is at the Friar's Club roast of Hugh Hefner on September twenty nine. Is this work too soon? It's from UM? Well, yeah, this I mean, I don't I don't know that it originated there, but this was the response to him. Um, and I think it's the first time I ever recall

hearing someone say that. Godfried said that like the reason he decided to tell a joke this close to nine eleven was that he was personally offended by the fact that anything could be too soon to make a joke about. UM. One of these is interesting about this. A little side thing is that like after bombing and getting shouted at by the audience. Godfried, like decide did to get them back by telling a particularly long and foul version of

the Aristocrats, which is a meta joke about jokes primarily anyway. Um, it's basically just being as foul mouthed as you can possibly be to an audience. Um. And that that audio has been lost to time apparently, But boy, you can watch a fun documentary about the Aristocrats if you want to learn more about that now. I think the first good actual comedy bit about nine eleven came out a

little bit after this. This was about two weeks after the day and a couple of months later, at like the three month point, South Park season five aired, uh, and they ran an episode about nine eleven. Um. It has been criticized, rightly so because there's some kind of racist bits of humor in there. Surprising, that's not surprising. Um. That said, it's also kind of a valuable snapshot of history.

For one thing, The huge part of the episode is just kind of like the Afghan child counterparts to the main characters in the show, walking around their town as

everyone is ordered by US air strikes. UM. So it's it is not like the it stands kind of an opposition to sort of the kind of like bootlicking responses you got for For some context, the show The West Wing, which is the favorite show of everybody who runs anything in politics right now, ran an emergency nine eleven episode like a couple of weeks after the attack, which was the kind of turnaround you didn't do in TV at

that point in time. So they put in a ton of effort to have the special nine eleven episode of The West Wing. Um that number one in the alternate West Wing universe, there's no nine eleven. There's like some vague like there's basically basically the episode focus on like a bunch of kids on a tour getting stuck in the White House because it locks down because some vague terrorist attack thing happens in a fake country they made up.

So when the West Wing needed to talk about Muslims, um and kind of like the breakout piece of this, well, there's two breakouts. One of them is a very racist retelling of the story of Isaac and Ishmael that explains like why Muslims are always so angry all the time, um.

And then the White House Press Lady c J. Craig goes on a rant about how awesome the intelligence apparatus is and how like what good people uh CIA agents are, and how the best thing to do for politics sometimes is to have a guy dressed as a waiter murder somebody with a silence pistol like it was out of

its mind, unhinged. That's the fucking like. So the fact that South Park does an episode that's like, yeah, we're gonna murder a bunch of people in Afghanistan for no reason is like, not a not a bad response, not a bad thing to recognize about that day. Um, the other things that are like pretty good or pretty I think meaningful sort of bits in that episode. It opens with all of the kids at the bus stop wearing gas masks as they stand in line for the bus.

There's a piece in that episode that kind of sticks with me today still, um that I'm gonna play for you guys. I don't know, I always found that bit fun. So when the school bus arrives, there's a cop on its searching bags and confiscating items that might be used as weapons. The school classroom doors are reinforced with a massive military grade lock, which resonated more in a time

when like school shootings weren't a constant thing. Um, And it it kind of hit me because, you know, when this episode came out and I watched it when it came out, I was at middle school, Clark Middle School in Plano, Texas, and on nine eleven and twelve, the attacks were like the only topic of discussion that anyone had. And I have this vivid memory of a couple of girls in my US history class weeping because they were

scared that al Qaeda was coming for our schools next. Um, Like this was a very real worry for kids that I grew up with, what like Midland, Texas or something. No, it was, indeed, it's a big school. But like I'm certain that fucking Osama bin Laden had never heard the name plane o Texas, let alone the Joatha thing with like anytime a plane was like going down, people will point at it and be like, oh my god, yeah yeah,

um No, that was definitely a meme. And there was, you know, one of the most famous ones was this this video called Triumph Dot a v I that started to spread on the Something Awful forums That was just footage of the September eleventh attacks set to yakety sacks um. And again, these were all kind of the comedy that that you know, that South Park put out here and that you saw, and stuff like the Triumph video were reactions to how fucking seriously everybody else took nine eleven right.

Like I have to, I have to point out that like watching an episode like this or watching something like Trump felt like legitimately transgressive in the days and weeks after nine eleven, because it was kind of a as we'll talk about, had turned into kind of like a secular cult um. And I think people who were just a few years old then or born after nine eleven

missed this part of nine eleven. Um. I think you inherited the wars and the intrusions on civil liberties and the creeping fast is um, but not the derangement by terror that had preceded it, Like everybody's permanently deranged from nine eleven, But you didn't really get to know people before that kind of happened and drove a lot of them mad. As a kid, it was like a strange

and exciting and scary moment. But I think my parents and I think the people who were kind of in their age range um completely lost their minds, and oddly that that South Park episode has kind of the best depiction of that too. There's a scene in which stand who is one of the main characters they're all like middle school kids, walks into his house and sees his mom like lying on the couch staring blankly ahead UM

and just like weeping. She's surrounded by tissues. She's been crying for days, UM and as her husband says, she's just been watching CNN for like the last eight weeks straight. And the the image of her just kind of like lying on the couch staring at the TV is I can remember every adult that I knew as a kid doing that, and it it really did go on for days, like people moved moved around as if they were like

in kind of a shocked stupor. I'm sure there's places where this wasn't the case, UM, But for my family, who were very very conservative people, and I think for people particularly who lived closer to the attacks, like it was just this period of um like post traumatic stress for the entire country. I think a good amount of research backs up the fact that this it had this kind of and I think it is hard to understand if you weren't there impact on people. I found a

Pew Research study that I'm gonna quote from now. Our first survey following the attacks went into the field just days after nine eleven. From September seventeen, two thousand one, A sizeable majority of adults said they felt depressed. Nearly half said they had difficulty concentrating, and a third said they had trouble sleeping. It was an era in which

television was still the public's dominant news source. Said they got most of their news about the attacks from television, compared with just five percent who got their news online, and the televised images of death and destruction had a powerful impact. Around nine and ten Americans agreed with the statement I feel sad when watching t the coverage of the terrorist attacks. A sizable majority found it frightening to watch,

but most did so anyway. Fear was widespread, not just in the days immediately after the attacks, but throughout the fall of two thousand one. Most Americans said they were very percent or somewhat forty five percent worried about another attack. When asked a year later to describe how their lives changed in a major way, about half the adults said they felt more afraid, more careful, and more distrustful or

more vulnerable as a result of the attacks. And I think you can't separate this because the main people were talking about here when we're talking about the response to this, when we're talking about the people who got to make decisions, it's boomers, right, which is not all that different from how it is today, but even it was even more so boomers then. And you know, my parents and the people of their generation are all children of the Cold War.

They both grew up, my parents on different military bases, um and I can remember, you know, my dad told me stories about doing like duck and coverage rills as a kid, like literally hiding under a desk to get ready for an atomic bomb. His family like went out into the countryside during the Cuban missile crisis to hide because they were afraid all the cities we're going to get nuked. And this is not These are not uncommon experiences.

So you have to think, like all of the all of the adults were either very close to this period or had spent most of their formative years like constantly scared of being murdered by a nuclear weapon. Um, there have been clinical like studies and stuff that have shown that that fear of nuclear annihilation is a major factor and anxiety like it's not ever been properly I think

explained how much that fucked up that generation. But what you had is all these people who had spent the first couple of decades of their lives living with the sort of damocles over their heads. And then the war ends, right, the Cold War ends, the USSR falls apart, and suddenly people aren't talking about nuclear warfare for the first time in anybody's memory. Um, And I think for most of

that generation they felt safe for the first time. There was this kind of celebration that was pretty bipartisan, that capitalism and democracy had triumphed, and that like this kind of horror that had stalked through their childhood had been defeated.

When people like Francis fuki Yama talked about the end of history, what Fukiyama meant was that liberal democracy was kind of, in his eyes, the end of the evolutionary road for states, which is a flawed idea, But the interpretation that I think people like my parents had was that we didn't need to worry anymore. Right, like that that's the end of history, right, our way of life had one and we like we we didn't need to worry.

And in nine eleven happens and suddenly this decade or so of relief from that all ends in a minute, and all of that fear that they lived with their whole lives came roaring back with abandoned. Nine eleven was like the emotional equivalent of splitting an atom. And and the Internet that was released by that is going to

be used for something, right. I want to kind of touch on that a little bit, because I mean, I obviously don't remember the nineties because I wasn't there, and it is such a fascinating idea to me, like this time where neoliberalism kind of reached their paradise, like like we didn't we could we we we we did the thing, We found the spot and how that you know, talk about like the edge o chaos theory, how it was built up to the super high point and then all

because because it got so high and then immediately crumbled, um and shot down and there's this thing that um. One of my favorite writers, Granat Morrison, talks about how nine eleven kind of became this moment where the world of imagination and the world of like the lowest material visceral reality crashed into each other. Um, and he says a quote. The collapse expressed itself in the material world when the twin towers of the World Trade Center were

reduced to dust by determined extremists. When cement occurred, reality and fiction began their slow collapse into one another. After the fall of the towers, quote unquote, reality became more fictional, and quote unquote fiction became more realistic, I think, plausible, realistic, superhero of movies like The Dark Knight films, fake news,

deep fakes, a r VR and the rise of magical thinking. Um. And I would extra plate that out to like stuff like you know Q and on UM and you know the how just these images that we thought were only viewable in film and television um became descended down onto the onto the dirtiest, most visceral material plane. UM. And then things that were fake like this idea like the Perfect nineties, It's gonna be this is gonna continue continue

like Diever that fiction. Uh, it felt almost more real, like it like that that that should have been what's real and it's not me more. Yeah, it feels like there's an alternate and I think that's part of why liberals are still so goddamn in love with the West wing. And by the way I talked about liberals, my parents, who loved Ronald Reagan more than life itself, watched every episode of that show. They thought it was wonderful. And

the Republicans are always portrayed very sympathetically on the West wing. Right, it's very much this noble opposition sort of idea um and uh, the the that I think there's something in that that there's list almost since that we've been locked out of the right reality. And that's that's what you know, That's what liberals are constantly harkening back to with with nine eleven. But it's also or with with stuff like the West Wing. But it's also like what conservatives. I

think for a while they were looking for that. I think that's what George W. Bush promised and failed to deliver. Um. It's what they were hoping to get with Romney and when that didn't happen. I think part of what's going on with Trump is this desire, part of the desire to burn it all down is the inability to get back to this imagined if you're talking about the collapse of reality and fiction going into each other, that's what

Donald Trump represents. He is this so fictional person that in order to meet this new world of reality and fiction the same thing, you need somebody that under that, that rep sense that. Um. So they turned to him because he was meeting the way they saw the world was going, that the reality infection are going into each other. So you're going to get the reality television president who who who? Who kind of embodies that essence on a

very very visceral level. And I think that's part of why when you have nine eleven happen, you have all of this energy released. Both parties kind of come together in this idea that the United States should strike back and that we were at war. It's rightly pointed out by people that particularly protests against the Iraq war were massive,

and they were, they were historically large. But President Bush was also the most popular president of our lifetime briefly, and it's because people were in line behind this idea that we need to hit someone well. And and I think something that's important about this that's completely forgotten is that the invasion of Afghanistan. There was like no protests. There were there were a few, but like the left imploded, like here's I'm going to read a quote from Doug Henwood.

This is an attack on us. There is a near certainty that something will be done soon. Clearly considerable use of force will have to be used to capture these motherfucker's um like Adolph read He's like talking about how like there's gonna have to be military reaction. Like a bunch of the people from like who like the the old school, like anti Vietnam War protesters like from STS are like, well, we don't oppose all wars, we just opposed bad wars. So like here we should go in vadive.

Guess like everyone lost their minds. Well, and I want to what I really the core of when I talk about today is why that happened. Because I think there's on particularly kind of some of the more superficial left wing analysis of this, this idea that like George Bush did what he did in response because he's like this

Christian holy warrior um. And there's a couple of reasons people do this, including the fact that he once referred to the invasion of Iraq as a crusade, but as a general rule, what Bush did was not because of his Christianity and had nothing to do with any kind of conflict with his Lam. In particular. What it was was the reaction of a group of a kind of fundamentalists, fundamentalists of belief in the American state, reacting to an attack on the sanctity of that kind of idea um.

And this is this is you know why all these liberals were on board at least with you know, the strike on Afghanistan or attacking Afghanistan. Christopher Hitchens. Probably no one embodies like what happened to a lot of the left better than Hitchens. Hitchens was a well known liberal journalist. He wrote an excoriating book about Henry Kissinger. Right, he's one of these people who was criticizing the Empire, who was attacking it for its excesses. For builds his career

on that, and the nine eleven happens. And the first big thing he does is he puts out a massive column titled Bush's Secularist Triumph, in which he argues that the war on terror is not a crusade but a battle to keep rely Gin in public power. Separate, and I want to quote now from a study published in the Journal of Political Theology by William Kavanaugh of DePaul University.

It's kindled the war on terror secular or sacred. There may be some Christians who think that we are fighting for Jesus, but the battle is being one in the name of secularism. George Bush may subjectively be a Christian, but he and the US Armed forces have objectively done more for secularism than the whole of the American agnostic community combined and doubled. While the left makes apologies for religious terrorists, the right supports their obliteration to protect our

secular state. Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution,

and the liberals have gone a wall. That's Kavanaugh's summary of Hitchens is article, but like, what's going on there is really interesting because Hitchens is proceeding as an a priori assumption that the attack on the Twin Hours is an attempt by a theocracy to take over and destroy a secular state, rather than an attempt to damage economically a military enemy um and goat it into a war that would weaken it socially, militarily and economically, which is

exactly what had actually happened. The liberals that Hitchens attacks is former allies are basically saying, don't take the bait right, don't do the thing that he wants you to do, because it will it will lead to the results he wants to achieve. All Hitchens can see is that, like Muslim extremists are scary and they want to hurt him as an atheist, religion is doing things that hurt me, So I must destroy the people who believe in this city. Yeah.

And it's interesting because everybody, all of the people who are kind of on the side of this civic religion, which is which is why they're responding, because there they're civic religion has been attacked and this strike on the towers. They all find kind of different ways to justify it. Hitchens is a prominent atheist, so it makes sense that he kind of sees it as a fight against theocracy. If you go through a lot of footage of news

anchors in the immediate wake of the attack. Garrison, you and I were doing this a couple of nights ago. There were numerous references that the Twin Towers, which were a symbol of capitalism, and that they represent capitalist and American supremacy over capital It's like it's it's it's like the American supremacy of the economic system and and and like a reified symbol of capitalism almost like it's like

it's like an idol to like to the god of capital. Yeah, there's a there's a number of different things you can find making this point. But in a column that published on nine twelve, uh, the Washington Post editorial Board wrote, for three decades, the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center stood as the symbol of American economic might, as powerful an icon for capitalism as the Statue of Liberty is for freedom exactly exactly. That's yeah, yeah, it's amazing. No,

people were just saying this ship the day. You ever think that's funny about it. It's like no one thought this before. Like these are cheap fucking buildings, like the World Trades Yeah, like a license, Like it's literally It's just like license is a nameless license out. It's like that, you know, But that doesn't because again, what what you by saying this when they're saying like, for three decades,

this was the symbol of American economic might. People and I keep going back to my parents, but I think they represent a lot of Americans saw the defeat of the Soviet Union as being achieved by the US economy, by capitalist right, and and that's the thing that ended history. That's the thing that got them to their neo liver paradise. It's the thing that saved them from the nukes. And so by taking these towers down, bin Laden basically killed Superman. Right,

That's how they're reacting to it. Um. George Bush and Christopher Hitchens and the Washington Post editorial board, they all saw their support for war not as as not based in religion. All of them would have denied this right, Um. But Kavanaugh argues that they were motivated primarily by what he calls the civil religion of the United States, which is why I've been using that term. I'm gonna quote

from his paper again. The United States has its own civil religion, which, though relying on the support of Christians, and undoubtedly, borrowing much from Christian imagery, transcends mere sectarian religion to unite all Americans on a higher ground. Indeed, this is what makes secularism compatible with civil religion. What Robert Bella calls traditional religion is privatized, while civic rituals revolve around a generic God who underwrites America's identity and

purpose in the world. In this sense, Andrew Sullivan is right. This is a religious war. The war of which nine eleven was a significant marker, is not extremist and expansionist religion against a peace loving and neutral secularist order. It is rather the violent confrontation of Islamist terrorism with the civil religion of American expansionism, that is, the evangelical insistence that liberal social order is the only viable kind of social order. It is what Tarik Ali has called the

clash of fundamentalisms. And I think that's important because I think one way area in which the left really got things wrong in sort of their interpretation of what happens in this period of seeing it as a lash between kind of Christian fundamentalists as embodied by George Bush and Islamic fundamentalists. No, no, no. The people who were leading this country, including Bush, but including most of the the Liberals, were America fundamentalists. They were fundamentalists in the idea of

the secular American state, and so were my parents. As conservative as they were, my family was never about you know, Christianity needing to be spread over there. It was about this this belief in America as something holy and that something holy and sacred had been struck on September eleven.

I will say I I think, I I don't know, it's easy for me to see why people think about this on the left sort of as this Christian holy war, because like I grew up with a lot of people who like in the wake of this, who like really were full on into the crusade thing. Like I had classmates would talk about how they were going to join the military to kill a Muslims. Like there was like

I think this is a real thing. Sure, and that's what I mean, that's sort of analytic wrong, that's what that's what Kavanaugh saying, and that it's kind of scaffolded on Christianity. But like that's fun fundamentally, like the fact that there are some people who are going in there being like this is finally religious crusade, doesn't mean that's like what the leadership of the country is doing, and

as I have to do. I think that's part of why we get Trump and the current Christian extremist surge is that, uh, it's a reaction to how kind of the neo cons go with this, because for the neo cons, this isn't really about this isn't about Christianity is something you use in this fight, but like, that's not what you're fighting for here. Um. And I think there's there's a good amount of evidence for the fact that Americans identified something as being like holy about the Twin Towers,

particularly after the attack. UM from Kavanaughs study in Public Theology Quote and August to thousand ten of poll found that fifty six percent of Americans regard Ground zero as sacred ground, and a slightly larger majority opposes construction of a mosque nearby. For this region, a sacred aura surrounds the identity of the nation that was attacked on that day, and the attacks concentrated that sacredness in a particular location

in time. It is not necessary to go back to the more famously evangelical George W. Bush to make the link between piety and nine eleven. In his speech at Ground Zero last September eleventh, two thousand ten, Barack Obama talked about gathering at this sacred hour on hallowed Ground and talked about how those who were not only killed

but sacrificed in the attacks. God was invoked, of course, but it was a generic God who belonged to no particular faith, because, as Obama made clear, the victims themselves

were of many faiths. Yeah, this is I mean one of the things that I think is interesting if you're actually trying to analyze this and you want to see kind of the degree to which why I think it's important to look at how people treated the space itself is sacred, is how actual religion responded in the wake of nine eleven, and how Americans responded to religion in the wake of nine eleven, because you know, it says they're about fifty six percent of the country. See, this

is like hallowed Ground in some way. Um. And I think there's evidence that people kind of rose up to defend this civic religion more than they actually did their real faiths. Um. And this is because primarily the reaction on a on a population basis to September eleven, is

that religiosity in the United States continued to decline. Right, There's a public idea that it led to this like surge of people coming back to the church and getting religious again, but there's really no demographic evidence to back that up. And I want to quote from an article

I found in Christianity Today. For a few weeks after nine eleven, people packed the pews, but it soon became apparent there was not a great awakening or a profound change in America's religious practices, as Frank M. Newport Gallop Pole, editor in chief, told The New York Times in November

of two thousand one. Barnard Group confirmed that conclusion in two thousand six, attract nineteen dimensions of spirituality and beliefs and found none of those nineteen indicators were statistically different from pre attack measures. In other words, that not eleven attacks didn't put American Christians on a trajectory towards more orthodox beliefs or more consistent habits of prayer, church attendance,

or scripture reading. And so far as we can measure matters of faith, the decline of American religiosity continue to pace spiritually speaking, said barn As David Kinneman. It's as if nothing significant ever happened, and that's something evangelicals have had to grapple with ever since the US did not turn back to God demographically. And while hateful attacks against Muslims surged, you have to acknowledge that a lot of those were from people who were more or less secular

um in the traditional sense. And this is part of why so many of the online atheists set Uh sided with the al right in two thousand fifteen, in two thousand sixteen, right, it's because there are a lot of those people Um, while they would have described themselves as an opposition to Christianity as well, were very much a part of the same civic religion as everybody else. And we're willing to engage in racist attacks against members of

religion as a result of that. You know, when when you get the fact that a majority of Americans saw ground zero was sacred and opposed building a mosque because of that, a decent chunk of those people are not Christians who opposed the building of a mosque, Right, they're a religious or their atheist, and they opposed the building

of a mosque because they still see Islam as an enemy. Yeah, it's uh, it's interesting, but Americans were not moved to embrace religion by the attacks UM and the deterioration of our sense of security that followed, and I think that

Evangelicals have never been able to actually accept this. A two thousand thirteen Barner Group survey found that most Americans, but particularly born again Christians, believe nine eleven quote made people turn back to God, and this again has led to kind of a fetishization of the period right after nine eleven UM. The writer of that Christianity Today article I cited earlier theorizes quote. My first suggestion is what

we thought was hope wasn't lost at all. It was less Christian trust and character and redemption of God than American optimism, coded with not quite biblical bromides that when there's bad, good will follow. Americans love to believe that everything happens for a reason, and that after a short period of time, sorrow will always turn into joy and

suffering into sanctifications. We quote Romans we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, and incorrectly interpreted to mean that everything that happens to us will also somehow work out, Okay, And I think that they're onto something here, and this really that this goes back to what Kavanaugh was saying about how this civil religion is kind of grafted on over the bones of Christianity, right, Um, and it's it's there's

so much. Part of what's interesting to me here is that well, I think it's it's worthwhile that he quotes Romans. I have to think that this, this belief that Americans have that everything happens for a reason, is at least as undergirded by like Disney as it is with scripture. It's undergraded by the way we tell stories, by the way fiction works in our society, which is a very unique to us. Right, Every culture does not tell stories

the same way. Well, and I think, like, if you want to trace that out to like, I think that's part of the reason why people are so unbelievably any conspiracy theories here. Yeah, if everything needs to have a reason, that it's part of an overarching grand narrative that ties

everything together. Yeah, And it's obviously again I don't want to like underplay and perhaps we should do an episode maybe behind the bastards on the reaction of the religious right to nine eleven, which was nuts and it was

vicious and horrific. I'm not I'm not trying to deny that, but I think one of the things that happens in this period is they grow increasingly infuriated that that is not shared by a majority of the country, that it doesn't bring a religious revival, right, that that doesn't follow September eleven. Um. Now, it is kind of there's a

couple of things that are interesting here. Um. One of them is that, uh, the apocalyptic Christian believers, they do have kind of this this in with the Bush administration. We know that at one point a bunch of apocalyptic like Christian representatives, like people who are kind of heading churches and stuff that believe there's this belief among certain Christians that you need to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem and bring about the end of days and all this stuff.

There's a bunch of ship that has to happen in Palestine in order for the apocalypse to come, and they're trying to get us presidents to make it happen. This is why Trump made some of the calls that he made was to deliberately like give those people a win, um, which is why some of the ship that happened in Jerusalem during the Trump administration um was able to happen. All of that stuff is stuff that they went to

George Bush. They had a two hour meeting with him and Elliott Abrams and a bunch of his staff were these representatives of kind of like the Pentecostal movement. Tried to get him to carry out this wish list policy of acts around Israel and Iraq to help them bring about the rapture, and the Bush administration didn't really do any of that. They have to take the meeting, right, They bring these guys in, they don't give them what they want. It's not until Trump that a lot of

these guys get what they want. And what you what happens here. You've got this this death cult Christian group who see this as a crusade and who want to war with Islam, and they're constantly frustrated by the fact that even though he's supposed to be their guy, Bush doesn't go all the way for them, right, and this is part of why his military adventurism gets criticized effectively

by guys like Trump. Who win the evangelical right, because the evangelicals say, like, well, if we're not going to have a holy war, then like what was this stuff? We just wasted a bunch of of money and a bunch of treasure and a bunch of young men for nothing over there. Um. And that's part of like what

Trump wins on. Now, these two factions, these neo cons, the guys who wind up, by the way, the guys who are sort of on the civic religion side of the response to nine eleven are all the people who wind up running the Lincoln project right when you're talking about the Republicans on that side of thing. And then the part the folks who break off the evangelicals, the people who want to holy war, that's who winds up

making the core of Trump's support. Um. And yeah, And that's I think mostly where I'm going to leave us for today. On nine twelve. Next week we'll have another special episode about Glenn Beck's nine twelve project that will

be kind of the finishing of this. But I want to end because we're talking about why I did this and why I started by talking about jokes about nine eleven is because I think understanding understanding the attack on the towers as like an attack on what what had effectively become a god to a lot of Americans, even if they didn't realize it. Right, the sanctity of this kind of neoliberal capitalist order, and it's it's it's um,

it's historic inevitability. Right. The fact that that's what was going on, that that that was so dear to people, that justified so much violence, twenty years of war, of bombing's millions of deaths is part of why I think there's a value in joking about nine eleven, which is not to say that what happened wasn't terrible. Three three thousand and change innocent people were murdered um in a

in a truly horrific way. If you actually sit down and watch the footage the people falling out of the buildings, it's a namare. If you think about stuff like Flight ninety three, it's it's really stirring. You have these people who one moment they're heading to like see their families or go on a work trip or something. You're on a plane experience, I'm sure everybody has, where you're just like trying to get from A to B and in

the space of like a few minutes. They have to all decide they're going to charge a bunch of terrorists, fight in hand to hand combat, and then pilot a plane into the ground in order to stop it from killing other people. That's that's powerful stuff. Um. What what I think is important is de sacralizing it, because there's nothing sacred about mass murder um, and there's nothing there's we shouldn't see what happened, there is anything but what it is, which is a tragic um, a tragic act

of violence against innocent people. But taking it as like an attack on our soul, as an attack on like our our collective god. Um. When you start to do that again, it kind of justifies any sort of violence, like there's nothing, there's nothing that's off the table, and in in the first few years after nine eleven, there was nothing off the table. Um, And we're never getting back to the world that we had before, which is

ultimately like what all that violence was about. Right, all of everything terrible that was in the wake of nine eleven was justified, even if people didn't say it. In the desire to get back to where we were in the nineties, right in their heads and their sense of security. I'm not talking about anything is like courses, economic projections. I'm talking about in the sense of like optimism and

basic security. And I think one of the people who got this best in the immediate wake of the attack was Hunter S. Thompson, who you know, was still alive at that point for a couple of years, and he wrote a column. I think it was for ESPN dot com, because that's who he was writing for in those days. His career was well past its peak, um, but he wrote probably the best thing anyone wrote a week after nine eleven. I'm going to read you the end of that.

Now we're at war now, according to President Bush, and I take him at his word. He also says this war might last for a very long time. Generals and military scholars that will tell you that eight or ten years is actually not such a long time in the span of human history, which is no doubt true. But history also tells us that ten years of martial law and a wartime economy are going to feel like a

lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with the lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. This is extremely heavy news and it will take a while for it to sink in. The twenty two babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned, will never know what they missed.

The last half of the twentieth century will seem like a wild party for rich kids compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks. Yeah, that is kind of the feeling growing up in the early two thousand's and not

not knowing, not never actually experiencing the nineties. Yeah, some ways, you know, nine eleven feels very similar to me as something like Pearl Harbor, Like they're both things that happened I guess before I was around, and it just they created the world that already existed in like it never it never like it, you know, it never changed the world I was in. It just became the world that

I was in. For me, nine eleven is my first memory, Like that is the first thing I remember, And yeah, we got exactly the world that you would expect from your first every reading nine eleven. Yeah, it's um, I mean again, for me, I think the thing I identify most is that little clip I played from South Park where one of the kids is like, do you remember when everything didn't suck? It's not really um, So yeah, go out, um, tell a tasteful joke about nine eleven,

and try not to worship the state. It doesn't end well. 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.

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