It Could Happen Here Weekly 52

can make your own decisions. Welcome to assassination week. P Bang, Bang, timely expulsive device D C. Hello, welcome to assassination week. I hope you like that intro from our good friend when we commissioned to do that intro from so big props to them for giving us like ten seconds of their time to record that intro. Wow, it's it's been so long since we've been planning to do this. Yep, but here we are talking about killing people. It's great

because would be first thought of assassination week. We're like how are we going to fill five episodes there? And then there's like so many more assassinations happened, there were, there were to the next day. Yeah, yeah, we've decided to stop imagining things into the ether and yeah, and so maybe assassination month is coming, who knows? Hey. Well, here's the thing. If, if people keep getting assassinated, we will do more assassination episodes. That is the way it works. Yep,

that's that is, sadly, part of our job. So we've already done one, I guess we did. We did Shinzo Abe a little bit, but we're coming back to him. Yeah, WE'RE gonna WE'RE gonna do we're gonna later because we have a lot more context information about the assassination now, but that that is later this week. So we have we have five episodes all about assassinations, most of which have happened or tried to happen this year. Most, most

these are going to be pretty, pretty topical. Yeah, mine is not, because I am so we gotta, we we we we got, we got, we gotta start with the historical assassination. We can't, we can't completely have it be just randomly jumping back and forward between times. There has to be some kind of logic. Yeah, well, the assassination

is the logic. But yeah, today we're talking about ETA Basque nationalist Leftist Group and, more specifically, I guess they're operation are the killing of Luis Carrero Blanco in Spain in nineteen seventy three. It's like obviously not very, very current. It's often pointed to is like a very influential assassination, right one that made a difference and made a change.

Often it's called the only thing that ever did to advance the cause of Spanish democracy, which I think like this is, and I'm sorry if you think that they're like based leftist terrorists. This is not not a generally as as an organization, we don't like people who made the journalists. That's one of US dances, and so there's going to be a little bit of context around this that we need to give first. So maybe if we kick off with who they are and then we can

talk about that assassination in particular. How familiar folks do we think, with ECTA? What do people know about them in us? Not at all. Yeah, people all eat. Okay, I think. Well, they're they're I think they're famous for this assassination and for having literally the worst outfits I've ever seen in my entire that that that the combination of like the face mask in the beret is like one of the most unfortunate things I've ever seen. It is hideous. It is you. You've got just just were

the mask. It's cooler. AH, batch, it's awful, truly dogshit. Okay, Chris, come in with the fashion police early on. I say, where what you want. I think you will look great and really alienating ski mask and Berry Audience Right at the start. So if you've, if you've managed to, you know, stick around through that hate speech, we're going to talk about they do. Yeah, they do like to wear a

ski mask. It's part of an esthetic, isn't it, though, like there's an aesthetic of like, I guess eightiesies terrorism that is like like woodland pattern kind of DPU Camoufla dbm camouflage, a cheap black scheme mask, Balaclava and a berry like sometimes you can pick two of those things, but it's definitely like a vibe from that time period. HMM, I wonder. I wonder why none of these groups worked. It must have nothing to do with the fashion, to

be fair, the Zapatista's big scheme mask. Maybe it's the bubble. Maybe the bubble is what sets then yeah, it's it's it's the fact that yet you don't wear the Barret on the ski mask necessities because they just wear the mask. Yeah, okay, I think we're we're united and I believe that the Zapatis does look cool and in many ways are cool. In fact, we're not talking about them today. We're talking about so it's an acronym right. Um, it's an acronym

INSCARA or Basque. I don't I don't speak Basque. It's a very hard language for me to learn. At least I'm not going to say it's a hard language to learn, cause I think that depends on who you are, but it is one that I have historically struggled with understanding. It does have a generous smattering of XS. So you know, if you're seeing it out there, good luck to you. I will try and pronounce things as respectfully as I can. I spent a lot of time in the Basque country

by graceeing. I really, really love Basque people. They're very nice. I enjoy their food and their CIDER and their countryside. But today we're talking about this group ESCAR. It stands for you, Scadi, to Askatasuna, which means, like Basque, homeland and Liberty, which they were going to call it Ata, but in and back down dialects. That means duck so they moved away from that. That would have been so much funnier. Would write you've been ducked, but they didn't

do that. They right from the get go they were about like like this dual process right of politics and political violence. Their slogan means keep up on both sides and their logo is like a snake wrapped around the acts. The snake is politics and the act is acts is, I guess, political violence, terrorism, whatever you want to call it. And over the years of action they killed eight people, so that they were pretty serious terrorist group right. Like, I can't I don't know how many people the IRA

a killed, but I'm thinking of groups in there. I don't think it would be that many killed. Like I think they killed like over a thousand. Okay, well, I mean I said like the entire troubles killed like thirty. So it's like a not significant fraction of that. Yeah, I mean the British government did a decent amount of that and definitely yeah, but like it's a not in significant fraction of the total number of people who died in the troubles. So they're not like nothing, know, but

like it's only up there. And Look, this is much of a similar thing as we're going to see right, where the Spanish state killed a lot of people too, and sort of armed groups acting in sort of coalition with the Spanish state, it's the safest way to say that, but certainly with the complicity of the Spanish state, played a large part in this, this dirty war that ETA conducted with the Spanish state. Right. And to understand them you have to understand a little bit about Basque nationalism,

early Basque nationalism. We we can like find the guy who really constructs the idea of a Basque nation, right, and Sabina is the guy. He takes what is like a language. It's a very old language, right, predates Latin and places where that language is spoken, and takes it from like these are the areas where this language is spoken to like this is our nation, and all nations are created, right, like nations don't come from the primordial soup,

like we don't evolve into one nation or another. An abrogation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they they're constructed by like entrepreneurs identity for which war leads to some kind of false consciousness, one might say, to maybe distract people from other things, but that's the right Zapatistas watches. That's the yeah, yeah, we're coming for you with a work mob. We're going to cancel you. Nations begin to exist when religion loses a claim on

universal truth. Right. This is the Benedict Anderson speed run. We don't need to go into the history of nationalism. Particularly it's important people to know where the Basque land is. So the Basque land is in the northwest of Spain and the southwest of France. Right. It's these provinces where, historically,

their mountainous provinces, people there were often shepherds. You'll often find Basque people in the United States like growing wine or doing sheep herding, and that's their sort of historical images themselves, and they speak this Basque language. Right. So ETA come onto the scene as a Basque Nash to list Leftist Group. Like they sort of have some elements of Marxism, but they're obviously like nationalist. They they center.

They don't center Catholicism, which is what previous Basque nationalisms have done. Right. Previous Basque nationalisms have been elite constructs that centered language, poetry and the Catholic identity. Don't do that they have this that's where they're slightly better. Yeah, yeah,

right there. They're better than like the carlists, who are like things went wrong when Spain moved away from this line of royal secession and we need to go back to that, and like extreme religious totalitarianism and a monarchy. Like they're better than that. I feel pretty comfortable saying that. And they've done some cool stuff that they used to kidnap bosses who refused to negotiate with striking workers, which, like, I know, watch out rail rail company owners. But they

they definitely have like a leftist lead, right. They have this sort of Pan Third World this idea, this pan sort of colonized people idea. They begin assassinating people when they take revenge for this guy who's called chabby. You can look at that name if you want to see some ex is in her name. But they they kill the local chief of police. Right. What happened is EST BARRIETTA and this was a guy, were killed by a policeman. The police stop them at a roadblock, they run away

the police, the police shoot them. In response, they kidnapped the local chief of police, who has probably been torturing people. Right like that, you have to understand that all this is happening in the context of a Spanish state which is extremely violent and repressive. And they kill this guy, right, and with this Franco right? Yes, no, but they begin

under Franco, right. So they and their support probably peaks under Franco, right, like they what what we're going to see is actually they are somewhat integral too not bringing down the Franco regime, and in a sense, Spain never does bring down the Franco regime, right. I want to

get into that a little bit. But in destabilizing the Franco regime, and they certainly there was more support for this kind of political violence when the state is so obviously like undemocratic, unjust and incredibly violent towards people, right. So they when they're killing members as a guard Seville,

these are people who are torturing prisoners. Right. ETA prisoners pretty often, when they're captured, turn up tortured in court, like very obviously that they have been victims of beatings and physical violence, right, and a lot of things you'll see. They also kidnaped this guy forgetting it. He's one of the founders of vox and they kept him in a seller for months and months and months and months. They look I don't I don't like vox, but they also

don't like locking people and sellers. Two things can be dead and vox is a right wing, populist average party, if people aren't familiar. They also did a lot of extortion. They also did a lot of extorting local businesses, right. They called it the revolutionary tax. So they got into some sort of more classic kind of organized crime stuff there. And but the assassination we want to talk about today is so the way they do this is they rent

this flat right there. That's an apartment for American listeners, and they rent this flat and claimed to be students, like sculpting students, right, like they were art students, were into sculpture. That's that's why we're covered in dust every

day and we we wear these overrules. And for five months they spend every day digging a tunnel underneath the road by their flat, right, and in that tunnel they packs of explosive and what they're doing there is they're waiting for this guy, Luis Carrero Blanco, to come in his car, which he travels in every day, right, and they're gonna explode that explosive and they're going to kill him. The reason they want to kill him is because they say that he is the the best example of pure fascism. Right.

He's a former admiral, he's Spain's sort of prime minister. He's Franco's chosen successor, right, so he's going to take over from Franco, and so by killing him they're able to destabilize the whole Franco regimer. Franco cries in public when he finds out Colonel Blanco is dead. And so,

spoiler alert, career Blanco is extremely dead. The way they did this is they dressed up as electricians, which is also a lot of dressing up in this which is kind of fine, and they painted a little line on a wall to be like, okay, when the car gets to here, we explode it. So the car gets to there, they explode it. They launched this car over a church and it lands on the second floor terraces on the

other side. Sometimes this is called like the Basques. His program or Luis Carrero Blanco is referred to as Spain's first astronaut. Yeah, you can find a picture of it. Is His hysterical. The court, like it's just it just goes. So, yeah, it's it's periodically in Spain like someone will be prosecuted for making this joke. This Spain's first astronaut joke. And so it happened someone pretty recently and she had really made it a thing of making jokes. Actually, I think

his I think it's his grandchildren have noted that. It's it's a problematic restriction of free speech that the people keep getting prosecuted for this, and the court recently found that they weren't mocking his family or his memory, but they were just pointing the objectively funny way in which he died. You know, great for the court to agree that it was objectively funny that a terrible fucking person died by being blown literally sky high and his driver

and his bodyguard were also killed. Shouldn't be a bodyguard for a piece of ship. But they, the guys had disguised themselves of Electricans. After the bomb went off, they ran around shouting, Oh no, we've hit a gas pipe, like there's been a gas explosion. Every everybody clear out.

was so pretty pretty entertaining stuff, acting as their side passion, I guess, and and like the reason they did if they did a pressor not longer afterwards, wearing their outfits, which some of you may find offensive, and they they cited like his irreplaceable place in the hierarchy right and him being this. They called him a pure francoist. And, oddly,

like etta, were not. At this point, they were less unpopular than they became later, because they weren't doing quite as much extortion and they hadn't been engaging in quite as many murders of journalists. Right and and you used to see this. I'll get to that lay. Actually, they got grudging praise from almost everyone for doing this right and because it really does destabilize and kind of kick their legs out from under the Franco regime and it makes Franco cry, which I think is a laudable goal,

like it's good to make Franco cry. Franco cry more so they well, it kind of it, kind of, it kind of astomizes the Franco a state right between people who are like this bunker tendency, who want to go hardcore and crack down, and those who are like, we don't have the ability to crack down, like we'll lose all popular support if we do that and it really sort of vaporizes the consensus for what to do after

Franco dies, which he does a few years later. I want to point out that people will, you'll read these articles on like the popular news websites or like you know, like hot take websites, where they're like, Oh, this carbon launched Spain into democracy. I don't do that, I think. First of all, the major error with that is the

idea that Spain, quote vote, transition to democracy. When you have a pacted transition where the people who did the war crimes in the previous regime specifically not prosecuted an exempt from prosecution. That's not what democracy looks like. I think the most accurate way of just scriving West Spain is is a post dictator like a post dictatorship, and

Spain is still there. Now that we see that with these prosecutions for mocking him, right, with the fact that there are people in Spain who are still in prison from mocking the crown, like that's not what democracies do. Good thing. That could never happen in Britain. Yeah, yeah, okay, you won't find you won't find me defending that either, but we don't we don't make a big industry of

talking about Britain's transition to democracy. Maybe don't talk about transitions at all, given the powerful TURF discourse in Britain. But yeah, I think it's problematic that that folks talk about this like yeah, it Spain his fixed. Like Spain has some dark it that it needs to process. Like it was not until the middle of the last decade that we started exhuming the graves from the civil war, and that's still highly contentious. Right, you still have a

political party that doesn't want to do that. Spain is still processing the fact that the Catholic Church took babies away from people who had considered to be leftist and gave them to people who it considered to be more appropriate to raise them. It's called Ninobos if you want to look it up. Yes, Spain not transitioning to to democracy,

and I want to make that very clear. Some of the other ship that etta does is really this is where they start to lose any any claim to being like a liberation movement, right, like they bombed an epair core. That's like bombing a target for American folks in Barcelona and they killed twenty one people. Now I will say this isn't this is exemplary bad policing. They called the cops and we're like, Hey, we've put a bomb on

that eas the supermarket. You will ought to clear it out, and the cops sore like I can't tell if that's a real threat or not, and as a result, did do anything and as a result the bomb went off and then needs the supermarket in twenty one people died. Right. They also alerted in a newspaper in Catalonia beforehand. Reporters Without Borders still for a long time classified Spain as a place that was hostile to journalists because of the

attacks on journalists by etta. Right, also, the state isn't hostile to journalism, but I want to point out that they killed journalists, they killed university professors who disagreed with them, they killed local counselors, and it was some of these, like these very unpopular murders which really sort of strip

support from them. And one thing that the Spanish state did, a couple of things the Spanish state did, that really were extremely repressive against ETA, was they would move Basque prisoners out of the Basque Homeland and sort of hold them thousands of miles away from their families. Work in the Canary Islands and ship like. They're probably closer to Africa than you are to to your your home country. When they do that right, and you would often see I don't know if maybe you guys have seen this.

It's a white flag. It's got an outline of the Basqutland, it's got an Arrow and it says you area. Have you seen that like protests now? If you if you've been at the protests, I is that, like, you know, in like the early two thousands in Europe, you would see that flag a lot. It just means Basque prisoners

to the Basque Homeland. Like a lot of people got behind that who might not have got behind other things that ETA did right that it does seem deeply inhumane to move these people so far away from their families. It's sort of an extra punishment. The Spanish state also had this thing called Gal Gal is Groupo Anti Terroristas de Libration, so I guess like anti terrorists Liberation Group, and these were desquads, right. These were descat dated and

invetted by the police. Etta enjoyed like a safe space in France, I guess, or like a Freedom for prosecution. Certainly under Franco, France was like, you know what, Franco really sucks, so you guys, go ahead and send it do your terrorism way. About a clavist. I'm sure the French also objected to their beret style, but this is

this safe space. It's basically what they said. Yeah, yeah, this is like a whole thing with midterrand in France in the seventies, like France kind of became this weird like like they basically had this they had this open policy. Were like there was a bunch of well, there are. There are a bunch of people in Italy who got like falsely accused of like being the Red Brigades. What's that guy's name? The Guy Negri a toto, who's like

a kind of famous. This theory kind of sucks by the end, but like they arrest him for like being a terrorist and then he gets himself elected to parliaments, we can get parliamentary immunity, and then flees the country to France. Yea. Yeah, this was a weird time. was in Carlos a jackal, also in Paris for a while. Yeah, yeah, you love it. France open door policy to terrorists. This is the only cool thing France has done since like yeah, yeah,

you're not wrong. They invented Parkour. When was that? Oh, that was like in the resident xt okay, there you go. Okay, so the second cool thing. You're going to hand that to them? Yeah, they'll tend that to the entire country of France. Yeah, maybe not actually, given their treatment of migrant de aspirates in recent years. And sometimes their firefighters will go out and beat the ship into the police. That's true. Do you think we all have to give that to them? I wanted to maybe end with this

quote from supercommand Ante Marcos. So we've talked a little bit about so this is from a piece code. I shipped upon this. I shipped upon the Revolutionary Vanguards of the Earth. Yeah, it's something. It yeah, the all the titles are like having problems translating Total Mundo, which is like yeah, as you I couldn't find it written in

the original Spanish. Maybe that's just because I was googling wrong and I didn't put a lot of time in it, but I found so many of Zapatis to text of preserves better in these weird English translations and I don't know, I they're written in English. Its supposed to be possible they're written in English the first time. I don't. I don't think this one. I think I think these. I

think this particular one is a translation. Okay, but yeah, yeah, yeah, I've tried to find in Spanish actually, but so I'm just going to go with a translation. I think it's probably from Lib calm or a similar website with like aging, red and black asthetic vibes, but I love those websites. So it's had a bit. I hope you'll enjoy it. We don't see why we should have, like the ETA were kind of like reaching out in solidarity, and the Zapatista has probously been like now, Dude, we are not

the same. You're not just like a set society. We are not the same people and we don't see why we would ask you what we should do or how we should do it. What are you going to teach us? To Kill? You a lists who speak badly about the struggle, to justify the death of children for the reason of the cause. We don't need or want your support or solidarity. We already have the support and solidarity of many people

in Mexico. And the world. Our struggle has a code of honor inherited from our grilla ancestors, and it contains, among other things, respective civilian lives, even though they may occupy government positions that oppress us. We don't use crime to get resources for ourselves. We don't rob, not even a snack store. We don't respond to words with fire,

even though many hurt us or lie to us. One could think that to renounce these traditionally revolutionary methods is renouncing the advancements of our struggle, but in the faint light of our history, it seems that we have advanced more than those who resort to such arguments. Like I deeply enjoy this critique. You can look it up. Was Big on killing people who a Tang gently related to the regime in any way, which I don't agree with.

We should also add that they more or less definitively stopped doing stuff in eighteen that they had a press conference, and in their press conference, actually arenaldoor Tegi, who was a former member, said that they wanted to express a sorrow for the pain and suffering other people have endured. He goes on like we feel their pain and that sincere feeling leads us to affirm that it should never

have happened. Sure, buddy, you want to say sorry because you did terrorism, but I do think that, like we should. We're talking about assassinations. Are gonna talking about assassinations a week. There are ways to do leftist political struggle that are not killing random civilians and their friends and family members and bombing supermarkets, and those are the better ways. But making Franco cries good sending Franco's successor into near Earth orbit is pretty funny. So we we enjoyed that one

at least. If not, I think it is worth pointing out, like we weighed this prettyvious by by that line. But it does not get a free space, a free bask homeland. The Zappatistas have actually taken and still controlled territory, a thing that none of these like weird thrilla groups ever pulled off. So you know, yeah, they don't even get majority support really at any point. Like occasionally there will be people who are like yeah, you know what, like I agree with some of what they say, but the

tactics are deeply flawed. You know, these keeping people, like torturing people, that kind of thing in the context of the dirty war with the state is important, but, yeah, they don't succeed right and I don't think you do succeed by by extorting the people you're claiming to liberate. That generally doesn't work well. So up the Zappatistas, I guess. Yeah, that seems like a good place to end. Yep, cool, yeah,

this is this has ma could happen here. Join US tomorrow from more assassinations, and also the day after that, the day after that, the end, the day after that. Yep, I'm wait, hello, I'm the ghost of the Queen, and this is assassination week, and whose I actually was assassinated? It was the I R A. Hi. Welcome, welcome to assassination week, where we talk about all of the normal things. That's what we do. We talk about all the stuff

that's totally normal and chill. We were just we were just debating why we keep having to talk about Nazi furies, differences between catboys and cat girls as they relate to Nazism, Um, and we're not going to get less stupid for today's assassination Um. So let's let's talk about Argentina. One of one are the ones that happened pretty shortly after we we planned on doing assassination week. Were like, well, there's

another one to add to the list. So, yeah, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner has been kind of one of the most prominent politicians in Argentina for almost two decades now. Um, she was elected after she was elected president after her husband served as a term and then declined to to run for a second. But she was liked in two US and seven. After an eight year run as president, she's now the country's vice president. She was expected to make a bid to return to the top job next year.

That's kind of up in the air. Um, she's kind of left dish. She she's kind of the populist, like leftist, kind of talk about perronism and like the weird ship that's going on here. Please talk about maybe, maybe do it in the in the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Oh God, no, okay, so there once was a man the parode, and he so he had been like he there's a whole thing. He gets like coude, he's like he like flees the country and while he's not, and you know this is a teatorship, and like, while he's

not in Argentina. There's like this whole like like if they're a very classical populace movement, to the point where, like a lot of the theorizing about what populism is is theorizing about perronism. And what you get is like two completely different like political factions, like casting all of their sort of aspirations onto the like, like like onto the figure of like perrone, who's like in exile, and so you can, you can like, you know, you can,

you can say that, like Perrone has whatever. Two perone supports us, like perome will be the guy, you'll save us, and like so you get, like you get this really weird thing where they were like they were like there are Peronas who are like fascists, there are Peronis, who are like communists. So you get the split that happens. You have these left Pronois of these right Peronius, like like when perrone comes back to the country, like the

right Peronas start ordering the left wing Parnais. It's this whole fucking thing, and it's this, you know, and uh, this this this sort of like political formation like persists to an over military tatorship. It persists like through sort of like the trend, quote unquote transition to democracy, and like basically everyone who has ran Argentina since like the quote unquote transition to democracy has been a paronnais of

some kind. Um Chrishnai is, the Krishner is from the left wing, sort of the newly sort of like revitalized left, like paroonism that comes around like the early two thousands.

I mean she she's around. She's around actually in the nineties too, but in in early two thousand's it's sort of like, okay, so in two thousand one there's this massive series of protests and uprisings in in Argentina that, like I I would argue is like the last of like the Great Twentieth Century, sort of like working class revolutions, like people started occupying like people their factories, like did they go through like five prime ministers in like a month?

Like they come very, very, very close to bringing down the government. And the thing that, the thing that sort of stabilized situation is a the and this is this is a serison protest against like I am a posterity right, which would be just like destroying the country. And the way this sort of gets stabilized is that Um you get a new you know, you, you, you, you get a new sort of like revitalized, like left peroneous populist thing. And this, the sort of populist deal is is twofold.

It's like one, okay, we're gonna have a bunch of patrons, networks and we're gonna run like everything from like sort of like job networks kind of like down, like right right down to like hey, we will like give a dear neighborhood as long as you stay, as long as you sort of supported. And the second thing is, like they make that like the ruling class like cuts this sort and this is this is particularly like Fernandando Christian,

like her husband's like cuts. This deal basically, sorry, Nestor Christner, cuts, just deal with with the working class, which is like okay, if you guys don't, if you guys stop trying to overthrow us, like we will give you a bunch of welfare programs, we will like do a bunch of stuff to like promoted the sort of like national economy. And so it's it's this, it's this whole it's it's looks like a left populism, but it's it's it's built on sort of like like this very explicit like we are

going to buy off the working class. We can maintain capitalism, but the capitalism is gonna be slightly nicer. Yeah, and there's a few reactions that, including the reaction from the right, which is very much like these wealth help these all of these welfare programs are making people lazy and unwilling to do actual work, which is kind of worth some of our assassin, or attempted assassin, gets some of his

ideology from Um. But yeah, so a week before this assassination attemptum Argentine and prosecutors announced that they're seeking a twelve year person sentence for Mrs Kirchner over accusations that she directed public roadway funds to a company owned by

a friend of hers, accusations which she denies. I don't I have no bid in this fight Um, but I mean the thing I would note is, like, like almost everyone, so she she like well, particularly this Christian, but she was also sort of like considered like the soft wing of the pink tides, sort of like social democratic government to CON parwer this period. And like all of these people are kind of corrupt, but they're not like more

corrupt than any other like politician in this region. But like, like every single one of these people eventually, like there's a whole movement to put them in prison because of corruption or something, and it's like, I mean, I don't know, like every like they're politicians, like what do you expect? Like the political rhetoric against Mrs Kirchner had intensified in recent weeks amid the final stages of her corruption trial.

And while she is probably the country's most prominent politician, even serving as vice president, seen as more powerful than then the president, she's also a very polarizing figure. You know, her face is plastered on posts all around like working class neighborhoods Um, but Argentina's right has kind of made her out to be their boogieman. She's kind of their

she's kind of like their top target. Um. Last week in one opposition lawmaker commenting on her case said that Argentina shouldn't bring back the death penalty um just for her case, just because she's like a woman we don't like, so we should kill her. As I got friends at the Written House Cultural Center. Yeah, would you call her

a Femi Bolshy uh because they so. Yeah, but since the proposition of the twelve year sentence, hundreds of her supporters have been rallying, or were rallying outside of her house every night, Um, you know, calling her a victim of political persecution and doing these big, big rallies in support. And it was at such a rally on Thursday September one, just after nine PM, when Mrs Richner was returning home from presiding over a session at the Senate, accompanied by

her security detail. She was greeting the massive supporters, letting the streets and signing copies of her book, and then a man rushed up through the crowd, aimed a semi automatic pistol interest away from her face and pulled the trigger, but the gun didn't go off. There's lots of footage of this incident. There was a lot of cavas rolling. It's kind of wild because she sticks the gun like right up in her face. It's just like really, really like this. This is this is, this is like something

out of like fucking like like late Russia. It's it's very slapstick, it's very comical. Yeah, the Franch Ferdinand level of well, speaking speaking of President, President Um Fernandez said in an address to the nation later. That quote, Christina still alive because, for reasons that have not been confirmed technically, the UPEN, which was loaded with five bullets, did not fire. I can confirm technically that it is a piece of shit. You can find it was. It was a thirty. It

was a thirty two, caliber three, wasn't it? It's a burst of thunder, isn't it? Oh, maybe I'm wrong. What wasn't it was was, isn't it? Like a specific gun? That's like absolutely, like they're kind of funny. They're these like the bursts, so that I think they made in Argentina. They might be made in Brazil, I think they made Argentina. They make knockoffs of other gun designs, more or less. So it's in the style of a PPK, which has good precedent for killing bad people. That's what hit the

brained himself with. But this, this is a knockoff. This is a cheap one. It's one of the guns. It's approved for safe sail in California because it doesn't get bang, at least a version of this. I don't think the one that that this person used is actually a thunder, but yeah, it's just it's like I don't know. It's it's the it's like when you go and buy cheap knockoff of anything. You know, like it doesn't work. This want to paste be missing one of the grip screws actually,

but yeah, it's very rusty. This person didn't think this three very well. I guess it's what we'll talk we'll talk a bit more about what was going on with a gun in a sack. You know what, I won't failed to matter. The vice president of the country. These these products and series products before the podcast. Yeah, thank you. That's what it's what everyone says about butter. Help will will not help. You killed the vice president. Okay, so

plug for ammonium nitrate. Federal Police arrested Fernando on Andre's Sabag Montel, a thirty five year old Brazilian man who has been living in Argentina for about twenty years. They recover the gun at the scene and then the next day they searched his apartment. He had hit hit at a studio apartment in like a working class sub verb of Oh boy, what's Oh boy, Um banarosh boy. I want to send this one to the chat let. Someone else said to Spanish and sort of speaking. It's a boot.

There we go. I sent it to the regular cool scent O. No, that was I can't I can't read that. I have no idea. Then it's a capital. I don't know, I can't read it. I only I never say words, I only read it. Yeah, yeahs Buenos Buenos. I'm learning how to read ancient Greek for magic and that's way easier than this. I was quibbled back. Are you going to be like a Hebrew understander on twitter? Are you're

gonna be like it means legal immigrants? When he says that, guys, no, only, only, only for ancient Greek, only only for Greeks to use, to use in spells. And I forget that people who aren't Americans don't pick up the sort of like smattering of terrible Spanish that like everyone in the US can kind of do. Yeah, no, I I grew up as a kind in Saskatchewan. No one's going to speak Spanish. They're just food nowns. You can you can just do like and but anyway. So they searched his studio apartment

in apparently this big town point what, Buenos Aires? This is pepmately, but it's fine. But Anyway, they searched his apartment. They found just a hundred bullets just around, just like in various places, or, like they said, they just found a hundred bullets like like around his studio apartment. So that's that's that's the statement. It's amazing people haven't voiced a video and highly recommend looking it up. So Mr Montell is registered with tax authorities as an uber driver, Um,

and he's not. Pretty soon people figured out that he's not just a regular dude. Um, there was, there's, there was a few signs, most most notably the sun and Red Tattoo on his elbow. That'll do it. So Which? Yeah, so battalion logo, right, James, shut the funk up. Shut the funk up, James. So, yes, a wave of people who think they're smart but are actually not, saw the sun and red and thought that he was doing this in solidarity with the ASA. Battalion. Um, isn't he like

in a Duke and his group? I'll get to it. Not Quite, Um, but no, it's not as off battalion because the son and read does not come from the as off battalion, Um, as most people listening to this show should probably know. Already. His social media accounts got taken down pretty quick, but we do have a few archives which I'll be working off of to kind of paint the rest of this weird guy's picture. Um, he is steeped in a whole bunch of ECLECTIC and esoteric things.

He has various esoteric symbols tattooed across his body. He follows a lot of extremely interesting facebook pages. Um, he is. He is, you know, is interested in stuff from far right groups, conspiracy theories, mysticism, freemasonry, Um, quote unquote, alchemy and the Cabala or again, quote unquote, the Cabala Um, across many, many kind of political, esoteric, fascist interests. It's kind of it's not very surprising. By the way, I just found out there's a whole page by that caliberisk.

You're a guy and you were right and I was wrong. It's a thirty two a CP bastel. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It wasn't thirty two a CP. Huh Wow. Yeah, yeah, maybe if you spent less time making fun of my Spanish, we can learn something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think in terms of levels of understanding. For a while he used the symbol of the tyrontal order of the Knights, which was a fringe kind of far right Argentine fascist mystical group from the nineteen eighties. But he had that

as his facebook profile for a while. So he's like into the worst type of nerd things, like, instead of just playing D and D and getting it out of your system, he's like, I'm going to become a fascist and a wizard. You know, if he'd had a cultural center where he could play Dn d with people just saying talk, talk, Talk About Dragon Ball, play D and D. Yeah, do some really, really bad figure paging do and we wouldn't have had a problem here, but instead here we are.

So would be like looking at his facebook page right you see stuff about like paganism, Vikings, death metal, not very good philosophers. These types of things don't immediately indicate a connection to the far right. Like you can't just take them by themselves, but when taken all together with the much more avert political things, you can get a fuller picture of who this person actually is. Um You know, it's like when I when I'm when I walking down the street and I see someone inside like a half

skull mask. That doesn't immediately mean they're Nazi, but if I see the half skull mask and then's some questionable tattoos, I'm like, okay, then that that that, then you're able to put that together. Um. So same thing with here, right, when someone's really into like Pagan Viking Shit, it may make me side eye until I see some things that really confirm my suspicions. I'm not gonna you know, you know, talk of this person as if they are a Nazi. Uh, this guy is not. He is a big Old Nazi.

A few extremism researchers in Argentina have kind of made statements about this guy and what they're they're take on it is, as someone you know who actually is in Argentina, right, I'm an extremism researcher who lives in Oregon, which, as I so, I don't really have the same cultural understanding. You have a good grasp on the language, which is helpful. I have a good class on the language. When they're using magic words, when they're using words from real language,

is not really Um. But no, they, they, they've they've talked about him like saying, uh, they're not. This dude is, quote, not explicitly connected to an organization, but they relate to the fascist ideology and compared him to kind of being the the types of, quote unquote, like Lone Wolf attackers that are not connected to any like specific political movement but almost just like an emanation of political ideas online,

like in a Christ church buffalo in El Paso. Those were the places that that he was kind of compared to, is like people who aren't like inside a group but are willing to go out and take politics into the real world. But yeah, they compared his profile to other other types of like, you know, like load, quote Unquote Load Wolf, which is not a good term, but like what that means is like as someone who's like isolated, doing a mass shooting or a terrorist attack or an

attempted a political assassination. Montel was described, as his friends as like eccentric and insecure and dishonest, um, but not necessarily openly violent or kind of openly invested in like political parties, which isn't surprising when you get someone into this like nerdy type of politics that's like, yeah, they're doing politics as it relates to being like a weird nerd online. But you know, who knows his his friends made us not not seeing this side of him at all.

Like who, who can? Who can say? Because he did have a lot of fascist tattoos. So like like come on, guys, Um, on the he had like, like we said, son and red on his left elbow. On the back of his hands, he had a he had the iron cross and he had thor's hammer, but like like the like the traditional one, not like marvel movie shit. In a funny, maybe coincidence, this guy, the assassin, was actually interviewed twice on television in like months before the attack, just as an average

citizen on the street, giving his opinion on politics. Um, one of them, he they were he was interviewed with his girlfriend and they were complaining about Argentina's social welfare programs, saying that they make people lazy. Um. And then in another more recent one, in another more recent interview, he was asked if he supported Argentina's new finance minister, which he responded Hell No, and then he offered his opinion

as well, saying that he doesn't support Christina either. Christina's later the person he tries to kill, which you know I will say this. This is, this is not out of line for like whenever a journalist tries to pick a random person on the street, like it's like they're, they're, they're, they're always interviewing Hitler, Mussolini, like it's it's just every single time, like this guy is a repretentisative sample of

those people. But yeah, so he gives up his unslicited opinion on Christina, who he then tries to murder on TV, just a month before he tries to kill her. Um. So now back at the scene, authorities said that. So the gun, they had five bullets inside. Um, the serial number was partially, partially removed. Um, it was. It was an older it was an older gun. It was not was was not brand new. Um, they said that the

gun model had not, had not been manufactured in forty years. Um, but it's, uh, the IT looks like it was made until eight. Again, it's pretty old. Yeah, the gun could have failed to fire because it was broken or because it was just improperly loaded. Um, because have you come across the Argentine media articles which were explaining how to properly cock the hammer on one? That's a real, real,

really interesting take. Stuff being like next time. So good stuff was always from from our friends in the media and reportedly, uh, the gun tried to try to get fired twice. So pull pull the Trigar at least two times, and when they recovered it there was no round chambered. So he may have just not like like. He could have just not cocked it at all, and that could be why I didn't fire like. It's unclear that this

whole thing is really like the like. It's it's the Verdin Virgin Kirshner assassin versus the chat abbe assassin, that the Chad aube assassin went to the time of building his own weapon. He fired it twice, bullshots went off. Fucking Virgin, this guy zero fires it twice, doesn't doesn't build his own weapon. Zero bullets come out. Do we

know if it's legal for this person to own? The guy in Argentina, it's heard they like a quiet legally and not being able to test it illegally and not being able to test it, because that would have also sort of got some attention to them. I believe it's illegal. Okay, yeah, well, either way, I should have just done the older, the old Abe method with the pipe gun and the battery, I guess. Well, do you know what isn't illegal, and

that's assembling your open. No, it's uh, that's very illegal. where, uh, these products and services which support this podcast very not illegal. All right, we are we, we are back. I'm going to share with you, guys, the document I'm looking at, uh, so you can, so you can have have fun looking at all of these, uh, these symbols with me. Um, scroll to where the first picture is, Um, and then we'll then we're gonna go over all of the all of the weird ship that we have. This is what

so we're looking at his facebook likes here. Yes, these are the facebook pages that he follows God. So, yeah, this is a bit of a Red Flag. There's some yikes here. So yeah, UM, thirty five years old. He has a Chilean father and an Argentine mother. He's lived in Argentina for at least twenty years. His profiles on facebook and Instagram we're taking down pretty soon. On his instagram, he described himself as a devout Christian. Sure, buddy here. Yes, yes, Um,

he didn't comment on Brazilian politics very much. It was mostly interested in Argentina, Um, but and a lot of the esoteric Nazi stuff. Um, a lot of the weird like there's actually an interesting history of Esoteric Nazia stuff, specifically inside Argentina as well. Obviously a lot of Nazis fled to Argentina. They've kind of kind of been a fostered ground for them. But yeah, there's there's a lot

of a lot of stuff here. Um, one of the pages he follows is named Camarada Miguel S S, which is just a picture of like Nazi soldiers in armed bands. Your understanding this? All right, that's a hit and nothing to me. There's there's there's a lot of stuff Biblioteca esoterica. But yeah, there's there's stuff from like Gnosticism, there's stuff on freemasonry, Um, all of like it's kind of like a it's a little bit of a basic bit here. This is like it's not for for this type of guy.

It's not surprising. Obviously he's not like a normal dude, but for someone who's into esoteric fashion stuff, you're like, okay, yeah, you hit all the things like you're I'm not surprised looking at your page. Um. So yeah, like we said, he's tattooed with Black Son Iron Cross and and a mule near Um now, obviously the iron cross the mule near are not symbols created by not ses. Uh. You know, they were previously existing symbols. Iron Cross existed in the

PRUSSIAN Army. The mill neaire is an old nordic symbol. But both of these were UH CO opted by the Nazis Pretty Pretty Uh, pretty strongly, uh, and now have very strong associations. If you scroll down to the next page, Um, I have all of his tattoos here. So you can see a bit of the son of red on his on his elbow, you can see some of the hammer on his uh. I believe his right hand has the hammer and his left hand has the has the Iron Cross. Uh. So,

I mean, what's this diamond thing on? I'm going to get to that. So the Black Son's son and Rad. We've talked about this on the show a lot. Um, it exists before as of a lot of libs, a lot of liberals now think it's an asaf battalian symbol. Uh No, I mean that this you know, uh, a lot of Nazi mass shooters have had son and red like patches and stuff for years and years and years.

It's been very popular. It's also very popular among Esoteric Fascists also very popular among like you see a lot of wagner group guys with this, like you see there's a lot of Russian soldiers who have so. But no, and it makes sense as in its popularity, as like an esoteric fascist symbol. This guy is into all of the esoteric fascist ship, so he's of course he's going

to have a black son Um. Uh. So the that now James mentioned another Tattoo Whi kind of looks like a diamond, which is the drazzle immursal, which is how how that's how I'm going to pronounce it, because nobody cares. Um. It means a great tall pillar. It's known as like the tree bridge that would connect the to like the celestial, like greater reality. The urmnsule plays an important role in like old GERMANIC paganism. Um, it was there probably was

a physical sacrificial site adorned with like big pillars. Um. But I like like a lot of the old weird German ship. It got notified. Um Heindri Khindler founded the Society for research and teaching of ancestral heritage in nineteen which was this was in an organization with the aim

of retracing, quote, ancient Aryan artifacts that support the master race, theory. Um. And Uh, he used one of these for the original symbol of this organization, which is all about like tracing back old Germanic like pagan ship, to be like here's evidence that we're the master race and all of our he's he's like trying to manufacture anthropology which supports all of the bad science that as we are Arians and

we are better. So he's it's in this like fake and you know, it's like the Indiana Jones stuff, like this is, this, is, this is, this is what he's trying to do. Um. But that one of the symbols used for that was the immnstule or the Yah drazil. Uh. Possibly this symbol was also linked to Odin. It's unclear because the actual God of that represents, im Minstrel, is

hard to trace. Um. But yeah, probably a sacred object in the form of a pillar that represents kind of the trunk of the Nordic Spiritual Cosmos that rises up into kind of the heavens. Yes, it's it's something. It's something the Nazis pilfered from like Germanic paganism turned it into Nazi ship and became this idea around the spiritual center of like German nationalism. It's like it's this this this, this spiritual thing that represents how pure we are as

German nationalists. Anyway. Uh, obviously the shooter is not German, which is kind of so I wonder. I wonder why he has that. Huh, I wonder what he's trying to stay there. It just likes German people. It's interesting in the culture. But yes, he has one of these on his uh, I believe it's his left hand, um on on on his forearm. It's a, it's IT'S A it's a pretty intricate symbol. Uh. Yeah, that's like his best tattoo as well. Some of the other is a pretty robey. Yeah,

the the millionaire Tattoo is not very good. Um, the the the iron cross is pretty faded. But but the great pillar once decent um in terms of like quality. Again, we're just we're just reviewing the esoteric fashion. Ye, yeah, best fashion. Um, look as fascination week is also fashion week. Yeah, it's true. Would you say better or worse than the berries and the scheme mask at this point, I like the scheme masks. I think, I think it's slightly better.

Take this, the thing that James was asking about previously. There's this really weird symbol that obviously looks kind of Swastika Ish. It's it's very like. It's, it's, it's, it's made up of like two different runes combined into one symbol. Um. This, this is, this is the kind of logo of an Esoteric Neo Nazi sect in Argentina founded by a very famous Argentina and Neo Nazi named Nimrod de Rosario, which I do like that his name is Nim Rod. Yeah, like,

Oh God. So, yes, Um, I highlighted this, this thing. Do you want to try to try to pronounce that one? That one's, uh yeah, Argentina. So like. So, that is the name of the sect. It's the symbols a combination of the odal run and the Tyra Rune. Um, hence the name Tyro Dal or UH tirodal. It's, it's, it's, it's a combination of these things into this new thing. Um. So this is like very popular for this type of like kind of kind of esoteric Nazi writer. UH, inside,

inside Argentina. He had so that the assassin or attempted assassin had a few of these things saved. Um, it was actually an organization like the order of nights, the herodal nights, or how we say that. I mean not really. It's just a facebook chival recorder. It's it's hard to say. I mean like no, they're not, they're not out there doing tons of ship. Um. Are they laughing? Yes, yes, they are. I mean all as soon as would any one of these groups called themselves like an order of

the nights. They're always larping, like, they're always they're always doing kind of alert like whenever something like the templar isn't ship you're like, okay, edition recently who joined like the he's like sworn to protect Christians in the Holy Land.

It was very funny. Yeah, like come on, yeah, all right, so he's a big yeah, he's got a lot of Christian stuff as well, like I'm looking at the and yeah, I mean that's that's kind of with all of like the GNOSTICISM stuff, which it was draws on a lot of like Christian imagery or Catholic imagery, and he didn't describe himself as a Christian on his instagram account, which still it's like okay, but you're you're into some weirder ship than that. But yeah, there is there, there is.

There is some of a Christian basis for this style of like esoterrorism. I feel you're okay. Well, I just found it. I'm sorry, I just scrolled down. I didn't expect to see that. Expect to see what is it like? A CAM girl? Oh, yes, yes, he was. He was retweeting a cab girl on his twitter. Yes, so I have some other stuff here on the the Argentinian Patriot front, um, but please, different Patriot front to them, the American one.

But that was just talking. I just wanted to talk briefly a bit about like Argentinian like uh, Nazism or fascism, um, much like Brazilian stuff with Basonero and the kind of the the the fascist groups that have been active in both countries for a while. Both of them have historical roots that go back to the twenties, twentie century. Their Ne Nazi and Neo Fascist groups that have been active

in Argentina for decades. We've talked. We talked a little bit about this in the Kyle written has cultural center as well. Um, as it relates to like anti communist like stuff. Um, one of the kind of oldest groups of of of Argentinian fascism, uh, formed into a new group called Patriot front, or friente Patriot Patriota. How. How would you? How would you say that? How would you say that? Patrick, I was close, I was, you were really there. Form like it. I already thought you had it, Um.

But yeah, so that's this new group. Patriot front, was formed in Um, but it's based off of a very famous, uh, far right leader called Aleandro Bandino. Um, just how again? That's how how I'm gonna do it. Uh. Should his name was? His name is highlighted here Italian, like, yeah, that's yeah, that's name. I mean, but he's, he's he's been active in Argentina's far right sphere for a long, long time, like he's he's kind of like the main guy who's trying to do stuff. He's six, sixty six

years old. Um, he was born in Argentina. Um. Yeah, I was. Argentina has a massive Um Italian population. This has been like, this has been for sort of a long time. Like, yeah, and this sort of this cuts both ways politically, like a lot of those guys used to be anarchists, like there's a hugenicis huvement in Argentina for a long time. So a lot of weird fascists. So it is. It is. It is interesting that like this neo Nazi assassin again wasn't part of any of

these groups. Wasn't really aligned with this Patriot front group, wasn't really aligned with any other kind of actual like far right political activism. Um, he was just into weird. He was into like dressing up as a as a wizard and talking about weird GNOSTICISM and Fascism online. And then he tried to kill the vice president. Um, did he? It was just like an impulse thing or it's just like a long planned I think he did live nearby. I mean, I believe it's. I mean she was in

the capital city. So yeah, yeah, well, it's a it's a big place. You can walkably, you can, you can, you can get around if you're dedicated. People around the city. Of which cities? Again, I can't remember. I can't remember either.

You know, I. I. WHO's to say? WHO's to say? So, yes, this is this is the story of the uh not assassination that was attempted a few weeks ago in Argentina and the guy behind it, who should have just learned to play D and D um like, honestly, yeah, well, he didn't know it's probably going to spend it on time in jail now. Probably. I mean he he did not kill the vice president, but he didn't put a gun into her face and tried to pull the trigger two times in front of tons of unfortunately, that gets

you to attempted assassination. Yeah, I think. I think that's a I think, even if he didn't know how to chamber his round properly. Yeah, once again the master race prevails. So, yeah, and any any other notes on on this guy or the stuff in Argentina? Any any comments? Comments from the from the gallery? Not Fascinating stuff. This again, this is, this is. He is so much less cool and worse

of an assassin than the big guy. This guy sucks. Yeah, compared to he's, he's he's the probably the least based guy we're gonna be talking about. Yeah, I think right. Like, at least ETA was successful in sending someone into as. You can buy Nimrod's books on Amazon Dot Com. Yeah, album, some of those, you should be able to do that. Come on, he has a twitter account. All right, let's just read some of these tweets in English or Spanish. UH, Spanish,

but I can, I can trans I can do Google translate. Um, oh, talking about Zionist terrorism. Um, the myth of the Holocaust. I mean it's again, he's, he's, he's. What do you what? Do you expect physical reaction to that last one? But yes, so this, this was the guy that had the symbol, that that that had the weird, the weird combination ruined symbol, that that the assassin liked the books of and used the symbology of on his facebook. I just, I just

sent the writers of twitter account to the cool sound chat. Um. I feel like once once I go to nimbrod's twitter page on the Hut to follow section, it recommends Alexander Dugan. Good. So that this this was the guy. I had vaguely read somewhere that this guy like, like, isn't he dead? I believe he's dead. So who's running this twitter account for a while? These are some some lackeys using the nineties.

He died in seven. Okay, so this is like, yeah, this is like some lackey is posting honest account to plug his books. Um, yeah, the state. Yeah, he's retreating the Falange. It's funny. Look to the people he retweet. You go to their account and it's like this account is temporary unavailable because it violates twitter's media policy. Yeah, I wonder. I wonder why. I wonder what Nazis. Yeah, I do like. Um, Nim Rod's website is down, which is good. That is that is nice. His official website

is offline, so that's good. Um, it sucks that his books are on Amazon, but you know, it's good. What can you do? It is, it is. It is good that he's dead, Mum. So He is dead, the vice president is not and the assassin is probably gonna be in jail for a long time. And that's the episode. This is assassination week. Oh God, my left arm, pet it hurts so much. Land doesn't feel so good. Ronald Wilson Reagan, six, six, six, six letters in any way, whatever. Um,

I'm Robert Evans. This is it could happen here, a podcast about assassinating world leaders. Um, that's why it's called it could happen here, and today we're talking about a time where it did, when John Hinckley Jr shot Ronald Wilson Reagan, Um with me today, James Stout, Garrison Davis, Um and of course, of course, the ghost of Ronald Reagan, who was a regular contributor to our to our podcasts, along with the ghost of the Queen. And Yeah, now

the ghost of the Queen has joined the team. Very excited. Um. So, obviously John Hinckley shot Reagan. We're gonna get into a lot of detail about Mr Hinckley's life. This is something that is joked about a lot on the Internet, including by me. Um. But you know, it's it's it's interesting because there's there's two strains of people who will like come out and tell you it's not cool to joke about John Hinckley JR shooting Ronald Reagan, and one of

them is right. which are the people who are like, well, actually like it's pretty messed up store or and he like it's it's kind of messed up to to laugh about this family's tragedy, because it was a family's tragedy, and the other people are like no, it's fucked up because he had the hots for Jodie foster and what was actually going on there was a lot more complicated,

um than that. So we're gonna talk about all of the things that happened in this shooting, which was messed up and which I probably shouldn't joke about on twitter, Um, because it's actually really bleak. Um, and in order to understand both why it's sad on a personal level and

why it's a tragedy for the entire country. Um. Yeah, I'm just gonna start by talking about John Warnock Hinckley Jr, who was born on May twenty nine, nineteen and are more, Oklahoma, which is about two and a half hours from where I grew up in Oklahoma. Unlike me, John's Dad, who was John Warnock Hinckley senior, was the chairman and president of Vanderbilt Energy. So they had lots of money, a

lot of a lot of walking around money and vanderbilt money. Yeah, and like most people who have good money, they don't stay in Oklahoma. Um, they have any owls and the vanderbilts big must, I'm certain they did, add owls to this story as you picture John's childhood. Um, so their rich as hell and they get the funk out of Oklahoma and moved to Dallas, Texas when John was four, which is so far weirdly like my life in a lot of ways, although I was a bit older. Um,

maybe that's why I didn't get the madness. So that's not why. Normally, getting kids away from Oklahoma really really fix his stuff. But John was taken. John was taken to the only place more toxic than small town Oklahoma, a wealthy neighborhood in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. He attended Highland Park High School, the school where I would later lose several speech and debate competitions and win one

or two as well. Um, it's where, if you if you're in the DFW area, the rich kids who don't have good drugs go to highland park, but which rich kids with good drugs go to Jesuit because they're private school kids. But Highland Park is like the rich kids who are gonna like try to sell you a shitty ditch weed. Anyway, these are this is important Dallas Fort Worth context and I assume it was the same when

he was a child. Um, as far as I've ever found any information, he was a pretty your normal young man for that time and place. UH, there's no one really seems to notice anything particularly different about him. Um, he does reasonably well in school. Uh, later in life he's going to express some racist thoughts in his diary

and in other writings prior to the shooting. It doesn't really seem to have ever been a motivating factor in his life and to the extent that he had regressive beliefs, they seem to have been due to the fact that he grew up in a sheltered, rich, all white environment. Um, and that's not great for you. Um, shocked. Yeah, shocked in Texas no less. One right up in the New

Republic describes his childhood this way. Perhaps it is fear of what lies outside that makes the interior of the family so rigid and subdued, like life in a well run bunker. The world of the hinkleys was the rootless middle class sun belt culture that nurtures pro family values, Christian fundamentalism and occasional mass murderers. Families move frequently, but

without compromising their parochialism. Everywhere people are white. Christian Republican Joanne explains John's egregious prejudices by saying he had never been around people of other races. Somewhere outside there are malign elements, minority groups, rock musicians, big government and the cynical Gosmus cosmopolites who dominate the media. Mothers in this culture do not lavish attention on their children, but on

their furniture. Now that is a coastal liberal elite like fucking paragraph, trying to describe like people who grow up in this situation as someone else who grew up in a similar area. I think most of that is pretty silly and, more to the point, it doesn't get to why John does this. We're getting to why John does this. It's not because he grew up sheltered and a little racist. Um. That is not why he shoots the president. Um. There is, however, a bit of that that that does strike me as accurate.

It as again, a kid who grew up near here a couple of decades later, which is the description of his childhood as life and a well run bunker, which is kind of how it feels to live in these wealthy enclaves in the Dallas Fort Worth area. I grew up in plan Oh, which is, you know, a couple of steps down the economic rung from Highland Park, but not all that far. and Um, yeah, that's that's not a bad description of it. It just doesn't generally lead

to kids shooting the president. More often it leads to them shooting up heroin and then dying of heroin overdoses, which was the big problem in Plano when I was a kid. That said, it's also worth noting that his parents are not, as far as I can find, like fifties stereotypes like his dad's not this super masculine guy who's like mentally abusive to his kid. His his MOM's not like checked out. Neither of them are against the idea that their son might have a mental illness and

need help for it. In fact, it seems like they're kind of more open to the idea of reaching out for professional mental health for their kids than a lot of parents would have been at the same time period. In nineteen seventy six John Drops out of Texas tech to go to Hollywood and try to make it as a musician again. His parents are very supportive of him. One cannot say they didn't try to help their son live his dreams. When he gave up on music and he wanted to be a writer, they paid for him

to take a class at Yale. We'll get to that in a second. It doesn't go well, UM, because he's yeah anyway. But John's not being honest with his ambitions, nor is he open with his parents about his mental health. We now know that John Developed Schizophrenia as a young man and had a series of psychotic breaks. When he would get money to do stuff like this Yale writing class, he would take it and buy guns. He did go to Yale, but it was mainly to Stalk Jodie Foster,

who was going to Yale at the same time. Um. Now, this is all occurring in the late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties, which is the fucking Dark Ages for treatment of this particular condition and a lot of other conditions. There are not a lot of good options. Among other things, I just said, he's not open with his parents about the fact that his mental health is declining. I don't know how he really could have been. I don't unders.

I don't think it's likely. It's certainly not the case. This didn't happen to John, but I don't think it's very likely for a young man in this time and place to be well equipped by his education or society to express what is going on in his head to his parents. Um, and you know to be fair to his parents, they're not equipped with a lot of like, you know, an ability to really help him out here, and they're doing the things you would want them to do. Again.

They repeatedly are bringing in professionals to try to help. Um. None of it is particularly useful, but it's not for lack of trying. Um, like a lot of people who struggle with similar mental health issues, John Seeks refuge in fiction. Unfortunately for everybody, the movie that he finds himself most drawn to is taxi driver, and I think most people are aware of this. It's a bad choice. That's a

really bad choice. Yes, if he had found maybe adventure time or something, it would have been a lot healthier, but instead taxi driver. If you haven't seen it, there's the and characters, his kid, Travis bickle, played by a very young Robert Deniro. It is weird to watch him because we're also used to old man Bob Deniro, Um, who is thinking about assassinating like a presidential candidate and then kind of through movie magic, rescues a child prostitute

played by Jodie Foster, from a pimp. Um and Hinckley thinks the movie is kind of talking to him and providing him with like information about how he can fix his own life. He starts dressing like Travis bickle. He starts wearing like an army jacket and boots and drinking the way that bickle drank. He starts buying guns. He gets really into guns for you know. Um, he starts, you know, in letters that he's writing home to his parents.

He starts talking about this relationship he has with a woman named Lynn, who isn't real but who sounds a lot like one of the women that Travis bickle has an interest with in the movie. Um and yeah, this is kind of the start of his obsession with Jodie Foster, and there are people who will like say that he's

a pedophile because she's thirteen in the movie. That doesn't seem to be the case when he is actually stalking her and most obsessed with her, she is eighteen and he is stalking her in real life and calling her on the phone and stuff, which is like bad and messed up. But he's not into her because she's young in this movie. He's into her because he's he's kind of losing his mind and obsessing with her right. So, while this is all going on kind of in the

late stages of this his parents bringing a psychiatrist. Um. Again, they're they're willing to fund and support him and seeking professional help. The doctor they wound up getting for him. I don't know if he's a bad doctor for the time,

but he's wrong as Hell. He kind of looks at the fact that John has been normal, quote unquote and quote unquote, in high school and like at the start of his college career, and so he looks at this kid who's like seems to be developmentally normal up to a certain point and then goes off the rails and says, well, it's because you were sheltered and coddled by your rich parents and you're just lazy right. That's that's that's what

this guy says. So a big part of his is like advice to mom and dad is you gotta cut him off. You can't. Can't keep giving him stuff, can't keep giving him money, can't keep taking care of him. Um. So while this is happening and this guy is like making them make plans for John to be less reliant on his parents, John Hankley is getting way more into guns. He does a lot of target shooting. He also plays a lot of Russian roulette with himself alone in his basement,

which is not not great. Um, in Christmas of nineteen seventy nine, he takes a very famous photo of himself holding a handgun to his temple. Now John is increasingly harassing jodie foster in this period. Now, what he's doing is not he's not just obsessing with her and it's one sided. He is reaching her on the phone. They talk a couple of times. Yes, they do. Uh. She is always very terse in their calls. Always, you can tell is kind of frightened, but is very controlled and careful.

I would describe the way she handles this is very responsible and, like you can tell, she's talked with like people, I think, like her manager or something, and been like I have been advised, like, I don't want you calling it. She's very tries to be very clear here, Um, and I think handles this as well as a person can possibly handle, you know, being stalked in this way. I believe he's able to get her number because, like, it's

the eighties and people just have numbers in the phone book. Um, again, she's kind of taking a break from Hollywood right now and is going to Yale. Um, his obsession with foster veers between these kind of like fantasies of like harming her or harming a guy that she's with, or harming himself and eventually harming the president of the United States. Now he is not want to shoot the president for

political reasons. He has no kind of particular anger at the president that he wants to work out with a gun. He wants number one to impress her and he wants everyone to know his name and know his name associated with Jodie foster right because, again, he's very ill. Um, he starts following Jimmy Carter around. He goes to like three different Jimmy Carter rallies in D C and in Ohio. There's video of him twenty feet away from Carter at one point. He probably has a gun on him. Um,

like he gets really close to Carter. Again. One of the through lines here is that, like, presidential security wasn't great in nineteen yeah, it's not very good. Um, Carter John Thinks about shooting Carter. He's probably there and equipped to do it, but he just can't get himself into the frame of mind to shoot Jimmy Carter, which is understandable because it is. It is Jimmy Carter right, like he is a hard man to want to shoot to death. So there's a moment where he like yeah, so he's

he's kind of bouncing around. After this period where he like is he thinks about shooting Carter, but he doesn't. He is in communication with this Nazi ideologue and they almost have a meeting but they don't. Um, that's all kind of obscure, kind of unclear. And then on October six nineteen eighty, he gets arrested at the Nashville airport with a briefcase full of handguns and a pair of handcuffs. Now hops has been in this situation. The gun bag

and oops. Yeah, he says he's just trying to sell them, and they're like, well, you still can't get on a plane with a bunch of guns, John Inkley j this is yeah, this is pre night eleven, so you have to assist. He's looking weird. He's like sweaty and in an army jacket and talking to him and they're like, well, we've literally never searched a single person before in the entire life of this airport. But let's check this guy.

What's this massively heavy brief case? There's a fucking there's a dude just walking in with a Stinger and they're like no, no, let that guy on, but we gotta check John Inkley. Um, so he flies to Dallas where he buys more handguns and some explosive twenty two caliber bullets. We will talk about that in a little bit, but they are explosive bullets for twenty two. Yes, they are bullets that are to explode on impact. Is He like reading soldier of Fortune Magazine at this point? Because this

is nobody. He's like a gun culture. So I haven't we have to assume. I think his family's kind of casually conservative. He is kind of maybe, as is embodied by the Nazi thing, probably dabbling in some areas. Again, I think that's that's certainly not good for him. It's also, I don't think politics. I haven't seen any real evidence that politics is a motivating factor. And what this guy

is doing. Um, he does get explosive bullets. Probably helps that he has explosive bullets in terms of making this less dangerous. These are not good explosive bullets. They are meant to be fired out of a larger weapon than he fires them out of. But they are supposed to. Basically, the idea is that these are twenty two caliber rounds, so the idea is that this little explosive charge in

them makes them more like a thirty eight. So we're not talking about like military grade weaponry or anything here. Why is he doing? You may not know, of course, but like if he's a massive gun dog, it's not a massive no, gun culture is different than right. He's buying a bunch of handguns. He's shooting a lot. I don't know that it would be. He's not particularly good or knowledgeable with right. Okay, yeah, but gun cultures very

it's harder to get information about guns. Right. Maybe the day he would have gotten a lot more into like just flipping through magazines exactly. You can't look something up online. Yeah, yeah, he's twenty two good for assassination, just exactly. And this is also like this is what he can afford. Right. He gets kind of a he's lost his better guns, right,

they have their property of the states. So he winds up with this twenty two and he gets these explosive bullets to try to make it give more of a kick. Obviously the thing that's going on in the background here is that Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan having a presidential election which Reagan wins. Um. We'll talk a little bit about kind of that a bit later, but that happens. Reagan is the president elect. Um He flies home. Hinckley flies home. Things continue to deteriorate in his own life.

He's continued to travel around. John Lennon is assassinated and he kind of goes a little bit nuts over that because he loves John Lennon. Also might kind of think that he is John Lennon. So that does not help his mental state. He visits the the the what is it? The shrine to him in New York at one point and kind of when he gets back in March of nine, his dad cuts him off basically like says, you know, you've got your here's your car, here's two hundred dollars.

We can't take care of you anymore, John. And I think this is his dad basically trying to take that psychiatrist advice of like it. We need to have tough love. He has to be forced to kind of get his ship together. But John Hinckley is not really capable of getting his ship together because he is profoundly ill. So he uses that money to pay for hotel rooms in Denver where he sits alone watching television with a gun. Um.

Not Great Treatment for schizophrenia. Reagan wins the election, uh, in what was a sweep electorally but fairly tight in terms of popular vote. He got like fifty point five percent of the popular boats something like that. It's pretty close. And soon after taking office he gets hammered on a bunch of stuff. Right, the economy is not great. He's this, he's he's back. He's like going for a bunch of far right policies to unwind the new deal, a lot of which are unpopular and some of which he said

he wasn't gonna do, and debates with Carter. He's not. He doesn't have the kind of traditional grace period most presidents get where they're broadly popular. Right, Um, it's not looking great for kind of the midterms, is what I'm getting at Um. So Reagan's staff is struggling to right the ship, trying to figure out like, how do we how do we fix all this, Reagan or Hinckley, while this is going and gets convinced that like shooting the president is a pretty good idea. He doesn't have a

lot of other options. He's kind of like running out of money and he's able to get a little bit more from his mom, but he's he's increasingly unhinged and alone and desperate. On March twenty nine, he checks into a hotel in D C where he finds in a local paper the president's schedule. He loads his twenty two caliber revolver, he writes a letter to Jodie foster and he travels to the Hilton, where the president is set to deliver a speech to union workers. Here is how

John's letter to uh to her ends. Quote. I will admit to you that the reason I'm going ahead with this attempt now is because I just cannot wait any longer to impress you. I've got to do something now to make you understand, and no one certain terms, that I am doing all of this for your sake. By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope to change your mind about me. This letter is being written

only an hour before I leave for the Hilton Hotel. Jody, I'm asking you to please look into your heart and at least give me the chance, with this historical deed, to gain your respect and love. I love you forever, John Hankley. It's not great. Yeah, yeah, not a great letter to get, not a great letter to ascend was. Was this actually delivered in the mail? I believe so. Yeah, I think this she ends up getting this. I mean, like she has to come to court and stuff when

he goes on trial. It's like something he kind of demands and I think she does to just make it easier for things to move along. Um, obviously she. She does nothing wrong at any point in this process. She's just living her life and this guy is out of his out of out of his head and has easy access to guns, Um, which is a problem. At PM on March nine, one John Hinckley JR opens fire at

the president's entourage from just a few feet away. Reagan had been speaking to a bunch of union guys at this this thing at the Hilton Anyway, and they're kind of like walking out into towards the Limo when this happens. John's first shot hits James Brady, the press secretary and former PR man for Philish loafly in his head. Uh. He then wounds a police officer and a secret service agent. He actually does not hit. Probably does not. I don't I think there's still a little bit of debate because

it's like ballistics are kind of fucky. But he probably doesn't directly hit Reagan. Instead around fragments and bounces off the armored limousine, penetrating the president's lung. None of the ex past of bullets explode because they're not the right bullets for the gun. The barrel is too short. Um, so it doesn't. It might even do less damage than it would have done, although maybe they fragment because they're these weird explosive bullets and that's why Reagan gets hurt anyway.

Hard to say. Nobody really understands ballistic style that well. Today there's a lot of debate over how all this stuff works. Reagan had been in office for sixty nine days and no real plan existed for what to do if the president gets shot and is alive but is unable to do the job of the president. Um, fucking George H W Bush is in the air a bunch of this time and like people can't reach him, Um, and they're like, but he's they're saying you need to

come back to Watchington now. Um. So kind of the people running the country for a few hours is Al Hague, the Secretary of state, and like a room full of guys in the cabinet who were all disagreeing about everything and none of whom are constitutionally supposed to be running the country. Um, it's a real big problem. Like the fucking like the the press ask at one point, because hey, it goes out there tripul like hey, the president's in surgery,

and they're like, well, who's? WHO's in charge, like with the nukes and stuff? WHO's running the country? And he's like, we got a whole room for the guys. Don't worry, it's all fine, and they're like, is that what the law says, because I don't think that's how it's supposed to go. Um, it's it's not great. It's actually a real problem. And they do they make a bunch of changes after this to make sure that, like, we never don't know who the president is when, if this kind

of thing happens, at least Um. But on a political level this is fucking gangbusters. For the Reagan administration, and I'M gonna quote from a write up an Elpie here. The assassination attempt silenced criticism of his administration at a critical point early in his term. Explains H W brand's, author of the biography Reagan the life in an email

the good humor he exhibited during his recovery. He spent only twelve days in the hospital, convinced many skeptics, some of some of his followers believe that God had forgiven him to allow him to finish his work, and it is possible that Reagan thought so too. On anniversary of the assassination attempt, journalist Del winton Wilbur published raw hide down, a thorough investigation full of revelations of what happened that day.

The book is written in the style of true crime and its title as a reference to the Secret Service Code name given to Reagan, raw hide. Joe Biden's code name is Celtic and Donald Trump's was mogul. It reaches two important conclusions. Firstly, it argues that Reagan became the first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms because of the way he and his team handled the assassination attempt, and secondly, the White House did not reveal the seriousness

of Reagan's injuries. He walks into the hospital and then stops breathing and collapses. Um, like. He walks in specifically because he wants to be seen walking in, and it's like they don't know that he's been shot at first. It's not like bleeding a bunch outside, he's bleeding internally. So it's this is like legitimately the best case scenario. It would have been hard to figure out what had happened to him, kind of because you can't immediately tell

that he's bleeding. A lot of people have been shot, and so everyone just kind of assumes he's having a heart attack, which is why they take him to the hospital. He thinks, actually, I think he believes that his secret service agent broke his ribs getting him into the Limo. Um, but if they've taken him to the White House first, he would have fucking died. He loses half of his blood in the surgery, like it's that's which is like bad if you lose half your blood. That's not like

a great injury. Um, just it's his lung collapsing. Is that what's happening? Like, yeah, they've got him on oxygen and stuff. He's like barely able to joke with the doctors, which he does, which is one of the things that like goes viral from this and makes him so popular because he's he's Yucking it up old Ronnie um his. Yeah, this is believed. There's a number of massive long term

fucking consequences. One of them is that this is why Nancy brings in Joan quickly the astrologer like this is when she you can refer back to behind the bastards two part or on the Reagan astrologer. But this is why the Reagan astrologer becomes like they start. They stopped having him do events when the astrologer says it's a bad day for it and ship because, like Nancy, this kind of breaks her and it also kind of breaks Ronald. He's not the same man after getting shot, which, to

be fair, he is seventy when this happens. So getting shot in the lung at seventy, most people are gonna come back all the way. This is also probably doesn't help the Alzheimer's May accelerate the timetable there. But on a political level this goes fucking great for the Republicans and it allows them to do a lot of really fucked up ship, and I'M gonna quote from CNN here. Today, Reagan is the only modern president who receives high marks

from Republicans, Democrats and independence alike. A look at the polls can quantify the roots of this enduring goodwill. Despite an electoral landslide over Jimmy Carter with a forty four state win in nineteen eighty, Reagan won a narrow popular margin,

a fifty point seven percent. Moreover, gallops valuable presidential poll tracker shows that Reagan's approvable ratings were significantly split along partisan lines after his nineteen eighty one inauguration, with seventy four percent Republican support and fifty three percent from independence, but thirty eight percent from Democrats. When Reagan came back to capital in April to push for his economic recovery act, he was greeted by a hero's welcome in a three

minute standing ovation. He leveraged his political capital to help publish pass his agenda. Before the end of the summer, the Reagan tax cuts had passed the House of Representatives, led by Democratic speaker tip O'Neil, and the Republican controlled Senate. Reducing the top tax rates from a confiscatory and unleashing an entrepreneurial era. That's how CNN categorizes that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um, and in Reagan wins forty nine states and the popular vote.

It is very clear kind of how this happens and what this allows Reagan to do. It's fascinating because you have in Britain, like, less than a year later, right, we have Margaret Thatcher right like, who is similarly not doing very well, until she gets to go to war for two tiny little cold islands in the Atlantic and no one knew about before, and then they proceed to just ravage like the like post World War Two social democracy consense. Just suck it up and fucking here we are.

Now here we are two and people are going I have called in Britain this winter. I will say in terms of just to be fair, one of the things people will say is a positive from this, is that this is one of the things that helps push the arms treaty deals with the Soviet Union, because Reagan is like God saved me for a reason, and maybe it's to make nuclear war less likely. That's a bigger topic

than today. It's a thing that he will claim and generally speaking, the fact that the Soviet Union and Reagan started talking about nukes during this period is not a bad thing. Um. Always good to be talking about nukes, Um. But yeah, what I will say, if we're looking at kind of the only clearly good thing that came out of the shooting, it's the fact that the justice system actually worked in this one instance pretty much exactly how

you would want it to. Hinckley was clearly not mentally comm potent to understand his actions, what he had done or to stand trial, and he was declared not guilty by reason of insanity. His father, tearful took blame for the shooting for cutting his son off from resources. The psychiatrist who had botched his diagnosis admitted his mistakes on the stand and expressed regret. Hinckley was sent to a psychiatric facility where he received decades of treatment, and the

treatment seems to have really helped him. On December seventeen, two thousand three, a federal judge ruled that Hinckley was entitled to unsupervised visits with his parents. This is five years before his dad died, so they get time together again. In two thousand seven he has a request for unsupervised visits as long as one month. This is denied, not because of any problems but because of issues the hospital

had not taken to prepare for the transition. In July of two thousand and sixteen, Judge Paul Friedman concluded that Hinckley did not pose a threat to himself or others and ordered him released. Um the conditions initially limited him to his residence, residence where he lived with his mother in parts of southern California. He was obviously bidden from contact with pastor president, presidents of the United States or

any of their family members or graves from banning. He was banned from contact with Jodie foster or other entertainers. He was prohibited from watching violent movies, television or online media. In two thousand eighteen, a restriction confining him to his mother's house ended. He can now live anywhere he wants, with doctor's approval. Uh and on September one John Hinckley Jr age sixty six, was approved for unconditional release by

district judge Paul Friedman. Friedman noted that, quote, very few patients at St Elizabeth's Hospital have been studied more thoroughly than John Hinkley and again that's pretty much how it auto work right, like, yeah, he shoots the president, but clearly because he's sick and you don't just punish sick people when they don't know what they've done. So he gets treated for decades until he's better and now he's able. Yes,

it's really good. Quite surprising. It is very surprising, and part of why it's surprising is that one of the other negative lingering effects of John Hinckley attempting to shoot the president is that a lot of changes are made in many states to make it much less likely that people benefit from the same understanding judicial system that John Hinckley Jr does. Okay, I'm gonna quote now from a write up from famous trials DOT COM, which has a pretty good, pretty good bit on just kind of everything

that happened here. It's a fair, pretty fair summary. I think within a month of the Hinckley verdict the House and Senate we're holding hearings on the insanity defense. A measure proposed by Senator Arlen Specter shifted the burden of proof of insanity to the defense. President Reagan expressed his support for the measure with the comment if you start thinking about even a lot of your friends, you would have to say, Gee, if I had to prove they

were saying, I would have a hard job. Right. Tell us more about you that, which maybe that says a lot about your administration, who are, by the way, at this point, deep in like Iran, Contra, Shit, selling cocaine and in anyway. We were talking about all of this on an upcoming episode of bastards. But like, yeah, they're all monsters, joining con Congress and shifting the burden to proof.

We're a number of states. Within three years after the Hinckley verdict, two thirds of the states placed the burden on the defense to prove insanity, while eight states adopted a separate verdict of guilty but mentally ill. In one state, Utah, abolished the defense altogether, always delivering. So the system works really well for John Hinckley Jr um ethically, I think the Justice Department of the United States this is maybe

one of it. Probably in history you will not find many cases of a guy shooting an active world leader and being treated ethically by the justice system like he's handled very reasonably, I think, and never again, never and again will that happen for anybody, even if they don't shoot the president. So, Um, obviously I wish John Hinckley

jr well. I I hope his musical career goes fine. Um, I fuck Ronald Reagan, Um hate him and UH yeah, it's probably made the world a lot worse that John Hinckley Jr tried to shoot Ronald Reagan, because it empowered Ronald Reagan. One of the lessons here, if we're talking about assassinations, is that, um, it's a real wild card

trying to assassinate a president or any other politician. And as a general rule, people are kind of programmed to think that somebody's cool if they get shot and don't die, like it's one of the cooler things that like look it just objectively. It's what do you do if you want to show John Mcclain as hard as hell, you even get like hit in the arm or something and just like work through it, right, like what do people?

People talk about like Teddy Roosevelt when he was shot and how bad it was that he gave it bad assid was that he gave a speech, or how cool it is that fucking Andrew Jackson, who they don't say any of these things. About is JFK that's right, is not cool. Not Cool, not over the roof of a church. Yeah, lame as hell, Um, but, like you know, this is the look. If, if you want John F Kennedy to stop being the president and you can successfully kill him,

you will get what you want. He's no longer the president. Um, if you were to have a political motivation, and again, Hinkley doesn't Hinkley, it's not thinking about the top marginal tax rate when he does this. Um. But if you if that had been his goal, this is the opposite of that, right, because it just makes Reagan look cool and helps him, makes everybody feel like an asshole for

fighting him for a while. So, like he gets a bunch of ship through and also a bunch of laws, get worse for mentally ill people and, on the whole, bad, bad, bad assassination. Zero, zero. Yeah, I have to say, based on based on the evidence we have here, shooting Ronald Reagan not a good idea. They didn't do it. Now let the whole team down and we should just plug his album. It's out on us. Best. We should plug

his out because, again, he's not responsible for this. Yeah, you know, I think he's if he's happy singing songs, I'm happy for him. Yes, yes, I wish you the best of luck, John. You can buy his t shirts. He's got t shirts that he's trying to move, which I don't know. I don't think it's bad to encourage his music career, like seriously, like we're all doing it with a little bit of a smile. But what's the harm if John Hickley Jr thinks that people like his music,

that doesn't hurt anybody. And maybe if people can see that, like if you treat people with mental illnesses like people who are ill, not fucking terrible people, then they can get to a place where they can sing songs on Youtube. And yes, that's good. That's an example again of the only time it worked the way it's it's should, but it didn't work out pretty well in this case. Um, so I don't know. Yeah, take whatever lessons you want

to out of this. Many, many possible things can be a lot enough, a lot of different lessons we can take out of this. Don't Hire Al Hague, but I feel like that's that's a generally good lesson. Yeah, there's a Phoenix Punch Bang called Jody Foster's army. I've just read as well, who makes songs about him. Great by their records too. Fine. Yes, no strong opinions on that either way. Anyone else got anything to say about John

Hinckley JR or the assassination attempt on Ronnie Raw Hide Reagan? Also, we're talking about the I R a a lot this week. Probably not for nothing that Joe Biden's code name is Celtic M M and the Queen Dies now makes you think you're telling me it's a coincidence. I still suspects trust. Personally. I think that maybe Joe Biden shook hands with Liz trust and like like, transferred a nerve poison onto her hand and then she touched the queen. Definitely possible. Sipping

again us on the plane back. No one that he's done his job in his Batta clava and spectably post one. Anyway. Hopefully nobody who has stuff going on listens to that and takes the wrong message out of it. Yeah, he kind to one another anyway. We're done. Prime Minister Abe was a champion of democracy and a firm believer that no economy, society or country can achieve its full potential if women are left behind. I am shocked and devastated by his assassination. A loss for Japan and our world.

J K. This is assassination week. WHO's assassinating my ex x former prime minister of Japan? It's it's assassination week. It is, it is. I I would kind of, I would somewhat ving gloriously argue the capstone of assassination week. It is the episode about the assassination that started it at all Um, and by by that I mean we are, we are, we're here talking about the assassination of one

Shinzo Abe Um. This is this is going to be a slightly different episode, both to the rusty assassination week episodes and to the other episode we did on the assassinations of Abbe Um, partly because, basically the day after, within within about two days of the our episode, original episode about the Abbe assassination dropping, Um, there was confirmation that the reason abbe was killed was because of his connection to an organization called the Unification Church, which is,

I think, better loloquially known as the Mooneyes Um. People might have listened to the very, very long episode I did about it. But yeah, there is, there is an enormous amount going on there, and this is something that fortunately,

we have experts for. And Yeah, so, so joining us to talk about this assassination and the moonies and sort of, I don't know, the sort of weirdness and the horror around everything that's been happening around this assassination is anti fascist researcher Elisam as you yeah, Alisa's a anti fascist researcher specializing in cults, WHO's working with deprogramming imperialism, which is a collective of ex moonies who've been documenting just sort of all of the ship the moonies have been

getting up to and trying to get more awareness of really just incredible array of awful stuff that they've been doing. Yeah, so, alsa, welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. I really apreciate it. Yeah, and thank you. Thank you so much for joining us for this. I don't know why I'm saying us, as if if there's someone other than of this episode and You, but you know, old old habits die hard, I guess. I guess I've inherited the royal we which is not great. Oh well, so someone

will have to assassinate me soon. That's fine. Sometimes it happens. I hope it doesn't happen to you, though. That would

not be the best assassination target, honestly. Yeah, so, okay, I guess the place I think we should start is talking about what we've found out about this assassin in the last sort of a few months since this happened, which is that when when the initial police reports came out, there was a bunch of very, very murky stuff about basically, the police were like this wasn't a political killing, it was about some organization, and I think me and you

and every single other person was like even testentially where of Japanese politics. saw them say like an organization and was like, oh no, there's like a one in three chances of the Boodhi's. Yeah, that's yeah. I saw like when they said something about like organization or religious organization. I was like yeah, it was like that probably is. Yeah, yeah, and it turns out that okay. So the assassin is

a man named Tetsuya Yamagami, who was a navy veteran. Um. Yeah, made a a series of unbelievably based and incredibly wild firearms with which she assassinated the form per minister of Japan. What we've learned since then is that the reason he did this was that his basically, like his family and his life were completely destroyed by his mom falling into this colts and by her I mean she, she, she, she gave this Holt set like something like seven hundred

thousand dollars. Yeah, like roughly seven U S dollars. Yeah, like literal, like like multiple fortunes, like she, she, she gave them all of her money and then she sold the company that like she had been running to give them more money. And Yeah, what? What? What, basically, as best we can tell, has happened was that he was he was looking at a way to like get back

at the boonies Um. And basically the problem was he okay, so if he didn't want to kill civilians, which I think is admirable, and he couldn't figure out a way to like get at any of the like individual church leaders, and so he's the thing he decided to do was go after sins Abe because, as we're gonna get to in a in a bit, Enzo Abbey lots of connections with the Unification Church, a thing that all of the people like writing glowing obituaries about him just like in

edibly don't want to mention. Yeah, it's been left out of a lot of ship yeah, and okay, so I guess to back up a little bit, Um, can for for for people who sort of don't know what this is, or for people who like, may have heard of Aberty, to refresher, can you talk a bit about what? What? What? What the Unification Church actually is? And Yeah, we can. We can sort of go from there. Yeah, definitely. Okay.

So the Unification Church, or the Moonys, uh, they are a quote unquote, new religious movement or pretty much a cult you know, they're very culty and they're a cult Um, and they were started by some young moon who was originally from what is now North Korea. Uh. And so basically, this guy, he claims he's the Messiah, has this originally it started out as like a sex cult Um, under a practice called, I think, Picarum, which is basically, uh, he was supposed to h quote unquote, clans a woman's

like relationship to God by having sex with her. So he assaulted a number of people doing this stuff. Um, and the church over the years has sort of like developed into more of a multinational corporation. Uh, and political movement. Uh. And it has a lot of tools, I mean a lot of ties and connections to various governments around the world, including Japan. Um. And it's basically, at the end of

the day, a tool of United States imperialism. Um, there's some pretty pretty direct ties to like the Korean CIA, yeah, as well as the U S C I. A. Um. So, yeah, it's like this big umbrella of like groups, different NGOs, different like businesses, a bunch. It's just a whole conglomeration of things, right, Um, but very, extremely virulently anti Communist. Uh. And, you know, involved in some of some of the greatest hits of the last century, like Iran, Contra. Yeah, for us.

And when? When? When? When? We say involved in a rand contract? Like, okay, there's lots of people who are like, sort of involved in a rand contract. The movies. Like there. There is a decent there you can do. You can make the argument that if the movie's had not been doing what they were doing in Nicaragua, around Contra, wouldn't have been able to happen because the civil war would have ended like they like. When? When? When I say like? When we say like, like they were involved in the

rand contract. Like they are like on the ground giving people guns and money and keeping like literally literally keeping guerrilla organizations and like terrorist groups like in the war, who wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Yeah, and then, and then also, and that's that's the thing, like they

did to around contrast, right, because they did. They did the second around contract with like with you know, when the CIA actually got money, but they were also doing the same thing like before that, when they in the sort of stop gap period with the CIA, wasn't able to fund the contrast. So, yeah, these guys are route for that money. And Yeah, so it's yeah, they're very,

very heavily involved. Like basically anywhere there was an anti communists squad like in the world, you can find the bodies funding in although, okay, I wasn't, weirdly, the only one. I the only one I haven't directly been able to find. Is I haven't been able to directly find any evidence that they were like that. Like specifically they were helping Pinot, like helping PJ. Okay, they were involved in Operation Condor

and they were like doing ship with that. I haven't found evidence they like directly had any conversations with Pinochet, but that's like he's like the the only person you can say that about. And they probably did at some point, like but, you know, like a frail straws. Yeah, like they probably did. Like, I mean again, like they were, they were there with a frail strawsner. They were they with, Um, what was that guy's name? UH, Claus Barbie, the cocaine

K yeah, yeah, I can't, I can't. I can't remember that, the name of the guy. Yeah, there was. There was a guy, and believe you, who got installed for like a year, that he got couped right now. Um, yeah, no, I I know who you're talking about, but I'm also

forgetting his name at the moment. It's funny because he's he's one of these guys where it's like, you know, I had a professor, I took I took a Syrian history class in college, right and Um, there I think it's I really should, if I was saying that, I really should know the year. But there there's a year in like the fifties in Syria where there's like four cups in one year and there were like two guys

who were, technically speaking, like had controller. serially. He was like I'm just not even telling you these guys names because they get overthrown him like two months and like that's that's that's this guy. Yeah, yeah, but, yeah, this is a very sort of very serious and deeply scary like death squad funding machine. Yeah, and that, you know, has continued to today pretty much. So, yeah, and okay, I think like yeah, so, yeah, there's sort of the

desk quard side of it. Um, the other thing I wanted to ask you about is about like what it's like being in the church and what it's like sort of I don't know, because I think, I think a big part of of what's happening with this story is tattoo a Yamagami like basically watching his family get sucked in and not being able to do anything about it. And I was wondering if you could talk a bit about yeah, I mean sort of like what, what? What? What? What it's like being in the church and then what

it's like just sort of watching it destroy people. Yeah, so, Um, I was born and raised in the church. I left when I was around seventeen. It was not it was not nice. Um, pretty much everybody I talked to who is also left feels the burden of this like perfect abuse that we had to endure. Um, it was a bleak time for me. Uh, you know, there's just so much pressure put on members to follow leadership, to do

out outrageous amounts of fundraising. They have a bunch of these fundraising teams, right, and they'll they'll go out and they'll sell things and live in a van, occasionally stopping at like different church centers. Um Too like, uh, you know, sleep for the night or whatever. They don't eat well, UH, they don't get enough sleep, you know, like you're constantly around other people, basically like all all of the methods of cycleogical torture you can do on a person, right, Um,

which was, you know, pretty standard throughout the whole movement. Um, I was lucky enough not to go on any of these fundraising teams because I left before Um, that could happen. But Um, I still, you know, definitely feel like the psychological, you know, fallout from that and it's something I'll be healing with, healing from for the rest of my life. Um. Yeah, so,

like there's there's like no accountability for leadership. They can do whatever they want, but everybody else in the church you know, uh, has to follow what moon and the regional or national leadership says, or the the thirty six blessed couples who are like some of men's original followers. Uh.

There's it's like extremely hierarchical. UH, there's a lot of racism within the group, a huge amount of sexism that is like, you know, directly tied into their Um, their belief system, because the fall of man, according to the Moonies, was eve having sex with Satan and then having sex

with Um Adam and spreading that thin. Um. So just like very inherently misogynistic, extremely homophobic and transphobic movement just all around, like so much sexual repression, like you're not supposed to hold hands, kiss, do anything before marriage, right, and then it's only that person. Well, of course moon, you know, didn't didn't like this. Didn't apply to him

at all. He could sleep with anybody's wife pretty much. Um. So, yeah, it was just altogether a very intense environment, just so much indoctrination going into the heads of the people who are part of it. Um. Yeah, just altogether shitty group. Um. Yeah. So for me, I I went away to school in another state when I was fourteen. Um, it got me like, you know, the physical distance, as well as like the space and time to actually think and reflect on what

was going on. And then I started doing some research online because I was like, well, maybe what people are saying about it is true, maybe it is a cult Um.

And I came across this, the tragedy of the six Mary's, which was, you know, Moon assaulting a bunch of women, uh, and that sort of like made me just, you know, it sort of brought it to a head because I had like, you know, seen for the longest time how leadership was treated versus how regular members had to live in like poverty, Um, but they got like big mansions and like nice things, Nice cars, expensive watches, but everybody else had to like give all their money to the church.

And you know, was were like terrorized, Um. and Uh then eventually I was like I think I have to go. I like I had been through the process of like meeting the mystical or the the evil, other which, you know, like people outside of the church, or you know, they're fallen there, like, you know, basically they have original sin, so they're kind of evil, right. Um, and gotten to know more people, Um, queer people who were just like a hugely demonized group of people within the UC. Um,

and here I am today. I'm Super Queer. Um, but like that, like Kelly. Yeah, but like getting to know people and actually seeing, you know, like, Oh my God, what they're saying. These people are not evil, they're normal, they're human, they are just different from straight people. I don't know. Uh. That to me also made like a huge difference. Um. And then when I was seventeen, I went to another school and I was like, I want

to get laid. I've had a lost this. So I went out and did that and that felt like, you know, once I finally lost my virginity, it felt like sealing the deal. I'm like if I have to go to hell now, okay, and it was cool because God didn't like immediately smite me where I where I was in bed at that point, like I lived and I'm here to tell the tale. So so, yeah, that's how I left. That rules. This is much more gay of the story when I was expecting, which is all, which is always

a good thing. Yeah, it reminds me a lot of like the stories of sort of like people leaving like the really right wing, like Evangelical, was like a lot of reminds me a quiverful but like, yeah, more intense, I think. Well, it's like I think like like the

level of I don't know, I guess the level of separation. Yeah, yeah, they seem to be at least sort of like integrated into like other communities and stuff, whereas the Moonies, I don't know, like there's definitely like people have friends outside of it, but like generally, like people kind of keep to the moonies because, you know, they're supposed to be like God's chosen people or whatever. So they and they like look down on everyone else because they're not moonies.

So yeah, it is. It's also interesting to me that like literally literally the term is just the evil other, which is so I don't think that's a literal term, but like that's how I sort of phrase it or whatever. But yeah, or just like fallen people would be, or the fallen world, the outsiders, is what they would say. So just this very, you know, like very like stigmatizing language that they use for people. Lots of people are just called evil in the church. To they just call

people evil like Willy Nilly. It's like Oh, you're satanic, like no, that's not it that's not that I don't know how to do a good tradition into this. Yeah, we're going to adds. Yeah, so I want to just also talk about specifically one of the things that the church does and one of the things like the sort of one of the specific things that to Yamagami, Yamagami seems to have been suffering from, and well, physically is mom, but his sort of full family, is the financial abuse.

And Yeah, I wanted to ask you a bit about what that looks like. And also there's some stuff about the Japanese context that I think is slightly different than. Yeah, so the American of the Korean context. I want to ask you a bit about that. Yeah, definitely. So across the board, uh, comunification church members are expected to bring in a lot of money through fundraising, through tithing, uh, providing free labor or, you know, low paid labor through

church businesses and stuff. Um. So the cases though, that in Japan, because of the rhetoric of the church, which is, you know, basically born out of, you know, the environment. Um, in Korea, uh so there's basically this thought in the church that they say, Um, that Korea is the atom nation. Uh, because that's where, uh, you know, the Messiah came back, uh, South Korea and Um, and that Japan is the eve

nations supposed to submit to the atom nation. Um and also sort of pay indemnity, which is a big word in the church, and uh, for the atrocity is committed during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Um. And so this means that Japanese members have to pay significantly more for pretty much everything. Um. So there's it's like just uh you know, like instead of like a type of reparations where it's like, you know, we'll give you money, it's like they make them suffer for uh that fact. and

Uh so, like you know, fundraising goals are very high. Um, let me see, I think I had a figure here somewhere. Um. Uh. Yeah, so Japanese membership they bring in roughly of the church's income. Uh so a large amount for, you know, like proportionally. Not You know, there are a lot of members in Japan. However, throughout the world, that is like proportionately. You know, where

most of it comes from. Um. And then, as of several years ago, uh, the Japanese church fundraising goal was thirty billion yen, or around two million for that year, I believe. So, just, you know. And so they go out selling uh, ancestor liberation is one thing. Uh, you're supposed to pay exorbitant fees for your ancestors to go to heaven. Um. There was a book called the Chanson young and that book was extremely expensive and, of course,

much more expensive for members in Japan. Um, I think I read a figure where I think, I don't remember what year it was and it was not very recent. I think it might have been or something, or two thousand two or something. I'm not sure, but it costs like, roughly, like two thousand American dollars to go to the marriage ceremony, the one of the mass weddings that the moonies do,

where everybody has arranged marriage, arranged married, Um. And so yeah, just like these huge amounts of money, uh, directly flowing from the pockets of the membership and anyone they happened to, you know, have give them money, uh into the coffers of the Church and, you know, directly on up to

like the Moon family, who are billionaires. Um. Another thing I would say here is that they often uh so for people who that they're trying to fundraise from uh, they often will target like elderly widows and people who are, you know, in sort of precarious places and come to them and say, your family member who has passed away wants you to give this donation to the church. Uh. They also like at one point made up like a fake Buddhist sect in order to like specifically target people.

So it goes deep. There's a there's a lot to that. Yeah, like one of the things I remember reading those like that. Yet they had like this whole network of like fake mediums you would like like specifically to target people. They add. So we target the widows, which is like I don't know. So so much of the stuff that they do is

just so incredibly leak like, I think. Yeah, I mean the thing that always that got me was the sort of like like the the way in which they're sort of weaponizing like like Japan's sort of war crimes in

in South Korea and North Korea as well. And it's like it's like a on the one hand, like yeah, like a all this body is just going to like a bunch of like too rich fascists and then be like, and I think this is something else we can sort of get into is, like, okay, so the church's main political allies in Japan are the people who did all that ship Yep, like, no, it's just a constant deflection,

pretty much. Yeah, and I mean it's interesting too, because, like you get, you get this, like some of the newspapers they fund will like openly say that, like, Japan should rearm again and like Japan should like start retaking Korea and then, like you have did, the other art with their business being like hey, pay US money for all the people you guys killed, and it's less. I don't know, it's yeah, it's pretty it's the worst, honestly. Yeah, yeah,

and I guess, I guess. Yeah, I think. I think this is as good a place as I need to go into. Like, okay, so the moodies like could not do the things that they do in Japan without an incredibly large degree of institutional support. Um, part of this sort is with the Yakuza because, like you can't run, like you can't do organized crime stuff like like running an entire network of people to defraud widows, like in Japan, without the acquisite like you having some kind of deal

with them. YEA, and yeah, and and and that. That also bizarrely ties in with sort of how how the innification Church got integrated with the sort of mainstream? Wow, yeah, you know, I'm just gonna call them mainstream, like fuck it. People, people, people, people will quibble about the different factions of the LDP. I frame we don't care for reasons that will get

to but yeah, how. How? How they got, like and yeah, which I guess we're talking about, like the origins of how they got ingrained with Japan's like perpetual ruling party, live Democratic Party. Yeah, Um, sorry, were you? Were you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, sorry, I wasn't sure that was a question. It's okay. Um. So, yeah, it goes all the way back to uh, like so it goes. It goes back pretty far. So Novasuka Kishi

obvious maternal grandfather. So he initially became sort of embroiled with the UC kind of stuff, unification church stuff, in the early days of when the movement Um was in Japan. Uh, he collaborated on stuff like the foundation for victory over communism. Spoke at their the founding of the organization at a UC church which was, I think, uh, next to fish's a state or something like that. Yeah, and I think, I think, I think, I think he sold them their

first building in Japan. Yeah, I think, if I remembering something that I read at one point. Right, yeah, so, Um, so, yeah. And then, uh, in sixty two, the UC was able to convert fifty leaders of the alternationalist Nietzchech in Buddhist Uh sect, called sect called, Oh Gosh, I don't know how to pronounce this, Rio Show Cost Kai. Uh, and they had a lot of strong use of Yakaza connections. Um. And then Sami Kobuki was the first, you see, president

in Japan. Uh, he was the Yakuza Lieutenant and second in command of that group that I had just mentioned. And and the other thing we should mention about this about the sort of how the occusite ties. Yeah, is that? So? Okay? So, Obsa Kishi is the guy who founds liberal democratic, the Liberal Democratic Party, right like He. The Liberal Democratic Party

is his creation. It is like what that party is is all of Japan's conservatives basically like basically seating to his authority and being like, okay, fine, we're gonna follow your lead. Um, and his his party is like his base and his funding is basically a combination of what he he like. Kishi himself is a like artual words of war criminal. Um, his his base is basically in the old Japanese fascists. He is funded by, like, well,

partially funded, like funded directly by the CIA. Um, he's also funded by but the the CIA in particular here is working through the Yakuza, because one of what that's that's one of the sort of the will like will it be in this sort of like we will. Will it be sent up? Not Cia, but yeah, that basically American intelligence in the American army starts working to the Akus as like an anti communist Um Force, and he he gets bankrolled by this two guys named Kodama and Um, right,

you reached. Yeah, Sasakawa, who are like Kodamas is like like the like milit basically like the guy who is in charge of the Yakaza. He's also a fascist. Um Kawa is this self like literally called himself the world's rishest fascist. And both of these guys are like huge bank rollers of of Kishi. They are also and you know, and when, when? When Kishi is like bringing in the church like this? This is how this is, this is how all these people have got have Yakaza connections because, yeah,

it's it's this. The whole sort of Japanese right wing like political machine is like one like happy family that is doing doing the worst stuff altogether, at the same time funded by the CIA. Yep, and like, and also, I need to say this, I said this is my episodebook, like like the level of CIA involvement here. Like there there are individual will CIA agents assigned to individual Liberal Democratic Party candidates in the fifties to make sure they

won their elections. I did not know that, but that is it's not wild so specific. Wow, yes, yeah, concerning things, concerning things, Oh God, Um. But yeah, so, like, yeah, to this day a lot of LDP candidates and politicians still have ties to do you see, get donations from it. UH,

used like membership as like free labor. uh, even like having secretaries from who are members of the UC and uh, like, you know, sometimes they would you know see like some sort of like classified or you know, information and stuff like that. So there's, yeah, there's like apart from like that, like just so interconnected. Yeah, do you do you remember the story about the LDPs like number two guy, like getting getting moon to be able to visit Japan. Ah, sorry,

I don't Oh God. Okay, so that my memory of this story was okay. So, like, Japan has a series of really weird laws about like, okay, Japan is a series of very weird laws about many, many things. One of them has to do with it. It's something like if you've been convicted of a felony in another country, you can't enter Japan. And I don't know if it's I don't know if it's a felony. I don't I

don't know what the I forget. I'm forgetting what the legal bar is for what you have to be like convicted of in or to not be able to enter the country. But I, like moon is a I like he like he was like convicted by the US governments of like perjury and a bunch of other ships because of the crimes that he did, and so he, like technically legally could not enter Japan. And then, like the the the vice president of Um an office, presently got him for his title. But maybe basically, like what like?

Basically like the like the like the second most powerful man in Japanese politics and the nineties, like very specifically did a whole bunch of Visa Bullshit so that specifically boon could go to Japan legally. Not Surprising, not surprising, but wow. Yeah, it's like, Um, the lengths people will go to to collaborate with other fascists. Yeah, I think that's that's I don't know, that's to me. What makes

the Sassination really interesting is that. Like, okay, so, if you ask like even like in Japan, if you had asked the average person what the connection between like Shinzowabe and Edification Church was, like, most people have no idea. Like before this assassination, those people had like no idea what that was. Yeah, yeah, after the assassination this the whole landscape has changed. Um, yeah, I mean it's it's

been really interesting to watch like this. This really seems like an incredibly sort of politically effective assassination because, yeah, okay, so, you know, you you you had, there was, there was, you know, you had the very the initial right wing backlash, but the righting backlash kind of it got kind of muted when it when it became clear that it like wasn't a left wing radical, which I think would have actually been an enormous disaster. Yeah, but then the guy

was Yamagami, was pretty right wing himself. Yeah, it's like he's a right wing guy and but also like his story is really sympathetic. Yeah, I mean I feel for the guy. Like he had so much trauba in his life, honestly, and like it's obvious like, and I think you know a lot of uh former members, you know, sort of understand how that feels. UH, most of us have an

assassinated a prime minister, but so far, so far. But yeah, like, I mean we understand that pain of where he is coming from and like, you know why, upon learning that Abe had these ties, he's sort of like, I felt like compelled to do something. Yeah, and I think the I mean there's also this element at work here that's kind of weird, which is like, okay, it's very, very hard normally to get like right wing Japanese people to

turn on their own party. Uh, the one way that you can do it is by going hey, look at these Koreans. So there's like weird dynamics going on here.

Like there were some, there were some like even further right parties who were like, you know, using this thing as a campaign thing of like Ah, this party is like a fake right wing party, like they're all being run by like Koreans, and it's like, okay, that's like not, like the thing that is bad about the moonies is not that they're Korean, it's that it's all of the other ship they do. Yeah, and I think that's complicated, but also, yeah, like the political impact this has had

has been like enormous. Yeah, yeah, do you want to talk about that a bit? Yeah, so, Um, so, okay. Obviously it has shined a lot of light on sort of the connections that a lot of members of the government there have from the L D P, Um, as well as other parties have with do you see getting donations, etcetera. Um, people are pissed about it, you know, as they should be. Um. So I guess that, uh, Prime Minister Kashida has said that they want to cut ties with the Unification Church

at this point. Uh, and it sort of remains to be seen whether that actually happens or not, because it can usually just be like lip service kind of ship. Um, but the politicians are uh, and I'm not sure if this is specifically for the LD P or sort of across the board. Um, there's like a thing where they're supposed to self report any ties or donations to the U S, which is just, you know, like I don't know, like I don't think everybody's going to come forward with

that sort of thing. If you're supposed to do it yourself, that's like not how that should work. But Um, so, I mean, like it remains to be seen, you know,

if those ties are actually gonna be cut. Um. So also, like there has been sort of like, uh a, a a lot of support from uh, like lawyer groups, like the National Network of lawyers against spiritual sales Um, who has, you know, worked with, you know, cult members and like specifically a lot of Unification Church members or former members or whatever who have, you know, lost money through spiritual

sales Um. And they've also just recently called for the dissolution of the UC in Japan, which is pretty cool and I hope that happens. How realistic it is, given all of the strong ties to the government, but that would be cool. Um. And then also I saw a thing a couple of days ago that Japanese consulates and embassies have a program that is offering advice or assistance, uh, to UC members who are Japanese nationals and their children, Um, and that ends on September thirty, I think. So, if

anybody needs that, getting fast. Um. But I think that also applies in America. So if, like you're a Japanese national and like a victim of the U S or if your parents are, uh, they those that open and I don't know exactly what the levels of support resources

they're offering are, uh, but it's worth looking into for sure. Um. But yeah, like, so there's been like sort of this outpouring of support from various groups and there's, you know, like it's really shining a light on the issue of like especially what it's like to be a second generation member of occult and the trauma that people like us have gone through. Um, you know, there are definitely a lot of calls for like support and mental health care, as well as like, you know, ways to sort of

get people out of situations like that in the first place. Um. Yeah, yeah, I don't know, I I. I. I hope this translates into actual resources. And Yeah, just sort of like the LDPs through ratings tanking, which like is good, and like it is very funny that Kishia has had to act like half his cabinet. Yeah, I don't know. I think it it remains, although he remains in power and he's

see too interesting. So it's like, you know, clearly there's not a lot, like even if people are like having a little bit of like the smallest level of transparency about this stuff, like I don't necessarily know how far it will actually go into like, you know, making amends or like protecting people from further abuse or, you know, getting people their money back. I don't know, I think

there's a there's something. I think that's that's really sort of, I don't know, like really grim about the way that this worked out, which the Japanese police knew what was going on and why this sessination had happened like immediately, like they found his hard drive and he'd written out the whole thing about why he did it. Yeah, and then they intentionally held the information and basically made were able to maintain a press in Bargo until after the

election happened. Yeah, you know, now everyone fucking hates the LDB, like the perminision's approve of ratings, like theories present, like it's really bad. I mean it went from like fifty went from like fifty two to like thirties six and

like a couple of weeks. But because the people who are people who connected the church are the people in charge, they were able to like suppress this information long enough to like shape how the election was going to go make sure that it was sort of like the right wing shock from Oh my God, that's assassinated prime minister

and not the weight. The assassinated prime minister for a reason that's like incredibly justified and relatable to like this is as relatable with a motive of assassination as like I've ever seen. Yeah, I mean, like, as far as reasons for assassinating people go, this is a pretty like solid reason, like there's there's stuff there. Yeah, and like and I think it's just like like it's it's interesting.

That's like it's it's rare assassination where the assassin is a very empathetic figure to like I think a lot of the time when you get people doing stuff like this, like it's there. There's sort of like one to one correlation with like okay, like how how? How how do you feel about sort of like like how how do

you feel about assassination in general? is going to like determine your dicay, like determined your sort of response to the actual action, whereas I think here it's different, because you know like that yeah, this, this, this is someone who, yeah, I mean I keep saying that he's sort of like imminutely relatable, but it's like, yeah, this is, this is someone who, I don't know, has been through just an incredible amount of trauma in a way that's like very

easily sort of digestible to like regular people. Yeah, it's like, yeah, very obvious trauma and like, you know, yeah, I don't know, it's and I really hope that that that that really does actually translated to resources for mental health resources, because

I do too. I feel like as well as mental health resources, I help there are like, you know, financial resources and you know, like all sorts of other resources as well, because, like dealing with the fallout of, you know, having been in a like a cult is incredibly difficult and requires a lot of space and time, and a lot of people are, you know, left with like PTSD after that and it'll last for your whole life and that makes you know, for a lot of people, that

makes you know, having getting money and doing job things extremely hard, especially, you know, if you're like getting like emotionally like thrown back into that all of the time. Um, so I hope there are like more, you know, like material resources that are also available in addition to uh, sort of like mental health care and therapy things. Is. That's something that I feel like it's all too often

just not there for people who have been through abuse. Yeah, and I think also there's there's this way in which like like a lot of this like insofar as there's any kind of like support network like in the US, and this is also true of Japan, two maybe as I don't know, the Japanese offer stay. It's not great.

But yeah, like there's an extent to which like the sort of like last safety net you have is your family, and you know, like this is this is a kind of thing that can very easily cut you off from your family and that that has, you know, I mean that that has emotional consequences, but like, yeah, that that

has enormous financial consequences. That really don't like. I don't know I when when, when I was originally doing research on this, like I I read a lot of sort of like people arguing about like deprogramming stuff, and it like they just didn't talk about like that kind of stuff.

Often it was always just sort of like, I don't know, really weird, and it's sort of like grotesque and detached way to think about it instead of like yeah, so, yeah, it depends on what type of care it is too, because, honestly,

deprogramming is another cult. It is another cult. It's like an anticult cult and, Um, it just, you know, it re traumatizes those who are already traumatized and honestly, like people who have been deprogrammed sometimes leave, but a lot of the time it just increases their fervor for being

part of whatever movement they're part of already. Um, because they're like Oh, if this is, you know, like what everybody is going to do to be if I leave, like of course, I gotta stick with this because, you know, then like it's like every what they've been saying the whole time about, you know, being persecuted and like hurt and stuff then becomes true. Right. Yeah, I guess that's the thing I would say about. Like that's my disclaimer about de programming. Uh, and though the collective we are

a part of is called deprogramming imperialism. That is because the only thing that needs to be deprogrammed really is imperialism and not people, because that's not how that works. The radicalization requires a lot of trust, a lot of time, a lot of space, a lot of reflection. It's not something that, you know, you can just like go and like lock somebody in a basement for two weeks and then like try to make them leave whatever movement there

part like that's that's just abuse. Yeah, I think, like, I don't know, I think it's it's as an industry. It's not as sort of like powerful as it used to be, but I think, like, I don't know it there's, there's, there's there's a sense in which it's sort of like, you know, it almost it almost has like civil war logic where it's like both, both, both sides need the other side as sort of they're like reason to exist and, you know, so like and both, you know on both both,

both sides are traumatizing people. On both sides need like like that. They're there. There's they're serfically fighting over the same group of people and each of them can sort of like offer the other side as like Oh, Hey, this is why we need to exist thing. But then it's like, you know, and like like as with, like most civil wars, it's like the actual people caught in it don't it's like no, you don't actually need, you

don't want either side of the civil war. You want out. Yeah, yeah, no, it's definitely it's definitely one of those like Oh, you're stuck between a rock and a hard place kind of things. It's like both options suck. Like yeah, like the two party systems. Yeah, God, Stalin, Stalin said two good things and his entire two things that were like funny in his entire life. One of them was the pope, how many division does he have? And the second one was

they're both worse. And there I mean immediately he was wrong about they're both worse, but like yeah, that's a that's a that's a real thing. That is the basis of all modern politics. Honestly, that is honestly we hate to see. I hate to see it. Yeah, yeah, on the on the other hand, though, I don't know, like I I am kind of hopeful about this, like I

am too. It genuinely seems to have like changed, like, at the very least, it's changed the way that the Japanese public, like season, understands this whole thing and like this is the first time, I think, ever betther, I mean like, you know, like the Communist Party and stuff. I've been trying for like years to get people to care about this. Just no one has really cared since, like, I don't know, like they basically since the Japanese left

collapse in like the seventies. Like nobody's really cared about this and I don't know, it really seems like something like it really seems like this assassination has actually changed something about just sort of like the like just the way that the Japanese politics is being structured right now. And I don't know, I'm modern really hopeful. I would say I'm too I mean, like the more light that

is shed on this, I think, the better. And like, unfortunately weird things happened, but I feel like if there's any chance for some sort of Um, some sort of you know across the board or even in certain areas just specifically, any sort of like justice, that the amount of public attention on this now is, you know, potentially something that could help bring something like that about. So I don't it's been it's been like sort of a weird ride for for us x members, Um, with all

of that just sort of like re traumatizing to everything happened. Um, but at the end of the day, I think a lot of us are hopeful that things can change now that people know about it, because you know before that it wasn't something that was ever really talked about. Groups like this thrive on this sort of weird combination of like operating in the shadows and also when they show up,

it's through their own PR stuff. Yeah, and you know, sometimes the best way to break that, apparently, is you shoot someone who was you shoot a guy who they who was working for them. And Yeah, I don't know, I mean, yeah, I feel like, Yeahmagami sort of managed to at least, you know, he he did what he he did a thing and it has had sort of, I probably, some of the impact that he imagined it would.

So I don't know, yeah, like honestly, like Im from from what I've read of his stuff, like I I think that's what better than he expected it, like it could it possibly have gone? Like? He seemed like really

really sort of just like had abandoned all hope. Yeah, and I don't know, I mean, like I guess the the other thing that I really hope out of this comes out of this is that like you don't have to have people like destroying their lives a second time in sort of like just out of the incredible desperation of what they've been through, right. Yeah, preventing any of

that would be optimal. Yeah, yeah, because the you know, the more that, the longer the Unification Church operates, the more people will be abused and the more violence will come out of it. Like maybe this is the most high profile like a recent bit of violence that's come out of the movement, but it's not unprecedented in any way. So,

you know, it's like that's what happens when people are abused. Yeah, and it's I think it's also worth just sort of like reminding people that one of the sort of so the church has sort of splintered into various factions. Yeah, a lot of the people, well, okay, a trump trump gave a speech at like the at an event of

the mainline church. A bunch of like so one of the other guys, like one of the other splinter factions, had a bunch of people at January six rot of iron ministries or sanctuary church, and those are those are the guys who had the the A R fifteen gun blessing ceremony a few years ago that made the rounds, where they wore bullet crowns and their robes and they

had the guns. And they've also got land in in Pennsylvania and Tennessee and also in Waco, Texas, where they're basically preparing people for war with what Sean Moon has this ribed as something akin to the globalist deep state and Marxists. Uh, I don't know if those are his exact words, but it was something like that. So they're, you know, like they're they have an act of militia. They're preparing for war. That is what the Rod of

iron is for them. That is the gun. Um, yeah, and and these are these are the if remember my my stuff on this, right, this is the fashion that owns car arms, right, yes, they do. Yeah, yeah, so they have a gun manufacturer. Now, okay, like, if Robert We're here, Robert will probably start equippling with me about how good, like the equivalent with me about the actual quality of the weapons they produced. But like, okay, they have them, they have they they have a weapons manufacturing peace,

which is terrifying. Yeah, and they make the trump gun because, of course they're all super pro trump, very like patriot. A lot of q and on overlap there. And Actually Rod of Iron Ministries UH in in Japan has been helping organize q and on events. Um. And Yeah, so like there was also and so basically the relationship between rode iron and the mainline, you see, is supertense. Sean Moon and a couple of his other brothers basically want their mother dead. And who is? She's the you know,

the head of the mainline church right now. Um, and not just dead but like specifically beheaded. Um. So there was an event recently over the summer, I think it was like the end of June, where Uh Sean was, Gosh, I forget, I forget where he was in Japan. Um, but basically he was sort of like railing at the audience for supporting his mother, Hawk to Han uh, and then when people spoke up in defense of her, they were literally like physically thrown out of the room. Um,

it was super intense. Yeah, there's yea, yeah, it's it's a really fucking intense moment. Um. And he's like they're saying she had like sex with a demon or something like that and has fallen and all of this. You know, God, like I don't know. Sometimes. I watched a bit of the guy's speeches just because I'm like, I want to know what the funk they're up to. Um. And first of all it seems like he might do a lot of cocaine, which would not be on the precedent had

given the moonies and all of their drug smuggling and ship. Well, I mean we we have like, what was his name? I, Oh God, I'm blaming on the name of what? What? What? What of his other sons? was like it was like literally spending like a shell corporations, like net income amount like per month on cocaine. At one point, like was that he o Jen possibly? I think I think it was. Yeah, yeah, I think. Yeah. And he's also enormous abusive piece of ship. Yeah, yeah,

it sucks. Yeah, people are all well, okay, that's not the people who are still actively involved in the church and who didn't break themselves out and flee like the first opportunity they got are like enormous pieces of ship. Yeah, I mean because like even at the end of the day, if they're not specifically doing anything that like directly harm somebody, they're giving money to these institutions that do into people who do and giving them support and, you know, reinforcing

all of that ship. And then, you know, I mean most of them are just shitty in general too. Yeah, I also like specifically awesome about like, yeah, there there were a couple of people who like got forciably married into the family. Yeah, like left and I don't I do not want people to get to get the impression that I think they're bad, because they're not. Like they got, yeah, really horrible stuff happened to them. They're able to escape me.

That's good, but also, Jesus Christ, like yeah, uh, and that's the thing that it's like sometimes hard to talk to like, you know, childhood friends or my family who's still involved, Um, because I feel like it's like, you know, if you're supporting this group, you're implicitly supporting fascism and murder and death squads and rape and all of these awful things. Um, and you know, a lot of members

don't know that those bits of history about the church. Um, but if anyone who is listening is in the U C, I would definitely say to look those things up, because they are all over the place. Yeah, okay, so this was specifically. Yeah, I read inside the League by Scott and Lee Anderson. Okay, I I will say this. Yeah, there it is kind of hard to read because these

people are journalists. They're not normally book authors, and the idea of starting at the beginning of a story and then moving through to the end of it is like an entirely foreign concept to them. So it is constantly jumping around between sixteen million things. But yeah, there is a lot of there's a lot of very good stuff

in there. Yeah, it's an incredible resource. I would also suggest reading, uh, the there's like a a bunch of articles that Robert Parry did from his consortium news about do you see and like stuff back in the day on it. Um, I would also say check out how well do you know your moon? Uh. That's another great resource. Has a lot of you know, like links and direct citations of a bunch of documents and ship uh, all good stuff. Also, I would plug John Gorenfeld's book. Um, oh,

it's called it's been bad, bad moon rising, bad moon rising. Yes, yeah, John is gray. He yeah, it's it's another really good book on that. Yeah, I think there's a new edition came out like very recently. Yeah, so I think he has it, actually a pdf of it or something for free on his website. Um, yeah, uh. And then another book I would suggest is gifts of deceit about the

Thompson Park Scandal and care a gate. Another good one. God. Yeah, the thing about the MoD is like there's just like entire like there's entire genres of like crime that they do that like doesn't even like make most accounts of them because they're doing too much other crime. Yeah, literally, there's just so much crime too for there isn't just done so much that it's hard to keep track of everything.

They literally have a million shell corporations and they literally do things unser different names and in different places and then different types of atrocities that it's like how are you supposed to keep up with all this? That's why they do it that way, because you're not supposed to. But yeah, I mean it is, I don't know, like figuring out how intelligence operations work is like easier than like trying to untangle this ship. Yeah, honestly like that that.

That stuff was, you know, a little more on the nose. It's like, Oh yeah, clearly this is like a joint psychological operation and other like, you know, back channels for money and trafficking things and people and stuff. But then it's like, Oh God, What Company owns what? And how much do they make and like where do they move their money around? It's just like, I don't know. That's that side is like, how do I navigate this? Yeah, so I am extremely fortunate to be a part of

a group of people who's working on this stuff. Now, Um, you know, we're gonna what we're going to try to do is sort of make like a Unification Church wikipedia kind of thing so that we have like all of it in one place and then, you know, potentially down the line maybe do like a people's history of the Unification Church or something like that, but in the meantime we're just compiling a bunch of information. Yeah, are there ways people can support you? And it also can support

deprogramming imperialism in this the work you all have been doing. Yeah, so I have a patreon. It's a Lisa Majub a L I S A M A H J O U B uh. You can follow me on twitter at Alisa Underscore Majub same spelling. Uh. deprogramming imperialism has a twitter. Uh, it is, since deprogramming imperialism was not. was too long to put in as a user name. The one we are using is no more cults, which is no underscore, more underscore cults, Um. And then we have a instagram

as well, under deprogramming imperialism, I believe. Let me double check, M Hm, and we will. We will put links to all this stuff in the show notes. Yeah, awesome, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, it's do programming imperialism. Just together, together words. Sorry, it's just not working. The words are smashed together. There's no space. That's that's. There we go. I did it. Yeah, well, I I think. I think. I think that's going to be all for us today. Um, thank you so so

much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate this and hopefully, you know, this will just have helped more people to sort of like understand what's going on there and sort of the history of the U C and uh, as well as, you know, maybe shine some light on the obbeys assassination and UH. You know, the more people who know about this, the better, I think. Um, so I really she ate being on here because you guys have a pretty big platform. So that means a

lot to me. Yeah, and I'm I'm I'm really I'm really, really glad that that you came on for this, because I don't know, like it's it's really like it's really easy to like cover stuff like this and just never actually sort of like get to the human, like the actual human impact of it. Yeah, and so, yeah, I'm really glad I was able to talk to you. Thank you. I yeah, I'm glad I was able to talk to because that it was fun. It was fun, it was informative and getting the word out. We're doing it, we're

doing the thing. Yeah, yeah, it feels good. On pictures of Alexandrow dooking moments after his daughter exploded in a car bomb. Again, I don't have any problems beating puppies. Oh No, this is recorded. Welcome to it could happen here, the podcast where Garrettson Davis is fine with violence against dogs. Yeah, right, as wow, cancellable, cancellable. deathly allergic to dogs, but they

love you so much. So if people were people were going to pick an assassination method for me just to get a whole bunch of dog Dander and rub it on my pillow and I'll be dead with I'll be dead the next morning. I've I've seen you get rubbed on by a bunch of dogs and you've you've never died yet. No, yeah, that's get uncomfortable and you have to use your inhaler and it's you know, but I don't. I just I just ignore that. You get uncomfortable and

you have to use your in Halor. Robert's like, that's great, I'm super thrilled with that outcome. You know what? Other outcome I'm thrilled with. Oh good, so sick. Transition. So we are talking about the assassination of Alexander Dugan's daughter. It's, it's a it's a it's it's kind of a wild story. There's a lot of weird things going on. We still don't know much about what actually happened. Um, there's a lot of conflicting theories, a lot of experts who are

saying different things. Quote Unquote experts who are saying different things. Uh, it's it's wild. But I have a little right up here that we're going to go through based on what I assume everyone's questions will be about this assassination. UH, first thing, probably before we before we get into Alexander Dugan's daughter. I guess it's probably worth clarifying who Alexander Dugan is because to understand the nature of this assassination and possible motives, it's important to know who he is

as a person. So I know we've talked about Dugan on the show before kind of briefly, but Alexander Dugan is Russian traditionalist, neo fascist, political theorist. Um. Some people call him a philosopher. I think that's being a little generous. Son. Yeah, yeah, he was born in nineteen sixty two into a high ranking military family and a Dugan spent his early years as an anti communist dissident in the collapsing Soviet Union.

He joined various dissident ultra nationalist, occult Andy Semitic and Fascist groups or collectives that sprung up during the last two decades of the Soviet Union. Uh, in the nineties he was one of the founders of the Russian National Bolshevik Party, which he left in the late nineties because the party was not fascist enough. Um. So he he left the political party he helped, he helped start because it was it had too many of the Bolshevik parts

of the National Bolshevik Party. Um, he, he, kind of carries on some of the traditionalist political philosophy from Twentieth Century Esoteric Fascist writers like Julius Cevola, whose book on Pagan Imperialism Dugan translated into Russian, just as a brief bit of context for people. Now you know they're fascism and communism are are portrayed as in strict, strict opposition to each other. But if we're going back to the twenties and thirties, a lot of these guys had a

lot of things in common. There were times where the Communist Party of Germany and the Nazis would fight the cops together. Um, there were people in the Nazi party who were more or less national bolsheviks in terms of their political outlook. Um, and they were all murdered on the night of long knives. Like the Nazi party had a left wing that it purged. Anyway. This is just like, this is not coming out of nowhere, this isn't a

new development. Well, and the thing with Dugan is that he really is does carry on that type of Red Brown alliance idea with a lot of his politics of of of bringing together some of the more harder fascists with some people who are more like authoritarian Communists, Um, and we see that with the National Bolshevik party at

this point. Dugan is probably most known for his influence on Contemporary Russian politics, the NEO Eurasianism ideology, his writing on the multi pole or world theory and his fourth political theory about the ascension of Russia as the world's like traditionalist political power, Um, and usurping the kind of

political dominance of the United States. And Dugan's Neo Eurasianism is described by Antonov, an eastern European far right scholar, as, quote, a form of Fascist ideology centered on the idea of revolutionizing the Russian society and building a tolitarian, Russian dominated Eurasian Empire that would challenge and eventually defeat its eternal adversary, represented by the United States and it's atlanticist allies, less springing about a new golden age of global political and

cultural illiberalism, unquote. So it's it's very centered in just being against the ideas of liberalism and being against like globalist liberalism, like actual like globalization, Um, and still carrying over a lot of influences from esoteric writers like Julias Seviola in terms of like kids, anti modern, anti liberal

politics based in like traditional, anti multicultural right, like this this. Yeah, yeah, a lot of if you've ever seen someone screaming about like Global Homo or something like, that's probably one of these guys. Yeah, and that that Dugan's daughter actually, in her last ever interview, talks about that a little bit

and we're yeah, yeah, like the like. There's there's there's there's a lot of people in the US who like see this ship and like this take it for anti imperialism, and it's basically because like they've lost the ability to like conceive of an empire that isn't the US, Britain or France, and even that's tenuous, and it's like guys like from a lot of these civil accounts, you get the attitude that, like, well, only the United States is capable of being imperialism, which is then just then just

say you're anti us, just say you're anti the United States, because you're not anti imperialism, because, let me tell you something, there's been a lot of empires in history. Controversial statement from Robert Evans. Quite quite a few different empires over time. They're not all. America press probably worth like pointing out the Russia asset exists. Is An empire, right, it's just a contiguous one. It's it's one that that is joined

by land separated by seas. Doesn't still be being an empire? Yes, as as we can see, with them trying to expand into Ukraine, which is heavily influenced itself by some of the theory that Dugan was writing from the nineties up until now, Um and then, kind of in reference to Dugan's influence on contemporary Russian politics, especially since Russia's so far failed invasion of Ukraine, Dugan is often referred to as quote unquote, Putin's brain or, quote unquote, Putin's Resputin Um.

And while he is connected and has and while he is certainly well connected and has quite a bit of influence in Russia and the global far right movement in general, the degree to which he holds significant power in the decisions that Putin makes is definitely heavily contested among actual political experts. We think some of the whole Putin's brain and Putin's like resputent thing is a little bit over emphasis,

over emphasized with sometimes Dugan's never held office. There's Dan Dugan's never we we, we, we don't even have a picture of Dugan and Putin together, like we don't even oh they've actually like been in the same room. We don't know if the same person, the same person. Yes, that's correct, Chris. The thing that is important to know about Putin as regards Dugan because again, as garrison said, not trying to make a statement here about the degree, like saying that he is or is not any kind

of influence. But Vladimir Putin has been doing this, has been working towards the where he is now for decades and is a guy who has had a view of the world for decades that he's worked towards making real um and it's not a view of the world that you need to be. Dugan's an esotericist, like you do not need to think Esoteric Lee to understand what Vladimir

Putin is doing. He wants to reunite the Russian imperial project that fell apart when the Soviet Union did, using violence and whatever other means he can do, which is why he's gone done what he's done in Georgia. Um It's why he's done doing what he's doing in Ukraine. This is not like complicated and Standing Putin's motivations are

is not hard. You know, I think a lot of people have kind of leaned into that Putin's brain thing, especially since the invasion of Ukraine, because in in Dugan's seminal nineteen nineties seven book, the foundations of geopolitics, Dugan lays out his vision to divide the world up and calling for Russia to rebuild this influence through annexations and alliances. Well, all in a heavy opposition to Ukraine as a sovereign state, and a lot of Dugan's writing has been about trying

to reconquer Ukraine and absorb it into Russia. Um, yeah, and he's a useful guy, but yeah, I guess. And and like the the in an article from the from the Guardian, that I was I was using for one of the sources for this episode. They they claim that the foundations of geopolitics was a very popular book in the Russian General Staff Academy Um and kind of was. Was One of the things that shifted Dugan from like a weird esoteric dissident to actually becoming a more influential

and prominent pillar of the conservative establishment inside Russia. Um, as as Dugan's writing evolved, started to emphasize less, the more esoteric elements his writing did, did get more popular in Russia. Um, but at this point he is stronger as a symbol, uh less so than having actual personal influence over decision making. You know what does have influence of your decision making? They have influence of your decision making. You're you're the sub the subliminal messages that we've been

placing insider ads for the past three years. Um. That leads that that has been an esotary project, of of of my design to to influence you to buy these products and services. That's right, James, I'm I'm trying to I think we have a couple of different esoteric projects. I'm not sure what Y'alls is. I'm trying to get people to bring the Subaru Baja back. That was the

super a little truck. Bet in the back it was the my God, how can yeah, I was gonna come speaking of one word, but I realized when that was taking me and I stared up to me. It is a cup. Yeah, it is a cuck. It's my second favorite cup. Why didn't they call it the Superu cuck, and I would buy one immediately. Yeah, the Super Yah, please buy, please, by Super Cuck. Enjoy these adverts and

we're back. All right, so let's I think it's now actually time to talk about the the actual casualty, this assassination, which is got Alexander Dugan instead Daria, Daria dead, Gaina more like it. Yeah, so she was. She was. She was born on December fift Daria herself was a Russian journalist and far right activist who was very vocal in support of their journalists. Well, I mean yeah, she, she.

She did work for a number of journalists, of journalism outlets, not only Russia, including in France, like she she, she did. She was a journalist. Um, she did work. It wasn't very good. She's a bad person, um, but she worked for a few French outlets. Um, she was very vocal in support of the invasion of Ukraine. In accordance with her father's political theories. She studied at the Moscow State University, specializing in the political philosophy of late Neo platonism. So

you already know she's going to be really annoying. Anyone if it tries to describe that degree program to me, I might hit them like absolutely no, yea, we, we, we, we, we, we. We have, in that one sentence alone, laid out justification for assassination. Okay, well, okay, come on, I think I think that's a bit too far. I'm gonna say right now bought property with land so that when people say the word Neo platonism around me I can get rid of the body. So, Um, here's some fun facts about

about Daria. She played the flute. Um, she was, she was in her she was in a band, I think in college, uh, called Dason may refuse, which was an electronic music band. Now, Dason did actually rock. It probably did slaugh of I mean like and this. And this was when she was less of a fascist actually. Um, now, just in terms of something that kind of an interesting note here. So dason translates to here, being, which was, which is one of Alexander Dugan's favorite favorite terms. It's

it's related to the philosophical concepts, uh, upposed by Martin Heideger. Yes, uh, so, it's. It's just a little nerdy reference to both her father. I guess she was probably exposed to the phrase via her father, but it's a hideger reference. So she named her electronic music band off of hider. If you're tried to kill her ghost now, which is pretty funny. Yeah, yeah, if you're in a band with a hiding a reference

to leave that band now. But but yeah, when she when she was in the university, her friends say she actually she actually wasn't really into her dad or her dad's politics. Um, her her friends talk about that. When she when she was in university, she really liked Um, guide to board. Um, she was interested in some of the more yeah, like just just quickly, it's like a lot of popular stuff on the left now ship like a crime thing, but also stuff like Um, AD busters

is influenced by guide to boy. Yeah, I mean also like the French Revolution in yeah, to for hundred and twenty years and never aged. He was also, I will say this is a thing a lot of people don't know about. The board was influential in the development of war games and and is part of the intellectual tradition that gave us warhammer. That that that actually makes a lot of sense. It makes it. It makes complete sense. Yeah, yeah, but but yeah, so she was. She was into stuff

like that inside and yeah, I don't think. I don't think she would have described herself as that. Um, but that was the types of stuff that she liked talking about and that was the types of groups that she was involved with. She she never talked about her father and her father was already a very popular um person at this time, specifically inside Russian universities. But she she was.

She did not drive with that type of stuff. Um. And then by by the end of her kind of time in university, she started shift doing more towards what her friends described as orthodoxy. Um. I would say it's like she s shod more towards her father's traditionalist stuff. I'm not sure what exactly caused this shift to happen, Um, but here's a quote from one of her friends. Quote. It was strange because before that she has not shown any interest in him and her father had no influence

on her. Um. And it's so, yeah, something by the by the end she by the by the end of her time in university and she got and by the time she was out of university, Um, she actually just became an activist with the International Eurasianism movement of do again and began to arrange lectures for her father and became a very active supporter of his, and then after that she started writing for state run news outlets like rt and running parts of her father's website, where she

was then listed as his press secretary, and started to appear at the events of the Eurasian Movement as a speaker as well. So she she shifted in like the last like probably ten fifteen years past, like ten years she was shifting more towards her father, even though when she was in her twenties she was more into some of the French leftist stuff. That doesn't surprise number one, it's pretty normal for young people to rebel against their parents and that era and be interested in stuff outside

of it. And like, I think there's a couple of different ways this could have gone, but the thing that makes total sense to me is that she's rebellious. She explores some things. The primary things she learns is that life out there is hard and like making a living on your own and completely like is difficult and her dad has a lot of influence and she can make a lot of money working for him. And so back back she goes. I don't know, I don't know. She lost.

She lost a lot of her friends over this because when she started doing stuff with her dad, her friends were like situations. People are like no fun that, we're not going to hang out with you. It seems like yeah, it's, it's,

it's it's kind of actually a bomber. Like I, I only, I only, I only got to this part of her life um a few days ago when I was doing the research, and this is actually something I stumbled upon later into my research for this episode because I was nasally I was momly focused on the actual assassination part Um and I when I found this, I was like, oh,

that's actually kind of sad. Yeah, I will say I don't know if this is at work here, but there is a thing in like there is a current in the French altip left like after sixty eight going into the seventies and eighties that gets like really fucking weird and kind of ghost fascist based around it's it's a

long story. Where there there there's a whole thing about a guy who was like sort of involved in the alto left circles who was like I think he'd been in he'd been in a concentration camp, but he'd been in one of the ones that like wasn't an extermination camp and he started doing like Holocaust denial. And there's like this whole fucking thing where like a bunch of these people kind of went really, like, went really fucking weird. The rest of people, like the rest of also left

to own them and like they like. We're kind of involved a bunch of the sort of like the like founding the French neo fascism. I mean, it's not like. It's not it's not a path that has never happened before. That's not coming out of nowhere, especially when your father is who he is. That's not that's not surprising. So when she started, so, yeah, and in the past few years she started acting as her father's press secretary, scheduling

events for him. She was doing she was doing more writing on her own, Um, in various outlets, including state run outlets, but also outlets in other countries. Um, but definitely shifting more towards the kind of traditionalist durationism, Um

side of politics. Earlier this year she was sanctioned by both US and UK authorities, who under under accusations that she was significantly contributing to online disinformation around Russia's invasion Um and in an interview just to few months before her death, Daria expressed pride that both she and her father had been targeted by Western sanctions. That kind of she kind of a board, as like as like a

badge of honor Um and imperialism. In it's filing, the UK office of financial sanctions called duging a frequent, high profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine and the Russia invasion of Ukraine on various online platforms. And to get a sense of how she actually politically described herself in the months before her death. In an interview from May, she described herself as, quote, a political observer of the

International Eurasianist Movement and an expert in international relations. My field of activity is in the analysis of European politics and geopolitics. In this capacity, I appear on Russian, Pakistani, Turkish, Chinese and Indian television channels, presenting a multipolar world view of political processes form. A particularly important issue is the development of the multipolar world theory. It is clear that the globalist movement is over and the end of liberalism

has come, the end of liberal history, unquote. So and and guess, and guess what she thinks is going to replace liberal history. It's it's just I have some theories. It's Orthodox, traditionalist Russian fascism. Um. She in that same interview, she described the war in Ukraine as, quote, a clash between globalist and Eurasian civilization. I'll let I'll let my friends in Kiev know what they are. That's great, they'll

be excited by that. Yeah, it is. It is one of the things that's been sort of interesting to me about this whole thing is like, okay, so do do you can sort of comes out of like like Russian national bullshit was into some extent right, but then, like if you look at the propaganda about Ukraine, it's like, okay, these people are all, these people are all Nazis, but like also with their communists, and also they're gay, and it's like yes, well, that that's the thing is like,

you know, do people like Dougin and Dogin know well, being absolutely fascists, can can pretend to be against Nazis for various reasons? Um, DO GINA? Definitely, uh, and and do good as well. Are Are Pretty Homophobic, Um, and they they view gayness as a sign of like degenerate liberalism, so like. But like, they definitely walk that line between like,

but you know that and that that's the thing. A lot of that, like what red, Brown alliance are National Bolshevik type things do is walk that line and how they how they try to present there, you know, cultural beliefs who are to heavily based in traditionalism versus their versus their beliefs on like fascism and communism. Um. But anyway we are. Let's see, and in her last ever interview, Um, which took place on the day of her death, Um, do Gina said that at quote, Western just Biggie, by

the way, I don't know who that is. Oh my God. Alright, we're doing a biggie episode next you're of your homework for this week. Please come back next week and do better. So in in in her last ever interview, she said that, quote, Western utilitarianism has come to an end and a special military operation is, it seems to me, than the last

nail in the coffin of this world hedgemon. Um. And then later on the interview she talked about how environmentalism, support for transgender people, quote, the conversion of a person into a homosexual unquote, as well as span is m and freaking is Um are tools with which the West is trying to fragment society and reduce its population. Free my friends who dumps to dived so they could buy more drugs fifteen years ago. We're part of a conspiracy

to fragment society. It's not that cocaine was expensive and the fucking trader Joe's didn't lock it's dumpster. It's that. Okay, awesome. So yeah, so, those, those, those were the views that she exposed hours before dying. So well, talking about the conversion of a person into a homosexual, transgender people, freakings Um as being the things that are destroying the west. To be clear, all of these things are based and

showed in fact destroy the West. If the if, the thing that finally kills capitalism is dumpster diving teams, I will be thrilled, but I just don't see it happening. Uh So, before we get to the actual deed, let's set the stage for where this, uh this event took place and where everything went down. So it's August, a Saturday. Al Ender Dugan and UH Daria Dugina are attending this festival just outside of Moscow, where Dugan's making a planned appearance that Um and he gave a lecture that Saturday

evening at this festival. Now, the festival was called the tradition quote unquote. Tradition is what it is, whatever ever everything calls it. So I wonder what the festivals about? Huh? Appreciation of the headline song from the play fiddler on the roof, Best Sung by Zero Mostel? Look it up. It's an incredible performance. That must have been it right. So the tradition festival is billed as, quote, a Patriotic Cultural Festival and family event for art, literature and Music Lovers.

It's just the same, this thing I've ever heard. So it's basically it's it's this traditionalist kind of quasi fast. Is Like Art Festival for people who like Neo platonism. Is What it actually is. Of It. It takes place in Zarkava. Manner. It's this, it's this biggest state about

twelve miles away from Moscow. Um, the tradition festival is supported by the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, the Ministry of Culture and tourism for the Moscow region, among a few other kind of sponsors and both Daria and her father were special guests at this year's festival. Um. In an interview, a colleague of Dugina's said that the conversation topics at the festival between Duke and his daughter and other tradition festival attendees Um. They said, they said this

in an interview. Quote. We talked about the Russian idea, the empire and the cultural war. Unquote. So that's just like the regular conversations you're having at this festival. To give you a sense of like what this thing actually is. Um, and the blast that eventually that did kill uh Dugan's daughter, happened shortly after Dukina left the tradition festival Um at the estate where her father had given a lecture just hours previous. Um, do you know who? Do you know

who won't blow up? And I don't. I don't want to say that. Look, I'm gonna say right now. If you are planning to assassinate a member of the Dugan family and once spot to sponsor our podcast, we're on board. I think we're fine with that, actually, because it just counted. Yeah, yeah, actually, we'll do it for free. Just give us a name, because we have and we're down. This is this is part of our radical Freakan identity. This is, this is this is what I'm gonna do in between stealing old

pumpkin spice coffee from the trader Joe's dumpster. Unbelievable. I will do I will do a traditionalist because pumpkin spice coffee is destroying the West. We have to kill it. Yeah, Robert, Robert and Danie fucking love the Pumpkin spice. It's amazing. It's destroying degenerate liberalism in the form of Pumpkin spice coffee, not enjoyed in any wayship. I don't want to Yuck you. Yum, I'm thank you. Thank you, thank you. I would like to Robert. Oh my God, here's that break. You know what? Yes,

we are, we are back. Um, I'M gonna open up with a quote from from the Bromo. I don't know who that I don't know what that is. Oh, the bomb. Yeah, Mr Bomb, when you exploded, what's going through your head? Then? We are thinking about hot Stariadina. But no, it's actually no, no, perfect. We're finishing assassination week to actually to actually justify some of our kind of glee at this happening because Dukee is a horrible person. They're both trash. Yeah, I am

going to read a quote from Port Sour in the Guardian. Quote. On Saturday night, the violence that the alternationalist Russian thinker, Alexander ducan has propagandized for decades suddenly entered his own life when his daughter was killed in a car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow, and I think that's a really important thing that, like, he's made his entire career off of doing violence on other people and and promoting

genocides on people that he doesn't like. They are a people I know who are dead because of the war that he and his daughter urged to happen. So, yeah, like, it's it's it's what it's, it's it's it's the same thing as like when every single fucking Nicon guld dies, like no one should no one show, no one should feel bad about them at all because they dedicated their entire lives to having another country be invaded and having all these people killed their lives destroyed. So fuck them.

But yeah, the violence, the violence that he's fetishized and and propagandized for decades has has actually entered his life for like the first time now. And so, after giving a talk at the festival, Dugan and his daughter were due to leave the venue together in the same car, if but at the last minute Dugan decided to travel separately and take different vehicles. We stepped off by the C I A, according to a friend and family. Now, because at the last minute he did decide to take

another vehicle. This actually has spawned a lot of conspiracy theories, Um, which will kind of get into it a bit later. But but this, this is what happened, is that they were they were they were going to leave together and the last minute they decided to take separate vehicles. Um, five minutes later, while, do you note, was driving a Toyota Land Cruiser on the highway. That makes the tragedy. That's a fine car. It didn't deserve to in that way. Ye, Robert,

why couldn't it? Why couldn't it have been afford some sometimes sacrifices are necessary for the cause. Yeah, I'm Land Cruiser on a flag. Let's put let's let let's all pull one out for comrade Toyota Land Cruiser. You served us well. You made the ultimate sacrifice so that mankind might be free to go off roading. So as as as as she was driving this Toyota Land Cruiser on the highway, a bomb exploded in her car, killing her

immediately and sadly ripping the vehicle apart Um. Witnesses say debris was thrown all over the road as the Toyota Land Cruiser immediately lost control and crashed into a fence and engulfed in flames. Noble stuff. Yeah, I mean a really solid assassination. It is, what's one of the better executed ones, especially, especially for a car like it's one of the most impressive car bomb attacks that has ever happened. Yeah, yeah, that car bomb. That car bomb killed nobody, but yeah,

that was quite a card. It was a big moon. We thought that was an air strike it. Yes, yes, definitely a so Um. Eyewitnesses called the fire brigade, but by the time they arrived the entire car was up in flames and firefighters only found one badly burnt corpse in the remains of the vehicle. So investigators say an explicit device planted under the car went off in the vehicle caught fire. This happened about twelve miles west of Moscow on in the village near the village of Oh boy,

you don't need to try that. Nobody needs vallims the Zimmi. Okay, that's me near near the village of bullshower Vel Zimmy, at around nine thirty PM local time. Investigators do believe the bombing was, quote, premeditated and in the moment. Guys just walking down the street with a bomb driving M why not? It was. It was. It wasn't the vehicle error. This was there was a bomb planted. No forward or a Chevy, a pinto. Sure, yeah, if if a fucking F one fifty goes up like that, I'm blaming Ford.

But no, because must have been a bombing. So the bomb was placed under the car on the driver's side. Now, a friend of the family named Andre Krasnov, who's all to the head of the Russia Horizon Social Movement. Um was that one of the first ones to confirm the reports of of Daria's death and but also said that the bomb could have actually been intended for her father, and he gave this quote to media. Quote. This was the father's vehicle. Daria was driving another car, but she

took his car. Today, while Alexander went in a different way. He returned, he was at the site of the tragedy. As far as I understand, Alexander, or probably them together, were the target. Unquote. Now, this is this is just speculation. Actually, Um, from what I can tell, there is actually more evidence suggesting the car was indeed registered to Daria Dugina. We. I don't believe it is her father's car. Uh. We

there was. Some of the vehicle registration was leaked by a Russian opposition UH news, news site, like a new site in in Russia. UH, who's not state funded. Uh leaked the car registration. It was registered to Daria, not, not, not Alexander Dugan. Um. So, but it is very likely that Dugan may have been a target as well, like, very,

extremely likely. Uh. It's it's hard, it's it's hard to say. Uh. Now, in one of the funniest parts of the assassination, footage posted on telegram appears to show Mr Dugan walking up to the side of the crash. Hey In shock, with his with his mouth just gaping open and hands on his head like he's in his surprised. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. He's walking up to the side of the crash like, Oh, it's very that is that is the that's the sound of the face

he's making. Is Um we we love to see a wizard in distress. So sad wizard. So the attack happened on Saturday and then come Monday, the Federal Security Service, or the the FSB, Uh said that the murder has been solved. Come, come, come, the next Monday. And this is this is not true. This is what we call a lie. From the FSC, yes, that's that's really disappointing and untruth. Yeah, that's wow. From the Russian FBI? No,

no intelligent services ever told a lie. That's disappointing. So so, yes, according according to, according to the FSB, uh, the the attack was mastermind by the Ukrainian secret services and carried out by an ace of Ukrainian national names Batalia Vulk who fled? Last name? Yeah, Johnny, racist, keep it the fan. Did it again. Who fled to Estoda, uh Estonia, following the killing? Um, so, Russia, Russia's FPS, did a very brief investigation. Yes, sorry, Russia. Russia's FSB did a very

brief investigation. Claimed that it was this female Ukrainian citizen, Um and that, and that she fled the next day, which was Sunday. Ukraine says, uh Nah, not really. Yeah, that is I mean, basically that Ukraine has made uh yeah, did at that noise. It's one of those things. I would not be surprised, obviously, if Ukraine did it and they have the people responsible or some of their network

are still in country. Of course you you make a denial, but if Ukraine did it and they were out of the country, I can't imagine why they wouldn't be like, yeah, man, we fucking did yeah, so we're at war. I'll read the actual statements. So Ukrainian official dismissed the accusations of Ukraine's involvement in the incident. Quote. Ukraine, of course, has has nothing to do with this, because we are not a criminal state, which is the Russian Federation, and even

less a terrorist state. Said Uh Mike Helio PODILLAC, who is an advisor to President Zelinsky. So yeah, I mean maybe Ukraine obviously denies involvement in this. Um, there's a bunch of people it could be. Could be Ukraine, could be the CIA, could be Ukraine and the CIA could be the FSB or the G R. A lot of people have a lot of people have theorized all of those things. Yeah, there's really no way to know a

lot of this. Yeah, are we are we going to get into the person who destinated the bomb, more like the car that? We don't. We don't. We don't know what actually happened. I'm going to get to some bit later, but some of the actual mechanisms that caused it to happen are are still unclear because because the FSB is not like given us any definitive evidence on how this thing actually worked. But the head of the UH, the Nets People's Republic, they issued their own statement on telegram

saying vile villains, the terrorists, scoundrels. So they're just they're just doing a Cobra commander. That's awesome to eate. Alexander Dugan blew up his daughter in a car. We cherished the memory of Daria. She is a real Russian girl. There's as if that makes it worse, but like, if they've blown her up some other way, it would not have been as vile. But I just loved at the end it was she was a real Russian girl. Yeah, yeah,

it's like Pinocchio. It's very funny. So some, some politicians and experts, quote UNQUOTE EXPERTS, I've said that Putin himself may have orchestrated the bombing, with little to new evidence and support of that theory. There was a British member of parliament said that Putin may have targeted Dugan over recent criticisms against his government, which I find to be very uh. Yeah, Putin's gotten rid of a shipload of

guys who used to be close to him lately. And he didn't use car bombs, for they commit suicide, they get sick. You know, a lot of many historians or like you know, extremism kind of researchers are definitely kind of eyeing up the the FSB um. It's, you know it's but it's it's really it's it's really unclear. There there was Um uh. People have proposed that, like this, this attack was orchestrated to kind of create a wave of needed anger in Russia six months into their failed invasion.

For him, Ruslan, a Trad a security researcher in the in the US think tank Atlantic Council, proposed that the the the FSB UH or or other Russian state kind of apparatus is could have been involved, saying that's evident that the murder of Dugana created a wave of needed anger in Russia and that, quote, Dugan is now mostly a symbol, not an instrument for the state. His role in the creation of current Kremlin mythology for Eurasia and the so called Russian world has already ended, and he

and he can be sacrificed. Currently, the Russian army needs victories and a patriotic flame, so they they're kind of them opposing that. He was. It was like his symbolic sacrifice that like be sacrificed this figure. That means this thing, people will be willing to like keep on fighting. The Ukrainians literally have literally bombed and struck inside Russia at this point and killed fifty thou plus of their children. You would think that would be enough to make the

Russians angry. Like blowing up this Weirdo's daughter isn't going to be the thing that Galvini is the nation. Well, to be clear, though, this is the kind of dumb

ship the Atlantic Council will be. A stupid Atlantic Council ship, yes, yes, and one of the one of the funnier explanations that our theories being posited is by former Russian state deputy, uh Eliya Pomrov Um, who is now so, in an appearance on his Russian language opposition TV channel and Kiev, alleged that that Duino was killed by Russian partisans from a previously unknown anti Putin terrorist group dubbed the National

Republican Army, and that both Dugan and his daughter were targets. And, according to this guy, the group authorized him to issue their manifesto via his telegram, Chattel Um, and this group is entirely made up. This is not real. This is this, is like this, like this, like this, like former Russians, this, this is like this. This, this former Russian official turned this like Ukrainian Lib Guy, who claims that it's this secret to Anti Putin liberal terrorist group that contacted him.

And this is this is their first ever attack. That's that's that they're they're going public as this new terrorist group, and I'm gonna I'm gonna say this is the only one of these theories that is abs that that I don't believe. Like the this assassination is a lot like what happened to Epstein, where everyone who brings up a theory has some other reason for having that theory, and so I don't trust anything anyone says about it. But every theory about why he might how he might have died,

is plausible right, like every all of these are plausible. Yeah, might, like I don't listen. I don't care what the Atlantic Council has to say, but yeah, it could have been the F FSB. I don't care about, like, what the Russian government has to say, but yeah, it could have been the Ukrainians, but definitely was not liberal terrorist groups.

First bombing like this, like that. What what a the like the like the single thing where like you can instantly tell that someone is lying about what happened in the bombing is when they say a previously unknown group everything. It's so hard to bomb things. Yeah, like, so serge some money. Is a German political expert with particular focus

on Russia and Eastern Europe. Yeah, he definitely has made a lot of statements talking about how Kremlin's version of events is definitely h he says, totally fake and absolutely out of the scale of possibility in terms of blaming it on this this one. You Krainian as off fighter

who infiltrated Russia. Um and well, well so. The FSB has produced, quote unquote, evidence in support of this theory of saying that this Ukrainian citizen, who arrived in Russia in July with her daughter, rented an apartment in the same building as Dugina's and her into Russia as a Ukrainian, by the way, July of this year. Yes, as your child, rented an apartment in the same building as Dunkin's daughter, so specifically ducan's daughter, and spied on her. And like.

The month before the killing, UM, the FSB released a purported passport photo of the Ukrainian citizen, as well as a footage that allegedly showed her in Russia with many people, including Ukrainian officials and kind of data analysts and like, disinformation researchers pointing out the various ways that that the

document seems forged or digitally fabricated. Um and some landy also says that this National Republican Army Group is completely made up, because there's there's there's no way that there could be a terrorist group like this here's like an actual group active that's not infiltrated by the by the FSB right now. Um, just like he's like, you're like not, like people can do individual acts of terrorism, but have like a like a big group like this comprised of

like former Russian officials. He's like that's just impossible, that's just not that's just not gonna happen. Um, no, I I agree with all of that. Um Honestly, one reason why someone involved in the Russian security state is plausible is because this was such a good bombing. It's, it's I'm leaning whoever it is, because the CIA is also like.

I'm leaning towards it's it's a state actor, or because, like, fucking bombs are hard to make, especially almost close to zero percent of the time when an independent terrorist group makes a bomb doesn't work the way it's meant to. And like this, this wasn't even ignition based. This blew up as she was driving on the highway. So people, if it was yeah, like it. It could have been like heat activated, it's it could have had like a

timer based on ignition stuff. But like whatever mechanism that got to that they got it to blow up is more complicated than your average car bomb and it was way more successful in your average car bomb. So it's like it's it's bizarre how good they were at doing this. Yeah, and like I think it's worth mentioning, like, okay, like there was a time where you could just, if you needed to make up car bomb, like you could hire a guy who would teach you how to make a

car bomb. Like we don't live in that error anymore. Like that, like in the seventies you could plausibly do that, right, although, if that's a kind of training you want to offer for people to help try to take out Alexander again, a sponsor our podcast. Yeah, we're yeah, our our podcast sponsored by Becca Valley to Becca harder. I do believe that I have this one source here that that it's they, the FSP, claimed that the the bomb was either made of or equivalent to, five hundred grams of t n t,

which is that which is complete bullshit. But it's just like in Oregon to get rid of a whale. But that's that's but that's just one of the statements that that's like that's one of the statements that that the FSB has made on this, that it's five drabs of t n T, which is just not true. Like that's just not how bombs work. Um, so now we're gonna get to something. We're gonna WE'RE gonna close off here by talking about the aftermath and the televised funeral of because, because,

because it's kind of funny. So family friends, dozens of colleagues and acquaintances of Daria Dugina got together live on TV on the Tuesday after after after her death, to bid their final farewell to the, quote, unquote, journalist killed in the car bomb attack outside of Moscow. That's quoting from tasks, one of the one of the Russian state funded media outlets. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read a quote from Alexander Dukean who. This is something

he said on the televised funeral. Quote. She had no fear really, and the last time we talked was at the festival tradition. She said, Daddy, I feel like a warrior, I feel like a hero. I want to be with my country, I want to be on the light side of the force. She's with a lot of Russian people now, with about other Russians right now, and just love that. Like saying that his daughter walked up to her and said, Daddy, I want to be on the light side of the force.

She's like, like what I mean? A significant chunk of her body mass was converted into light. I just I just, I just said that. I I don't know. I just think it's a really funny thing that that ducan was saying less televised funeral. It's just it's a bizarre quote. Um, he also said that he wanted to bring up his daughter the way that he saw the ideal person to be, saying, quote, the first words that we taught her as a child

were Russia, our state, our people and our empire. Unquote. Again, none of this is true, like, he's just a weird thing to say. It's your daughter's funeral. No, you gotta Look, look, he got daughter. It's like any other kind of investment right, like, and she's been exploded. You gotta get as much as you can, like really, it's like ringing out a towel,

you know. Uh, you gotta just make that last little bit count and then, uh, Vladimir Putin, a few days after, after the assassination, signed a decree to to award her with the order of courage post posthumously. So she did. She did explode courageously. So, yeah, that is that. That's the Sassination of Dugan's daughter. It's wild because we don't really actually know. We don't we we don't really know who actually did it. We we we don't know much

about the actual event. We're unsure of the actual the actual like ignition of the bomb, how the bomb actually operated. Who Actually did it? I mean, obviously like this, whether whether Dugan himself was a target or was specifically Um, Daria Dugina. Um. Now, obviously this was like heavily planned based off of her and Dugan's schedule, right, because they

were both openly gonna be at this facial cultural festivals. Yeah, but, like, you know, like it did require like you know, people were tracking their movements, being like Oh, Dugan's gonna be at this festival on this day. Um. So, like it's there is a lot of like background work that went into this and it's fascinating that we just we actually know very little about who, who may have done this

and how and how the bomb actually operated. The primary clue we have is just how good the bomb was, which which means one way or the other, a nation state actor, probably, but that does not really narrow it much. So, yeah, that was that was again one of the assassinations that happened shortly after we planned assassination week. Yeah, I feel like it's what like man like easily our most successful

PR campaign. It's it's just so wild to think like how close Dugan was to die, because remember, like he was planning to leave in that same car and then, at the last minute, decided to take separate vehicles. So was he behind her when it went off? Like yeah, yeah, that's why we got that great photo walking up to the site. Yeah, would you point this out to like actually been like five grams a t and t like held been when he walked up to it, like picture of going Oh my God, and then just his face

would explode. But not mean like a lot of conspiracy theories have popped up, being like well, Dugan was supposed to be in that car and then he left last minute.

Maybe he was in on it. Maybe, like maybe, you know, the Russian state told him this was gonna happen and he and he just let it happen and it was doing it for like this pr thing and like who knows, like like do maybe maybe Dugan didn't know that this was gonna happen, like, like there's there's no way to like, you're just, you're just, you're just speculating at that point.

We're just creating theories in your own head. But it is it is kind of funny that that Dugan almost was in that car and then it wasn't, and that is, uh, that that is at the very least, an interesting aspect of this assassination. Um, but it's no evidence for one specific thing right now. It could just be like, Oh, I'm gonna make a stop somewhere on my way back home right like, so I'm gonna take this I'm gonna take this other vehicle, like. There's so many other possible

reasons for why he may have switched cars. Um, but it is, it's it's another, it is another like thing to that that the people are turning into various theories. Yeah, I would. The thing I say about that was, like you have to have a lot of faith in your bomb maker to drive behind a car bomb like intentionally, like you've got to be really like, I don't either that or you really hate your daughter in a way

that's very reckless. Yeah, but you could just like turn off the highway or something or like, oh no, my car broke down. I need to make sure that down. You gotta drop her, you've got to press the big plunger into the box. Yeah, well, at least we're ending on a high note. Yeah, I have to have to. Yeah, I do like that. I've started. We started asassination week with a car bomb and we're ending it with she

declared the nearest church. No doubt. It's like it's like poetry at rhymes and I want to be on the light side of the force. Quote. Fine, what are the according to do again? What are the last things Daria Dugan said? I wanted to be on the light side of the force. Somebody, if there were real journalists left in the world, somebody would reach out to George Lucas and just try to get a quote. And you're not.

Don't email him. It's like just go to a mall near skywalker ranch and wait until he goes to the sparrow. You'll find him. All right, that doesn't for us today. Check under your driver's side door. If you're Alexander Dugan. Imagine if he wasn't like, if if he wasn't involved, he wasn't aware of this. He is going to be looking over his shoulder like nonstop. Now. Yeah, man into a car he hasn't like shimmied under. He had to look under every car he gets into. It's so funny. Uh,

we'd love to see it anyway. All right, we're done. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here is a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts from cool zone media, visit our website, cool zone media DOT COM, or check us out on the I heart radio APP, apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com, slash sources.

Thanks for listening.