It Could Happen Here Weekly 75

just me. It's me and I am alone, So that means I am probably going to tell you about some fucked up shit that happened in the Middle East, which is exactly what I'm about to do. I just think some things are purposely underreported, and even when they are seldom reported about, it's always a bit skewed and biased. So I just try to draw attention to certain countries and their people as best as I can because of this, and today I think we're do you for an update

on Palestine. Israel continues to be humanize Palestinians daily and blatantly, and it's not just through murdering them. Last year under new Israeli restrictions on foreign entry into the West Bank. Foreigners romantically involved with Palestinians must declare their relationship to the occupying Israeli government. Yes, you have to tell them

if you are involved with the Palestinians. Why. I don't know, because they're treated as less than human and this is one of many laws that deny Palestinians of basic human rights and keep them under apartheid rule. I want to talk about all that's happened in just these first few months of twenty twenty three, because this cycle of violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank in particular has suddenly surged to levels that we have not seen in years.

As of this recording on March seventh, at least sixty six Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the start of twenty twenty three, and at least seventeen of those killed have been children. For comparison, in twenty twenty two, which was the deadliest year in the West Bank in decades, forty eight Palestinians were killed in the combined months of January, February, March and April. The deaths are increasing day by day and the rest seemed

to be a stop to them at all. Twenty twenty two saw the highest number of civilians killed by Israeli security forces in the past seventeen years, and the highest number of Israelis killed since twenty sixteen. Renewed violence flared up between Palestine and Israel and January of this year for many reasons, and it continues to build and intensify

after a cascade of concerning events. And before we jump into those events that happened in January and onward, I think we need to look back on twenty twenty two in order to understand this a bit better and to hopefully provide some context. So let's take a look at twenty twenty two and how we got here. We are going to be focusing on the West Bank with the majority of the data in this episode, in particular, the

one tomorrow will be more broad. I'm going to explain a little bit about what the West Bank even is, just for some more context. The West Bank is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediterranean in Western Asia that forms the main bulk of the Palestinian territories. It is bordered by Jordan and the Dead Sea to the east and by Israel to the southwest and north.

The West Bank includes East Jerusalem. It's been under Israeli military occupation since nineteen sixty seven, and its area is split into one hundred and sixty five Palestinian quote unquote islands. These islands are under total or partial civil administration by the Palestinian National Authority or the PNA or PA. There are also two hundred and thirty Israeli settlements into which

israel law is being pipelined. The West Bank initially emerged as a Jordanian occupied territory after the nineteen forty eight Arab Israeli War, before being in xed outright by Jordan in nineteen fifty, and it was given its name during this time based on its location on the western bank of the Jordan River. This annexation was widely considered to be illegal and was only recognized by Iraq, Pakistan and

the UK. The territory remained under Jordanian rule until nineteen sixty seven, when it was captured and occupied by Israel during the Sixth Day War. The Oslo Accords, which were signed in nineteen ninety three between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel created administrative districts with varying levels of Palestinian authority in specific areas. In the West Bank, there was Area A, which is administered exclusively by the PA, there is Area B, which is administered by both the P

and A and Israel. And then there's Area SEA, which is administered exclusively by Israel. And this Area C, which is controlled exclusively by Israel, accounts for over sixty percent of the West Bank's territory. Twenty twenty two was the deadliest year for West Bank Palestinians in nearly two decades. Israeli forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in

twenty twenty two than in any other year. The United Nations began systematically recording Palestinian fatalities in two thousand and five, and they started doing this after the last major Palestinian uprising aka the Second Intifada that lasted five years. And knowing that, I want you to keep in mind that unfortunately, the number of Palestinians that have been killed by the IDF is far greater than some of the numbers I'm going to say in this episode. And again that is

because I am focusing particularly on the West Bank. I want to talk about Israel's twelve month crackdown that has been happening in the West Bank. Nearly twelve months ago, Israel begana has become a year long violent crackdown in the West Bank. Israel last year prompted a sweeping Israeli military campaign that they called Operation Breakwater beginning March of two and twenty two. It was created after attacks occurred

by Palestinians against Israeli settlers. Since then, Operation Breakwater has conducted nearly nightly IDF raids in the West Bank, which of course causes heightened friction between the IDF and the Palestinian population. So far, Israeli security forces have made over two thousand arrests, and that's way too big of a number, just to give you an idea of the terrifying scale

of this operation. Operation Breakwater is the biggest IDF operation in the West Bank since the Second Intifaba that I mentioned earlier that lasted from two thousand to two thousand and five. Since the start of this operation last year, nearly every day Israel has conducted raids in the West Bank, which is part of the Palestinian territory, which encompasses the Godza strip in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and this whole territory has been illegally occupied by Israel since

nineteen sixty seven. In spite of this, because Israel does whatever the fuck it wants, because it's already founded upon existing illegally in the first place, thousands of Palestinians, many of them young, have been arrested, and nearly every week more Palestinians are being killed. Last year, this all resulted in the highest cumulative death toll in the West Bank

since two thousand and four. Palestinian rights groups and UN experts have said that the bloodshed is due to Israel's excessive use of force and open fire rules during near daily military operations, as well as rising assaults by settlers in the West Bank, where again Palestinians are living under

illegal Israeli occupation. Israel justified their intensifying violence because of the fatal attacks on Israelis by Palestinian militants, which also spiked last year, which is also very bad, but blaming the people you've been oppressing for nearly a century for being angry and fighting back people without an army faced against one of the most powerful armies in the world.

It just does not sit right with me. In twenty twenty two, Israeli security forces killed at least one hundred and fifty two Palestinians in the West Bank and predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem, compared with seventy five Palestinians in twenty twenty one. These are figures provided by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs or OTCHA. Four Palestinians

in the West Bank were killed by Israeli settlers, not soldiers. Settlers, settlers that have been emboldened and even encouraged in their hate and violence by the Israeli far right, and the Israeli far right is basically the Israeli government at this point. And we're going to get into some of the extremes that these settlers go through in their hate and their violence more tomorrow, but for now, let's focus on twenty

twenty two. Most of the Palestinian deaths occurred during Israeli military raids and clashes in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus. More than half of the Palestinians who were murdered were under the age of twenty five. They never even had a chance to live their lives with their families and their loved ones. Each one of these individuals that were killed have people mourning them and missing them every day, and I never want anyone to forget that.

Among those killed last year were also US citizens El Jazeero, journalists Sharin Abu Akhle, and seventy eight year old Omar Assad, And because of their US citizenship, their deaths gained rare worldwide attention and briefly sharpened international criticism of Israel. Sharine, if you remember, was shot in the head while wearing a press vest. She was there as a reporter doing her job. No violence was taking place around her, she was targeted and killed. Israel says she was probably killed

by a soldier's gunfire unintentionally, and that was that. The world moved on. I did an episode last year about Sharene Aboahle and how Israel murdered her in broad daylight, So if you guys want to revisit that, that is there, back to the episode. I don't want us to forget that this data is regarding the West Bank. Only hundreds of Palestinians die at the hands of Israel's terrorist organization,

that they call an army every year. In May of twenty twenty one, if you can remember that far back, at least two hundred Palestinians were killed in a week of Israeli airstrikes, just one week, and the deaths included fifty nine children and thirty five women, with nearly thirteen hundred people wounded. Women and children made up nearly half of the casualties. Fifty nine children, fifty nine children that were just taken with families that will never be the same.

I just want people to remember these things when I mentioned numbers, that each number is an actual living child or person. In twenty twenty two, in a statement to The Washington Post, Israel's military said that Israeli soldiers used live fire when quote necessary during counter terrorisumectivities in response to quote violent riots, which often include explosive devices, molotop cocktails, and rocks hurled at the idef soldiers and Israeli civilians.

Are you kidding me? One of the most powerful and supported armies in the world is saying that it's killing people in response to rocks being thrown at them. Armed and protected soldiers covered in swat gear with all the weapons they could ever fucking dream of fighting against the people without an army at all, blaming them in an official statement to the Washington Post for throwing rocks. I mean, just just get the fuck out of here. The idf

are all fucking clowns. And maybe I shouldn't be cursing and I should pretend to be professional, but they make me fucking mad, And I think we should all be fucking mad because I don't think it's fair, and I know life isn't built to be fair, but to terrorize and genocided population, drive them into a corner and then blame them for having the audacity for fighting back and

the only ways accessible to them is fucking ludicrous. You can't both sides a conflict when one of those sides has one of the most advanced and supported armies in the world that oppresses the other side that has no army and no support of any kind, a side who has rocks in their hands resorting to violence because absolutely

nothing and no one is helping them. A total of two hundred and twenty four Palestinians were killed in twenty twenty two, including the forty nine people that I mentioned earlier that were murdered during a three day Israeli assault on the besieged Gaza Strip, Seventeen were children. And I'm emphasizing this because Palestinian children have started keeping goodbye letters in their pockets in case they're killed by the Israeli army.

No child should have to live in fear that they might be killed at any moment, but that's the reality for Palestinian children. Nearly every day, Palestinians wake up to news that the Israeli military has killed yet another Palestinian. This daily violence against Palestinians has traumatized generations of Palestinian children, and their parents have no way to protect them. Many of the casualties in the West Bank in twenty twenty two were young Palestinians who have only ever known military

occupation and the oppression of the Israeli government. The West Bank also has to deal with the repressive politics of the Romala based Palestinian Authority, the PA, which was set up as a caretaker government three decades ago and is now widely unpopular among Palestinians. And I'll get into this more after a quick break, So brb Okay, we're back.

As I mentioned earlier, the West Bank has to deal with repressive politics of the Romala based Palestinian Authority, which was set up three decades ago and is now widely unpopular among Palestinians. A spokesperson from the Palestinian rights group Al Huch said people are very, very fed up. Whether it's in Jerusalem or Jenin or Nablus. The last twenty

years have not shown any improvements in the situation. This spokesperson spoke only on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal by Israeli security forces, because the Israeli security forces raided the organization's headquarters in Romola last August. The spokesperson explained that quote the near daily raids in areas under control of the PA showed that the sovereignty of the PA does not exist. So they're saying that the

Palestinian Authority is basically useless. If these Israeli raids are happening in areas that are supposedly under control or quote care of the PA, then what the fuck are they even Therefore toward Wensland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the Washington Post last year, quote, we have a new dynamic in the West Bank and around Jerusalem with a quote new generation of Israelis and Palestinians in conflict, there is an urgent need to de escalate.

He also cited the quote tension and so called friction zones, which are areas where Israeli settlements continued to encroach on Palestinian lands and where violence is mounting, probably in part due to the frustration with the lack of action by the Palestinian authority. Twenty twenty two also saw the emergence of two new Palestinian militant groups, thee Genin Battalion and the Lions Den, both led by disaffected young men with

local support networks. Meanwhile, Israel's military has repeatedly declined to provide the number of internal investigations they supposedly opened last year regarding their misconduct related to the Palestinian deaths. In September of last year, Israel announced the results of its inquiry into the death of Sharin abu Akhle, who again was shot in the head while covering a military raid

near Jenin last May. The IDF said that a quote found a high possibility that Miss abu Akhle was accidentally killed by IDF gunfire towards suspects identified as armed Palestinian gunmen during an exchange of fire, though it has not released any evidence whatsoever showing the presence of gunmen in

the area. An investigation by The Post contradicted the IDF's claim that there was an exchange of fire in the minutes before Abu Akle was killed, and surprising absolutely no one, the IDF said it would not pursue criminal charges against its soldiers. No one is being held accountable for the

killing of Palestinian life, including Palestinian children. Israel has continued to operate as though they have immunity, which in a way they do thanks to the United States, who does nothing but give Israel more money and weapons and good press.

Even more concerning, far right politician Itamar Ben Gevid, who was Israel's new national security minister, has proposed giving police and soldiers wider latitude to use live ammunition and putting laws in place that would shield them from criminal prosecution for killing or injuring Palestine. And this should be a red flag for everybody. The other Hawk spokesperson said that many of those killed in Israeli raids last year appeared

to be either bystanders or victims of excessive force. Let's not forget that they also killed members of the press who clearly wear press vests in a moment where no violence was ever taking place, just a camera and reporters trying to raise awareness that the crimes that Israel commits. An early December, Israeli fire killed a teenage girl in Jenin who was on her roof as a raid unfolded nearby.

Days earlier, Israeli forces fatally shot a sixteen year old boy who was throwing stones at a checkpoint outside Ramula. We're getting to the end here, so let's take our last little break and we'll be right back, and we're back talking about how the IDF shoots Palestinians as though they're basically playing a video game. They had shot a teenage girl and a sixteen year old boy, and there are many disturbing videos of idea of soldiers shooting Palestinians

like they are playing a video game. There's one video in particular that I'm thinking about that is so fucking disgusting where one soldier is crouching down and aiming his gun at a Palestinian who was hiding behind a dumpster. I know that the Palestinian is hiding behind a dumpster, because the soldier says something to the effect of what does he think he's doing behind that dumpster? And then the soldier shoots and jumps up in pure elation, cheering

for himself because he shot this person. There's another soldier in the frame next to him who seems to be more aware of the camera that is recording them, who keeps telling his annoying murderer friend to we professional instead of jumping up and down like he just scored a point in a game, because that is all this is

to them. There is much more evidence of this infuriating and horrific attitude and culture of the IDF and Abby Martin's two nineteen films Gaza Fights for Freedom, which I've probably already recommended a million times and will continue to recommend.

It is free on YouTube tour Wensland. We mentioned earlier the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process said, quote, the continued killings of Palestinians by Israeli security forces an incidents where they did not appear to present an eminent threat to life are disturbing. He went on to say that quote, I am increasingly concerned by the fragility of the current political and security dynamics, particularly in the occupied

West Bank including East Jerusalem. Vulker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said, for this violence to end, the occupation must end on all sides. There are people

who know this. The violence of last year reflects a dangerous mix of on the ground and generational changes, and this could only escalate further as Israel's mostly far right government becomes more far right because Jewish supremacists who have incited violence against Palestinians were recently sworn into office, including Israel's aforementioned new Minister of National Security. And he's just one of the many cogs in the machine of Israel

being controlled by far right terrorists. And yes, to me, they are terrorists because literally everything they do was either a crime or a crime against humanity, regardless. At the end of last year, Israel's new government was sworn into office. It's nationalist, exclusionist and far far right. It's the most

extreme Israeli government in the nation's history. Benjamin and Yahoo, who's already the country's longest serving prime minister, is at the helm of the country for the sixth time, and this time he's assembled the most far right cabinet in Israel's history, with the most notable posts given to ultra nationalists, one of them being the person we mentioned at tamar Ben, the new Minister of National Security aka a position that oversees the police. There's also Bezalel Simotric, who will have

significant power over Israeli settlements. In addition to his role as Finance Minister. The government has promised to expand those settlements those already illegal settlements. The members of this new coalition have also made extensive comments denigrating the queer community. They've also called for stricter definitions of who even qualifies

as Jewish. In making its vision abundantly clear, the government released policy guidelines at the end of September, announcing the Jewish people's quote exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the land of Israel. Toward the end of January, the policies of the Enyaho's newly swording government coalition brought

out about eighty thousand protesters in Tel Aviv. The protesters were largely focused on the government's proposals to overhaul the judicial system, which could weaken the country's democracy and separation of powers quote unquote democracy yet right, But the effects of the policies on the one point six million Palestinian citizens of Israel and the five point two million Palestinians living in the occupied territories, all of these effects are

going to be catastrophic and only building upon years of policies that Israeli human rights organizations say constitute crimes against humanity. The human rights defenders and experts in Israeli politics emphasize that this government is not a departure from the previous ones.

And yes, it is Netanyahu's sixth time leading the country, but instead of being a new government, it's instead a culmination of Israeli politics that are only drifting farther and farther to the right, and then decades longer of policies that amount to defacto annexation of the occupied West Bank and policies of Jewish supremacy. What's different now, however, is how clearly these ideas are stated in the new government's coalition guidelines by prominent ministers of the fundamentals of how

the country runs. This time, it is clear it is written in the guideline. There's no longer subtlety to their hate. It is in writing. The new Israeli government is somewhat of a turn from the brief centrist government of last year, but it's still seeking to implement policies that are anti Palestinian and anti liberal. But again, it is certainly not

the first Israeli government to do these things. The executive director of the Israeli Watchdog Bitsalem again apologize, probably must pronounced that said, it's key not to pretend, as many seem to already be doing, that it'll somehow be a sudden departure from Israeli quote unquote democracy. What worries me is that even this level of clarity will not be sufficient to trigger an adequate international response. And the new Israeli government is shaping up just to be extreme as

we anticipated. Israel's parliamentary system is made up of many fragmented parties, and it's slowly been collapsing, and there's been turmoil and whatever, because there have been five national elections

since twenty nineteen. The quote unquote change government in twenty twenty one brought together opposing parties last year to Auston n Yahoo finally once and for all, right, But that fell apart last summer, and in the ensuing elections, nan Yahoo built a coalition of ultra orthodox and religious Zionist parties that returned him to power, leading to an even more extreme government. So even they tried to get rid

of him, but he came back worse than ever. And so this extreme government is already acting in extreme ways and again the new government's ministers have made long standing attacks on the queer community, as well as religious freedom and Israeli in Palestinian civil society, as well as who

can call themselves Jewish. Above all, there are going to be drastic implications for Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and for the civil liberties of Israeli citizens, mostly because Nenyahoo's internal coalition negotiations have brought settlers into key ministerial posts, and only days into the government being sworn in, there have been already multiple signs and signals of how

these personalities are going to rule. Justice Minister Yarev Levin has introduced legislation that would weaken judicial review and the power of israel Supreme Court to strike down legislation. Another proposal would revamp and politicize the country's longstanding process for selecting judges. And of course we can't forget about the fucking new National Security Minister aka to Marvin Gavide, who

is part of the Jewish Power Party. His political ideas are inspired by the late radical iconoclass Rabbi Mayor Kahane Bengavie has stepped into a role that is basically tailor made to oversee the police both within Israel and the occupied West Bank, and in early January, he on somehow legal grounds directed the police to tear down any Palestinian flag in public spaces. And then there's also Finance Minister

Bezalel Summatric. He is the head of the Religious Zionism Party, and he's also a settler whose anti gay rhetoric is prolific, to say the least. He has already seized customs revenues that belong to the Palestinian Authority, and he's called the Palestinian Authority a terror abetting body that he thinks should fall. He also holds newly created authorities that give him oversight of the West Bank occupation through a role crafted for

him in the Defense Ministry. So they're essentially just creating these roles and creating these rules that only allow them to have more control corruption one oh one. I suppose we can also see clearly Hona and Yaho and his partners are going to govern. In the coalitions agreement that sets out the new government's guidelines, it's not legally binding, but it states plainly in its ideology that quote, the Jewish people have an exclusive and in allegal right over

all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel, and this includes to them the Occupied West Bank. Israeli human rights organization of Dull La wrote in a report, this goes further than any previous agreements. The government has made explicit the coalition's party's long standing intent to further entrench Jewish supremacy in Palestinian repression throughout the State of Israel and the Occupied West Bank through

a two tiered system of governance on all levels. The new government's approach to the occupied West Bank revolves around the illegal annexation of Palestinian land. The government plans to legalize the illegal outposts that are built on private Palestinian land, and the likely result of that is Palestinians being stripped of rights and protections and left even more vulnerable to

violence and the hardship they're already enduring. The Israeli Rights organization of the LA goes on to say that these changes to the judicial system and bestowing ministers like Symatrek with new authorities over the occupation threatened civil rights and individual rights in Israel, but it is mainly going to be a big, big issue against the national minority, the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up about twenty percent of the country. They are going to be the first

and most severely damaged by those changes. And clearly the Israeli government even before all of this, but now it is clearly stated it has all the components of fascism. And yet the US still appears to beholding out hope that it can somehow work with and Yahoo and his fucking government and its fucking ministers. Even now politics are

all a scam. Everyone fucking sucks. Israel has been violating Palestinians human rights with impunity for decades, but this new government again just illustrates the most brutal intentions with greater clarity.

Bits Salem, another human rights group, said the hypocrisy is denying that Palestinians have already been living for many years under extreme, organized criminal Israeli state violence underwritten by the US, and the lack of accountability and the acquiescence of the international community is to a great extent responsible for driving this and as we mentioned in this episode, last year, twenty twenty two was the most deadly year for Palestinians

living in the occupied West Bank since the UN began recording the deaths in two thousand and five. It was also the year that the most Palestinians have been held in administrative detention, and the attacks on Palestinians throughout the center right government leading up to all of this, the governments of Ya Lapide and Nefatali Benett cannot be understated.

It's always been bad. Now it's just extremely bad. And in sharpie, the US has a role here too, because it continues to supply Israel with billions of dollars of military aid, and it has also failed to publicly criticize the En Yahoo's new political allies. An analyst covering Israel and Palestine for International Crisis Group said there's no way that the en Yahoo, as desperate as he is, would

have gone to form this kind of coalition. If it wasn't for years and years of US abdication of sponsibility for what happens here, he just wouldn't have felt that he could do it. It would have been too outlandish. And all of this brings us to twenty twenty three, which we will talk about tomorrow because I like short episodes, so I'll see you there and welcome back to it could happen here. It's still Sharine, and we are going

to continue our discussion about Palestine. Yesterday we talked about the atrocious things that Israel has done to Palestinians in twenty twenty two, and it brought us all to now twenty twenty three. And as a reminder, as of this recording on March seventh, at least sixty six Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the start of twenty twenty three, and at least seventeen of those

killed were children. Thursday, January twenty sixth marked one of the deadliest Israeli army operations and the occupied West Bank since at least two thousand and five. Israeli soldiers invaded a crowded genin refugee camp on Palestinian land and massacred nine Palestinians, wounding at least twenty others. Among these nine Palestinians were two children and a sixty one year old woman. The injuries of the wounded were in the head and chest,

indicating that Israeli soldiers were shooting to kill. Israeli soldiers also blocked paramedics from delivering medical aid to the injured, and they tear gassed the children's ward of a hospital. This massacre is the deadliest Israeli attack in the Palestinian West Bank in nearly twenty years. I just want to repeat some things in case I said that too fast or it's just glossed over. But nine Palestinians were killed, two children, a sixty one year old woman, and the

injuries were in the head and the chest. They were shooting to kill, They blocked paramedics from delivering medical aid to the injured, and they tear gassed the children's ward of a hospital. What is the justification of that? Someone please tell me. I'm all ears just monstrous things that Israel is doing to Palestinians. And in addition to the massacre in Jenin Israeli soldiers killed three other Palestinians within twenty four hours of the massacre, a child and two

young men. This raid on January twenty sixth led the Palestinian Authority aka the PA to stop coordinating with Israel on security matters, officially suspending it's US supervised security cooperation with Israel, but it's unclear to what extent that will take place, and this spike in violence is occurring on both sides. A day after the raid aka massacre in the Gena refugee camp, a Palestinian gunman near a synagogue outside of Jerusalem killed seven people and injured three more.

Violence is often the response when you lead with violence, and this event marked the deadliest Palestinian attack against Israelis since two thousand and eight. Israel's colonization and military occupation of Palestinian land and its violent apartheid rule over millions of Palestinians are the root cause of this violence, but US media largely ignores Israel's violence, as Israeli's soldiers routinely murder Palestinians, including children, destroying their homes, and stealing their land.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned that we would talk about the heinous things that Israeli settlers have been doing well. On January twenty eighth, Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians at least one hundred and forty four times. The attacks ranged from assaulting Palestinians to setting Palestinian homes and cars on fire. No arrests were made. In fact, Israeli soldiers often allow Israeli settlers to attack Palestinians, even joining in themselves or

arresting the Palestinians who have been attacked. Israeli settlers live on stolen Palestinian land and violation of international law. They shouldn't be on Palestinian land in the first place, let alone be given free reign to attack Palestinians without any sort of consequence. These are all obvious hate crimes that are only supported and encouraged by the military and the government. If a government treats those it oppresses as less than human,

its people will only do the same. This January was the deadliest January for Palestinians in fourteen years, and Israel's violence shows no signs of stopping. It seems like Israel's new extremist far right government is determined to exact more violence against Palestinians this year than ever before, and with the US officials refusing to condemn their actions, Israel's leaders are getting a green light to continue to terrorize Palestinians.

Never held accountable for the daily violence and apartheid rule over Palestine, Palestinians deserve freedom from Israel's daily violence and at the very least, fair media coverage so that the world understands what's really going on. On March third of this year, Israel killed a fifteen year old Palestinian boy by shooting him in the back. This occurred in the West Bank town of Azoun, when an israel military vehicle drove into town. Teens were hurling rocks at the car.

Soldiers responded with live fire, which is a very reasonable response to having a stone thrown out your fucking tank. In addition to shooting and killing a fifteen year old Palestinian boy a child in the back, two others were wounded in this attack, including a child. He was currently

still in critical condition. Israeli forces have carried out three large scale raids on Palestinian cities since Israel's new government took office at the end of last year, including one in Nablus on February twenty second that led to the largest Palestinian death toll in a single military occupation since two thousand and five. Israeli forces killed at least eleven

Palestinians and wounded more than one hundred more. Among those killed were a seventy two year old man, a sixteen year old boy, and a sixty six year old man who died of tear gas in hillation. New armed Palestinian groups have also emerged in response to this violence, and there has been a spate of Palestinian attacks against Israelis going back though to the fakery of the Israeli settlers.

On February twenty sixth, at least four hundred Israeli settlers attacked several Palestinian villages in Nablus, including Kawara, killing one man and injuring hundreds of others. The violence came after calls were made by Israeli Kanesset member Zabaka Fogel apologies obviously mispronounced. I tried my best, but this violence came after this Kanesset member told the settlers to burn the

town down. Settlers burned down more than thirty homes and at least one hundred cars while beating Palestinians with metal rods and rocks. None of these settlers were arrested. About a hundred Palestinians are also being treated for tear gas in hialation. In one of the many videos of this event, and yes, there are actual videos of like this happening without any justice, crowds of Jewish settlers can be heard reciting the Jewish prayer for the dead as they stare

at a building in flames. There's a video of Israeli settlers fucking dancing as the violence takes place. And earlier, a prominent Israeli cabinet minister and settler leader had called for Israel to quote strike without mercy. On March first, Beziel Samatric, who was Israel's finance minister who also handles civil administration in the West Bank, said the village of Hawada should be wiped out. He told a journalist quote, I think Hawada needs to be erased. The state should

be the one to do that. Back to that, Israeli Knesset member Zivika Fogel again apologies for mispronouncing that. He tweeted that quote. Hawada closed plus burnt down. That's what I want to see. On an earlier occasion, Fogel said that quote a hundred Palestinians must be killed in a day, and he described these Palestinians as terrorists and to force

them to the quote Israeli will. In response to Symmetric's statement that the Palestinian village of Hawaida should be wiped out, the Human Rights Chief of the United Nations AKA Volker Turk, who we mentioned briefly yesterday, he said that these commas are an unfathomable statement of incitement to violence and hostility. He went on to say the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory is a tragedy, a tragedy above all else

for the Palestinian people. This was during a report that he presented on the situation and the occupied territories to the UN Human Rights Council. He said, my report finds that over the reporting period, lethal force has been frequently employed by the Israeli security forces, regardless of a level of threat, and at times even as an initial measure rather than a last resort. My office has also documented several cases of apparent extra judicial targeted killings by members

of the isof the Israeli security forces. The report finds that one hundred and thirty one Palestinians were killed by the isof personnel over the past year in a context of law enforcement, that is outside any context of hostilities. This includes sixty five people who we understand were not armed or not engaged in any attacks or clashes. The occupation is eating away at the health of both societies on every level, from childhood to old age and in every part of life. For this violence to end, the

occupation must end on all sides. There are people who know this. I did mention the end of that report briefly yesterday, but I wanted to mention more of it today, just to really give you the whole context of what this report was saying to the UN. The European Union's envoy to the Palestinians also called for accountability for these settler attacks. It is absolutely necessary for us that accountability is fully ensured, that the perpetrators are brought to justice,

that those who lost property be compensated. In what seemed like a very rare move, the Defense Minister Yolav Gallant said that he signed administrative detention orders for two suspects over this rampage, and he court ordered police to release all seven people who have been detained in connection to the rampage. Amnesty International condemned this release of the suspects. It also condemned the use of administrative attention, which it

said was a practice that violates international law. But Israel doesn't care about that, because it violates international law a lot, and here it is Israeli, writes group yesh Din found that ninety three percent of investigations into settler attacks in the occupied West Bank between two thousand and five and twenty twenty two were closed without indictment. And even though the US demanded that ne Enyahoo disavow symatrics call for

Hawaara to be erased, nothing has happened. Nunyah, who on the night of the rampage urged people not to take the law into their own hands, but he never publicly addressed sematric statement or responded to the unusual criticism by the US, who was obviously a close ally. The situation in Israel today is clear. Israel has become a state for the settlers, where some of these militias have the support of the Israeli ministers, such as Symatric and Bengavid.

Israeli settlers who chant death to Arabs and mayor village burn have the direct support of people in uniform and the Israeli government. And just like the other Israeli settlers who set hundreds of Palestinian homes on fire and uprooted thousands of Palestinian olive trees and got away with their crimes, it is highly unlikely that the Israeli settlers who burned

homes in Hawada will be touched. And there have been protests that are actually secular and liberal in a desperate attempt to stop this growing far right government, but they don't do much, obviously, when you're in a fascist government regime.

I can't believe we haven't talked about him yet, but President Isaac Herzog, who is Israel's eleventh president and he's been president since twenty twenty one, he stepped in after these protests were happening, and with support from President Biden, he was facilitating a compromise between the government and these protesters and what seemed like a well intentioned effort to build some kind of consensus, it was only in fact this ill advised attempt to appease fascists and pander to evil,

and any compromise that is offered by Herzog would be skewed toward the ruling majority, which holds the power to interpret its articles at will. A compromise will also whitewash and empower the ruling fascists, presenting them as responsible and pragmatic actors as they pursue their extremist agenda, and as a street opposition loses momentum and disintegrates slowly but surely.

In a recent article, Haretz said that Herzog's plans were born in sin to whitewasher government led by a criminal defendant who was in a conflict of interest in everything regarding changes in the judicial system and certainly regarding such a radical quote unquote reform. And obviously, the more sinister and dangerous ramifications of such a compromise lies in its focusing on Israel's liberal democracy for the Jews while ignoring

its tyranny toward the Palestinians. In fact, reaching any sort of compromise on domestic affairs is sure to free the government's hand, only to widen its oppression, deepen its occupation, and multiply its illegal settlements, Israel has no security solutions in Palestine. Former intelligence officer Chief Ami Ayalon, in his biography Friendly Fire, said of Israel, because of its occupation,

Israel's democracy will evolve into tyranny. Let's go back to Izamar Binevide, Israel's Minister of Security, who the New York are actually called Israel's Minister of chaos. He has been convicted of eight charges, including supporting a terrorist organization and incitement to racism, and who, according to former Prime Minister a Hud al Marte, presents a more eminent danger to

Israel than a nuclear armed Iran. And as we mentioned, Bin Gaveer serves as Minister of Security alongside his genocidal partner and crime but Zabel Sumatric, the Minister of Finance. Both of these men have risen to the highest echelons of power thanks to their racist campaigns and incitement against Palestinians.

Their fanatical religious movement has sprung out of the illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank based on these Zionist belief in the necessity to take full control of all of historic Palestine aka the quote the Land of Israel as they call it, in order to redeem the Jewish people by any means necessary. In other words, Israel's fanatics have a divine ordained, vested interest in greater turmoil in Israel and Palestine that strengthens and expands their base, especially

among their youth. After decades of military occupation. Polls and surveys suggests that about sixty percent of Jewish Israeli's favor segregation from the Palestinian Israelis, and sixty percent identify as right wing today, a number that rises to seventy percent for those aged eighteen to twenty four. This does not bode well for a future piece or security. It's not exactly a generation that's going to die out. It's a

generation that's being formed as we speak. And even though Palestine has the Palestine Authority or any kind of leadership, that is obviously weakening. Even when Israel pretends to coordinate with them on security and intelligence matters, it persists on humiliating the Palestinian leaders, undercutting their authority, and undermining their legitimacy as it forces settlers to rampage through the Palestinian neighborhoods and refugee camps without out any sort of repercussions.

And I know Israel gets called an apartheid state a

lot these days, and it isn't apartheid state. But basically the engine of turmoil and violence today is only because of Israel's decade long military and civilian occupation, This occupation that has rapidly transformed into an entrenched system of apartheid government because of the two separate set of laws, rules, standards, and structures designed to favor the illegal settlers and to maintain and expand Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to

the Mediterranean Sea. The ruling fascists plan to unleash greater state and settler violence against the Palestinians as this year progresses, and in the process transform Israel into a fascist garrison state and worsen regional turmoil. Let's take our first break here. We will continue when we come back. Brb Okay, we're back. In twenty fifteen, the world was shocked by the kidnapping of Palestinian child Muhamment of Jadid from Jerusalem by Israeli

settlers who burnt him alive. This was depicted in the HBO show Our Boys. It's a decent show. I recommend you swatch it just for more information. It's really hard to watch, but it's still a really good show. But this event, this kidnapping of a Palestinian child who was burnt alive by Israeli settlers. This is the mentality of Israeli settlers in the West Bank today, where birding Palestinians

in their homes is celebrated by their political leaders. These groups have carried out dozens of attacks against Palestining families by birding their homes and their farms, including burning the Palestinian Dawabshi family in the village on Duma in late July twenty fifteen, where an eighteen month old Dali Dawapshe

and his parents lost their lives. Between six hundred thousand and seven hundred and fifty thousand Israeli settlers live in at least two hundred and fifty settlements and outposts built by the Israeli government and settlers across the occupied Palestining West Bank and East Jerusalem. That is equivalent to roughly eleven percent of the total Jewish Israeli population. They live beyond the quote internationally recognized borders of their state on

Palestinian land. That Israel militarily occupied in nineteen sixty seven and continues to do so until today. Settlers also lived in the besieged Gaza Strip until two thousand and five, when they were evacuated. The Gaza Strip has also been described as an open air concentration camp if you want an idea of maybe why they left. The majority of settlers are armed, and Palestinians living on the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem suffer from hundreds of Israeli settler

attacks each year. Such attacks, which include shootings, stabbings, arson beatings, and rock throwing, have become more organized over the last few years. Every year, thousands of Palestinian trees and cars and homes are burned by these settlers. Many of these incidents have been recorded on video, showing that the attacks often take place under the protection or in coordination with the Israeli Army, sometimes with soldiers and settlers shooting side

by side. Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, as they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which banns and occupying power from transferring its population to the area it occupies. This is for a variety of reasons, including protecting civilians from the theft of resources by the occupying power, and to prevent changes in the demographic makeup of the occupied territory,

which both things have happened. Israel is doing that very successfully. Unfortunately, the majority of settlements have been built either entirely or partially on private Palestinian land. Despite being outside of Israel proper. These settlers are granted Israeli citizenship and they receive government subsidies that significantly lower their cost of living. In contrast, Palestinians living in the West Bank are subject to Israeli military Harry law, and there has been an increasing number

of settler attacks. Between twenty ten and twenty nineteen, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded at least two thousand, nine hundred and fifty five settler attacks in which at least twenty two Palestinians were killed and at least one thousand, two hundred and fifty eight others were injured. The governance of Nablos, Tebron and Romola

had the highest numbers of these incidents. Since the start of twenty twenty three, Israeli settler related violence reached an average of three incidents per day, compared with two incidents per day in twenty twenty two, still really shitty, and one incident per day in twenty twenty one. This is what the UN had told El Jazeera, and this is the highest daily average of settler related incidents affecting Palestinians

since two thousand and six. And criminal charges are rarely, if ever pursued, And although not every attack can be tied to another, it seems that since the launch of Israel's Operation Breakwater last March, it's only driving the surge and violence further. The imbalance between these two forces doesn't get any better when you add politics and leadership into the mix. While Israel is appointing more and more far right politicians to higher positions of power, there has been

a weakening of Palestinian security forces. Palestinian security forces are trained by the US and international forces to patrol the West Bank, round up Palestinian militants, and coordinate with Israeli officials to prevent attacks on Israelis, but those forces have lost a law of legitimacy among their own people. Many Palestinians see them as doing Israel's bidding, maintaining Israel's military occupation,

rather than resisting it. Increasingly, pockets of the West Bank have become no go zones for the Palestinian authority forces, who now either refuse to enter or find it too dangerous. That includes the Genin refugee camp, which is a dense, highly populated district. Israel says it's stepping in to fill the void of leadership, intensifying its arrest raids in these densely populated areas, and unsurprisingly this leads to deadly clashes.

But Israel has occupied the West Bank for nearly fifty six years and continues to deepen its grip on it. It says Palestinians are not ready to make peace with Israel and that the occupation is a security necessity. But it has also allowed and supported hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers across the West Bank, which we've seen manifest and the far right parades and the rallies that chant

for the quote death of Arabs. Additionally, Israel's new far right government vows to legalize dozens of small settlement outposts deep in the heart of the occupied territory, making it harder to envision a future Palestinian state there, which is

part of their whole agenda. Younger Palestinians have grown up not knowing anything but Israel's brutal permit regime, which controls Palestinians entry and movement, and some of their only interactions with Israelis are often with hostile settlers or with occupation enforcing soldiers who raid their homes and jail people for

months without charges. And because of the inaction of both the Palestinian Authority and the international community, some young Palestinians see violent resistance against Israel as their only viable path to freedom, With young militants lionized on social media, let's take our last break here, we'll be right back, talk about Palestinian leadership, Israel's far right, and a bunch of other terrible stuff. So whoopee, you're back and we are back.

So as Palestinian leadership weakens, Israel's far right only gets stronger. According to Poles, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas eighty seven, one of the Middle East's oldest leaders, has lost the support of most Palestinians. Palestinian protesters and activists have long accused Abas of not taking a more active role in

dealing with Israeli aggression. In his nineteenth year of what was supposed to be a four year term, a Bas has lost control of Gaza to the mil to Hamas, calling off elections for new leadership and allowing government corruption to thrive, never laying out a clear future for Palestinians. But it's not the end of Abbas's reign that worries Palestinians. It's what comes next when the eighty seventy year old

is no longer president. But the question of who will replace a Bas is not currently at the top of the Palestinian public's agenda. Doctor Mustapha Baghruti, the head of the Palestine National Initiative Movement, said that Palestinians, particularly the younger generation, are no longer viewing the two state solution

as a viable option. They are also recognizing that they can't expect anything from Israeli governments, particularly the coming one that is discussing annexation, bolstering settlements and suppressing Palestinian rights. He said, the notion is strengthening among the young generation that Israel only understands force and opposition. It doesn't matter whether national resistance is violent or not, which is why there's growing support for armed groups in Jenin and Nablus.

Baruti said that Israel's prevention of a two state solution will eventually make the Palestinian authority irrelevant. He said the PA's current model as a type of subcontractor for Israel, which implements apartheid against the Palestinians, cannot go on forever, regardless of who runs the PA. On the flip side, Israel's longtime leader Benjamin and Yahoo is back as prime ministers, a prise surprise, with a far right coalition that has laid out a plan for deepening its grip on the

West Bank and taking tougher action against Palestinians. And with only a couple months in office in this new year, the government has already sparked a series of controversies, including over the status of the Uximosque in Jerusalem. The Uximosque is a very holy and special place for Muslims, and it has been subject to violence for years because of

Israel's government. More far right politicians have also come into office, including the National Security minister we mentioned earlier, who essentially wants to give Israeli police and soldiers immunity to use live ammunition, which would shield them from criminal prosecution for killing and injuring Palestinians. Israel's also planning to destroy an entire Palestinian town, beginning their plans last month. Khan Alhamad is a town just miles from Jerusalem with nearly two

hundred Palestinians. Israel is planning to destroy the entire town in order to expand two illegal, racially segregated settlements nearby. Israel plans to bulldoze all the homes, schools, and businesses in Khan Hmad, forcing families into homeless. It's a process they've done in countless Palestinian towns. Kahn Rahma is simply

Israel's latest target. Just miles away from this town, Israel is destroying the Palestinian community of Masafiriata, where over a thousand Palestinians are living in fear that Israeli soldiers will violently tear down their homes at any given moment. No government should be allowed to forcibly uproot entire communities in order to steal their land. Israel should be no exception, and the fact that it continues to operate in this

way as the entire world watches is it's shameful. Israeli officials are already prepping for a tense month in April when Ramadan and Passover coincide, which could be a combustible mix for potential religious and nationalists fueled violence. The Israeli military is inflicting horrific, deadly violence and Palestinians every single day.

Instead of condemning Israel or take any kind of action to protect Palestinian lives, the US continues to turn a blind eye while also continuing to send Israel billions of dollars every year. These billions of dollars are used to commit massacres of Palestinians. The world should bring to account to the Israeli government, which has encouraged violence against Palestinians publicly, and supportive settlers with arms and money to carry out

their crimes. The Israeli government just legalized nine illegal settlement outposts.

If the international community, including the US, does not criminalize settlement activities in the West Bank, Israeli settlers, who in recent years have leaned towards the far right in alarming ways, will continue to enjoy impunity when they commit crimes against the Palestinian people and Israel's brutal occupation shows no sign of ending, so will continue to hear news like this until any sort of action is taken to defend Palestinians and end Israel's apartheid rule of Palestine and end the

ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Until then, we won't stop raising awareness of the crimes against humanity that Israel commits against Palestinians every single day. And that is the episode. Who I hope some of that was informative or educational, and I will probably be back with more upsetting news about the Middle East very soon. So goodbye, dearly beloved, Welcome to it could happen here. We are gathered here today to get through this thing called life. Electric word life.

It's a thing that only happens with the addition of a couple of ingredients, and one of those ingredients is the subject of our episode today. Oh yeah, you guys like that? Everybody really happy with that? I love that. Yeah, I'm feeling not at all like I want to kind of shower. You can you can you can hear the moment where we're all like simultaneously questioning every single decision we've ever made in our entire lives. Yeah, now we're

all bonded together. So how's everybody doing today. We've got mea Wong, Garrison Davis, James Stout, and I should let people know I wasn't joking about the come thingum. So those of you who are two online will know this. Those of you who are not online enough, this is one of the online things that you will want to

know because it's very funny. And the gist of it is that like four days ago, doctor Jordan B. Peterson got sent a link to a Twitter account that is that purports to be spreading like hidden news about the evils of the Chinese communist regime, and they put out a video that was a segment from British Milking fetish

pornography video. Now, if you're not aware the milking, as far as I can tell, I believe they're kind of descended from the long lineage of like rubber fetishists, right, and there's like a lot of medical fetish stuff it tied into it. But the idea is that men are entirely wrapped up on hospital gurneys and giant pump sucked the semen out of them. So it's like the machine

is very like a cow milk. This Twitter account put this up, claiming that it was the Chinese government stealing the semen of young men, and Jordan Peterson shared it, saying it was an unbelievable act of evil and then everyone had the best day of their lives. And an hour of two later he deleted it. Now I have been continuing, coward, coward, coward. Yeah, so strange, so stranger. He left the world of peer reviewed academia. Yeah, it's it's wild that he's no longer professor. Um, it's very funny.

We're continuing to give him shit for it online, but it set us off down an interesting road, and because some other stuff fell through, we're going to talk about the wide world of weird right wing come conspiracies. Most of them released are going to be right wing. There's a surprising number of semen based conspiracies. Everybody did research

on their own special thing. I wanted to start by talking about this this Jordan Peterson video and giving kind of some of the some of the background on it, so I believe it. Last July, the Chinese Human Sperm Bank of Shanghai announced that it was hosting a competition for college students to find out whose semen was the best in terms of, like, you know, a number of modal sperm per milli leader, I think is the way

that they judge it. And basically the idea was that they were trying to find like people with sperm concentration greater than sixty million per milli leader, and if they visited a sperm bank a set number of times in a six month period, they could receive a prize that

was equivalent to about twelve hundred dollars right now. The reason this is happening is that China, for the first time, as a result of a number of different policies, had negative population growth very recently, and this is the thing that can cause a problem for a country for a

variety of reasons. So the government is trying to shore up birthrates, and there are a lot of couples in China that have had issues conceiving, and so there's a huge amount of demand for sperm in the country right now. So this is not a weird story. It is actually a thing that happens all around the world regularly. But right around the time that this happened, a little bit after that, it came out that a Japanese company started selling what is called in the articles I found an

automatic sperm extractor to Chinese sperm banks. Now this is I'm gonna send y'all the link. I was hoping you would oh, oh, yes, good friends, thanks, but yes, we're all going to see this. So the Machines price listing on Ali Baba, where it sells for about five to six thousand dollars, describes it as a device that quote merges modern digital technology, automatic control technology, and simulation technologies

with semen collection and premature ejaculation desensitization training function. So it has a number of purposes, including guests to help guys stop coming too early, which no shame. It's funny that someone built a machine for it. It's extremely funny I that you can buy an Ali Express. It's like I personally, I'm not attaching anything. I bought an Ali Baba too sensitive parts to my body's thousand dollars. It's not cheap. Now the primary these are not being used

for people who are coming to too quickly. Um, it's just like the worst ever were two D two. This it is. It is weird. It's see orientation. Does it stand on the ground and you just approach it. You have to stand up. Yeah, but what if you're a shock king, Yeah, I said, I'm sure they have options. It has like the rough shape of like canteld massage device, but it's kind of like formed like almost an art

deco robot vagina. And basically, from what I've read, kind of the reasoning is that, like, hey, we need people to donate sperm. Some people feel weird about just masturbating in a clinic, and we hope this is a more pleasant experience for them. So again this we're laughing because like, look, a machine designed to capture seamen is kind of a funny thing. That's okay, no shame on anybody for that.

But the fact that you have both the government trying to encourage people to donate sperm and this weird machine kind of created fertile ground for a bunch of right wing weirdos to start making grounded I know, fertile ground tom to make the completely un ungrounded claim that like the government was trying to steal people seemen, right, And that is the basis of doctor Jordan B. Peterson's fun little freak out on the internet. And I will say you should try to find the videos of the automatic

sperm extractor. This this amazing Japanese machine, because it is funny, fascinating. We should change some of these on the cool Stone account. Do they have to like like like change like I assume they like to. Ye, yeah, you can't clean that. If you watch the video, there's like a there's a rubbiot that like comes out, like the thing that the penis goes in is also the captured device, so it

is removed with the sperm donation when you take it out. Um. So again this is, you know, funny because come, but there's nothing sinister here. It's just in the same way that literally everything is. People have like spun it up

into a nonsense thing. But because of this beautiful, beautiful story, which I hope we've all gotten to enjoy, I got to do a lot of work on the some of you, if you've lived, if you've worked in agriculture, you're not going to be surprised that stealing come is a massive industry, like it is a there is a lot of money to be made in stealing semen. There's enough money to be made in stealing semen that there are two different official terms that I have found for semen theft. The

first is sperm jacking. How could it get better? How could it get better than that? Garrison? It gets better because the second, the second is spurgling. These are like professionals who like come up with these terms. Huh, these are genius. There actually is. I did find in my research there is one actual Chinese based sperm conspiracy. It's just not a very sinister one. There's this Chinese businessman, Jesse Jabbai zoo Um who stole there. There's this I

think it was a Canadian company. It was a US company who had So this is for like bull semen. And one of the things that you want for bull semen is you don't want if you're inseminating cows, you want all of the babies to be female generally, right, because bulls are not very with outside a certain space. If you're like trying to make more breeders or whatever, if you're in industrial agriculture, you don't want any of

the boys, right. You just want to keep making those sweet, sweet lady cows that that are, you know, more useful to you in a financial sense. So there's a US company that developed a method of before insemination looking through the sperm and like sorting out the sperm that will make female cows um and that is apparently hard to do. I mean, it sounds like it would be hard to do, right, And this, uh, this Chinese businessman was like reverse engineering there.

It's kind of Actually it's basically the same story as Jurassic Park. And anyway, this guy has gotten sued for a bunch of money a raptor cattle. I hope it works out just as well as Jurassic Park. Yeah, it's very funny. I will say. There's a couple of really wild lines from this the CBC story I found. I'm just going to read one to you. Um Zoo's activities

could best be described as machiavellian. At various points he outlined a plan to make X Y that's the American company quote feel all the time, the sort of damocles is on their heads and brag the law is strong, but the outlaws are ten times stronger. Yeah. Jesse Jabezoo my hero, the sperm Bandit incredible sperm jacker, one of the best burglers in the business. This man lives on

an island with his cow raptors. What a hero. Um there was also a case of a Japanese man who illegally took wag you cattle sperm to China to try to give them sperm, and like the Chinese government immediately caught him and was like, no, this is actually incredibly dangerous, Like you're not allowed to just take animal breeding material into the country without because you know, there's a wide variety of reasons that that could be in horribly So

he got into shipload of trouble. Yeah, anyway, that's my that's my sperm stories. Everybody, thank you for yeah, thank you, thank you for spurgling my knowledge. Garrison. Ah, we're back and James is here to talk to us about the kind of sperm jacking that you do when you don't jack. I'm talking about jacking your own sperm by keeping it inside of you seem in retention. Yeah, it's it. How was that, James, beautiful? Unscripted? Did you just didn't even

write that a Garrison? Yeah, so on the back of his hand. He had a brainwave at two in the morning and I got that down. Those are the kind of things you can do when you've been podcasting as long as I in a come space. I've been in those saggy trenches for a long time. Yeah, all right, we are after all, it works, so let me continue. So I'm going to talk about what happens when you keep your comb inside you. Okay, yeah, this is the thing. What are we doing today? What this is? This is

critical journalist. We are making content doing Okay, talking of content, let's talk about the content of some Reddit posters. So the what it's called the semen retention movement, and this will this will shock many of you began on reddit dot com. Oh my god, yeah yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, like so many ones. I feel like, I feel like because I feel like if you type that into your phone, it would have finished the sentence the same autodirect What

is the auto directed to Reddit? I would believe me. We're gonna go there, Garrison, because when you google sperm retention, you do indeed find some stuff on Reddit. So now they've spun off from Reddit, right then I have their own organization, which is No Fat dot com and No fact dot com is a community centered sexual health platform.

I'm I'm using, I'm allowing them to define themselves here, I guess designed to help people overcome poorn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior, which is not necessarily really like like the this isn't not all seamen retention, as we're going to learn, is basically helping people I become addiction to pawn but so far as that is a thing that

people actually have. And if someone was accusing Rabbit of being addicted to pawn on on his timeline this weekend, that would be because I keep Ratio and Jordan Peterson with the pornography video that he mistaking. That's correct, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just want them to respond, so I could ask him, Jordan, tell me in your own words, what you thought was happening in that video. I really hope he thinks it's like milking, Like they have RFID collars and they get

fed based on their production level. That would be great. Yeah, And what did you you you're a medical doctor, did you think that come actually worked that way and you

could just stick a sucker anyway? Yeah, just get it out, Okay. So, after this movement began on Ready dot com, it quickly pivoted to kind of offering all kinds of weird physical and mental health benefits, and that's where it was adopted by friends in the podcast the Proud Boys, and luckily we do have a bit of insight into why and into the exact nature of the no fat fascism that

the Proud Boys practice. Sanks to Kyle Cheney, who's a political reporter who was reporting on the trial of one of the Proud Boys accused of additional January six called Zach Rell and that trial for reasons that I'm not exactly clear on the Proud Boy I guess it's like their handbook, like that the kind of a Proud Boy bybe was introduced and into the into the record. Somebody's in there. Yep, it's in the court record, buddy, because because what the lawyers decided that it was pertinent to

the cause. So a Proud Boy may not ejaculate alone more than once in every thirty days. That means he must abstain from portography during that time. And if he needs to ejaculate, this is really weird, it must be within one yard of a woman. Fascinatingly specific. Yeah, yeah, right, And I like that they've they've gone with imperial measurements with her consent, so that's nice. The woman may not be a prostitute, so that that's the Proud poison nature.

They know FA fascism. But I think I think the way of of understanding why some people practice this perhaps best is to is to go on to reddit dot com. So I found a post by Reddit user you slash Monk one nine one eight one seven. It seems like a nice guy and there are four votes. What I did was I went to semen retention and I looked at you know, sorted by popular posts, found this one from a bunch of numbers. And so this guy has nine years of experience with semen retention. So I'm just

going to read I'm presuming it. Boy, yeah, yeah, yeah, him and some mugs off the coast of fucking lind Spark cannot be healthy. No, I don't think it is. There is I will get to this evidence that you shouldn't do this. So in his nine years of experience, he has experienced the following things. Semen, when retained in our bodies, has healing, rejuvenating effects. Loss of semen has the opposite effects. This may not be scientifically proven, but

it's proven by experience. That's a red flag. That's interesting. Getting Reddit medical advice while attempting any task. It demands high physical, mental or intellectual abilities. If we are semen tension powered, we would actually enjoy the task, which would otherwise seem dull. This is called sexual energy transmutation in layman's terms. Oh no, that's the layman's the what's the non layman terms? It's got even more. I have no

idea spermozoic fucking fission. So for peak performance, it's always necessary to be powered by seamen, and it would be best to use seamen only for regeneration purposes, since nature originally intended it for regeneration, and not use it for sexual purposes apart from to create a child. If not serving that purpose, Master whatever teach techniques are useful in not letting the seed out while having sex. At the end of the day, don't let your seed out like

a worthless thing. There's more so, just contain yourself great great, which is exactly the reason why core religions are based on celibacy, because opposite of regeneration is degeneration, which will cause a man to fall into a lower state controlled by his lower nature, rather than when he's subduing it. We should let seem in retention be part of our lives,

not something that is done for superpowers. For superpowers are, in my experience, the sudden ecstasy that we feel once we transition from the degenerated to the regenerated state, and that will stabilize after some time, similar to how a flight maintained stable altitude after takeoff. Very simple, very similar. Actually, yeah, that's that's what you can hear when the when the engine a spinning up. If just a dude trying really

hard not to nut and it makes that noise. So excited for the next Marvel film, the where the superhero power from Paul Rods and not come so he can get tiny no fat man. Yeah so yeah he didn't. I should add that this person confess us to having elapsed at some point in the nine years. Yeah, it stole Armstrong was on steroids. It's just disappointing. Yeah, no

one would have seen it coming. See what I did there. Okay, So this person then urges other posters on the Sema Retention subredit to not use streaks to outperform others or look better about ourselves or bring others down. The battle with lust is a lifelong fight, and the more we get better at finding victories, Yeah, yeah, buddy, at finding victories over internal battles. The battle, we become as high

valued men. Hell yeah, I've often wished that, you know, if the if the pandemic hadn't been a thing, and I could force you all to work in a central location, I could have like a wall of murals where I put under each of your faces a quote from an episode that you've participated in, and James that that would be your quotes. The battles lust is a lifelong struggle. Yeah, that'll get some T shirts knocked up, but we can do a fundraise. We eventually get the cools on media offices.

But you have a portrait hanging on the wall of each of us have one quote under the yeah yeah yeah on a plaque with a yeah. We get the cool when we when we take over the meta officers three weeks from now. Yeah, there is a marketing company that has been emailing me for about six months telling me how cheap it is to buy a billboard by the side of a road and send a message to

a loved one. So maybe great, maybe I'll do bang rang yeah yeah yeah, yeah, Well there will be until I put my positive messages about the controlling lust and holding seamen inside our bodies true and return ment to the former glory. So a lot of the a lot of the reddit posts rely on a couple of different studies, right, and one of these studies measured participants. A lot of what they're doing is a claiming to increase testosterone right

right at the bat. The testosterone does have, as Long's armstrong can tell you some performance enhancing benefits, so yeah, you know, increasing your muscle growth, your your coverage from exercise, all those stuff. One of the studies measured participants testosterone levels at baseline before masturbation and then in ten minute intervals after masturbation, right, and then they were asked to abstain for three weeks, and they came back and they

did the process again. Testosterone was higher in the baseline measurement at the end of the three weeks of abstinence, right, But the sample size was pretty small, and there's some theorizing that the boost was actually caused by the anticipated

masturbation that they were about to do. At the second it was so ready to go, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're just ready to pop. After three weeks, the second study looked at a forty five percent entury, So after a few days seven days of abstinence, but even the study showed this was a temporary peak that returned to normal even with continuing abstinence. So there's there's just these two studies. They're pretty they happened a long time ago. Will post them all in the show notes if you guys want

to read more about no fab science. But we should just point out that there is in fact a multitude of evidence this is a bad idea that having sex is actually good for you. Having sex will will trying not to ejaculate. It's probably not good for you, probably not good for your your relationship either. One would surmise there are in that whatever yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Well

if that's your thing, you do you do you. There was a study that investigated the motivation for semen retention among semen and retainers, and a lot of it it seemed like people were people who felt that like either sex or masturbation was unhealthy or wrong or sinful. And there is evidence to show that like feeling like guilty about yourself or like living with stress and self loathing, like that is bad for you, right, and that will

reduce your test aftera level. There's also some evidence to suggest not ejaculating can give you prostate issues, which yes, um yeah, there's there's and this is like pretty debatable, like most things that people talk about in regards to coming and health, Like you can find some studies, like the studies on testosterone. Some of them are kind of sketchy. Anyway. Yeah, I don't think come or come either way. Um, you know,

it's whatever. But if you do have a chance to fuck one of those Ali Baba robots, I recommend it out. Let's talk about come demons. Hell yeah, wait, okay, okay, hard hard pivot here from so okay, we we we are not going as far afield from the no fat people as as as as you would think. Okay, but all right, now, the year is twenty twenty. Everyone on Earth has collectively gone insane. Uh this is this is this is the summer. This is the summer twenty twenty.

So this is the part of twenty twenty where fun stuff is happening. This is like late July, Garrison, that's when we met. So yeah, we're getting just incredibly poisoned. Yeah, yeah, we share were it would be fun in like twenty years. Well, well, while life or death struggle for the sort of the life or death struggle for the fate of the United States and whether or not people are going to be conducing murdered by the cops is being waged in the streets. Uh,

Donald Trump and Donald J. Trump Ronald Donald J. Trump. Wow, Donald Trump Junior. That one. That's that's that's the Trump A little drum here, Yeah, Trump Acts. We're you know, looking for look at looking for their there they're they're cure to COVID nineteen on Twitter. And Okay, so as we probably all remember, right, I think they found was hydroxy. Okay, so one of the first ones that they found before before I remact the this is this is before we

found so much? Was it inside of them all along? Man? No? This is this is this is hydroxy florican the thing that was probable. I hope they weren't full of acord. No. No, well we'll get to that. Where there there's a The road is long, but it ends with cum demons. We first must walk the road. So the road here is Donald Donald Trump Junior post a tweet saying like this, saying this is necessary watching about this video from this doctor named doctor Stella Emanue. Now, okay, so who is

this person. Um she she is part of a oh okay, I say part of she runs this thing called Firepower Ministries, which oh no, so you don't know, going great. Um she's also part of yeah, okay, cool, Yeah she she's also part of America's frontline doctors who are yeah, yeah, yeah, I forgotten. Yeah, these dipshits, Oh my god. Okay, So this is this is very very very much in the

same vein as architecture nine eleventh truth. They found a bunch of people who technically have medical degrees or like nurses who were like no, no, vaccines are bad and hydroxy chloric clean hydroctic chor clean is well, we'll chlorical covid cor qu that one. Yeah, it's it's it's been. It's been. It's been a long day. I I've slept for eight hours, but in like several distinct parts of the day that we're not continuous. It's been. Things are going,

things are going corect. If you've taken some horse medicine fisk, quite possibly, I mean it's it's all like you could have gone worse. All all right, So so this this person's from the very sketchy doctors who are trying to sell like a bunch of random shit to to to cure COVID. And okay, so who actually is this person? Um?

She is from Camera Roon and doctor Stella. An Emanuey was caught up in the unbelievably sort of like i mean right, like yes, objectively right wing, also very very weird wave of Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity that's been sweeping across that part of Africa as part of sort of a you know, sort of like a very sort of long range of coordinated effort by by right wing Christian missionaries.

So okay, so for for for people who don't know your Christianity very well, the Pentecostals and the charismatic Christians are like firmly in the very very weird camp of Christians. Like these are these are people who do faith healing. Um. One of the very common sort of Pentecostal things is this belief that like like you just you talk to God, like God's in your head and you just have conversations

with Him. Now unfortunately for like all of us, and this is you know what a thing that is a non insignificant contributing factor to why the last I don't know, ten years have been so bat shit? Is that? Like the this originally was kind of an isolated Pentecostal thing and like the broader evangelicals were like no, no, no no, God only talks to me like your pastor, Like he's probably not like you're you're not like having a conversation

in your head with but like change that's changed. Yeah, this ship has this ship has fucking taken over everywhere. It's really bad. Um. And these people believe a lot of very very weird stuff. So well do I mean? Okay, so, like you know, she she has like some of the sort of standard like really really hardline like David Ike shit, Like she believes that the world's being run by aliens and like reptiles, and like the vaccine has like alien DNA in it to like take over your dude. You know.

This is like sort of kind of Facebook moments Alex Jones. Shit, yeah right, okay, but okay, I'm gonna read this quote from will Sumner. This is a quote from one of her for her sermons, they which is, demons are responsible for serious guy in ecological problems, and Manuel said we call them all kinds of names and Tremesius and Travisius. We call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts. But most of them were evil deposits

from spirit husband God. No, they are responsible for miscarriages, impotence, men that can't get it up. So all right, immediately we we have like we have there there are several kinds of cum demons here that we're dealing with. So there are like there, there's, there's, there's okay. So a lot of this is drawn from what is I a very like a JT. Whitely unbelievably dubious piece of theology.

So when when when I was res musician, this right, I saw, I saw, I saw someone there there was there was like a religious scholar who was writing this. He was like, oh, I immediately recognized the theology of this. This is from this is from a Genesis six so okay. So I was like, okay, what what the fuck are they talking about? So I went back and I read

genis Okay. So I went back and I read the Genesis, and I'm going to read the two this is this is from Genesis chapter six, verses one and two, and I am just going to read these two sentences, and I'm going to see if you two can produce cum demons from this, Okay, happy to do so. I mean I could produce cum demons from almost in anything that is. That is the power with the right machinery. You know what. I think we know exactly what the right machinery is. Look,

we know that we can produce cum demons mechanically. Our challenge here is to produce them theologically. Okay, try I will, I will use all of my knowledge. We must, we must find a way to evacuate the past deference of

the soul. Okay. So I'm using I'm using the King James translation, because that's the translation that all these psychos use, And it came to pass when men began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born onto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of and that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose. Okay, So I I do know why they're I do know what what they are doing. So the sons of God those would be

what like fallen angels that have been procreating with women. Yeah, so this this ties into like the book of Enoch stuff, which was made a little bit like after Genesis, but it kind of it like retconned a lot of like the creation story. So I can see where they're they're pulling come demons from, but it is it is a bit of a stretch. Yeah, they're kind you could say, come demons in the way that like God seemed. Yeah,

you could see it. Yeah, it's that's it is a stretch. No, okay, my my, my, my analysis because I think I I I think they're pulling this out of their ass and I think they're pulling this out of theirs. It's also come demons. So yeah, they're like I I I I have It is well known for people who follow me on Twitter that I have an immense in powerful disrespect for theology. But what what what part of the sons of God? What? What? What part of that gets you

to demons? And not? Like because again, isn't the whole point of Christianity that we are all God's children? Like, isn't is this not a thing that they tell you in every single fucking sort How do you read that and not think they're talking about people and immediately jump to come deemon? Like here's what's going on? I could I could explain this because this is the King's James version. So this was made in a post book of Enoch world.

Around the around the alleged birth of Jesus, the Book of Enoch got very popular, um and this this introduced the idea of a fallen angel. The fallow fallen angel isn't really in the Bible at all, it's only it's only in like non biblical um Abrahamic texts. So this this idea then kind of got planted into a lot of like Catholic mythology as well. So when they're they're caused there they have a distinction between like the like the sons of like the sons of God versus is

um what was the what was? I think they used to refer to the daughters the sons of the daughters of men exactly. So the daughters are human, where the the the sons are like came from God. So that is some type of fallen angel that has been cast down to earth. Like they are doing a specific thing.

But it's it's it's it's a result of a whole bunch of like mistranslations and a whole bunch of various various like christian a Gnostic texts that that have been misinterpreted for thousands of years by the Catholic Church, and it creates a really weird theology that is indistinguishable from like Castle of India. So yeah, I blame I blamed Martin lud This is Martin Luther's fault, like the like there's things the thing would keep it in high latins

can't understand this. This is this is, this is what Martin Luther. I'm specifically because okay, so this was already happened. The count the Church was already doing this right, but Martin Luther had a chance to fix this ship and he was like, do you know what I'm gonna do? Instead of that, I am going to you, I am going to turn against the peasant revolts and I'm going to do it. I'm going to bring about a level of anti Semitism that is going to allow me to

outflank the Inquisition on the right. She could have been fixing this bullshit. No anti semitism. Whoo, I gotta keep my patron lords in power. He was German like, there's only so much you can ask, that's true. Yeah, well I'm happy that we can all go to sleep at

night worrying about the sons of God and planting semen. Oh, there's also that that's that's come demon type type one, right, that is okay, so those are those are the demons that like they they have they have sex with women and they produce nephelim from or sometimes Also there's there's a lot of sort of conflicting sort of theological All that stuff comes from the Book of Enoch. All that stuff is non canon to the modern Bible, but it's

where it's where it comes from. Fucking Council of Nicia. Okay. But there's also there's also a second there's also the second kind of cum demon, right, which is these are the these are well, okay, so succubine and incubi are based here we go. I knew it, I was down, it was counting down. Had faith. Yeah. The the other kind of of demon. So you have your incubi, right,

who are another type of sex demon. The incubi fuck men so they can steal their semen and they're they're there there, you know, there's such difference are reasons that there there's another thing that she talks about, which is that um, there are witches who have like actual spirit sex with men in their sleep. And if you're like having a sex dream, it's because you're having actual spirit sex. Oh no, no, yeah, I mean like I like Bill Murray,

I've I've experienced that. Oh no, that was Bill Murray. Sorry, my mistake. Oh wait, understandable, Yes, okay, Okay, the cloud the fog is clearing. I've I've had I've had sex with too many sex demons. It's it's a real issue. Okay. So so all right, So we have the sex demons who are like trying to pregnant you. We have the

sex demans you're trying to steal your cump. We allo have the actually, we have the actual projecting projecting witches, right, and the actual projecting witches are trying to steal people's come as part of an Illuminati plot to create like an even more powerful witch. And the even more powerful witch is going to use gay marriage and children's toys to like destroy the fabric of Western civilization and thus

bring about sort of general new world order, et cetera. Honestly, some of my witch meetings, Yeah, it is not as far from the backstory to Warhammer forty thousand as it should be. That's very sadly true. I didn't want Warhammer forty thousands coming to our come episode if I moneyed. No, no, it's I mean, look, there's a lot of people who are interested in both seem in Retention and Warhammer forty thousands. That's a tight venda ram yeah. Yeah, and they all

play ultramarines. That was. That's pretty good Warhammer forty thousand joke for those of you who plays. I also learned a couple of days ago that I one of the many crimes of the Emperor of forty k was passing off and a Miri Bekara quote is his own. Oh yeah, that is. That was. That was a good bit. That was a really good bit. It's little pieces like that that let you know that Dan Abnett's pretty base. That was my favorite part of the book. So funny, that's like,

that's literary cannon. I do have like three pages written on contest tanning. Okay, yeah, that's that's that's the end of the sum go off. Well, okay. I The one thing I'll add on is that one of the more funny modern versions of these if you go on the Beta Drill subreddit to the Recreational Penetral subreddit, you can find people who try to take enough Beta drill to have sex with the hat Man, which is another another form of trying to subve and shedow people. Maybe you

have to you have to explain your terms for people here. Yeah, I'm not. The man is a tall, thin man wearing a hat who appears when you take hallucinogenic doses of Bena drill because you can't afford better drugs because you're seventeen. Yes, we're younger, and there people the hat Man. Some people find the hat Man extremely attractive or some of like the female Shadow People variants, and they try to they have I have read multiple reports of people explaining their

sexual experiences of the Shadow People. Anyways, the President of the United States and his son were promoting this, so this is great. This website. By the way, absolute adventures on here. I'm just reading about how to use christ blood as a weapon. Amazing. Oh that's good. Yeah, yeah, no problems here. Yeah. Do you know who won't steal

your semen? Everybody? We can't promise that. I can. I can promise any advertiser on this show I've personally approved to make sure they will not come into your bedroom and steal your semen. Wow, how do you do? How's the approval process works? Out of interest, I cannot divulge private garrisons. We are We are going to close off by by talking about a sperm antestosterone um to two

of our favorite topics for this episode. For some reason, about about a year ago, a trailer on Fox News dropped for a new batch of Tucker Carlson originals titled The End of Men. It opens with the text that reads, in the current year, the cycle continues once a society collapse, he said, You're in hard time as well. Hot iron sharpens iron, as they'd say, and those hard times inevitably produce men who are tough, men, who are resourceful, men who are strong enough to survive, and then they go

on to re establish older and so the cycle begins again. Now, there's a few funny things about this video, from the ripped shirtless dudes milking cows, to wrestling each other and shooting bottles of canola oil. They're just at a undranche. They're just shooting like ten bottles of canola oil for some reason maybe, But the Mussolini's like they're into the Mussolini staff. He was by far the most bizarre. I suspect they're shooting the canola because it's like a seed

oil thing. They think that like seeding thing, like sucking out your testa sterone. Anyway, it's something very silly, but by far the most bizarre thing in this trailer is a shot of a laked man with outstretched arms like Jesus on the Cross style, standing in front of a lake at dusk, with a white machine shining a glowing red light on his dick. What and again at the climax of the music from two thousand and one A

Space Odyssey, Uh, there's this. There's this man facing balls first in front of this large red light at the end of this trailer. I it should never have been any cause on our podcast or on Fox News for anyone to say the line after the end of the climax of the music from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey. Oh, that's the thing we're objecting to from this episode. That's the light. Yeah, yeah, because it shouldn't a climax. It lost its power in that moment. It

was considering both like the gas. That was a very good joke, Thank you. Thank you, thank you for seeing me, buddy. Yeah, So, considering both like the text at the beginning and then some of the narration that we just heard in the trailer, they're kind of doing this weird like calli Yuga thing, right, that is that it's a bit of a bit of what's going on here, because again you can listen to our episodes on Savitri Devi for a little more information

about this. But it's like this weird right wing uh like quasi apocalyptic concept that evolved during an intermix between some of the early Nazis and some of the people who are currently behind the present leader of India. It's it's way too esoteric weird to get into, but it's one of the things that like the real Yeah, it's like it. Um, We're not going to get into it too much. But I think the previous news unsettling that it wound up adjacent to a Tucker Carlson episode because

it's some like weird esoteric Nazi wizard shit. Yes um. And that previous November, Joe Rogan posted a Kali Yuga meme which went viral. It's it's about how hard times creates strong men, which create good times. Which lead to weak men, which create hard times. It's a fucking silly his, his, his. The the accompanying text on the Instagram post that that Rogan did said, civilizations move in predictable cycles. We are

in the Kali Yuga, the age of conflict. All of the chaos we're seeing right now was predicted in Hinduism thousands of years ago. Rogan was probably just like parroting something that he heard from one of his many fashy or new age friends, which, considering Rogan's social circle, that

could very well just be the same person. Yes, yeah, one of his fucking sparring buddies is either friends with the Nazi or just stumbled upon a fucking the wrong podcast and then told him that when they were smoking weed, And you know, yeah, that's I mean, that's honestly to It's problematic because of his platform, but that's how I learned. Everything about s O Tereca that I learned when I was in my twenties was some I was smoking wheat with some sketchy dude who was going places you shouldn't

have been on the Internet. So a few months after Rogan posted this meme, we have Tucker Carlson making this whole mini series surrounding this hard Times creation strong men kind of trend. Uh. It's taken cues from the online manisphere, and Tucker posited that weak, unmanly men are leading to the collapse of civilization and a hardening of men is

necessary to save it. According to According to Tucker, one of the one of the threats to manhood is a quote unquote total collapse in testosterone levels amongst men in recent years. And the solution goes beyond just your typical

like anti soy crusading that Tucker has done in the past. Now, Tucker has turned to the cutting edge science of bromeopathic medicine, as advocated for by a quote unquote fitness professional named Andrew McGovern who touts that infrared light and testicle tanning is this day sex makeda for plummeting tea levels in men.

So obviously half the viewers right now are like, what that's cutestical telling that's crazy, But my view is Okay, testosterone levels like crash and nobody says anything about it. That's crazy. So why is it crazy to seek solutions? It's not crazy to seek solutions. And I think um. I was recently exposed to a term called bromeopathy, and I think there's a lot of people out there right

now that um are don't trust the mainstream information. This TV special is constantly referred to as a documentary, so surely you would expect Tucker to try and like interview scientists, or like anyone with expertise on this topic. Of course, not act not no ways. Andrew McGovern are our bromeopathic hero. Works as a personal trader at Lifetime Fitness in Columbus, Ohio. And he hasn't even been a trader for very long.

About a decade ago, a good one. About a decade ago, he was the manager of an Abercrombie and Fitch store in Mama. Oh perfect, Yes you know, okay now descriptions from it looks at the Abercrombie and Fitch store. Wait, but in Miami. Hey, if you want to get trim, that's where you get trim. That is that type of dude. He's emerging here. As of twenties eventeen, he was the director of operations for Petland retail stores. You're getting funnier.

This guy's resume is highly amusing. But Tucker being a competent journalist did not just interview one person. However, Kid Rock was brought on to be the sole voice of reasons. You laugh, But Kid Rock is the other person. I've gotten prescription drugs from so real Bastia. In the platonic cave of men stands Kid Rock and a guy from Apocrombie and Fitch. We must only be their shadows. Dude, stop testical tanning. Come on, I mean, yeah, I haven't

heard anything, Bobby. I'm starting a punk rock band and it's called testicle tanning. That's the end of it. I mean, don't you think at this point, when so many of the therapies, the paths they've told us to take, have turned out to be dead ends that have really hurt people, why wouldn't open minded people seek new solutions. I don't know what the hell is going on in this world. I'm not even sure if I understood that question. But some days I just want to stop this planet let

me off. Like kid Rock was not did not buy into testicle tanning the same way Tuckers seemed to. Oh God, is kid Rock gonna be the voice? That's what I said. I said he was brought up to be the sole voice of reason again. But we thought you were joking. Because it's kid Rock, you were joking. Believe you know, he is the only person Kid Rock stands with science.

It is indeed sweet Home Alabama all summer long. Tucker was not the first person to advocate for testicular tanning as the solution to an allegedly problematic dip in testosterol levels. Dating back to twenty fifteen, you can find articles online such as quote former MLB player Gabe Kapler says men who want to get stronger should tan their testicles from Complex and quote I put a giant red light on my balls to triple white testosterone levels from a Men's

Health twenty seventeen. Is that written by Ben Greenfield? Banny chuns because he normally pops up with these things, which which which one the Men's health one. Let me see the guy who injected to make it big. I have it in my show notes here. This was written by someone named Ben Greenfield. This baland has won games. So proud of you today, buddy, I'm so happy teams are you taking? Are you taking performance enhancing drugs for this podcast? Shad me rub it? I'm not. This is so funny.

We have stepped into a gold minded contact with Ben Greenfield, the guy who injected his own dick with stemseelves to make it bigger. That's so funny. I urge you. I compel you. If you have any free time in your day, just google Ben Greenfield penis. There will be several articles. It's supposed to be rectible outlets. It will just fucking make you unwell. Well, that's that is great to hear. But despite not being the first person to talk about

testicular tanning, Tucker was certainly the most impactful. After the airing of the End of Men. Testicular tanning showed a seven thousand increase in relative search interest on Google and thirty thirty five thousand increase in tweets on the topic. Now, surely some of these things or stuff like what if, like making fun of it, right, Yeah, but also a lot of it's also people who are just talking about

it genuinely. Um to quote a study published in jmi R, a dermatology publication, quote, the promotion of testicular tanning generated significant public interest in an evidence lacking and potentially dangerous health trend. Dermatologists and other healthcare professionals should be aware of these new viral health trends to best consultations and

combat health misinformation. So like, in terms of actual data, a twenty seventeen meta analysis of studies on sperm counts found that in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, men's sperm counts have declined by about fifty percent between

nineteen seventy three and twenty eleven. Now, these results have not been enough to really cause broad concern unless you're like a right wing influencer for men, because there doesn't really seem to be an equal drop in testosterial levels up problems mankind has had on the not enough yes and and like compared to previous decades. There is this maybe like a twenty percent decrease in total testasterone levels amongst adolescent and young adult males, but that's highly fluctual

and it's impacted heavily by diet. It's it's suspected that pollution environmental degradation are also suspected of being contributing factors, with plastics like highlight being known to interfere with the

production of hormones like testosterone. But this this area of research is still heavily contested, but still that has not stopped fitness YouTubers and conservative influencers from tying this to like the soy boy feminization of men and drumming up panic to grow their social media followings, sell their supplements and advertise affiliate products. The Kreme de la creme of red lights for testicular tanning is the Jeve Light. A light.

Juve is a light therapy panel company which ells these LEDs um They're they're like this, They're like this upscale wellness brand. Um. The smallest model they have costs over a thousand dollars, with the full body ones going for around ten grand. This is when you know it's a grift. If someone is telling you that they need to sell you sunlight, they are having a fucking laugh. Our friend Ben Greenfield advocates a quote that advocates that you spend the big bucks on Drew lest you quote fry your

balls to a crisp with a cheap knockoff. You wouldn't want to do that, would you? Unwill Yeah, it seems like it's maybe a bad idea. I can teach you how to how to how to cook your balls safely. Without spending any money at all. Get a pair of double A batteries. Take them right out of your out

of your your your your your remote control. You stick the active end in a bottle of water, and then you put your hand on your testicles and it'll complete the circuit and power your testicles up with electricity, which you can then ejaculate instead of come. They'll probably give you superpowers too, almost certainly, Garrison, legally, this is not a recommendation to do this. If you do this, that shit's not on us. Divolition, Please to not connect batteries.

Dick to quote that JMIR study evaluating the public's interest into secular tanning quote. The interest in this topic may be partially explained by the men's attention and advertising men's sexual health and homeown replacement or homeown enhancing therapies receive

in the US. Although subsequent media coverage largely disfavored to secular tanning due to lacking evidence and potential dangers, other health influencers came to defend and encourage the practice of testicular tanning, specifically by using UV light as an unquote. As an example, here is a clip from fitness YouTuber Elliott Hulsey's Strength Camp with one point seven million followers.

Blast your balls with sunshine to increase testosterone. Now you can drop your draws and let your balls get kissed by the sun, or you can try one of these light panels to roast by nuts and be more manly. Nineteen thirty nine study suggests that UV light exposure to your testicles increases testosterone by two hundred percent. If you want to join me in this experiment, you can find one of these bad boys at cozyhealth dot com. Then just go to personal labs dot com, get your blood tested,

get your testosterone. Then after eight to twelve weeks, check it again and find out if the nut rusting really works. So this whole idea goes back to this one nineteen thirty nine. Studies eighteen thirty nine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get chience in nineteen thirty nine. Man, And if there's one thing I trust, it's science from nineteen thirty nine. Yep,

got any comments on race in the study. So this study was published in the journal Endercnology, and it found that frequent UV irritation to the genitals increased urinary and drosterone, a metabolite of distasterone. Increases levels by nearly two hundred percent, quote unquote. Now you'll be shocked to learn that there may be problems with this study. Guess how many test subjects were included in this In this study, I'm going to be generous and say eight. So Mia says eight,

James and Greenfield just one? One? You say one, Robert, how many? How many do you think are in the study? Geez? I think like seven was sacred to the Nazi, So I'm gonna say that five. A grand total of five people are in this study. Wow, I give too much credit. They had to pick the sacred discordion number bullshit. Three of them are fifty four years old and have manic depressive psychosis. The other two are twenty Honestly, not a bad representative sample for Tucker's audience. I was about to

say the same thing. This is actually the other two or twenty eight and forty five and have a quote psychopathia with depressive features, which is very old old timey term everyone on Twitter, etc. Etc. But I think what what actually happened is I think they did this study at an asylum and just found people with depressive psychosis to do the study on it. It's just these five, these five random people. Um No, no individual graft results

were produced. It only showed the quote unquote typical reaction. And there wasn't even a control group for the study. Not to mention, there's many problems with like measuring to stosterone in the first place, because it changes broadly day to day and by age, and it's very kind of unreliable. Um to quote the jmi R study again, quote Beyond this questionable study, research has shown that exposure to UV

radiation may increase sex steroid hormone levels. However, these studies either do not include human participants or do you not specifically evaluate UV radiation exposure to the genitals. There is there is not a single other study since then that has done anything resembling like peer reviewed science. You know why why everybody go to go to go fund me, help cool Zone determine whether or not testical tanning works. And we'll get that control group. Well, okay, so what

my mile question about this? Aren't aren't all these people getting fucking ball cancer? We are? We are, Okay, we are about to get to that, because yes, you may think that shining UFI lights on your bulls might have some long term problems. Yeah, it's great that long sound strans come back to the episode of gain. So Vice interviewed Seth Cohen, a urologist and the director of the

Sexual Dysfunction Program at NYU lendin Health. Quote, I'm not aware of any science or data or any journal publications proving that red light therapy improves meltostosterone and quote we change recommendations on medical therapies based on a double blind, placebo controlled randomized trials, large studies with thousands of patients.

That's where you'll find if there's any really statistical significance between red light therapy and a placebo Could these men who underwent red light therapy and came out and felt stronger and more manly? Could they Could that have been a placebo effect? Of course it could unquote so and as Mia mentioned, we have not really even gotten into

the potential dangers yet. Close direct heat to your testicles actually damages sperm count on top of the risk of giving yourself ball cancer by blasting concentrated UV light on your genitals for twenty minutes a day, every day of the week, which is what is recommended to quote to quote that study one last time quote. Research shows that excessive exposure to UV radiation may lead to higher rates of genital tumor formation and decreased sperm counts, as spermo

to genesis is temperature dependent. Thus, given the current obsession with optimizing male hormone levels, the high cost of Redleigh therapy, and misleading information labeling of testicular tanning by prominent influencers, there may be an increase in men exposing themselves to UV radiation and developing associated complications, right heroic, So guys, almost done here. But man, it's pretty it's pretty funny that all of the worst people you know are gonna

get ball cancer. Ye don't stop him. Yeah, I you know, there was a period of time in my life when I had said where I will never wich cancer on anybody. But if you are deliberately exposing your testicles for the sun, to the sun and the hope of getting superpowers because of Nazi science, it's okay. It's it's okay, Like I'm not going to mourn that. To be fair, That thirty nine study was from the United States, so it could

I'm talking about the other Nazi science. Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, well yeah, um and I think I think of a part of this whole narrative of like the total collapse of men's distosterone levels, as as Tucker puts it, fucking wish Yeah, chasier. But I think this is more about men in power feeling that their position of assumed superiority is being threatened. Really, all of our quack science and conspiracy theory stories today all revolve around this, like subliminal

dog whistle. It's no mistake that Tucker titled his program the End of Men. In all the stories we'recovering today, it is the fear of emasculation that is the hook used to drum up fear and anger about how liberal feminism is eroding manhood. It targets some of young men's sexual insecurities while promoting this like anti woke return to the old ways of rugged masculinity. Yeah, I might add,

because I think you're missing one aspect of it. I think you're identifying what he's signaling to his listeners and what they get out of it. But I also think that what he and the other folks who are kind of in positions of power and influence in the right get out of this because they're not they don't believe this,

they're not actually motivated by that. Now, what this is and what because because we do not know specifically why, like testosterone rates, maybe lower white sperm counts are definitely lower, but it likely has to do with a massive variety of industrial pollutants in the environment, and with the fact that industrial agriculture and the process nature of a lot of our foods is having a negative impact on all

these things. Like it's it's consequences of capitalism, right, and because the consequences are getting increasingly hard to ignore, the thing that people like that need to do is find either a cure for them or another way to blame or another thing to blame them on. Right. And so if the aspect the things that are horribly unhealthy about these society that we have built is causing men to suffer consequences in their bodies, um, the thing to do on the right is to blame that shit on the

liberals emasculating men. And the solution is whatever kind of shit we can sell you, right, Like, that's what's going on here, that's the motivation, and it happens outside of like man shit too, Like that's all the right has anymore. Like their their economic theories have been proven disastrously wrong. They have no actual ability to govern in a meaningful

way other than by causing harm to people. So it's entirely about taking the consequences of the world that they advocate and blaming them on someone else and selling you snake oil to deal with it. Yeah, exactly, And so that is that. That is most of the of the testicular tanning fun that that I got into. We haven't covered all the things in twenty seventeen. We'll get back on this subject, but it is time for us to end. This is all right over an hour. So I want

to leave you all, all of you, all of you beautiful. First, I want to thank all of our beautiful correspondence for their research. And I want to leave all of you with this simple piece of advice. If you feel like your testicles aren't getting enough solar radiation, simply purchase a glass cutter and an old microwave, cut a circular hole in the microwave, and you bag it while it's on. You'll be okay. That is our legally binding health advice.

That's the end of the episode. Hello, Welcome to It could happen here We've got a bit of a bit of a downer of an episode here, but this is going to be part one of a two part series talking about the increasing war on transpeople that we've seen both on the horcle side and on the actual legislative side. UM with me today is mia Anna Margaret. How how are you doing on this fine day? It's it's been.

It's been really fun frantically updating my part of the script because they're keep being fucking new bills that are like going through committee. So it's great having having a good time. I'm doing great. I'm not aware of anything that's wrong. I assume you all are here to tell me that everything's fine forever. Well, hopefully next episode we'll talk more about how we can, like, uh, I don't know,

deal with this sort of thing. I most I it was my job to handle the bad part of the of this two part series, and it was the other people's job to handle the good part. So I don't know what they haven't planned for the next episode. Actually, all I all I did was watch hours and hours of people advocate for genocide and put together some of the worst bits that I feel like are still worth mentioning. It's probably worth noting that the two of us who are supposed to be writing about what we do about

it both have swords over our shoulders. I can go grab a sword, if that is, If that is a core part of the advice, I think so okay. So I think whenever I put together episodes like these, I always try to be careful not to I don't just want to include people who are talking about why myself and others should die, like just like I don't want to include that unnecessarily because that's just kind of a bummer.

But I think it is also important to actually hear and understand the types of rhetoric that they are trying to spread and they're trying to normalize, and be aware of what techniques and what rhetorical styles they are trying to employ. So I've condensed this down as much as I can. You will still hear a decent amount of pretty gross stuff. Um. I think I should have almost all of the machendering completely edited out. I should have

a whole bunch of things not not included. But there will be a decent amount of rhetoric that that that you will hear from, just as as a heads up. That's what's going to be kind of part of this episode. A lot of this is going to be talking about hosts that are employed by the conservative news site ran by Ben Shapiro, The Daily Wire. They have really, really focused in an excruciating extent on antitrans like campaigning and

activism for really the past year. It got this type of stuff got really bad last February, and it once again got really bad this February. It's no coincidence that this is also the start of the legislative cycle, that this is why they're doing this right now. It is. It is part of an attempt to actually affect the laws that the United States have around if trans people are allowed to exist. It is, it is. It is purposeful,

So we may as well just get started here. We're going to start a little bit liked actually, so most of this will be documenting the types of rhetoric they were using in February to March, so the past like month and a half. In early February, Candice Owens on her Daily Wire show refer to transpeople as demonic while advocating for the total ban of transgender healthcare for all ages.

The trans Lives Matter protesters decided to occupy the Oklahoma Capitol building to fight GOP bills that ban gender conforming surgery for people that are under the age of twenty one. So that, of course that should be banned. If you are in the age twenty one, you should not be Honestly, you should never be allowed by I would go a little further, Oklahoma, if you really want to do something,

just ban it altogether. Yeah. I love that because they're always trying to be like, no, no, no, we're just here to protect the children, whereas we've known this entire time that they're trying to stop anyone from being trends. Yes, this is a pattern that will come up a lot in the research I've put together for this is how last year it was their very much trying to make

it like, no, it's just about the kids. And then we were talking about how first they're going to try to limit it to eighteen years old, and they're gonna limit it to twenty one years old, and they're gonna limit it to twenty five years old. Then they're just going to ban it all together. And that is very clearly what they're doing. And they're they're now just saying the quiet part out loud. So good on us for calling that a year in advance, but now they're emboldened

just to say it outright. So kind of Someone's refers to trans people as demonic later on a night clip. I'm not not including that bit because just today Michael Knowles on his Daily Wire show said that this so called transgenderism is demonic, the second second Daily Wire person to drum up this satanic panic shit. This is demonic stuff,

really demonic stuff. And I made this point I got in trouble with our publicists over at Media Matters because I said that the attacks on man end's sexual nature and sexual difference in complimentarity are demonic, and they are. They go back throughout all of history, throughout some of the earliest depictions of demons, even one of the most prominent depictions of demons. It comes from an artist, Lafas Levy, who is an occultist, who did a depiction of Baphomet.

If you just think what's a demon look like, you're probably thinking of this picture. Okay, okay, all right, that's not true. It's it's completely wrong. So this is this is really funny to be because for years now I've been trying to say that being trans is not demonic. It's very clearly alchemical. Please please get your occults terms right. Thousands of years of alchemical development has delivered onto me

estradial valorate. It's it's very clearly alchemy. Um. But also it's just extremely funny to me that Noels tried to cite Levy, who's like, Baphomet isn't really a demon in Lovey's work, but like whatever, it's it's all it's extremely funny. He He goes on to talk about Solivate and and Coigila, which I've actually been planning to do an episode on for a while. But it's it's all extremely funny too.

Is it worth describing that Bapphamet is the statue of the like hornheaded person with like Yes, often falsely falsely identified as the Satan or a demon, But yes, it's a very famous, very famous statue. Like if you think of like the statue of Satan, this is what bapha Bet actually is. Yeah, it's it's not Satan, but I mean the use of this like demonic rhetoric is a very is it's it's very basic, like a dehumanizing stuff.

Trying to dehumanize trans people, um, while also pulling from like the remnants of the satanic panic that still exists in some conservatives minds. UM. Moving on to to a friend of the pod, Matt Walsh. UM. One of one of his recent main targets is actress Dylan mulvain. On February fourteenth, Matt went on a mindless rant while continuously miss gendering mulvaney and attacking her appearance, at one point referring to her as like doing a woman face minstrel

show routine. Which a reaccording thing about this is that all in all of their rhetoric against transpeople, they also managed to be incredibly racist yep, and like not understanding what racism actually is, which I mean is not surprising considering there they work for the Daily Wire. I'm not going to actually include the clip of Matt Walsh there because it's it's just it's just miss gendering and like making fun of how someone looks for like a minute,

and it's all very gross. Who is that actress? I just I live under a rock. Dylan Mulvaney. I think she does like Broadway stuff. She's like a New York person I've not, I've only i've wholly really heard of her. Based on Matt Walsh's continuing rants against this person, we can't have cross stressors in the theater a matchin. We'd have to I actually don't know. I literally don't know how far back you'd have to get to get to where people didn't play with gender on stage. I think

it's impossible. Well, I think the further back you go, the worsting guests, because like things were like only men could be on stage, and it's like, well, okay, this is every Shakespeare Beforeance, etcetera, etcetera. In one of the more bizarre Daily Wire appearances in this um so on on February fifteenth, a young dad who called into the Daily Wire sports show Crane on Company talked about how dad's like him are going to cause dangerous problems if

trans inclusivity continues. The hosts of the show agreed and said that violence will be an inevitable response to trans women playing sports, which one of you bar up. But somebody said something about dad being in the stand finding out that for the first time that somebody in the locker room was a male, and that they were just hanging it all out in front of their girls, how I rate they would get. My view is that, yeah, we're gonna have not just one irate dad, We're gonna

have a lot of I rate dads. That's gonna content massive problem in the school system, and it's going to be very dangerous for everybody because people are gonna start taking in their own hands because they're seeing that other people are. That's exactly jungle rules, as we call it, jungle rules. Exactly at what point do we say, we've tried to talk this out and hash this out with you, you're not being reasonable. Those are part of my values. So it's not even us saying go in there and

handle business. It's saying, I know what's gonna happen the minute that girl runs out of that locker room or a couple girls. Imagine if a twelve year old girl ran out of the locker room and said that to her doll mine, just to imagine that how or whatever. Men shouldn't be in women's locker room. But if a man that was straight walked into a women's locker room with a trench coat and just showed everything and started shaking like this and got beatn asleep everybody would be

doing this, they'd be clapping, great job. But you let the same thing happen to somebody who says they think they're a woman in there and does the exact same thing, then it's no, it's a totally different situation. So while we're not advocating for it, I'm telling you what's going to happen because I live in the real world. I know what you would do for your daughter. Yep, that

man does not live in the real world. No, And it's it's all like, it's this weird like trying to have some form of like of a of of like denial in their very clear advocating for violence and like advocating for the normalization of just assaulting people. I mean, I even feel like though this is like, this is like last year's anti trans rhetoric, you know, the like lowest hanging fruit was to come at us about sports,

this issue that affects the tiniest percentage of people, you know. Yeah, and it's it's it's the it's the blending of the sports issue with like the locker room stuff. Yeah. Later on in the show, another caller admitted that he would assault trans woman, including his own children. And The Daily Wirehouse refused to push back on like any of this

as this man just advocates child abuse. And I just wanted to say too, as a as a new father, I've got a new baby boy, uh, and I've got a two year old daughter, And not only would I want to beat somebody up for doing that to my daughter, but I would beat my son up if he ever thought about doing something like that in a women's locker room. It's just again, and I want to make sure and again,

we live in the real world. We know what's gonna happen because we're not even advocating violence, like I said, We're telling you what's gonna happen. These are the fathers and the brothers and the uncles and the mamas are it's gonna get to a point where they're just gonna handle business like and it's just it is. It is what it is. We're trying to tell y'all this in the threat, this it's just a four warning. It is foreshadowing what's gonna happen. British are coming. Yeah, okay, but

but the British is coming. Is a really, really funny thing for an American to say about this because he's wait, is he saying that they're the British they're trying to do like a Paul Revere sing oh oh oh. I thought they were trying to be like, we're gonna show up and we're going to handle business us. No, I

think in the opposite. I'm sorry, we are we are warning that if this insanity continues, then people will start violently assaulting anyone who they suspect of being a man in a bathroom, which will also just lead to like people assaulting like a like a butch sis woman as well.

Like no, I mean, it's like this has already been happening, like like one of my friends can't get changed at the local gym um even though they're assigned female at birth, because there's no safe place for them to do it because the way that they read, you know, like and I don't know whatever. I mean, that's just one example of the time my head, but it's just happening constantly.

Suddenly we have gender police everywhere, and everyone is expected to perform masculinity and femininity and like weird sis normative ways saying that everyone knows. I'm sorry, I'm just no, no, but I think there's something important about this too, which is like, and anytime someone tries to say, like anytime someone starts talking about their real world, this is the way the world really works. Right, That's not an actual description of reality. It's an it's an aspirational thing, right.

And the way that you make something real is through violence. Yes, And that's what all this stuff is absolutely and and specifically speaking of violence and child abuse. The next day, on February sixteenth, Candice Owens was discussing this, uh, this like trans kids TikTok video about his grandmother's transphobic reaction to him coming out. Um, and it's it's also it's

it's just extremely grows. So these like these media people who are paid millions of dollars spend their days making fun of trans kids on TikTok like like random like random miners on TikTok. We are making videos about their experiences. And they then these these like these grifters and these content creators who work on the right, it's like blast these kids on their on their on their shows. They get like millions of millions of viewers. I mean, this

is the entire lips of TikTok platform. But yours now seeing this across like almost every mainstream conservative influencer. So on top of Candice calling being trans a mental illness placed upon you by society, Candas Owns also said that if she had a trans grandchild, she would beat them with a cane. It is a cry for help, and your grandmother answered that cry for help by telling you that you are loved as you are and that you

don't need to fall into this trap of insanity. You're the best grandma ever, by the way, because when I'm a grandma, I get any foolishness like that. I don't know. I want to be a sweet grandma, I really do. I want to be a sweet old lady. But I feel like I might be the kind hit somebody with a cane. I don't know, I'll be like, why you are not calling your Michaels. I feel like that will probably be me, but I will I would have prayed

for you. You know the thing that I keep thinking about with this, with this Candas clip, with most of these clips, it's like they're just like laughing the whole time they're saying this stuff. Yep, Like it's just a joke to them, right, It's like, yeah, they believe it. But it's also it's just like a joke. It's just something they can sort of like casually talk about while like you know, fucking hanging out in their show or whatever.

And absolutely, because I mean the primary goal for these people is is content creation, and yeah, they're making suffering content for for and as well as like normalizing this type of like violent response. Yeah. And and I think I think the sort of joking thing is is a

big part of how the normalization works. Like I don't think, like I think it would be much harder to have someone just being incredibly serious going like yeah, I'm gonna like beat my child with a cane, right, like if but if if you do, when that's sort of like joking like matter of fact thing, it helps, It helps normalize it enormously. Yeah. No, absolutely, I'm just really sad thinking about the because acceptance by family, a family that

doesn't necessarily understand, but that's willing to accept. It's like the thing that I think bolsters the spirits of young trans people or adult trans people more than anything else, you know. And I've been like reading a bunch of history about like trans people from one hundred years ago where their family are like, all right, well we don't get it, but what's your name now? Yeah, And like a hundred years ago, we we could have improved from there.

And this is something that the Daily Wire definitely does continue to harp on across multiple hosts, even like the next video that we have here, Matt Matt Walsh is doing like this is the same thing they're they're talking about if they themselves had trans kids or trans grandkids, that they would continue to be as openly vitriolic and even violent against their own children. So this next clip came like a week after Matt Walsh's first unhinged rant

attacking Dylan Muldaney. Walsh claimed that he wouldn't stop barking the vitriolic rhetoric if he had a trans kid, that in fact, he would quote rather be dead than discover he had a trans kid. A beautiful and innocent kid one day, seemingly out of nowhere, gets sucked into the gender call and is devoured by it. All of their innocence and light and beauty just drained out of them, replaced by this self cannibalizing madness. For a parent to see this happen to a child, it is a fate

worse than death. I would rather be dead than have that happened to my kids, then die. We do argue with you. I'm not on the debate team. This is a mock trial. I keep thinking of whatever these things happened, Like, I keep thinking about Matt Christman's one good line, which is we should give to Christians what they want and

crucify them, persecute, persecute all day, every day. So unfortunately, there was more to that clip than Walsh just threatening to kill himself using like a groomer and protect the children rhetoric that we saw go viral last year. Walsh promises that mean words are only the beginning. See, the thing that I most despise about Dylan Wilvni is that part of a movement which actively seeks to turn my

children into Dylan Wolvni. That's why I'm entitled to my anger and to whatever language I use to convey it. I will say whatever I want to say, and I will be justified in saying it, because these people are after my kids and yours and everyone else's. And you're worried that I'm being a little rude, Well, you see, when it comes to my children, the children that I

cherish more than my own life. If you think mean words go too far, then you would be very shocked to hear how far I would really go to protect them. Trust me, words are the least of it. I love this. I would do anything to protect my children, unless they're a gay, in which case I'm good, like off myself or something like yeah, just I mean, I mean, I don't know whatever. Already the legally actionable things have already been said. Hey, it's it's not my idea, it's only

Matt Walsh's. This is his idea. You know. I do want to go back for a second to the early parts of this clip when he's talking about like, oh, like you have these like purean innocent children, and like the light goes out of him, like it's this thing

that strikes you about that so much? Is like she's describing the process exactly in reverse, Like the thing that he's describing is what is like, this is what happens if you do transition a kid like by force, Like the thing that actually happens when a trans kid transitions is like you can you can literally see this in like like you can you can like literally see this in pictures of kids. It's like like you can wash

the light come back to their eyes as a transition totally. No, yeah, yeah, it's you know, it's it's it's one of sort of like it's one of the most beautiful things about being trans It's like is experiencing that joy and experiencing like what it is to be yourself and then you get to watch this fucking dipshit like just literally just like taking the process as it actually happens, and then like lying and saying it's like literally like lying and saying

that the thing that is making these people have this joy is the like the thing that's fucking killing them. No. Absolutely that that's something that's often overlooked when covering this sort of thing, is the like just the presence of trans joy and the trans joy that can be experienced when people are given access to the treatments that have been like known to be successful for decades now. It's also I mean, I don't know if you're intentionally going

in an escalating sense. This is the first person that I'm looking at being like, oh, this man wants to kill me, you know I am I am going in an escalating Yeah, yeah, we escalate pretty far over the next First, I think let's let's have a bit of an ad break. Do you know who doesn't want to kill you? Fifty percent of the advertisers, at least at least fifty percent of the advertisers don't want you dead

because instead they want your money. All right, we are back, as as previously stated, Like when when reporting on this topic before, we've always said that the limited focus on transgender miners was simply a form of rhetorical deception. Oh,

somebody please think of the children. By conjuring concerns that have been like culturally ingrained in US around the protection of children, Anti transactivists have been introducing and a normalizing anti trans talking points that inevitably get used against trans people of all ages. Last year, Matt Walsh openly said that quote, it should be illegal for doctors to medically

transition anyone of any age unquote. And as Margaret said, it seems like we were we were moving in a more escalating direction, but that that just so happens to corresponds as the month of February continued. So here's a clip from Daily Wire host Michael Knowles from the late February twenty twenty three. In order for women to have the right to have their own bathrooms, you have to ban transgenderism entirely. You can't just ban it for the kids.

It's got to be entirely. In order for women to be able to have their own locker rooms at the gym, you have to ban transgenderism entirely. In order to protect businesses from having to participate in weird occult sexual rituals like the transgender transition, you have to ban transgenderism entirely.

So that is just like straight up advocating for genocide, right, Like, yeah, there there is no difference between this term that the daily Wire people use, transgenderism and and currently existing transgender people. That that isn't you It's like saying, we have to eradicate judaism, Like what what is it? What do you mean by that? You obviously mean exterminating human beings and making it impossible for them to continue on? Like that

is that? That is what genocide is? Yeah, and you can hear me like literally the next thing he says is like you know, he's talking about like like transition angas and the cult ritual or whatever the fuck it. It's like well, yeah, no, like like he's he's explicitly saying, like what what Yeah, what does banning transgenderism means? Does it? Never? Like confuse you all when you just have these moments

where you're like, these people believe in sky Daddy. Like I'm not even anti religious, I'm not even an atheist. I don't know exactly what I am. But like when you hear people just being like God has willed me to do this murder or whatever, that this is what this person is saying, I'm just like they think of themselves as like holy warriors who have been chosen by

God to eradicate this demonic plague that is infecting like humankind. Yeah, it would be like if all of the sudden they were like, and that's why Gandolf has told me that I must go on a quest. Like I'm just like, am I living in the same century as these people? Like again, not an atheist, but I'm just like you've decided that sky Daddy has told you to march off to murder, Like yeah, that doesn't even map to a

fucking basic understanding even of religious anyway. Sorry, no, absolutely, And I mean this unfortunately continues to get worse Yeah. The very next day, Michael Knowles defended his eliminationis rhetoric in another unhinged rant about the like probably about two million trans people in the United States, saying that quote, there can't be a genocide of trans people because it's quote, not a legitimate category of being. They said that I

was calling for the extermination of transgender people. They said I was calling for a genocide. I said, what, I must have missed that part of my show. When did I did? I say that? I don't one. I don't know how you could have a genocide of transgender people because genocide refers to genes, It refers to genetics, it refers to biology, and the point of those genderism is that it has nothing to do with biology. That's what the transgender activists say. They say, forget about biological sex.

My gender expression doesn't have to have anything to do with my biological sex. Okay, well, then there can't be a genocide. It refers to genetics. But furthermore, nobody is calling to exterminate anybody, because the other problem with that statement is that transgender people is not a real ontological category. It's not a legitimate category of being. There are people who think that they're the wrong sex, but they're mistaken. They're laboring under a delusion, and so we need to

correct that delusion. Okay, so that was that was a lot. I'm just clinging to my emotional support sword, Like, what what solution to preytel will you be employing to correct that's so called delusion? Maybe just like one one once, like a like one one of the last one, Yeah, a fal one. Not the penultimate solution, that's not his his thing. No one step further the the very the very last one. I can't think of a of a of a of another word for for for very last.

But yeah, I also like, have these motherfucker's karrotyped themselves? No one has almost no one has been goddamn like the percentage of people who've seen what their genes are like, I don't know, whatever, sense it's nonsense. Yeah, the the science does not hold up to the like thing you learn in fourth grade that the you know, I don't know when they teach you xx and x y or whatever.

But it's like, but like that's not science. That's not the current scientific understanding, and I think has never really been the scientific understanding. That part I'm not as certain about um no, I mean like it's and by saying like I'm not calling for genocide because the group I'm targeting aren't even a real group of people, They're not even literally it's literally the talking point of every single

genocide or fascist ever in existence. So like like literally literally this is I can't I cannot find the person

who was writing about this. I apologize immensely. But there when when when this clip was first circulating, there was a really interesting article about that was circulating about how like not a legitimate category is what like the word that gets translated as degenerate like that the Nazis used like actually means like like that's like non legitimate kind like like that very specifically is what the Nazis used as like you know, as as they're staying for we

need to kill the Jews, right like that, that's that's that's very very specifically what they were doing now and and like genocide does not refer to genetics, it doesn't. And and and you know, you know you can you can look at like think because like these people are like just unfathomably fucking stupid, right like they they they look at genocide, right and they see the word gen and they go, this means gen No. But you know, and I think, I think something that is worth mentioning is that.

So Raphael Lemkin is the guy who coins the term genocide, right, Um, the Lemkin Institute, which is the the like the lempicin Scitude, which is the institute from this guy that that does genoisde like does anti genocide prevention works specifically in the US. Was like there was now a risk of genocide against trans people. So, you know, the institute of the actual guy who made the term genocide versus a guy who

thinks that gen means gene. It's like, it's just no, It's it's very obvious that that saying that transgender people are not a real ontological category is like he's doing He's literally is how you do the Nazis did That is how you do Nazi stuff. Like I'm under the impression of the whole thing with ontology is accepting that there's like multiple ontologies, Like it's clearly not an ontological concept in his ontological like his way of viewing the world.

That's one of my problems, you know, I don't think he would pass a basic philosophy of course at college.

You know, okay, I will say this, my my, my, my argument against against specifically against there being multiple legitimate ontologies is this is this these people's fucking ontology who like believe that, like these people, all these fucking freaks literally believe individually right, that there is no scientific explanation for lightning and that like every act of lightning is an individual act of God, that is not a legitimate ontology.

Like fuck that shit. No, I I refuse, I refuse to do fucking to have to have to have there be fucking multiple valid ontological positions. I refuse for there to be valid worlds like no, there's something that are just wrong, and you have to be able to say that shit otherwise you get this fucking bullshit reality tunnels do do be funny like that? He later added quote transgenderism ultimately is a lie, It's a deception. It is a fraud. Fraud is not protected by the First Amendment.

Fraud is not a category protected by the principles of a free speech. You have no right to fraud. But you know, here's the thing, I will I will agree with him. You have no right to fraud. Fraud is

not protected by free speech. I really like have have a real fun time when we fucking come for you on those principles, like a show disappears a few days of A few days later, Noles once again invoked grooma rhetoric and openly called drag Queen's pedophiles and explicitly called on quote the heavy hand of the state to shut down to drag shows and arrest performers and parents. Why is he dressed like um mister Rogers in a Black Marre episode. He's just he's just mirror universe. Mister Rogers's

like just telling you to hate your neighbor. You know, I don't know how you can watch this and not conclude that the performers are pedophiles. I don't use that word lightly. I know a lot of people on the right use that word. They fling it around, and they use it in precisely. I don't see how you can dance around in a thong or in a leather harness in front of babies and toddlers if you are not a pedophile. So I would bet if not the farm, I'd bet a lot of my money that that's the case,

and that's being normalized. I don't see how these parents should be permitted to keep their children. They're abusing your children, are sexually abusing your children by taking them to these events. I don't see how whatever company is hosting this should be allowed to keep its doors open. All of this should be shut down by the heavy hand of the state. All of these people other than the children should be arrested, and some of them should face pretty severe consequences. Not

great stuff. He did hedge his bets. He was like, you know, I'm actually not sure about this. That was my favorite part. I think it is. It is interesting that the whole heavy hand of the state line is is is an interesting, little little unique gem in their style of rhetoric whenever they explicitly call on the powers of the government to like do fascism. I think a lot of this type of rhetoric was leading up to

Sea Pack in which happened in early March. During Seapack, anti trans rhetoric was a very central theme across There are many speakers. That's like the big right wing gathering where all the far right people get together and talk to an empty room. Well, Seapack is the Conservative political action conference. It is far right by the world's over to the window. But it's like a mainstream right wing

convention in the United States. Cool. So the conference featured in a rave speakers, including prominent Republican politicians and policymakers, as well as people like Michael Knowles who are just like right wing pundits. The many many speeches had attacks against gender affirming healthcare, trans inclusive sports, and bathroom policies, as well as the you know, the typical groomer and and pedophelia stuff that we saw gets super popular last year. Um,

as well as framing this word transgenderism as a radical ideology. Now, words like transgenderism and gender ideology are not actually terms that trans people use. These were terms invented by anti transactivists. I want to be very certific about this because I think I don't think people understand the term gender ideology was specifically invented by the Catholic Church, like as as as a thing to oppose this and also a sort of a way to oppose like gay marriage and like

queerness in general. And they're all of the fucking all of the like shitty, like one of the one of those sort of like quote unquote like dark secrets in the fucking closet of all of the black people who claim to be radical feminists who are anti trans is. All of these people specifically worked with the back back this up was first being developed in like the late

nineties and early two thousands. All these people worked with the Catholic Church specifically to make sure that I like that that that more sort of liked more gender inclusive like terminology and stuff like not on a terminology like more gender and preclusive programs and definitions of like of

what gender is wouldn't be implemented at the un. So this this sort of like rad fem conservative Catholic alliance is very old, and most of the people who are in it will deny that that's what they were doing, but it is like, this is this is Catholic Church ship. The Pope literally had a rant about how gender ideology was colonialism like like a week ago, like and and and the Pope does the same demonic rhetoric as these people. And I mean, yeah, so I believe this terms him.

It makes sense from him. That's his that's his thing, that's his literal job. Yeah, which immediately also it's like, sir, you are the pope, like, shut the fuck up about colonization, man, Like, yeah, you know from Latin America. That doesn't excuse you, like the Cash Church. The Catholic Church famously never never, never

done colonization. Um. But yeah, these words were invented by anti transactivists to the humanized transgender people and frame being trans as itself this dangerous ideology or a mental illness in a need of curing m Seapack speakers consistently invoked like grooming and pedophilia stuff in their In their long anti LGBTQ hate rants, um Lauren Bobert claimed that educators attempting to groom children, echoing the libs of TikTok stuff that got popular in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two.

Tulsi Gabbard was at Seapack. She basically claimed at LGBTQ plus people were trying to gain acceptance for pedophiles by labeling them as minor attracted persons and allowing them to teach in schools. This is another conspiracy theory that Libs

of TikTok has boosted for a long time. By the way, I want to hold a fucking greed share, which is that there were a lot of people who who like claimed to be leftist, who in like twenty eighteen, twenty nine, twenty and twenty were like telling all of us that Tulsi Gabbard was a leftists, like the only anti very clearly a fascist walk like she she she like, no, fuck off, you were wrong, Please admit you were wrong.

Please be more careful about who you're going to fucking back so you don't end up backing this fucking like weird peto jacketing dipshit. But you know who you should back. Oh god, not yet, not yet almost almost okay, oh not almost almost time? Sorry, I have abot planned. Um Matt Gates spoke about an instant in Virginia which the right wing media sphere has spread disinformation about to falsely frame it as an instance of a transit student abusing

inclusive bathroom policies to attack young girls. Just spreading all kinds of misinformation and disinformation from these right wing hate websites, that that is why they exist, is to prop by gate disinformation. Um Marjor Taylor Green target agenda from healthcare, praising her current reintroduction of the twenty twenty two protect Children's Innocence Act in the House, a bill which would make it a felony to provide a gender affirming care

to miners. Green spread the lies and disinformation made popular by Matt Walsh that gender affirming healthcare designed to quote mutilate your kids and quote chemically castrate them. Stuff that we've debunked on the show before and many others have debunked. Trump gave a pretty pretty bad transphobic speech to close

out the conference. On the one side, he said that he would keep men out of women's sports, but then closed out to see pack by saying, quote, he would revoke every Biden policy promoting the sexual mutilation and chemical castration of our youth, and I will ask Congress to send me a bill prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all fifty states unquote. I don't want to include Trump's stuff here because I find his voice to be slightly annoying. Anyway,

Moving off, Donald Trump more annoying than Michael Knowles. Shocking so hard, challenge level almost impossible. Speaking of Michael Knowles, he gave a speeches Sepack where he advocated that transgenderism must be eradicated to thunderous applause. Now I'm going to play this whole clip here. Bear with me. There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing. If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it's true for everybody of all ages.

If transgenderism is false, as it is, if men really can't become women, as they cannot, then it's false for everybody too. And if it's false, then we should not indulge it, especially since that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of so many people. If it is false, then for the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely,

the whole preposterous ideology at every level. Pretty pretty bad stuff. Not great to hear a room full of people applaud someone who's very clearly talking about the eradication of an entire group of people. And I want to specifically point out the from public life thing, because that was something that you know, like back when the first bathroom bills were happening in twenty sixteen, right, you know, like people

like trans people who were following this stuff. You know, the thing everyone said was they're trying to they're trying to erase trans people from public life, right, because that's that's what happens when you can't use a restroom in public, right, is like it limits your ability to just exist in the public sphere. And we've gotten to a point now where they can just fucking say what we you know, what we all knew they wanted from the beginning, and

that's terrifying. I remember when I hit them the kind of uncanny valley space, like when I hit the space where I freaked people out, no matter what bathroom I used, you know, it's like a very conscious thing where I remember it because I pick which bathroom do you use based on safety, right, and and like depending on my presentation. It's it's wildly different depending on what kind of space

I'm in, it's wildly different. I don't know, I just I just remember really consciously the first time I like just I picked the men's room and then got like double takes about why was I in there, and it's just like, oh, I like can't do anything anymore. Yeah, Like no, absolutely. After Nol's speech at Sepack, arguing for

the eradication of transgenderism quote unquote. Daily Wire hosts, including Matt Walsh, defended him by saying, quote, we are in a war against the most deranged ideology ever invented by the human race. We are fighting to eradicate the ideogical equivalent of a parasitic infection. But is a term like eradicate over the top. Does it have a needlessly militant tone? No, definitely not. The tone may be militant, but not needlessly so. We are, after all, in a war, and lives are

at stake. We are in a war against the most deranged ideology ever invented by the human race, plain and simple. We are fighting to eradicate the ideological equivalent of a parasitic infestation. And the parasite gender ideology seeks to not only brainwash a generation of children, not only degrade and appropriate womanhood, but also and manhood by the way, but also, and most fundamentally, it seeks to eat away at truth itself.

This is coming from somebody who glibly refers to himself as a theocratic fascist, And in cases like this, when they tell you who they are, you should fuck believe them. Like the first bit of that clip is like pretty bad, very very clearly fascistic, Like it's it's checking all of the boxes. But then I'm going to continue on to the second part of this clip, and it is incredibly chilling. Can we point out about how his poor choice and

plaid is also degrading too masculinity. Really, he is the greatest threat to masculine right now because of his plaid choice. Eradication of gender ideology. Total defeat is the only option because there's no compromise with it. There's no living side by side with it, there's no finding common ground. The gender ideologue wants to destroy your culture and your children. You will either rise up against it or lose everything to it. We're so fucked, it's so Nazzi, Like, yeah, quote,

total defeat is the only option. The gender ideologue wants to destroy your culture and your children. Like that is less than a stones throw away from we must have secured the existence of our people in a future white children. It's right there. It's like, it's so it's so clear. I think there's like a tiny grain of truth in it, which is that like they are very very very close to like permanently losing the battle over whether the trans

people could exist. And that's why they're doing this, right, because like the only like like like so support for trans people getting healthcare is like sixty is at like sixty percent, right, The only thing they have left is just straight up genocide because if they don't fucking kill us all now, right, and they don't right now act to make it impossible for future trans people to be trans, right, they are going to lose. And I will talk about

this towards the end of the episode. This is kind of part of my thesis on this, and this is something that Michael Knowles himself actually admits. In one of Michael Knowles's first shows after Sepack, he suggests that eradicating transgenderism would be a simple matter of returning to the state of Affairs in twenty fifteen to eradicate transgender is from public life. And it's a good question. I'm glad people are talking about that. That was the point of

my speech. What would it mean to eradicate the preposterous ideology of transgenderism from public life at every level? Put simply eradicating transgenderism from public life would mean behaving as American society did before, say twenty fifteen. Before Round twenty fifteen, we did not have any acceptance of transgenderism in public life. Also, in just like a grim moment of surality, in the middle of that clip, Knowles does an adder read for a company called Rabbit Air, which is an air purifier

company who has an office in Pasadena, California. She's fu oh. Knowles goes on to blame Obama for leading this wave of trans end's acceptance in public life. Now, this whole twenty fifteen thing is very funny to me because in a lot of ways it was actually kind of easier to be trans and twenty fifteen what it is right now. But I and I think that this is mostly that like for conservatives, it's mostly that young trans people are simply more visible now, mostly due to things like TikTok.

Like there's just there's a more visible presence of trans joy and trans people living, and that is angering conservatives. So they think it's is like some new recent thing. And because Michael Knowles did an ad break for Rabbit Air, who again has an office in Pasadena, California, I too, am going to do an ad break for our fine sponsors, all right, and we're back we are. We are almost done. I only have like one or two more clips to show. I like the ad for Rabbit Air that just played

fuck off. So in Michael knowles case, I think he isn't even primary early against just like trans equality, he is against modernity. Now, when I say modernity, I'm not referring to like industrial civilization. It's many consequences for humans and the planet at large. Right wing antimodernism is very different than like anarchist ANTISTI of ideas. This idea of modernism isn't really tied to industrial developments. It's more linked

to a psycho spiritual antagonism against modern social progress. It's more akin to the esoteric super fascist Julius Vola's idea of like revolt against the modern world and how liberalism is like a plague against moral society and causing maths degeneracy. Michael knowles own Twitter bio reads quote, I am completely opposed to the error of the modernists. Again, when these people tell tell you who they are, you have to

believe them. Just this week, during a speech at the University of Buffalo, Knowles laid out a plan to attack quote the illogic of so called gay marriage, the rights to fornication, and the feminists who loosened divorce laws. Yeah, I think it's I think it's worth pointing out here, right. I think I think the actual reason why twenty fifteen is the year that he picked out of his head is at twenty fifteen is the year that game that

game marriage is legalized by the Supreme Court. Sure, so like that that like ninety nine percent chats that he means like twenty fifteen before game marriage is the thing that he wants to go back to. But here's here's a here's a clip of him talking about how conservatives have continued to lose the battleground at a whole bunch of topics, and how he's going to try to win them back. Now, even many conservatives accept so called gay marriage,

and they have to. They have to accept gay marriage if they accept the illogic of the Sexual Revolution, which held that all sexual relations are fine and dandy so long as they're consensual. After the Sexual Revolution, the only test for sexual ethics became if it feels good, do it. For most of American history, nobody believed that too. For most of American history, there were all sorts of laws

against certain sexual behaviors. There were famously laws against sodomy, but there were lots of other laws as well, laws against fornication, laws against adultery, laws against plenty of other destructive sexual behaviors. Those laws were on the books as recently as two thousand and three, when liberals on the Supreme Court discovered in the Constitution some sort of right to all of those things. He wants all these things

to become illegal again, that is his political project. And to quote airy dren end quote, none of this is a theoretical exercise. After banning drag or gender if I may care for minors, the Tennessee House yesterday passed a bill that would allow local officials to refuse same sex, interfaith,

or interracial marriages ute. Now. Last year we titled some of our episodes that cover this wave of anti trans attacks quote like the War on trans people unquote and even like considering the origin of this podcast, I am often hesitant to entertain fantasies of actual civil conflict in the United States, but in this case, like they are the ones who are killing us and trying to make our very existence illegal. It is them who has initiated

this type of militant language. The last clip I have here is of Matt Walsh talking about just that we aren't even remotely done. Okay, this is honestly only the beginning. We've got a lot more in store for you. I promised you a year ago that we were going to war here, and I kept that promise. I'll keep this one too. There's much more to be done, that needs to be done, and we aim to do it. So the battle continues, whether you like it or not. The

battle continues. So a few days ago, the Governor of Mississippi brought Matt Walsh to speak during an official press conference about the signing of House Bill one one two five, banning gender affirming healthcare for minors. The presidence of Matt Walsh at a State of Mississippi official press conference is a clear example of fascism being inserted into the governmental process. Um, and speaking of bills, I'm going to hand this over

to Mia to now talk about some of the legislative stuff. Yay, yeah, wow, So this is going to be a long one, I'm sorry, folks. Yeah. Unfortunately, the the list of ways in which they are trying to kill us as long. So yeah, this is this

is the inevitable result of that. In one of the very early clips, right, I think I can't remember which one it was, one of the maybe it was Kennis Owen has talked about like our publicist at Media Matters, right, Yeah, And I think, you know, I think there is in a lot of cases, I think there's a lot of merit and not like covering this ship when it's tifically

people like like very specific. You know Alex Jones does this, right, Well, he'll say something like specifically incredibly inflammatory is a way to start of get media attention to him. Yeah, But in this case, we can't fucking do that because all of the policy proposals that these people want are getting actually fucking implemented. So here here's from the Human Rights

Campaign about how bad things have gotten. Less than two months into twenty twenty three, Human Rights Campaign is already tracking three hundred and forty anti LGBTQ bills that have been introduced in statehouses across the country. I think four hundred. Oh yeah, it's this, Yeah, I was gonna get this. So those numbers are from early Those numbers are from early February, right or mid February now, yeah, it's something like over four hundred. It's really hard to get actual

totals because there are so fucking many of them. One hundred and fifty of those would specifically restrict the rights of transgender people, the highest number of bills targeting transgender people in a single year to date. They also note, as everyone else does, every single successive year breaks the record for the most number of bills targeting people. Um. Yeah,

those numbers are already out of date. And okay, So on the one hands, right there, there are there are real problems with projects that just track the raw number of bills, and you know, okay, on the one hands, the world like the raw numbers are I think a good way of actually getting people to sort of understand like the level of threat that is happening, like just sort of just sort of the raw magnitude of the threats.

On the other hands, okay, it's kind of misleading in the sense that almost all these bills are going to fail because most of these most most and this is the incredible important thing here, most but not all, most of these bills are made by just random state lawmakers

and no political backing. And this allows organizations you know, sort of like like a lot of the nonprofit groups who who work in these sort of legislative spaces to like claim credit for defeating like ninety percent of the bills, and it's like, well, no, like most of those, like almost none of them we're ever going to pass in the first place. And the second thing that it does is it puts this sort of cloud out, which makes

it really really difficult. You know, if you're just being if, if you're if you're trying to follow right the sort of legislative process here, it gets very very hard because it's it's very difficult to sort out which bills have any chance of passing in which ones are just some random dipshit like first term like I don't know, some some some like first term lawmaker from like a part of Mississippi that is two lawmakers right like. But so my, my, my solution to this is we're going to run through

the bills had ever already been passed. Um, I guess we should just start in Mississippi because we've sort of already talked about, Yeah, Governor Tate Reeves inviting that wallshing of a speech at the bill signing ceremony. So in Mississippi, a law was passed called the reap Act, which you know, that's that's great. It's a that's that that tells you exactly what they fucking I mean by this. This is a bill that bands and this this is a very

very common pattern for bills. Um. It bans miners from getting hormones, from getting any kind of gender affirming surgery, and blocks anyone from getting puberty blockers. We've said this before, We'll say it again. All of this stuff is good. Kids should be able to get these things. Kids should be able to get these things easier. They they just unfathomably improve the lives of the child to get them. All of the data supports this notion. This has been

normalized for literally decades. Yeah, and I mean puberty blockers in particular is one of the things that's become the

focus of like, oh, it's not safe. It's like puberty blockers were the compromise position, right, And this is something that I think has been lost in a lot of debate about this, because you know, we've gotten to the point where everything is being banned, but puberty blockers, you know, we're a compromise position because you could give people puberty blockers without like actually giving trans kids to hormones that they need, and even that, you know, we're at a

point where stare full on banning kids from getting them. This sucks, It's awful. It is killing trans kids. Um. Mississippi also has a band. One of the other things about this specific one and not not all the states are doing it do this, but the specific bill also bans state money from going to any institution that practices

like does like gender form for minors. They also have an anti sports law, so you can, you know, you can see the sort of like how how the dominoes went down in terms of, like, I sorry, you can see how the dominoes fell down in terms of where it started and where it was going right for at first you get your anti bathroom long and then you you get your sort of like keep trans people out of sports, and then the yeah, yeah, so I will also has a band that's you know, but basically identical

identical ban on hormone, gender firming surgery and puberty blockers. They also passed to build bands trans kids from using bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender and elementary, middle and high schools and I want to talk a little bit about this, because this is going to lead to kids getting fucking raped, because it turns out if you force a trans girl into a men's locker room, things are going to go real fucking bad for them. They don't give a shit about this, right, They simply

do not care. Um. But that's you know that that that's that that that's the actual substantive results. Um. I will also pass. I've seen it variously refers to as like I don't say trans or like I don't say LGBTQ plus bill. This is a bill that prohibits teachers who teach either from kindergarteners through sixth grade from teaching about transniss like at all. You can't teach about gender. You can't teach about like sex. You can't teach about you know, you can't teach about the fact that you can,

in fact change your gender and it's good and cool. Um. The Human Rights Campaign says quote. This bill would also prohibit schools from providing to refer me accommodations for transgender students without parental consent, and would require school staff to out transgender students. Um. So I read this bill and it's not clear to me how it requires that. But that's what the lawyers are saying, and I'm not a lawyer,

so it may or may not require that. This is another thing, very specifically, this isn't everything that that that's been happening in the sort of newer waves of these laws are laws that specifically require school counselors, teachers, and school staff to out their kids, like to out kids to their parents, which is unbelievably dangerous. Un in the last few years alone, there have been a bunch of

trans people who are just killed by their parents. And you know, forcibly adding people is like you're you're you're exposing them to the risk of abuse, You're exposing them to the risk of unsafe housing environments. No, it's just a little soft whack by your grandma, I remember, just a little a little tap on the head. Yeah, yeah,

I was gonna fucking beat you to death. So these bills in Iowa have been and passed by the House in the Senate and they're just like they're just like sitting on a desk winning for the government to sign them, and the governor's going to so yeah, that's that's the situation Iowa. In Arkansas, you have the hormone puberty blockers, gender firming surgery ban. The Arkansas one is on hold because you know, and this is a this is true for a couple of these, is that people have done

legal challenges on it. And yeah, our Arkansas particulars had a huge legal fight. We still don't know how that's I mean, the legal fights are going on for like a year. We still haven't gotten ruling on it yet. They also have a ban on transgids competing in sports. Alabama made it a Class C felony punishable by up to a decade in prison. To give trench gender kids hormones,

puberty blockers, gender affirming surgery. This was also interesting because it's the only built so most of these ones when they do when they say minors, right, it's until you're eighteen. You can't get it for whatever reason. Alabama. It also bans eighteen year olds from getting any of these things.

You just have to be nineteen. Yeah. Part part of the bill, you know about hormone blockers, So okay, So specifically the part of the parts of this bill that are about hormones and hormone blockers are on hold pending sort of resolution to legal challenges, but the judge was like, fuck it, you can do the surgery band. So that sucks.

Um Alabama also has bills that you know, have the whole trans kids in schools can't use the right bathroom and you know, teachers, counselors and other school officials have to out them. They also have another Dosa trans bill that does a very similar thing about bands teachers from talking about transit until fifth grade. I think a lot of these bills are written by like lobbying groups who just and paced the same thing and see a whole

bunch of different states. I will say there are weird differences in them, like so you'll see like different completely scatter shot like definitions of what hormones are, or like like some somebody's bills trying to find what a woman is. And it's very funny because they have to like do all this weird stuff about like like clusters of like chromosomes, but also there's like chromosomal diseases, Like you can't do this,

like a fuck off. It's it's so funny. We should also mention that, like there will be more reporting on this later. This bill. This episode is already too long, but there have been a bunch of emails released from a bunch of anti trans sort of organizers and fake scientists and stuff about how they've been coordinating all of this, and a lot of the experts that they use for testimony for all they show up to these capitals are

like are exactly the same people. And the big guy they have saying that puberty blockers is unsafe like has never worked with a trans person in their life and has no fucking idea what they're talking about. So you know, this is this is this is fun Utah also bands also passed a band banning gender affirming surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormones. They also have a band I also have a bill forcing students and counselors to out their students

to their families. Last year, you take Governor Spencer Cox was praised by the media for a symbolic veto of a bill that made it illegal for trans students to compete in sports. Cox signed this fucking bill, signed, signed, the one signed, the one that bands of gender affirming surgeries, beauty blockers, and hormones. Yeah. I think we talked about this last year. Yeah, I want to we had we talked about some Utah thing last Yeah, well we talked. Yeah,

the thing we talked about was him vetoing that bill. Um, I want to read his thing for why why he packed? Why so he vetoed the bill that was less bad and signed the one that's worse. And I'm gonna read what he said about this quote. Well, we understand our words will be of little comfort to those who disagree with us. We sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures.

Fuck off, Fuck all the way off. He's trying to avoid the Nurembug trials. Look As a as a neutral objective journalist, I'm obligated to inform me that Spencer Cox was a full time missionary from the Mormon Church, which is currently embroiled in a pedophilius gandal. Lefter is revealed to have systematically protected church members and members of the clergy who sexually abused children from church sanctions and legal repercussions.

Under Utah law, clergy have the right of penitent privilege, which means they are not required to report child abuse to the authorities as long as the information is revealed during confession. Both the Mormon and Catholic churches, along with Jehovah's witnesses, have lobbied against all efforts have changed this law. Earlier this month, survivors of the Mormon Church rallied in support of a bill that would have ended penitent privilege.

Governor Cox publicly announced his support for the bill being considered in the legislature, but did nothing to pressure legislators to vote for and as of time of recording, the bill is dead, leaving the church free to protect yet another route of pedophiles. Also, his name is Cox. Yeah, so South Dakota also, I did I could do this for every fucking governor on this list, and I decided I was going to do it once and not do it for all the rest of them, but fuck them.

South Dakota has a sports bill. They also have a ban on puberty blockers, hormones, genderate firming surgery. Arizona has an anti bathroom bill. Tennessee has a sports ban. It has the basically identical ban on puberty blockers, hormones, and gender firming surgery, and it also has this. It also has what's been kind of a new innovation. I guess

which is the anti they have an anti drag law. Yes, this is the one that's gotten the most amount attraction and has sparked some debate over how much of it can actually be applied against just trans people living their lives because it is tied to the state's pre existing obscenity laws. So there's been some debate about this. We will, we will. We will learn more about this as it starts being enforced by law enforcement and the court system. Yeah,

I want to talk about it. It's not good. Like, Yeah, I want to talk about it a little bit more so the specific bill it makes it illegal for anyone to be underage and a drag show. And you know, it basically applies like the rules around the sex offender list for where you can have drag shows. So Governor William Brian Lee, who signed this bill did drag in

high school, which I'm saying. No, I'm saying here not to point out the hypocrisy, like Governor Lee doesn't see anything any hypocrisy here, but to get across the fact the Republicans who want to do this stuff will still be able to. This bill will targeted a very very specific group of people. As Jules gil Peterson points out in your piece the left Hand to the Law, which people should go read, this is an attack on a very specific, precarious class of workers, many of whom are trans,

some of whom aren't, who do drag performances. This is this is it's it's a very specific attempt to sort of like neutralize, Okay, it's targeting this very specific middle ground between sort of like being in the formal economy and do sex work. They're an enormous amount of trans people who do sex work. Drag shows provide a way to sort of like not exactly enter the middle class, but it provides a legal way for trans people to like have a job that's not fucking that and those

and those workers are specifically the people being targeted by this. Weirdly, I don't know. The other thing that's unclear is, for example, like if a podcast does a live show where there's trans people, like, what will happen? We don't know. But the other thing I want to say about this, right

is everyone's talking about this fucking drag bill. I have seen like basically zero discussion of the of the fact that they also past the same fucking ban on puberty blockers, tormones, and gender affirming surgery, which is way way more destructive and damaging. It's like but directly attacking. Yeah, so I think I want to push back about the like, yeah, like what you're talking about about, like what will happen if you do a live show? Like what will happen?

Because to trans people who live in these states. The state I live in as a red state, well it's not supposed to be, but as a red state, and you know, is considering a drag bill and things like that. And I recognize that they're like aimed, they're targeted specifically at drag performances, but there's a fairly easy interpretation of a lot of these things that literally says I can't go to the grocery store. And that is how like a lot of trans people in Tennessee are viewing this

right now. And so I don't think it's a disproportionate thing that the drag bill is something that a lot of people are focusing on. I mean, we all care also about the hormone issues or whatever, but the Tennessee passing the drag law that other states are considering is

a new bad thing that could criminalize our very public existence. Yeah, that is part of the kind of discussion around this laws ties to the pre existing obscenity laws, and that will heavily depend on the discretion that law enforcement chooses to employ this law, and if it gets taken up to the court system, how the court's going to interpret this law. So it is like the vagueness is part of the point because that causes a lot of fear because you really just don't know what it all entails.

And yeah, that's fucking weird because you don't know if you going to the store is going to be a felony or not, And how are you supposed to live like that? Yeah, and it I don't know. The sort of pervasive atmosphere of fear is definitely like part of the point of this, right, Like part of the way the sort of extermination campaign works is by forcing everyone to sort of live in fear of what they can and can't do, and also live in fear specifically of

the police increasing the amount of violence that they're deploying. Yeah, I mean, and all the stuff like we talked about, they're specifically targeting people's ability to exist in a public life, which is whenever you want to do a genocide, that's one of the things you do is you make people unable to exist in public life. This is literally what the Nazis did, right, Like you section them off into their own little communities where they cannot actually leave and

enter into the outside world. Yep. So, so far as of writing this, there are seven states with bands on gender, firm and care for Youth. I was about to become number eight whenever the governor gets round as signing the bill. There are nineteen states that ban transathletes from competing. There are a number of states. Oh so other st forgot much So there's like literally while I was like, while I was like waiting to record this episode, there were

a few things that happened in like the legislature. So in Florida, there was a bill that got just got out of committee that would ban LGBTQ books like in all libraries, not just sort of school libraries. So I don't know that that actually has a real chance of passing because it's Florida. There's a lot of movement right now.

The situation is very very sort of fluid and bad. Yes, yeah, how I would say it it is, I think one closing note, I will save my kind of my ending thesis to start the next episode, just because we're going on so long here. But the last thing I will say is I be wary of social media accounts that depend on ramping up and spreading panic to grow their follower accounts. Typically news news aggregation accounts are not the best source of information because their existence is entirely dependent

on causing panic. So like look into the things like beyond just a tweet, Like look into stuff before before you spread it, just as like a general rule of thumb. I'm not calling anybody out here in any way, I'm just saying it. It is a good practice to get into, especially when we're looking into stuff that is about our very existence being criminalized, and that can be very depressing and it can suck to be constantly bombarded with. So it's good to stayed to stuff that's going on in

your own state. It's good to state connected to bills that have a decent trans of passing. But but be wary of of of of undo panic spreading just constantly, NonStop, because a big part of being trends needs to also be like finding joy in living Yeah, And I think I think the very last thing I want to say don't lead into this next episode is we're not fucking done yet. We are still here. We're going to continue

to be here. We are going to kick these people's fucking shit in and we are going to fight them for every fucking inch and they are going to lose. And next episode is going to be us talking about how you can start doing that. Oh boy, welcome to It could happen here, and it sure do feel like it's happening, don't it. M thank for surviving that last long, excruciating episode full of basically just like a bunch of hate speech that we were trying to be like, Hey,

doesn't this look like hate speech? This is bad. Maybe platforms like Spotify, YouTube other podcast hosting platforms that I am somehow forgetting the name of, but perhaps they shouldn't be hosting all of this Daily Wire content that is explicitly calling for genocide. Anyway, I think it is interesting what the Daily Wire is trying to do here because they obviously saw what is a woman? The documentary, the quote unquote documentary by Matt Walsh last year get incredible

traction online and boost their subscription service. So now they're they're they're doubling dead on this because this is how they're gonna try to make content, and they are trying out as many rhetorical styles and arguments as possible just

to see what sticks. Like it really feels like they're just doing like the shotgun method of like throwing every single possible reason that turns people are ikey up against the wall and seeing which one like catches on, like they're doing, they're doing a band and transgenderism entirely, what is a woman? Groomers? They can't be genocided because they

don't exist. Attacking transgenderism as a cover for trans people. Right, So it's all these all these various various tactics, all these different rhetorical strategies, calling them demonic, it's it's it's it's very much trying to be like if we, if we, if we throw up as much stuff as possible attacking and demonizing trans people. Some of these trends will catch on online, right, some of these will will catch on,

will be spread to legislators. Eventually something will stick. And that that is that is very much the tactic that they are trying to use. And I think this is a point I wanted to make last episode, but I think it's still it's it's it's useful to hear now kind of in retrospect everything all of the like extremism that you heard in in the last episode, all of these like very very fascist talking points. This is what conservatism is now, right, Like, this is the mainstream new right.

Sure you can call it fascist because by definition it is, but sometimes that term fascist or fascism it carries with it this false sense of foreignness. It has like this, it has like this displacement in the time right. Most people view fascism as something that happens elsewhere or something that happened in the past. By by by just referring to this stuff as fascist, it creates a distance in

people's minds. This this this like um exotic improbability. But this stuff is like the mainstream conservative platform that the up and coming leaders of the conservative movement are trying to normalize. That this was like the main talking point at CEPAC, which is like the biggest conservative convention in

the entire country. It is this stuff is is what the conservative platform is now, and I think it is It is just as it's important to emphasize that this is what the modern conservative mainstream is, and it is it is. It is just as important to say that as it is to tie it and tie this rhetoric to the history of fascism, because the Overton window is

certainly accelerating. Right, Like, this thing can both be heavily steeped in the history of fascist rhetoric and also be like the new up and coming version of the conservative right that the Daily Wire and its allies are trying to normalize. And I just think that is, that is something that I that I am trying to focus on a little bit more when I when I'm doing my

writing and my research in these topics. Um is that we often will use terms like fascist because these things are are are pretty fascist, and I want to make sure that doesn't like create this false distance in people's in people's minds when they when they think about these bills, when they and when they think about this rhetoric. Yeah, and I and I think I think the way in which this is simply what the modern right is demands a different kind of response than a lot of what

we've been seeing so far. Yeah, you can't simply try to catch them in their contradictions. You can't simply catch them in their hypocrisy. Every every tactic that liberals tried to use against Trump in the lead up to his election, and even Republicans try to use those tactics aren't going to be successful here because they weren't successful back then. Like you can't, you can't like outthink them in that

in that way. Well, but the reason that you like when you when you call out, say the governor of Tennessee or lieutenant governor or whatever Tennessee for about his hypocrisy and how addressed and dragon stuff, it's not that. The thing that that does to defend it a little bit to that calling out is it doesn't make his supporters, It doesn't change his mind, It doesn't expose him as a hypocrite to his base, but it does expose him

as a hypocrite to his enemies. UM, and I think it is worth understanding that are the people who have declared us their enemies. It's worth understanding that they are not like UM more worally consistent actors. You know, it is worth understanding that they don't believe the things they are saying. A lot of their base does. But so I actually do think that there is a point. Um,

all of the shit talk on Trump or whatever. UM, I think might be part of how Trump didn't get elected again is because he as he got more and more defensive, he looked more and more ridiculous, not to his base, but to uh to the middle, which is basically the Democrats at this point. Yeah, it was able to recruit like a growing moderate oppositional force, which was what beat Trump. Trump was not beaten because people liked Biden.

He was beaten because they didn't like Trump. And I think you are you are right in having that that is a point to focus on. Um. I think it's it's important to mention that like fascists do not believe in the absurdity of what they say, um, it is that that is not necessary to maintain fascism. Yeah, and I think I think so. The position we're at right now is a very very strange one for the left, which is that we're in a position where, you know, when when when the Republicans tried to run on this

shit in in twenty twenty two, they got destroyed. Right, this is actually have mass popularity. This is what I wanted to talk about next I have this is this is the very last section I have written is on this topic, because yeah, this off putting focus on like a genocide and like the culture war stuff seemed to hurt conservatives in the last election cycle ended, and yet

again there they are. They are still doubling down on it. Um. Voters in some of swing states were turned off by the focus on the regression of queer rights instead of like actually addressing material conditions. This strategy, though, is a

core concept of the fascist project right. Instead of addressing material conditions under capitalism to improve people's lives, right wing populists will conjure up this culture war bilgie Man to blame all of like society's problems on and to to talk about the social war that is contributing to degeneracy. I also think that they're winning, unfortunately not winning in a broader sense, but in terms of um, yes, this is a very unpopular issue that they're doubling down on.

But I think that, um, you know, I've I've seen studies where like a higher percentage of the US population supports anti trans stuff than did two years ago. It's still a minority thing to hate trans people, but it is a growing minority. Um. Yes, which is why, like we're talking about how in a lot of ways it's easier to be trans in twenty fifteen than it is now. Um And And kind of on that point, I'm going

to play the very final clip of Michael Knowles. We will never have to hear his voice again, hopefully his annoying little voice. UM. But I'm I'm gonna play a bit of a longer clip from him. Um. And this is from his initial like band Transgenderism entire early rant. And I'm only going to play this because he actually makes a point that we ourselves have made before when discussing this topic. The conservative right is desperately trying to

play catch up. Right, Us who believe in like liberation and freedom have been winning historically, and the rights getting very scared and desperate. So in response, they're introducing all of these bills, right, and they're accelerating these types of eliminationist rhetoric. But in this clip, Michael Knowles provides us with our pathway to victory. We cannot simply hold our ground on these issues. We have to keep pushing forward.

Because as long as we keep going forward and get on the offense, the right will be stuck playing a catch up forever. And it reminds us of a truth and politics that Republicans all too often forget. You're either on offense or you're on defense. You're either making gains in the culture or you're losing ground in the culture. There's no standing still, there's no status quo, there's no neutrality.

And what the Conservatives have screwed up on for at least fifty years now, probably more, is the Libs make some crazy aggressive play and then we try to dial it back by about five to ten percent, or worse, we try to slow it down by about five to ten percent. So the Libs attack the family through feminism, the fundamental political institution. They claim that men and women are basically the same. That takes the culture pretty far

to the left. And then Conservatives try to try to inch it back a little bit, but not by the time they're even thinking about inching it back, the Libs push forward with the normalization of other sexual practices. They agree with this, and then by the time the Conservatives are trying to dial all that back, they've lurched much further to the left. They're trying to redefine marriage. Now they're saying redefine marriage. Well, I don't know. I guess we could come to some kind of terms with a

civil union. And by the time you say that, they've lurched even further to the left. Now they're saying, actually, we've got transgenderism. She Now a man can become a woman, a man can become a woman. Okay, but but maybe we shouldn't do it till mind. By the time we say that, oh my gosh, we're now we're all the way off the screen because now they're trying to train

as the kids. And there are many conservatives never were saying, Look, if you want, if you're a man and you want to put on address, that's fine, but just don't do it to children. Just don't make me pay for it. No, that is such an interesting little cliff. No, I mean it's funny because this is like kind of this is what I've been saying for a long time, since about twenty fifteen or so, like looking at the rise all this shit and you know, Trump and all that is

that we were winning. Culturally, I hate the word culture war now means something different. It means arguing about guns or whatever. But like we were winning on a cultural front very dramatically, and like I would point to Stephen Universe as the evidence that we are winning, right, you know. And then they basically had to play to their strengths. And he's talking about He's like, look, the it's funny that so much this is happening on a cultural front

because it is not a conservative strength. They have some cards in their hand when it comes to cultural stuff, you know, the antimidarity stuff when it does weird, anti semitic, you know, almost anti capitalism or whatever. That's like a strong card they like pulling out all the time. But conservatives overall are not very good at the cultural thing. But they're good at is politics and violence. And so they're playing to their immediate strengths as hard and fast

as they can because they're on their back foot. Yeah, no, they are. They they're defaulting to advocating physical violence and enforcing their worldview with violence and advocate and doing stuff on like the political legislative front because they've realized just

screaming about transpeople isn't enough. They have to actually start dedicating millions and millions and millions of dollars to pushing these through state legislative cycles, which is why The Daily Wire has su spent the past month and a half harping on this so hard as the legislative cycle for

twenty twenty three is starting to like ramp up. Yeah, And I think there's another thing here, which is the sort of fundamental disparity, you know, the fact that they've chosen this front, right, there's a fundamental disparity in what

they have to do versus what we have to do. Right, and and this this, this is a giant sort of shift in a way that I don't think has we don't I don't think the left really has much experience with right, which is like, the thing that is happening in the US right now is that we are the silent majority, Like this is this is true when when like consistently over and over again, when you when you look at polling on these issues, right, like just regular

people are like, what the fuck are you guys doing? Right? The problem is that you know, we haven't those people haven't been mobilized. And you know, it doesn't matter if you're a majority as long as these sort of like you know, because because again, like who the actual majority is in the us or like who actually what what what actual regular people believe has very very little impact on the kinds of policies that are that are that

are sort of enacted. But you know, but there's a second sort of issue here, right, which is the conservatives have like, because of the fact that we are, right now, the sort of silent majority that we have a kind of I guess you know, the gramsyan thing would be like hegemony, right, but like we have we have an advantage in just how average people behave. Right, they have

to kill us, they have to fucking kill us. They have to make it illegal for us to exist, and they could do this right there, there is a there is a real there is a real possibility that they can win. Right. They are winning on this rent right now. This is this is what they are you know, in the places where they have power. This is what they are doing. All we really have to do is survive.

Because if if we survive and we're able to stop them, you know, I mean, even if we don't get sort of like Argentina style, like we're gonna have like like hiring mandates for trans people, right, Like, even if we just hold the ground that we already have, we will win inevitably, right, like the sort of march of where of where the culture has been going will favor us. Trans people will be able to sort of exist in public. Trans people will be able to survive unless they kill

us right now. And that's that's that's sort of that's the sort of the key thing that that Knowles has realized, right, is that this is the critical moments where either we win and we interns people get to continue our lives, or they kill us. I would argue that it's not just kill us. I think that even though we're listening to all this exterminationist rhetoric, I think that the odds are that most of these people don't actually envision a future where they're like rounding us up and putting us

in camps and gassing us. I think that overall, it's a drive back into the closet. I actually I actually take them at their word that they want to destroy transgenderism, and if transgender people have to die along the way, that's on us. But if we, you know, put on appropriate clothing and shut the fuck up, like, I actually think that that would suit them just fine. So I actually think they have to kill transgenderism. I think that's true now, but I don't know how true that is

as they keep actually having to implement there. They don't think being trans actually exists though, right like they they think it just is people doing these things. So as long as trans people are able to, for one, maybe even not even realize their trans to like repress that and just live their lives as if they were as this person, that that that is all that that that's what conservatives think trans people already are. And I think

that that is a large part. That is a large large part of it is making us just not able to be trans in public life at all in any capacity. I think that's true, but I don't. I don't think they can. I don't think their political path allows them

to maintain that position. Like I don't. I don't think they can, Like I like, you know what, one of one of the things that's happening with with right right now is they're they're they're they're doing those feedback right where they get you know, like like where where they're they're sort of media people right or are continuously radicalized

by their base, and their base radicalizes them back. And I don't I don't think they can maintain an equlibrium position that doesn't involve like we have to hunt all these people down to make sure they don't go after our kids. Like I know, I don't don't think they're gonna I don't think they're doing that now. I don't think they're planning that now. But it's it's I don't know how they can keep up this cycle without eventually getting to something like that. Well it's worth, it's worth

being prepared for that type of possibility. But the kind of thing that I feel like, really strongly about with all of this is to like really not like the sky is falling, but it's not falling the way that

we sometimes say it is. And and when we say this guy is falling in a way that people look around they're like, oh, just know how this guy is falling to me, then people get like, well, actually, I think you all are being hyperbolic, right, yes, And and so I think that we do need to be really clear that they are open to the possibility of mass murdering us, and they are actively discussing individual acts of

violence being very justified against us. But currently I believe the thing that they are trying to do is eradicate the concept of being trans as a thing you can do in American society. And of course, like there's a lot of people who believe in death before detransition, and all fucking power to I don't even know where I fall in all this shit. I'm not trying to. I literally don't want to opine about it because I don't want to give anyone. I don't want to tell anyone

to do about that shit. Right, Everyone makes their own decisions about closeting not closeting based on their own positions, you know. But I think we do have to be like careful about it. And I think one of the reasons is because, from my point of view, they have picked trans people not because they care so much about us,

but because we're a wedge issue. You know. We saw this in like actually I don't want to name them because I don't want to get or whatever, like different large coalitions of LGBT people were perfectly willing to drop the T twenty years ago if in order to get certain like equal rights ship passed. They just like straight up like trans people did all this fucking work organizing for this ship. As soon as it got to like higher up level in the government. They were like, oh,

trans people, that's gonna be a problem. We're gonna take them off of their right and you know, and because we are a wedge issue, and we always have been, and I think the Nazis used us in a very similar way. But even within US, there's trans sorry, there's wedge issues within that. And so sports was the first wedge issue. I actually believe I was reading this earlier, but I wasn't reading it for this, so I didn't

take notes. I believe that the majority of Americans do not believe that trans people should be able to compete in high school sports based on their preferred gender. I'm under the impression that is minority position to be trans supportive of trans athletes in school. And so that is the wedge issue that they used to open up this divide in order to then come at us. But we're

still just a wedge issue. And one of the reasons I think it's so important for people to understand us as a wedge issue is so that people understand, like really clearly that they are not fucking stopping with us. You know, this is like absolutely about like you can hear it, and that guy talking because one of the other things he's talking about is he's talking about like women need to get back in the kitchen and be

obedient to their husbands and shit. And one of the reasons that trans people scare them so much is because we like, like it's so funny because like largely, by and large, like trans men are left out of this discussion and trans women are seeing these like evil monsters or whatever. Right, but trans men are absolutely part of it because massive threat. Absolutely because it's stealing women from them. It is stealing their fucking wives that they want to have.

They want to fucking own women, and like so they

can't handle the idea of anyway whatever. I know a lot of a lot of the things they get so mad about is when they see a young transgai on TikTok and they're like, look, sorry, this is going to be like gross, but like, look at this potentially beautiful woman who's now been ruined, like just horrible, horrible, horrible, right, But that is but we have so many grown men, like thirsting over fourteen year old like a fab people who are who are deciding that hey, maybe I want

to start HRT, maybe I want to use different pronouns maybe I want to have a binder and this They get so so mad at that. And I think a big part of not not simply I think, I think it is truly not enough just to hold our ground. We have to keep going forward. And a big part of that is having more intersectionality with transmasculine people. A big part of that is having a much much more of a focus on gender not nonconforming people and non binary people. Um. Because we have we have to keep

pushing it forward. We cannot simply hold our ground on this because if if we simply hold our ground, they can pull out the rug from from under us. UM. So I think that is that is that is a massive part of this, and I think I do believe

that we will win. I fundamentally do because if you look at if you look at like the rights of which young people zoomers and even the generation younger than zoobers, I do not know what they're called, um, but if you look at the amount of amount of us who are who who self identify us non binary, trans or gender nonconforming, it is so much bigger than any previous generation people. Once people experience a form of freedom, it

is hard to take that freedom away. There are so many people who are entering their teens and are realizing they can be so much more free and they don't need to be limited to these weird, draconian like dualistic notions of gender. And that's amazing. If you look at a whole new wave of like actors and actresses and people in the entertainment industry, almost all of our non binary, like the person who plays Ellie in the in the Last of Us is transum. I believe they identify trans

non binary or some of them of gender queer. But this sort of play Ellie like that too anyway, I just like absolutely, but this is something that that keeps happening. We are going to win this because there's so many of us and we know that it rules to exist like this, and we're not going to let them take it away. And I think that that is a big part of not only standing our ground, but continuing to move forward with the confidence that we will win in the long run. Yeah, and I think that we can.

And I think that like a lot of the stuff, including myself, right, Um, I'm famously armed. I'm someone who you know, believes in self defense and in all of these things, right, Um, But I think that we always need to like focus on our strengths when it comes to being especially on the offense, right. And so when I think about like strategizing how do we win, the stuff that you're talking about about staying on the offensive

makes so much sense. And I think that, to misquote the art of war, you attack your enemy where they are weak and you are strong, you know, and so like, and they are weak at cultural creation and I don't mean culture wars and culture war issues like art like creativity. Yeah, and so like we win because we say because our ideas are good, and when we express them, people are like, oh that sounds sick. I want to be free, right yeah. Um. Now, at the same time, we need to shore up our weaknesses.

And I think our weaknesses at the moment are in the political sphere, which we're at on a back We're on the back foot right now because of all the I guess I don't track this stuff as much, but like all the judges and shit that got put in under Trump, and we are also not at our strongest. I'm not trying to call us weak here, but like far few of us, few of us are like weird gun nuts and like no, you know, militant strategy protect e type people. And I we've seen us shoring up

that weakness and that rules. But I think it's always important. Maybe not always, maybe there would be a time when this would shift, But overall, I don't think that's our strength. That's not where we go on the offense. That is where we stay, like protecting ourselves. Yes, and no. DREG defense like DREG defense, square defense that has defense in the name, exactly, It is crucially important, exactly. It also

terrifies the fascist right. The fact the fact that like like that one one hundred and forty pound twink can carry an AAR and defend a DREG show terrifies fascists. It utterly destroys their brains. You know. For sequalizations a hell of a thing. Sorry, buddy, The trigger pole is two and a half pounds. Yeah, you know what else is a four key force equalizer, the force of advertising and pole arms. As as long as we don't have an ad for a rabbit air who has an office

in Pasadena, California, I'm fine. So I think if you've listened to the show a lot, they're they're One of the sort of sub themes of a lot of the writing that I do is thinking about what we owe the dead. And on the face of it, it's a sort of nonsensical question. Right, you can't have any kind of reciprocal relationship with someone who's dead, because well, you know,

they're dead. And this question, this question of what we owe the dead is a question board of grief, of a kind of sort of raw and immaculate anguish that comes to the memory of people who are like you in every way except that you're here and they're not. And this was written, you know, this is written seven weeks ago. The people this is written for aren't even the same people that you know, that that that like

that that is for now. Right, the question, in some sense becomes, what do we owe the people who have died and were thus denied to live, that denied the chance to live the lives that we do You know what, what do we owe them? What do we owe these people that we failed to keep alive? And this has an answer, this has this has a very very definite political answer. We owe them the destruction of the world

that killed them. We owe them a future that we owe them the future that they should have had, and we owe them, we owe them a world where they never take another one of this another one of us. Again, the world is already fucking burning. It is time to

start the counterfire now. One of one of the things that you that you will hear a lot, and this, this is, this has been, this has been one of the sort of dominant responses, for better or for worse, from how people are thinking about these laws is that these laws, you know, these anti trans laws are unconstitutional and that does not matter. That does not matter for shit, right like, oh, oh, our old friend the Constitution. Ha,

Like I just, I just I need. I need everyone to understand that the ability of the Supreme Court to strike down a law is not in the Constitution. None of this ship matters. They're making all of it up. The only thing that actually matters is power. And to understand why the law is about power and you know, and and why legality is not actually a tool that we can rely on. I want to I want to

tell the story. I'm not sure if I've told this story on on this on this podcast before, but I want to tell the story of the worst mistake I ever made as an activist. So the year is two thousand. In seventeen, Donald Trump's Executive Order one three seven six nine, locally known as the Muslim Ban, has prevented people from Iran, Iraq with whore they drop a rock, later Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria,

and Yemen from entering the country. Now, almost immediately after the Muslim Ban is announced, um there is a spontaneous wave of airport occupations that sweeps the country. And these protests have two goals. Their immediate goal is to free the people who have been taking captive by immigration authorities before they can be deported, and the second goal is to end the Muslim band more broadly. This was this was actually my this was my first Irrell direct action.

I you know, I remember I was in this train car on the Blue Line to O'Hare, which is our airport in Chicago. And you know, I'm on this train and it's packed and everyone is completely silent, and you know, everyone thinks people are going to get off, but as we get to this airport, lies that the entire train is completely full of protesters. Like everyone on there's a protester. And it goes on and on and on, and we get off the train, right and we're walking through the airport.

And the way this airport is structured is there's like this overpass that you walk over where you can see the trains coming in and every single train is full of protesters. And the trains keep coming and they keep coming and they keep coming, and you know, every everyone and every time a train shows up, everyone starts cheering and it is like it is, you know, one of the most amazing things I've ever been a part of.

And you know, and we we start moving and there are just you know, this is a fucking this is an airport, right, Like, this is one of the most heavily policed places in the world. There are not enough cops to stop us. And you know, they make this one token attempt to try to clear us, and they can't do it, and they pull back and now we are holding the airport, and we do it. We reat them,

We win. The airport releases the detainees they've been they've been negotiating with the a CLU, the ASU have been trying to get me released. And the person from the person from the ASLU, like God, comes on the mic and announced that they've they've released everyone and everyone chairs, and then and then the person on the ALU personal and the mic says they're going to beat the Muslim band in court, and everyone goes home. It takes a few hours, but by the end of it, everyone goes home.

And here's the thing. The ACLU several years later lost that case at the Dream Court. The Muslim band continued the entire fucking Trump administration. Right, it wasn't repealed until Biden took office. We could have stopped it there, right, we held that fucking airport. Airports across the country and fucking like dozens and dozens of states were being held by protesters, and we could have stopped them. But we didn't,

and we didn't because we trusted the courts. Right we went home, we trusted the SLU, and they lost because again, the law is not about the law. The law is about power, and millions of people suffered the consequences of that. And this is what's going to happen if we if we leave this fight to the courts, either either we actually sort of like stand up and actually fight not in the courtroom, but in the streets, in schools, in salons and shop floors, in the places where we have

power or we are going to die. That is my intro to this, which is that we cannot we literally like, if we try to leave this to the people who have been acting right now, right, if if we leave this electorialists, if we leave this to sort of legal institutions, and if we purely fight self defense battles, we are going to lose. Yeah. So the question from there is how do we hit them back? And the thing that I specifically wanted to talk about first is I wanted

to talk about this thing called power mapping. Now, Okay, the moment, the moment you say that we're in map around leftists, people immediately start talking about how the map is not the terrain. And that's true, true, the map is not the terrain. They're different things, don't both are useful? Yeah, yeah, you still a map when your hiking, even though it's not. Actually, that's spash the maps. Spash the maps. Situation is practice walk around the city without a map, but mess up

the maps. It sabotage the mass. Yeah, don't walk through the forest about a fucking map. Forest is dispassionate and cruel and will kill you. So all right, So what is power mapping? So there there is a normal version.

There is a version of this that gets you know, it's it's part of sort of like what I guess you would call like the liberal version of organizer training one on one, which is this like pure NGEO thing, which is you know, I guess you could you could argue it's from like a lins like like from Salo Lynsky or whatever the fuck. Um And and this this version about it is this version is about finding and pressuring quote unquote stakeholders. This is almost completely useless to us.

It's largely politically bankrupt and tactically it is simply not going to work. Right, Like, there is some value in mapping out which specific like legislators and which specific governors are going to like sign bills, right Yeah, but like okay, NGO style pressure campaigns are not going to stop this

is this is simply not going to work. Um. And the strategies that people have been employing to sort of stop this, right which is you know, relying on our suffering and our pain and relying on medical expertise that that doesn't that doesn't work. It's weigh them a lack of diversity of tactics. Yeah, the only language people understand is power. So Okay, having said all this, we can strategically use other groups like NGOs or sympathetic lawmakers to

do their own pressure campaigns. But that that that is not what I'm talking about here. We can leave. We can leave those people in their terrain they're paid to

do it. Don't get sucked up into it. But you know, and I will say, like, okay, sometimes very strategically right, like you can you can show up to people's events and embarrass them because you know who they are and what they're doing, and that that that can be useful sometimes, like I I you know, I sci shame can be can be a useful tactics sometimes, yeah, like I know, I know people who've done union campaigns were like things have turned around when they like showed up to like

some NGEO person's fund raiser and they're like, hey, you guys aren't paying us, and they're like everyone was like, oh my god, but you know what what what what? What are we? What are we actually doing here? And what what? What? What? What? What I'm specifically talking about is powermapping in the context of direct action and in the context a sort of offensive direct action and when when you're thinking about power mapping. Here there's two kinds

of mappings that are useful. One is physical mapping, and this is something that people don't do enough. I don't know why they don't do this more. But first of one of one of the things that made the Hong Kong protest work is that Hong Kong had really really detailed maps, right they were you know, they they had apps for this that were very very detailed maps of

Hong Kong city streets. They would map where the police swear, they would map where the police were moving to, they would map where protesters were and you know, obviously there are sort of security and tactical considerations to this, but if we know the terrain better than the police do, we can do a lot of things. This is this is something that people are successfully employing in the city

of Atlanta, yep, yep. And anyway, I mean this, this, this, this is the thing where we have we actually do have an a legitimate advantage in in large cities, which is that like the cops who are in large cities are not from like those those cities, right you know, And and I think I think we squander this advantage a lot By just like like in fucking Chicago, there's this one plaza right like pretty close to Trump Tower

where every single protest starts. And that's like it's in the middle of fucking downtown, So I guess people sort of know the way around there, but like I fuck nobody, like nobody lives there who doesn't make like fucking seven hundred thousand dollars a year, right, Like you're you're you're

kind of squandering whatever tactical advantage you haven't. Also, you know, and and and another sort of another reason to do mapping and stuff is so you know, you can you can plan things out ahead of time, Right, you can plan out where your lines of retreat are. You can figure out where choke points are so you don't get kettled, a thing that like I swear to God, no one who arranges the protest in the US fucking ever does.

Like I mean, I know some people do it, but like Jesus Christ, you can you can figure out on a map where you're gonna get kettled, Like you can do this, yeah, and you know, and you can do other things too with maps, right, you can you can figure out where the locations are of infrastructure that is particularly vulnerable, you can figure out what roads will will cause the maximum a matter of sort of economic damage if you shut them down, you can figure you know,

you can figure out things like can you learn the police into places where they can't use their numbers very well? Right? Can you spread them out over one hundred different areas and neutralize their effectiveness? And this is a kind of These are the kind of terms that we need to be thinking thinking about in terms and when when when we're physically mapping and physically trying to understand an area, which is that we need to be thinking in very direct,

tactical terms. We need to figure out what kind of places you know? And this also this also works defensively, right, we need to be figuring out you know, okay, so we have a drag show that's under attack, right, we need we need to figure out what kinds of places if people are attacking, we need to figure out how

we can defend them. And we need to be thinking again not not just like showing up to a place and being like, okay, we're hearing these people across the street, right, like before that happens, and be like before a protest, stars before an actually starts. There needs to be like work put in to make sure that what we're that the actions that we're doing are effective, are as effective as possible, so that that's that. Yeah, that that that that that that's that's one part of this kind of

mapping stuff. You know, if if if you if you

want more sort of inspiration for this stuff. There's a bunch of uh, oh my god, I'm not forgetting the name of every book I puble should have actually written the books in here, but they're they're that you can some of the some of the Italian Autonomous will talk about this stuff and they have all of these like really wild sort of tactical stuff about like things you could do in a city, like you can mess up stop lights, you can like I don't know, like they

they they did a lot of stuff and like moving signs around there. There's a lot of very weird things in a city that you can do that we don't think about because we've limited our tactical arsenal to like people show up at a place and yell yes, stand stand outside of a building and yell at a building. End of protests. Yeah, and that that doesn't work, Like we need to have tactics that are sort of like

that are beyond that. I guess, I guess part of the reason that I'm I'm starting here is that I want people to like literally go back very much to square one of thinking about what our response needs to be before we start moving, because you know, like, and I'm not this this this is not a sort of criticism of the people who've been doing dract de fats, like they've been doing a great job, right, but our standard protest arsenal is not enough. It has not been working,

and we need to reevaluate what we're doing. It needs to expand, and we need to see a better understanding of what diversity of tactics means. I also think that on this particular issue, until fairly recently, our primary threat vector was non state actors threatening physical violence, and so the community defense model is actually a very effective response to that threat and has been incredibly effective on numerous times.

Now that we are looking at the threat coming from the state in terms of legislative legislative action and all that stuff, it does open up a lot more tactical possibility, like what you're talking about, and that's cool, and people

should realize that. Yeah, No, I think you're right. We should go back and look from the ground up and like come to new conclusions, new ideas, And I think I think the the the the other thing of going back to sort of like basics, right, is going going back to the kinds of going going going back to changing how we think about the world around us so that we can actually so that we can more effectively take action. And the other kind of thing that we

need to do is social mapping. It's figuring out the resources that we have, the resources that they have, where they are, how they function. And this is something that Margaret, you've you've talked about in your in your threat about this, which is very good. Yeah, but one of the things that we need to figure out very quickly is what skills do we have and what resources do we have? And you know this this expands into a lot of into a lot of different sort of fields, right um.

You know, there's some of this is sort of territorial, right, Like it's about thinking about like what kinds like what's physically what spaces are safe for us and which ones aren't. How can we sort of leverage the spaces that we have that are safe and you know, maneuver in the ones that are how is this changing? There's also something that I I want to sort of think about here, which is this old this is old tradition. Do you do?

You do? You know what workers inquiry is? I don't know? Okay, So this is this is a very old Marxist tradition. Um it means a lot of different things to a

lot of different people, Like Marx was attempting. So the origin of this is Marx was trying to like send out surveys to like workers to figure out what their conditions were, and people over time took this into more interesting directions of you know, but it turns into a kind of like like a worker's ethnography of you know, workers sitting down and writing or doing interviews about just literally like what what their work day is, like, what

the sort of like labor processes they're involved in are, How does how does that work? Like? Who? Like, how do their bosses work? How how are they being managed? How are they resisting them? And you know, and you you there there there are other things you can sort of use this for that are very useful to us, which is, for example, figuring out things like what does the what does your local economy depend on? What are the sort of important logistics lines in that local economy?

You know, who is physically doing the labor that the economy depends on, who is doing the care labor, because that's another side of this that gets sort of brushed over a lot. But for example, this this, this is a large part of why teachers are enormously powerful because teachers are doing a shit ton of care labor that is is necessary for the necessary for the entire economy to function, but isn't really seen that way, right, And you know, and and you you you you can ask

other questions like you know what what what? Like literally, what are the physical conditions under which you and the people around you are working? A lot of the stuff's come to you like person who works a job. Right, Um, there there is an advantage that we have as people who do this stuff, which is that we we will understand the terrain of our own workplace is better than the people who are sitting at the at the top of the power structure because we're on the bottom of it,

right the people who are above us. And and this this is another thing that that's important about this kind of transphobia is that it's it's very much an elite thing. This is I think especially noticeable in the UK, where like you can literally track who is going to be a turf by like what kind of like elite schools they're going to. Okay, but but like literally like if someone goes to eat like you know, it's like who goes to eaton? Right, Like this is this is the thing.

It tracks who the ruling class isn't who and who is a turf and who's not going to be a turf? Right and but this is this is also true in the US, where like I mean again, if you look at them media people who are pushing this, it's a bunch of people sitting on like an unbelievable amount of trust fund money and getting a bunch of sort of right wing billionaire money. Yes, my experience has been that since Trump's selection, the random folks around me have become

substantially less favorable towards me. Um And I think anti and stuff is is popular across class. But I don't know, I think that's I think that's true, but I don't think it matters that much because like like the the the ordinary person in your neighborhood who has become transphobic, isn't the person who has the capacity to get these laws passed? Okay, that's fair. And and the things that they know are not the things that the actual people

running these campaigns know. Yeah, okay. And and that that that that I think is what is sort of important about this, is that like legislatures, right, or like you know, the people who are funding who are funding these campaigns, the people who donate to these who donate literally literally donate to sort of political campaigns. Right. These people do not understand what our jobs are. They don't understand what we do, They don't understand how the economy works very well.

What the version of reality that they can see is is a sort of bureaucratic image of it produced by their subordinates. And you know that there's a realm with that, which is that a lot of the time, right, the more powerful person is, the more likely it is that the version of reality that they're getting is the version of reality that is just being told to them by

the people by the people below them. And you know, and this this means, like the more powerful the people we're dealing with, the less capacity they actually have to understand.

Is this is true even with for organizations to have like an enormous amount of raw intelligence that you know, they're sort of spy and surveillance networks have assembled, right they're you know, they have all this information, but they don't understand and they're sort of buried in trying to like trying and often failing to sort through all of the information that they have. Yeah, and they try and

map it to their world view. It's how you always end up with like we found the like I have a friend who is investigated as the leader of international anarchism, and it took them a really really long time before they were like, I don't think that's a thing. Yeah, well it's like they don't they don't understand how our networks work very well, because yeah, they have stuff like that.

But but this is also true, especially like on the level of the workplace, right, Um, there is a bunch of stuff that we know that cannot be replicated by the people on the top of the org chart. And a lot of that stuff has to do with we know how to make things stop working in ways that they don't, okay, and and that that is that that that is very sort of useful information to have, because if you know how something works, you can make it

stop working. And this is this is the sort of uh, you know, this is a lot of what the Marxist tradition sort of was, right, It was an attempt to understand, like what workers are doing. The distinction I would make is they were trying to figure out what workers are doing because they were trying to figure out how capitalism works. And I don't care about that enormously like that. That's that's that's not a thing that actually sort of like I don't know whatever I do, I don't I don't

care about whatever esoteric value debates they were having. The decision I would make here is that, you know, the Marxist version of this has a tendency to collapse and dollar production into just like incredibly bitter and minute debates about Marxism. We are not trying to do that. The thing we're trying to do with our version of this

is stop agendicide. Right. Our Our version of inquiry means attack and and when when when When I say when, when I'm talking about this kind of stuff, right, I'm talking about like you and finding the other people in your workplace who are supportive of this stuff. And you know, I mean literally just on like a very very basic level. And this is something that you get union organizing right.

It's like just figuring out what the fuck they do, because like management doesn't know what you do, right, Like I I I have I have worked in a lot of of of places. I have talked to managers a lot. They have no fucking idea what what anyone is actually doing. And if if you if you can build up and this is this is you know, this is all going,

this is all kind of abstract. But if if you can figure out how your workplace works, and you can figure out how the workplaces of the people around you work, and how how the workplaces that like actually genuinely matter to the people who are doing this stuff, you suddenly have. You suddenly have leverage that you normal that you know, a sort of like traditional like protest thing doesn't. And this means, for better or for worse, trying to get

unions involved. Um, there are upsides and downsides here. The downside is that there just aren't there many unions and there aren't there many people in unions as I just have like a middling faith in them. Yeah, or working on it. I mean, yeah, I mean some of them, I'm sure good, and I want to challenge all of them too, and if they do, I will eat my shoe. Whatever they saying is um some yeah, I mean it's like they're not going to do unless they're forced you, right, well,

depending on the I think some unions do. Now I'm like suddenly one eighteen, I mean, like talk shit on

unions like that. Whatever anyway continues, So okay. So the thing part of the other reason that that I'm focusing specifically on unions and I'm specifically I'm focusing a lot and workplace organizing stuff is that, Okay, one of the inherent problems of trans organizing is that trans people are not a large enough minority to enter the most sort of like cynical, like numerically determinist accounts of who matters enough to support right like not not yet not right.

But as as of right now, we're like maybe two percent of the population. Now change it is, it is grown. If the zuber numbers continue, we're gonna be We're gonna be quite quite the problem. I remember marching with my my first boyfriend and this this bashback March where we're chanting one in ten is not enough. Yeah, and it's just funny because it's like it works. There's more of us now, yeah. Yeah, And this is trands are really good at recruiting the LGBT, because literally, you can not

think I'm cute and be heterosexual. There's no way of making that happen. True. No, this is like legit legitimately. One of the reasons that I figured out that I wasn't like a sistet straight dude was I was dating an un binary person, and I was like, shit, okay, something like it's, um, there are places where trans people are like enormously overrepresented, right and and and there are places where we exist in numbers enough that we actually

statistically matter. And unions are one of those places because the people to people who are organizing unions, like trans people are so unbelievably fucking overrepresented in all of that stuff.

And this is this is as much true of I mean, okay, so this this is true really, especially of any kind of sort of new unionism, like particularly things like grad student unions, right, but it's also true of like like all all of the fucking service sector unions that are getting organized and this has been true for like twenty years.

All of the people ORGANI using that, whether they realize it or not, are trans. And you know, but this this means we actually have leverage there, right, because this is this is a part of the economy where if we stop doing our job, shit will actually fall apart, right, like you know, act actual sort of large scale union campaigns like cannot work without us. And that means that we actually we have the ability to pressure them into

doing shit in a way that's not necessarily true. Another, and I'm talking here like specifically about like you the listener who is trans, which is like statistically, statistically like you the listener is not trans. If you are, congratulations, um, if you're not, I also suspect that they are slightly overrepresented.

That definitely still probably not a majority, yes, I guess I like I also want to say that like, um, I mean, it's funny because the way to define sis allyship is literally as if you're willing to car yourself siss, you know, because it's not actually a slur, it's just a description. It's just a you know, like that the not trans word, right, and it's not bad at all. Yeah, And now that that's a battleground word. It's like pronouns

and profile or whatever. You know. It's like it's actually fairly easy to make it clear where you stand on this kind of issue. And I I will say, I mean, obviously trans people will do a lot of this organizing, but I think that we have a lot, an awful lot of CIS people with us, And so you, the CIS listener, we also fucking love and respect you because if you've made it into an hour of us talking about how much this matter is, it clearly matters to

you too, you know. Yeah, this is probably our like three or whatever the fuck and both episodes and soon you won't be allowed to wear pants if you're a fab So you know this is gonna hit everyone. Yeah, yeah, and I think you know all of the stuff that

I've been seeing right about you know. Like another part of this also is is literally just like a thing that you can do that is organizing that will help in this stuff is literally just talking to your friends, yeah, and being like, hey, here's my eight friends or whatever,

here are things. How do you feel about this? You know, and then and then and then try and then you know, using using this kind of stuff using this kind of mapping stuff and you know, using using what you can learn about how you know this this this, this, this part of it has been kind of abstract, but I think intentionally so it's like we we we we are, we are in a place where we need to very rapidly build up capacity for a kind of movements that can actually do things. And I think this is this,

this is sort of like the planning phase for that is. Yeah, but you know, like these these are things that are going down to be created very quickly. These were we are going to have to very quickly figure out you know what what what levers can be like pushed right. And one of the things about like the first bathroom bill in North Carolina, right, it didn't get repealed, but

it got like amended to be slightly less bad. Yeah, And it got amended to be slightly less bad because the state it very quickly ran into trouble with a bunch of corporations who were like, you know, because an initial push that they were like we're like, Okay, we're gonna we're gonna pull out of events in this state. We're gonna pull out of like backing your giant, Like we're gonna pull out of having our giant like fucking sports tournaments here, We're gonna pull out of like advertising

for like retails off and that. And that got them to sort of like run away very very quickly, right, And that's been the one big thing they've been actually scared of. And I think this is part of why they've been pushing this sort of like quote corporation like anti Disney stuff so hard. Is that like the kind of backlash that can very quickly get these people to flip is the kind of backlash that starts actually hurting.

If these kinds of bills start hurting their bottom line, these a lot of these people will flip because a lot of a lot of even the legislators who are voting for this arn't as hardline as to sort of like daily wire people. And if their campaign funders are like, hey, you gotta fucking turn this around so the economy can go back to normal, like they they will flip on this stuff. Okay, this is what I was talking about, is about things that you can do to begin to

mount pressure campaigns and mount direct actions. I also wanted to talk about sort of like just survival network stuff because that also was going to be a part of this. And yeah, Margaret, you had a lot of very very

good stuff in a thread that you wrote about this. Yeah, I wrote a thread a week or so ago about all this stuff as I woke up and doom squirrelled for a while, and you know, and I was just thinking a lot back on the organizing that I know people are doing and stuff like that, and trying to put things together and and so some of it's just kind of like tips, right, And I want to say, like again, well again to the threat, not to something I've said here, Um, I think that we need to

focus on what unites us and not what divides us. Right now. I think that this is not a time for public facing internal conflict. It is not a time for interpersonal conflict to be aired publicly. Not to say that interpersonal conflict doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. We need

to you know. I believe mediation is actually one of the most important skills actually, frankly, literally, if you're listening and you have any mediation skills, I think it is the thing that the revolution needs more than anything else. Off the top of my head, but overall, basically, there's something that MC Soul said, I don't know if his own podcast might have been Twitter a long time ago. And it's really stuck in my head, which is that

we need to focus on. We need to de escalate all conflict that isn't with the enemy, Which isn't to say that the conflict doesn't happen, is that we need to look how to de escalate it and bring it down in pressure. Except when it's with the enemy, like with someone who's trying to murder all the trans people or someone who's like a white nationalist or whatever, right, we are not looking to de escalate that conflict. We

are probably looking to escalate that conflict. We are looking to make it very clear the way in which we are not that person. But and I'm as guilty this as anyone else. I have a lot of pet peeves that people who listen to my show are very aware of. Also, this fight will happen on multiple fronts, using multiple tactics. There's this magical phrase diversity of tactics, and we have

to mean it. And diversity of tactics usually means like kind of like, no, you should support my tactic, like especially if you're like tactic is like riots or something. You know. You often say diversity of tactics, and what you really mean is like my shit rules and your shit sucks. We actually have to straight up mean it. We need to support the people who are focused in legislative action, even though it's not where we are strong. It is a place that needs to be shored up.

We need to focus. We need to support the people who focus on community defense. We need to focus. We need to support the people who are doing illegal things. We need to support the people who are doing organizing in all kinds of different ways. And if build organizations that accept diversity of tactics and don't expect to have a sort of hegemony over the movement, we can create

a very strong movement. Most of my personal infighting is with people who do want to have a Gemini over a movement, and so you get I fall into this

like trap where I'm like, how do we fucking anyway whatever? Okay, other things that people can do if you are not visibility LGBT and you feel like it is safe to do so, or you feel like it is dangerous to do so, and you're willing to be a little bit fucking dangerous because we are in complicated fucking times, be publicly clear that you support lg LGTP, whatever us And like the day that I wrote yeah, support the queers, Like the day that I wrote this. I live in

you know, I live in West Virginia. I go to Lows and you know I'm having a bad day. I'm like, fuck, I mean, like, you know, at what point is it going to be a crime for me to go to Lows? Right?

And the like guy, just the fucking metal head guy who seemed kind of like super masculine metal guy tattoos and he had his fucking like trans ally support pin on And if we were in like a big major city, it might have almost seemed like cringey because it said like ally or whatever on it, right, And I'm fucking overworrying about what's cringe e. I'm like, no, thank you. I I went up and I thanked him, right, because

it like fucking helped my day. And that kind of shit is going to matter because it is now actually a fairly dangerous thing in some places to be visibly in support of us, And I absolutely appreciate the people who are doing it. And another thing that we need to support this is the kind of thing that you've talked a little bit about is that, Okay, we need to have support networks. We need to have networks that

are protecting trans people, families that are leaving environments. There's so many families that want to leave these states where their child is no longer safe will be or so detransition will not be allowed to transition. There are transparents in Florida who might be at risk of losing their children. All of these things, people are going to want to move. We need to support people materially who are trying to move. And there will be organizations that are doing this. If

they don't exist yet, you can start them. And if you wait for them to start, that's also sometimes okay, if you're played is full, you can support those organizations in a lot of different ways. We can also support and not shame people who choose to live in red states as like, as a Red state transperson, I think about this a lot about like because like I'm not planning on moving right, you know, it helps that I'm

an adult. I'm like settled whatever, Like my mental health is strong, you know, but I'm not planning on going anywhere. And that's why we can't give up these spaces, right. I think that one of the things I kind of mentioned earlier, but is that like we are not in normal times. We need to take this seriously. We also need to not assume that all this is a foregone conclusion. We need to not assume that this will go down

like Nazi Germany. However, we need to be aware that it might, and we need everyone This is not a trans people thing, This isn't everyone thing. We need to think about what that actually means. You know, there's that cliche that is true right now that is like, if you want to know what you have been doing in Germany in nineteen thirty three, it's what you're doing right now. And that's true. This is a time for us to be the kind of person that we want to be.

We are in dangerous and complicated times, and it is times that we need to be brave, and we need to be brave for each other. Bravery is not the absence of fear. Bravery is doing things despite fear. Bravery is the presence of courage, not the lack of awareness that things are scary and bad. Yes, and that's kind of like my main thing is I want us to not panic, right, not assume that we're going to lose, to realize that they are acting this way because they're

on their back foot. This was always going to happen in the fact that in a way we kind of started this fight by like existing and like coming out of the closet and shit. But we basically were like, no, we're allowed to be here, and most people were like, yeah, okay, I guess that tracks. I guess you're allowed to be here. And then some small portion were like, these are demons from hell sent to rip the tits off of the children.

I'd like to marry. The freaks like Matt Walsh are the ones who declared quote unquote war on trans people, right, because we were coming for their way of life, not their way of life in terms of like heterosexual marriage that gets to still exist, that's fine, like, but compulsory heterosexuality and compulsory sis sexuality is the thing that we are coming for. And their way of life is hegemony. Their way of life is being the only force of power.

And so yeah, I guess the other stuff is that we just okay, what would you do in Nazi Germany? That's what you're doing right now, and you should think about what skills you have and how they apply to different things. And then the kind of final point to a lot of this is as a specific issue and it's a pet issue of mine, and that could be completely wrong. I have a lot of bias about this, but I would fucking love it if liberals would shut

the fuck up about guns. Right now, it is very hard for me to find a state that is not either in the process of trying to tell me that I can't wear a dress, or find a state that is trying to tell me that I can't carry the means to protect myself from the violent bigots who want to kill me because I wear a dress. It is incredibly hard to find states that are not pushing in one of those directions or another, and it is embarrassing.

It is embarrassing that this, of all times, is the time that liberals are focusing so hard on gun issues, which is a culture war bullshit thing for them. They don't fucking care. They didn't fucking care about abortion. They just want your fucking votes. And we are probably entering a very bad and hard time. However, we can do it. We have done it in the past, and my reading of history it basically is this cycle I kind of don't quite believe in, like a forward progress everything gets better,

things ebb and flow. And however, we will survive this, not necessarily all of us as individuals. Probably probably there won't be like large numbers of killings as a result of this, but it is possible, right, But they it is impossible to stamp out homosexuality, It is impossible to stamp out transsexuality. We have always been here, we will always be here. And so yeah, to quote my final quote in that particular threat, I definitely went off threat. But um, we need to find each other. We need

to stop fighting with each other about bullshit. We need to defend each other. We need to be brave. And then I will cite the anarchist's prayer, which is that I ask not to be safe for my enemies, but dangerous to them, because all right, this is what we're fucking doing, and like, we all want to be safe, but that's not something that we're guaranteed. What we are guaranteed is that we can choose how to handle the situation that we're in. And then almost done, almost done.

You talked to earlier about what we owe the dead

I really liked your way phrasing that. I really liked a lot of what you were talking about about all of that, and one thing that I think about we're talking about like the Catholic church and shit right, one thing that I owe the dead is I owe Sister Dominic, a Catholic nun, to not fucking go back into the closet because when my cousin came out as trans, this woman who is literally married to God, she died a couple of years ago, maybe ten years ago now, before

I came out, but my cousin came out before me, because it's a contagion now because we were always fucking trans, and she was completely supportive, completely and immediately in my like, you know, and just this is a woman who dedicated her entire life too well to God and saw literally no problem. Was the most immediately accepting person immediately said

you know, I bet she's always felt that way. And so I personally owe it to her to tell these Catholics to shut the fuck up, because fucking Jesus Is wife says, it's fine. Fuck you, That's what I got. Thank you, Margaret, Yeah, that was fantastic. Where where can people find you? And some of your other work across

the across the web. Yeah, I just finished a four part series on Stonewall and the stuff that came before Stonewall, the riots that kind of brought us this movement, and how it was all different types of queers and even some hat people working together to bring us as far as we've gotten. And you can find that on my podcast Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff. It's with It

Could Happen here host Sharine as my guest. And you can also find me talking about the end of the world on Live Like the World Is Dying as another podcast that I'm a co host of. And my most recent book is called Escape from Insel Island, and it is not nonfiction. It is not something about how people should get better. It's literally about someone with the shotgun who lands on an island full of insults and has to get out alive. Fantastic. Well, thank you for listening

through all the way. If you are still here, hopefully, hopefully you've learned something interesting across these these these two pretty pretty heavy episodes. We will we will see you on the other side. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now and totally heat death of the Universe. It could Happen here as a production

of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.