It Could Happen Here Weekly 9

the podcast where it's happened. Shit, Um, Garrison, Chris, somebody, somebody, somebody picked this up. This is on you. Anybody anybody got help you out of this one? Okay, Well, you know what podcasts this is. You've been listening, presumably for months, or this is your first time listening. If so, I've probably lost you already with that Bush League introduction. Jesus christ Um, I'm Robert Evans. This is a show about how things fall apart and how to maybe stop them

from falling up art as much. And today we're talking to some people who were in kind of the best case scenario situation for having a bunch of authoritarians try to uh dominate your country, by which I mean, we're talking to some Chilean activists who who who won? Um, inasmuch as it's it's possible to win in the world. Um, it's a pretty exciting situation. UM happening there. I'm excited to introduce people to like what's been going on. But first I want to introduce our guests for today. UM,

y'all wanna you'll wanna say hello. Hello. My name is Jeremiah from the United States. I've lived in Chile for the last ten years. And Stephanie Good I'm a Jillian and I'm laving here with with my my husband. And Hi, I'm Nicholas. Um, I'm m I have been living here for my whole life. Yeah. So we started a small group called Nitos to do some activism to try to get out the vote for the plelcito, to try to uh last year to get the constitution approved to be

voted on and and it was successful. So we are proud of the small bit of work that we did to help that happen. And so today the constitution is being written and it's a very exciting time. Yeah. And I want to let's pull back a little bit because the last time we we talked about UM, Chile on behind the bastards in two thousand nineteen, when UM a protest that started as some I think it's fair to say zoomers protesting a fair increase by like jumping fares

at the at the underground the subway. UM was met with police doing police stuff, which was met with people taking to the streets and very significant numbers, which is the thing that by now a lot more people are experienced with. But unlike kind of what happened in my country,

you did it. You made him blink, and and that's what the plebiscite is, right, Like the there was an agreement made to give because Chili was still, if I'm not mistaken, governed under the same constitution that that Pinochet had had, right UM, and Pinochet famously not a great guy. UM, So I wonder if you might give us kind of an overview of y'all's experience during that time, from like the start of the protests to oh ship we might actually get to change things at a pretty fundamental level

in our country. UM. Yeah. So it was incredible time about exactly two years ago, so just the of October was just a two year anniversary. And UM, as you said, it all started with UM literal high schoolers, sixteen year olds who are protesting a thirty paceo increase, which is, you know, like increase in the metro. But we of course have one of the most expensive metros in the world and a very low um uh minimum wage here.

And so as you said, they went out there and started to jump the turnstiles, but in massive groups, hundreds of them going to the metro together and all jumping together. And in response, the government ended up closing the metros. And so it was this Friday night, UM, and we were having dinner and uh, suddenly the metros were all closed and everyone had to just walk home from work or dinner or where they were. And that was kind

of the beginning of everything. And it was almost like the government brought it on themselves because suddenly there were thousands of people in the streets just because they had no other way to get home and from there, Uh, they there were protests and UM the protests were met with extreme police oppression and water cannons and tear gas and all of that, and UM eventually it led to one march which had over a million people throughout Chile

marching and UM a series of marches and protests basically every week for months. Um, and finally, uh, it came down to uh they announced that there would be this pleblist site and it was a vote, um, yes or no to create a new constitution, because yes, Chile is still There were some reforms in the early two thousands to the constitution, but um still U we live under the constitution written by Hime Gustman, Um kind of you know,

Cha's right hand man, and we happen to live. Nico is our good friend and also our next door neighbor, and we live about four blocks from the Plaza um formerly Plaza Italia. Now the protesters have deemed it Plaza Dignity Dad, and so we've been just in the middle

of it. And uh, for for a couple of months, our our whole neighborhood was like a war zone and uh, just really crazy protests every single day and and tear gas and all of that, and it was it was really intense for a while, and uh it still is. You know. Um last Friday, Uh, we you know, were met with tear gas and water cannons again. So it's it's it's even though the current the constitution is being written again, and the plaslist site was a year ago,

but the police are still out there being bastards. Yeah, I'm curious what each of you kind of sees is the moment when or if you because maybe I was going too optimistic, right, Like I guess I'm wondering, do you think that a corner has been turned? And and if so, what was kind of the moment each of you felt like, oh my god, we might actually this isn't just gonna be like showing up to get the ship kicked out of us. We were going to get

somewhat least of what we're fighting for. Wait, technically, yeah, I mean I think that like that particular moment was when we finally went to the elections to who you call the referendum for the for this new constitution. Um, we were kind of skeptic about the the percentage of people who approved this new constitution because a few months ago or a few weeks before this referendum, we have like continuing polls. We had the polls and there were a kind of fifty, So we're kind of skeptic about

are we gonna have any constitution or not? And that the same I mean the process very quick. So after I know, the this thing close at six pm and then you have the results like three hours later. So on the same day, we're having the results and it was like eighty against twenties. So it was like kind of shocking. I mean, we I think that nobody was expecting to have this kind of eighty percent of the people until they were I went to throw to the

being the you know, chech constitution. So it was kind of like, I don't know, I will say, like the

best moment. Yeah, there's this. There's an American, a deceased American um sociologist who who wrote an essay that I find quite influential called the Shock of Victory, and it's about how activists often failed to take advance age of of their momentum, like because they're kind of surprised at the success early on, and then they don't properly take advantage of what they have when they have it, and and you know, progress gets turned back, which I think

we've seen happen in the United States in the wake of of what happened here last summer. Why do you think that that hasn't happened in Chile? What do you think it is that that that enabled UM, you you all to actually keep the pressure on and and take advantage of that that moment in time, which which never I guess that's what I'm impressed with the most, is that you y'all did manage to make that momentum work for you rather than kind of letting it pull you

off balance. And I guess I'm just trying to get a handle on on how UM. I guess for me, what I think it's lost a lot in the conversation is UM the premier linear, so the first line of defense.

And so you have UM a bunch of young people, anarchists, you know, just crazy young people who went out there to fight with the cops every single day, and it was really impressive and a lot of times we uh, I don't know, I feel like they don't get the credit they deserve because you know, they're the delintements and that you know, we talked a lot about the big marches when there was a million people in the street and and obviously, like Nico said, winning the vote by

sevent showed that it was something that everyone in Chile wanted. But it never would have happened if it weren't for the this small group of of fighters who were there every single day, facing tear gas and water cannons and police beating them up with you know, throwing rocks and stuff like that. So I think that's the main thing. It wasn't like once a month or even once a week. It was every single day, and they were there on the front line, and it none of this would be

possible without them. That's fascinating to me because obviously things like that, groups like that existed here, like in Portland, went every night for not as long, but for not an insignificant amount of time, and it was those same It was a lot of these kind of young anarchists, frontliners who were willing to go toe to the toe with the cops every night. But you didn't have you didn't have that kind of larger, more moderate populace backing

them up. And I guess one of the things I'm curious about is what was kind of the you mentioned you don't think they get the credit they deserve. Was there a broad attitude that like, these people are the ones going face to face with the cops, so that those of us, you know, people who are older, people who aren't And it's going to ship people who can't physically take as much abuse can still show up or

was it. I'm kind of curious how how those people represented what they were doing and how it how it was seen by most of kind of the more moderate people who still supported change around you, because that that dynamic exists in any mass protest movement, and it worked where you are, and I'm trying to get a handle on maybe how it was different than what I saw in Portland. Uh So now a lot of them are

in Yo and or without one eye. So it's, uh, it's really terrible because we have all these new beautiful process but we are without really completely democracy with liberty with the for this guy, or or democracy for all this um person that loose eyes or uh yeah and everyone that was injured. Um So, yeah, a lot of protests nowadays. Actually, I think today right now there's a

protest going on to free the political prisoners. Um and uh but yeah, I mean I think they're even among you know, obviously of the country voted for the new constitution, so there's a lot of different points of view there. But but yeah, there was division even among the left. A lot of people said, you know, this is not the form of this is not the way to protest, and we should not be violent and you know, burning

things and um. But but there was a lot, I mean, you saw a lot of the opposite where people were were saying, just as you said, like those out there on the front line are the reason that the older people and others can come out and feel safer to protest because the premiery LINEA is kind of taking the brunt of the violence from the police, and that allows the the older people and those who are are less

confrontational to be out there in protest. So for me, some of some of the most inspiring signs I remember seeing are like folks that are eighty years old and they have signs that say, you know, gracias ala primary LINEA. You know, like thank you to the front liners who who are taking that violence so that they are able the others to to protest um in a more peaceful way.

That's such a fascinating situation to me that you've got You've got these these more radical front liners who were, as you say, critical in allowing this this really groundbreaking change to occur in your society. But at the same time, things haven't changed enough that number one. The cops who beat the ship out of them, I'm guessing are still largely employed. Um and and a bunch of them are

in jail. I'm do you have much hope that at the very least there will be something to like get these people out or is it is that maybe a bridge? I don't know, I don't know your country obviously, Well, you know, I'm curious, like, do you feel like there's much hope in pushing for that, because it seems like,

you know, those people need to be free. I mean, most of these guys who are in prison, they have spent like, oh no, like twelve months in prison without any evidence, so only the world of the cops against them. So after I know, like thirteen months for ten months, they will finally get released because they have they have no evidence, or they could they may find that the police they made up all the evidence, so they they finally go out. But I mean, you spend like almost

a year in prison, that's me. It's clearly like political. I mean you're a political prisoner, like they got they got you in prison with no evidence, without any profit process. They keep you in prison for a year, and who's gonna pay for that. I mean, you lost a year. Yeah, Like we're talking so far about the sacrifice is made here. What do you think with this new constitution, you and your your your fellow Chileans, what are you gonna get? Like?

How what are the changes that that are seemed to be most concrete and the ones that you think are most important? Um. I think already it's been groundbreaking. I believe it's the only constitution ever to be written by a plurality of women and and also to have a representation from the indigenous people's and uh so it's already been very um inspiring and groundbreaking. Um. The President of

the Constitutional Convention is a very inspiring um Mapuche leader woman. UM. And the good thing is that the right um it represents less in one third of the Constitutional Convention, so they don't have the power to block um anything uh as far as only by the right, So we will see. But they literally just started writing the constitution last week.

So yeah, yeah, it's still but that's I mean, that's that's a significant Is there a kind of a broad agreement that one of the things that needed to happen here was a redress of grievances between the indigenous people, UM, and the and the state because it it sounds like that's a significant chunk of what's what's been already agreed upon. Just but like how this is coming together? Yeah so, uh well Nicoka probably tell a lot more about this

than I could. But Um, there's a big deal with the United with the indigenous people in the South and the government UM basically waging war against the indigenous people. Actually, uh two weeks ago, Nia the current right wing president UM declared a state of emergency in the South and he just extended it for fifteen more days. So we have the military in the south, UM, and they are you know, with the tanks and attaching attacking the the

Mapuche and other indigenous people there. And uh so yeah, a big aspect of Chile right now is the the the fight between and and the oppression of the government against the native people. And and it's a cultural thing too.

I mean, it's it's really heavy everyone. Most people here in Chile are are mixed, you know, between the the natives and and the white men and everything, and you know the Europeans, UM, but the Mapuche and the other indigenous groups have really not UM received a lot of respect in the last thirty years and and so yeah,

that's a big aspect. Yeah, I will say, like for me, it's very inspiring to have like the president of this new Constitution to be uh I'm a picture woman, so um yeah, I mean I guess that the most important thing, like the thing that this Indigenous people want to claim is their land. I mean land for them is the most important thing. And that's what the government I'm only for the last three hundred years they have been taken from to them. Um, they are now like trying to

claim again their their their space. So I mean, let's cape that this new constitution will bring them back their land, um, the respect that they deserve. Now, there's been a lot of discussion about this, this new constitution as I think the term used as an ecological constitution um, and it it's the necessity of it addressing a lot of the climate not just climate change, but like a lot of the things caused by climate change, like unequal access to water. Um.

There's been discussion. I think Ezio Coasta of of the f I m A and GEO has has is arguing currently that the Constitution needs to enshrine a human right to water and recognize it as a common good. Um. It's obviously again they're writing it this week, so it's kind of unclear if that's going to happen. Um. But I'm I'm wondering kind of what you what y'all think it's actually because as you've talked about, you know, with the protests ongoing, with the military being deployed in the South,

this is not a finished fight. Um, it's just a fight that a lot of progress has been made on. What do you think is reasonable to expect from this new constitution in terms of of of climate change, in terms of ecological justice. Also, I think the right of the of water. So water is privatized here, so chileans here and ago we have to pay a Spanish company

too for our water. Sure. Um, I would say, like the economy in this country is based on like structivism, So you have like the most productive thing is mining, and then you have like the forest three and all these things, like they have an enormous impact on the environment and the people until I mean the people who live right next to these kind of things, they don't get anything from them. I mean, the poorest places are like right next to the first three right next to

the mining. So it's kind of like we're creating a lot of income from these things, but we're not getting anything from them and all. I mean also, it's not like a thing like let's get everything back to the state, I mean to the state, because it's it's more than that. It's just like like, um, ecological quality equity. Yeah. Yeah, it's not saying we should take all of the private water and give it to the state as much as it's saying everyone who lives here has a has a

personal right to enough water to survive. Yeah. So you have pounds where small little towns and they don't have any water to drink because all of their water is to the going to the farm owned by Nessley to make you know, to grow avocados to sell to Europe and the United States. So um, yeah, it's it's uh, it's it's a pretty crazy thing. One of the things that's most interesting to me about your situation is you you are in a place where not entirely similar dissimilar

from the United States. You have a police in a military that are heavily dominated by by right wing ideology. Obviously, like the United States is partly responsible for that in your case, we we funded it for a very very long time. Um and uh, and so it's still an

ongoing fight. But at the same time, clearly the people are unhappy enough with that situation and hold like that they were able to make they were able to force the folks with with guns to um, to recognize that they can't hold on to everything that they wanted to hold onto. And I I guess, I'm what, how can

we do that? Um, I'm I'm very impressed by like, and you know, watching from the sidelines, I was just so happy to see this not go where I think we were all scared it might go, you know, in either the direction with like Syria, where it turns into this horrible blood bath, or where everything gets crushed you know it. And and I I'm wondering, like why you think on a on a broader scale, what do you think was responsible for those people with access to the

deciding we can't hold onto this. Like, Yeah, I'm just I'm so intensely curious about that because it's it's it's important for a lot of people and a lot of other parts of the world. Yeah, I don't know, I mean, I think it was just the protests and the daily protests and and just getting out the keeping the pressure on.

And at some point, you know, it's like, hey, this is not good for the economy, you know, like so all of the rich people, um, and you know, the ten families that are in control of you know, sixty

or seventy percent of the wealth of the country. Yeah, and they at some point had to recognize that this was something that that you know, had reached its boiling point and and that they could no longer respond with just force because they tried it and it didn't work for months and it was just months and months of protests and um and uh. And obviously that caused a hit to the economy, and that caused a hit to

the wallets of of the ultra rich. And so at some point they realized that they had no other move to play than to accept it in some way and uh, and that's how we got, you know, this new constitution that is being written. One thing I was interested about is the geography of the protest, because I know Chili very urban population and also it was is it like it's like a quarter of the population or something lives in Santiago, like in in that area, and I'm yeah,

so sorry. I just want to note, if I'm not mistaken, there were only five. You have kind of communes instead of states is what they're called. Um, like ten voted in favor of the referendum and only five voted against it. If I'm not mistaken, Well, communes are within cities, like different commune. It's like boroughs in New York, but we have different regions instead of states. And um, and I think they all voted. They might be like seven. But what you might be thinking of, um of yeah, Robert,

you might be thinking of communes in Santiago. Where Santiago is very Um. So it's all on the Rio Mapocho, the river which goes east to west across the city and basically you have this like very rich part on the east and up into the hills and um, and then it gets poorer and poorer as you go to the west. And UM. Yeah for the vote for the constitution, Um, it was everyone voted for the constitution except for these communes,

these ultra rich in the east. Wow. Amazing saying, Okay, thing something I was curious about this was so when when the protests were going on, Um, because you know, Chile's had like huge protests before, I mean even the last decade or what I was interested stid also with this time is like, well, hey, what do you think it is different about this than say like two thousand and eleven ChIL wasn't thirteen? And then be in terms of like the geographic breakdown of where people are and

where they're going? Is it that you know? So so you have this, you have this classifying the city were the working class districts, like we're people staying there in those grastructure where they like moving from those places like to protest inside of the richer urban areas. I would say like, I mean, yeah, we have like many protests in the best but there were more kind of like I don't know, like students protests, and then you have

like you know, like university protests. But when we have like the protest like that, the one we have on Todasa nineteen is like something that unites everyone. I mean you don't have to be a students, you don't have to go to university to protest. I mean it's something that it's affecting everyone. I mean, the fairs of the metro, they affect everything on the in the quality in the country affects everyone. So um, I mean that. I guess that's that's the thing that make this protests of the

Totasa nineteen unique in this term. Yeah, and I think it was actually a problem when all the protests were happening. A lot of people were saying, we can't keep going to the plaza. You know, the cops are just going to wait for us in the plaza, and you know it's going to be a ship show, and we need to you know, protest all over And there were protests

across Chile and every single major city. UM but I will say the majority of the protests have been UM here in the plaza and close to Lamoneta, where the presidential place and UM but some of the most memoriab protests and and the Coast Nara Center, the tallest building in Latin America, which is a mall and a monument to this idea that Pinera has of Um, the way of Chile being an oasis in South America. We're not like other countries were. We're like the United States, you know,

where this capitalism capitalists oasis and exactly. Um but but yeah, so some of the most memoriable protests. They weren't super common, but we're exactly that where the people said, you know what, we're not going to the Plaza, We're going to coast to Nara Center, or we're going to Vista Kora, We're going to where the millionaires live, where they work. And

um that those were really powerful. And so that's when you started to see like all of those banks and malls and just blocks and blocks of what the rich folk like to call Sanhattan, you know, Santiago Manhattan, the skyscraper part of the city, and it was just all boarded up, you know. Um because there there were definitely a couple of weeks where the protests went that way and and and yeah, it was inspiring. What I keep coming back to when I look about like why it worked.

It wasn't because the front liners just kept the pressure up, because the front liners did in a lot of places here, the front liners stayed out well after everyone else stopped coming out. It's that the population kept up the pressure.

Like the there were like Chile as a as a as a nation, as a as a people kept up the pressure in in a in a pretty significant way, um, as opposed to kind of fading back after the first couple of weeks, and I mean it, I think I'm sure the question of why it happened has a lot to do with, like you said, inequality, you know, things

that have been going on for decades. It's it's a it's a complex situation, but it does seem like that's one of the big takeaways that if you can you can secure even in even in a pretty terrifying situation, a lot of concessions, a lot of of what you need. But but people have to have to keep putting themselves out there. Yeah. Absolutely, I would say it's a couple

of things. Um. One is um as you mentioned. I think it's like the culture of protests here, you know, especially in the last ten years, like um with the revolution Penguin and Milances inven Um, you know, and there are in and the feminist protests and um. So it's it's not something that just happened two years ago. It's the last decade or two has has been the people, especially the young people, going out there and protesting. And that's that's one thing that's inspiring about Boris the candidate

for president. The election is next month, and so the left wing candidate Boridge, and he came out of that movement. He was a student protester and a leader of the student movement. And so I think it's like it grew out of that, it grew out of kids in high school saying this is just what we do. This is normal. We go out there and protest when when ship happens.

And and the other thing is, yeah, you know, we always say here in Chile after the protests started, Um, it's not thirty pace those it's thirty years, you know, thirty years of neoliberalism, of this revolving door of center right and center left and and just continuing on with the um economic oppression. And the other thing I feel like people don't understand is that, uh, you know, people either think Chile is like the United States or they think it's like Peru or something, you know, and it's

really neither. In Chile, the minimum wage is half of what the United States is, which is already terrible. But um, the cost of living here is almost the same as you guys in Portland. I mean, not the housing probably, but like you know, yeah, yeah, it's like Europe. You know, I could move to Berlin and live cheaper than here.

You know, it is hard to of three times that, you know, So, so I think it's that's the other thing is people just they they had no other choice, you know, and we're just boured down by by thirty years, you know, after twenty years of the dictator ship, thirty years of this terrible wages and um, just neoliberalism, and so so I think it's it's partially that and partially just like the culture of protests that grew out of

the student movements in in the early two thousand's, mm hmm. Yeah, there was one thing that was interested also interested about that I don't remember seeing much of at the time, was what was Chili organized labor doing during this That's a good question. Honestly, labor hasn't been a big part of the protest, at least from my point of view. You know, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it took a pretty strong hit during the Pinochet years, if I'm not mistaken, So there was kind of that, Like I

guess that does make sense. Sure, Yeah, honestly, I don't know a whole lot about labor history here in Chile, but um, but yeah, it definitely is. I mean, you would see, you know, um union groups in the Straits here and there, but um, but but definitely they weren't a leading voice in the protest I would say. Yeah,

So I guess that leads into the other. I guess one of the other things that, from from my understanding, has been happening all across Latin America, but but in in Chill in particular, is the rise of the informal sector and people just sort of not having access to

sort of stable wages in labor. And I'm wondering about, Okay, so organized labors like the classical unions aren't really involved in this, And I guess I'm interested in how, if I'm right that that you're dealing with a lot of people who aren't doing traditional labor stuff, what was the process that was able to get people mobilized. It's like, especially people who just have no sort of like people, people who are in the informal sector, and people who

are involved in the sort of older classical organizations. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I would just say it's like that that culture of protest um that comes from the young people, uh in the last twenty years, and then of course, um, the older folks who UM you know, uh lived through the dictatorship, and of course, UM there were an incredible protest at that time too. And and so I don't know. I mean, honestly, I was even after living here for you know, six years, UM, I

was shocked. I never thought it would come to this. I never thought I would see you know, over half a million people in the streets of Santiago. UM. And and I would never never thought we'd see a new constitution. So, UM, I don't know, I don't I don't have the answer. Is it's uh, it's surprising to me. But UM. One I will say, though, is I don't want to paint

a Rosie portrait of Chile right now. Because if like we mentioned, you know, uh, tomorrow night, if you guys go to uh Galerria sema c I m A on YouTube or Instagram. UM, they have a live feed of the plaza four blocks from our house. And every Friday, you know, you the protests come out, and sometimes the cops are there right away, and they make a whole perimeter with two cops and all of the you know, tanks and everything, UM, blocking in turns to the plaza

in every direction. Sometimes they let the people protest. But then at ten o'clock, you know, after the sun comes down, they come out there, and you know it's it's the same thing were a young woman was was killed a couple of weeks ago. So and the other thing is that we have this election coming up and uh, this guy Cast, extreme right winger Pinochettista, UM, just like they call him the Chilean Bosonaro UM, a real piece of ship. And uh he has um, he has really risen in

the polls in the last month or two. UM. The right wing candidate Sitchell, who won the right wing primaries, UM and was kind of going to be the successor to Pinera, the current right wing president. UM. Because in Chile, you know, you can't run consecutive you can't have consecutive terms. UM. But Sitchell just kind of was not a great candidate and uh kind of blew it and and he went

down and and now Cast is going up. And it's really scary to think about Cast getting into the second round, UM, where it will probably be him verse Boridge and UM. And so yeah, you know, even though the constitution was approved by seventy of the country, UM, you know, it's very possible that this election is going to come down to a runoff between a you know, moderate socialist like Boridge, um not the most extreme leftist in fact, known as Amario,

you know, very yellow bellied here in Chile, that's his nickname. Um. But it will probably right now, it's looking like it's going to come down to him and cast who is like almost a return to the dictatorship. So it's it's pretty scary, geez. So it's just this there's just so much fighting to do. Yeah, it's just so much fighting to do. Um, I mean I I uh yeah, UM, do you have do any of you have an anything else you want to make sure you say or talk about before we kind of close out for the day.

Oh no, I will say, like three days ago, I just pay my I finally pay my whole student loan, like like I've been working for more than ten years in my life since I finished the university, and I've been wasted, I mean, all my savings. I just pay this fucking student loan. I guess that you guys in this in the States like the same, thank you. I don't know, except for people don't pay off their student

stays there forever. And I just I just I would like to wish to the other, to the coming people that I mean, I don't wish that future for my from I mean for the future people in this country. I don't wish anyone that I mean University, I mean all students should be UM study for free. I mean it's like uncle suable for me. Yeah, So that was a big part of it. And then also the I FIT pay pension system here, which is totally privatized, and so you uh, you the government just takes your money

for retirement. You get to choose between four or five options which are private companies, and then um, if you make money, then the company takes you know, their chunk of your your retirement as the payment for managing your fund. But if you lose money, then it's on you. So literally, you know, Stephie's mom is like, you know, checking on her retirement. How did I do this year? It's like, oh, you lost two thousand dollars this year. That's that's your requirement, Davids.

You know, so you and you have you know, people here trying to live on you retirements of one hundred dollars a month. Wow. The military is receiving ten tho dollars a month, you know, So that was a big part of it, um. But I think what I always come back to here in Chile is, like we've said, the activist renamed the plaza plaza dignidad, and that's what it all comes down to, is just we're not asking for you know, ponies, as Hillary Clinton would say, We're

not We're not asking for the moon. We're just asking for basic dignity that everyone deserves. And it's as simple as that. So we just have to cross our fingers and hope that we've done enough that that you know, at a minimum, you know, people can live and retire with some dignity, that's all. Yeah, and uh, and that enough ecological justice can be gained that people can survive.

I've what's coming, um, which it's it's nice to see at the very least that that's a central topic of discussion, um, Whereas in the United States, everyone in power seems fine

with just ignoring the increasing problems right now. So I don't know, you know, I I again, I also don't want to be painting too rosy a picture as you've as you've repeatedly clear, there's a lot of of struggle left still um, but at least you've you've you've achieved a lot, and I I'm just heartened by by hearing your story and and and hope that more people pay attention to what's happened there and try to take lessons from it, because I think we all need to be

we all need to be gearing up um as as I'm sure you all will continue to continue to do anything else before we close out. UM No, that's it.

I mean, I completely agree. I think that just like the messages that like, you know, better things are possible, like real, real, real change can happen, you know, like this started, uh two years ago with high schoolers protesting, and now we're going to have a vote on a new constitution, and it's going to be an ecological constitution, of blurry natural national constitution, um with respect for the

indigenous people. It's it's uh, it's written by you know, an equal amount of men and women and everything, and and so yeah, just I think for me, it's so easy for us who have grown up in you know, under the gloom of neoliberalism, to to just get really depressed and fatalistic about it. And uh so for me, I feel the same way, Like it's just such an inspiration and the Chilean and especially the Chilean youth. Um. But but yeah, um, it's just an inspiration and uh

and proof that that change can happen. Um. But it's not just voting. And you know, like Chileans have elected socialists. You know, the former president was a socialist, but it was just the same neo liberalism bullshit. So I think, you know, voting is great, but like that's just not enough and so you have to, um, you know, get out in the streets and try to organize and make real change in other ways as well. All right, yeah, I agree entirely. Thank you all for coming on. Um,

you couldn't appreciate it more. And and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day and a lovely continuing to uh stick it to the sons of bitches, welcome back to it could happen here. The show that is only introduced competently when either someone besides me is the one hosting the episode, or when I have a guest that I feel embarrassed about being incompetent in front of. And and this is this is the latter case, because today I'm talking with Uh, my friend and admired colleague,

Molly Conjure. Molly, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I got to do that like a professional. Welcome to the show. That's like an NPR shit right. I know people have been saying on the Twitch stream that I have a very soothing NPR style voint. You would be great. I would love to hear you, uh talking in NPR about how it's it's rad that those those people broke the windows on those police cars or whatever. No, I can't be allowed in respectable spaces. I can't be allowed there.

They let me talk on a panel at Harvard one time and I actually said fuck in front of a bunch of people. I mean, I assume Harvard students know a funk word or two. Speaking of funk words, there's a couple of funk words who are under trial right now for inciting mass violence that led to human death

and suffering. Um, you wanna you want to give us the overview we're we're talking today about, you know, the Unite the Right rally and Charles Well in two thousand seventeen that led to three deaths, one as the result of direct violence. Had their higher who was murdered murdered by the fascist James Field currently in prison for forever. UM, Yeah,

forever that you know, his trial concluded a while ago. UM, but there has been churning through the legal system a trial against Richard Spencer Jason Kessler, who was the main organizer.

UM can't well, there's other uh plaintiffs right, Yeah, a lot of a lot of fascists about you know, all of the things that they did, the fact that they clearly intended this to be a violent uh riot assault whatever, like, they wanted to have it be a fucking lynching essentially, And there's a lot of evidence, including things they said to each other about building armies to murder people. UM. Anyway, Molly, you want to take it from here, I think I've

introduced the situation. There's a trial going on. You have been listening to every day of it and covering it on twitch very ably, UM, And so I just kind of wanted to catch up with you. You also wrote an article in Slate with our friend Emily Gortchynsky about um, what's like largely the jury selection of the trial. So I was wondering if you could just kind of give us an overview of what's happened so far. If your thoughts on it, um that that seems that seems good. Yeah.

So there's just right at the outset, this is a civil trial, right, this is not a criminal trial, and no one's going to the No one's going to jail at the end of this. Some of the jail we call it, oh, what's that? The Who's goal? We call it the Who's goal on the show. That's the property. Okay, Um, some of them ality in jail obviously, Like you said, James Fields is serving twenty nine life sentences to life.

It's a lot of life. So he was he was charged in in Virginia State court by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He was convicted at trial of first degree murder and several counts of aggravated malicious wounding. Um. He was so that trial happened in he actually went to trial for that, but then he pleaded guilty in federal courts. He was charged in two separate courts for the same underlying events, and in federal court he pleaded guilty to twenty nine

federal hate crimes. Um. He pleaded guilty to hate crimes. So there's no debate about whether these were hate crimes, right, and he pleaded guilty too. He pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty because a hate crime, murder is a

capital crime. So in this lawsuit, right, this this civil lawsuit against Deep Breath, Jason Kesler, Richard Spencer, Christopher Campbell, James alex Field, bang On America Andrew England, Moonbase Holdings, Robert Asmond, Raid, Nathan To, Miko Elliott Klein, Identity Europe and Matthew Parrot, Matthew Hindbuch, Traditionalist Worker Party, Michael Hill,

Michael Tubsley and the South Jeff Scooped. Now that the National Socialist Movement, Nationals Front, Augustus and Victus, Reternal Order of the Alt Knights, Mike Kindovinch, Loyal White Knights of the KKK East Coast, Nights of the KKK East Coast, Knights of the True Invisible Empire, Several of those parties have been dismissed from the suit. That's a lot, It's a lot of bad guys, right, um. Several of those parties have been dismissed from the suit. Augustus and Victus

defaulted Pine dismission. That means the fact that he defaulted does that mean he was like, yes, right, he offered no defense, So that's what that means. Yeah, I mean he's been dealing with a lot. What would he He's had some problems, he's been jails, he had he abducted his wife at gunpoint. Um. I think he's out of jail now. But he's had some personal problems. He's had some personal problems. So the underlying claim with the lawsuit is a section complaint, a conspiracy to deprive people of

civil rights. This isundamentally, at its at its core, an anti clan statute. Right, it was designed to disrupt clan organizing. Um. And that's kind of what it's being used for here, right. This is so the lawsuit was brought by by nine plaintiffs who were harmed people who got hurt at the rally. Most of the plaintiffs were physically injured in the car attack, although not all of them. Um, But these are people who are seeking damages, right, Like for all all the

emotional weight, all the sort of social ramifications. Fundamentally, this is a case about damages. So the jury is going to say, Okay, these people were harmed, do we believe they were harmed by a conspiracy to commit acts of violence, conspiracy to commit racially motivated accidents. Right, so all of those elements have to improve. And there was guys want to do racial violence when they assaulted people? Yeah, was their conspiracy? Was it motivated by racial animus? And were

overt acts of violence committed? And did those acts of violence harm these people in a way that entitles them to damages? That's all the jury has to decide. Right, should be an open shed case, But it does seem like kind of an open and shut case. It does. Right, So, if there are people out there who are not familiar with the events of that day, a lot of alt right groups, you know, overt neo Nazi organizations, the Literal Clan,

the literal American Nazi Party, like Neo Confederate secession. David's Duke was there. David Duke was there, David Duke, who Elliott Klein described as an ideological grandfather when he was asking other organizers that he can invite him. Um, these guys came together, they came to Charlottesville. They brawled in the streets, they beat people, they hit them with shields. A Literal Clan wizard fired his gun at a black band while screaming die N word. Well, now, okay, it

seems like you're reaching a bit to call that racially motivated. Well, that's something they're trying to litigate, right, So you're probably familiar with the video of DeAndre Harris being beaten nearly to death by members of several different hate groups, right. So one of the guys that beat him was a tv a P member, one of them was a League of the South member, and they worked together to beat this young man nearly to death while he was lying

on the ground. And so that today they were talking about like, well, can we really say that was racially motivated? You know, can we really say can we really say? Yeah, yeah, I think we can. I think we can. Um. You know, his mother has been on podcasts since his conviction. I'm referring to Jacob Goodwin, the t TPP member, the man who used a t w P riot shield provided to him by Matthew Heinbach to beat this young man. His mother goes on Nazi podcast still to describe how her

son is a martyr for the white cause. There's no ambiguity. But where are you getting racially motivated from that moment? Right? Like there's a there's a picture of her with her arm around her son. Her sons like seven feet tall. He's a giant boy to get her arm around her large adults, and he's wearing a T shirt with a giant picture of George Lincoln Rockwell on it. Ah, you love the deep cuts, so you know. And Billy Roper's

Christmas party. Yeah, another another Nazi, right, So there's not a lot of ambiguity here for the average person, but so you know, like you were saying, Emily and I wrote about jury selection, jury selection is um so corporate seedings are generally speaking open to the public. Anyone can go to their local courthouse and you can sit through a trial. You can sit through the war deer process. You can see how a jury gets chosen. You can go trial hopping, get wasted re entertainment. As long as

you say quietly, they can't make you leave. It's like a library's very discouraging, because the whole point is to pic jurors who have never encountered reality. You pick people who don't have any opinions, right because you want them to be able to be impartial. And the best way to make sure your jury is going to be impartial

is to people who don't have any opinions. And if you don't have any opinions on whether or not it's good for Nazis to beat people in the streets, I would say that in and of itself as an opinion that you already have right the ability do not have an opinion about that. So the jury selection took three days because they had to go through this process of speaking to each juror individually. Usually they'll they'll do it in batches where they ask questions of people in batches, um.

But this was so sensitive they didn't want to taint the jury pool, so they did it one by one. So it took three days um, and they chose jurors who didn't have opinions about the existence of racism in the United States. Okay, that seems unbiased. Again, it's this thing you keep seeing where it's like, well, we can't let people have a bias, so it has to be people who have never heard of white supremacy, which is like, then that's a bias in favor of white supremacy. But

of course that's the default of the system. It's like that's the tear right, like you stick white supremacy on the scale and you tear it, but then you add awayness of white supremacy and suddenly there's weight on it. You know, it's sorry, it's very fresh. I know, you know, it's frustrating and mean, yeah, I shouldn't. It was frustrating to sit through listening to them to ask people, you know, because they had to fill out a questionnaire ahead of time so so they can sort of sift through obvious

knows um. And one of the questions was, you know, how do you feel about how concerned are you about these different kinds of prejudice, you know, prejudice against black people, prejudice against Hispanic people, prejudice against Jewish people, are prejudice against white people. And a lot of people indicated that they were very concerned about anti white racism, and a lot of jurors were asked follow up questions about like, well,

why aren't you more concerned about anti white racism? Why did you say you don't care about that because it's not real. Yeah, because I've never seen it in my entire life. Um, but okay, but we seated a jury. We did see the jury, and there were you know, there's always concerned in a case like this that you just won't be able to get an impartial jury. But

we got it could be worse, right, it could be worse. Um. There is a guy on the jury who said that in high school he was the victim of a racially motivated attack by by a Samoan person, um because they didn't like white people. M hmm, I wonder what that person was doing. Slash say, black people who believe that they have a right to exist without being subjected to racism,

not impartial can't be on the jury. But a white guy who says he was the victim of a hate crime because someone didn't like Howley's God, so people talking about like I don't like it when folks not from my island come here and function up and make it expensive. Yeah, that's anti white racist. He was living in incredible incredible, So you know, it could be a worster, It could be a worse jury. But it's not ideal. Um, God, where did we go from there? It's been it's been

a little bit of a blur. Um. So Cantwell and Spencer don't have lawyers, right, well yeah, okay, so right, because can't Well, can't can't well, it is for people who aren't aware, can't well is representing himself and tell correct me if I'm wrong here. But he started by acknowledging the old saying that a person who represents themselves as a fool as a lawyer, but then said, but I'm not a fool in this case. Yeah, he said, you may have heard this, but that's not true here.

That's not the case here. Unbelievable. Just and I didn't even stay in a holiday and Express last night. Oh my god. Really he seriously made a holiday and Express joke while he was oh my god. But the follow up, the follow up was, but I did stay in the Central Virginia Regional Jail because that is where he stays. Yeah, I mean because he's he's in prison for sexually or not for for harassing and threatening and blackmailing another Nazi, right, yeah, yeah.

He was transported here from the federal prison in mary in Illinois, where he is a guest until next Christmas. Um, so he had filed motion is to exclude the fact that he's currently incarcerated, as is his right right, Like if you are a yeah, yeah, absolutely involved in a in a criminal case or in A. In a civil case, it is it is your right to have the jury not see you in a jumpsuit, and I respect that.

I think that's absolutely yea. So he went to great links to make sure that the jury would never see him in cuffs, that the marshals wouldn't bring him in irons, that he would change before the jury arrived at the coronels. All very reasonable, and no one's going to get to talk about it, but he brought it up in his own opening statement. I'm here from prison. I'm here from prison. By the way, I'm in prison for the other crimes

I committed. But they're not related to these crimes. They're not related to these crimes except to the extent that he's unable to shut the funk up. He's only in prison because he emailed the FBI or recording him him doing the crime that he's in prison for. He's he's really a very cunning man. But I think, you know, so, as much as those crimes aren't relevant to this case, I think it is very relevant to his trial strategy, right that he has this belief that all the things

he did that were wrong, they were right. Actually he just needs to explain to us why he did them, and then we'll understand. Right, he's in prison because he tried to talk his way out of a thing that he did that was wrong by telling everyone that he did do it. Yes, I did it because I have to. You didn't have to make an extortionate threat to rape another man's wife in front of their children. You didn't

actually have to do that. Yeah, that's really I mean I would I might argue, and perhaps I'm an extremist, but there's no situation in which you would ever have to do that. Nobody made you email the FBI about how you did that, but you did. I would have told you that was a bad idea. I mean, there's saying there's some snarky stuff in some in some of the affidavits about how like he called the Keen Police Department trying to tattle tale on other people so often

that they were tired of taking his calls. Unbelievable, What an amazing man, Like he's a piece of ship, but he is legitimately an incredible person. I mean, if he wrote this, no one would believe it. Right, this is so heavy handed, it's so goofy, Like when he was paying Elmer in guns his law He paid his lawyer in guns, and then he ran out of guns and had his lawyer stopped working for him. Yeah, he doesn't have a lawyer anymore because he ran out of guns

to pawn. Although I guess he can't anymore because now he's a convicted I gotta say, running out of guns to pawn for your lawyer, it's pretty cocked. He even had to sell the bucket of loose bullets he used to keep us a prop on his desk, I mean, really devastating stuff. Um, so he doesn't You're you're down to the brad, You're down to the rails when you're

two with that really the bottom of the barrel. So he's proceeding pro sae, which, unfortunately, unfortunately for everyone involved, means he gets to talk a lot, a lot, a lot a lot, which means he gets to cross examine his own witnesses. Right, So the first two witnesses the plaintiffs put on were two of their plaintiffs, right, two young people who were injured in these events. The first witness they put on Natalie. It's the v a student

who had her skull fractured in the car attack. Um, she had to learn how to walk again, she had to see a neurologist to retrain her eyes to track movement. I mean, she was very badly injured. Um. And so she testified at length about the damage that was done to her. Because again, this is a case about damages. So the jury needs to learn who is this person, what happened to them, what did it cost them physically, mentally, emotionally, financially um, Because what they're gonna be asked to do

is to put a dollar amount on it. So they had to meet her and hear about her injuries, UM, and hear about her motivation for being there. Um. You know, she's a young queer Latino woman as she's the first college student in her family, and she's a very impressive young woman, and she was very composed of the stand um as awful as the content was. Um. But then every single one of the defendants gets to cross examine her. Richard Spencer gets a cross examine her. Christopher camp Well

gets to cross exam and her. James Klenich who took the case. He's Kessler Demigo and Identity Europe's lawyer, James Klenicch. She's an Ohio based attorney who said on the record that he took this case with the express purpose of

opposing Jewish influence. Great Great Klenich gets to cross examined her matt Heimbuck's new lawyer, Josh Smith used to be the campaign spokesman for Paul Neilan, wasn't endorsed by Trump at one point in his run for Congress, and as also just a straight up Nazi who's repeatedly threatened to murder you. Yeah. Yeah. One time he spent all day posting pictures of a deer that he said that he named after me. He said, I named this dear Molly. You know, he's been all day stalking at posting pictures

of it, posting pictures of his gun um. And then he posted a picture of the dear stage like a lynching, and then he spelled my name out in its entrails and posted pictures of that. So you're just like a really normal guy Paul Neilan, which totally completely with it um. His campaign spokesperson when he ran for Congress was the Holocaust denying um former jew Josh Smith. Josh Smith was born Daniel Nussbaum. He changed his name to hide his Jewish past. Oh, that is an old story among the Nazis.

I mean we talked about the guy who invented uh sea monkeys. But yeah, it's basically the same case. And you know who else hides their I okay, Um, this was meant to be an ad plug. Normally Sophie would jump in and stop me from doing that. None of these advertise, none of these advisers are plaintiffs in the current case that you're covering. That's a guarantee, that is, that is an absolute promise. David Duke is not about to sell you dick pills. No, no, no, although he

could use them. We're back, Um, all right, Molly, sorry, please continue. God where were we got distracted thinking about David Duke trying to sill you dick pills? Yeah? I have That's not good for anybody, right, so everybody gets to cross examined the waiting. It's Josh Smith is Himbo's new lawyer. Um Colennich used to be a lot of these guys lawyers, and then he sort of dropped them over time as they became uncooperative. They are all these

motions to withdraw. Klench slowly dropped clients over the last two years. Um, he dropped can't Well as a client because kent Well wouldn't stop posting about hurting Roberta Kaplan, who's the lead counsel for the plaintiffs. ROBERTA Kaplan, Femish, famous Jewish lesbian lawyer. You know, she was on the US v. Windsor the I'm losing it, absolutely losing it, the Supreme Court case that gave us gay marriage right.

ROBERTA Kaplan brought us gay marriage essentially. So she, you know, famous Jewish lesbian that is a well known portion of her identity and can't Well kept posting um anti semitic remarks about her. And finally Klennch was like, you're making it really hard to be your lawyer, and you don't pay me. Um. And Colennich dropped Heimbach as a client in twenty nineteen because Heimbuch just stopped answering his calls. Um.

Great smart people. Yeah. So Matt Parrott, who's Matt Heimbuck's father in law but also the husband of the woman that he was sleeping. This complicated. There's a chart. There's a chart. Matt Heimbuck and Matt parrot um founders of the Traditional Worker Party, Best friends for a long time. FIL's wives big problems, big problems for them. The Night of Wrong Wives, The Night of the Wrong Wives. So Matt Parrot was technically Matt Heimbach's father in law during

the time pariod which Heimbach was fucking Parrot's wife. Very classy people, not a great situation. So they lost their lawyer. UM Parrot very publicly told all Traditionalist Worker Party members to destroy evidence. UM so we knew that, right that was on the record from the beginning that Matt Parrot was like, hey, everyone in t t VP, if you did any crimes, delete it right, delete your social media, delete your pictures. Like we weren't there, right, that's a crime.

That's a crime, is a crime, right there. But an interesting thing that we learned to date, but I don't think we did know before. Um. In November, so they played a recording of a conversation between Matt Heimbuch and Christopher Can't Well And this was during examination of Heimbuch. Heimbuck was on the stand and they're talking about like, you know, you didn't produce discovery. You said you lost your phone, this, that and the other. You know, after

you beat your wife, she threw away your phone. Um so he said I couldn't turn over my social media accounts because my wife deleted them because we had an argument about me taking out the trash, right like, we had this domestic dispute about the trash and she deleted all my accounts, so I couldn't turn them over. Um. Well, today we found out that he told Can't Well in ten so a year after the lawsuit was filed. When a lawsuit was filed against you, you have a legal

obligation to not do things like this. He told Can't Well that after a conversation with his lawyer, the advice of his lawyer, he deleted those accounts. Oh oh, there's just a record of him criming. Yeah, that's a crime, and it's also a crime for his lawyer to have advised him to do that. Great. Um again, that's there's no direct evidence who told him to do that, but we do have a recording of him saying a lawyer told him to. So that's not great. That's not a

good situation. Is he going to get charged with anything for that? I am curious. You know, I'm not a lawyer. Just for everyone listening, I'm not a lawyer. I didn't go to law school. I didn't even finish undergrad. I'm not a lawyer, um, but I have listened to a lot of lawyers. But I am I am curious, what with what frequenci Can perjury charges be sought in a civil case? Right, it's still under oath, like it is still perjury. But how common is that to be pursued

because they're perjuring? Yeah, perjury perjurer doing the right always does, which is trust that the law will never actually come after them for their many crimes. And there's there's a good chance they'll be right. You know, like Himbach said, you know when he was asked, have you ever provided security for Richard Spencer? And he said no, And it's well, there's like a hundred pictures of you doing that multiple events. Um. You know, they're claiming they don't know each other, Like

here's all these pictures of you guys hanging out. Um, god, where else are we? Um? Yeah, I'm curious. You know one thing that kind of especially because of the written house thing. And we're actually we'll be talking to lawyer tomorrow night about or tomorrow about the written house thing. Um, every cool person shares the same lawyer. Uh. Um. But yeah, because of that, I'm kind of curious, what do what is your what since do you get of this judge?

There's no good judges, there's no judges. But it could be yeah, I mean, I'm not saying, but it could be. It could be a lot worse. You know, Trump appointed a shipload of federal judges pretty recently. Judgment is eighty five years old. He's a Clinton appointee. He's a Clinton appointee, so it's could be worse. He's been on the bench, you know since I was an elementary school. Um, and he's very old, and he doesn't he has it's a

little bit hard of hearing, but he's not stupid. Um. There's a lot of people, I think we are really frustrated with some of the things he's allowing to happen. He's he's really allowing these these proceed defendants to sort of run rough shot over the procedure. But you know, like I said before we started recording, it's really hard to apply the Your sense of how things are supposed

to work doesn't really apply in court. Right. There's a very rigid, sort of outdated set of rules and procedures and they don't feel right, they don't feel logical or reasonable or fair. There is a specific way that it works, and it is hard to watch, especially if you've never seen it before. And because of the emotionally fraught nature of this, it's particularly frustrating to be to be listening on this line and saying, like, why are they allowed

to do this to this witness? Well, legally you can cross examine your witnesses, even if you are the person who hurt them. It's not a good system, but it is how it works. Um, but he's um And I also think there's there's concern about appellate issues. There's concerned about mistrial, and so they're really going out of their way not to give anyone any excuse to say, well, this was not fair to me. They're gonna say it anyway, but they they're really letting them have a long leash

in a way that feels very bad. But at the same time I can kind of understand it. Yeah, I wish they hadn't done so much Holocaust denial, like on on the right. That good. They put an expert on today who's um Dr Debrah Lipstad, who's an expert in Holocaust denial to sort of talk about what the Holocaust is. I guess in case the jury doesn't know. God, that's bleak, I mean, that's sucking bleak because they chose this jury

based on them never having heard of Jews. You know, it's a bunch of like middle aged people from Green County who have never met a Jewish person. So they had to put on a professor to say, okay, when he says gas the K words, we're talking about gas chambers, gas chambers from the Holocaust. They didn't start out with gas chambers. They started with mass shootings. But it was

too messy. I mean she was literally recounting sort of the evolution from the Asens group and you know, shootings in the fields to the ka of the gas chambers. Like we had to talk all the way through it. Um because it seems unnecessary, but again for the jury it might be necessary. And so when Asma door Robert don't want to take anything for granted, you know, yeah, right, and you really have to sort of lay out these connections, right, because the idea is you have to prove a conspiracy,

and you have to prove the conspiracy was racial motivated. Um. And so when Asma door is the racist wizard name that um Robert Ray uses when he writes for the Daily Stormer. When Asmador keeps saying, we're going to gas the K words, everyone knows what I mean when I say that, right, yes, yeah, okay, Um, you know he keeps saying, you know, the plan is to gas the K words. You know, G, T, K, R, W, N UM, guess the K words race war. Now he keeps saying,

he keeps saying, keeps saying it. And then the Torch March, he Pepper sprays a bunch of people, which he is currently a fugitive of justice for UM. He's UM, he's

wanted for felony in Almarle County. He's missing. UM. So he says he's going to do it, then he does it, and then afterwards he's on video saying, yeah, I guessed half a dozen K words, so you can see from A to B to C. And then we have this expert saying, Okay, what he's saying is a direct reference to the Holocaust, right, Um, It's like he's like you said, it's pretty open and shut. It's pretty straightforward A to B two c. Um. You know we have these discord

leaks if you want to browse them. They're on Unicorn Riot and almost immediately after the rally, Unicorn Riot had these discord leaks. UM the entire server, the Charlesville two point oh server where they planned this out, where they're in the discord saying yeah, it's gonna be so great. We're gonna do just so much violence. We're gonna we're gonna hurt people, We're gonna bring shield, we're gonna bring base, really explicitly talking about the plan, making jokes about hitting

people with cars. UM. Now that the entire discord will be admitted, UM, it has been authenticated. They received another copy of it via subpoena directly from discord. It's real. It's evidence, UM, as much as Campbell doesn't like that. But more than that, UM, we have, you know, some first person authentication. We heard deposition testimony from Elliott Klein's ex girlfriend, UM, the woman that he was living with

in seventeen. So in the summer of seventeen, he was living with this woman that he had just met and it entered into a romantic relationship with UM. She has since left the movement. She has a lot regret about her involvement in that time period, and you know, there's little People have a lot of mixed feelings about what it means to leave the movement, what it means to a tone, Is it possible to redeem yourself for having

been a part of something like that. We don't have to litigate that, but we do have to well, we do have to recognize that her testimony is damn me. I mean, this is not this is not Elliott Klein putting on a show in public. This is not Elliott Klein posturing for his friends. This is Eli at home in bed with his girlfriend talking about his fantasies of killing all the Jews. Um. And her testimony was pretty harmful. Um,

you wouldn't think, yeah, it's not great. You know. Really you have to wonder how the jury is taking this right, these people who have no concept or context for this for years yea hours of this woman sort of near tears talking about how her boyfriend said that he was going to put her in a breeding camp once they

had the ethno state. Um. Not nice, really not nice stuff. Um. And she also tested you know, we we have the messages from the discord where people are posting memes and jokes about hitting protesters, but Samantha testified that at private parties at Richard Spencer's house in the summer. Of these private parties with the organizers of the event at Richard Spencer's apartment, people explicitly discussed the legality of hitting people

with their cars. This is not random people in the discord that Richards could say, Oh, I don't know him, I never met him, I never posted in discord. This is somebody sitting on your couch Richard. Um. Yeah, and you know, Samantha said that during that time period, um, Klein was building an army for Richard, and Kessler texted Spencer is something similar, right that, where we'll build an

army my liege fucking dorcass ship. Um. But so when when One fun surprise from Samantha was that during that time period Klein was, you know, planning to provide his militia in the form of Identity Europa. Right, these these street troops he was going to provide to Spencer to build the movement, but that when the time came, he always knew that he would kill Richard to take control.

These people are all such fucking It's a shame that what they actually are is deniable assets for the most dangerous folks, you know, the fucking the fucking Bannon types, because if if all of the fascists were this dumb, I wouldn't be so worried. And it's hard, it's hard to walk the line between, you know, really getting a kick out of some of these moments where it genuinely funny, right, but you remember, like, these people are very dangerous, these

people are responsible for a death. These people it's this emotional whiplash right of the plaintiffs getting on and saying, yes, my life was ruined. I still have nightmares, I still have to go to physical therapy. And then well getting

up there and asking Heimbach if he's a federal agent. Yeah, right, like I think so we've only seen one of the defendants on the stand so far, but I have a strong feeling can't Well, it's going to use every opportunity that he has his freenemies under oath to ask them if they snitched on him. Yeah, that's that's going to be pretty funny. It's gonna be great. You gotta laugh. Sometimes life's too hard. But I can't Will is really using this. I think you know, he has nothing to lose. Right,

this is a case of damages. He has no money for them to take. He has thirty thou dollars in credit card debt and his car got repossessed once he went to prison. He has nothing for them to take. The only person he knows who did have anything is Ian Freeman, who's currently facing federal charges for some sort of complicated bitcoin money laundering scam through a fake church. Um. So he doesn't even have any friends to help him. That's an interesting case, but I don't have time for

it now. But he has so he has nothing for them to take. He's already a felon. He can't have a gun anymore. I think he's just using this as an opportunity as a platform to get his message out there and to harm the people he thinks harmed him. So every chance he gets, he's trying to force witnesses to ducks people. Right. He asked one of the plaintiffs, Devin Willis, when another young man who was who was injured at the torch march um a plaintiff in this case.

He asked him he forced him to name the names of the non parties who were also counter demonstrating at the statue. These people's names have not been on the record. They you know, judge made him do that, made him do that. That's and you know, you could if you were, I don't know, a complete baby brained idiot, you could say, well, you know that maybe there was a legal reason that he needed those names. Whi's not and we know there's

not because he tried to do it again today. Um. There was a non party witness, a young woman who lived um in one of the dorm rooms right by the rotunda. They're called the lawn rooms. The prestigious opportunity. Only super high achievers get to live in those beautiful historic lawing rooms. So she lived right near where the torch march was happening, and she heard and she went outside and she looked at it. Um. She's not a party to the suit. She has no knowledge of these

people or what happened. She just saw this thing happen. And she testified to that UM, and he tried to you know, she had made some passing remark that she had heard from another student that maybe there would be a thing on campus right that they knew about the rally the next day. But like, I don't know, maybe these guys will try and come here, just like, be on your toes, right, not anything specific. She was not.

She's not an activist, she's not. She didn't know anything right, and so he was grilled her, tell me who told you that? Tell me who told you that? How did you know that? And he said, on the record, direct quote, I want to know who infiltrated our communications. So he's trying to use this, this moment where he has someone

under oath to extract information about who snitched. He wants to know who infiltrated their secret communications, which is him admitting their secret communications that weren't turned over in discovery, which wasn't smart of him to do. But he's using this process to get names of people who he can harass. And we know that's what they're doing because while he was getting these names from that other witness, you know

the names of the people at the statue. Jason Kessler, the lead defendant, right that, the defendant whose name is on the lawsuit, the lead organizer of the rally, is posting all this time. He's posting through it, posting through it. If you had a good lawyer, he would tell you not to post through your own conspiracy trial. Um So wal Cantwell is extracting these names from this poor young man, Kessler's posting them. He's posting their pictures and their legal

names and describing their involvement. These people who are not party to this lawsuit. And there's no way to interpret that other than as as a vehicle for harassment. Um. So there's I think there will be there will be collateral damage of this lawsuit, but I hope that it does um have the intended deterrent effect. Right, Um, sorry to be talking at length for a while, but just insummation, insummation, I think, um. Inside the courtroom, this is the case

about damages. Right. The judge is very clear that like, stop talking about broader societal impact. You can't tell the jury about that. That's not relevant to this case. This, legally speaking, is a case about did this thing happen real? These people hurt by it? What is the dollar amount

of their pain? Legally speaking, that's it. But outside the courtroom, this is about deterrence, right, This is about setting a precedent that if you do this, if you plan a rally knowing that the people who come to your rally will hurt people because you told them that's the goal. Right, Even if you're not the one who swings the stick, even if you're not the one pressing the accelerator, you are responsible and you can be held accountable. That as

an important message. Yeah, we will, like your life will be ruined if you participate in this ship. That even if you don't have anything for us to take, we will put a garnishment on you that will follow you to the fucking grave. Yep. And I think, yeah, that's that's I would agree what I think is important here. Um Molly, I think that's that's everything. For now. We're still how much how much longer do we have to go through this the court, Well, it's scheduled for four weeks.

It's been one and a half. And there was there was some some anxiety and handwringing about how maybe four weeks won't cut it. Yeah, Jesus, I'm regretting my decision to actively live tweets. So like I'm transcribing in real time for eight hours a day. It happens your fingers are using a laptop. Are you doing it on a phone.

I'm doing it on a laptop, thank god. So because of covid um no one can go into the courthouse because there's so many parties in this case and there's the plague, and no one can go into the courthouse except for there's there's a press room where fifteen people who got pre approved by a federal court can go and sit and look at a monitor. Um, but I'm sitting at home. I'm comfy at home, So I'm thank god. Yeah,

that would be and I was. I was disappointed. You know, I kind of wanted to see I love to see a love a courtroom ambiance. But I'll be honest. Word, I'm way less worried about getting stabbed here at home. That is true. That is true. People are less likely to get stabbed at home or more likely one of the two. Um, I don't know. Uh. Tell us in the comments where you think people are most likely to get stabbed. Uh and um Molly, thank you so much. Thank you both for what you're doing for coming on

the show. Is there anywhere the listeners can find slash support you? Would you like people to mail you knives? What? Oh mail me knives? Yeah, but not as a threat, like as a fun thing, fun knives for fun. I did get a large machete in the mail the other day, and before I saw the little gift note, I was confused. Oh good, okay, I'm glad you're getting a gift machetes. Yeah yeah. My my friendship is a sheep farmer in

North Carolina sent me a large blade. Good. Uh no. But so if you're interested in reading moment by moment live transcription of people screaming Holocaust denial at a federal judge, um, you can check me out on Twitter. That's at Socialist Dog mom. That's what happens when you make a little joke with your friends, when you have five followers and um, and then you end up using it professionally. The national

news repeatedly, I don't. Then people are posting your mug shot making fun of you using your bullshit mug shot. You look great, but it's bullshit. Um, nobody looks good after they get left in a hot van like a dog. Yeah that's true. Well, Molly, that's gonna be the end of the episode. So why don't we Why don't we sing a song and and and roll out? Hopefully not the song that Heimbuch included in his Christmas letter to James Fields in prison. Oh god, that must have been

really a special. Jeez, I'll have to look that up. I did come across in my um my browsing through Fascist Telegram the other week, an entire album, dozens of songs that we're all Nazi covers of Blink one eight two's entire discography, everything, everything, And they called it, of course, they called it Blink likely of course it was. I don't I don't even know, like, I don't even know like how to talk about that. It was just the

thing that I found. Do you know hampt Install, the guy who studies malicious Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's got a particular fascination with white power wrap. Oh god. Yeah. It's never a good although there was a there was a fun in one of the h Bomber Guy videos. He found finds this flat earth Nazi who has a rap that's amazing. Alright, alright, partial, I'm partial to can't wells distracts. Yeah, Chris Campbell, Well, thank you, Molly and

uh off we go into the wild blue yonder. I'm gonna go smoke some legal weed and fall asleep, face down, hopefully not thinking about this trial. I am not going to smoke some legal weed, because that's federally a crime. Molly. I have a good day, Molly. Thank you all for listening. Welcome back to It Could Happen here, the podcast that is occasionally introduced competently as it sort of was today because our guest today is someone who is very near and dear uh to me and to like almost every

other person that I know and work with. Um, Moira Meltzer Cohen. You are a lawyer focusing on civil rights and movement kind of cases. Uh. And you are the lawyer of yeah, like every everybody I respect in the world. Yeah. Um, you're the person that I text whenever I need to know, Hey, was this a crime? Um? Or it never is and it never is. I'm law abiding, very law abiding. Um and uh. Yeah, we wanted to have you on both because you're always a breath of sunshine and because um,

there's some like law stuff happening these days. We just had um our mutual friend Molly Conjure on to talk about the Charlottesville case, which is quite a thing. Today was the day. Yeah. Today today had some had some moments. Chris Cantwell and Richard Spencer representing themselves separately, each cross examining each other I'd have so many thoughts. Mostly my thoughts involved laughing. It's very very funny. It's it's it's

the funniest of an incredibly tragic and infuriating situation. Something funny finally happened. Um, So at least there's that often very funny in spite of himself. Yeah, Um, I would love one day to just get you on and duo, we can do a reading of some of Chris Cantwell's better legal filings. Um. These guys quite the legal mind, Robert.

I think I maybe didn't ever tell you about the fact that we um did a Poorams Feel, which is a performance of the story of Esther Um Oh my God, traditionally done at Poor Ram, which is a Jewish holiday Um. And it was based on the complaint that he filed. Oh my God, those of you what are the third

was promin ly featured in the role of Hayman. For those of you who don't know, Chris Cantwell, the crying Nazi from the Unite the Right rally, has been incarcerated for a year or so now um and continues to put out his own legal motions, generally handwritten UM, alleging all kinds of conspiracies from the people who did not call the FBI and admit to committing several crimes. We should, we should absolutely absolutely do a crossover with Daniel Harper

um and to discuss Wells legal genius. But but today more we wanted to have you on because there is another case that a lot of folks are rightly concerned about, because it has some pretty dire implications depending on how it goes in a number of ways, the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. Um. For the I mean, everyone knows Kyle Rittenhouse took a gun illegally across state lines to a protest so he might have the chance to shoot people. Um,

and then shot people. This is my opinion about what happened. Obviously, the legal case is unfolding. Um. There's been a lot of talk online on on Twitter and whatnot about how obviously unfair the judges being. This is what the talk on Twitter is about, and it's because of a couple of things. One is that the judge and and again I'm before I cut, I go to you, Moira. I'm just explaining kind of the way the discourse has been. The discourse has stated like, well, the judge said, you

can't call Kyle. You can't call the people that he killed victims, but you can call the people that he killed looters and arsonists. UM. And so people are saying, look at this very clear example of how how bad the justice system is, UM, and I wanted to bring you on for a number of reasons, including the fact that, like there's a lot of stuff that seems fucked up and in fact is fucked up, you could argue, but it's also like like pretty normal justice system stuff and

some stuff that seems fucked up but actually isn't. This is not I'm not necessarily talking about the Rittenhouse case here, just in general, and we talk about the law. So I guess I wanted to have you on to explain to us what's happening in your opinion and how normal, abnormal, good, bad are kind of the things that we're seeing, the decisions we're seeing this judge make UM in this case so far, Yeah, sure, absolutely so. The trial, UM. I think when you asked me to comment on this, UM,

the trial had not started. The trial has now started. It has been characterized by the defense saying the N word be here this morning, I think was dismissed for making a cruel and nakedly racist joke. Uh. And apparently the judge had a fit of peak about the media's response to his evidentiary rulings, which are what you've asked me to come discuss, um, which is itself actually one of the more unusual things about this how this trial is going. UM. It's always a little bit hard for

me to opine on a case that is not my case. UM. I feel tentative about it. UM. This would never be my case because I would not represent a white supremacist, and I am not a prosecutor and would never be a prosecutor. And I was not able to look at the briefing because although all of the briefing was ostensibly

publicly filed, it is not actually publicly available. UM. I had a very interesting conversation with the Clerk of court and Kenosha, who told me that if I mailed her a request, she would fax me the briefing at a dollar twenty five a page. And I said, thank you very much, goodbye. UM. So I'll do my best to speak to these rulings, UM, and the sort of larger

issues as I see them. UM. As you noted, there's been a lot of kind of salacious headlines about the evidential in this case, UM, And I think those headlines are really they're less about what's actually happening in the case, and they're more reflective of the sort of pearl clutching UM liberal impulse to to notice the totally self evident hypocrisy of the legal system uh, and then to conclude that because certain groups are shown more leniency, the way

to resolve this hypocrisy is to make sure everyone is pleased and prosecuted and punished as viciously as the left is, which is not actually the goal that I have. UM. And just to clarify when I when I talk about liberals as I as I will probably do a little bit, UM, I don't mean like I mean liberal as opposed to

radical UM. People who are more or less okay with the underlying big systems uh, like capitalism and like dipremacy and hetero patriarchy and like maybe are more concerned with the iterations of those things that are particular league ghosh, but they don't actually mind the systems themselves that or the way that those systems are reiterated and enforced by,

for example, the American criminal legal system. UM. So you know, I think the kind of liberal read on these rulings is not only not legally sound, UM, I think it's actually incredibly dangerous. And it's watching this unfold and watching the liberal commentary on it, I think is one of the things. It's one of the ways that I can

really see liberal liberals and liberalism losing credibility. Um, because because they're sort of calling out this hypocrisy, and at the same time there's a little bit of a double standard that they want to um, that they want to propose and enforce. UM. So okay, so I'll talk about the rulings that you discussed. Um. The first one is that the judge um, so that the prosecution is not

allowed to refer to the people are writtenhouse killed as victims. UM. I will remind you, as I remind all of my clients continuously, UM, that the law is at best adjacent to common sense understandings of justice and even frankly common sense understandings of reality. UM. Obviously, the people that Kyle

Rittenhow's killed were victims. UM. But as my beloved colleague Sandy reminded me, uh, the concept of victimhood, the status of victimhood is among the things that needs to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at this trial, right, um. And so in in fact, this is a totally straightforward ruling. Is a ruling that I would argue for as a defense attorney and that I expect to win where I

trying in murder case. So you know, it's one of those things like you have to overcome this, this you have to overcome when you're thinking about a trial, like the fact that you know he's guilty, because the point of a trial is that everyone like there's a process, right, we don't just do street justice because that's what written

House did. Um, Like we're we're you have to like one of the It is troubling to me the extent that people are like, well, he he should be presumed like we should be referring to the people he shot as victims before he has been adjudicated as guilty, because like that's that's important, Like the presumption of innocence matters, and it's it's it's also something that's very unfair, Like there's a person in Portland, Alexander Dial, who got in trouble for taking a hammer out of a Nazis hand

during a rally UM, and has been charged with several felonies, and because his trial kept getting delay, spent two and a half years under pre trial conditions. So the presumption

of innocence is hardly equal, but it is important. Yeah, exactly, And I think that you know, we'll talk about this, I think in a little bit, but that's exactly the issue, right, is that, UM, we need to be enforcing the equal application of the presumption of innocence, not being you know, rapidly going after the right in the same way that we are used to uh, law enforcement and the judiciary

going after the left. Um. The other ruling that the judge made, UM, which you mentioned, was that he said that the defense is authorized to characterize the people that written house killed as looters or rioters if there's evidence presented that they were in fact looting and or rioting. I would, if I were, you know, in this case, which of course i'm not, I would object to this on the grounds that it is prejudicial and bullshit, and it's fun up in bullshit. Yeah, yes, that said, I

am not super surprised by that ruling. UM. I would say it's likely within the sound discretion of the judge and if you know, and if the prosecution disagrees, it's a matter for appeal. UM. You know, I think, UM, one of the things that judge said about this, actually that I think is really important and correct, UM, is that he has uh a tremendous amount of discretion in

making evidentiary rulings. Rulings. UM. One of the rulings he made was that he's admitting the testimony of an expert witness, UM, which you know, I think a lot of people are also quite upset about. UM. But that said, again, this is not that unusual, and it's very difficult for him to deny that motion to have his evidence or his testimony admitted, because the prosecution routinely uses use of for sex words in similar trials. UM. So now we're they're

just on the other side of the table. Yeah. So you know, first of all, I get that these rulings don't make us feel good, UM, but they aren't that strange. And as I said, the judge has tremendous discretion in these matters. UM. I was thinking about how to illustrate this, and it occurred to me that I think the last time I was on one of your podcasts, you asked me whether cocaine was illegal? Yeah, what are we landing

on that? By the way, so I think the first time you asked me, I was a total kill joy and was like, of course, it's a legal proverb. Um. But if I had actually taken your question more seriously, I think a better answer probably would have been nobody knows, um. For precisely this reason, because the real question is not what the law says. The real question is how, or whether, or against whom, or to what degree and under what

circumstances will that law be enforced? And right? These are always open questions and arguments, and judges have a ton of power. This case is no exception. So you know, again, not only are these rulings pretty standard, but there I think within the judge's discretions some of them I really dislike. Some of them make total sense to me. Um, And I think that what is happening is is not necessarily

sound legal analysis. But liberals sort of trying to argue that Writtenhouse should be more harshly prosecuted by saying that these specific rulings are unfair or unusual. It's a little bit like the liberals crying out now because people are putting like, let's go brandon on printing it on rifle

receivers and saying like, well, the Secret Service should investigate it. Well, if they do that, then some then like thirty if they do that, and like one company gets a fine, forty people are going to go prison for having red flags on their body armor. Like that's the way it works in this country. But the right thing, Yeah, any any anarchists for the three D printers can to immediately

go to jail. Yeah that's not like that is correct. Yeah. So, I guess the thing that I want to point out here is that what is actually unusual about this case is not these rulings. It is that Written House is going to trial at all. And the reason Written House is going to trial is able to go to trial is largely because this prosecution is fundamentally calculated not to be repressive. Um So, I want to kind of zoom out and get away from the weeds of the evidentiary rulings.

Um So, in its simplest expression, when we talk about the difference between state and federal jurisdiction, we're saying kind of, um, jurisdiction for dummies. Uh, Overly simplified is stuff that happens inside or only impact a given state is typically prosecuted by the state and if it impacts if your offense conduct or alleged offense conduct impacts more than one state, UM, then it is or can be prosecuted by the federal Department of Justice. So Kyle Rittenhouse crusts state lines with

a pretty serious firearm and he shot three people. This puts us immediately into federal jurisdiction land. Um. He did this in the context of an uprising for racial justice that has been characterized by the fact that those rising up on the side of racial justice have been subject

to intense repression by the federal government. D o J has shown themselves to be fire breathingly enthusiastic of omicizing their jurisdiction over heaty offenses based on totally tenuous grounds um for people on the left or who are received to be on the left. UM. D o J has asserted jurisdiction in order to prosecute people for um absolutely trivial but politically motivated offenses that would be left to

the state to prosecute absent the politics of the accused. UM. They have a certain federal jurisdiction on really flimsy bases like that a local police building or vehicle um belongs to an apartment that has received federal funding, so property damage against it becomes a federal offense. One thing they're doing that is unusual is the federal government is a

certain concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute offenses. So I know there's someone in Courtland who is simultaneously being prosecuted by multnoma and also the federal government UM for allegedly throwing some accelerant on a police building. UM. Right, So it is very curious that written House, who quite clearly did something that would you know, fall under federal jurisdiction, is not

being federally charged. And it matters a lot for how the case proceeds, UM, because the way that federal prosecutions operate is that the Feds will typically stack these indictments UM in a way that really puts tremendous pressure on them to plead guilty UM, which is not typically the case or it doesn't happen in the same way in

a state prosecution. So UM, you have these stacked indictments with multiple multiple counts ranging you know, all all kinds of conduct um, often involving you know, a conspiracy, which can be very very easy to prove UM and a guilty finding on any of those counts could be like a mandatory minimum of five to ten years. And then if you're looking at, um, you know, a guilty on more than one or all of those counts, you're looking at a sentence potentially concurrent sentences that our tantamount to

dying in prison. Right. And so this creates tremendous pressure on federal defendants to negotiate a pre trial disposition to take a guilty plea UM. So again, Kyle Rittenhouse crosses same lines with this firearm which gets used in the in the commission of an act of violence. And I feel extremely confident that any federal prosecutor could come up with a stack of counts against him within about ten

minutes without breaking a sweat um. But you know, so you know, if you think about him being in that position, you think through, Okay, if I go to trial, what is what are likely outcomes if Kyle Rittenhouse went to trial federally, and even if he prevailed on a self defense right, which which could happen if you were found guilty on one or more of the lesser charges, he

would still be looking at really really serious time. Right, But that's not where we are, right, Um, we are in a really weird place where like, in a federal context, we wouldn't even be like talking about evidentiary rulings because uh, he would almost certainly not be going to trial, right or you know, if he had a reasonable lawyer, he

would probably be negotiating a plea. I'm curious what do you think about because one argument I've heard, and I'm certainly in no position to evaluate this personally, is that if federal charges had been placed on him, you know, when the crime in Trump would have pardoned him. Um, I don't know, yeah, Like I've heard people argue that that like, well, at least with the state charges, he

can't be pardoned by President Trump. Like, I'm in no position to really evaluate that, but I'm curious what you think about that. Hey, honestly can't even yeah, speculate about what might have happened. That is very interesting. I do think that if if d O J wanted to charge him at this point, I mean not, but like there I think wasn't opening for that to happen after Trump

left I seat. There is a very interesting foy A request to be made to d O j UH to see what kind of memo was circulated about whether or not they were going to pick this one up. They clearly declined to prosecute Um. I the only thing that I could come up with, to be honest, And I looked and did not really see any meaningful discussion of this, of their decision not to prosecute um. The only thing that occurred to me is that they might have been

reluctant to a search jurisdiction over a minor. But they can prosecute anyone over the age of fifteen as an adult if they engage in violent crimes or if they are alleged to have engaged in violent crimes. So that's not it wouldn't entirely undermine their ability to do so. UM. So you know, for whatever, you know, for whatever reason they didn't, I think it is worth noting. I think it is, as I said, very curious, UM. And it's particularly curious in light of the intense federal repression that

has been faced by people perceived to be on the left. Um. You know. So, like again, I want to be very clear, I don't. I'm not suggesting that I want him to be federally prosecuted. UM, I don't particularly I'm not interested in arguing for more prosecutions or for making the state the arbiter of political rights business, or giving the state more enforcement power or more resources. Um. You know, but you know, and look at no shade to Kenosha, Wisconsin.

All right, But UM. One of the things that the UH federal prosecutors are really have a lot of experience doing is digital forensic investigations, and UH, in this case, one of the sort of critical questions is did he have specific intent to go across state lines and engage in violence? And I suspect that if you were to access all of his texts and metadata and social media posts, that you could probably find evidence of that specific intent.

And I think that the federal government is probably better positioned to do that than the prosecutors UH in Kenosha. And they decided not to, right, so, you know, and that is exactly the kind of investigation that they mounted against Daniel Baker, who just he's a the yoga teacher in Tallahassee who just got three and a half years for posting vague, sort of incoherent, mutually contradictory kind am

not at all frightening. Yeah, it's not that I wouldn't be a characterized as threats, but I hesitate to that. You know, he posted some stuff on social media and and now he's going to do fer. Yeah, my attitude on the nature of what he posts that like if prior to his prosecution, you had brought that post. But to me, I said, well, probably not a great idea to post. But also literally every week a right winger

in the Portland area posts something significantly more actual. Right now, Chandler Papa's currently being charged with assaulting six police officers in the state capital and Salem just announced that he's doing armed training as a convicted felon outside of Portland, uh later this November. Um, which if he's if he touches a firearm, he should go away, Like based on the letter of the law, he should go to prison for years. Like that's the way the law is written.

Nothing's going to happen to him. He's going to get to train people with guns and continue to carry guns. And it's it's fine for him. Um anyway, whatever, I'm sorry, it's Okay, I guess your your listeners can't see that. I have my head. Yeah, yeah, I mean, look what Daniel Baker did us certainly ill advised. If yeah, ill advised,

it would characterize it. I have clients who have been visited by the Secret Service or have been visited by the FBI for saying stuff that when they call me and they're like, well, I just said this, and I'm like, yeah, I know that you're not gonna actually do that, but maybe don't you know, it's it's not it's I advised, but it's protected by the very First Amendment more or less. And you know, I've said this before. I don't think the solution to too um being surveilled on social media

is self censorship. I think it is courage. But I also think that discretion is the better part of valor. So yes, pick your battles and maybe, yeah, understand that it's not fair, you know. Yeah, And also like, what do you gain by you know, being bump stous on the internet. It's one of those things where, yeah, if that guy had had a high dollar lawyer, um, if he if he'd been a rich person, yeah, maybe he

would have gotten away with it. Um, who knows, but like he it's it's he certainly would have gotten No. I can certainly say he would have gotten away with it if he'd been a right winger because of you every single day. UM. I can't make any speculation about that particular shase, but I can say that the people who are being surveilled intensely and targeted for that kind

of repression are not the people on the right. Um. The people on the right are able to make those kinds of statements and not be particularly taken seriously even when they should be. And people on the left are presumed to be you know, Antifa super soldiers. UM. So you know, I think the decision not to assert federal jurisdiction in the written House case is interesting. It is noteworthy, really curious about what was going on there, um and it has had a sort of cascade of effects, including UM.

I doubt that the forensic digital investigation was as good as it would have been had it been federal Uh. And I doubt that the what I mean, he's facing multiple charges, but I don't think that he would have been as likely to go to trial had he been federally charged. UM. So again I don't you know, this is not an argument for more federal prosecution. But like, I think the breathless outrage that we're seeing in you know, these headlines, um, where people are correctly identifying the hypocrisy

of the criminal legal system. UM. I think it's sort of an exercise in point missing. Um. You know, this prosecution, UM, like many of the prosecutions that we see, or the prosecutions that don't happen at all, UM, that involve members of the dominant class or people who uphold the values of the dominant classes. UM, is sort of proof of concept that it's possible to effectively allocate the burden of proof to the prosecution. It's possible not to go super

hard on people and punish them for exercising their trial, right, UM. Right, I mean it's it's possible two treat all people accused of offenses in this way. UM. And I would much rather. I mean, obviously, my ultimate goal is to uh dismantle the entire system, you know. But but in the meantime, I don't think what we need is more vicious prosecution of the right. I think we need consistent and commensurate

prosecution or lack of prosecution. We need to you know, Uh, I think that seeing the way that the right is treated should be evidence for an argument for the possibility of um treating all people with more leniency rather than you know, intense the intense federal repression that we are facing and have been facing, you know since the Palmer rates. Um. So yeah, yeah, Um well, Moira, that uh is the stuff I wanted to ask about. Is there uh anything else? Um?

I mean sure, I definitely go off on liberals Swart please, um please. I mean Garrison is a huge fan of liberals. He's got actually a full back tack two of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, but they're they're in the volleyball scene from Top Gun. Um, it's an incredible tattoo. He did it all freehand on his own back. Amazing. Um, this is like the Garrison. I hope I don't receive any I hope I don't receive any awful fan right now? Someone,

someone do it? Come on, come on, photoshop Garrison's head onto onto your stones back and the photoshop Nixon's head out and the volumeball scene from Top Gun with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Do it. Do it. Someone's gonna do it. Is definitely going to do it. This is you consume me for this, and you'd be right to do so. Um. But let's get back to and I might represent you the trial of the trial of the century. Yeah,

that sounds great. I think this is a trend that we see with people who are not necessarily focused on looking at the ways that the law is always going to be used first and worst against the already most vulnerable. Right.

So we've seen things like, UM, I think there's just this very well documented liberal impulse, and I think it's very well intentioned, but it's very dangerous UM to do things to assume that the system somehow works um or should work, and that it just needs to be like followed more closely, and that if we push for things like um, if we like use the law to constrain things that I would agree are the most harmful um, excesses of bigotry, right, UM, that the law would be

a good tool for UM for addressing violence and bigotry. The law does not, But that is not what kind of tool the law is. UM. When we push for things like laws regulating political speech, including so called hate speech, laws regulating what are referred to as hate crimes laws, um, regulating who can carry a fighter arm and what they might look like. Um. You know, pushes for limiting the places or circumstances under which you could pro test UM

or demonstrate, right, um, which you know, which was done. Um. There there was a real big um push to uh forbid uh anti choice activists from protesting outside of UM clinics, right, which I understand, right, But what actually is the upshot of doing that? When we see this kind of push to use the law as a tool to enforce a particular political agenda, it is not you know, it's it's just a very ill conceived way to approach this because

the law is never going to protect the most vulnerable. Um. Well, these structures of power that up remain in place, and so you know, it's just always going to be leveraged against the people who have the least amount of power, and and so you know, this this sort of response to the written house stuff, to me is just essentially a recoup daration of that impulse. Yeah, I mean, it's it's a little like that old I think the joke

has attributed to Gandhi. I don't know if Gandhi actually said it, but like he was asked what do you think of Christian civilization, and he said, I think it would be a wonderful idea. What do you think of the fair and equal rule of law? Sounds nice? Um, but yeah, one of the two. Um yeah, maybe both, maybe both. I don't know that we ever saw them together. Um, right,

So I don't know. I I it's it's obviously it's too early to It's one of those things where all of the complaining about the unfairness of the trial of Written House winds up getting um rammed into a legal wall. Metaphorically, Uh may seem silly in content or in in retrospect, or he may this may be the thing that ignites a new wave of vigilante showing up at protests with guns,

but it seems to be untouchable. Like really, the big fears that they don't know a president that will allow other people to use quote unquote self defense claims an effort just to kill black activists, to kill activists on the left, to kill people wearing you know, black hoodies and bandanas, because that's the that's the big fear out of this situation. Because my my expectation is that if Written House gets off or even just gets very minor, like if it's if he's if he's out of jail quickly,

within about six months, he's going to be a millionaire. Um. Absolutely, Yeah, that's the way the right wing works. I would gently ask you to think about what happens if he doesn't, because if he's convicted, we are going to see a deepening of the repression that is faced by everyone on the left as well. We lose either way. Yeah, is on the table. There's no winning, I guess, I think, I mean part of it, I guess depends on what

he's convicted for. Um, because some of the stuff has I would it seems to me, some of the things he's charged with, if convicted, there's more potential negative implications across the political aisle than than with others. Um Like if if it's ruled murder. I don't know, that feels less worries. I mean, I have some concerns about the crossing state line stuff. I don't know. I mean, none of it's none of it's good. I guess where I

am is. I remember vividly how much the situation on the ground changed after Kenosha, just in in Portland, even I mean, Garrison can can back we up with it. They were there for that too, Like it was a It was a significant shift in the feeling of deadliness, you know, whenever there was a right wing left wing confrontation. Um, someone died a few days later, someone died a few days later and in a fucking gunfight. Um, And I I don't know. I don't know, Moira, Uh, I don't know.

I don't. I don't want Written House to get off scott free for shooting three people. You're absolutely right, there's no there's no winning with the legal system. The only way to win is not to play. The only way to win is not to play. So form your own breakaway civilization and as Gandhi and Gandhi yeah uh and n Hubbard take to the sea, yes, yeah, always Look. I don't I don't think. Um, I'm not looking for him to prevail on the self defense. Not like none

of this is going to make me feel good. But I think that whether or not he is punished, whether or not he is convicted, there will be negative radio cussions, and all of those negative consequences will redound to the detriment of the people who are already facing the most intense federal oppression. Yeah, that is, I mean, and in fairness, like, this is the case of a child who killed two people and is now we are determining whether or not this child will spend the rest of their life in

a cell. None of this should make anyone feel good, no matter what happens. It's a thoroughly bleak story. Yeah. Yeah, it's because this kid is never going to have a chance to grow up and be like, oh, I was being like a horrible No, they'll never be able to adjust to anything else rather than being this person that like culturally has been created right there. They are like a cultural thing. They're an item. They're not a person anymore,

and they'll never be able to escape that. Yeah. I was a piece of ship when I was seventeen, and if I had had access to an a R fifteen and a chance to feel like a hero, I might have done something horrific too, And instead you were just doing sloppy steaks And it's fine and now it's fine. Um, have you watched I think you should leave Moira? I'm sorry, have you watched I think you should leave Moira? No? Oh, it's good, it's good, Okay, all right, I'll check it out. Um, um,

I'll take a look. Yeah, I don't know. Um, well, thank you, Moira. Uh, this is always appreciated. Um, it's good. I don't know, like, were you we've talked a bit about anarchism. How many of how much? How much of like your belief about the way the world ought to be and is, came as a result of getting into the guts of the legal system. Do you mean did I become more devoted to anarchy and I went to law school. Yeah? Um, I didn't become less devoted to it.

I remember when I was going to law school, people kept saying, Oh, You're going to become really conservative, and I was like, I don't think that's true. That seems seems fake. Uh. And in fact, I remember being in my criminal procedure class and just thinking, how in the world can anyone at any law school read Miranda, which is a case where someone is, you know, just horrifically abused by police in order to extract a statement. How could anybody read this case and not come out of

law school with a deep contempt for law enforcement. You know, I know that it happens. I don't know how always uplifting I mean it, it is it's important to know, you know. I when I was when I was younger and poor, uh and dealing with things like taxes, I would often go like years without paying them, and I would like ignore debts and bills until like like my student loans, until it became like a serious problem because

I didn't want to look at it. I didn't even want to like look at the scale of the issue and grapple with it. I just wanted to run away from it. And when I actually like sat down and figured out my situation and like really came to understand like what what I needed to do in order to deal with those problems, Like, it was stressful and it sucked, and it was fucking days of work, but getting understanding the scope of the problem I'd gotten myself into was

a necessary step to like fixing the situation. And I think the same is true with like this kind of ship. It's not fun. Nobody who is. I think a reasonable person like wants to dig into the US justice system and get into the guts of it because it's bleak as hell. But you need to because it's it's you can't escape it unless you flee the country. And live in a place with no extradition treaties UM or international waters. I feel like you're talking about a lot of the

people you've profiled past. I mean, Ecuador does sound nice. I'm sure it's loveliest time of here. Um. Yeah, I think you're right. You need to be able to have a sort of clear eyed assessment so that we can accurately identify and effectively address the problems. Unfortunately, I think the problems are so um all encompassing that I don't know that there's I would venture to say that there is not a real totalizing solution that doesn't involve total abolition. Yeah,

I I agree with you. But in the meantime, I mean I think there are there are things that we can do too, Yeah, to advocate for our clients, or as an individual, you can do to protect yourself. And that's why it is important to have some sort of working understanding UM, because you can keep yourself and the people around you at least somewhat safer if you do understand the beast um. Even though your goal is to

is to destroy it. Uh. And that's I think the only reasonable goal when you really understand it, it's still behooves you to to understand it. I mean, it's the same with like it the same with what what Garrison and I do with the fucking Nazi spending all this time in weird telegram channels, like reading what they're trying to understand them, because you do need to understand them to effectively combat them. Well, it's not for the faint

of heart. No, no, yeah, neither is what you do. Um. The messages is that we're all well adjusted and we're all we're all great. That boat that's the secondary trauma. No, there's no secondary trauma in international waters Moire. I have that that that my my old friend l R. H told me that just you and the open sea and a bunch of twenty year old searching for gold that I buried in a past life, live in the dream. Yeah,

he is both fascinating and terrifying. Yeah. Um, just just like just like our legal system and system, and that wraps up this episode that brings us around. Um, anything you want to plug any any place, maybe our listeners could could send donations that would help somebody who's themselves against a wall at the moment. Would certainly suggest that people look into whatever bail funds are local to them. There's one I know in New York called COVID Bailout NYC.

That's UM doing incredible work right now to get people off Riker's Island, which is having a humanitarian crisis of just unbelievable scope. UM. It sounds to me like the conditions on Rikers right now are at least as bad as the conditions that led to the Attica uprising. UM. So I would always, always, UM direct people to give

money to local bail funds. I also want to plug the National Lawyers Guild Anti Federal Repression or Federal Defense hotline, which is to one two six seven nine to eight one one two one to six seven, nine to eight one one if you call that number, or you can call that number if you are having unwanted contact with federal agents, and you can be advised by an attorney who is ME about your rights and responsibilities with respect to federal agents, and I will try to connect you

with appropriate resources in your area. This is not the hotline to call if you've been injured by a police officer. UM. This is the hotline to call if you have been visited by the FBI. UM, don't talk to cops. If you are contacted by law enforcement, say I am represented by counsel. Please leave your name and number, and my lawyer will call you. Uh. And remember that you cannot talk your way out of an arrest, but you can talk your way into a conviction. All great points, all

great things to be aware of. Um, speaking of great things to be aware of. Be aware that we'll be back tomorrow, unless this is a Friday, in which case we'll be back next week. From now until the heat death of the universe. Thank you so much, Maura. You're so welcome blow and welcome to it could happen here a podcast about the continual state of bad things happening and how sometimes you can make them less bad or

not happen. And today we're gonna I'm Christopher Wong, by the way, and today we're gonna be talking about Bosnia, a place where things went about as bad as they possibly can, and about how they're heading in very scary directions now. And with us to talk about this is Arnessa. Kristrad Arnessa is a genocide survivor and a academic expert on genocides in general. Arnessa, how how are you doing

you know, I'm doing okay. I think all thanks considered, you know, being sort of bombarded on a daily basis with you know, possible threats, um and talks about you know, a new conflict war brewing and the Balkans is the thing not an easy thing to content define, you're not. Yeah, But other than that, I'm doing great. Thanks for asking. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad you could be here with me today. Because the Balkans extremely complicated place, which

I guess the story of both places. But yeah, and so I guess that that's that's where I wanted to go with my first question, because reading about what's happening now, my first instinct was go back to the date and accords. But I'm actually not sure that that's that that's that's

that's even the best place to start. And so I wanted I wanted to, I guess ask you if so, okay, so if if, if you're coming into looking at the Balkans for the first time and you're trying to understand what's going on now, where do you think is the best place to start on it? Because I think you know the best. Yeah, we're talking about so much history, honestly. But the thing is, let's you know, let's start with

the death of Tito. That's always a good place, I think, because that's really when things started to kind of shift in the Balkans and the former you know, socialist Upo Slavia was really once Tito died and his place became, you know empty as this sort of unifying factor of

all the various ethnicities and nationalities within Yugoslavia. You know, once he was gone, that sort of left this vacuum that needed to be filled, and unfortunately, instead of being filled by another socialist, you know, pro equality, pro unity leader, it was filled with a nationalist um, which is kind

of where we still are. Unfortunately. Um, you know, it started obviously with with little things, I think, with little sort of conversations and and little subtle I guess, you know, Ethno nationalist rhetorics, and it just kind of like grew and spiraled from there, and obviously, you know, that sort of thing led to Miloshevich and Kosovo giving his infamous speech,

which kind of really gave that full fledged stamp on. Okay, yes, this is a ultra nationalists, you know, Ethno nationalist president that we now have, um, who's threatening war across the other ethnicities. What do we do next? Um? And at that point, you know, that's when you sort of see the other countries start to secede, you know, Slovenia and Croatia they're attacked by Serbia and then obviously eventually it goes down to Bosnia. UM. And yeah, I mean it

starts with the ethno nationalism, as it always does. I think, Um, you know, I don't think we're anything special in terms of having conflict with our neighbors. Look at France and England or in our or America and Mexico or anyone. Really it's just you know, I think people make it sound as if we're special or we have these ancient hatreds, but you know that's not really true. It all comes

down to the freaking politics and the leaders. And unfortunately, you know, Miloshevich was removed, but is policy is um beliefs continue to kind of stick around, you know, I think, uh, you know, people think of people like Miloshevich and odavankata Ji, who were you know, genocidal war criminals, as a thing of the past. But really you look at you know, the Serbian and president um or the SKA president middle and they are really just the continuation of Katach and relationshim.

So nothing you know, has fundamentally changed since Tito died, except you know, we got some new agreements, We've got some new territories, some new ethnic lients drawn up, and not a new pretty buildings too. We have those as well, but we don't really have that coexistence um at least

that on paper, not in politics. Certainly. I want go back for a second too, I guess the moment of Chito dying because it's always been a sort of interesting thing looking at it for me because I remember, I mean, you know, so from from stutting Chinese history right there, there's a period where in the seventies were okay, like everyone's looking for reform and China and you know what what you would consider like the sort of the I guess you could call them the I don't know, left

and right is complicated in China, but you know, like there there are a lot of sort of what you would call like the sort of left socialists, like democratic reformers who are who you know, I mean people people like they're looking at Yugoslavia as a model and they're going, oh, we can have like workers participation, and we can have we can have these democratic enterprises, and then that just implodes.

And and yeah, I wonder if we could talk a little bit about more about that, because my my very limited understanding of it was like there's an economic crisis from the oil shocks, and then once Tito dies, it's just like the wheels come off the whole system. I mean, that's a really good way of like putting it. Um, you know, like life in Yugoslavia, I don't think it was like ever perfect, and I definitely don't think it

was a perfect system. I think, you know, me being a ball me and he was born to Vary, I think pro Yugoslav parents. Um. I just like many of my you know, fellow Yugoslavs or x Yugoslavs habitant seemed to look at Yugoslavia with like rose colored lenses. You know.

We think about the coexistence, the unity, the multi ethnic part, the worker owned you know, socialist models, the fact that our parents, um, you know, we're able to provide for their families and take vacations and travel and um, you know, get together and all these sort of wonderful things. But in the background really in the sort of depths of the you know, politics and the economic issues were kind

of always there. Um. You know. The one thing that Tito did was obviously he relied unlike I think other socialist leaders of his time is you know, he basically worked with anyone, you know, the non aligned movement, but also with the West, with Europe, you know. So uh, he was a very picky choosy I think was you know, the betterment of the country by kind of any means necessary. Um. But I think, you know, he made mistakes, just like um other leaders do. And I think obviously we had

you know, two issues. One he was sick, he was dying, um. And and too there was an economic crisis happening. Um. And three then we had like the economic reforms, which really shifted the entire I mean they just they very much shifted the the system that the Yugoslav people were very much used to. Um. It became more and more prior you know, private eyes after his death. UM. And and you know, Miloshevic he was he was a banker,

he was a businessman. He was he was who he was. UM. And I don't think that he ever really pretended to be a socialist, which is why I get so upset when the American leftists call him a socialist or call him an anti imperialist, because those aren't even words that you know, he himself would have really used to describe himself. I think, but but I think, you know, there was just it was that sort of thing where there's an economic crisis brewing, they have no ways to really fix it.

People are broke, people are starving. Suddenly the ownership, the worker you know owned sort of model is being shifted to a more privatized model, and people are just not happy. What's a good way to distract from that? You know, It's just we see it happen everywhere. It's not a new it's not like a new, you know tactic. It's a tactic that everyone has utilized. Blame it on the other. Um. So, Yugoslavia didn't really have you know, immigrants that they could

blame it on, but they had Muslims. So and they had the Kasabo you know, Albanians and the Bossians and that was, you know enough, and suddenly the conversation really shifted. And obviously I'm simplifying all of this a lot, so much more complicated. Um but you know, there there are books out there, and and that obviously go into a great you know, level of detail, um, into the actual sort of breakup, so I can give some recommendations later. Um. Yeah.

But I think in in that sort of very simplistic kind of sense is there was an economic crisis happening. A good way to sort of distract that was the use of ethno nationalism, and it just kind of spiraled from there. I think, you know what Miloshevich and what people like Miloshevitch always want, it's more power for themselves. And so his whole thing wasn't really ever about keeping Yugoslavia intact as Yugoslavia. It was keeping this vision of

a greater Serbia alive. Because the thing is, you know, if we had not had a person like Miloshevitch, if we just had somebody who was you know, the second, you know, maybe more or less worse or better, who cares, I think people would have been fine. I think, you know, I don't see this like war breaking now. But instead we had Miloshevitch, who was like way more concerned about

consolidating power, exerting that control. And when he realized that he could use ethno nationalism to get to his goals. Of course he was going to use that. Of course, like who wouldn't you know, we see it today with like what Trump did. He utilized you know, Muslims and immigrants and refugees and black people, all his scapeboats to distract from all the other things that are wrong with him, his leadership and the overall country. And him did the same.

He just did what any other politician did. And you know that's the thing I think, you know, in thinking about Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and all these countries that started to succeed, I think if they had felt comfortable with, you know, staying in a country that is multi ethnic, at least in the case of Bosnians. I'm not going to speak for the Slovanian's or Croatians because they have

their own, i think complicated identity. But with Bosnians, are are saying collectively, I think while we're not a monolith, not monolith, but collectively was always where are united? We are multi ethnic, multi religious, multi cultural, and it's such a big part of like our entire history and identity. And so if the choices being you know, under Serb control being secondary citizens, not having that equality, not having that multi ethnicity. Of course we're not going to take

that choice. Of course, people are gonna want to you know, when when you have like that, you know, that boot on your neck of saying like we're going to control you, we're gonna take your land and we're gonna basically rule over you. Nobody wants to deal with that. And you know, unlike a lot of the other countries in former Yugoslavia,

Bosia really was the most multi ethnic. It had one of the highest rates of you know, make ethnic marriages and multi religious marriages, and that kind of remains true even today. So especially in places like sary Evo, Mostad, Baneluka, you know, the bigger cities, it has this very proud history of you know, coexistence and multi ethnic co existence. So I think what happened for so many people was just a huge amount of shock. Um, my own family, so many people in my own family just did not

think it could happen. Now. They grew up with this idea of a united you know, multi ethnic Yugoslavia, brotherhood and unity. These are our neighbors, our friends, our teachers, are lovers, you know whatever. There they work with us. They live next to us. Of course they're not gonna

have you know, turn against us. And I think even while all the politicians were fearmongering, while you know, Midloshevitch and Kinda Dutes were sort of leading their campaigns of you know, especially as lamophobic provacad propaganda, um, you know, in in newspapers, on the radio, on TV, any chance that any speech that they gave, they talked about how the Muslims were coming, we were going to make their

daughters wear her jobs, we were gonna take over. We're going to kill them, you know before that's why they have to kill us, because they don't pill us, We're going to kill them. It was just whole, you know, really brilliant propaganda campaign in so many ways that has now been replicated and so many other Can we talk about that specifically for yes? Second, because I think there's something interesting in the way that like the way that you get people to do with genocide always seems to

be like you can't. It's extremely hard to get someone to like just murder or their neighbor because they don't like them. You have to do this like they're about to exterminate us, and that's why we have to like strike first and that. Yeah, that that that aspect of it, I think is is something that I see a lot when when I do this. Andy, you you have you have done more geneside studies. I want to hear. Yeah.

I mean here's the thing. Um, it's so funny. I gave like an interview UM on this specific topic I don't know, like two years ago, and I remember turning to the guy who was interviewing me because he was just like his look on his face was I just don't understand, Like I don't. I can't wrap my mind about how people could do that to their friends, neighbors, students, you know, people they were sworn to like protect and and people they lived with their entire lives. How could

they do that? Well, you know, I turned to him and I said, yeah, I mean, if I told you right now go kill him, you know you probably wouldn't. But if I came to you, they in and day out. And I slowly started to kind of whisper in your ear, and I started to tell you, you know, he's been really really I don't know, he's been saying a lot of stuff about you. He's been quite negative. Or I don't know, you know, do you think he's kind of acting weird. I feel like he might be planning something.

You may be planning to take over your house. You may be planning to I don't know, probably attack your sister. I think he's going to kill your sister. I think you might make your sister wear her job. So it's these very like slow, subtle things. And that's the thing that people don't understand. You know. Violence never interrupts, like, never erupts out of nowhere, you know it. It's always planned. It bruised, and it bruise, and it bruise and then

it explodes. You know. Then there's the thing. But it comes slowly. And that's how it wasn't Yo Slavia. It wasn't this sudden. You know. Oh, yes, we're brothers and sisters. Forever, go Tito, go Yugoslavia to you know, Oh, I hate you because you're Muslim, and I hate you because you're a servant. I hate you because you're croact. No, that

was not the case. The case was that this was a very slow campaign of propaganda that started in the eighties, almost immediately after Tito's that let's say it started very slow, started with the you know, with the sort of I think disenfranchisement of the coast of all Albanians um and

kind of the targeting of them um. And again yes there was this economic component on of it, but the way they wanted to kind of sidetrack that was, you know, well, you're you're hungry because the coast of Albanians are not, you know, and they're taking your jobs again some more uh, you know tactics that we see. Yeah, so it's not it's not that much different, but yeah, you know, it starts slow and and the militievitch and the katage and the melodic kind of campaign. Thing was God, it was brutal.

I mean, like I always say, it was kind of brilliantly executed in that it really got to people so much that then again, you know, they turned neighbor against neighbor. It was it was subtle in the beginning. It was that sort of what are the Muslims up to? Can we trust them? Can you trust your neighbor? Can you

trust the Muslims? You know, talking about islam sization, talking about Alia is a Bigga, which is book that he wrote when he was like I don't know eighteen or whatever, like and you know, talking about World War Two, this was another thing. Like like everybody knows that there was a period in World War Two where you know, a lot of service were killed by the Gustsia UH and by the Nazi collaborationists. And I think obviously that's a real fear for you know, for a certain group of

people who went through that. So there was a lot of that as well. You know, that's going to happen again, That's gonna happen again. Meanwhile, there was no grand plan. There was never even talks of you know, committing violence or even you know, talks of you know, seceding from Yugoslavia or anything. It was all it was all set in motion by the Serbian leadership, you know. And I

think that's what people don't understand. The Bousian leadership, while not perfect, we're simply reacting to what the Serbian leadership was in many ways making them do. And and that's kind of where, you know, what happens in these situations.

You know, they kind of push you and push you and push you until they're able to get you know, some sort of rise out of you or response out of you, or or get you on that sort of offensive where you have to defend yourself, you have to defend your identity, you have to defend who you are,

you have to justify it also in many ways. So yeah, the you know those sort of propaganda campaign God, there was you know, obviously the funny things were like things like they're going to make you wear the hit job. But it was also very insiduous because they would target like these you know villages where they were like Bosnians and Serbs, you know, living together, and they're quite small, but they knew that like in the village obviously usually have a gun or you know shotgun because of the

animals or you know, working or whatever. So they were like target them specifically with like the you know, the radio and instead of like the big cities, like they worked up to the big cities, but they really started in like specific sort of areas, like in eastern Bosnia, especially because there was like a lot of UM i think majority Muslim like villages in that area that would

also have like nearby served villages. So yeah, I mean it was that there was you know then sort of taking over all the radio stations and UM kind of going full force they think, like in the sort of early days of the war, like we're talking April May, they you know, they would get people like pretending that they were Bosnians, they were actually Serbs, and they would like talk about how they went to you know, kill

all Serbs or something like that. Um. There was also when they were like having people in concentration camps, when they started kind of putting them in those concentration kIPS. Initially they they would make the victims in the concentration camps the Muslims basically, you know, say that, oh, they're just there as a refugee and the Serbian army is like protecting them, and they're making you feel really welcome

and stuff like that. So it is right at the beginning between especially eighty nine to like the propaganda was so visible and it really escalated, and it was like suddenly everywhere and you would hear Cartgic and Middle Bershovitch talk about you know, the Muslims and the things that we wanted and you know, the things that the goals that we had, which after all, we're not you know,

nobody was saying it. There wasn't like a single person that was saying these things that they were attributing to us, but that didn't matter. What they were just doing was instilling enough fear and enough doubt in the population to eventually get them to take up arms when the time comes. And unfortunately, that's precisely what happened. When the time came. You know, a lot of people did take up arms,

whether or not they wanted to. They had enough of that doubt and fear so in their minds over the course of you know, several years that they ended up feeling like I have to protect myself. And I'm not saying that's the case for every certain person. I think some a lot of you know, especially in higher leadership emissions, a lot of them were just sociopaths who wanted to kill. And I don't think it mattered why or how, because

you're always going to get those kind of people. But I think when we're talking about how how that shift happened so last, we have to obviously discuss the propaganda. The huge amount of propaganda that I went into, uh, you know, implementing it such a tangent that was that

was really great. Yeah, I think, you know, yeah, I mean, I guess, like, I think it's incredibly important for everyone to understand that propaganda works, like if you just say something over and over and over again, like it does you know of event eventually it pays off. And you

know the quote unquote payoff here is the genocide. And I guess, yeah, I'm not sure how far into detail you want to get into this here, but but I think one thing I want to kind of focus on because I think from from reading what you've been saying about this, that this wound up being a big deal with like why things are sort of still fucked now,

which is that like the international response to this. Like I mean, one of the things I'm always just like haunted by is there's this quote by mid Irand who's the Prome Mr of France. He's like this, he wants

to be the socialist. He's like the guy that like they finally put in power after like all of the stuff in the sixties, and he has this lying about like I'm sorry, I wish I wish I had told up the exact quote, but it's it's basically like io, yeah, do you want to say, I don't remember the exactly, Um, it's the it's what was it up? Peaceful but necessary reconstruction of a Christian europe Um and Bosnia does not belong.

So I remember that differently. It's really stayed with me for such a long time because he said that at a time where the Bosnian Muslims were just completely defenseless. Um, they were being dragged the way to concentrate to shim camps. The massacres were already well underway. We're not talking about Stuberdance. We're talking about sorry about uh um even Stub nine two.

You know, this is all, um, the things that happened in places like witchcoins running and all these like places that you that I think the vast majority of people don't really know about any here about, like in a

lot of my family is from there. With in a span of three months, that entire town, the entire town which was once almost entirely Bosnia muslim Um, was ethnically cleansed, and that was done through forced deportations, concentration camps, mass rapes and rape camps of women and obviously a lot

of murders. You know. So we're talking about one small town that took you know, three three months, and my family when it comes to that town, on both my mother's and my father's side, interestingly enough, has like such a long history. My parents fell in love there when

they were like kids. So you know, they you know, my grandmother's house was there, my grandfather's house was there, um on like both sides and they, you know, so is this beautiful little town where you know Bosnians then Bosniaks and Serves and CoA hads lived in Jews Roma and you know, my parents talked about beauty of it and this wonderful sort of experience that they had when

they lived there. My mom is from saraebo Um and I saw my as well obviously, but the change was like the place that she would go kind of like for the weekend just because of the family that we had there. UM so very special, I think in her heart my grandpa's heart as well, and you know, within it's just like so hard to like fathom that within just a few months that talent was completely ethnically climes and that the international community knew this and did nothing.

You know, there is and I believe it's in the Clinton tapes as well, but there's this thing about how they had provided aerial footage of the massacres that were being that were being enacted in places like Pittical and Vonnique where, oh my god, depare military served forces did some horror, horrifying acts of violence and torture against the civilians. UM. And they had you know, showed it to the Clintons, and they showed it to the French and the English,

and they did nothing. You know, they knew that a genocide was unfolding, UM. And the Day in Peace Agreement wasn't signed until so the international UM community I think as just as much of a responsibility in the you know, the genocide of the Bosniaks as Serbia does, because they sat there, they watched when they had all the power to stop it. They always had the power to stop it. They had the power to stop it before it even

before even one person got killed, um. And and two they it's not even that they just watched, it's that they purposely left the Muslims defenseless. Guys. Serbia had all the Yugoslav army, all the weapons, all the you know, everything, all the tools that they needed to commit j other's side.

They already had it, all the arsenal everything, um and you do, it was army was like the most powerful in the region at the time, and I think the fourth, third, third or fourth most powerful in like the europe Turkey areas, so we you know, quite a powerful army. And there

was Bosnia which had no weapons, no military um. You know, you see these pictures of like civilians fighting against you know, tanks and mortar shells and snipers, and it's like these you know, youths basically and like converse and jeans and like an army jacket playing soldier because that's all we had, you know, we had the homemade weapons, we had um you know, how to make your own bomb books kind of thing, and trying to basically descend ourselves with anything

that we could. Um. They specifically did not lift the arms embargo, knowing that they were leaving us defense less.

Like they just knew there was no way. There's no doubt on everything that we have read about the international community response, everything that Clinton mean John mayor Major Major um not mayor Major have said you know about it during that period shows us that they absolutely knew that we were defenseless, you know, and this wasn't you know a lot of people say I didn't know about the Bosnian genocide, but it was discussed you know, I've looked

at the archived footage. Um, it was talked about, it on television, was brought up in parliament, and incentive that was people at the time who are like, why are we leaving the Bosnians defense lives? Why are we you know, not helping them, Why are we allowing them to be allowed into slaughter? This is genocide blah blah blah. So even as early as there was still people who knew

about this stuff, we're telling the leaders but nothing. Yeah, I think I think like that part also, like it's it's not just that like they did nothing, like they like they did worse than doing nothing, like mitterrans actively cheering it on, Like you know, the arms embargo is just like the arms embargo if you're applying in arms in bargo on a conflict where one people one side has tanks and the other side has like molotovs, like

you are actively supporting one of the sides. And I think that like that just like is completely lost in how like almost everyone seems to talk about this now because there's like you know, because because when you word of get like interventions later, like people are like, oh, look, the West was like planning to intervene here the whole time, and it's like no, like they were literally cheering, was cheering, Like it's like it's so frustrating because you know, we

you take what we know about. And here's the thing. I know that Islamophobia escalated after nine eleven, but is Islamophobia has existed for a very long time. And I think talked to the black Muslims of America, they will tell you more, you know, better than than I could ever tell you about the history of Islamophobia in the United States. So it's Alamophobia was always an aspect of life. And in Europe, Islamophobia just like anti Semitism. I mean,

it is like the staple of European cultural cuisine. So to say yeah, it's like it's like yeah, it's like that there's there's a there's a there's they have they have like they have like the like the the tri force of Europeans of European civilization is anti Semitism, Islamophobia and hating the roma, just like how for the force.

And so I think the sort of thing about the explicitness of European leadership, especially at the time in in you know, effectively ensuring that we were killed off because a Muslim country in Europe could not exist. And that's the thing that they said, literally set a Muslim country in Europe cannot exist. Like the fact that that was so open and brazen like kind of takes me back, but it really like tells you how much is Lamophobia informed.

I think the international community responds on this, and it's so interesting to me now. I think I've seen it over the past, I would say, especially five years, the sort of leftist genocide and leftist anti imperialist kind of defense of Miloshevich. And oh they were the you know, the serves with the actual victims, blah blah blah and NATO blah blah blah, Western intervention. And I'm just like, oh, my god, read a book, read an article from that,

read their actual quotes. There's no way that you can actually convince me that Europe, fortress Europe, and the United States of America would do anything that would benefit, you know,

the Muslims. Was this what was one of the things I think was it's really interesting to me about the way that the sort of like left sand of sides nihilism works, like it always seems to be Regin's homophobia, like and I remember started seeing this with Bosnia too, where they're like, oh, yeah, well it's it's because it's because what's okay, they have two things. One it's like,

well that the Bossians were Nazis been. The second one was that, oh, well that the boss the Bossians were like altra hotti ists, and it's like like, it's the exact same thing you see with China, and it's like, oh, it's because all the weakers are like sealafi Jo hottest iss c I A. And it's like no, yeah, I mean it's it's it's honestly laughable at this point. It really is. And it also just you know, obviously I'm a leftist. You know, I'm gonna cheer the left on

to an extent, but that is my red line. The genocide anatism really is my red line. And the reason it's it's you know, my red line isn't just because I'm a genocide survivor, but because it's like, oh, for God's sake, the data, the statistics, the research, the forensic the analysis, the specific quotes, videos, articles, uh, you know, all of those things exist and are out there, and all you have to do is actually do your research and you will find out that actually know you're in

the wrong. And the other thing is what you just said about the sort of thing of painting you know, the Muslims is like the Nazis and the you know, the extremists. Um. You know, the thing about like the Bazian Muslims is like, we don't hide the fact that there were people of our community they that participated in Nazi crimes. There isn't this goal of concealing those crimes,

of minimizing the crimes or pretending that they were right. Um, there is I'm sure a French group of people who defend these kinds of people, Like there is a French when I'm talking about the collective sort of Bosnian Um, you know, state level response as well as like an individual response is that the you know, the Nazi division had like seventeen thousand Bosnians soldiers, and there's millions of Bosnians in the country. The vast majority ended up joining

the Partisans and stood against the Nazis. And the thing is, you can't when it comes to Yugoslavia and World War two and the Holocaust, you can't just say that the Bosnians were Nazi lebition ists, because the thing is, so are the Serbians, so are the Serbs, so are the Croats. At that time, Let's be honest, who the hell wasn't a Nazi collaboration is now just doesn't excuse it, absolutely not.

But what it does sort of show is that that history, that period um in Yugoslav history is really complicated because you know, you had the Gusta sia Um and then you had the Chechniques and then there's a period where the Chechniks were against Ustasia, right because like used to

show we're killing Serbs and Romans and Jews. But then the Chechniques turned around and there you know, these Serb nationalists, they start killing the Jews and the Roma, and then they start working with the USA to hand down the Jews in the Roma, and then they start working with

them to stand against the you know, the Tito's Partisans. Um. Meanwhile, you know Tito's Partisans had a multi ethnic coalition, like and we're talking about Serbs, Bosnians, Roma, Jews, Croats, Albanians, you know, all sorts of people who were very like, you know, anti Nazism. So you know, we're we're gonna we're gonna win, We're gonna rebuild our country, We're gonna you know, make this beautiful sort of you know, multi ethnic kind of state, which they did, which is amazing.

But yeah, but it is a complicated sort of piece of history. So you can't really say, oh, yes, they're the Nazi collaborationists because um, at some point or not,

everybody was, and at some point or not everybody was. Also. Yeah, it's like like it's when when when you when you start getting into like it becomes this like you know, it becomes a way of just getting people to I don't know how to describe it, like you know, when when when it starts being like this specific ethnic group as a whole is responsible for all of these crimes. Just like no, they're not like that's that's not that's

not how this works. Like it's not like like like they're like there are like there, yeah, there there's gonna be people in the ethnic group who did things that were awful. There's also going to be people, especially especially in insuffiction like this, there's there's a lot like a

lot of probably more people who fought them. Yeah, like yeah, that's such an interesting statement because I'm going to compare to the bossing and response after the genocide, which has consistently been no, we don't believe that every single service bad, and we are only talking about those that took place, took part in these crimes, and those that concealed them. And that has always been the collective and state level

response of all Bosans. Now you have to think about I have a friend who's who, who's nine members of her family were killed in Stubberty in July. That's an absorbent number of people. These were women, children, and men and elderly. There was no discrimination when it kim comes to her. I've sat with her as she's read all

the names of her you know, killed family members. That woman, with all the pain that she survived with being there as a young girl in the midst of genocide, in the midst of these her horrifying crimes, has never once publicly or privately to me said, yes, old Serbs are the same, Yes all of them are war criminals, Yes

all of them hate us, absolutely not. And the thing is I think about myself as well, Like you know, my earliest childhood memories me being shot at by a sniper, knowing my father was in a concentration camp, knowing that my grandmother was just killed by a bomb. Um knowing that, you know, my biological dad was dying in a hospital from an attack, and my mother could also be killed because she was pregnant with my brother at the time. And so these are my earliest childhood memories. Um, they're

not very happy memories. And I know why those things happened, you know, I know why I was being shot at by a sniper, and it was because I was Bosnian. It it was because I was Muslin, and because I was seen as the enemy, even though I was you know, a little kid at you know, six seven years old, um, and absolutely not a threat to anyone, and nobody should have been shooting at me. They did. Anyway, even though that happened, I never had that feeling of all serbs

are awful. All serbs are you know, I'm going to paint them all with a brush. But a lot of them, unfortunately, especially on the you know, the the ultra nationalists that continue to not just the night the genis nipe, but also glorifyed and celebrate it. They do paint everyone with the same brush, you know, And and the worst thing The funniest thing is that they paint themselves with the same brush, you know. They they think that they get to speak for every single serve person um, and that's

the tragic path. Like I'm not, I'm not. I get accused of like constantly talking about serbs, and I'm like, I absolutely am not. I'm talking about the nationalists that I will call out all the nationalists, whether they're CAUSI in serpient Croation, American whatever, but we're talking about you know what you're doing to me and your response to my criticism of nationalism is actually the thing that's ruining

your reputation. Yeah, it's it's the it's it's de'th the nationals camp it it's it's you have you have to conflate all of the individual people, the ethnic group, and the state. They all they all have to be this like, you know, this must be this organic totality and it's

not true. It's just not. But that's you know, that's that's that's the sort of it's it's the motus apperanda behind their entire ideology, and it's what they deploy, you know, it's what they deploy when the genocides, is what they deploy when they have to sort of like you know, sort of promoted openly or less openly afterwards. Yeah, it's like that justific it's how they justify it, I know.

And like we all know about the ten stages of genocide, but my colleague Um, who's brilliant actually has often talked about that the nihilism is not really the final stage of genocide. It is in fact triumphalism, Um. And that's what we're actually seeing in Bosnia. You know, we're not I get genocide denialism from American leftists and like British leftists who are on a certain spectrum and obvious certain I don't get genocide denialism from at No nationalists serves.

What I get from them actually is very openly celebrating and threatening another genocide. They are not in my mentions saying oh there was no genocide. Uh, they're I mentioned saying no one shops a Steba and so, which is basically a slogan that says knife fire, serbonizza, and it's like basically a threat that another Sherebonia will occur. There.

In my mentions, in my emails and in my d MS sending me threats about how they can't wait till I'm put in a rape camp again, How they can't wait untill they kill my family, until sorry ever gets bombed again, and how you know we're they're gonna finish the job. How Ram is a hero because he killed all those you know, people in Serbonizza and sorry, um Kada Ditch is a hero because he's the same Alosha, which is a hero because he believes in a greater servia.

These people don't hide it, um, And that's the thing. So it's it's very like just today, you know, the first thing in the morning, I opened my Twitter and the first thing that I see is a Bosnian activist arrested for protesting the dot com Laach mural, which the Serbian police were guarding. They were guarding a mural get like, a mural of a war criminal who committed genocide, who

who everybody knows committed genocide, a mural glorifying him. They were got the police were guarding you know, the mural and inflicting damage on innocent civilians who were there too, you know, protest against the mural. And so I think that really tells you so much the issue in the Balkans. This has When it Could Happen Here? Join us tomorrow for part two of this interview, which we discuss the

dangers of what's currently happening in Bosnia. In the meantime, find us on Twitter It Happened Here pod, and you can find us on Twitter and Instagram for the rest of our shows at cool Zone Media. What Could It Could Happen Here a podcast about bad things happening and how they can continue to happen if you don't stop them.

I'm your host, Christopher Wong, and today we're doing part two of the interview with genocide expert Arness Acustra, focusing on the absolutely horrifying things that have been happening in Bosnia recently. Is you and if you hope you enjoy? Can you can you give an explanation of what's happened in the last couple of weeks because it's terrifying and I don't think enough people are talking about it. Yeah,

I mean, yeah, So that's where are we now? Uh, you know, I'm just going to talk briefly about the date and agreement because I think, yeah, yeah, the audience speeds to understand what the dating agreement is and I was going to talk about it earlier, but I went off on a tangent, So my apologies. UM. So obviously you know where the war is, how opening the genocide is happening. UM stburns. The worst of the genocide happens. You know, eight thousand people are killed in just a

matter of a few weeks, few days really, Um. The international community does not act at that time. UM. Towards the end of the year, another attack happens, since Saraevo and Marcalis, civilians are once again targeted waiting for bread fruit.

I think it was humanitarian aid at the market, and that that's kind of when the international community starts to open their eyes a bit and negotiations start and not to borry with the details and no. Geotiation process was absolutely ridiculous, and every single time to discussed it, it was about splitting Bosnia down ethnic lines. And that's ultimately what happened with the Dating Agreement. Yes, peace, quote unquote peace was achieved, but the Dayton Agreement mandated so that

there would be a three member presidency. So instead of having one president, we would have a three member presidency. It's a rotating presidency. There would be a Curat representative,

a Bosnia representative, and a Server representative. That also means that there's no representatives for anyone who's another, whether it's the identified Yugoslav, Roma, Jewish, Bosnian but not Boshnak like they you know, it's just there's no space for the other in this constitution with the state in peace agreement. But that's for another day. Um. They also split the

country down by ethnic lines. So all of those genocides and ethnic cleansing that the Serbs had just been committing all over eastern Bosnia up in the north, um, you know, basically the international community said, good job, here's your own territory that you ethnically cleanse. UM. So they split the country down, you know, these ethnic lines, and uh, you know, the warst stops. And then now we have to sort of contend with this you know, peace agreement. With the

new constitution. We we get this UM called the OHR Office of the High Representative. The High Representative is basically a person who holds the highest power in the country. They're not a Bosnian, they're actually kind of um, they're put in place there by the international community. So the o HR kind of you know comes then breaks us up when we're squabbling over issues, and this has been anything from things like the flag, like the new flag

of Bosnia. The flag of Bosnia that was the flag of Bosnia had to sort of be a place because the OHR deems that it would be you know, offensive to the Serbs or the Croats um and the same thing like the national anthem. So they hold a lot of power. Now just recently we switched a HR representatives,

so we have a new High representative. Before it was Valentinianscope and his final kind of part of his you know, time as the High Representative was to enact a law against genocide denialism, which the Bosnians have really been campaigning for for years because you know, um, I think in your birthplace, in the place where the worst crime ever could you know, happen to you, happen to you, where you know, fifty women were raped, a hundred thousand people

were killed, um, six hundred plus mass graves were you know, dug up to hide the crimes and the massacres. People want to be able to you know, know the truth and and and and be feel safe with the truth. So the genocide denialism law was good but this is kind of when things started to you know, shift a bit, because I think Dotta came out Melante, who is currently the Serb member of the Presidency who controls the Bublical Subsco, which is the entity where that's considered the Serb entity,

but Bosniacs also lived there as well. Um, he came out and he said, well, if they passed the genocide denialism law, we're going to succeed within eight days. And obviously that didn't happen months ago. And here's here's the thing, um, milanids Doteck has been threatening succession for years now. This

is not anything new. What is new is the fact that this time he seems to talk about not just talk and threaten about succeeding, but actually has started to kind of drop up the papers and not a not to legally succede, which he's not allowed due to the state and agreement. Um, but he is. He has run up the papers to start pulling out of all the national level. So you know, Bosnia is the country republican

subscrise and entity. The Federation is an entity, but both of them are accountable to the national sort of state level institutions. He's basically at this point, you know, been saying I'm gonna Republica subscribe deserve. We're leaving, like we're we're gonna form our own army. Yeah, we're gonna pull

out all all the Bosnian state institutions. Um, we're gonna have serve only, you know, serve only, courts, serve only, lawyers, serve only, justices, serve only, I don't know, passport whatever, control serve basically anything that was at a national level, whether that's like a healthcare institution or like I don't know, procurement for supplies for the office. They're gonna have it as like serve only. Obviously, I think the danger is right there, serve only. Where have we heard that before?

We heard that nineties And the biggest sort of red flag has really been this thing about them forming that a public Scott army, and they're not even talking about forming a new army. They he specifically stated the words reforming that republica Scott Army. Now, the Republican of Scott Army,

you know, was led by Kota In. These are the same people that put girls as young as ten and twelve years old into rape camps, that killed babies as old as you know a few months that killed um you know, elderly women as old as a hundred years old. You know, these these were the guys that were going village to village, city to city, killing, torturing, bombing the hell out of Sorry al. These were the guys that you know, would throw like three thousand to four thousand

mortar shells on sorrymo and snip it. I don't even know how many times, like tens of thousand times per day. It's just these are the bad guys basically. Um So, I think there is an alarm right now going in Bosnia, and it is the reason why so many of us are quite worried, quite frightened, because on one hand, he has threatened, he has made you know, Donic has made plenty of for us before. But on the other hand, in prior times, the international community has somewhat gotten involved.

You know, the US has sanctioned him, the UK has scolded him, the EU has said, like, you gotta chill out, otherwise you know, Sorbia doesn't get into the EU. You know, there's there's always been some sort of I don't know, influence there, the o h r's influence as well, But in recent years, the international community has not stood by its responsibility to the Date and Agreement. I mean, here's

the thing. They implemented this agreement. They made it so that we the Bosnians, have to abide by it, but they also have a responsibility to ensure that it is actually being upheld and that they're doing their job in importance with the international like with the Dating Agreement, so you know, the Date and Agreement was very kind of specific that it was one a temporary solution and to the international community was to work on finding a more

permanent solution that will bring about you know, actual sort of reconciliation and justice and all of these things. But they didn't. They you know, they've left sort of bousing it to kind of uh live up on its own. Um and and now they're not really doing much. I mean, the EU, the US, they're doing their typical thing of only worded open letters UM and Dottic seems less afraid

than ever before. He seems very brash. I mean, he is a fool and a half and an ultra nationalists, but right now I feel like he has so much confidence and I think he also knows that like the US and the EU have so many bigger problems to worry about rather than Bosnia, and so we're just out a priority so he can play around with it. And then we're also, you know, seeing like the Secretary of

State Matthew Palmer hanging out with him. The day after this man openly stated on national television that he is reforming and they're being very cozy and very friendly and stuff like that. And here's the thing. I've never been really a big believer on the international community, because come on, like I have him, the experience speaks for itself. I've already lived lived their help and I'm like, no, thanks, please stay away. But I don't live in that world.

I live in a world where, you know, I'm from a small country that is unfortunately very dependent on outsiders and on the international community. So while I would love to say, well, fuck the EU, fuck the US, we don't need them, the reality is that we do need them. We do need them to do their jobs. And because if they don't, I am really worried that the situation

is going to continue to escalate further and further. And this appeasement of Dotty, especially in the last several years, has gone on so much that at this point, I think you have to like start to wonder like do these does the international community you know, even want peace in stability in Bosnia or did they benefit from our constant instability and what is their long term plan? But

that's kind of where are at right now. I think there there's you know, there's the people in in Bosnian politics and activist circles right now who are calling on US leadership or calling on EU leadership, and there's a lot of oh, no, the EU sucks, the US will help us, the U s sucks, the EU will help us. Turkey that's gonna help us. No, Turkey sucks. There's a

lot of like disagreement. Um. I think the reality is that, oh my god, does it suck that we are in this position where we have to rely on external sources because once again we are feeling alone. Once again, we're sort of being back into a corner and once again we're being threatened with a prospect of, you know, a new war. And I think the reality is the minute, the minute that he gives that green light for that the Republicans of Scott Army to be formed, there will

be violence. We've seen what happened before. We cannot afford to even have one act of violence. We cannot board to have even one person injured, let alone die. Because these people in Bosnia, on all sides, have suffered so unbelievably much. They are exhausted, They are still bearing their loved once twenty six years later, they still haven't you know, found that peace. They're worried and scared for their future, and they deserves so much more, they really really do.

So I think, you know, I'm I'm hoping and praying that. Um. You know, we obviously continue talking about this issue, and we try to pressure those people in power to you know,

calm the situation down. But the reality is that this is going to be our future for as long as they next exists, and until the Bosnian constitution is completely reformed and dating is completely either thrown out or reformed to actually allow for a you know code actually all multi ethnic United Country that's not broken up across ethnic you know aligns, and it's not ethnically segregated, We're going

to continue being in the situation. So yes, for right now, I think let's talk about this and let's kind of pressure those powerful people, but really a long term. It's time to start thinking about ending the Date and Agreement, and it's time to start thinking about actually building that you know, multi ethnic, multi cultural, multi religious country that we fought for. You know, you're saying like okay, like what what what is you know, what what is Europe

actually wants out of this? And you know, I mean I think it's pretty clear, like okay, so you know it. The Day and Accords are like okay, we're just gonna give all of the ether nationalists like their own fief them. Right, It's like, okay, here, here's your award for the genocide. You get your like yeah, and I think you know, like that's that's that's that's that's a very classical you

know that that that's what Europeans do, Right. It's like, yeah, they come in the sport of the nationalists and it's like, you know, they don't want this, like they don't actually want, like if a functioning, multi ethnic, multiracial society because you know, oh oh the horror weight hold on what if other people look at that and go, wait, why why do we have Like yeah, I think that I don't know, I think you see this both you know, back back and what they were originally doing in the nineties, and

you know, they come in later and they're like, oh, hey, look we're heroes. We uh helped them do the genocide and then kind of sort of did something maybe later, And I think, like, yeah, I don't know, just the possibility of that happening again, the possibility of it's just being you know, this is like, oh, hey, we have Bostia.

This this is where we do press tours for like why the American Army is good and like fun, anyone else who actually lives there is just I mean, like, come on, d're America, Like, let's be honest, scare Like, I'm not saying they're all powerful entity, but what I am saying is that if they really wanted to the people who are in power would not be in power, right Like, but these people, people like dotty, people like Dragon Chovich, who is the Croatian at the nationalist leader

who is also by the way, directly involved in this mess. And and once again we're seeing that thing of the nineties of you know, Croatia and Serbia want to split Bosnia up and you know, break it for themselves. Basically, Um, that's you know, it's it's just now instead of Ryan Tujman and Looshevich, it's now Chovich and uh, you know, Dotty. I talk about Dottic a lot more because I think

he's a more immediate threat. But it's important that we don't forget that Bosnia is also facing the Croatian threat as well. Um And you know, but but I think about it this way, like, I know for a fact that if these people did not benefit the system somehow, they would not actually be in power. But they do.

They do benefit that and I think, you know, you know, Madain Albright called dot a breath of fresh air um in you know, the nineties when he came to power and then and now here we are, you know, um got its threatening more and threatening succession and talking about serve only you know, spaces and serve only armies and it's just it's exhaust thing. But yeah, it's it's it's

also funny. It is funny when you think about it, because the reality is that it doesn't it never had to be like this, and it doesn't have to feel like this in the future either. But unfortunately it will continue to be like this because that's just you know, what the powerful want like what those actually who have some power want. And that's the thing that sucks because when you know, I feel like I'm starting to sound conspirator,

but I'm not. Um. You know, when you when you think about like Europe overall and how they looked at Bosnia, I think for the last you know, hundred years, um and their policy towards Bosnia, it's really difficult for me to kind of be filled with any sort of confidence about what their plans are. You know. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's Europe in the United States, two countries that historically have never done anything bad, have never done

any genocides, and have never yeah, just absolutely annihilated countries. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, they're the good guys.

So like you said, you know, Bosnians, there are so much as like this press store for you know, these politicians to come and to talk about why we're such a great example of the peace process when we're really we're not, you know, And the thing is they'll you know, they'll come on and they'll say, well, while Dayton wasn't perfect, it was the best solution at the time, and it's like it was not you know, but but they have convinced that themselves that this was like a win for

intervention and win for the international community. Now, don't get me wrong, I, alongside everyone I know, is extremely happy

that the war ended and that the genocide ended. Um And I think until you're in that position of growing up in the midst of you know, all these bombs and murders and tortures all around you, and you know the only style you ever hear are the sounds of bombs and mortars falling and sniper shooting at you, you won't really know how it feels when that finally stops and when you have some peace, and how difficult um it can be to think about obviously any future sort

of prospects of war. Um. And I think that's that also is a is a contributing factor to the overall instability of bossing it because our twenty six years now, our policy as a people but as a country as well, has been as long as there's no shooting, which is not a sound policy because you know, settling for the bare minimum is not helping any of us. Our youths are leaving in observed absurd amounts to Germany, to Austria,

to the United States. People are struggling for for jobs, people are struggling to find food, you know, all of these things, um, on top of the threat of war and violence and conflicts. So it's just it's not a sound policy. And I'm just hoping, um, it will change eventually somehow. I mean, I'm going to keep doing my part, which is, you know, yelling and yelling at people in in there on Twitter and in person and pressuring them to do the right thing and to obviously talk about this.

But um, yeah, I just feel like we have such a long, long, long, long road ahead of us, and um, you know, peace is a process. It's a process. So I think where just at the beginning of that process. Yeah, so much more to do, I think I think that's a good place to end on with just the realization that, yeah, I mean, if if, if there's no fundamental change in the structures and the forces and in the politics that

created a worthy created genocide, like it's going to happen again. Yeah, and so you you you have to actually change it. You can't just sort of put this band aid on it and put it in stasis and just leave all the structures intact. You have to now you have to knock them over before you can build something else. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, unnessa think thank you so much for talking with me. Um, where can people find you? And what books do you

want to read? Because as as as we've said over and over Agatten on this podcast, do not get your information from podcast. Actually read books you think you need what you need to do. Um, yeah, well if you Obviously, I know our audience can't se yet, but here's my little one of my little selections of books on Bosnia. Um. Obviously, people can find me on Twitter. Um, you know, type in my name a r n E s A. But my at is at ore are are r an E s s A. Yeah, Twitter is probably the best place.

But also I have a book out so if people want to read it. It is about the Bosnian genocide UM, and it is based on real life experiences of my family and friends. It's called Letters from Diaspora. It's more so on the emotional UM side of things. But if you want to learn about the conflict from a leftist perspective, I always recommend UM and I don't know where it's going there, but I always recommend UM Bosnia Kosova and Yugoslavia by Mike Kindadigus. Um. It's the Marxist perspective on

the breakup of Yugoslavia. UM. Additionally, I have a pdf on my Twitter of tons of books. So if you want to learn more about Yugoslavia, about Islam and the Balkans, about the history of Bosnia, about the war, genocide, feel free to shoot me a d M. I have a handy little guy that I hand out constantly. Two people. UM. And there's also a list of books on like my website and stuff like that. Yeah, I think I can post it. We can put a link to it in

the description. I've I've read some stuff on there. It's very good. You should read it all. Thanks. I pry myself on really good reading list depending on topic. Oh yeah, yeah, well Vanessa, thank you again. And yeah, this this has when it could happen here find us that it could happen here pod on Twitter, Instagram. The rest of the show is that we do are You can find it at the cool Zone on the same places and yeah, oh boy, genocide bad. Hope there's no more work to

stop them. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.