Anti-Abortion Terrorism

We're talking about terrorism, Sophie, your favorite thing. Christ saved the day. So okay, well, we've we've talked about sort of abortion as a as a legal issue, but running parallel to the sort of legal electoral pain against abortion was a wave, a systemic campaign of terror that ranged Trevor from you know, sort of individual personal humiliation and terrorization of individual women seeking abortion to like nail bombs

and blowing abortion providers heads off with shotguns. Um. Yeah, so it's it's extremely bad, obviously, but I think there's a tendency among people who look at antibution violence is sort of like isolated from its historical context, which is that, Okay, the American right has always rolled by terror from like literally its earliest extermination campaigns against addition as people who like whose land they stole to, you know, the sort

of horrific psychological abuse and violence inflicted against slaves on their own plantation. Who there's an entire history of like denying abortion people to slaves for numerous reasons. So you know, there's no reason really to expect that anti abortion militants

like wouldn't be violent. And I think it's worth noting that that the tactics of of the sort of militant wing of the anti orsition movements, which are things like our arson bombings and assassination are these these are the key tactics of the of the segregationist movement when they're finding against integration and you know, low and behold, like as as abortion becomes the political glue for the right, after they sort of okay, well they sort of losified

over integration, they lose the ability to legally say like that you can't do integration, but a lot of the sort of factors segregation like still exists. But yeah, like as I do that, like you still see you know, you see a new generation of sort of right wing militants like taking the tactics of the old right wing militants and using them to kill people, which is to add, yeah, for the for the record, yes, that is our official position.

We're taking up bold stands here radicals. So I think we should start with someone who was not killing people, because I think it's it's useful to see the sort of like the arc of of how this movement goes. So John O'Keefe was a Catholic anti war protester. He his thing was okay, so he's anti abortion, right, but he wants to fuse like the anti nuclear anti war movements with the anti abortion movements sort of in the

wake of Roe v. Wade. And this doesn't work because the anti war and the answer nuclear movements are like driven by leftist and feminists and they're like no, like funk off, like we're not gonna like we want people to have abortions, so you know, but but he he, he still is like dead set that there should be

this sort of like direct actually against abortion clinics. And he managed to convince this convince this like quicker peace activist named Charles Fager to like teach the anti abortion movement the sort of like techniques of like the civil rights movements and do like no violence ofilius obedience, and so people like like in the in the early seventies, like as az Row like is happening, people start changing themselves to abortion clinics, and you know, like, I think

this is if if you've been around the left long enough, like these are tactics, I think you'd recognize. But these these are very very different campaigns. Then you're sort of like chanting yourself to a tree like the And the biggest difference is like the the extent to which the focus is just purely on terrorizing people. So I'm going to read a quote of like what these protests actually look like, um from the book Living in the Crosshairs,

The Untold Stories of Anti Abortion Terrorism. The protesters stand at the entrance to the clinics parking lot and badger the patients. When they come in, they get screamed at. The protesters write down their license plates, they send them cards, They make phone calls to their homes. Protesters also swarm clinics and harass the people who work there. Those window blinds. Christina Who's works at a clinic, explained while pointing at the huge windows that surround the conference table in one

of her clients. You pull them down, you can look through them and you could find the protesters at the

windows looking in. And Krista, who's the person who's talking about this, like she describes like the like these protesters would walk up to her and like say her kids names, you know, in order to get like the doctor into this clinic who is doing the abortions, like they have to smuggle him in like that, he can't park in the parking lot because the abortion protesters will get to him, so they have to they have to like smuggle him

in in in Christa's car. And like even then people follow them constantly, Like the doctors and nurses have to like change the roots to work every day. They have these like decoys they have to use. Um. Like yeah, and for the record, I've gotten reports from folks who work for abortion access organizations saying they are now in multiple states using drones to follow people as they leave the Jesus their their license playing numbers. Yeah that God,

that makes sense. But it's yeah, like these people like Krista, the person I was talking about, like she she had to transfer her kids to a private school that like knew what her job was so that her kids wouldn't

get harassed. And like, well, we'll come back to this sort of quote unquote non violent stuff later, but like even in it's sort of like non violent phase, this is a terror campaign, like the the the goal of this is to terrorize everyone involved, like stalking them, by intimidating them, by harassing them, to get them to not do abortions anymore, making patients or people that want abortions too afraid to get them, and people that provide them

too afraid to provide them. Yeah. Yeah, And but you know this doesn't really work in the seventies, and but by the time you shoot the eighties, it starts to get really violent. Um in nice and eight two or is this guy named Donnie Ben don Benny Anderson. It is two nephews, Matt and Wayne Moore carry out the first anti abortion, the first action of this this right

wig anti abortion. Also they're like really anti gay, Like they they have a thing later on where they like they have this giant celebration for like the Saudias beheading too gay dudes or three gay dudes like they're they're horrible. Yeah, this this network is called the Army of God. And oh these guys there, that sounds familiar, Yeah, they're they're this very actually in some ways like they're they were very sort of quintessentially modern terrorist organization and that like

they don't they don't have like a command structure. It's not even so much essentialized cells. It's just like people just sort of can freely affiliate to it. And like he used his name to carry out attacks. And the first one of these is it's it's this guy, Johnny

Benny Anderson. He kidnaps Dr Hector Zavalos and his wife Jean and originally, like the their their plan is to kill them, um don Benny Anderson like he but what he writes about it is that he has been talking to God and he has been talking to art Change, to the archangel Michael, and they have commanded him to go and kill this person. And eventually, like negotiators fortunately are able to talk them down, and like the doctor makes this like it tells them like yeah, no, no no,

I'm not gonna do abortions anymore. That they let them go. But yeah, I think like it is important to note that like among people who are like this hardcore and this isn't you know, I said, like, there are people a lot of people who more moderate than this, Like the the whole sort of talking to God thing like

that is not uncommon. No, that is like very good. No, these are all people who in their churches will like say a bunch of gibberish words and tell everyone each other that they're speaking in like the secret language of God that God has like speak into their brains, speaking in tongues. Yes, yeah, so like and yeah, like and I think I think like there's some tendency to like, like I've seen I've seen people trying to write this office people who are mentally illms like no, no, no, no,

no no. These are desearching me. They don't believe in a different world than you do, and they're willing to use violence to make their world real. Yeah, and the letter that they right, I like, why while they're holding these people captives, says quote, those who truly love God would kill the baby killers. And it turned out later that they've been funding their activities by robbing abortion clinics.

And actually that's not that's the thing that doesn't that I don't think I've ever seen any of the like, like I don't think this doesn't get included in like the list of terrorist things people do against abortion clinics. But they get robbed a lot, Like there's like a lot of these builitants are just robbing abortion clinics so

to fund their stuff. Um. And and this is again like the thing you have to keep in mind when you're trying to and it like, if you literally believe the things that these people literally believe, this is the only moral thing to do. Yeah, if there if there were just trying like get in their heads, if there were an organization literally murdering babies every single day, this would be the right thing to do. That's like you

have to actually like they're not crazy. They fundamentally exist in a world that is is different from from the one you live in as the world in a fucking Marvel comic. Like it's it's it's just another reality that they exist within. Yeah, and like you get sort of like you get like like I don't know, you're called like people who are trying to play the centrist ango who were like, oh, like people on the left don't understand that. It's like it's not about autonomy for them.

They literally believe they're killing babies. And it's like that doesn't like a no, but like yeah, like yeah, the fact that they literally believe that abortion is killing children. The only thing that does is make them more fanatical and more militants. And it's like, yeah, like I used to sort of believe, like I used to believe that, like oh, like people don't understand they really think they're

killing babies thing. And then I went to college and I like read it started reading about the history of genocides, and I started reading about like what how how common it is for people who commit genocides to literally believe that if they don't do this genocide, that the people

the genocide and you you are going to kill them. And it was like, oh, oh no, no, that that actually that just makes you more likely to do violence, Like it's and and this this goes exactly how to expect in fact that the and this is one of the other things that they're very effective about, which is each

attack like radicalizes more people to start doing attacks. So remember remember John O'Keefe, the guy who was doing the non violent stuff, Like he starts questioning whether non violence is like the right tactic and he never like bombs anything, but he likes stops condemning violence in public. And this

this goes really really really badly really quickly. Um, the Army of God publishes this like it's initially a very clandestine thing, but they publish his manual about how to attack abortion clinics, but has stuff from like like pouring concrete overheating pipes, how to make bombs. Um, they have this thing that the antibortion people do a lot, which is pouring bucolic acid, which smells like it is the

thing that makes vomits smell bad. Like you you can you can smell like two parts per ten million like of this thing like in a room, and they'll they'll take like a syringe and they'll inject it into a facility and like like one drop of this stuff is enough that like you can smell it like months later there's no way to like easily clean it. And eventually like they're pouring gallons of this stuff like into abortion clinics,

into the ventilation system. Yeah. Yeah, it's there are more than a hundred of these attacks today too, Like it's they've they've done this a lot. Yeah, by four, this whole thing goes into overdrive. Um, I'm going to read a quote from from the book Armed for Life, The Army of God and anti abortion terror. In the United States, the National Abortion Federation identifies thirty incidents of arson or bombing in night four, exceeding the previous seven years combined.

The series of bombing is included, but was not limited, to, the offices of the National Abortion Fund and the Americans Civil Liberties Union in Washington, d c. As well as abortion clinics in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The signature of the Army of God was also found in a subsequent clinic bombing in Saratosa, Florida. Um. One of the other things that they do that is that is great is so they have have a declaration of war that the

Army of God sends. They also like, like specifically send a death threat to Harry Blackman, who was the black Man was who was the guy who wrote the Supreme Court justice who wrote Roe v. Wade, which is like, you know, this is a fun thing if you've been

like the whole discourse cycle. But oh, we shouldn't protest that these houses Like yeah, man, a terrorist group like threatened to kill the justice who wrote this thing, like and and that guy, um, the guy who wrote that eventually carried out like this enormous bombing campaign where he started strapping like twenty pound like liquor pro pain tanks to dumpowder bombs and blowing up clinics with them. And

this stuff spreads are spreads like wildfire. People start using the Army of God's bomb recipes to attack clinics in other ways, like yeah, we talked, We've talked about so

of the other campaign stuff that they use. Um and and this this starts to like a lot of the people who wind up in the full on terrorism stuff where like people who used to be like non violent protesters, So Shelley Shelley Shannon, who who had previously been like a non violent protester like goes violent and ninety two and starts doing these like fautric acid attacks and then she graduates to arson. She attacks seven clinics, offices and

health centers. And these aren't like when I say attacks, like this isn't like they threw a ball off at it. Like she is making napalm and like detonating napalm bombs like inside of these clinics, it is do they even

care if people are inside? Or so? It's weird. Initially they're they're targeting empty buildings, but they're like they're like working themselves up to it, and like they they start to be they they you could read this in their writing, like they they they're working themselves up to a point where they're like, wow, okay, if there was a person in this building, we don't really care, and yeah, yeah, and but nice ninety two the Army of God like

specifically in it in its manual, like as justification for killing people, m and lo and behold. One year later after this is one of the other strategies to use what what what was their justification they're killing It's like, well, they're killing babies, and they have to have a bunch of Bible verses that they sit and they're like, now we can kill people because they're killing babies. It's great.

It's that's that's truly like in writing to horrify. Yeah, and like like literally the next year there's all these they start doing this thing where they put wanted posters with like an abortion doctor's name in them, like like literally like stuff out of like a like a Battled West movie and they'll have like their name and like where they live, and like that fact that they're a doctor and say they kill babies, and uh so you know in in in in three, these posters go up

for this doctor named Dr David Gunn and he's one day walking back to his car when he gets shot three times in the back by Michael Griffin and he he dies, and he he is the first that David Gunn is the first bushed provider to be killed, and he is not going to be the last. Yeah, so this immediately and you know, the moment someone does it, like it opens the floodgates and suddenly everyone is doing it.

And so you know, this makes people like Shelley Shannon and who we talked about like setting off napalm bombs, who until this point has only like bombed anti buildings. Like she starts like considering killing people and a few

months later she shoots Dr George Tiller. And if you're thinking to yourself, hold on weight, I thought Dr George Tiller was killed in two thousand and nine and not, you are right, Shelley's assassination attempts like she shot him like in both arms but he survived to be murdered

a a decade and a half later. Um. Meanwhile, there's this guy named Paul Hill who's just like a like a bustion clinic like protester, right, he urges in like the national media scene because he's he's like the he's like the guy who will go on TV and defend Michael Griffin killing killing a doctor, and they just let him do this. He does the whole fucking talk show circuits. They just let him do this to defend on Life TV. He's on all of the mainstream networks to defend killing

abortion doctors. And he does it again with Shelley Shannon's attempt to kill George Schiller. And a year later, uh, Paul Hill walked up to Dr Joe Britton Britain and blew his head off with the shotgun wounds. His wife turns around and then killed an abortion uh like at

clinic escort named James Barrett. Like they had this guy on TV fucking every night saying that he like calling the saying that killing abortion doctors is justified, and then he fucking kills he blew an abortion doctor's head off with a shotgun. The next year, well, and uh yet I don't think I'm what's exciting is that I'm sure that when there are more attack x uh by pro choice oriented people. Uh, at no point will anyone get brought on TV network to say anything. But but asked

that tops get more money to crack down on them. Yeah, it's like just the medias in which she was awful. We're gonna talk about this more in a bit because it gets even worse. Um so that that same year, in ninety four, there's a gunman named John Scali the Third who walks into a building and murders Shannon Loney, who is a social worker in anti abortion like she's she's an anti abortion and an anti child, a brief advocate who's working at Plant Parenthood, and he just walks

and shoots her. She shoots at a bunch of the doctors and the patients and luckily they all survived. But then he goes to another clinic and he kills social worker Leanne Nichols, who was like working at the front desk there, and he's eventually arrested. He gets away with both of these ones, but then he goes and tries to shoot up a third clinic and that one finally

like he gets arrested for. But like and the other thing is like that the third clank that he shoots it like that's a clank that already had already been bombed as the claimk that they've been protest that for years. And he's you know, he goes there and he shoots at these these people and he kills two more people, and yeah, and it's you know, and they just like keep doing this. And one of the sort of incredibly grotesque things is that like, Okay, so the Army of

God has this. They have a website, right, and their website has these these things they call like the Prisoners of Christ, who are like people who are like it's like prisoners of conscience but like Christ, who they like celebrate and the like raise funds for. And one of the ways they do this is they have this thing called the White Rose Banquet, which is like one of the most offensive names I've ever seen for an organization.

That's it's named after the White Rose Society, which is just like Christian anti Nazi like nonviolent resistance group who's like leaders were all killed by Hitler for opposing Hitler. And they they are things like well, okay, so the abortion is the is the new Holocaust, and so you know they have this banquet that's like in support of

these terrorists and they at the first one. Then they released this thing called the Nuremberg File Project, which was this like it was this archive of like abortion providers. It has like their names, has their addresses as photos, it has their phone numbers. Um. They target like they and it's not just like doctors, right, they target clinic staff, the target security guards, stark at anyone who's who's around there, and that they have like these like lists of different

categories of people. So first, if you're still alive, your name will be in like bolded black. If you've been wounded, your name will be grade like grade out. And then if you die, there's like if you get killed or you die, there's a strike through through it. So this is this is a killed list they've assembled and this

is just like going around the internet. There's enormous numbers of people who like providers who are who are put on this and they also like the White Rose siety, like at this bankot they start putting out wanted posters with like a thousand dollar rewards for closing a clinic and for like convincing a doctor to stop giving abortions, and because these people are just like like I can't

have is enough like literal monsters. In the auction off the gun that Shelly Shannon used to kill George Chiller, that's like a fundraising thing. Yeah, and uh, there's a number of things you think about that. One of that is one of them is the fact that the local police department absolutely had to be um involved in that because normally murder weapons don't go back to anyone that they're destroyed, um, which means the police were like, yeah, we absolutely want you guys to be able to auction

this gun on cool stuff. The fear tactics they would be like, of course they would work if your whole if your name is on this list and you have a family and you're you know what I mean, like it's it's I will say that there is an interesting thing with this, were like a lot of a lot of people who like get targeted by this stuff, like it just pisces them off and they can even more committed to it, which is like incredibly rad But also like Jesus Christ, they just they have these abortion provider

kill lists, and people on this list get killed. It's encouraged, like the people are encouraging to kill them. And like they do this in the open, like there are like literally like Christian radio stations will like they will be they'll they'll do this thing where like they'll they'll they'll start listing like like like by name and the addresses of like where the abortion providers dear them are and then start talking about the biblical verses to justify killing them.

And then they will literally say on the radio, go kill this person. And they could just do this. No one stopped them ever. They just got away with this for decades and decades. So what one of one of the other. I think this bombing is famous, but I don't think the reason why it happened is famous. Um so there's a guy Eric Rudolph. Oh yeah, it was was wondering when they we're gonna talk about Yeah, yeah, so that's right now. So so Eric Rudolph is most

famous for nailed bombing Atlanta Olympics. He did. Yeah, he put entering hundreds of peace yeah yeah, he enters people, he kills killing killed one. Yeah, it was more special forces guy right, yeah yeah yeah yeah, And He says that his commander in ar assault regiment taught him how to make bombs like out of out of like scrap stuff. So he like yeah, so okay, so and he does his next six. He doesn't get caught, right this this this guy, this guy detonated a nail bomb at the

fucking Olympics. And then at then a year later. Oh, don't worry, we're gonna We're gonna a year later, this twice next year. The next year, he sets off a bunch of bombs, and he sets off a bomb at an abortion clinic. And this is like, this is this is a double tap bomb. There is a there is a bomb in a trash can behind that that's that's designed to kill the first responders. Um, this is seven people and the seven and it kills the police officer actually does it? Oh I didn't, but yeah, it kills

the police officer. Yeah. And then like the next one, he bombs in Atlanta nightclub and win six people. I'm sorry specifically, yeah, he bombed, he bombs, I bought, he bombs a gay bar. Um and there were that one he also like in the adjacent parking lot, because again he was trying to kill the first responders, that the police find a bomb and diffuse it before it can go off. And again they still don't get this guy the not until two thousand three. The next year, he

bombs another rebution clinic with a nail bomb. In this kind of just got time, he kills a security guard named Robert Sanderson, and like permanently injures a nurse name Emi Leons, who was like Emily Leon's who was he was left like half blind and like permanently made by the fact that again he set off a fucking nail bomb and he was not caught. He was not he

was not caught for a while. Yeah, And I want to stop here and talk about like how the bombing stuff is carried in the media, right, Um, as best I could, talent, I went to look for this. No anarchist has killed someone with the bomb in the US for hundred years, Like Coral Marx was closer to seeing the moon landing than a baby born today is of seeing an anarchist kill someoneos with the bomb. And yet

anarchism everywhere is so constantly associated with bombings. Meanwhile, the anti abortion freaks fucking they bombed the nine Olympics with a nail bomb, and he on when he was in his trial, he released to benifesto talking about how deadly force is justified against people who operate abortion clinics. He talks, he talks about a whole whole bunch of like whole bunch of anti gay stuff, whole bunch of anti abortion stuff, like and he's like he's given them like like on

his trial just used to like read his manifesto. It's pretty it's pretty wild. Where are the pro life activists when it comes to taking life? That's interesting, Well, but that's that's the thing though. They're all they're all in favor of of like, yeah, there are doing that. It's self defense or its defensive, these these these babics. I'm not the defense of those who can't defend themselves. What they'll talk about it is entirely within them, the moral

universe within they operate. It's it is entirely consistent. It's one of those things. Whenever like liberals will be like, why don't they do this or why don't do they that? That's not pro life, and it's like, well, because the

word doesn't mean the same thing to you. Well, and and the guy's doing this terror because like you will, occasionally you'll get some I mean, some of the pro life people oppose this because they think it's bad optics, right, But apparently it's not bad optics because again, like, who are the people who get fucking remembered as bombers? Like and I want to I want to read a quote from from the FBI. This is this is This is

from from the book Armed for Life. In in nineteen eighty four, the year with the highest abortion clinic bombings to date, FBI Director William Webster went on television and informed the public, quote, bombing a bank or a post office is terrorism. Bombing an abortion clinic is not an active terrorism because the objective is social. Is social and anti abortion violence, and I don't believe it currently meets our definition of terrorism. Reagan's called Reagan called the It's worse, okay,

Reagan called called the bombings. The abortion clinic bomb is quote anarchist activities. Like they're fucking they're blowing up abortion clinics and we're still getting fucking blamed for it. Like Jesus Christ, I don't know a lot about anything. So this is a lot of this is used to me, which is wild that I'm hearing about a lot of this for the first time. How have I not known about this? They bombed the Olympics and know what talks

about it? Actually, like I was just losing my mind the whold like it's it's bad, and it's it's still happening. It's not. It's just like three people were killed and nine people were injured an attack on the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado back. Um, there's been over at least at least at least eleven murder is tied to of

anti abortion uh like like action. I guess twenty six attempted murders, at least forty two bombings, two hundred arsons, and then thousands and thousands of more like assaults and

random random incidents. We should also point out here when we're talking about the murder counts and murder count is lower vented actually is because the murder count doesn't count to people who like the Americans, like specifically the Americans who went to Canada to shoot abortion doctors and the Americans who went to Australia to shoot abortion doctors, both of which happened, and threats against abortion providers have increased

exponentially just since just since, like they have more than quadrupled, like this is it's constant. It's been escalating at such a at such a rate that every year's data is insufficient for talking about the current period. Like it's it's you can't you can't even talk about it because all of the data is so inaccurate. Now that's how fast this stuff is accelerating. And and like there's there's a few other things that like, like you mentioned when we

talked about the statistics. So one of the reason is the reason the death toll is like quote unquote only eleven is because bomb making is really hard and a

lot of these bombs don't go off. So for example, in Canada, a worker right a clinic discovered a bomb with two pounds of nails in it that quote how to destruct a capability of a hundred feet um and you know, and also like I should put this out like okay, so like they they there's a lot of abotion doctors who are killed like outside of their clinics.

But also there's a guy named James Copp who who shot he shot like four doctors and he shot them like in their homes like with with with an s KS like in their homes through their windows and he he killed Dr Barrett Slippy in in in the nineties and like and you know and like it. They like they keep doing stuff like this, Like in two thousand and one. I don't know if I wonder how many people actually remember this. Uh, there was this huge anthrax scare.

What was an ancestor like that people were like they were later they were anthact attacks. People were like mailing people letters with anthrax in it, and so right, this is happening. Um, A guy named Clay Wagner since eight hundred letters signed by the RB of God with fake anthrax to plan players heard clinics in seventeen states and these antis packets like it's not just like flower, right, these antis packets have BT in it, which is there's a pesticide that is so similar to anthrax of the

package just texted tested positive. And so all of these people, these eight eight hundred clinics who opened these letters like thought they were going to die because they opened they opened a letter there was white potter in it. It said it was anthrax and then it tested positive for anthrax.

And like to this day, a bunch of abortion clinics like have like like that when when they're they're like when they opened their mail, they have they have like a special room that is like sealed off so that if they open the mail, they open a chemical weapon, only the person reading the mail will die. Well. Great,

that's the side of a good system. Yeah. They also a lot of planned parenthoods have something kind of similar set up with the receptionist where basically the way it's set up is that if there's a mass shooter, the receptionists can like seal off everyone but them. Yeah, it's like a thing that you know you're getting into if you're in a plant, if you if you're in that gig, it's like someone might come in and I might have to die to try and stop them from getting to

everyone else. It's it's bad. I mean, just just from there was a hundred increase in reports of assaults and batteries uh inside and outside clinics. UM, there was double the amount of death threats from and things have not gotten better since twenty So we're just waiting for all that new data to come in because oh boy, Yeah, and I think there's another thing when we need to keep in mind with this data is that there's so much stuff doesn't get reported. All of those numbers are low,

every single one of them is normally low. And there was a bunch of other stuff that is people do that just never gets talked about. Um, well, okay, so I think before we get into that, I do want to talk about the most famous uh abortion provide you who got murdered, which is Dr George Tiller, who is like a genuinely incredibly heroic figure who he was keep doing it after the first time you were shot, Like you would be a hero if you did it up until you got shot, going after like he got shot.

He's a his clinic got bombed. There was an entire eye. Yeah, he's clinic up on what was the other one? Yeah, he he was. He was one of the he was I think he was actually I don't know if it was that anthrax threat or like a different anthrax threat, but like people, people like he kept getting anthrax threats. Um. There was this thing called Operation Rescue, which is I

guess that there's still version of us around. But they're these like they do these like giant like non violent severe disito obedience campaigns were like thousands of people will will will will show up to a place and they'll like change themselves the buildings and they'll like prevent anyone from getting in, and they'll like terrorize everyone around there.

And his office is one of the is one of the ones that was targeted, which is like in there like that they had this big campaign called Operation Rescue. It was targeting like him specifically. And there is one fun story in this which is they tried this in Minneapolis, Nett three, but they got their asss cap by a bunch of anarchists and had to all run away, which

was extremely funny. But yeah, like I'm the The other thing that that's important with with Tiller specifically is the extent to which the right wing media is like like culpable in this um like Tiller. Like Bill o'reiley specifically is constantly yelling about Tiller. He calls Tiller the baby killer. He accuses him of running a quote operating a death mill, executing baby is about to be born, and destroying fetuses

for just about any reason right up until birthdate. Uh. He On one of his rants, he he literally says like right before well not like pretty close to when Tiller ists assassinated. Uh quote, if I could get my hands on tiller, well, you know, can't be vigilantes, can't do that. It's just a figure of speech. But despicable. Oh my god, it doesn't get worse? Does it get worse? No? Wow, So he's just like this is just like the ship that that he's that that he's being subjected to by

the media. And then oh lo and behold he gets murdered. You know what doesn't I don't know, I have nothing to say. It doesn't do uh coordinated you know what would be dope? Here here's what I'll say. You know, it would be dope if when somebody came to shoot George Tyler that person had gotten shot repeatedly. That would have been cool. M that would have been neat. But anyway,

here's ads and we're back with more horrifying stuff. Um. Yeah, so there's a lot of focus I think, you know, there's been a lot of media coverage recently about this, just because, like you knows, as a reaction to the incredibly bad faith Like, oh, look at the sanctity of people protesting at the Supreme Court. It's like they blew

people's heads off. The shotguns but you know, and like that's good, and I'm really glad there's there's more media reporting about this, But I want to talk about you know, there's there's an incredible focus here on the shootings and bombings, and like there's good reason for that, But I want to talk about some other ship that the force birth fanatics do because it's horrifying. It doesn't get talked enough

about enough. Um So, one of the people who gets interviewed in Living in the cross Hairs, which is a great book by the way, it's it's about I mean, okay, I don't agree with all of its policy recommendations, but it's a book like interviewing like abortion providers about their experiences. One of the people they interview is this guy named Rodney Smith, who's an abortion doctor. Um and I'm just gonna read the stuff that they do to this guy

because it's okay, So protesters show up to his son's wedding. Um, they burn his house and his farm down, They burns to death, They kill their dog, their cats, and all of their possessions. Wow. Yeah from the books help kill Babies. Can you tell me that the cats? Yeah, we will imagine im script did this Yeah, everyone would lose their minds. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read a quote about

this from this book. Someone mailed a letter postmarked the morning of the fire justifying killing the animals on Rodney's farm because Rodney quote murdered little children. However, the letter was untraceable. Wow. They do this ship all the fucking time, and it never gets reported. Because the reason never gets reported is because when when when, when this this the city comes to investigate, They fucking destroyed the entire scene

of the crime. They showed the entire scene of the crime so thoroughly that when the fire marshal showed up the day after, they tried to arrest um. They tried to arrest Rodney Smith Smith for evidence tampering because I

thought that he had done it right. Yeah, that makes sense. Wow, And let's less lest you think this is the end of the ship, that that that this guy goes through, right, Like they when they find out he's like going to like a conference, or like they find out he's staying in hotel, that they do these campaigns where like they'll they'll do these mass collins to the hotel saying hey, there's this person here and if you don't kick them out, like we're going to protest all your branches. He gets

kicked out of hotels. Um, he gets attacked by an anti abortion protester in the chambers of the Supreme Court, like that Supreme Court, the big one. How did they even get in the two the chambers of the Supreme Court. He was just one of it was one of the people who was showing up at this thing, and that the guy like throws him out of his chair, grabs him, throws him out of his chair, picks up the chair and starts beating the share out of him with his own chair. In this is in the chambers of the

Supreme courts. They beat an abortion doctor with his own chair. And you know, socially, Roddy had had security with him, right, because you know it it's yeah, when when you're abortion doctor and and people are this targeted at you, Yeah, you have securities. You don't get attacked like this. But the court wouldn't let him like bring his private security in and their rationalization was, uh, he had been assured

that quote nothing ever happens in the Supreme Court. To think about this, right, you cannot find a news article about this. Right, a guy got beat up by these people in the Supreme Court. If literally anyone who was not a fucking forced birth anti abortion fanatic did this, there would have been a new cycle that would have lasted until the fucking end of time. There have been

a movie and three shows made about it. Yeah, and there's just nothing well like that is wild, Like that is really showing like these things don't get These things aren't big problems, right because they aren't challenging to any kind of power structure. So they're allowed to happen because they're just reinforcing things. They're not actually challenging things. Um.

But still it's very brazen. When you're killing like seventeen horses and going into the Supreme Court to beat someone with a chair, you would think that someone would say something, Um and I've never heard of this before either this I know, this is like the thing, the thing I want to emphasize about this. This is the things they

did to one guy, right, one doctor. This is happening like this is right, Like this stuff, this kind of stuff is happening to people every fucking day across the country, and there is nothing there is jack shit. You might maybe see a report in local papers, like maybe it is a it is a it is a just an incredible campaign of terror. But this guy is like he is staggeringly based. Uh. Here this is quote from that book. Again, Rodney is used to this type of verbal abuse and

sometimes reacting kinds. When a priest called him a murderer, Uh, Rodney responded by calling the priest a child molester. When the protesters told Rodney they were praying for him, he responded, no, you're praying upon us. There's a difference. So she rules and she likes she he'd been a doctor who like did other stuff and when they worshiped people. I think I think it was after they burned his house down. She was like, no, fuck you, I'm only going to

do abortions now. She's exaggeratedly basic, like yeah, which which I guess also like this is this is a thing that like so like obviously, like I don't think any leftist has ever fucking lit people's horses on fire, not that I know of them, generally left generally they would have more of an instinct to free the horses. Yeah, Like you have to you have to be like genuinely monstrous to to light horses on fire, like they screamed like horses scream like when you like them on fire.

I mean, and and and cats and dogs animal like an animal abust and animal murder. But it's it's like pretty pretty despicable. And there's uh just justifying it by saying it's because they were on the property of someone who helps gives abortions is some wild some wild thinking. Well, none of those what's are in the Bible. Actually there is there is a lot of animal murdering in the Bible.

Never mind yeah, okay, well but but but but I mean, I I will say that there is a thing that can happen where if if you like, sometimes targeted protests on a person just like makes them bin for it, like dig into their beliefs. And that's on top and and and I think like here, I think like there's a lot of people who are just stunning Lee Brave who go through this ship and just still keep doing it because like this is something that they believe in.

And you know, and those aren't even like that extreme examples of like the kind of stuff that happens. Again again we've talked about like again nail bombs, right, like

people were getting their heads blown off with shotguns. There's there's a systemic campaign of terror that has felt incredibly acutely by the people who need these services, who need to get abortions, who need to get reproductive healthcare, and is felt by the providers of that healthcare, and nobody else in society sees about it or talks about it, and they have you know, Okay, so the I'm I'm gonna read another quote from Living in the Crosshairs about

the tactics that these groups use because they have they have so many things. These tactics include bombings, arson and

threat scares, and mass blockades. Extremists have also thrown beautric acid into clinics, glued clinic locks, shut locked themselves to clinic property using items such as bicycle locks or chains, drilled holes into clinic groups so that clinics flood, invaded, invaded clinics, vandalized clinics, made threatening phone calls, try to persuade patients to go to fake clinics, which we've talked about that in our our episode on Cristis pregnancy centers,

but those that is also like part of the systemic campaign of terror, is deceiving and humiliating people into not getting abortions. Uh, they put spikes on driveways. They they they'll they'll still stand one of them. This is the very common things. They'll stand on stand outside of abortion clinics talking about how they're gonna make bombs and like the comic clothes that they're mixing, and uh, yeah, they they'll they'll lay down on sidewalks in front of buildings.

They will they will jump on people's cars. Uh, they will camp out in front of clinics for like multiple day stretches. The they send decoy patients like into the clinics and disrupt it. It's just so much. Yeah, and like like the brazenness with like again like that if there are things on there, like okay, and like okay, So like I don't want to like make this point too much because like, yeah, you can get away with a lot of stuff, right, even if the state is

hunting for you. There's a lot of stuff that you could do that you can get away with. But like the level of stuff they've been able to get away with, like the fact that they've been able to literally on the air say that you should murder a specific abortion doctor mentioned them by name, and the fact that I know people who have had the FBI show up to their doors because of jokes they made on Twitter. It is it is fucking appalling. Yeah, yeah, because I mean

they're not they don't. The law doesn't exist a lot, a lot doesn't matter. It's all about who's actually challenging the systems of power. Yeah, and then the police are like again this this is one of those They literally do cross burnings, like fucking like, they literally do clan style fucking cross burning. So I I can once again go back to the old rage against the machine classics. Some of those who work forces are the same cooper and crosses. Because it is literally the same people, the

cops will cooperate with them. Like. Um. There's the other thing that do a lot is they'll just like shoot bullets through the windows of clinics constantly, and they never no, no,

no one, no one cares. That is very common. Yeah, And like fire bombs happened to do this day that one of the incidents they talked about in that book was, um, so they like this, this is stuff that happened at like one clinic, they set the clinic's fence on fire in the middle of the night they plug the downspouts on like the roof after like a giant snowstorm, so that like when when the snow melted, the water like poured into this whole, they drilled it flooded the entire clinic.

Um they had another one where they they drilled holes in the ceiling of the clinic and ran a garden hose through it and flooded the entire building. And yeah, again like none of this stuff ever makes the news, Like like well you and you you can compare, you compare the reaction to this to like how they reacted the Animal Liberation Front, right, yea, that that caused there was like there were like that, there were there were

like like law enforcement like techniques. There are law enforcement organizations that exist today specifically to stop people like like that existed a specifically because of this campaign to stop the Animal Liberation friend for freeing animals like these people.

And you know, and I should say this's like also like there's this whole push to like, oh, we need to call these people terrorists, Like yeah, like Bill Clinton called these people terrorists, and like what happened nothing Like they they they got one law that was like fine, that was like that was that was about trying to keep people from protesting graphs side of clinic. But I got strked own about the scream court, because again, we live in in a size society that is constantly moving

towards theocratic fascism. If you torture construction sites or sedans or people wanting to destroy sections the forest, then you're then you're a terrorist. Um if the mail pops and to and kill a whole bunch of horses, you're just You're just some some dudes, I guess. Yeah. And one of the things incredibly frustrating about the story is there will be people who are being stalked right where that

they're being harassed like that, they're they're being intimidated. These people keep showing up, they'll call the FBI, and the FBI will go in, we don't care. And then the next day I'll get shot by the same person. This happens multiple times with multiple and like like that. We talked about this with the person who killed Tiller Um.

A lot of the people who do use anti abortion murders like we're just irregular anti abortion prisoners and protesters, and like everything happens a lot is like people will go to jail for an abortion bombing, they'll come out and they'll do it again. And it's like, you know, one of the one of the really scary things about this as well, I know this is this has been stated before. This isn't by any means a new a

new a new thought or framing. But with all of the laws getting enacted around the whole like bounty hunter side of things, for like how there's going to be you know, citizens being amputized to track down both abortion providers people who thought out abortion. Um, it's giving all of this strain of thought, like this whole, all of the striving ideology, it's deputizing it, and it's giving it actual legal backing. So it's no longer just ignored by

law enforcement. It is now being encouraged by local governments. Um. All of these all of these same motivations are now like you can get rewarded for doing this um, And oh boy, will people seize on that opportunity. Yeah. And I think that there's a thing we can talk about with with fascism here where it's like, okay, so like

what what is fascism? And if if you're looking at like one of the one of the things that like if you if you're using like a strict classical definition of fascism is the integration of of of like parties sort of like party paramilitary forces into the state. And this is what we're looking at, is we're looking at these people who have been sucking a bombing abortion clinics

for fifty years, like starting to do this stuff. And I think, like, I'm gonna read another passage about the kinds of stuff they do to individual people because like I think, you know, I mean, I keep going back to just like here's the high level terror that they're doing, but like, yeah, like the individual people. Um. After being verbally targeted at our clinic for years, protesters started harassing Tammy Madison through various written communications. First, the protesters distributed

flyers throughout Tammy's neighborhood, including one at Tammy's door. The flyer listed Tammy's address, the make and model of Tammy's car, and listed a telephone number reporter to be Tammy's number. Then, the protester disappeared at her home with science is playing her name that said she kills babies and hires the baby killers. When they were outside Tammy's house. They handed

out flyers about her to anyone walking by. They do things like they'll they'll use like licenses for example, cause again you have to get licenses right to to to provide abortions, to be a doctor, and so I'll use a licenses to find personal information about people. These the people out there are like I mean their right wingers, right, So they're they're really racist. They like they they love screaming jew doctor at people because yeah, like they racial slurs.

They constantly out people like the nail bob guy also attacked a gay bars. Yeah, there's a lot of crossover in terms of who they want to attack. Yeah, and like they do constant death thrust. There's also a thing I want to talk a bit about, which is like these malicious legal lawsuits. So one of one of the ways that people go after like clinics is that they're constantly these clinics are like constantly under legal for people

are constantly suing them. People people are suing them just to find out personal information about them because the court will give court will give you information. Uh, they get They have like these fake like fake case inspectors who will come in order to infiltrate the things like they have. There's legal enormous legal pressure from the state itself, which is often trying to destroy these clinics. They're they're like they'll they'll pass laws specifically to make us with the

clinics can't operate in various ways. Um like people who are just like district attorneys will will do investigations into them over and over again. They a so they go after like the kids of providers constantly. I read a story from this book that again, like no one ever talks about, like they they kidnapped this this provider's child like her like twelve year old child like at a clinic and like try to indoctrinate them and then eventually

gave them back after a few hours. But like again, like they they kidnapped a child of one of the people who works at these things, and there no one even talks about it, Like it's never there's never anything. I just I don't know, like I just like the more you go into this is like the more stuff that you see that like like they target people's parents still, like show up at like the nursing homes of like the parents of like of these doctors, like they'll they'll

target their neighbors. They go after the donors to clinics a lot, like they'll they'll they'll send them pictures of like bullets and knives. Um. One of the things they do often is that those burned down completely the wrong clinic. So there's been a lot of cases where they just they attacked the clinic next to it because they're not

the stuff. They've gone. Yeah, I want to I want to end on this guy named John Brockenhoff, who he bombs three abortion clinics over two decades, Like he's one of the guys who they sent to prison, and then he came out and they bounded another abortion clinic. Um, And I want I want to read this quote from him.

My orders to Vietnam didn't suddenly material materialized unexpectedly. I volunteered to go because I saw the South Vietnamese people were being threatened by a Communist takeover, and I figured if they were willing to fight for freedom, they deserved to be free and deserved help too. He goes on to point out, in January of seventy three, I had just returned from voluntary participation in a bombing campaign in support of the liberty of people eight thousand miles away.

So I hope you will believe I will. I would not have turned my back on my own people, American babies, my own people, American babies. If you had asked for my health up in bombing an abortion and abortionary in this country, even in seventy three, and especially since it was not mere liberty but very but their very lives at stake, I would have gone with you. So this guy is literally saying he's still fighting the Vietnam War, but he's doing it to bom abortion clinics, and he

went to Vietnam because he wanted to kill comunists. And this guy was at the Capitol at January six. But

that that sounds about right. So yeah, like it's like one of yeah, we're we're like the moment we are at now is this sort of detritus of like every crime the US has ever committed is just rolling back, and you know, we're we're we're we're seeing all of these people who fought in Vietnam and came back home and like killed a bunch of people who did abortions and did a bunch of bombings, and now they you know, and they tried. They just tried to do a coup.

They're probably going to get away with like in actually like a legal coup pretty soon because they've now seen his control of the court system, and it's like, well they've done. Really they do a really effective combination of violent direct action and legal challenges. Uh. There their actions able to be so successful. Uh one because like the tactics they choose it cause material damage and material change.

But also obviously like they're not getting like investigated in the same way anyone else would, right because like they they are they are capable of doing this effective action because they don't face any any similar level of oppression to any other group that would that would be doing

doing this, especially if they're on the left. Um. So, like it's it's it's it's always useful to look at the tactics of your enemy and how they and how they do certain things, but you can always have to realize, like this is the same thing with January six, if it was a whole bunch of people in black block storming, that the response from the cops would have been very different initially and continue on throughout the whole day and

the subsequent investigations. Um. So yeah, always good to look into tactics, but the response from the government is always going to differ depending on who's doing the actual challenging. Yeah, and I think, as I said, you thinks about this one, like there are things you can learn from how the right operates. You can't carbon copy their tactics and try to do them from the left because it just won't work because the start to structural conditions for the left

are just different. But the second thing is also that, like it is simultaneously true that the level of oppression against leftist is higher than it is against right wingers. And also that's true, and it's also true that you can do stuff and like people have and yeah, I mean none of the change revenge people have gotten caught yet, so like you know, we will we will see. Yeah, I mean maybe by time this episode comes out. And I mean, like, well, we'll we'll see, Like in general, right,

especially when movements are decentralized. Um, but yeah, I mean, wow, they shoug get they should get to get away with a whole bunch of stuff. You can be doing like pretty public of vomiting incidents for almost a decade and not get caught. Um, if you just can bomb the Olympics and not get caught for like seven years. It's wild. And I'm also just assuming the vast majority of these guys are white, and so they're not. So it's also that and also the fact that this didn't happen like

a long time ago. It's still happening, and that's crazy that we still don't hear about it, like yeah, like we we talked about we talked about on this show like a few weeks ago, like the people people lit another abortion clinic on fire, like that happens still and will continue to happen, and people continue to not care about it because it doesn't write anyone whos in power ins what the media doesn't care, and it's been happening

long enough that there's this sense of like normalization around it. It's not seen as radical, it's seen as oh, obviously some people think that's justified. It's not. It's not surprising, um, and that normalization allows way more people to both feel keep well of doing something and it when it happens,

there's not as big of a fuss. I do think it's also true though, like I think there are a lot of people, like I think most people don't know that this happened, Like I think, I think there's an extent to which the level of violence has been totally invisibilized. And you know, because I mean, they ever think about this again. Is the reason that they're working like this is because this this is a completely minoritarian position, right, Like,

they don't actually have that many numerical supporters. It's just that they're able to sort of, I mean, you know, they they have enough people to wage systemic a pain of terror, and because of that, they're able to inflict their sort of are able to inflict their their fascism months of the rest of the population. Ah, that was a good ending. Sigh. Yeah. Yeah. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. Well more podcasts

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