The Cato institute Guns, and the Left

Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States. Um, that might actually get us in trouble with the Secret Service. But you know what it's happening. It's happening James. Well, they're gonna have to figure out which one it was. Yes, and that of course second voice, James Stout, who might wind up in Guantanamo for this because he's not a US citizen. But I feel pretty safe, and I feel like our guest for today is pretty safe. And I

would like to introduce Stephen Manicelli. Stephen, you work for and are an editor at Protein Magazine. You've written for The Rolling Stone, You've written for a bunch of People, Dallas Voice, a number of different um news websites, magazines, and you have been spending a big chunk of the last year or so in the streets and Dallas reporting on the escalating series of well, hopefully not escalating. I

guess time will tell on that. But the series of right wing UM, I don't even want to I don't want to dignify them by calling them protests, but like right wing organized attempts to intimidate UH and spark violence at LGBT events in the DFW area, and some of the left wing protest counter against that, which has involved groups like the elm Fork John Brown Gun Club, who we've had on the show a few times, and has involved groups of armed leftists kind of UM in opposition

to groups of armed right wingers UM. Now, Stephen, the specific reason we're talking today is you were just the other day part of a panel put on by the Cato Institute, which is a libertarian think tank, titled Domestic Extremism and Political Violence the Threat to Liberty UM. Your

fellow panelists were Mike German. Mike is a former FBI agent who went undercover against the far right UM and now works for the Brennan Center, and Christopher Wiles, who is a professor of English and a director of American Studies at the University of Connecticut and wrote the u s Anti Fascism Reader. Um. Now, this was interesting for a number of reasons. Kind of in the lead up to this event, the Kata Institute published a graphic that

showed a number of domestic armed organizations. Um. And so in the same graphic you had groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Front, as well as groups like Yellow Peril Tactical and the Elm Fork, John Brown Gun Club

and the Socialist Rifle Association. Prior to the event, this sparked a bit of frustration the left and some people suspecting that this was going to be kind of geared towards attacking left wing armed groups and smearing them, you know, as violent extremists in the same way that the Proud Boys are. Uh, that is not what happened. Um, And I'm gonna open the floor up to you, Stephen, thank you for being on the show. Hey, thanks for having me.

And I'm glad that this is not sort of a critics criticism session that I'm gonna be sitting with y'all on. In terms of yeah, my participation with a hestitate to even use the word libertarian because of the historical definition of the term. But you know, conservative libertarian whatever, big L versus small L. I don't. Yeah, we could call them a right libertarian think to their rough bodies, right like literally founded by rough body. Yeah, they love them

some Rothbard. Um didn't they like excommunicate him or something, though at some point I couldn't. I don't. I'm not deep on the lower One thing, if doing my favorite meme with the two hands meeting in the middle middle left libertarians and right libertarians have excommunicating members of Murray Rothbart is on an io exile Murray Rothbart and Mary Books and United and cancelation. So yeah, I guess I'm

not being canceled, which is good. Um. And so yeah, they had reached out to me in September about being on this panel, and they had mentioned, um, the other guests, and frankly, I was intrigued because you know, if people want to pay attention to the growing threat of fascism,

I think that's pretty neat. And it seemed like an opportunity to do the thing that Glenn Greenwald claims that he does when he goes on Tucker Carlson, which is like reaching out to an audience that doesn't already agree with the things that I think UM, because he just goes on because their pals and they already all agree.

So UM, I digress. I thought it was maybe an interesting forum, and and I was really interested to hear UM from the other panelists, in particular UM, because I had looked at what Mike German had written after his service in UM the FBI and as well as the author of the Anti Fascist Handbook, and I thought, well, if if Kato has invited all three of us, it's it's not gonna go too off the rails in terms of UM, you know, sort of the false equivalency problems,

or it just becoming a session to bash on groups that aren't really the part of the problem. Interestingly enough, the primary amount of bashing that went on was Mike German, former f by FBiH, repeatedly viciously criticizing the police and the FBI for their complicity with far right street movements. Yeah,

Mike's been pretty consistent. I spoken this for like a couple of years, and I'm sure you people are probably aware of his presence by now, but he's been pretty consistent on bashing defense for failing to act on white supremacy for decades, and it's very It's there's a number of reasons this is interesting that we'll we'll be getting back into. But I really do recommend people take a listen to this conversation between y'all. Among other things, there's

there's some good history in there. We'll talk about a couple of things that got introduced that I don't a hundred percent agree with. That there's some good history in there, and I think more to the point, you get um a lot of updates from your reporting in Dallas and a lot of kind of summaries of that which I find very valuable and think will be valuable to people

who have maybe been following it less. And then also it's really interesting to get Mike's perspective as someone he was in it was late eighties, early nineties, he was doing a lot of undercover stuff in the West Coast and neo Nazi movements, UM, and so hearing him discuss the way in which the FBI's programs targeted at the far right work and don't work was really interesting to me. Oh absolutely, that was the sort of the side of the story that I knew the least about UM. Christopher Viles,

the professor, the guy who wrote the handbook. UM. You know, I think he provided a very important set of historical information that kind of helped iron out some of the issues in terms of the framing craps and some of the inconsistencies which I think we can dive into a little bit, or rather inaccuracies that kind of got slipped by UM and we weren't really able to address in

the course of the conversation. But hearing him just put it so bluntly kind of took the wind out of me in a good way where I was like, I don't I don't have anything else to add here, no notes, UM, because he really made the point that yes, some of these organizations were candon glove with police officers at the local level, even at the federal level. He's witnessed it.

He has a number of experiences that he cited where the FBI is basically saying, uh, do not talk about your case is involving white supremacists and these similar type of groups. Because there are people in the agency who are sympathetic UM. And I think that's kind of why I ended up on the panel because in part the story that I've been covering around here with this harassment campaign over the past few months of lgbt Q groups

and events. Part of the story is that policing has not really done anything to prevent uh you know, this incitement and harassment from continuing and occasionally turning violent. Not in the sense of weapons being used other than bear me so far, but in the sense the physical violence and uh you know, slurs and violent threats being hurled

at people. Um so, I I think that Mike's points for really timely and well said, and frankly, he's the kind of person that they needed to come from, because as otherwise, they just kind of get smacked away as a leftist talking point by people who probably have some internal biases or prejudices, prejudices that prevent them from engaging with it when it comes from the wrong person in the wrong way. And there were a number of interesting

kind of discussions happening. One thing that I was happy about is that, well, the initial framing, I think there was a lot of fear that all of these left wing groups are going to get lumped in with groups that have, to put it bluntly, tried to overthrow democracy.

Um right, we should point out that that's how the FBI does do it, right, like they for instance, the group white supremacists with like black identity groups, is racial identity extremists or statistics that way like that, That's that's how the FEDS see this. But yeah, they didn't, which is which is good. It's like a form of obfuscation to do so. And um, you know, why would they do that. Well, maybe there's a few reasons they might

do that, especially if you ask someone like Mike. Um. And you know, it's such a blind spot for obvious the ideological reasons for so many people involved. Yeah, and

it's it's Um. It was interesting because there was this bit in the middle of it where Mike, you know, being a former FED, walked through kind of like, well, it makes sense to me given the fact that law enforcement is is not able to be trusted in a lot of instances and often is working hand in glove with these far right groups that want to harm marginalize people,

that they would seek to arm themselves. Um. And that prompted from the the fellow who was actually um kind of the organizing the the event, Patrick Eddington, who's a senior fellow at the Cato Institute him to point out, and he was I would have to say broadly fair um, And generally he seemed a little bit kind of um uh. He he had this attitude you you get sometimes around libertarians where he was like, there was a moment where he was like, well, I'm glad some on the left

to finally started accepting the Second Amendments and stuff like that. Um. But but he had a he had a moment where he expressed a concern, um, which was his fear about the possibility that if you keep having these events, at some point you're going to have two groups of people who are armed shoot at each other. Um, which is we have We've been right up to that line. You

have had exchanges of fire, just thinking. In Portland, you had a moment where a single right wing individual with a handgun fired into a group of people, thankfully didn't hit any Two people in the anti fascist side fired back and forced him to flee. Um. You had a moment earlier this year in Portland where a right winger shot into a group of unarmed people doing traffic security, killed a sixty one year old woman, wounded I think five other people, and then was shot and stopped by

a leftist. Um, you obviously had um a proud boy, while a member of Patriot Prayer shot and killed during an altercation, but not an exchange of fire. The only person who fired was the person who killed that that individual. So none of those are quite two groups of people with guns exchanging fire, you know, in a sustained way. Um, none of those even entirely approached kind of what happened

at like Greensville. But they're all on that spectrum. And and while I think this guy there's a degree to which he's kind of spooked at seeing leftists with guns, I do think that that's a reasonable thing to be concerned with, because when and if we hit that point, it's going to be an inflection moment for I think

the entire country. Right right, I think the reality is that most normal people, whatever you want to use the word to describe them, people aren't brain poisoned and plugged into the Internet and about all these things or or having to deal with them and are affected by them in real life. They might see these groups and just

cast them all under the same umbrella. You know, there's a good me I chuckled at that came out afterwards, where it had had the slide showing on all of the groups the right when groups and the left and groups sort of armed groups in you know, the United States, and then replacing them all with just domestic cleaning products. Like, yes, they all have something in common. They have weapons, and they're armed to some degree, but beyond that, they all

have distinctions and we shouldn't drawn equivalency. And I think, you know, Mike did a very elegant job of drawing that distinctionaries as these people not only have a right to defend themselves, but they probably have a good reason to given all of these things. He was basically writing the lyrics to arrage against them en song and um, I was a little astonished by that, and he made a very clear point to say, like, yeah, there are people who are aggressors and there are people who aren't.

We can find a distinction in that. And if we're just now getting concerned about this violence, well maybe we should ask why we've had such a big blind spot for so long. And he got right to the core of it. It's these ideologies deeply baked into our institutions of white supremacy, right supremacy. UH basically all the way back to colonization, and you know, dealing with that is

necessary for us to deal with the broader problem. And I think he was very clear to say, like the things that were required to get to that point of like a potential shootout would be a total breakdown in policing.

And so he played place the blame at the feet of the police practically said it's there goddamn fault that people feel the need to do this, because if they just focused on the crimes that proud boys commit in the Dallas area, uh, you know, basically minor assaults and stuff, they would trace it back to the people that are committing them, and they would cut down on these escalations because the same people are the ones that show up

to these events time and time again. It's worth like Robby, you're talking about like an inflection point, right And we

spoke about like failures in policing too. I think part of the reason that we see things as super duper exceptional right now is the way that we teach history in schools here and part of the things we don't teach like that this has happened before, right, like the Battle of Haze Pond being a paramount example, if we look at the like the standoff at Wounded Knee or the Second Battle of Woundednee, or whatever you want to

call it, and throughout the civil rights movement. Right there's a book by Rob Williams about a contemporary book about the use of firearms and the civil rights movement that people can read like all of this stuff did happen then, And this same tension that we're feeling now about like a society putting itself apart and when it leads to a civil war also happened then and people felt this then two and we we well, the progress was made at that time. We didn't fix everything, right, Like that's

why we're having this discussion now. But like, I think the fact that we've removed so much of that, specifically the violence and the use of guns from our discussion with the civil rights movement sometimes leads us to see what's happening now is like really particularly exceptional, and it's not like, yeah, it's always been the case of marginalized folks that have resorted to the same tools that are

used to oppress them to defend themselves. And why wouldn't they write, like like Mike said, like Steve said, there's a very good and clear reason for oppressed people to want to defend themselves and their communities. The only analog that we were able to bring up in the conversation is like the pink Pink panthers, pink panther control, which was, you know, something that a lot of people don't know about.

And we did get a little bit of opportunity to discuss, you know, the black Panthers and how community defense is a different set of reasons for arming yourself and having knowledge of the Second Amendment and all those sorts of things. Then you know, going outside in an event hosted by an organization you have no interest in belonging to wearing your guns on your body to send a message that's

a very menacing form of free speech. And I think another good moment to bring up when we talk about this would be the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen, which was a series of race riots targeting black people in the United States that also involved large groups and communities, particularly in cities, of Black Americans taking up arms and defending themselves um and and was fairly enormous and it's deftal hundreds and hundreds of people were killed. Um, it's

it's really a pretty nightmarish moment in history. But it's the thing when you have groups, and we're about to have someone on from from Yellow Peril Tactical, when you have groups that are specifically organizing and saying like we are organizing, we are teaching skills for people to become armed because we are afraid that we and people like us will be victimized. It's stuff like the Red Summer that they're directly looking at. It's not theoretical, you know. Yeah,

you're Frank Karl from Arranged TV. Have some good videos about a lot of these different things if people are interested in looking them up. Yeah. Um, and I think probably we should bring on our next guest for tonight, and and Stephen will be staying on as well. Snow from Yellow Peril Tactical. Snow, do you want to introduce yourself and your organization for folks who may not be as as familiar with the stuff as we are. We we briefly covered y'all a little bit earlier in this

but yeah, thanks for having me. My name is Snow, my pronouns the sheet or they, and I am one of the many members of Yellow peril tactical. We are a collective of leftist Asian Americans under the shared ideology of being anti authoritarian um. And we talked about all sorts of things, but particularly how to develop firearms skills and also community defense and the occasional ship post and uh, first questions, because we're talking about this Cato Institute thing

that Stephen was on. Have you had a chance to listen to that yet? Since y'all watched it twice I have or paid notes? Yeah? Yeah, why why don't we start here? Yeah? Go off? You know, Okay, Like the chat was lit. When we first saw that we were mentioned, we were like, wow, we fucking made it because originally we started as a ship post account and then we

were like, oh, people actually care, um. And this is just one of those moments where, uh, I don't know, it felt like really surreal that Kato would even give a funk about us because we do all of this in our free time. You know, this is like nobody pays us, right, um. And so we had a lot

of skepticism going into it, um. And in a sense, uh, we're a bit on the defensive, kind of preparing for a lot of false equivalence, rhetoric um, and a lot of just like I don't know, maybe like orientalism as well, um, just given the history of how like Westerners have viewed Asian culture. UM. But ultimately, like the consensus has been that we were pleasantly surprised of how balanced it was.

I thought, overall it was very intriguing, and I got some good some good quotes written down, But I don't know if you want to go into those now or later or what can we start with having I really want to like anchor this in having you explained what community defense means, like so people can understand why, and

then we can go from what people say to you. Yeah, UM, so earlier y' all we're talking about like, um, the nineteen nineteen riots and actually reminded me of like the Pacific Coast Race riots of nineteen seven, and a bunch of were like murdering and committing violence against Asian people, right, And nineteen oh seven was not that long ago. Um, And in a sense it never has gone away. Um. And you know, I think, um, Chris Files said it like put it nicely when he was like, you know,

in the backdrop of a lot of anti Asian violence. Um, it's just that it's been a lot more prevalent among Asians specifically. That doesn't stop you know, like Boba liberalism, identity politics from happening where there's not like a grand division of like what's going on at large. Um. But we know that like our communities are under attack and the cops don't give a funk about us, and if anything,

they just make it worse most of the time. Uh. And so it's truly up to us because you know, cops don't prevent crime, They come after and they funk it up. Um. And it's not something that has come easily to me personally. I've been in denial about it for a lot of years around thinking like if I just avoid going out late at night, if I am always walking with a buddy, if I just you know, spend twenty minutes looking for a closer parking spot, it'll

prevent me from being harmed. And ultimately, like that's just me being in denial, um. And part of it. Another realization is like being strapped, I can seal Carrie every day, that's not going to deter someone from attacking me because of how I look without dosing myself I just look alternative, right, um, And knowing that that puts me at risk has never deterred me from wanting to express myself with how I look. But I know the risks, and that doesn't stop people

from me. But part of it is like I'm not going down without a fucking fight. Like my ancestors have come too fucking far. We kicked out the French, we kicked out the US, right uh, and now I'm in their turf. I've infiltrated the wire. But that doesn't mean but you know, it doesn't mean that it's going to stop them from harming US. Um. And you know, we know that we can't live in a fever dream where every single fascist on this planet will be gone. Um. But at the very least, like my life goal is

to make them think twice. And I'm scared a little bit.

It's interesting because you you bring up sort of what I think is a really good point, which is that like even if you're if you're in your day to day life, the fact that you're carrying a gun isn't going to stop somebody from starting, you know, an interaction with you that could turn violent because you just look the way that you look, I do want to talk a little bit about what's kind of the opposite thing, and it is sort of part of why I think folks were a little on edge when this event got

announced and you know that graphic came out that had as we've discussed, the Yellow Peril tactical alongside you know, these these these other groups. And there's one of the things that kind of results from the way gun culture works is that there's a very recognizable kind of um uniform um that you see particularly you've seen it with the Boogle Boo Boys, you see it with groups like

the Proud Boys. It's the it's the thing where you've got a plate carrier, a belt, you know, an a are some other kind of long gun helmets and and usually other tactical gear on it um. And this kind of this outfit, so to speak, has kind of evolved

over time. It really is a result of the War on Terror, and it's both an aesthetic choice and there's a huge number of companies that exist, particularly on the right to provide people with aesthetic options for kind of having all of this gear that are are sort of ideologically simple simpatica with them UM. But it's also just actually a practice. Well, some of this stuff is less practical than others, but the basics of the of the

get up exist because it's what worked. Right. There's one of the things people noted when the Taliban took back over in Afghanistan is that all of their special operations guys were dressed the same way that US fighters, just because it's just what works. You see the same outfits

on Ukrainian and Russian spec ops guys um. And one of the things when we when we're looking at kind of domestically, when you have people who are organizing and going out in the world armed as part of a public event, is that to people who are not familiar with what's going on, it can be hard to tell

them apart sometimes. And that is that strikes me the thing that the left particularly needs to deal with because both in kind of in the media and also out in the field, you don't want to be mistaken for groups like the Proud Boys and Steve and I want to start kind of with you here because I think you're you're reporting has always done a really good job of kind of making that difference clear. If you kind of have any thoughts on that, and then we'll go

back to you, Snow. I think that's a really interesting problem, the proliferation of tactical UM aesthetics and the ideological sort of turn in the production of weaponry and accessories. I mean, there's like goddamn tactical eight so the franchises, which is making me lose my mind for a number of reasons. UM and that is a is a real distinct thing that I see all the time around here, and and I think there's subtle things at groups do to try

to distinguish themselves. Obviously are patches, but in order to see a patch, you have to be close enough to someone in order to even find it legible. So then okay, you have flags, but then you also have to know what these flags are. Something that some groups around here have done when they're you know, sort of protecting an LGBTQ event is still have UM flags affiliated with the LGBTQ movement, but once again you have to know what those are. And one more people know what those are

these days. So that's a way in order to distinguish themselves. But it still takes a second for you to see a group of armed people and then process you know exactly all of these sort of semiotic markers of who they are and what they're doing. Um. Because if they have a different set of those things, it can be a very different set of conclusions that you can walk

away from if you identify them. Uh. And in Texas, the right does love carrying these flags and wearing these patches, so it makes it very clear who has consistently shown up to these events. Um. But like the reaction of normal people if a group of armed people are leading a protest is to kind of be like, what the heck? Double take? Maybe they will start filming it because it's

the craziest thing that they've seen that week. Um. And ultimately, you know, they have to kind of know some contextual clues in order to even make these distinctions, particularly when you're talking about groups like um, you know, John Brown Clubs or Yellow Peril, where you're there's concerns around op sack or info sack and you don't want to necessarily reveal your identities because you're already a part of a group that's facing violence at a disproportionate rate and maybe

you're you know, potentially targeted by the FBI at a disproportionate rate, like the former FBI officer interestingly noted during the conversation that, yeah, you may have an even harder time sort of distinguishing yourself and in making it known who you are. UM, So it's an interesting challenge. I don't know if I have uh, sort of any lessons from it other than that, you know, these classic signifiers

also seem to work. Sometimes they're kind of kitchy or um, you know, seem ridiculous, but it's kind of the same thing, like you said about the spec op stuff, like it's been used for centuries. Stuff like this has been used for a long time because it works because you immediately can comprehend is this person with a gun here to

kill me or to protect me? Yeah? Yeah, that's that's really interesting because I I, obviously I have a complicated history with flags, but there's few better ways to inform other people about what a group of folks is doing than having one. Um. Yeah, as long as you're not conducting an ambush and that's an offensive maneuver. And then suddenly you know, it's like, as long as you're cool with being like, we're here and this is what we're doing. A flag is exactly the thing that you might want.

So No. One of the things I've always paid attention to and appreciated about yellow perils the way and what's y'all social media and y'all's kind of forward face is both unapologetically focused on firearms, focused on training, and also feels completely different from any of the sort of right wing kind of groups that that focus on some of the state, even when you're doing stuff that's like videos of people shooting and training. UM, do you want to talk?

I mean, it's just anything in general on this subject that you've you've felt. But that's something I've always particularly noticed about y'all. Yeah, so thank you. UM, we try really hard. You should see the group chat um. But it's it's something that you know, when historically Asian Asians represent it in firearms culture tend to be conservative folks who fit within the norm or you know, proximity to whiteness, and that's something that we are not at all interested in, UM,

and we know that comes at a risk. That's why one of the reasons why are identifiable tattoos are clothing and our faces are always blurred. One because we don't want cult of celebrity around individuals. UM. But too it's like part of that is a lot of folks generally, but especially on the right, will kind of have this very grandiose, uh I don't know, uh, buffer sense of legitimacy just because they have cool you know, video editing, they have like the nicest guns, they have a lot

of guns. Um. And our thing is like, you don't need all that. What you do need is to train with what you got and are target audience are folks who don't know ship about firearms or just getting into it and needs some more reputable to go. Um. And we take that very seriously, um, because I only got into firearms like two years ago, um, and so that is fresh in my memory, and I know very well what that's like, um and how intimidating it could be.

So a lot of our work is to try to demystify it and really break it down to a way that like it doesn't like we don't make people feel like they have to be at a certain level already to even enter into the firearms world. Like, we want to meet people where they're at and encourage people. So like, you know, do our drill of the month and like tell us your score and then do it next month and tell how to tell us how you did better, and so it's really encouraging people to get better on

an individual basis. Um, we encourage people to go out with their friends. Um, but we also try to throw in like community international solidarity with our fundraisers in there too. So it's we try do a lot of different things. But at the end of the day, like if we help just eapen a handful of shooters get better at defending themselves or their community, like, it's all worth it. Thank you. I want to ask next and I'll ask you both again kind of same question. Where do you

see the armed left moving? Particularly in this next year's we kind of get through our last or start go through our last blessed year before election. Um, what are some things that that are on your radar? What are some things that you're sort of expecting to see? What are some things that you're worried about? Saying a lot, it's a big ques trying to keep it to a year, right, Yeah, but you know, I like I worry a lot. I try not to get too caught up in it because

life will surprise you, you know. Um, But I think ultimately, like where I live, we are facing down a really tight governor race in which if the Republican candidate wins UM, a lot of work that has been put to you know, codify abortion rights, workers rights, things like that, will be

reversed by this governor um. And it's something that a lot of people are worried about, myself included, and where I live, even within city limits, there are white supremacists flags, Confederate flags even just like a couple of miles from my house, and so there's a lot of fear around

that becoming even more emboldened. Even though we managed to fight back a lot and deterred, it doesn't mean that they're not taking this moment the right, the fast right to restrategize and to recalibrate what they want to do next um. And so it kind of feels like we're in the calm before the storm. Oh man. Uh, not like the J six storm, That's not what I mean, but like genuinely what it will actually look like, because

I don't think it's gonna be. I don't think there's gonna be Like, you know, we meet at the football field and we have like our drummers out and like our little pipe players out and then we have about it. It's gonna be like urban like warfare, is what I think. Um, And a lot of other people think that too. And you just throw in climate change as a treat like we don't know what the literal climate is going to be like, um, And so it really just feels like

there's multiple fronts right now. But it seems like climate change or the fascists will kill me before my smoking habit will And a lot of people think that too. Yeah, I mean I I do anecdotally know a lot of people who justify their cigarette use with like, look, there's wildfires all around my house. I'm not worried about the mar Brea's it is. It is October and the city of Portland is blanketed and smoke. I don't know if the cagrets are going to get me. Stephen, did you

did you want to go next? Yeah? Well, I mean, you know, the fact that a ship posting account gained some traction, maybe there's hope yet. Um, I don't know, but ship posting will save us in the end. It's it's another one on the board for ship posting. Let's put it that way. So looking forward to what are we dealing with well, Texas is uh deep in it

right now. Um, we're one of the sort of laboratories of fascism in the United States at the moment, sort of a spear tip of a lot of really bad stuff really just like you know, codifying in the state, oppressive things, things that they just talk about in other states. Um. And so yeah, our governor's race, uh basedly it doesn't either, you know, kind of split things because our lieutenant governor runs independently of the governor, and you know, the House

is a whole other thing. Yeah, if it goes far right, um, which a ton of money has been spent, billions and billions from people in the industry that's primarily responsible for destroying the planet, are um, pushing that to make it happen, and so that all works their way, then yeah, we're probably going to get some uh seriously bad laws, really bad state sponsored violence, a variety of forms. And yeah, people are already thinking to themselves like do I want

to live in this state anymore? Um? But that's also basically what the extreme people on the right want is to either just get rid of these people one way or another. Um. And so some people don't want that Obviously, some people don't have a choice to leave because it's expensive to move and they may be tied to their

families and other sorts of things. So, uh, I don't like to predict the future because history is we keep pumping shells into it and it keeps getting back up, and uh, it's just gonna happen, and I don't really know exactly. I just I'm very thankful that there are people and groups in my state that are trying to protect vulnerable people, um, and people working to hopefully make it not super bad. Um. So I think like the optimistic view is that it won't be all totally terrible horrible,

but it'll be still kind of same, same, you know. Yes, Yeah, that's kind of like how I see broad speaking, you know, the big projection cone. Otherwise, UM, I'm not sure. Yeah, it's gonna be fucked up, but at least we'll have friends. Hopefully it'll be wavy and it will be about the friends that we make along the way. Yeah, I do either of you have anything else you'd like to to talk about or or or bring up or say before

we kind of bring this to a close. I guess I'm just like I was kind of surprised how decent that the panel went. Um. You know, the anti fascist coalition can be broad because it is a sort of anti thing. It's not necessarily positivist. But you know, maybe that's another episode to describe, you know, why it's important to also perhaps have a positivist message along with what

you're trying to do in response to fascism. Um. And you know, like more discussions like this hopefully will happen, and I think they could be improved by like not all four panels being white dudes. That would probably be helpful. Um as a thought. Yeah, uh well, yeah that that was actually the first thing I wrote on my my note page is that it was for for what I should have said that earlier, So you never, I'm just playing.

But I think one thing I want to add is like, similar to what you were saying, Stephen, was kind of like what is the pro positive thing? And ultimately like to me, it's like the city that I live in, there's a lot of decentralized mutual aid groups that got a lot of people through the pandemic and still provide daily relief to people consistently. Like I'm in like a million fucking signal chats where people post a need and

it gets met eventually. UM. And it's like I'm pro that mutual aid and like it's something that I mean, maybe it's the only thing that will really get us through whatever is to come. UM. And that's just like pro commune to be building UM and coalition building whatever that looks like in your community. Maybe if we want to talk about mutual aid, you can. I know, you guys do a lot of fundraiser I think that's a really cool thing. Certain distinguishes you from a lot of

other gun clubs. So maybe do you want to talk about a couple of those, Maybe plug those? You know, I would plug our Fondward patches, but we just sold out of the second patch. It's a it is. We didn't think people would care that much, especially the first round, and so the second round we only ordered a hundred and it's pulled out in a day. Those are supporting the resistance in Myanmar, right, Yes, yes, people are getting them by donating directly to liberate me and mar and

then someone sends them a cool forward patch. UM. And it's one of many fundraisers we've done. We recently have done a couple for folks in Ukraine. UM, we helped them fund an ambulance out there. UM. I can't remember the Instagram handle right now. UM. We've also done a bunch for like a group in Portland for example, Black and Beyond the Binary. UM. I think we've done to

actually for Liberate Me and mar UM. But it's just something that you know, we don't do this for money, and we also want to support other groups doing things that we support, especially like popular fronts that are fighting back against authoritarian regimes UM and hoping that you know, if ship hits the fan here, that people will do that for us to UM, because we really value international solidarity and you know, as corny as it is, we're you know, we're like we got us, you know, we

fend us, not George Soros, but UM, you know it's something that brings us joy to be able to help and UM, as mostly anarchists, we really believe that, like we are all that we have and we can't wait for someone else to to you know, a benefactor to come and save us, because that ship is just not going to happen. Yeah, it's great. WHA can folks find you on the into web? They want to follow along. We can find us on Instagram at Yellow dot Peril dot Practical. You have to spell it out, I think,

because I think we're shadow band right now. Our Twitter, regrettably is ypt actual. We also have a website just Yellow Peril Tactical dot com. We just took it so no one else could. Um, but that's where you can mainly find us. We are primarily on Instagram, um, but most of our stuff is on Twitter. If you really want to see a ship post, go on Twitter. We recently got into it with this person and Oregon over

the gun control measure. Um, and let me tell you it was a heat but also a little like maddening because this guy, this guy actually ties into how we opened the episode because he was he's a local liberal uh thought leader guy who uh saw two pictures of people with guns, one of them being fascists and one of them being one of y'all and was like, clearly these are the same thing. Um, it was a good time vote no on one fourteen in my opinion, uh, if you're in the state of Oregon. But we'll talk

about that at a later point. Stephen Um, you want to plug you first off, obviously really good work, UM on the panel. I want to plug that for folks because I think it is really worth a listen. Um, as everyone is here said, there's a lot of good historical information in there and uh and and your contributions are invaluable, So folks can check that out. If you just google Cato Institute Domestic Extremism and Political Violence, you'll find it. And how else can people find you? Stephen?

You can also find me on Twitter. UM, I will make sure that my handle is there. It's at Steve van Zetti. Ste van Zetti as in the you know, one of the two that got killed by the state unjustly, um because it's anti Italian discrimination, so UM I digress um. The you can find me there. Prodian is obviously something that I work with, and I would say check that out as well. It's at Prodi and mag uh that has a website Prodian mag dot com. Um and anything else that you want to know about me you can

either find on Twitter or Google. There's really only like two guys named Stephen Monticelli in the entire state United States, and the other ones like a c P A in his sixties, So it's just not that one. Um, and yeah you can find me there. Excellent. Um, well I'm glad we got to end on a Sacco and Vanzetti reference. And uh yeah, everybody go help somebody. It Could Happen

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