Part Two: Ancient Genocide and the War on Carthage

Robert is joined again by Joe Kassabian to continue to discuss ancient genocide.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and for the last two years,
behind the Bastards listeners have funded the Portland Diaper Bank,
which provides diapers for low income families. Uh. Last year
y'all raised more than twenty one thousand dollars, which was
able to purchase one point one million diapers for children
and families in need in one um. And this year

(00:23):
we're trying to get dollars raised for the Portland Diaper Bank,
which is going to allow us to help even more kids.
So UM, if you want to help, you can go
to bTB fundraiser for pd X Diaper Bank at go
fund me. Just type and go fund me b TB
Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank. Again, that's go fund Me
bTB Fundraiser for PDX Diaper Bank, or find the link

(00:47):
in the show notes. Thank you all. Oh what's shitting
Orange my Joe? That's hell yeah, just for for for us,
for nobody else a time. How you doing, Joe for

(01:07):
part two of our genocide Spectacular? I'm good. UM, you
know I I often um and like my people that
listen to my show often joke that I surprise my
guests with the genocide. Uh. And this time it gets
to happen to me and it's it's quite nice. You know.
I did almost open this episode with what's eliminating ethnic groups?

(01:31):
My every people in the history of the human race,
But that wouldn't I just didn't want to see Sophie's
disappointed face one more time. I can feel her shaking
her head. No, across the internet, she always is somewhere. Probert,
you could never disappoint me. I often have. So Part two,

(01:54):
everybody's good to go. This is behind the bastards, by
the way, you're Joka Sabian, co hosted the Lions Led
by Donkeys podcast, asked, let's get back to some genocide,
so as I'm sure everyone listening to this show is
aware of. The United States is currently in a bit
of a moral panic over the fact that transgender people exist. Uh.
The groomer discourse, which has arisen on the right wing

(02:15):
um in which trans and now increasingly all queer people
are accused of being child molesters. Are one of the
child molesters because they like write books that tell kids
that people who aren't aren't this gender exist. Um, yeah,
the folks have been accusing this. Are folks like on
the left and queer people have been pointing out that
this is eliminationist rhetoric. Right this is potentially the kind

(02:35):
of rhetoric that can lead to a genocide. Um. And
the basic fear is that right wing thought leaders are
trying to convince their followers that transgender people are pedophilic
monsters because you can do anything to pedophiles, right, Like
it is exactly so if you can like lump a
group of people and is being that it doesn't matter
what you do to them. Um. Now, I've seen a
number of number of posts in this line on on

(02:58):
the int our webs that have brought Dr Gregory Stanton's
ten stages of genocide, which he laid out in nineteen
eight six and were revamped in UM. Step one is
classification e g. Splitting society into us in them rather
than using mixed categories. This is not always done intentionally.
This often just kind of happens, but it can feed
and do what later becomes a genocide. Next is symbolization,

(03:21):
which gives names or symbols to the classification. The most
obvious example of this from history would be the yellow
star that Jewish people were forced to wear a Nazi
Germany or indeed the purple triangle that that that homosexual
people were made to wear. Um. Next comes discrimination on
a legal basis, and then to humanization, which is comparison
of members of the target group to insects or vermin um.

(03:43):
This is also this is not in his list, but
plague bacillus is a really common one, particularly by the Nazis. Um.
I think that had something to do with the fact
that there had been a plague not that long before
the rise of the Nazis, famously in Rwanda. Yes, cockroaches. Uh.
We will chat about a little bit more later. Um.
And then there's organization, which is the forming of militias

(04:05):
and other not crucially nonstate groups geared towards the elimination
of targeted people. Polarization is number six, in which extremists
drive groups apart and broadcast propaganda in the mass media
to indoctrinate people with hate. Now, most of the time
when I see people bringing up stantons tend stages of
genocide to talk about how that's where the rights trying
to push people. Uh, they will least the United States

(04:26):
at either step four or step six. And you can
certainly make a strong case for either. UM. But while
doctor Stanton scale has has its uses, I'm not like
shipping on it or anything. I think the way in
which people are interpreting it leads to some inaccurate beliefs
about how genocide tends to proceed um. And it overall
pushes people towards a more mechanistic and centralized view of

(04:48):
how genocides occur. UM. And while this discan't this does
describe some historic genocides well, because he's looking back at
genocides and trying to describe them in stages, I don't
know that it's super used in predicting them um. Which right, UM,
I would argue that it's not UM simply, I mean,
I'm not, of course, I'm not hating in its research,

(05:10):
as research is great. It's just um, I think it
takes a lot of agency from the perpetrators of genocides themselves. UM.
I think it's very good. UM. And I mean even
Strauss sometimes does this as well. It's very good to
everyone does when you're doing this kind of history right
to right stint. Yeah, it's it's something. It's very very
good to understand the organization of the radical core that

(05:33):
makes all genocides possible, but isn't inevitable radical cores conform
and there can still not be a genocide, yes, um
And I also like the kind of the fact that
we're sort of critiquing this doesn't mean we're not saying, like,
for example, trans people should not be concerned about the
rhetoric coming up the right as elimination is not saying
that at all. Just I think focusing on the stages

(05:56):
in the way that people do kind of leads people
to inaccurate that expectations about how things proceed and have
proceeded historically. And that's what we're going to talk about today.
Um So in order to get into that, let's start
with another example from ancient history. This is one that
you brought up to me, Joe, when I mentioned that
I wanted to do this episode. The Asian Vespers of

(06:16):
eight eight b C. The Asiatic vespers. Romans got the
hit with the reverse card. Yes, exactly, Yeah, this is
the uno reverse of the of the genocide that they
did in Carthage. Um. So, starting in like ninety one
b C, Romans had what they called the social War,
which was social because the people they lived next to

(06:37):
Italians were not Roman citizens, but they had to submit
to some Roman policies. They couldn't vote, they weren't like,
I don't know, as a general rule, when people have
to submit to policies by a government but have no
say in that government, they can get unhappy with that.
This is not a thing Americans would be familiar with, right,
nothing like that has ever happened here. Um, That never
never occurred in this part of the world. So eventually

(07:00):
the Italians go to war with the Romans. I'm not
going to get into detail about that, but they call
it the social War, which is funny because it is
unbelievably brutal. And this is also this is a pattern
in Roman history where like a group of people who
are close to the imperial corps will have an uprising
because their rights are being denied, and they will make
demands which will be denied, and then they'll fight a war.
The Romans will crush them brutally and then grant most

(07:22):
of the demands later. That's what happens here because like,
the Italians get everything they want after the Romans wipe
out like a generation of them. Yeah, there's few of
your rights to so exactly for us, um, so yeah,
the Rome is at war with Italy uh in this period.
And while this is all going down, um there's a

(07:45):
you know this place called Pontus, which is in the
modern day Black Sea region of Turkey. Um and the
guy who runs it is a king named mithradit s
mythri Dates uh whatever you want to call him, the
six and he starts like rubbing his hands together like
that guy in that meme, you know, the me the
guy rubbing his hands together. It wasn't a birdman's doing this,

(08:06):
That's exactly mithraddyes is like that's what he's doing, looking
at Rome fighting Italy, like oh yeah, I'm gonna get
some ship. So famously, uh Mithradates uh was also related
and again this is something that goes back through histories.
It's related into the neighboring kingdom of Armenia and the
partness as well they share to um so Rome and

(08:31):
the people's and like that whole region of the world,
you know, the code which generally like they'll call these
guys like uh, Persians a lot of the time, like
it's all like it's this, you know, it's Asia, right,
Like that's what the to the ROMs. This is just
Asia um and they fought a while, and they would
fight many more wars in the future. Um. So old
Mithraddys decides that, like, while the Republic's got his back turned,

(08:54):
he's going to annex to neighboring kingdoms that have like
tight relationships with Rome, primarily like trading based. So because
Rome has so much economic interest in the area. They
have a Roman commission to Asia. Um and the guy
who's running it, basically the guy who's running the Roman
Commission to Asia is like, hey, methradityas you can't annex
these places. You have to give them back to their kings.

(09:14):
You have to restore their sovereignty. And the head of
the Roman commission doesn't do this because he's a cool dude,
but because he's been bribed, right, like these guys paid
him to do it. Um. Because you know, stuff can't
come back, Like it's not like Rome is centralized for
the day. But it's not like he can radio back
home and be like what do you want me to do?
Like that takes like six months to get anything back, right. Um. So,

(09:34):
the two countries that Methraddys had annexed, Cappadocia and Bithnia
get freed because Methradityas doesn't really want a straight up
fight with the Romans at this date. But they now
owe the chief Roman dude in the area a lot
of money because they promised to pay him for this.
Now this guy, this dude who like makes Mathradityas leave
and gets bribed, is Mannius Aquillus Aquilius. We don't actually

(09:55):
know how any of these names were pronounced, because here's
the fun thing. As a guy who took three years
of Latin, nobody in knows how ancient Latin was pronounced.
We know how people have said like ecclesiastic Latin, but
it is different, like nobody actually understands exactly how Romans
would have said everything. Um So Mannius Aquilius, head of
the Roman delegation, tells the king of I think Cappadocia

(10:16):
and Nikomedes that a good way to get money that
he owes Mannius might be by invading Pontus and taking
their stuff. Now, the fact that they had just been
annexed by Pontas, if you're a smart person, you may
be like, well, maybe these guys can't beat Pontus in
a war. If this just happened right, like, maybe their
invasion won't go well, maybe this is a stupid idea.

(10:37):
You might think Mannius Aquillis would have would think that,
but he does not. So Nikamedes tries to invade Pontus,
and they just ta get curb stomped by mithradityas um
just just absolutely pounded. So next, I'm gonna quote from
a write up for the University of Chicago's Encyclopedia Romana
quote mathread. Methraditys retook Cappadocia in Bitthania, defeating Ni comedies

(11:00):
at the river Amnius, fighting against chariots armed with sides
on the wheels. The army was terrified at seeing men
cutting halves and still breathing or mingled in fragments or
hanging on the sides, Overcome rather by the hideousness of
the spectacle, but then by loss of the fight. Fear
disordered their ranks. Methradity Is then swept into fr Gia
and the Roman province of Asia. Aquilius, who so ill
advisedly had precipitated the war without ratification from the Senate,

(11:23):
fled the mainland, but was given up by the citizens
of Madeleine. Ridiculed and paraded on an ass. He eventually
was executed, relates Appian when Methradates poured golden molten gold
down his throat, thus rebuking the Romans for their bribe taking.
And this is a cool and good way of executing
like powerful rich people. That happens a bunch of times
to Romans in it Like this is not the last

(11:45):
time a Roman will be force fed molten gold in
this part of the world. It's pretty cool. It's objective,
like Methradity is. I'm not calling him a great guy,
but like, it's pretty cool to do this to guys
like that. I want to say, this happens as someone Methradity.
I mean, um, it happens to um. Happen to these
um uh relatives later on, but I can't remember. Cool.

(12:07):
That's good. You know it famously happens, so you know
later during the time of like Caesar, and you've got
like Caesar, Pompey and crasses Um and Crosses is like
the richest guy in the world at the time. Some
people will argue he's the richest dude there ever was.
He made like a big chunk of his fortune by
when there would be fires in Rome, he owned a
fire department and would go to people and he would

(12:28):
be like, you want me to save your house, you
gotta like give me your house, like sell me your
house and then you'll be able to get your ship
out at least. And like that's so big asshole. He
like goes to war in kind of this vague region
of the world against like Parthia because he's a dick
uh and his army gets its ass. Again. This is
one of those times where like the Romans lose like
a whole generation of young men. Um. And yeah, all

(12:51):
according to legend, he gets killed by having gold poured
down his throat to the richest man in history, which
is neat army through the mountains of Parthia and getting wrecked.
It was like kind of an origin story for a
lot of important people in Roman Mark. Antony did that too. Yeah,
it's like getting chicken pox for Roman military leaders. She's
just gotta go get your ass wrecked in Asia. Um.

(13:12):
So again, obviously, so far this is broadly speaking morally
unproblematic um within the context of ancient history. Um. But
if you know your Roman history, you know that, like
and maybe if this hadn't happened, if he'd gotten back
to Rome, there's a decent chance they would have like
executed Marcus, like thrown him off the Tarpeian rock or
something for for fucking around. Um they did that sometimes.

(13:33):
But now a Roman elected leader has been executed by
a foreign king, and Rome does not take kindly to
that ship. Um. So things start churning up for a war,
and Methreadityase or mithrid Dates whatever decides his first step
should be to cleanse his new territory of all Roman citizens.
And this is where things get genociety. Quote A eight

(13:53):
b c. And a measure of the hatred felt for
the Romans in Asia. Methredites wrote secretly to all his
sat traps and city governors that on the thirtieth day
thereafter they should set up on all Romans and Italians
in their towns, and upon their wives and children and
their freedmen of Italian birth, kill them and throw their
bodies out unburied, and share their goodsmith with King Mithraddys.
Tens of thousands were massacred. Valarious Maximus records eighty thousand deaths,

(14:16):
Plutarch A hundred and fifty thousand, and what has been
called the Asian or Ephesian vespers um. So yeah, this
this is a definitely genocide. Um, pretty pretty clear example
of a genocide, and one that happens very rapidly. It
might be most common, it might be most reasonable to
dry compare it to Rwanda, where there were there were

(14:38):
pre existing tensions because the Romans had kind of come
into this area with all the money. They were backed
by this state that had bossed people around. They were
like landlords and they were bankers, and they were like
seen as kind of economically oppressing people in the regions,
seen as arrogant, seen as like backed by this outside
state that was unfairly exerting power in the area. And

(14:59):
so people had been pissed for a while. And when
Methredys takes over and says like, hey, it's time to
get rid of these motherfucker's, there's a lot of folks
who are like willing to do it because of these
pre existing ethnic tensions. Um. Yeah, obviously with the main
difference of these ethnic tensions or actually different ethnicities and
not invented, yes, and not invented because these look like

(15:21):
dudes from Italy showing up in fucking Turkey, um, which
is actually again like with Garthiage, not all that far um.
But yeah, so um this upsets Rome. The whole story
ends after two more wars with Roman victory and the
death of Methred Eyes and the rise of a guy
named Sola who sucks ass. But that's a story for
another day. Um. Definitely an active historical gin side. It

(15:45):
does not. However, again, if we're talking about Dr Stanton scale,
it doesn't correspond directly to that. Now, there is an
us versus them component to the massacre right that exists
well prior to Methreadity is giving the order right, the
fact that there are these divisions that Romans are kind
of seen as other. But there's no build up to this. Really,
there's no propaganda arm to to humanize them. There's no
gradual stage of separating Romans from other people in their community. Um.

(16:09):
He issues secret orders that local officials and their levies fulfill. Um,
and as an incentive, he divides the property of the
dead Romans between himself and the inhabitants of the city
that they're killed in. There. Yes, that's why, right, And
this is this is the thing I think scholars obviously,
because we're quoting a bunch of scholars talk about this
a lot, but is a general rule when people popularly

(16:31):
discussed genocide, they almost never talked about how fucking much
of it is about money. Yeah. Uh, it's starting to
become more accepted now. Um. Like, like we talked about
I think in the very beginning of the last episode,
is that people really wanted to believe that every perpetrator
of a genocide is a dead eyed psycho who's a
dead set racial baganda. Yeah. I mean that's pretty pretty

(16:57):
solidly thrown out the window by Christopher Brownings were um
and ordinary men, which then spawned one of the worst
books on the Holocaust I think I've ever read, called
Hitler's Willing Executioners. Yeah, but um, yeah, it's um, there's
a lot that's problematic about that. Make a long story

(17:18):
short for people who don't want to read it. Uh.
He hits the Nazis with their own race sides. Yeah,
which you don't need to do. You do need to do.
The only thing that could stop a bad guy with
race science is a good guy with race science. And

(17:40):
not to mention like the Rwanda genocide umps to mind immediately.
With some of the new scholarships, we'll be talking about
this quite a bit. But yeah, I mean this is
actually literally what we're leading into. Um. But yeah, I
mean it's it's worth noting that, like, yeah, the king
uh incentivizes people who inform on hidden Romans and he
promises slaves freedom. He again, the genocide occurs there. There

(18:02):
is an aspect of it as people have been pisted
Romans in this region for a long time. But they
have incentives, right, They don't just suddenly get let off
the leash and do a genocide because they're angry at Romans.
There's it's worth it. The balance sheet makes it worth it,
you know. Um. And this is an important truth about
why people do do genocides because it pays. Um. Racism

(18:22):
and nationalism are always major causes, sided along with kind
of vague and constantly frustrating claims of brainwashing by propaganda.
But as we'll cover, focusing on those things leads to
a really myopic view about why mass killings occur. Our
earliest two genocides. We have no context about it, right,
we have no We have no idea why the omnia,
how the omnia justified like what they did, or how

(18:43):
the people who killed that the people in Nata ruck
justified what they did. But it seems safe to conclude
that the folks carrying out the violence and uh their civilians,
the civilians back home, whatever that was, probably saw there
being some sort of a resource gain in killing those people.
That is very likely. Um. Popular scholarship of the Holocaust

(19:04):
tends to focus on the Yellow stars and arson attacks
on synagogues, and of course the camps, and obviously all
of that's very important, but many Americans have never even
heard of arianization. And in order to explain what that is,
I'm going to quote from the Holocaust Encyclopedia. Under voluntary arianization,
the Nazi German state encouraged Jewish businessmen, who were already
facing economic and social discrimination, to sell their businesses in

(19:26):
Germany at radically reduced prices. In early nineteen thirty three,
there were about one hundred thousand Jewish owned businesses in Germany.
About half of those were small retail stores dealing mostly
in clothing or footwear. The rest were factories or workshops
of varying sizes, or professional offices for lawyers, physicians, and
other independent professionals. By nineteen thirty eight, the combination of
Nazi terror propaganda, boycott and legislation was so effective that

(19:48):
some two thirds of these Jewish owned enterprises were out
of business or sold to non Jews. Jewish owners, often
desperate to immigrate or to sell a failing business, accepted
a selling price that was only twenty or thirty percent
of the actual value of each business. And I think
it's important to highlight this because you can draw a
real direct line between what Mathradates is doing what the
Nazis are doing here, right, Oh, yeah, absolutely, especially yeah,

(20:12):
especially when arianization became forced, which I mean, of course
you could argue that it already is forced, but when
it when it becomes you know, there they go from
voluntary to force, and the Nazis sense of the word
when they start deportations all their property outside of like
precious metals and things, which end up vanishing into Swiss
bank accounts and are you still there to this day

(20:36):
they get auctioned off at drastically reduced prices to German civilians. Yes, um,
and yeah it's um. Obviously, like one of the things
to notice that what Mathradity does is faster, because like
it's years between arianization and the actual physical elimination of
Jewish human beings. In Europe on a mass scale. Um,

(20:56):
there's a good Again, this is not something that gets
talked about, especially in our popular retellings of the Holocaust.
It tends to get glossed over. There's one very good
movie that is like focused on arianization, although it's arianization
on the Eastern Front during the invasion of Russia by
the Nazis. It's called The Shop on Main Street. Uh.
It one of foreign oscars made in the USSR in
like the sixties, um, and it is all about a

(21:19):
local dude named Tono who's like just like a Russian
dude who's like brother collaborates. I think it's his brother
collaborates with the Nazis, and because his brother is working
with them, this like kind of he's the town drunk
basically gets given a Jewish woman's business and he like
tries to hide her and stuff. It's it's a very
bleak movie, um, but it's a good movie about that

(21:41):
aspect of the genocide that I don't think I've ever
seen anything else tie into it maybe. And one of
the things that's really interesting about The Shop on Main
Street I recommend watching it is that this is again
filmed in the US. Are in like the sixties, So
all of the people acting in the movie had lived
through this, Like the actors in this movie had either
participated in or watched their neighbors give up their Jews

(22:03):
when they were kids, like during the Nazi advance. So
it's they're not so much acting as like remembering and it's. Um,
it is a potent film, Like you should watch The
Shop on Main Street. It's a very good movie. Just
like have something like the new Nicholas Cage movie to
put on afterwards that will be less sad um because

(22:24):
holy sh it isn't bleak World War two movie about Yeah,
I can't believe it's depressing anyway, I'm gonna go have
a nice palate Come and See. Yeah, I would say
it's on the level of Come and See in terms
of bleakness, not in terms of like how intense the
imagery of Come and See is, which is like nothing else. Um. Yeah,

(22:48):
Russian movies about the World War Two. Uh yeah, it's
it's interesting because like when you think about the fact
that um Mathraditis and the Nazis had the same basic idea,
but he immediately proceeded to genocide and it took them years.
You might conclude. One of the things you might conclude
from this is that a benefit from modern civilization, and

(23:10):
that is that in order to get a population to
buy into a genocide, you have to separate the killing
from the financial gain by a couple of years, um. Everybody.
I'm not sure if that does speak well of civilization, Like,
I know, you can try and you can interpret that
however you would like. If that's what you choose to
take out of this lesson, I would argue that it

(23:31):
does not, especially because it seems like the most genocide
is not all, but most in the modern era, Like
the vast majority of work that has done is done
to make it palatable, um, not only to lay people
in civilization, but also to the perpetrators. Yeah. And it's
because this might shuck some people. Ideology isn't all that

(23:53):
important for people doing the killing. It's important for people
doing the organizing. Yeah, and that's what we're we're this
is I mean, this is all what we're talking thinking about.
But first, you know, who doesn't organize people to participate
in an ethnic cleansing in order to make financial benefits
for a specific class of people. We actually don't know that. Well, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
because it could be and they are certain have. Um,

(24:16):
the Ford Motor Company when abducts children for their child
hunting island off the coast of Indonesia, they abduct children
from all socioeconomic classes, all major religious and racial groups,
all kinds of kids on the child hunting island off
the coast of Indonesia. That's the guarantee, the the guarantee
of of equality. Freely sourced children. Yeah, are kidnapping gangs,

(24:41):
do not see race. Ah, we're back. So we've discussed
a shortcoming I think of Dr Stanton scale, and again
we're not trying to show them like his research or anything.
This is primarily even not really an issue with this scale,
but with like the way it is popularly interpreted, like

(25:02):
it's a like genocide is a thermometer, right um, gonn
to dial up the genocide? Yeah, yeah, temperature. Um, that's
not quite how it works. And I'd like to present
folks with another rubric that they might find more useful
for determining how people and specifically individual people, this does,
you know, kind of work on communities get to tip

(25:23):
to the point where they are willing to participate in genocide. Right, Um,
This is another way of looking at it that I
find more useful. We can talk about like the shortcomings
of this way as well, if um and I'm sure
we will. Genocide historian Irvin Staub, who, by the way,
was only alive to do his research because Raoul Wallenberg
saved his life. He's one of the he's one of
the kids that Wallenberg hid in like a house during

(25:44):
the genocide in Hungary. Um Staub was a pioneer in understanding,
specifically the temporal procession of motivations in individuals who consent
to take part in genocide. That was like a thing
he was really interested in, is what is happening in
the head? Like are the different things that have to
happen for someone to be like willing to do this?
You know um up until his and he's obviously he's

(26:06):
he's very much working off of the work that Limcoln pioneer.
He quotes Limpton Limpcoln constantly in his book. You know,
none of these people are like doing anything entirely like
this is scholarship, right, everybody's like participating and building and understanding. UM.
Up until his book was published in nineteen eighty nine,
there was fairly little organized scholarship concerned with how individuals
changed over time to support genocide. Staub focused on what

(26:30):
he called a continuum of destruction, which other scholars have
empirically documented in studies of Rwanda, Bosnia, and Cambodia. The
findings of all of this research on motivation were aptly
described by one of the scholars who followed Staub, Scott Strauss,
who wrote a Rwanda quote. Rwandans killed for multiple reasons.
Others joined in the attacks for one reason, but then

(26:51):
continued for other reasons. Their motivations changed over time. Um Now.
I found a good article published in twenty by Jan
Reinerman and Smothey Williams in the incredibly named International Journal
of Violence. I think it's actually called Violence and International Journal,
but either way, it's a pretty pretty cool title for
a thing. Um now. Based on the research of guys

(27:13):
like stalbin Strass going all the way back to Limpkeoln,
they propose a sort of hierarchy of needs in list
ways in which different motivations can influence those needs to
make people capable of like directly carrying out mass murder quote.
To understand why individuals engage in violent action, we need
to understand both their motivations and inhibitions, both of which
stem from certain needs, inhibitions conceptually being motivations for not

(27:36):
engaging in violent action. As such, we can identify individual
hierarchies of needs, and only when the most salient one
is a motivation for action will an individual participate. Now
to explain why they present a chart listing the needs
of an individual and specific moment, which can generally be
categorized as security, moral integrity, social belonging, and a desire

(27:56):
for better life conditions. So, for security, if persons to
I are to keep themselves safe, might lead them to
participate in a genocide to avoid coercion, violence, or the
threat of violence from the state or another group. A
person's moral integrity might keep them from killing if they
believe that murdering people is always wrong. A person's need
for social belonging might convince them to kill if doing

(28:16):
so will keep them in good with the group, and likewise,
they might not be willing to kill if that will
ostracize them from the from the people around them, and
they need to improve their own Individual circumstances might of
course lead a person to support genocide for economic gain.
Quote This can be illustrated through the actions of a
Rwandan Hutu who might have faced strong pressure from other
hohotoos to participate. As Strauss argues, this was the most

(28:38):
common motivation for people to participate in the killings and
rendered the need for security a most salient and the
hierarchy of needs and motivations at this time in a
similar vein, an example of coercion can be found in Cambodia,
where coercion caused a diffuse feeling of anxiety in which
everyone feared becoming a victim themselves, making fear endemic. Furthermore,
coercion in this case provoked strict obedient to the orders

(29:00):
of their superiors for the fear of life threatening consequences.
Some former cadres of the Khmer Rouge claimed that if
people did not kill and follow the rules, they would
be killed, or stated they were fearful for their security.
A statement of a former camer Rouge illustrated this as follows,
But it was the order from higher and if they
did not do it, they were also killed. Therefore, whether
they wanted to do it or not, they had to

(29:21):
do it. They just followed the order. Now, yeah, yeah,
that that tracks, especially m Rwanda. I mean, the vast
majority of the genocide wasn't committed by arms of the state,
though the Rwandan military did help. Most of us done
by Hutu power militias in the inter homeway, and uh
like a huge number of the victims of that genocide

(29:41):
are also moderate Hutus who refused the tip part. And yeah, people,
you can actually go on the Rwanda Genocide Museum's website
and and watch a ton of perpetrator uh like interviews
and virtually all of them will point out that the
community was doing it. Um. I was worried that if

(30:02):
I didn't take part, I too would be killed. And
also I stole their stuff. It's like the three things. Yeah,
and that I think that's what's so important, is that,
like it is all it's not just fear of coercion.
It's not just that someone is ordering them um. And
it's not just that they have an economic benefit. It
is a continuum of things that kind of you know,

(30:24):
and again you could get overly mechanistic with this in
views like flipping switches. It's not quite. It's just it's
the same way that like, you know, people in any
circumstance can do things they would not expect of themselves
because things change that like alter the calculus they're making
in the moment about like what is what is the
thing to do? Um? And it's I think that's much

(30:48):
more useful than just being like, well, if you brainwash
certain people, you can get them to commit genocide. Um.
It's more like if if you can provide the proper
incentives in the proper away at the right time, people
can are willing to engage in horrific things that they
would consider impossible of themselves in a different situation. Right.

(31:09):
I mean, that's one of the main reasons why the
Holocausts switch from being mass shootings to death camps, because
human beings cannot continuously do that forever. No, no, and
they will break they as they did. And we can
talk about like the rates of alcoholism among the SS
or like just like the fact that um uh, like

(31:30):
so many of those guys killed themselves, right, which you
shouldn't you shouldn't feel bad for them. But it's just
like there's a certain there's a certain subset of the
human population who could who could shoot, you know, unarmed
people all day long and not have any effect, but
it's not a lot of them, and it's not most
of the people who do that kind of thing. Um.

(31:51):
So the need for social belonging is also a well
documented and powerful motivation for many participants in genocide. Obviously,
a lot of Germans why their neighbors be led away
and avoided speaking up. And this is an area where
like the popular view was often because like, well, if
they had said something, they would have gotten in trouble. Um.
And we just talked about how coercion is a factor,

(32:11):
especially in Rwanda, but it's also not as much of
a factor in a lot of genocides as you think,
for example, in Germany. Um. One thing that is worth
noting is that soldiers in Germany were not punished or
executed for refusing to participate in genocide. They were ostracized
by their fellows sometimes. I'm sure some dudes got like
beat up or whatever by their buddies, like if you're

(32:32):
talking about like individual coercion, but the state did not
execute German soldiers for refusing to kill Jewish people, of course,
now and or and um, ordinary men. Christopher Browning points
out before every mass killing, to include the largest mass
killing of beings, yeah, which the Russians are shelling or
we're shelling yes, yeaheah, the Holocaust Royal specifically good stuff

(32:55):
like the it's noted that I mean this is a
reserve police battalion. I believe reserve police telling a one
oh one or something. Um, yeah, we're like given explicit permission,
like you don't have to do this if you don't
want to, like you can request to transfer. Has had
an out. So again, it's not just any of these factors,
because social coercion can be totally absent in the way
that it's like in the way that we were describing earlier,

(33:18):
where it's a fear of your own physical security right
for not participating, that is not a necessary precursor of genocide.
It can be um and it's it's it's interesting here
because one of the things that is worth noting because
I don't want to just be talking about why genocides happen.
If you want to look at like how to prevent
them or to mitigate them. One of the most successful
things you can do is protest in the moment against it.

(33:41):
And this is a thing that was successful in Nazi
Germany against the Nazis um. On a number of occasions,
people who protested direct acts of deportation and killing did
not tend to be imprisoned or harmed by the state.
In fact, the state on a number of occasions backed off,
and stal writes it lengths about the power of bystanders
to influence, or, at least in specific limited instances, halt

(34:05):
and and and slow down the process of genocide. And
when talking about this, he points to a well documented
psychological phenomenon, the bystander effect. When a number of people
are present in an emergency, significant number, somebody gets hit
by a car or something, and there's a bunch of
folks watching, responsibility is diffused, and each individual person on
scene is less likely to help, right, because they assume

(34:25):
someone else who knows better is going to get in there. Right.
We could talk about the cops stacked up at Vivaldi
refusing to like. That may be a different thing, but like,
I'm sure that was a factor in what was happening. Psychologically, UM,
the same thing that causes most people in a room
to ignore when like a dude slaps his girlfriend, UM
is at play when agents of the state come to
disappear people. Stout points out that even the Nazis backed

(34:48):
away repeatedly in the face of public resistance. Quote, they
did not persist, for example, when Bulgaria, where people protested
in the streets, refused to hand over its Jewish population,
or when within Germany, relatives and some institutions protested the
killing of the mentally retarded, mentally ill, and others regarded
as genetically inferior um. Like there were cases in which

(35:08):
and and there was a backlash after Christal Knock that
caused changes in Nazi policy. And this is against the
Some of these scholars who are talking about it in
the in the way that we've just been discussing, will
say that what's happening here is that in that moment
where like you're trying to round up people, and folks
show up to protest your human need for moral integrity

(35:29):
can kind of switch to make you incapable temporarily of
at least like continuing to do the thing you had
come there to do. Right. You had come there morally
willing to round up these people for genocide, but the
the approbation of the community around you suddenly makes you
unwilling to do that in that moment. Doesn't mean they
weren't willing to do it later. Um, But it doesn't

(35:50):
mean that like they decide that it's morally wrong, you know. Um.
A big factor in what may be happening is that
when they are presented with a crowd of people protesting them,
they suddenly think, why might get punished for this later?
This might not be safe for me, Like, if this
is pissing off this many people, I actually might like
have to like deal with consequences for participating in this, right. Um.

(36:12):
So that may be part of what's going on, But
it does point to and this is something STAB points
out a lot. It's actually not useless to like, one
of the most useful things you can do at every
stage of like of of kind of building genocidal tensions
is make it clear that like you hate what these
people are doing and you oppose them, um, because that
has a number of influences that can like at least

(36:34):
mitigate the harms that are being done. Um. And that's
this is kind of gets to like the root of
what the humanization dialogue is getting at. You know. The
problem that most often when people talk about to humanizing
in the context of genocide, they frame it as the
use of specific language to deny people their humanity UM
in order to prepare to execute a genocide UM. And

(36:57):
that's not always how it goes, and in fact, there's
more evidence for it occurring the opposite way around. In Cambodia,
for example, killers reported being disturbed by the acts of
mass murder they committed it first, and then reported that
it got easier with time, like killing ducks and chickens.
And part of this is that like the longer you
do this without people stopping you, and the more the

(37:18):
less like resistance you encounter to it, the more it
just seems like if you're in a culture where people
are doing this, you feel less like number one, you're
gonna get punished for it, less like it's a problem.
It gets more like That's a big part of like
what the humanization is not what happens before, but what
happens like during UM And a lot of the participants
in the Cambodian genocide will say that, like they hated

(37:38):
what they were doing at first, and then with time
they just came to regard it as like killing ducks
and chickens, you know, the way they'd slaughtered animals as
kids on the farm. UM. They integrated the execution of
human beings in their lives into their lives in order
to like protect themselves right. Um and professor Eliza Luft
has also written and researched this topic extensively, and she writes, quote,

(38:00):
I find that the humanization is more often an outcome
of participation in violence rather than a precursor. In other words,
people make difficult decisions about whether or not to participate
in genocide based on their access to financial resources, who
they're being asked to kill, their proximity to extremists ordering
the violence, and signals sent by local elites. But the
more they kill, the easier killing becomes, and this is

(38:21):
partly due to shifts in social perception. Although a vincent
genocide describe reactions that include vomiting, shaking, nightmares, and trauma
the first few times they kill, over time their physical
and emotional horror at killing subsides. My research suggests this
cognitive adaptation of violence goes hand in hand with a
transformation and how ordinary killers perceive their victims. Dehumanizing propagandic

(38:41):
and help with this process, but providing participants with cultural
narratives that frame violence is the morally right thing to do.
And this is when we talk about preventing genocide you
mentioned earlier, like the racial motivations and stuff. That's key
at like the core of people who are trying to
plan and organize this. One of the ways to disrupt it,
you have to disrupt all of these potential incentives, right.

(39:02):
It's about creating friction for the people who want to
organize this. It's about making it difficult for folks to profit.
It's about making it difficult for people to feel like
this is okay. It's about making them like see and
encounter resistance constantly at every stage of this, because that's
a big part of like stopping people from feeling stopping
people from like stopping the people who will actually do

(39:24):
most of the activity of genocide from getting from feeling
like they this is a good thing for them to do. Um,
it's disrupting like the signaling and the messaging that that
that brings people in, you know, like that's the stage
at which you can stop this stuff. Yeah, I think
that there's there's certainly a level of feeling of impunity,

(39:45):
and most of the people that would end up doing
these things, they'll they'll also, in my opinion, a lot
of the people who would end up committing the violence
didn't actually ever see themselves doing it. Um Like the
Reserve Italian that Christopher Browning writes about, those guys were
all people who were um uh like discharge from military

(40:06):
service or not allowed to have military service due to
medical problems. So it's a job like they thought they
were gonna like go be occupied territory cops and ship um.
And as far as like uh the Rwandan Genna said,
or even the Armenian gen I said, where a lot
of violence is communal. Uh, there's there's an intense um

(40:28):
economic problem, economic friction and a history of conflict with
these people between the two groups, and unfortunately just takes
someone to harness it and allow them to be in
a position to grant impunity. Um. But I think that
the communities they are taking part in it, uh like

(40:49):
you've pointed out, or only doing it because they're like, well,
we're clearly going to get away with this, Like they're not,
They're not gonna live. Nobody starts off, you know, uh,
starting a checkpoint with a a chetty outside of if
they think like there's would be a trial in like
six months exactly exactly and part of like, you know,
one of the things that Left points out is that

(41:09):
like a thing that can influence populations to participate is
like their proper their proximity to extremists ordering the violence.
What stand them to point out is like these malicious,
these nonstate groups, which is like one of the reasons
why when anti fascists talk about the point the value
of like confronting groups in the street at the early
stages of this, that's part of the value of that.
It's not just that like you'll stop them from coming out,

(41:30):
because in a lot of ways it just makes them
want to come out. It's other people who might kind
of passively go along with them when they start setting
up checkpoints, seeing how much resistance there is to those
groups and the things that they say, Right, it's about
keeping Yeah, some of it is about because again there's
a number of things that can like flip in a
person that can make them willing to participate this. It's

(41:52):
it's about trying to make it so that people never
feel like this is a thing they can participate in
with impunity or without being ostracized from society, right, Like
that's that's that's part of it. That's part of it,
Like none of this there's no simple solution to stopping genesis. Oh,
of course, that's part of something. It's something that we've
been trying to figure out since Raphael Emkin first wrote

(42:13):
his insanely long book. But like a good example of
this is like, oh, the water is getting too hot.
Time to fucking bail. Is like the plots against Hitler
during World War Two. I mean, yeah, there was several
plots against him early on, but they really only picked
up once it became pretty fucking clear that like, yeah,
this this, this ship is coming down on us. Yeah,
Like the famous Staufenberg plot was like not because Staufenberg

(42:36):
hated the Nazis, it was because he didn't like that
they were losing. Yeah, i mean he was a Nazi
and he was anti Semitic, and he was one of
those guys. It's like, okay, so death camps a stepped
too far, But even even that, it seemed like and
then that seemed but even then him and most of
the central organizers of that plot had all been on
the Eastern Front at some point and they were like,

(42:57):
we're gonna fucking lose. Yeah, we're going to We're gonna lose.
And also when you're at that level of command where
you're like sitting with Hitler to bunker, you know, not
only are we're gonna lose, but like, oh ship, there's
going to be hell to pay, and this is coming
down on us. There is going to be hell to pay.
It isn't the consequences of my action. Yeah, speaking of

(43:21):
the consequences of my actions. If you buy these products
and services, the main consequence of your actions is that
you'll finally be happy. All right, here's that. All right,
we are back. So you know, people, I think, as

(43:44):
we're repeatedly getting onto here, are complicated and so our
genocides and we're never talking about a single reason. You know, again,
in every genocide, there's probably there's individual people whose motivations
are very simple and can be as simple as like
I'm just a piece of it. You know, those guys
like Oscar Durro Linger, like these guys exist, right, there's
people who just suck ass like comprehensively, and that's why

(44:06):
they're on board. But you you can't actually do a
whole genocide with just those people. No, you need the
they need the whole banality of evil to back you
up exactly exactly. UM. And that's the thing like I
think people UM misinterpret that sometimes is like being entirely
focused on like guys like um Aikman, who are these

(44:27):
like bureaucrats. But like part of it is that motivations
for genocide can be ben ow they're not. Everyone was
radicalized to think that the Jews were this like Titanic threat.
It's like, no, they were like they they participated in
the Holocaust for pretty banal reasons in a lot of cases. Yeah,
And there's a lot of attempting to make things palatable

(44:48):
for people. Like a good example like, um, the very
beginning stages of the Holocaust is like, well, you know,
before they started death campster killing the mentally ill, um,
the disabled, And that was to you know that we
don't hate these people, um, but you know they're you know,

(45:08):
evolutionary dead ends. Um. They're hurting everybody, but this is
better for them, you know. UM. And you see a
good parallel of that in my opinion and in the
peak of the elimination eliminationist rhetoric that we're seeing in
the United States right now is um, the framing of
trans identity is mental illness. Yes, um, so you well,

(45:32):
you want to cure mental illness, right, Like why wouldn't
you want to do that? So you have states like
Florida or I believe Texas and a few others who
are forcing de transition on people, um in order to
cure them. And it's I think it's it's both that
they are talking about forcing de transition because these people

(45:52):
need to be cured, but they're also talking about um
they're a belief that they're spreading it, right, which justifies
could be used to justify elimination in the same way
that like the Nazis talked about the Jews and how
like you can't let people who are just like a
quarter Jewish lib because they're spreading this like there's something
inherently you know. And again this is the high level

(46:12):
justification for it. But like this is also that's part
of why the individuals got on board, is like this
this this rhetoric that was explained to them, like because
you have to give people some kind of explanation, right,
people feel a threat from the state or they feel
like that they're going to be ostracized, and also the
propaganda lets them feel that they're victims are somehow less

(46:33):
human and not just that but a threat to them, right. Um.
And you you get some of this in like the
correspondence of einstets group of talking about like what, we
have to kill these babies because they'll grow up into
Jews will like threaten our babies and stuff. Um. And
so you know the killing is justified. But also it's
not just that it's that I'm getting paid to do this.
This is my job. This is keeping me away from
a more dangerous chunk of the front um or maybe

(46:54):
I'll get a promotion from the party if I'm like
doing it, you know, this other role in like the
Holocaust or something. If I can effectively move all these
people on these trains, you know, it's it's almost best
to look at the willingness of members of a population
to participate or allow genocide to occur with their consent,
as like the weakening of an immune system. Like there's

(47:16):
certain individual barriers and people that make them unwilling to
support something like this. And you don't just like flip
a switch over time, but you you weaken barriers and
you get them to like, well, you know, you're not
saying yes to massacre in all these people, but like,
let's get them out of our community. Um, let's get
them out of our schools, let's shut down their ability
to operate clinics. Let's do And like the every kind

(47:38):
of new incentive weakens more barriers, and again things get
you know, It's like we just talked about Staffenberg, high
level Nazi UM and he was deeply anti Semitic. He
believed in the Nuremberg Laws and see anything wrong with them.
His main problem is he didn't he thought killing them
was too far. But once you've gotten to that point,

(47:59):
what what barrier is? They're like, you've already you've already
acquiesced to camps, to arianization, to force deportation, Like, really,
how far of a jump is it? For most people?
And for him, I mean, he didn't attempt to kill
Hitler because of the Holocaust. So for for people like him,
who I fully believe would be and are generally the

(48:22):
vast majority of people that are the you know, the
state actors of any kind of genocidal powder, whether it
be the Empire, Nazi, Germany, UH, the United States, uss R, whoever, UM,
the vast majority of people will talk themselves into accepting
a certain amount of this um that they directly have
their hands in, or they can directly see, and whatever

(48:42):
happens beyond what they see, and that somebody else's problem,
I can't speak of it. They'll they'll talk themselves into
becoming palatable because much like you reserved police Batalion one
oh one, this is this is a salary, this is
the pension I can take care of my family. So
I mean, you know, people are able to compartmentalize of

(49:03):
why they need to be this, you know, horribly murderous bureaucrat,
because well, I'm just filing papers. My hands aren't bloody. Yeah,
And this is I think why I have been as
I think most people who participated in a lot of
protests very critical about the value of protests in a
lot of situations. But when it comes to stuff like
they don't say gay Bill, when it comes to stuff

(49:24):
like like okay, folks are saying some really sketchy elimination
of stuff about trans people, we should get as many
fucking people out in the street. And a part of
the value of that is making not the most You're
not going to change anybody's mind. I'd like the fucking
Rhonda Santis level, But there's a lot of people who
are more on the edge, and you're not going to
make them into suddenly nicer, woke people, but you can

(49:47):
convince them as like, oh, if things get worse and
more is demanded of me against this population, there's a
lot of folks who are gonna want my fucking head,
you know, And there's a value you and I mean
you're know, like it's like Paul Gossar as a fucking
white nationalists. You're never going to change it. And we
do the psychoever, yeah, and you know, we both have

(50:09):
in the past and will in the future, have laughed
at things like polite society and things like that. But
when you make a guy like that feel so deeply
unwelcome and any open space because if his his rhetoric
is obscene, it simply won't happen that much anymore. Like
these ideas are allowed to propagate, like you've shown and

(50:30):
talked about before on your show, Um, where they use
the guy as a freedom of speech to spread hate.
They don't care about freedom of speech, they care about
spreading hate. That's it. Yeah, Um, so yeah, And I
think what's important about looking at it all this way
and the way that we've been talking about is that
when you think about when you think about kind of
getting people able to commit to participate, to allow genocide

(50:55):
as as in this more fluid way, it frames the
willingness to engage in mass killing as more fragile than
people tend to think it is, which is important. This
is why strident's sudden opposition in the moment can delay
or prevent acts of genocide. Is Wallen. Wallenberg stopped a
shipload of people from getting deported from Budapest on fucking
trains because he would wave papers in their face and

(51:16):
yell bureaucratically at Nazi soldiers, and it made them think
they'd get in trouble, right, and that saved thousands of lives.
Look at the safety community in Nan king exactly, headed
by a literal Nazi who pointed out that, like all
fucking contact the Counselate of of Nazi Germany, if you
hurt anybody under my command, like anybody under my protection,

(51:39):
and that that wall of like I might get in
trouble is what stopped Japanese soldiers from like they They
possibly saved over two or thousand people. Yeah, And the
only thing that saved him was in force of arms.
So that is important when a genocide is unfolding, because
once it started, you can't prevent it. You have to
stop it. But in the prevention stage, the thing that

(52:01):
stops people from the murder is this smite blow up
in my face exactly exactly um. And And again that's
the uplifting part of this is that like, you can,
you can, you can stop this. And and it's about
like what we're talking about when a guy like Wallenberg
shows up or that fucking Nazi and Nan King, they
are disrupting and reordering the higher like the hierarchy of

(52:22):
kind of needs and fears and the head of the
individuals who were previously willing to undergo genocide, and they're
deciding in that moment, this is not safe, this is
not a good idea, this is not beneficial in this moment. Again,
you're not de radicalizing them, but you don't always need
to write um and yeah. It's honestly, I think a
lot about like the way doctors can talk about suicide

(52:45):
sometimes where it's like, well, there are and this is
not everyone who participates in a genocide, but like there
are moments where they're willing to especially in the case
like Rwanda and other moments where they wouldn't be willing
to and if you can disrupt someone in them and
what they're willing to, they won't do it again necessarily. Um,
that's maybe worth thinking about. Um yeah, prevention. Prevention is

(53:09):
real tricky. Um. I mean it's something that even people
in the field of genocide studies still don't completely agree
on what should do. Like famously, the guy one of
the people that runs Doctors Without Borders said like, you
can't stop a fucking genocide with doctors, yeah, effectively saying
that once it begins, the only thing you can do
is kill the perpetrators until it stops, which I don't

(53:32):
disagree with. I don't, I'm not I'm not going to
argue with that statement. No, but obviously, like, of course,
the prevention, like the key is prevention, Like, yeah, it's
great that you can, you know, the collective forces of
the Allies stop the Holocaust from happening or from being complete,
but the goal is to stop it from getting that

(53:53):
fun boy, it got pretty far. Yeah, um yeah, it
was not not a not a speedy uh, not a
speedy intervention, And they certainly didn't even intervene to stop
the Holocaust. Honestly, it was the fucking international equivalent of
stacking dudes outside the door in a fucking classroom. While

(54:13):
there's like it took way longer than it should have.
We can talk about boatloads of Jewish people being sent
away from the shores of the United States during the
Holocaust because the administration didn't want to seem sympathetic towards
the Jews as they were trying to get support built
up to enter the war, like all sorts of ship
I mean, and really even the successful genocides that have
been ended via military action were never that military action

(54:37):
the end. Then we're never initiated, with the exception of
very very few, to actually stop a genocide like obviously
World War two comes to mind, world War One and
the Eastern Front, And I would add, what the what
the YPG did in northern Iraq, Vietnam invading Cambodia, they
stumbled into a genocide, saying what the funk is going

(54:59):
on here? You know? I would I would argue that
the YPG and coalition forces stopping the genocide. This Yas
is one of the one of the times that I
was done on purpose and in a relatively timely manner. Yeah, Um,
the same with you know, Yugoslavia. Yeah, less timely, significantly less,

(55:21):
significantly less timely. Unfortunately, once you pull the military card,
things get even worse because you have to kill people.
That's why prevention is so freaking important and it's so
widely overlooked, and it's one of the things like I
I think I already said that, it's very, very hard

(55:42):
two champion genocide prevention because you're proving that something did
not happen, uh, and people and what if you It's
a lot like how we all would really like to
um envision convincing really weird right wingers at climate change
is real, because like, what's the worst thing that happens

(56:04):
if I'm right? The air is cleaner, Yeah, it's nicer outside. Yeah,
well you're gonna crash the economy. Yeah, what's the worst
thing that happens if we are worried about elimination? Elimination
is rhetoric whenever it pops up, whether it be trans
or gay people or um uh you know, uh rohingia
or weagers, like, what's the worst that happens if we're wrong?

(56:29):
There wasn't a genocide? No, sorry, people were less shitty
to teenagers who were dealing with one of the things
that is most difficult to deal with in our society.
It's it's literally something that own the group of kids
had a better childhood. That's the downside. Fuck, you can't
have that. It's one of the things that literally only

(56:50):
has upside. No, and it's it's I mean, it comes
down to because again, as you said, there's not broad
agreement on how to prevent genocides because spoilers, we have
not figured out conclusively how to stop genocide from happening.
There's several going on right now, but one thing is
making the people at the at the the central top
level of the genocide hierarchy, the folks pushing all of

(57:13):
the things the kind of genocide elites, making them scared
to say ship that's a part of it, and making
the people who are potentially lower on that totem pole,
who might listen to those militias or whatnot in the moment,
realize that they they they will be wrecked if they
take part in that. That there's more people who don't
like that sort of ship. So they get scared and

(57:34):
they shut the funk up, make racists afraid again, not
that it's always about racism, but like you know, you
get what I'm saying, Like, make bigots worried about their actions,
Like that's why would people complain, Like what's the worst
thing that are What could you possibly be doing uh
to to change anything? If you're outing members of far

(57:56):
right militias at protests, That's why they're covering. They're high
seeing themselves for a reason, because they're worried about what's
going to happen to them when people realize they're marching
around where wearing a short says six million wasn't enough. Yeah, yeah,
make them yeah exactly. And it's one of those things
to get back to the script a little bit um

(58:18):
when we talk about how like much you can disrupt
someone's motivational hierarchy and the way in which like that
can actually stop actions. There's there's a Robert J. Lifton
cites a case of an inmate in a concentration camp
who put in a request with a Nazi doctor who
had a I mean, who was a Nazi doctor in
a concentration right, um, yeah, and he he puts in

(58:41):
this like weird request in the doctor grants it and
it winds up saving this guy's life and and referencing
the situation, Staub argues, apparently the inmates unusual behavior activated
some motivation low in the hierarchy, politeness, correctness, and responding
to a request, perhaps even compassion um, and this allowed
him to like grant this guy's exception requests that got

(59:02):
him out of like the uh you know, the kind
of hopper to get fed into the genocide machine. And
it's like it's in the same way that like what
Wallenberg was doing with a lot of these Nazis who
were trying to load Jews onto on two trains. He
was disrupting what they were doing by activating something that
was deeper programmed in them. The idea that like, yeah,
if a guy who claims to be a government official

(59:24):
comes up to you and you're a state employee and
tells you to stop what you're doing because it's illegal,
you kind of stop, right, Yeah. And there there's a
there's a book on rescuers during the Holocaust. I think
it's called like the Psychology of Rescue. You can't I
can't remember exactly what's called, but they point out that
one of the ways that many people rescued people. Wasn't

(59:45):
because they had some deep seated revulsion of Um, of
of Nazism, or even they maybe they didn't even like
Jews all that much. But one of one of the
things that stuck out, especially in the case of like
that doctor, not that I'm called him a rescuer, he
was a literal doctor at a concentration camp. But his
psychology was like, well, he put in a request, as

(01:00:06):
you should, I reproved it. Like I'm not saving this
man's life, I'm simply doing my job. Yeah. Like there
there was like a bureaucratic shield in front of them
where they didn't see what they're doing is necessarily good
or bad. They're simply doing their job. And this is why, um,
oh God, I forget the name of the sky. The
guy who wrote Blood Lands UM, which is a great
book about the genocide in in primarily like East or

(01:00:30):
in like Ukraine and Poland, will point out that the
areas in which the Jewish communities were most thoroughly destroyed
were places that had suffered what he called double state
destruction UM, which is where like the government is destroyed,
another government came in, and it was in this case
it's like the Soviets took over, they destroyed the existing government,
and then the Soviets were destroyed and the government structure

(01:00:51):
they took they had created, was destroyed, and you saw
higher percentages of like the Jewish population wiped out in
those areas. Then you didn't say France, where the Nazis
just kind of took over and tweaked the existing state structure.
And part of it is because there was bureaucratic There
were levels of bureaucracy that people could hide in and
that provided like kind of excuses for folks to save

(01:01:14):
their lives. Right. A lot of the Jews who were
saved in Western Europe were saved because like some functionary
was able to find a way that it wasn't technically
illegal to like protect them, you know. Um. Anyway, it's
probably worth talking about propaganda at some point here because
while we've been I think intel like rightfully cautioning people

(01:01:35):
against over like amplify over amplifying the value of a
elimination is propaganda and genocide because it's all the popular
culture tends to focus on. Um. It is a factor, right,
it's not a non fall corn genocide. UM. And in
the context of modern fears about a new genocide. A
number of folks recently have made very direct comparisons between

(01:01:56):
modern right wing media and radio um and radio stations
in Rwanda during that genocide. This line of argument became
particularly common in the wake of the Buffalo shooting, in
which a teenaged white supremacist killed ten people at a
grocery store in a majority black area. Because the shooter
espoused the great Replacement conspiracy theory, which Tucker Carlson also pushes,
a lot of folks claimed to causitive link between the two.

(01:02:19):
I will tell you right now, there was none, Tucker.
The kid was radicalized elsewhere, right, Not that Tucker Carlson
is not saying things that can that can influence people
to participate in mass Kelly, I'm not saying that. But
this kid that that's not where this happened from. But
and and similarly, like Scott's Scott Stross sort of research
paper r TLM, which is the main uh compower radio

(01:02:41):
station broadcasting at a Kigali And um, it didn't. I mean,
I'm not saying it didn't have an effect. It did marginally. UM.
I mean, and I think that shows um again, what
we we talked about that while propaganda is real, it's
not the magic bullet um. Sort of like people have

(01:03:02):
this concept of r t l M as being machette.
Radio is like, it's a term commonly used for it,
but it hardly broadcasted outside of the capital of Kegali
due to geography. Rwanda has tons of mountains. Radio doesn't
like contains um so and not to mention like, some
of the worst killings took place in a southern commune

(01:03:23):
which had no r TLM reception, so like, similarly, these
people were influenced by other means to do mass killing,
not this thing that makes it easier for us to understand.
Yeah yeah, um so, uh yeah, I think um when

(01:03:44):
it comes to kind of the way in which this
incorrect view of what happened in Rwanda is getting sort
of like compared with things today. A good example would
be NPR Steve inn Skype, who tweeted quote a fact
about Rwanda's genocide has always struck with me. The ruling
party caused much of the killing by going on the
radio and telling ethnic Hutoos that ethnic tootsies must be killed.
Along with Hutus, who disapproved, many people listened and dismembered

(01:04:05):
their neighbors. For a brief overview of the Rwanda We're
we're getting in all of this, but let's let's get
it overwhere. So Rwanda was a Belgian colony for a
long time, and if you know the Belgians, they did
them some genocide in the regions that they were in. Things. Yeah, Now,
the Tootsies were used as their model natives right and
favored over the huto This is a thing that every

(01:04:26):
colonizing power, it does absolutely everywhere UM and it's um
caused a lot of anger between the Hutuos and the Tutsies,
who previously had not really been all that separate right
as they were, they weren't even an ethnic group. It
was a social class exactly. It was very fluid. A
hut could become a Tootsie, Tutsi could become a hut
the Because it's easier for them as the colonizers, they

(01:04:48):
solidify this, and part of what they do is they
put out a system of racial ideas which further informalize
this division. UM. Now, this does support one of Dr
Stanton's ten stages of genocide, but it also interestingly makes
the point that stages don't all need to be purposefully
incited in order their drive people towards the genocide, because
the Belgians are just doing this because they're lazy. Um
in this makes it easier to run a colony. But

(01:05:09):
it does help, and this is a big part of
why the genocide happens, and it's part of why they're
able to know who's whotu and who's a Tutsies because
we have fucking cards, you know. Um ye. Then they
then that probably like you were just talking about propaganda,
that propaganda takes over and then over generations it becomes
real like that like Divide. It doesn't matter if it's
real or fake. It's it's perceived as being real, therefore

(01:05:32):
it's real now in any case. In nineteen nine four,
following the assassination of the president during a very ugly
civil war, WHO to government and military officials, orchestrated a
three month orgy of racial violence, culminating in the massacre
of more than five hundred thousand people. In the aftermath
of the killings, a lot focused on the broadcasts of
specific radio stations, notably r T l M, and how

(01:05:54):
announcers referred to Tutsi as in yezi, which means cockroach,
and advised listeners to hunt them down and massa here them.
There were cases where violence was clearly caused by radio broadcasts.
On April twelfth, the broadcaster claimed armed Tutsie were at
an Islamic center in Kegali. A day later, a mob
stormed the mosque and killed hundreds of people. That same day,
the announcer came back on the air and urged people

(01:06:15):
to exterminate Tutsi and stopped them from taking power, so
certainly not claiming that the radio had no influence on
what was happening. Now there's a reason why they were
all convicted of genocide. Yes, journalists and scholars seized on
this as an explanation for the nightmarish slaughter, which seemed
kind of inexplicable otherwise. Unfortunately, this led to descriptions of
events that sounded more than a little fucking racist. And

(01:06:37):
I'm gonna quote Strauss here. Strauss isn't the one being
the racist, but he's quoting other people's how they interpreted this.
I believe Darrell Lee is who he's quoting. Parts, Yeah,
I think one of them. But yeah. Writing in the
preface to a siminal study. For example, a u An
investigator claimed that Rwanda. In Rwanda, media were the vector
by which the poison of racist propaganda is spread. Similarly,

(01:06:57):
Melverne claims, in order to commit genocide and is necessary
to define the victim as being outside human existence, vermin
and subhuman. In Rewanda, the propaganda campaign against the minority
Tutsis was relentless and its incitement to ethnic hatred and violence.
Another observer, a journalist, asserts, when the radio said it
was time to kill the people opposed to the government,
the mass has slid off a dark edge into insanity.
The UN investigator quoted above similarly concluded that the poison

(01:07:20):
of radio propaganda is all the more effective because it
is said the Rwandan peasant has a radio culture of
holding a transistor up to his ear in one hand
and holding a machette in the other, waiting for orders
emitted by our TLM. That's pretty racist, right. It reduces
them to like murdering automaton exactly. And what a lot
of people are missing when you like, when you read

(01:07:41):
passages like that and that one about the machete in
one hand radio, that's not Darely, that's someone else, but
um One of the things that they're leaving out is
our TLM only started about six months before the Genesis.
Yeah we're we're yeah, well yeah, it's it was not
this was not like deeply rooted into their coach radio.
How of Wanda, I believe has no radio signal at all.

(01:08:03):
It is worth noting that, like this is a very
centralized state. It had been centralized under the Belgians, or
Wanda still quite centralized today, and like that's not a
non factor in stuff. But like it is not this
that people are not just like radio said to murder,
time to go murder. I guess this is why I'm
doing it. It's very racist that it takes away everything,
and it's even it's worse because it'll it also allows

(01:08:27):
you to couch this and like, well they're illiterate, and
you know they they did have a high illiterate population,
but they're illiterate and therefore they're not as intelligent as
I enlightened person from the outside. That's why this When
this radio tells gonna go man a checkpoint with a
machete and kill everybody, I'm simply going to do it.
There's this thing we had that we had these episodes
on General Butt Naked and the Liberian Civil War recently,

(01:08:50):
And you know, I had to make a point of
because so much of what happens is so lurid, and
it gets reported as like look at this, like these
crazy like witch doctor like cannibals and stuff. That is,
as someone accused me on Reddit of like trying to
mitigate what he did by going into how it's not
really any different from Western war crimes. And that's the
same thing with Rwanda. It's not like, yes, there are

(01:09:11):
elements of Rwandan culture that made this are part of
why this happened, right, and some of that is how
centralized the state and government is. And you can say
the same thing about Germany that had an impact on
why things occurred the way that they did. There's nothing
different about the centralization. They weren't like Rwandans weren't commanded
by their radios to do a genocide anymore than Germans
were commanded by Hitler over the radio to do a genocide. Um,

(01:09:33):
there was a continuum of things that we're going on
that made people willing to participate in this, and it's
a lot more complicated than they had a radio in
their ears. I mean to mention that they check literally
every block like Strauss's risk risk factor for genocide, like
they've had previous massacres. Paul Harbor and Mia who I

(01:09:55):
believe his first name is Paul, who is president that
was shot down, had since the civil war been eating
more and more power to the Hutu power dynamic to
rally power around himself because they were losing. Yeah, so
he had seeded more and more power to the incredibly
far radical extreme of the Hootu power So by the
time he was dead, he had effectively already lost power.

(01:10:17):
That's why when the major overlying conspiracy theories is he
was shot down by the Hootu power section, nobody's entirely sure,
but they think he was. And that is like the
inciting inside of the geness the president's plan get shot down.
It's still a mystery as to exactly what happened anyway.
Strauss goes on to note that quote most discussions of
Rwandan media affects attribute little or no agency to listeners.

(01:10:39):
The Rwandan public is often characterized as hearing a drumbeat
of racist messages and directly internalizing them, or as hearing
orders to kill and heating the command. Those views are
consistent with stereotypes about Rwandan's, namely that they obey orders blindly,
that they are poorly educated and thus easily manipulated, and
that they are immersed in the culture of prejudice. Now
Strauss carried out an exhaustive analysis of massacres in Rwanda

(01:11:00):
where they occurred in relation to broadcast towers. In particular,
he looked at the strength of those towers and where
they could reach, and when massacres occurred in relation to
specific broadcasts. His conclusion was that the vast majority of
the violence could not be explained by urgents to kill
from radio personalities, and then in fact, most of the
broadcast people cited as inciting things happened after most of

(01:11:20):
the violence had occurred. UM. A follow up investigation from
another group of academics used a village level data set
from the genocide to estimate the impact of RTLM in
encouraging genocide. The attributed roughly ten percent of the overall
violence to the station, which is a lot. Don't get
me Rock. That's a lot for a radio station to
incite UM and noted that these broadcasts had more of

(01:11:43):
an influence on convincing militias who were organized and radicalized
to kill ahead of time, to go after specific targets,
and then those militias would rope in civilians rather than
again people just like again, those folks prior to the
fucking radio being involved, were already ready to kill. They
moved into an area because as a specific target was
signed posted by the radio, and they would rope civilians

(01:12:03):
in through coercion and a variety of other means that
we've already talked about. Um so yeah. Radio in mass
media Absolutely no, No reasonable scholar would argue does not
play a significant role in genocide. Um But consistent with
the research of guys like Stalbin Strauss, the willingness to
participate in such violence exists on a continuum. Even a
most Rwandan radio inspired massacres were committed by dudes who

(01:12:26):
joined militias. Um so yeah. The article by Reynerman and
Wilson I cited earlier notes of Rwanda quote. A need
for social belonging can result in a motivation for an
individual to want to conform to his or her group,
leading to participation in order not to stick out and
to be able to remain part of the group. A
member of a group. Intervite interviewed by Hatsfield mentioned the
strong bond to the group with whom he killed during

(01:12:47):
the genocide. We liked being in our gang. We all
agreed about the new activities, and we helped each other
out like comrades. Um their need. And again, it's traumatic
to partake in this kind of killing, and trauma bonds
people together, you know. Um. So even in those situations
where killings can be tied to particular broadcasts, it's ignorant
to blame the propaganda in a vacuum, just as it's

(01:13:10):
kind of ignorant to blame the propaganda Tucker Carlson spits
out for the Buffalo shooting. Tucker is allowed to do
what he does because people listen, and those people were
conditioned to listen by folks other than Tucker, generations of
right wing media and also family and friends. Right, the
fact that he's able to get up there and spread
great replacement bullshit is the end part of a continuation
of propaganda and and hatred. Um that you could, you could,

(01:13:33):
you could pull right back to the Civil War if
you want to go back far enough, you know, um,
Which doesn't mitigate Tucker's complicity in it at all. But
it's not he's not generating it. You know, he's not
generating it. He's he's Um, he's a stage in a
long procession. I'd like someone pointed out that he might
be one of the first extremists that was radicalized by

(01:13:53):
his own audience. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a big factor,
because he's doing it in part because it gets him
the views, because it gets people to us in right,
And that's the same thing that happens with a lot
of people who get radicalized online. Right when we talk
about the way like four chan and eight chan work,
where like people come into it like joking about this
stuff and over time radicalize each other and into supporting

(01:14:15):
the literal actions because there's no racism. No, there's no
ironic racism, and there's no iron there's no lone wolves.
People are radicalized for violence in communities and by communities. Um,
it's shared jokes, it's shared lingo, it's a desire for acceptance. UM.
It's a variety of different things that like push people here. UM. Now,
of course again, obedience to authority can be one of

(01:14:38):
these things. UM, but it's it's authority doesn't always mean
like a fewer sometimess the authority of like the kind
of group consensus about what's cool, you know, about what's funny,
about what's good. Um. Obviously like one of the things
that gets talked about that got and this is something
that like I think as maybe a little more debatable
when we talk about like the role of authority in genocide.

(01:15:01):
Um is the Milgram experiment, right, that's get This gets
talked about a lot. And in short, the Milgram experiment
consisted of I think he didn't want the seventies. It
may I think it's because these went on for a while. Um,
But the experiment consisted of experiment ers because Milgram was
trying to study like why do people like he was

(01:15:22):
looking at the just following orders excuse that a lot
of nazis made and being like, well is that the case?
And basically he would have a student deliver electric shocks
to a patient who was actually an actor, but the
student who was the test subject thought that they were
really shocking the person, and like a dude with a
clipboard would tell them to periodically increase the voltage until
it got up to a level that was noted as

(01:15:43):
being potentially lethal and the people who were delivering the shocks.
Some of them would cry, a lot of them would argue.
They were generally all pretty unhappy, but most would deliver
the shocks when ordered to do so by an authority.
Figure Stalbrights quote. Milgram suggested that people can enter an
agentic mode in which they relinquish individual responsibility and act
as agents of authority. While obedience is an important force,

(01:16:05):
it is not the true motive for mass killing your genocide.
The motivation to obey comes from a desire to follow
a leader, to be a good member of a group,
to show respect for authority. Those who willingly accept the
authority of leaders are likely to have also accepted their
views in ideology guided by shared cultural dispositions, the shared
experience of difficult life conditions, shared motivations that result from them,
and shared inclinations for ways to satisfy motives, people join

(01:16:28):
Rather than simply obey out of fear or respect. We
must we must consider not only how those an authority
gain obedience, but how the motivations of the whole group evolve.
Miilgrim's dramatic demonstration of the power of authority, although of
great importance, may have slowed the development of a psychology
of genocide as others came to view obedience as the
main source of human destructiveness. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's

(01:16:48):
it's always interested, especially because when the main points I
believe of that experiment was that they were told repeatedly
they could quit whenever they want, yes, and the person
in the room with them, I believe, could only say
you must continue the experiment. Yeah. Um, but like yeah,
and that of course directly inspired the writing of Ordinary

(01:17:09):
Men and amongst other things. Yeah, and it it definitely
allows the dispersion of personal responsibility if you believe of
a bigger structure. And another thing I think is key
is dispersion of your own personal responsibility into a structure
you believe is impune, like you's not going to be
held accountable for anything that it does. Yeah. Um. And

(01:17:33):
it's it's again like so and and and stabs not
saying like this isn't a factor or like the Pilgram
experience doesn't say anything useful about genocide. It's the it's
the kind of boiling at all that people want to say,
like one thing, right, um, and and it isn't And
it's like and also just like the fact that people
are like following authority isn't just as simple as like

(01:17:53):
they're following orders. It means that like they are they are.
Their motivation is a desire to be in a power
structure underneath an authority, and they accept the views and
the values of that authority, right, which is more complicated
than just thus, just I will follow orders, you know. Um,
there's and and this is an an area in which,
like the authoritarian culture of Germany prior to the Nazi

(01:18:14):
rise of power, affected the willingness of people to participate
in the the instrument of genocide. Um. Yeah, uh, it's cool,
and I think it is. It's important to have a
more complicated understanding of like what can motivate people to
this than just I do whatever the leader tells me. Um,

(01:18:35):
Because that's not where genocides start. All genocide starts with
the willingness of human beings to partake in the act itself,
right like that is or if if not start because
it may be wrong to like prescribe it that way,
but that you can't have a genocide without the willingness
of the of the people of people to participate, not

(01:18:55):
just to participate, but to welcome or at least not
discourage the people doing the participation, right, Like folks like it.
It's it's never, it's never one thing, Like societies are
are more complicated than that, And genocides are accomplished by societies, right,
They're noted by dudes who suck. Yeah. And and to

(01:19:17):
be completely clear, we're not saying that like genocides occur
because of like the marginalized turned it out group is
not resisting hard enough. It's lay people that could escape this.
No problem, it's this. It's the slow incoming tide that
you're fined with. Like we like to like stereotypically, there's

(01:19:38):
a famous poem about this. Um you know, um it's uh.
It's one of like, well, you know there's lawn Florida
isn't really a big deal. I don't live in Florida.
Well millions of people do. Yeah. Yeah. The the idea
that like ha ha, well this is what the right gets,
you know, this bad thing happening in Florida because they
wouldn't vote against It's like no, no, no, this is

(01:19:58):
a problem. And it's the same people who are are
dumb enough to believe that this isn't gonna go nationwide
after a while. Are the most naive motherfucker's have ever
heard of. And this is a deeper naivety than just that.
I would extend it to people who say, oh, well,
it's not it's not our business, Like I don't like,
I'm not gonna I can dismiss the mass killings of

(01:20:22):
of protesters in Syria because that's over there, you know.
Um oh, Now suddenly millions of refugees have flooded Europe
and it's reignited a far right and victor Orbon has
seized and centralized and into democratic functional democracy and Hungary
and now the Republicans are holding a sea pack. They're
talking about how to do the same here, like but
like every like I forgot that they had they did

(01:20:45):
you you it's all like you. You can't. You can't
abrogate your responsibility to to be a part of the
human race. And that includes being like, well this is
like that, that's what actual like resistance to fascism is right,
is like comprehensively calling out bad ship is bad, Like
that's not not not being like, well it's in Florida,

(01:21:09):
you know, Um, well it's until stupid South, stupid South,
right like it's it's it's taking as much offense to
like acts of evil that occur far away as the
ones that happened like next door, because like everything like
eventually it will. It's the same as like climate change, right,
it's it's like it's not being like oh well, fun California.

(01:21:32):
I live up here in Washington State where climate change
will never hit us, or like, um right, yeah, this
is the difficult thing about it, um, and it's it's
and I think it's even harder for people to grasp
um when it literally doesn't impact them at all. Yeah,
they're I mean, the vast majority of people in any
coming or future genocide like rarely are they going to

(01:21:57):
be directly impacted if face if they don't want to be,
unless you are, of course the out party. But like
you know, a random guy in you know, Duluth, Minnesota,
like he's not going to be impacted by this. But
the hard part and the the key for prevention is
realizing that if you want to prevent this from happening,

(01:22:17):
it needs to be made important to the point that
people who literally cannot have no role in it can
make a role in it by stopping it. Um. Because
Obviously these things are going to impact outgroups minorities, racial, ethnic, religious,
or otherwise. They're not They purposefully do not have a

(01:22:40):
voice that can stop this from happening. Nope, that's why
they're being targeted. Yeah, so uh rowan egg, get Rhonda Santis.
It's the conclusion we've made here. Um or or Abbott,
Abbott could use use an egg. That fucking guy give
him an all good egging egg it out? Um like that?

(01:23:04):
Like that kid in Australia. Um oh, I forgot about
that kid. Kids. It was a good kid because when
we find out he did something terrible immediately afterwards. I
think he raised a bunch of money for some nice
cause people were paying attention to him. I don't know.
Hopefully someone's gonna be like, please don't milkshake duc that kid. Well, Joe,

(01:23:25):
I don't know. How do you feel at the end
of this genocide? Yeah? Your a I'm you know, I'm
going to be a centrist on this one. No one
can say some people like genocide, some people dislike some
people comm Yeah, we're going to compromise to everything that
they've ever said. Um No, I mean I got into
this field because it's very important to me both in

(01:23:46):
my and in my history, and you know, in the future,
it's it's something that's the history of These things are important.
So we can stop revisionism from coming and taking place,
and also so we can help prevent it in the future,
and hopefully we can make prevention something that is not
like a weird thing to bring up. No, so go

(01:24:07):
out and don't commit genocide. That's that's the key here.
That is definitely there's a lot of debates as to
how to prevent it, but don't do a genocide. We
ask that. That's the baseline we ask of our listeners
is please do not participate in an active genocide. Lower
in the bar here, Yeah, the bar is through the floor.

(01:24:30):
Unlike some of our sponsors, including the Washington State Highway
Patrol and funk those guys I used to live in Washington,
hear the worst. We had a very funny one star
review of someone being like I thought I was gonna
love this podcast, but then they started talking about the
Washington State Highway Patrol. I have to two relatives in
the Highway Patrol, and they're both like wonderful men who

(01:24:51):
are not violent at all. I would really like to
believe that they listen to the Behind the Police series
like this sounds fun. Yeah, up until they were totally
down with shooting on every other police department, and so
we got some when their cousin was in Yeah, yeah,
funk the St. Louis Cole. Wait a second, we're the
good one. Yeah, bow t Highware and Fox. My my

(01:25:16):
cousins in the Washington State Highway Patrol aren't violent at all.
T shirt is bringing up a lot of questions answered
by my I'm not a lot around their families anymore.
They're not allowed outside their house. It's weird anyway, Joe,
you got any plug doubles? Have you ever done a
podcast before this happened in the world. I'm the host

(01:25:38):
of the Lines led by Donkeys podcast. We talked about
uh funk ups in military history. We also talk extensively
about genocide specifically. We talked about it. We've talked about
Nan King, We've talked about the Namibian genocide. We've talked
for seven hours about the cambody in genocide. Uh. I
promise it's not all that heavy. We do other stuff too.

(01:26:00):
Now if you want that, then you're gonna have to
go to the genocide cast, Uh With With with Rock
and Robbie and Uh the Butt John Wilson, It's the
drivetime radio show. I was doing a radio but I
didn't think it out very well. A Morning Zoo crew
Morning that's just about well. It's six in the morning.

(01:26:23):
We got a lot of traffic blacked up on the
I five. You know what else got backed up on
a highway. Good stuff all right? Episodes over Go Home
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool

(01:26:43):
zone media dot com, or check us out on the
I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.