It Could Happen Here Weekly 39

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Your children should be home.

(00:36):
Your kids aren't actually gay, you've just crooned to them.
Welcome to It could have happened here today. We are
talking about something that did happen just a few days ago,
and we'll be discussing it's possible ramifications going forward and
similar subsequent attacks that are most likely going to take

(00:57):
place throughout this next month. I'm Person Davis with me?
Is Chris Hello? Ready ready to hear about a lot
of threats of genocide and a whole bunch of audio
clips of fascists? You know? Okay, I got I got
one episode where there was like a pretty clean win

(01:19):
and like a good thing happened, and so now I'm
I'm ready to go back to getting exterminated. This is
so this episode is going to be kind of I
don't speak German style, I guess if if we were
to compare it to another one of our competitors in
the field. Um, yeah, so uh, I mean, there's been

(01:39):
a lot of threats against Pride events over the course
the past month. There's we've we've pointed towards some in Idaho. Uh,
there has been some in air Zona, there has been
lots in Texas. By the time this episode has dropped,
the Gundalane event in Idaho would have already taken place.
We are recording that just just before war on On

(02:01):
on June tenth, So I'm unsure of how that's gone
at this point. Hopefully nothing horrible happened. But but but
if everyone dies, that that's why we're not talking about
it because it hasn't happened yet. Oh but yeah, we're
gonna be talking about an attack on a Pride event
in Dallas, Texas that happened on June four, So starting

(02:25):
starting kind of closer to the lead up to this.
On the Conservative trends setting limbs of TikTok, who now
has over one point two million followers on the Twitter
account ran by Chaia Check, they started a threat titled
quote Mega Drag Thread. They say it's innocent. They say
it's about inclusion and acceptance. They say no one is

(02:48):
trying to confuse corrupt or sexualized kids. They lie. Increasingly,
many on the far right are targeting family friendly drag events,
including Drake time story events at libraries across the country.
The Gundalane event in Idaho was precursored by a whole
bunch of attacks on drag story events at the libraries

(03:12):
inside Idaho and the very church gathering that they announced
the event to oppose the Pride on June eleven. That
whole gathering at the church was about removing LGBTQ materials
from libraries and targeting any drag queens who do any
types of story times. So this this over thirty tweet

(03:36):
long thread by lips of TikTok contained a list of
drag queens, story how where flyers with dates and locations,
and family friendly or all ages drag events that had
recently took place over upcoming for Pride month. One such
event right check posted about was a Pride themed family
friendly drag event that was to take place on Saturday,
June four, hosted at a gay venue in the progressive

(03:59):
neighborhood of Doubts, Texas. In their post, Limps of TikTok
included the date and location for the upcoming event, as
well as an unrelated picture of one of the drag
performers wearing a skip be outfit. I think right check
just searched the internet for a picture of this one
person wearing as revealing clothing as possible based on the
entire intimate presence, and like it's still not a nude photo.

(04:20):
It's just like someone would like like a skimpy outfit.
But anyway, you know, you're trying to be like, this
is what your kids are gonna see, which means it's
it's not, but you know, you know the thing you're
trying to do. The tweet was shared by a new
far right group called Protect Texas Kids, who had also
declared that they were organizing a protest to oppose what

(04:41):
they called a quote child grooming event. They tweeted out
the address of the venue and called on people to
join in on opposition to the family friendly drag show.
The initial Limps of TikTok tweet about the Dallas All
Ages drug event raked up over a thousand retweets and
thousands and thousands of likes. Less than a week later,
the anti queer attacks moved from the online sphere to

(05:04):
the outside physical world. I wonder if the mama bearing
instinct is going to come out in three years when
the mainstream Democrat party platform and they want to rape
your kids, and they're all gonna think it's one big, smug,
little joke. These people, by the way, understand that there
is a bigger difference between ten years ago and now

(05:24):
than the wind be between now and in five years
when they're openly advocating for pedophilia like they've already started doing.
You people are the symptom of a dying society. And
you know it where. That's John Doyle, a self described
Christian fascist, standing outside the family Friendly drag event at

(05:46):
nine am in the morning, yelling through a megaphone at
the families with kids lined up to get inside the
brunch event. A crowd mostly in khaki shorts and button
ups surrounded the venue, and enchanted groomer grew umer as
the group of men kept screaming at the families stuck
outside waiting on line. Kids just a few feet away

(06:07):
covered their ears. Amidst the screams and megaphones, one person
waved a Christian Diminianist flag. A man holding a rosary
shrieked verbal abuse at the children and parents. The fist
of tribes will come down very soon. This it's what

(06:33):
was described as a quote protest immediately materialized as a
group of men and self described Christian fascists who came
to attack families at Pride, just yelling abuse at the
events attendees and staff, threatening people as they arrived and left,
and creating an actually unsafe environment for children, along with
a gaggle of far right grifting videographers who quote infiltrated

(06:57):
the event to film kids without their consent to create
viral propaganda. There was a very good article by Melissa
Geara Grant published a few days after the incident titled
a Pizza Gate in Every City, with the subheading quote
these conspiracy theories were once fringe. Now they're being fueled

(07:17):
by Republicans and driving far right anti LGBTQ violence. Now.
I'm going to read a few quotes from this piece
throughout our episode today because the writer does a very
good job tying the current grooming rhetoric to the pattern
of escalating violence and conspiracism embraced by the right over
the past few years. So to quote the article, quote

(07:39):
from the idea that children inside this venue were being
abused and that such abuse was a plot by Democrats
to the call to internet provocateurs to record their own evidence,
as well as the false claims of child rescues made
by those promoting these conspiracy theories. The attack on Mr Mr,
which which was the venue that the strike event to placet,
called to mind the same fears, if not the same

(08:02):
threat of gun violence as the assault on Comt Ping
Pong in Washington, d C. In a man motivated by
the Pizza Gate conspiracy theory arrived at the restaurant with
a rifle to quote, rescue children from the non existent
sex trafficking ring supposedly orchestrated by prominent Democrats. Now a
little more than five years later, of Republicans identify as

(08:23):
believers of the Pizza Gate successor q and On, and
the far right's capacity for street violence has grown. At
the same time, where once most elected Republican officials would
at least nominally distance themselves from Pizza Gate pushers out
on the fringe, that wall has largely eroded. Across the country.
GOP lawmakers have waged a legislative crusade targeting queer and

(08:45):
trans kids, smearing opponents as groomers. Language that rhyme was
with the pedophile claims that inspired the attack on commt
Ping Pong, and where once the targets of these conspiracy
theories were largely confined to select group of Democrat lawmakers
and their allies, the fearmongering, amplified by Fox News and

(09:05):
prominent conservative social media accounts, is now targeting all LGBTQ people,
from national figures to members of your local community. The
stage is set for a Pizza Gate in any city,
and just like Pizza Gate, where cases of threats of
violence escalated to the point of an attempted arson and
a young white man storming the establishment firing a rifle inside,

(09:27):
the homophobic and transphobic violence that is advocated or physically
committed is truly seen as like righteously justified by those
who do it, and even if those who promote it
don't sincerely hold those like illogical beliefs. Successful propagandists know
how to effectively frame bigoted violence as a moral imperative

(09:48):
simply as a way to encourage attacks on their own
ideological enemies. SIME. The far right conservatives and fascists who
made explicit threats of genocidal violence were not met unopposed.
There was what seems to me a mix of more

(10:10):
official security from the gay venue that usually functions as
a bar, as well as community defense volunteers and anti
fascists who put their body in between the fascists and
the families with children. Community community members wore low key
pride infected block attire, black masks, and rainbow bandanas, with
some holding trans and queer pride flags, which can come

(10:34):
in handy for blocking off unwanted persons. Not only did
the community defense protect families and attendees, but also worked
to protect the performers who are being followed after the
event was over by fascists. The Elm Fork John Brown
Gun Club did a stand up job documenting the event
as it happened and also doing work after the fact

(10:54):
to I d the people who are leading the homophobic attacks.
I truly believe if there was less of a community
defense effort, the day could have gone much much uglier,
and I think that's a part that's worth emphasizing, Like
everyone who showed up to oppose the fascists did an
amazing job. I mean, like they It's honestly, I've I've

(11:16):
looked at so much footage of this day, um, from
the footage the fascists were filming to the footage that
the John Brown Gun Club was putting out, and there
were so many times where people in with rainbow masks
were physically preventing fascists from chasing down kids. There was
barely enough of them right and you you would always,
you would always want more more community defenders there. But

(11:38):
the ones who did show up deserve much gratitude for
putting their bodies on the line. Eventually, police did show
up and tried to keep some of the conservative protesters
who were screaming groomer at children on one side of
the street across from the venue, But even with the
cops there, self described fascists continued to chase families as
they walk with their kids to their car, and anti

(12:01):
fascists and counter demonstrators were the ones to block the
homophobes path to prevent them from the further harassing kids
and families, while while the counter demonstrators were yelling at
the fascists to leave the kids alone. After the police
did arrive, Christian fascist leader John Doyle talked about how
police should quote go in there and put bullets in

(12:23):
their heads. They should be rewarded for it. That's what
the badges for. And now I'm gonna play a clip
of of him saying that it's a it's a little
bit hard to hear, but here's my due diligence. I
don't avertize everything the sheriffs and so yeah, that is

(12:50):
harkening back to the very real history of police's willingness
to enforce homophobic laws, something that these Christian conservatives and
fascists want to bring back. And if you think some
police wouldn't enforce such laws, then oh boy, I don't
know what to tell you, Like, yeah, their entire job
is to enforce whatever the laws are. And lots of

(13:11):
those cops, I'm sure don't have great opinions on gay people.
So yeah, I I know they were like like I
I've had conversations with people who are like I don't know,
like sixteen seventeen eighteen, who like you know, like who who?
And I don't want to be too hard on them.
But it's like people who got their sort of education
to queer history on Tumbler, and they'll do things like

(13:32):
well like assist white gay men were like never oppressed
in the US that it's like no, like like like
you yeah, you you you could be just assist white
gay dude and like like really like not even really
like fifteen years ago, it was pretty common for people
to just like get the ship beating out of him
on the street for being gay. And cops, cops are

(13:53):
participate in this, like regular people participate in this, and
this looks like what we're heading back to but sumbly
even worse. So if you if you look around the
social media feed of many many cops, as I do
for funds sometimes, um, just like you know, like cops
and they're like personal feeds. And if you look at
like who they follow, what right wing influencers they follow,

(14:15):
what churches they attend, you can don't be fooled into
thinking that cops will not enforce homophobic laws. Yeah, they
love this ship like and I mean anyway, um, one
of one of their stated goals is to regress on
gay rights and to have their version of a Christian
hegemonic order enforced by the violence of law. And here

(14:38):
is Doyle again saying as such at the event everything.
I'm gonna read what he actually says there in case
you could not hear it, quote, It's going to be
so fun when we take away all of your rights,
every single one of them. Let's now talk about some

(15:01):
of the people and groups who organized this confrontation and
the resulting propaganda piece put together by the right. So
one of the main people was Kelly new Dirt need
kneed Diert new I think, I think what cares one
of they suck? Yes, one of the people was Kelly Needert,

(15:25):
one of the Christian fascist organizers responsible for setting up
the Facebook group for the attack on the Pride event
this past weekend. She's worked with Gropers and Proud Boys
in the past for her Young Conservative of Texas events
at University of North Texas and is a self described
quote based Christian fascist her words not mine. She's also

(15:49):
hosted a campus event with Jeff Younger, an anti trans
Republican candidate for the Texas House of Representatives who came
to prominence on the right for attempting to block his
daughter's access to gender affirming healthcare. And who ultimately failed
on both accounts good good for her Kelly's. Kelly's current
project is a new anti trans hit group called Protect

(16:13):
Texas Kids, who she's she calls herself the executive director of,
but she's basically the main driving force behind it. Was
under the Protect Texas Kids banner that she organized the
harassment attack on the All Ages Drag Show, quoting from
Pizza Gate in Every City again quote. With her new group,
Nader says that quote, we will host protests of clinics

(16:37):
that do gender firm and care for minors and school
districts slash teachers who teach lgbt Q propaganda and critical
race theory. Protect Texas Kids is a friendly sounding vehicle
with which self of a Christian fascists in Texas can
go into LGBTQ community spaces armed with video and claims

(16:57):
to be there to investigate. All of this expands on
a now common playbook produced local events antagonizing queer and
trans people, then go on Fox News, News Max and
other right wing media outlets to put the videos in
front of an even broader audience unquote. The other major
figure is obviously John Doyle, the guy we've talked about

(17:18):
a blot this episode so far, and we've included many
audio clips of him screaming horrible things at kids. Uh.
He is the Christian fascist leader heard saying things like
every single one of gay right should be taken away
and encouraging police to go in there and put a
bullet in their heads. I guess the parents are drag performers.
He has a large YouTube channel with over three hundred

(17:40):
thousand subscribers. Don't don't worry, Chris, It's good to get worse.
Christian fascists led by both Kelly Newt and John Doyle
have been terrorizing the University of North Texas campus for months.
On one occasion, they brought Proud Boy, armed security and

(18:01):
a technical pickup truck. Now when I say technical, I
mean like the military style vehicle like that. It was
a technical built onto a pickup truck, So basically a
massive truck armed with a pretty pretty intense gun. That
seems not legal somehow, but it's Texas. It's it is

(18:22):
absolutely legal. I'm going to place some audio from a
University of North Texas campus event that took place last
October featuring Doyle and his crew of fascists I am

(18:56):
you can't do nothing, you guys. I would play more audio,
but a high pitched whistle drowns out the rest of
what he says, and I will not subject you to
the audio of the whistle because it does a fantastic
job making the audio completely unlistenable, so much so that

(19:20):
very soon Doyle just like gave up talking because the
whistle did a really good job dryting about um. But
for more background, Doyle, I'll quote from a pizza gate
in every city again. Quote John Doyle, who yelled about
rape at children through a megaphone, has organized a stop

(19:41):
the Steel rally with Nick Quentez. Was a special guest
at the White Nationalist America First Pack Conference, and as
the leader of a group titled the American Populist Union,
he was in audience at a one event billed as
Hitler Youth without the Hitler. Wait, So can I ask

(20:03):
the question about this? So I've heard about this event?
Did they literally write that? Yes, it was called that
by one of the organizers. Ariel early eighteen year old
white nationalist social media influencer built as a special guest
at the camping retreat, saying, I always say these events
are Hitler youth without the Hitler And what do I
mean by that? You have to get to the youth.

(20:25):
They claim Gen Z might be the most conservative generation,
but honestly, I'm not seeing it. I mean, I guess
that's good news if you ignore them, if you don't know,
if you know the Hitler part that well maybe the
father leader. Also, Kyle Rittenhouse says that he's a John
Doyle fan. So great and we are back. I'm gonna

(20:50):
continue to quote from the Pizza Game Every City article again.
Quote given many existing media connections. Videos from the event
made by far right content creators, some confronting attendees and performers,
were widely picked up across right wing social media by
people including Andy No, Benny Johnson, and Pizza Gate promoter
Jack Sobiak, who shared a video of one drag performer

(21:11):
and instructed his followers to contact the state's Department of
Family and Protective Services. When some of these same videos
made a two Tucker Carlson's show on Monday Night, he
introduced a segment by saying, just another weekend in vine Mar,
selectively airing moments when adults yelled back at people like Doyle,
accusing them of abuse, or when other adults used their

(21:32):
bodies to block men from forcing their way into the event.
All of this was used to portray the people threatening
the Pride event as the actual victims unquote so yeah.
Less than forty eight hours after the all ages Drag
event had begun, it was headlining on Tucker Carlson just
another weekend in Weimar. On Saturday, at nightclub in Dallas

(21:55):
held an event called Drag Your Kids to Pride. At
the event, little kids dance with drag queens and tipped
them with dollar bills. This is grotesque, sexualizing children always is.
So there were a small number of brave protesters outside.
One of them was our friend Alex Stein. He tried
to get into the event because it was a public event,
and so he was assaulted. Watch The event on June

(22:17):
four also attracted an assorted collection of far right media
personalities or those who aspire to be they themselves. Referred
to their group of far right videographers as the quote
avengers of homophobes, among which, as mentioned by Tucker, was
aspiring comedian and small far right commentator Alex Stein, who

(22:39):
was prevented entry to the venue by event security and
community defenders or a sucker would say was assaulted. Here's
an audio of that interaction. Also, I want to note
that in the video Alex Stein has a big old
smirk on his face the entire time, and I think
you can actually hear that through the way he talks

(23:00):
the time. And three were askingly, they're preg they're not
letting me baby here. I can't believe they're not letting
me in a game. But I thought, you guys are inclusions, right,
I'm not letuldren. You guys don't think that's weird trying
to dance in that groom, all right. Some of these

(23:35):
videographers did make it inside with their cameras, shooting videos
that misrepresented the drug performances as threatening to children or
acting in an inappropriate sexual manner, all while making threatening
comments of their own online or outside in person. One
who interrogated a drag performer captioned his video quote, these

(23:57):
groomers need to be exposed for what they are. A
woman who shot some video from in the side of
the venue later tweeted, quote, this summer is slaying groomers summer.
Two far right members of the self described homophobic Avengers
who made it inside the event to film kids were
Taylor Hanson, who got a lot of notoriety after filming

(24:22):
the Ashley Babbit shooting as he was participating in the
storming of the capital, similar to how Elijah Shaffer was
like making the events seem like it was this big
heroic thing and then getting a lot of press coverage
off of off of his footage. And someone else who
was who was going inside the event to film kids
was Aldo but Ziani. After the event, the little collection

(24:44):
of self described Christian fascists and their propagandists got together
on Elijah Shaffer's Blaze Media podcast to do a sort
of round table report back. Now, Elija Shaffer was not
actually on that episode. John Doyle was filling in as
the host, self self described and fascist on Doyle but
Schaefer brands himself as a classic I'm gonna say Christian

(25:06):
fascist because that's what his rhetoric means. Now, Schaeffer himself
doesn't use the word fascist, but he does share son
and rab memes on Twitter and his and his rhetoric
is indistinguishable from Doyle's who of course, Doyle does use
the word fascist, and of course Schaefer is totally fine
with having Doyle fill in as him for host on
his own show. Anyway, Here is Doyle introducing people on

(25:29):
that episode, including Turning Point USA representative Elizabel Riley. We
also have fellow e girl, Isabella Riley want to be
and I want white confetti, Please, white confetti. She likes
her confetti, how she likes her country. So anyway, tell
me what you saw, Aldough, because you got there a
little bit before I did. And now we all had
this sort of like you know, homophobic avengers assemble kind

(25:51):
of thing where everyone did their part. I knew that
I probably couldn't get in, so I just thought that
I would assemble my army of young men to go
and confront these people. But although in Isabella actually infiltrated
the event and got the viral footage that you've probably
seen if you've been watching literally any news coverage of
this event. So that podcast can be found on YouTube
and Apple podcasts, just openly hosting content that's that's hosted

(26:15):
by a Christian fascist saying shit about wanting a white America.
Half a million subscribers on YouTube just yep. So this
ecosystem of aspiring right wing content creators is part of
this wave of like twenty something conservative influencers, Like twenty
something that's like age, like they're all like their mid

(26:36):
twenties or something. Um. But these conservative influencers that are
trying to market like old school right wing evangelical bigotry
to young people as like a cool tread counterculture using
mem asthetics. Fundamentally, these people are attention hounds. As they
cover events like these on the ground, you can see
them smirking the entire time, even when while are acting

(27:00):
hostile to them, like the spectacle is the point if
they're not posing an actual, like active threat. What these
far right videographers hate the most is non engagement, right,
so if if there's the ability to do non engagement,
that's what they don't like. The most annoyed these people
get is when they're met with cold, still silence, like

(27:23):
in this case with Taylor Hanson. Can you guys, can
either you guys give me any information on I mean,
how you feel about what took place in here today
and about these counter protesters? What do you guys thinking?
No words? Where do I getting rid of? Why do

(27:46):
you hide your face? Is it because you're committing crimes?
Maybe it crimes against children, So they hide their face
because they're too scared of being identified as pedophiles and groomers. So,
I mean, you see this. This is a constant reoccurrence
with antifa and with left wing anarchist groups, and they'll

(28:06):
hide their face because they think they're all tough and
hard in big groups. But the minute that they're solowed
down and or actually ask questions, they have nothing to
say about their ideology, their beliefs, about the fact that
they are actually the fascist here in this situation. So,
I mean, I'd really like to just get one word
out of you, ma'am, because I mean, you just want
to be so silent, but you're so humiently defending this.

(28:27):
I mean, do you have anything to say one more chance?
They know they're saying ridiculous things like none of which
reads as genuine, Like they know the absurdity of their
own replies. In their podcasts, they talk about how disgusted
they were watching people dance together, but in their own
videos they're smiling, like relaxed, excited about what's going on

(28:51):
and how they'll spend whatever is happening to boost their career.
If they were actually concerned about children, they wouldn't be
having little giggle fests will inside events like the is
right they call it a child grooming event, and they
are not acting like there's anything bad happening, like you
can say like, oh, they're trying to play cool because
they're doing infiltration. Like no, they're just being chill like

(29:12):
they're they're giggling and laughing and looking like look at
this gay people doing these things. I can't wait to
use footage of this to boost my career and misrepresented
to a wider audience. We're in this like post irony
world in many In many aspects, the level of sincerity
does not actually matter, right. All it's necessary is saying

(29:32):
the lines from the script that the audience wants to hear.
It's like algorithmically generated politics. You can talk about how
victims of sexual abuse should themselves be locked up so
they won't go on to abuse of the people in
the future, and even though you look at the camera
at the end and give a knowing smirk, it doesn't
matter because you're just saying the things that are gonna
get traction, and you're saying the things that your misogynist

(29:55):
audience wants to hear. Here's the turning point USA represent
that of Isabelle Riley on the Blaze Media podcast, who
at the end of the clip does indeed give a
very knowing look to camera and a little smirk. Should
we lock up people that I've had sexual Toronto in
their childhood because they tend to become abusers in the future.
Also just a few of their notes on this on

(30:17):
this Blaze Media podcast. So I I listened to this
whole podcast like twice to get to get clips for
my coverage here and just to kind of get a
sense of what they were doing. Um, what one of
the speakers on the on the podcast blamed like the
recent mass shootings on the presence of nearby sex shops. Um.

(30:37):
Some of the videographers who were on the show went
on to Alex Jones's show the next day. You know
it was it was full of pretty I mean, it
was pretty bad homophobic rhetoric, but I mean it's just
so ever present that it's hard to even selectively get
certain clips of it. Like they were doing a lot
of work to to tie mental illness to gainness, saying

(30:59):
that these two things were like intrinsically linked and that
if we just locked up more into mentally ill people
in institutions, we wouldn't have as many gay people. I think.
The other interesting thing that I found to be really
funny in the podcast is that for for their first
ad break, they were selling testosterone boosting supplements. So in this,

(31:22):
in this very like anti trans like podcast, the first
product they were selling was supplements to boost your natural
mail to stosterone. And it's just very funny because like
they're you know, they're talking about how evil a turkey
is and how evil and irreversible it is, and then
they're also selling things that are supposed to boost testosterone levels. Right,

(31:45):
like we are in a post iro any world. It
doesn't like this anyway. Here's here's one more clip from
the podcast, talking about how the bigoted community is so diverse,
and you'll notice to our group was very dime verse,
which I think we made this point yesterday as well.
The bigoted community is so accepting. All you have to
be is also bigoted, and you're allowed to hang out

(32:06):
with us. And so we had this nice mob of
well dressed, handsome young guys to go confront these people
because no one else would. All right, that is that
is enough of that um on onto our final section
of the day, so Texas based journalist Stephen Moncelli reported
that later that same night of the drag event, incidents

(32:28):
that police categorized as terroristic threats of an anti homosexual
nature were reported by bar owners in the same neighborhood.
After the event, the venue and gay bar released a
media statement saying that it's weekly drag brunches are normally
for guests who are twenty one and over, but decided
to host a special Pride drag brunch for all guests,

(32:51):
including those who can't attend other drag shows because of
the drinking age restrictions, and as a part to raise
money for a local l g B t Q youth organization,
adding that it was quote more than happy to open
our doors to celebrate Pride in a family friendly, safe
environment because we believe that everyone should have a space
to be able to celebrate who they are. Unquote. I'm

(33:14):
gonna I'm gonna read another quote from uh I think
this is this is our last quote from Pizza Gate
in every city, quote the street confrontation, to video, to
Fox News to Republican Party. Pipeline took only a little
more than two days to complete. By the next Monday,
Texas Republicans state Representative Brian Slayton cited the Protect Texas

(33:37):
Kids attack on the Dallas event in his announcement to
introduce quote a bill to ban drag shows in the
presence of miners in Texas unquote. A Florida state representative
pledged to follow suit. US representatives Marjorie Taylor Green and
Lauren Bobbert voiced their support. By then, Protect Texas Kids
had already moved on to a new target, an lgbt

(33:59):
Q affirming church that was having a service next to Sunday,
and the group had already announced several more plans to
protest LGBTQ spaces this month. What we are already seeing
this Pride season is alarming, but it did not come
out of nowhere. There's a continuation of campaigns targeting drag
queen story hours. It was fed by Republican attacks on

(34:20):
queer and trans kids in the state legislators across the country,
and it is coordinated by people on the far right
who have names and very specific movement affiliations. As these
threats continue, as they generate yet more videos of confrontations,
they may also give heft to the lie that supporting
lgbt Q youth is grooming and that queer community spaces

(34:44):
are commercial settings for child abuse. No Republican would say
the Pizza Gate shooter had a point, but now simply
based on videos of deliberate conversations with kids at Pride events,
they're happy to co sign unquote. While make Is won't
be able to consider a Slantin's proposal on a statewide
band of kids being around drag performances until the tenth

(35:08):
of January, which is when the next Texas legislative session
kicks off. But if the no Drag around miners lug
it's enacted, that could have many many ramifications depending on enforcement.
One possible scenario is not being allowed to have dray
get Pride, or people under the age of eighteen just
not being allowed to attend Pride all right, because those

(35:31):
if you're having a Pride Pride and the drike performers
and the kids there, now that's a crying You're all
going to jail. Um. You could also just see this
as an attempt by Texas to recriminalize cross dressing, because
by and large, drag shows and events are usually taking
place at twenty one and up bars. Right, generally unless
it's the drag time storytime stuff like drags not around

(35:55):
kids super often, right, and including like very like non
sexual dragons. That's just because of because of how laws
work around bars us. Usually those things don't have much crossover.
But that's not what they're targeting though, right. They just
don't want gay people or men in dresses to be
around kids. Right. If you're seeing cross dressing while a

(36:16):
child is nearby, now that's a drag show. You're going
to jail. And if you think a ban on quote
drag in front of children won't be applied to just
trans people existing in public, then again, I don't know
what to tell you because depending on how they define
what drag is like, they're not limiting this to like
drag shows. They're talking about men in dresses like that.

(36:40):
That's that's what it's going to be. Because they're targeting
library events, they're targeting events in public. It's not it's
not about like drag shows with tickets and stuff. It's
about men wearing dresses or you know, in the in
the case the trans people just existing. Here here's the
Helm of Public Avengers talking about the introduced legislation after

(37:01):
their little propaganda campaign. But wow, the guys, we really
did and I'm not trying to pat ourselves on the back,
but which Brian Slaton with the legislation he's trying to
put through exposing these people. We really did take a
wt in the culture battle. We didn't win the culture warrior.
I don't think I've ever seen such enough I mean
an after effect of an event. I mean in positivity
for us. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen,

(37:23):
you know, a bunch of journalists go and expose an
event like this and then have actual legislation drafted almost
immediately after. I think this is a new sphere that
we're entering in, and I think, I mean, we got
a freaking role with Yeah. I really hope that the
momentum is maintained. To close off I'm gonna I'm gonna
riff off a point made by Stephen Moncelli. At what
point will become clear to those in media who run

(37:46):
quotes or use selective footage from these people that intentionally
obscure the extreme nature of their beliefs. Right, These these
are not like simple economic conservatives. However, if contemporary mainstream
conservatives are willing to accept this sort of politics in
their movement. Then it's the case that mainstream conservatism in
America has become almost indistinguishable from fascism. Much of the

(38:11):
coverage of the protest of this Pride event gives credibility
to the fascist side, basically endorsing their homophobic framing, positioning
the drag performers as somehow inherently sexual for wearing them
outfits and doing dances that are in reality more conservative
than your basic high school cheerleading team. Mainstream media and pundance,

(38:34):
and even some leftist ones quote like quote unquote leftist
pundance fell for the bait and treated kids playing musical
chairs with people in drag and giving the performers cash
from their parents as more inappropriate than the mob of
open fascists hurling verbal abuse at kids and chasing them
down as they head to their cars. So that is

(38:56):
my little right up on what has happened in dal
Us last week. Um, they are the Protect Texas Kids
group is planning more and more events in Texas for
for four Pride months. It's they're they're they're they're targeting
not just events with kids, they're also targeting twenty one

(39:17):
and up drag brunches. They're targeting churches. They're doing the
bit right there doing the thing, and people really fell
for the bait on this one. People really did. Um.
If I've seen all of the videos from the events,
there's nothing inherently sexual about these people's style of dancing,

(39:38):
there's nothing inherently sexual about their outfits. Right, playing with
gender isn't inherently sexual. It's playing with gender. It's these
are those are two different things. Um so, but yeah,
a lot of a lot of a lot of people
fell fell for the bit um. A lot of people
took the bait. We're sharing photos and being like, look this,

(40:00):
how can you defend this? So, like defend what it's
people dancing you would see, you would see it's it's
the dances are not like, they're not about sex, they're
not imitating sex acts. It's just it's fun and chill. Um.
People got really mad at there was there was a

(40:20):
sign at the at the venue that was an innuendo,
and there's a ice cream shop like a block away
from the venue with the very same sign. Um, they're
not actually mad about that, Like, that's not what they're
actually mad about. Because you can walk down the street
and look at so many, so many things. They're innuendoes
if you want, if you watch a Pixar movie right there,

(40:41):
there will there will be anuendos. That's not what they're
talking about. They're talking about gay people being around kids,
and I would like for people to stop falling for debate. Anyway,
I'm we're gonna be doing another episode on the City
of Hate, on the homophobook stuff in Dallas later later
this week, and we're gonna be talking about Steadfast Church.
I'm still writing that episode at the moment, but I'm
planning to put that out later this week as well.

(41:02):
And depending how the Gunderline event went to Idaho and
the various other things, I'm sure we'll be talking more
about this type of stuff as as Pride goes on.
So yeah, Chris, any thoughts on the word vomit? I
just gave it for the past forty minutes, you know,
and mostly just like I don't know, it's it's we.

(41:22):
We We've somehow managed to create a version of like
the like worst at parts of like the queer Bashing
two thousand's, but like even worse, because now there's there's
an even larger media cycle around it, And like, I
think it's worth mentioning that, like one of the ways
that stuff ended was that like a lot of people,

(41:43):
most of them would were like like systons, straight right people,
a bunch of people who weren't queer. We're just like
literally fucked this and started attacking people back. And you know,
you see the working clas neighborhoods right there. There'd be
a period of time where you have these evangelical churches
who are just you know, like openly insiding attacks on
people until they got the ship beat out of them
by a bunch of working class kids. And that's when

(42:05):
that ship stopped. And unless we fucking fight these people,
they're going to keep doing this until people start getting murdered.
And I guess I know a more positiing to end
on would be saying big thank you to everyone who
showed up to physically oppose this. UM. When I was
listening to the Homophobic Avengers podcast, John Doyle said that

(42:26):
there was a few points where he was scared. Um.
There were some people who some some people wearing like
pride bandanas and stuff who had handguns, um, and he
did not John Doyle did not like that. At one
point he talked about how he was heading to his
car and there was in the counter the counter demonstrators

(42:48):
were following him to make sure he was actually going
to leave UM and he saw that some of the
people were carrying UM and he freaked out. He screamed
for police, and he's said that these people were threatening
to shoot him, UM, which is mean, just an attempt
to get police to shoot the Canadas traders, right, like

(43:09):
it's it's it's it's just it's John Doyle screaming. These
people have guns, They're trying to shoot me, right And
even though they were, they weren't even holding their guns.
They were they were they were they were just having guns.
But like, these people can't be scared. And again, no
one was even violent against John Doyle. That was just
people who were who were carrying standing near him UM.

(43:31):
And I just big thank you to everybody who showed
up to try to prevent these fascists from chasing down
these kids, from hurling abuse at these kids. UM. I
would recommend you follow uh the elm Fork John Brown
Gun Club on Twitter. They did a really good job
documenting this UM and then for the stuff in Idaho,

(43:52):
you can follow Redoubt anti fascists. Um, those those would
be the two the two people I say to follow
on Twitter right now. Um for attracting these attacks on
pride in Texas and inside Idaho. Um, I guess that's
that's think. Yeah, yeah, I guess The last thing I
would say is just like it's important to remember that

(44:13):
unlike a lot of the periods in queer history, like
these people are actually a minority, and and like they're
trying to regress, right, like they we've already got to
this point, they're trying to pull it back. Yeah, this
is kind of a new thing, but it's like but yeah,
but it's like listening, like we like on unlike the
fucking seventies, Like we are actually the solent majority here
and if enough people fucking show up, And just like

(44:36):
these people need to be framed as Yeah, I excuse
my I guess semi ablest language here, but like I
deal with my ideal, mental ideal, with mental health issues
of my own, but like, these people need need to
be framed as whack ups, right they these people need
need to be framed as frames. These people need to
be framed as as crazy extremists. They need they need

(44:58):
to be belittled, they need to be put down, They
need to be they need to be viewed as as
as as pathetic as is scared, right like that, that's
the way to do successful proprianda framing, um, because they
need to be they need to stay outside the majority,
right like, they need to be mothered. That's the way
to win this, right that That's the thing they always

(45:18):
That's the thing they always try to do, right, That's
why they always try to frame gay people as being
severely mentally ill a the time, right like that. That
that's all what they try to do. And because enough
of progress has happened, we we just need to defend
the line that is already drawn because like like I
said before, right like, these people are not regular economic conservatives,
right but if mainstream and conservatism is going to be

(45:41):
is cont is going to continue to accept this politics
in their movement, then mainstream conservatism will be the same
as fascism. Right. So you need to point at the
people like John Doyle, point at the people who call
themselves Christian fascists and be so demeaning to them, um
and so making them feel so separate from every part

(46:02):
of regular social life, and because their whole goals to
integrate themselves into the larger conservative movement, integrate themselves into
larger American politics, and that can't happen. Welcome to it

(46:28):
could happen? Here a podcast where you all keep telling
me that we keep doing depressing episodes and we never
do any episodes that aren't dumerism. So today this is
a podcast about how you can find the people who
are making your life really bad and make bad things
happen to them instead. And with me to talk about
how this has been done and also can be done,

(46:49):
is Janet you, who is a tenant organizer with the
Chinatown Community for Equitable Development in l A. And on
here's another tenant organizer and leader at Northside Villa um A. Janis,
thank you so much for joining us. Thank you Yeah,
and it's Hillside VideA not sorry, no way. So this

(47:09):
is what happens when I have m R I brand.
I guess okay, So the first thing I want to
sort of walk through is basically, can can can you
describe the win you all had a couple of weeks ago? Yeah,
I can go ahead and start and then and I
if you want to fill in at all UM. So
a couple of weeks ago we were able to successfully

(47:30):
push our city council to approve alone to acquire Hillside
Viea from slum lord Tom Bots. And so just to
make it clear, this isn't the end of the fight.
We have not fully appropriated tom Bots at the moment,
but this is a huge victory and commitment from the

(47:50):
city to take the building from him. So it was
really really exciting for all of us. You know. I
guess one thing I want to clarify from the outset
is that a lot of the reporting about it seemed
like a lot of the reporting about it was saying
that the city had had voted to use eminent domain
and they have not done that, which is my understanding. Yeah. Yeah,
So to clarify that part two the motion that was

(48:12):
past it does include that eminent domain will be used
if the landlord does not willingly sell, which he most
likely will not of course, yeah exactly, so he's not
going to will and he sell his building. It does
include that it will be used and as part of
the pathway, um, but it does not specifically past the

(48:35):
eminent domain piece, so that will be something that we
will probably have to organize around. Um. Yeah, and if
I'm understanding correctly, then understand that that requires a second vote,
right M yeah, yeah, but I guess okay, first off, also, congratulations,
this rules us really exciting. Um yeah, And I guess

(48:58):
the second thing I wanted to ask about was how
how this organizing process started and how are you able
to do this because this is a this is a
rare massive w that yeah mm hmm. Yeah, so this
has been a three year struggle, um, and I can
give a little bit of context around how how it

(49:20):
got started and then Mediana you can take it from there. UM.
So basically, Hillside Via is part of a massive amount
of buildings that were built in the eighties, UM using
different kinds of federal and state subsidies. UM. And basically yeah,
it was UM subsidies that were used to fund private

(49:42):
developers to keep buildings affordable for a temporary period of time,
so using affordable housing covenants. And so Hillside covenant expired
in twenty nineteen after thirty years of being kept affordable
for the tenants. And as soon as that happened, UM,

(50:03):
the landlord of course tried to increase the rent to
market rate, So folks were receiving up to two rent increases.
Mm hmm yeah, so you know to actually like talk
about what those numbers are. People who are paying eight
hundred dollars for rent were now being asked to pay liked.
So that's a de facto eviction, right, And um, as

(50:26):
soon as that happened, there's actually this like origin story
that I really love is that one of our tenant leaders, Leslie,
who's uh bilingual like Spanish and English speaker, she came
up to a tenant who is a modelingual Cantonese speaker,
held up one of the rent increases, ripped it to shreds,
and the Benson, our Cantonese tenant leader, just said okay.

(50:53):
And that's like one of the origin stories that really
just shows like how um yeah, like opposite and all
our tenants were from the beginning. Um. And then what
happened was that another tenant leader, Louisa, who actually has
since passed away due to COVID, she actually called all
the news stations in l A just blew this the

(51:13):
funk up and um yeah, and then that's how organizers
kind of got involved and maybe and I you can
share your personal experience of going through all of this. Yeah,
for sure. UM so about right a little before the
association was started at Hillside Villa, UM, we had been
living here for about seven years and at that time,

(51:38):
UM So, I was working with my mom at the time,
and we went out um in the morning for work.
We came back around the afternoon, UM to find that
we couldn't get into our apartment. Our keys were actually um,
they weren't going into the locks. So we went to

(52:01):
the manager's office and asked them, like why our key
wasn't working. So they sent management up to our our
floor and UM they told us that we had been
evicted and that we couldn't like go back and yeah,
that we couldn't go back into our apartment. UM. So
it's just just within that one that one morning, you know,

(52:25):
our whole pretty much our whole life was like flipped
upside down. UM. They told us that they actually worked
unfortunately with them, and I think this is a very
common UM thing, is that UM landlords UM work directly
with the Sheriff's department. So the sheriff department came and

(52:46):
switched out our lock. UM. So we were pretty much uprooted. UM.
That day, UM, we had to figure out like what
to do. UM, we were all set brated, like that day,
we all, you know, my sister went to her friend's house,
my mom had to go rent a hotel to stay

(53:07):
with UM her husband, and then I went to my
partner's house. So that lasted about two to three days.
And in those two to three days, we were personally.
I started looking up tenant laws, tenant rights, and we
found thanks to to a friend, UM, she recommended the

(53:30):
Eviction Defense Network, who provides UM free lawyers for UM
tenants facing UM eviction in l A. So they heard
us up with a lawyer and UM they found that UM,
the eviction had actually been an illegal eviction. And then
we all we also had like the paperwork to show
that that it was an illegal eviction. So UM we

(53:54):
threatened to sue UM the landlord and because of that,
he dropped the case and us back in to our
apartment after like three or four days or something like
that from what I can remember, UM, but in those
days it was it was really enraging obviously, like who

(54:15):
wouldn't be like super piste off at this, like it
would boil your blood you know, and and it did. UM.
And that's one of the things that like, UM kind
of made me um or very much so more involved
in like tenant rights and and UM organizing. UM. And

(54:41):
then also like just to throw this in a little
more detail, UM, when we were locked out, UM, they
actually locked our animals in in c the apartment, so
we couldn't even get our dogs right away. Oh my god,
did they like were they okay? Like did you were
able to like was anyone feeding them? Like they weren't
there all the three days I think we were. We

(55:02):
had to like really like push for them to open
up the apartment so that we can get them, like
the day of UM. But then like we couldn't just
like grab all our things, UM, including like medication that
was like for my mom's husband who has diabetes and whatnot.

(55:24):
So I think that was like the first time we
acted as a family to like not let um someone
pretty much bully and harass us into a forced eviction
that was completely illegal. UM. And that's within that time.

(55:46):
It was also happening to all the tenants around us.
I mean there was the word was going all over
the apartment. I mean you you could see management was
doing a cash for keys um, which is also an
illegal tactic for UM landlords to do. And UM they
were trying Yeah, UM, so cash for keys UM. It's

(56:11):
probably going to be like a rough definition of what
it is, but it's when UM, when a landlord offers
a certain amount of money in order for you to
give up your apartment UM. And this could be a
couple of thousand, UM, ten thousand, twenty thousand, sometimes way

(56:31):
less than that. UM. So that was a tactic that
he was trying to use to evict people from our
apartment so that he could remodel and then UM move
it up to like market rate and get pretty much
all of our community out of this apartment, which was
an affordable apartment. UM. It worked for a lot of

(56:52):
some tenants did end up doing that. A lot of
people didn't want to fight back UM, but the one
that did UM started the association UM. And there's also
a lot of like language barriers with the tenants UM,
some that only spoke Spanish and didn't understand what was happening.

(57:14):
They were trying to get people to sign contracts UM
for for the increase of the rent UM. Yeah. So
that was my experience here to begin with um and
and why we decided to fight back and not allow
this to to happen to our family, but also like

(57:37):
our community here who were also experiencing the same thing.
You know, it wasn't just an ice. I say this
all the time. It felt like an isolated situation at
the time, but it on the broader perspective, it was
not an isolated thing. And that's what brought our community together.
That's a really powerful being, doably enraging. And yeah, there's

(58:02):
a lot of really interesting things they're like, I mean, one, obviously,
the cops doing like the sheriff's like helping them do
the illegal eviction is just incredibly on the nose. And
the one thing I think is really interesting about the
way that like I mean, okay, the the way the
law only exists for rich people if you can like

(58:23):
throw it into their faces and make it embarrassing enough
that like the state has to enforce it. So I
read a lot of media coverage of this, and not
a single person who who covered the story that that
that I saw from these articles mentioned that the that
cash for keys is illegal a lot because a lot
of the articles mentioned it, but they don't they don't.
They don't mention that like you legally can't do this,

(58:45):
and so yeah, I think that's a that that that's
I don't know, I guess it goes to show that
like even among the press, like whose job it is
to do this, there's there's such like little there's such
a little knowledge of what what what practices aren't and
are and aren't allowed, and that Yeah, I mean I

(59:05):
think as you're talking about like that, that that that's one
of the they're they're relying like in order to do this,
suff landlords are like, yeah, that they're they're relying on
people not knowing the rights to relying on being able
to trick people. They're relying on just straight up handing
people stuff they can't read and forcing them to sign it,
which I don't know that my brain is weird, But

(59:26):
like the thing that reminds me of is like that
the Spanish conquistadors showing up and then really like ask
asking people to convert to Christianity in Spanish language they
didn't speak, and then shooting them when they didn't do it.
It's like, yeah, that's a fitting analogy. Honestly. Yeah, it's
a new form of colonization and one that we're you know, resisting. Yeah,

(59:50):
yea that that was one of the other things I
wanted to talk about in terms of resisting this kind
of stuff is Yeah, what what was it like dealing
with the kind of anguage barriers that you get here?
What you have? I don't know, Like, I mean, you've
mentioned like at least three languages that people are speaking.
There's probably more because that's just that's how working class
communities work. Mm hmm. Yeah. I feel like that's been

(01:00:13):
such a central part of our fight, is language justice
and the tenant meetings that we've had every single week
for the past three years. Um, so that's like about
a hundred and fifteen meetings. Every single one of them
has included some form of translation. Um. So yeah, we've
had a lot of support from folks from Union Davos organizers.

(01:00:38):
There have gear where we can do like simultaneous translation. Yeah.
So if you go to one of our meetings, it's
folks who, um, if they're modelingual Spanish or English speakers,
they're having a headset on where we then have someone
who's offering simultaneous translation. Um. And then since we have

(01:00:59):
few Cantonese or Mandarin speakers will also have organizers on
the side doing UM consecutive translation for them. So our
meetings are run and like usually three if not more
languages M and I guess, I guess. It leads into
another question that I had, which was, so, how how
did I think from my understanding this on one of

(01:01:22):
the parts of the story is like, is people who
people who have been doing established tenant organizing like getting
getting involved with the struggle, And I wanted to, I guess,
talk about how that happens. And yeah, yeah, yeah, So
I think because that original tenant, Louisa like really blew

(01:01:43):
this story up. UM different orbs heard about it, and
eventually UM LAT too, so the l A Tenants Union
and then c c D UM, the organ that I'm in,
we heard about it and got involved long term. And
even with that, like I'm a relatively new organizer, I
only started volunteering with CCD a couple of years ago,

(01:02:06):
so it's really been like one of my first UM
site fights we like to call them. But there are
other folks who have had more a bit more experience
with different buildings in l A as well. But I
think what's important to emphasize is that this fight has
really been tenant lead um, and even though we have
like these kind of yeah outside organizers, it's always been

(01:02:31):
the tenants demands and the tenants interests first. Yeah. It
seems I mean, you know, from from your descriptionships like
people showing up a translation equipment. Yeah, it seems like
a really good way to do this kind of stuff,
which is you show up and you give help to people,
but it's it's you know, it's it's them doing the organizing,
which I don't know, reminds me a lot of like,

(01:02:53):
I mean, my experiences in union organizing stuff, which is like, yeah,
I know, it's it's some Yeah, like you have people
who experience with stuff and they come in and their
job is to help the people who are actually trying
to organize the place. Mm hmm yeah exactly exactly, the
people who are like actually directly impacted. Um. Yeah. I

(01:03:14):
feel like our role has really just been facilitating, offering
like the technical support, um more of that stuff. But
I think you can really talk about how so much
of this fight has really been building the tenant's power
and becoming more and more like militant um and radical
and just the tenants like yeah, really most definitely feeling

(01:03:35):
their own fire. Yeah. So we are like super duper
grateful for the UM organizers that have come out for
the last three years or however long UM they've decided
to or have joined the association to help UM and

(01:03:56):
a lot of the tenants always always like give things
and they're super appreciative or the organizers, But sometimes they
don't give themselves the credit either. They think it's only
like they think the organizers, which is obviously like super
important and we're super grateful, but they don't realize that

(01:04:19):
they're a huge part of of the fight. UM. For example, UM,
actually my mom UH has been a part of the
association for longer than I have. UM. I've only been
organizing for about UM well not only UM a year
and a half, but she's actually been in the organization

(01:04:43):
for three years UM because not only because she needed
the support and the organizers really helped to UM to
guide her to like learn to use her voice for
UM for the outcome that we all want to see. UM.

(01:05:07):
And a lot of the tenants are UM are women,
their elders, you know, their generation elders, so UM, they're
very strong people they UM a lot of like the
elder like UM like I guess Latina, I don't know

(01:05:30):
how I feel about that term. But UM, you know,
women UM are our natural leaders, and with the help
of the organizers, UM, they really just helped to to
help them too, you know, use their voice and to

(01:05:50):
empower them to to do what they can naturally do,
which is speak up and ask for what they want. So, yeah,
my mom is learned over the last three years how
to talk in front of politicians, how to UM communicate
the process and the struggle that we've all been enduring,

(01:06:13):
but to also demand what we rightfully deserve, which is housing,
safe housing, and for politicians to do their job, which
is to represent as they should be the community that
they are working for and not and you know, not
to beg them to do things, but to demand that

(01:06:36):
um they take action in the way that we have
taken action UM, much more than than any politician has
in the last three years. UM. It was up to
the tenants and it still is and thanks to them
we have gotten as far as we have. That That
was that was yeah, really well said. I want to

(01:06:58):
I guess shift a little bit into talking about like
what specifically y'all were doing because I guess I guess
both that is like what how how how how did
you actually do this? And then how can other people
sort of like how can other people replicate it? Mm hmm, yeah,
I don't know that we necessarily have like a model,

(01:07:21):
UM that other people can apply, because I think reflecting
about this whole fight, it was such a like just
dynamic campaign where at first when it started, UM folks
war kind of using more you know, like legal tactics,
just like looking for errors in UM the rent increases

(01:07:42):
that bots would hand out and this would you know,
lead to UM being able to stall the rent hikes
for months at a time. UM. But then that obviously
wasn't enough, so then people started escalating and UM eventually
like putting pressure to get this on the radar of
our districts, like city council person Gil Cudeo, And eventually,

(01:08:06):
through that, UM they were able to get Cudeo to
make a deal with the landlord to extend the covenant
UM and have his clan spe his debt beat forgiven. UM.
But the landlord just like renegged on that deal, right,
So yeah, yeah, so then UM, I think it's through

(01:08:26):
those experiences that the tenants really learned like Okay, it's
like this politician is not going to save us. Um.
So then I think our fight became more and more militant,
so just directly going to the landlords Malibu Villa and
shouting like fuck you, and you know, just like yeah,

(01:08:47):
just like those direct confrontations. And then even Sidio himself
UM has not been you know, this friendly relationship where
we're thanking him for putting our putting our story into
city council. It's been extremely confrontational and oppositional the entire time.
And I think thinking about what got us this recent

(01:09:09):
when it was um as it has been this whole
fight direct action, because we ended up the first day
that city Council opened up to the public again, a
group of us went in kind of like slid our
way through security and went to his office and surprisingly
he opened the door um and it was him and

(01:09:31):
not a staffer, and of course he saw it was us,
so he immediately tried to close the door, and one
of our amazing tenant leaders, Rosario, who's yeah, this elder
um Latino woman, she stuck her foot in the door
and refused to let him close it. Yeah, and because

(01:09:52):
of that, we were able to just like directly confront
him like, where the funk have you been? It's been
three years, um, and you haven't seen this through like
you said you were going to. And we got all that,
you know, UM, recorded video evidence of him UM just yeah,
fumbling around, and he sent the cops on us of course. UM.

(01:10:15):
And Yeah, I think that was such a great action
because all of the we call them like the muhera,
so the Latino women who have been leading the fight,
they were just so defiant towards the cops. UM, not
scared at all, and just you know, standing their ground
and that they're just defending you know, they're human right
to housing. UM. And a week after that confrontational action,

(01:10:38):
we got this, UM, this city council motion passed. So,
you know, I think from our experience trying to go
through the NXT way and like you know, doing traditional lobbying,
trying to schedule meetings and like texting, calling all of that,
things didn't happen for years. And then we did more

(01:11:01):
and more militant actions, things happened really quickly. Yeah. Another
thing I'd like to add on to that, UM that
I actually heard was something that not a lot of
UM other associations UM that are fighting for their housing
UM do often was UM to bring the community together, UM.

(01:11:23):
And like I mean really coming together. I mean we're
meeting every week for the last three years, and even
during the pandemic, UM we weren't in person. We actually
were on zoom for a really long time. UM. And
that's one of the biggest things, was UM the consistency
that we all pushed through even during the pandemic. UM

(01:11:46):
from the beginning was meeting every single week, and some
other UM organizers also meet more than once a week.
You know, we're meeting multiple times a week too, kind
of talk over like the fine detail of of you know,
the next steps UM. But definitely consistency has been one

(01:12:07):
of the biggest things in the last three years that
has gotten us where we are today. Yeah, that that
makes a lot of sense. It's I know, I keep
going back to this because this is the sort of
I mean, I guess I did some tenant organizing, but UM,
this is the thing that I know now. Was like, yeah,
it reminds me a lot of just like the way

(01:12:28):
the way the union campaigns that work run of just
you have to keep you have you have to keep
getting people together to do the thing. Yeah, most definitely. Yeah.
I don't know have you all seen like like how
how did that change, like your relationship with just like
the other people in the building. I'll give you an

(01:12:49):
example from like my mom. I think for her it's
been changed a little more drastically than it has for
me because a lot of the tenants here a little older. UM.
So before the association was started, she she's kind of
like a person that keeps to herself a lot, you know. Um,

(01:13:11):
but since that, um, since the association, she's actually made
like so many friends here now, like and she's actually
made like a best friend here, um, one of our neighbors.
And they like, yes, and they've become like really good friends. Um.
They even go, you know, have breakfast together, um like

(01:13:33):
almost multiple times a week. Um. The other day I
saw them, Like I saw my mom's best friend Adelita
or Adela, um giving her some sugar, and I was
like I should have gotten a picture of that, Like
that's you know, that's so cute, like posted it on

(01:13:54):
like Instagram so that you know, like everyone knows like
what it looks like when community comes together. It's it's
the small things like that. UM. But I think it
has UM made some you know who made us gain
like trust with UM the neighbors that have been consistent

(01:14:15):
UM and see the same UM kind of vision that
we have to keep this building affordable. UM. And yeah,
not everyone, not all the tenants here have been supportive
of our fight. Some you know, participated for a few

(01:14:39):
months and then immediately gave up. UM. But one of
the things that UM that my family has done is
to keep fighting UM, even for the ones that don't
want to show up or don't want to do the work,
which is how to work. UM. That we're not just

(01:15:04):
doing it for ourselves, but we're doing it for for everyone,
whether they're supportive or not. You know, this is going
to benefit them and it's going to benefit the whole
community and hopefully the city, the whole city in the future.
I don't know, It's something I've definitely seen with organizing,

(01:15:25):
is that like, yeah, just living in this world can
be really isolating and I don't know, like I've lived
in a lot of places where it's just like, yeah,
like I have no idea who any like literally who
anyone who lives around me is like like there's still
they'll they'll be like the one person you see at
three in the morning coming back to their apartment and
it's like, oh, I vaguely remember this person, but like, yeah,

(01:15:48):
like I think, I don't know, just this this being
something that just on a broad level, not just about
like I mean, you know, is it like this is
something that's a solution to both like an immediate fight
and then also this sort of like broader just I

(01:16:09):
don't know, like Nightmaror's isolation that everyone's everyone like is
a huge part of a lot of our lives. Now,
I don't know. That's just struck me. I guess yeah, yeah,
I feel like this just makes me think of UM.
To celebrate the recent win, we had this party at

(01:16:30):
Hillside UM just last week, and you know, it was
like Pollock style. Everyone brought their own food. UM. Someone
had a connection with like a Mariachi van, so we
had mariachi playing. UM. One of the tenants owns a
food truck and just wanted to cook for the community.
So she's whipping up these like amazing tacos and bag

(01:16:51):
enough hot dogs. And then someone had brought this pinata
of the landlord and people were just like talking just
showing it. Like one of the tenants he was just
like fist fighting it and cracking it open. The kids
were just like grabbing as much candy as they could
from this broken tom Bots Panada, and and like, I

(01:17:14):
feel like that was just like exemplifies the sense of
community that there is now Hillside. And I think, as
Anna was talking about, those personal connections have been so
key to keeping this fight going for three years because
it's hard. It's so hard to keep showing up, and
it's those personal connections that keep you coming. Yeah, most definitely,

(01:17:38):
it's almost like a support system that um, like my
mom and like some of the neighbors have created, like
Alta or one of our second generation tenants, Leslie, you know,
she's they can confide with one another, they can vent

(01:17:59):
with one another, and um yeah yeah, so um, they've
definitely like created strong bonds, and I think that's one
of the reasons why they keep showing up. You know,
it's it's women supporting women, and um, you know, they're
the protectors of the family, they're the nurturers and that's

(01:18:24):
what my mom taught me. So that's why definitely, one
of the reasons why I continue to fight, um for
Hillside to keep the housing not only for my mom
because I'm like her protector and she's mine, but we're
also like here to protect the community from from harassment

(01:18:45):
or from literal bowling. Yeah. So I guess looking forward, Um,
I think at the beginning interview, you said, yeah, it
looks like there's going to be another fight over sort
of forcing forcing the city to actually use eminent domain. Um. Yeah,

(01:19:08):
do you have Well, okay, I don't know if you
can talk about your plans for that. Yeah. I guess
two things. One if if if people want to support
what y'all are doing and you know, put pressure on
the city, what are the best ways for them to
do that? Mm hmmm, Um. Yeah, I think just following

(01:19:32):
our our socials and staying updated about the fight and
any action items that we put out is a great
way to support and just amplifying the struggle. Um. Yeah.
In terms of our specific strategy for holding the city accountable, Um,
we actually haven't haven't gotten super into the weeds of

(01:19:55):
it yet because we are just taking a break for
a while to yeah, you know, you know, yeah, to
celebrate sound this one and um yeah, kind of have
folks get perspective. I think our our view is that
because the city has now approved the funds to make
this happen, that um yeah, that there shouldn't be any

(01:20:20):
barriers to them seeing it completely through. Um yeah, I
think we can. We can maybe um apprehends some like
ideological barriers because actually using eminent domainion to expropriate a
landlord is not something that's been done before. Um. But yeah,

(01:20:40):
we'll see what happens. Yeah. I mean, look, if if
if they can displace tennants with eminent domain, they can,
they can they can use it to keep tenants in
their homes, like exactly. I guess the other question I
have with that is what is okay? So like say,
like I don't know, a miracle occurs and like you're
and Lord is visited by like three ghosts at night

(01:21:03):
who like show him increasingly horrible features, and he decides
to sell it to the city. What is that? Like?
What is the city owning the building? Look like? Mm hmmm, Yeah.
I can start with that and then and I can
chime in. But I think the vision of the tenants
has always been collective stewardship and tenant ownership of the building. UM.

(01:21:28):
So the fight definitely does not stop at the city
um taking the building, but there will also be a
push for actual tenant stewardship of the building too. Yeah.
And I think the exact structures of that UM aren't
aren't so clear yet. There's still a lot of like
discussions and work to be done around that. UM. But yeah,

(01:21:49):
and the conversations that we've had with folks from the
Housing Authority, which is going to be the agency that's
actually purchasing the building. UM, they have expressed open us
too to us actually um. Yeah, having another nonprofit takeover
and eventually building towards like a co op kind of structure,
that would be really cool. Yeah, I know, I know,

(01:22:11):
I've heard a lot of talk among well I know,
I think some people have don'e in Detroit about things
the community land trusts as as a way to um yeah,
I have tenants actually like control their buildings. Yeah. Yeah,
that's definitely been part of the discussion. Yeah, that's that's awesome,
because yeah, this is a much better solution than the

(01:22:33):
state is now your landlord exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so that's
the Yeah, that's that's the what we hope for in
the future. Um, like Jane said, we still have a
lot to work through, and this isn't done obviously. We wouldn't,
like you said, want the state to be landlords here,

(01:22:55):
they wouldn't be the best landlords. But yeah, um yeah,
we we are, like Janna said, taking a pause and
we will reconvene UM two plan out future steps to take.

(01:23:16):
But this was a really really great win. Um. It
was such a relief off of so many people, um
back and something we've been fighting for over three three
and a half years now. UM, so it's good to

(01:23:37):
finally get somewhat of positive news. And it's been such
an emotional journey for the last three years. Um. I
mean that doesn't even justify how how much of an
emotional roller coaster it has been for a lot of
these tenants or for a lot of our families here. Um.

(01:23:58):
When we got the news, um, everyone broke out in
tears and joy and and and everyone was so surprised.
I mean I couldn't help myself but to like cry
and smile and ugly cry some more for like the

(01:24:19):
whole day. Just yeah, um yeah, we're hoping for um,
for the process to be um, somewhat smoother. Um now
that that we've done a a large portion of the fight. Um,
but yeah, we still we were still at the tail

(01:24:41):
end things. Yeah. So where where where can people find
find deals, organizations and groups and stuff to go follow
them or help them in places? Um, for CCD, which
does post a lot of Hillside um content, I think
all of our socials are just at c C D,
l A. And then for Hillside, I think, um, there's

(01:25:07):
different handles for all the different different platforms unfortunately, but
if folks just look up hill SIDEVA or Hillside Tenants,
they should be able to find it. And if if
you just send me the social media handles, you can
put them in the description. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well,
thank thank you both so much for so much for

(01:25:28):
talking to us. This was this was awesome. I'm so
happy for you. Great, thank you. Yeah, thanks for thanks
for listening. Yeah, this has been huge. Yeah, and I
guess for everyone out there, you two can take to
start taking back your cities. And yeah, with with with
with with any luck and with a lot of struggle.

(01:25:49):
This is this is gonna this is gonna be the
first of Betty and Yeah, fuck landlords, we can beat them.
Hell yeah, flcome, we got this communities first, Landlord ng
is not a job. We're here to take it back. Yeah.

(01:26:25):
Oh boy, it could happen here the podcast about it
and and happening and could Chris take us away? I'm
taking it away, Oh boy, I think I promised to Um.
So uh, this is this has been a fun week

(01:26:47):
so far. We're all kind of sitting through that in
that awkward period where we know the Supreme Court is
about to do some ship with Roe v. Wade and
that that's gonna light a whole bunch of stuff on fire. Um.
And so we're all waiting for that, and we're all
waiting for the big Pride Month demonstrations in the wake
of a shipload of um threats from the right. Uh.

(01:27:12):
And kind of in that awkward interstital period, we got
this this little burst this weekend of of of happiness,
of just of pure joy. Um. So obviously we had
covered a little earlier the Gundaleine rally and Quarterline, Idaho,
which was a right wing kind of counter rally to
quarter Aline's regular local pride Um rally. Uh. And you

(01:27:37):
know it was a an event that the the the
the p R four ahead of time was deeply unsettling,
or a lot of like threats and talk about you know,
let the fight start here and all that stuff. A
lot of people were worried about a massacre, including us,
because when you have a bunch of right wingers saying
that anyone queer is grooming kids and it's time to
shoot them, it's reasonable to be worried about a massacre. Um. Now,

(01:27:59):
what we did see on the day, and this is
something you'll note a lot of times when you get
the events where there's a lot of threats around them,
that's what kind of provokes enough attention, um and enough
of a state response that that it's not where people
try to ship. You know, it's often kind of at
the edges of events or the events that uh, people

(01:28:23):
don't take seriously enough ahead of time that like things
go to ship. You know. Charlottesville would be a great
example because prior to Charlottesville, there was a lot of
like discussion about how big it was going to be
in the city, you know, did not really take it seriously.
There were a number of and this is one of
the things that's frustrating the fucking mayor of Charlotte'sville. Is
after what happened in Quarterline and stuff has been like

(01:28:45):
on the news talking to people about how to how
to avoid demonstrations going badly and ship which like that.
You know, he received a lot of warnings from anti
fascists about how many people with you know, pending violent
charges were going to be at Unite the Right in
Charlottesville and how many threats were going on. It was
kind of ignored and as a result it got really
fucking ugly because you know, you had smaller numbers is

(01:29:11):
on the on the first night, you know, when people
got surrounded by that torchlit mob, you had smaller numbers
of anti fascists, um outnumbered by fascists and no real
counter to them until you know the next day, and
obviously that's the day that that that James Alex Fields
drove a car into a crowd um and that kind
of starts our story today because the thing that was

(01:29:32):
the bright ray of sunlight in in the midst of
what has been a pretty rough couple of weeks news wise,
was thirty one members of the hate group Patriot Front
getting arrested in Quarterlaine, Idaho, jammed into the back of
a U haul UM and the story of Patriot Front
and the story of how that that beautiful moment happened.
UM starts in Charlottesville in two seventeen. Actually it starts

(01:29:56):
significantly before that in Texas. But uh, the group that
becomes Patriot Front starts as a group called Vanguard America UM.
And Vanguard America is one of the groups that is
responsible for kind of carrying out the the Unite the
Right rally. And this is this is a different group
than American Vanguard. Right. Uh wait, let my double check here,

(01:30:19):
because sorry, they all use such similar names. UM. If
I'm not mistaken, there is an American Vanguard. UM. There's
also the American Vanguard Corporation. Uh no, no, no, I
think it's UM. American Guard. American Guard is the group
that UM is a kind of more coming out of

(01:30:41):
the KKK S sphere orbit because some of them are
former clansmen. That's another story for another day. UM. So
you've got Vanguard America. They're one of the group's kind
of behind bringing a lot of people, a lot of fascists,
shouldn't call them people to UM Charlottesville. In two thousand
and seventeen, James Alex Field is marching with them and
carrying one of their shields. Earlier in the day before

(01:31:02):
he carries out his car attack, and as a result
of the bad press that him murdering a woman in
and maiming a bunch of people with his car in
a terrorist attack brings down um, the leader of Vanguard America,
Thomas Rousseau uh splits off like kind of ins Vanguard
America and spins it off into Patriot Front, which is

(01:31:25):
less explicitly just as fascist, but less branded as fascist,
more kind of branded in Americana. They all of their
pr and all of their like images look like rejected
stills from a BioShock game. Yeah, it's it's it's pretty amazing.
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, these are the guys are like that.

(01:31:46):
There there's a video of them like talking like like
like they're literally they go like on camera it's like,
oh yeah, we're doing America stuff. We don't we're not
hitler people. And then like the build the boat with
the camera turns off there like oh good, the cameras off.
We can say say kale now, yeah, it's it's great.
I mean, Van Guard America's logo was literally like an
eagle carrying a bundle of fascis. Yeah, they're not not subtle. Um.

(01:32:11):
And I should say Van Guard America I think was
actually founded by another guy in in California, but um,
Thomas Rousseau was pretty quickly prominence in there, and he
splinters off into into Patriot Front. I need to be
specific because there's people listening who will yell at me
for getting that wrong. Um. So for the purpose of

(01:32:32):
of what we're talking about today, we should chat about
Thomas Rousseau UM before we get into some of the
funnier stuff, because he's got a really interesting background for
a fascist. So in the last couple of years since
Patriot Front became a thing, Rousseau has held a number
of kind of like flash demonstrations where they'll get a
few dozen Patriot Front guys together and they'll march around

(01:32:52):
in their fucking gators and their their little fascist uniforms
that are like, um, I don't know, they look like
country club Nazis is like the way they prefer to dress. Um.
And they'll carry their shields and they'll you know, film
propaganda videos. Most of what they do is hand out
like put out stickers, put out other kinds of propaganda

(01:33:14):
to the extent that like they are probably the primary
national purveyors of of Nazi propaganda um in like the
real world, like in terms of stuff that actually gets
put out where people can see it. Um. There I've
found like stickers from them and just like random places
in Chicago. Yeah, yeah, I've seen a couple of them.

(01:33:36):
Like two nineteen, Patriot Front was and this is the
A d l s estimates, so they're not the most
accurate they could be, but also no one else is
really keeping track of this, so I'll say they're probably
broadly correct. UM. The in two thousand nineteen, the A
d L listed Patriot Front is responsible for eight percent
of all propaganda incidents nationally of like Nazi type groups UM.

(01:33:58):
And then in a number doubled um and they were
responsible for like ninety plus. I think sometimes you'll hear
ninety two percent of like the Nazi propaganda distributed nationwide. UM.
Their propaganda efforts are most active in Texas, Washington, California, Massachusetts,
New York, and Virginia. UM. And it's one of those things,

(01:34:19):
this is not the goal with the propaganda is for
them to be seen as very large and influential. The
way that they managed to do it is that Patriot
Front is effectively like a key para social relationship for
most of the people in it. Right. It's a series
of like chats and and and discords and whatnot, and
these people like come to feel like it's their community.

(01:34:42):
And one of the things were so did that was
very smart is if you want to stay a member
of Patriot Front, you will get banned and purged from
the organization if you are not regularly posting proof that
you're active in the real world. And the easiest way
to do that is by putting up stickers. Right. So
that's not only how they fund some of their operations
because you know their guys are buying stickers, but um,

(01:35:03):
that's how you keep people engaged. If you want to
like stay in the clubhouse with your friends, you have
to go put up stickers every couple of weeks or
every so often. And you know, when you have a
couple of hundred people doing that. Stickers are not that expensive.
You can get a lot of propaganda out that way.
And so Rousseau has been very successful in in that
end of things. So let's chat about him a little bit.

(01:35:24):
He is was born in nine so he's twenty four
ish right now. Um, he grew up where I did.
He comes from the suburbs of Dallas, the metroplex, specifically Copel.
And if you're not if you don't know much about
the d f W suburbs, So Dallas sizeable city about
four million people last I checked. Um, and then you've

(01:35:45):
got these these suburbs that are millions more and it's
it's effectively DFW is kind of this megalopolis, Like it's
this massive, sprawling city, larger than several states, and it's
geographical area. At some point in the future, assuming growth
can tenues, you're going to see like all of the
big cities in Texas merge and when their metro plexus
start to mingle. Um. But these these these Texas suburbs

(01:36:09):
are all laid out very orderly in grids. They were
all they're all like planned communities. Um. And in the
area around like this particular chunk around Dallas, they're all
pretty wealthy. And of these wealthy suburbs, Coppel is like
where the money money is. Like like coming up in Planoh,

(01:36:30):
which is was a fairly well off suburb, we would
like the Coppell kids were like the rich kids, right
Like when we would compete against them in football and
speech debate like that, you'd feel like, yeah, we're like
funking with the rich kids. Let's get them. So this
is this is this is this is like this is
like this is like uh dellas fort worst like Evanston.
I assume so yes, um. And when we would like

(01:36:53):
obviously like yeah they were the rich kids, they were
also like the kids I would often get drugs from
when I was like nineteen because they had like they
had they had good drugs, you know. UM. So the
other thing you should know about and Coppell is where
you know, um our boy Thomas Rousseau grows up in
the early two thousands, UM and in fact his senior
year is the year of the election. UM. And another

(01:37:16):
thing you should know about Kapel is that, like all
the Dallas metroplex, it's incredibly diverse. And it's also, I
should know, incredibly diverse in a specific way. It's not
hugely economically diverse, UM, but it is has a massive
population of people from Southeast Asia, UM, from India, from Vietnam,

(01:37:37):
from China, um and from Japan UM. And the You
can kind of see that if you look at so
Thomas Rousseau as a kid works for the Coppel High
school newspaper, the Sidekick, And if you if you go
to the Sidekicks website today and if you look at
its writers and its editorial staff, it is a bunch
of kids from Southeast Asia. Now, Thomas so is extremely white, um,

(01:38:02):
and he has, you know, his big things like replacement theory.
He's been yelling about this for a very long time, UM,
and so one kind of assumes this is probably where
he started feeling that. Um. Although it's interesting if you
look up, like one of the earliest articles, the SPLC
has a pretty pretty good profile on him and back
kind of at the start of UM. In February, he wrote,

(01:38:27):
write this article about the school's diversity club, which is
just a pretty normal you would not there's no signs
in there. Not that I saw that, like he's going
to be a Nazi in about a year. Like, it's
just it's how like basically anybody who was writing a
straight piece of reporting on a diversity club would write it.
You know, It's not like there's no signs in that article. Yeah,

(01:38:48):
it's just because like the next article he writes is
like completely off the rails. Yeah, like it's it's Trumps
at that point, because you know, February, Trump is still
like I don't know, he's definitely becoming the front runner,
but it's not clear what's going to happen yet. And
by the time he writes his next article a couple

(01:39:08):
in like October, it's a full on trumpy. Yeah. He's like,
I mean, he's like but by that point, like he
started his great replacement stuff. He started, like, I mean,
he's doing that kind of like the the white working
class has been like oppressed for too long and people

(01:39:28):
keep calling them bracest and so they're voting for Trump
now because they're simultaneously poor. But also like, but but
I think it's interesting. It's like, you know, it's it's
an interesting sign of that kind of like what actually
generates that kind of right wing populism because it's like,
so you have you have someone who's like going fascist
really quickly writing this, and it's like, oh, where is

(01:39:50):
he from? A wait, he's like just from like the
incredible rich kid place. It's like it's it's it's it's
it's fun he's doing Yeah, he's he's doing this sort
of fascist version of the like working class whispering that yeah,
kind of like rich Pundit's doing. And it's one of

(01:40:10):
the things the kind of black box mysteries with Rousseau
that I haven't seen a great is like when when
does the actual switch flip in his head? Like when
he writes that article about the school diversity club. Is
he already a fascist um or is he one of
these people who like is kind of conservative and gets
super radicalized by Trump because he had, you see throughout

(01:40:31):
kind of because I get the feeling from him that
he was always kind of like the conservative kid in
his school paper in school media, and like you get
you see, like he's writing, like the month after that
diversity club article, he writes h an article about campus
carry and is like supporting concealed carry on college campuses

(01:40:52):
and is pretty like, uh, but it's also these are
also like kind of it's also kind of a milk
toast conservative take, Like it's not he's not like making
an explicitly fascist argument. He's making the kind of arguments
that like I would have made in speech and debate
class as a conservative kid in North Texas when I
was a senior. You see, like in May he's writing
an article about like bathroom bills and stuff that's that's

(01:41:15):
getting closer to kind of modern American fascist rhetoric. And
then of course by like October he's he's fully on
the Trump train. Um. And he actually has a removed
opinion column after the election about like the Silent Majority,
where he says, quote, the truth is, white voters, especially
the working class, have had more than enough of being
called racist, sexist, sinophobic, islamophobic, homophobic, and the rest of

(01:41:38):
the usual trite buzzwords. The forgotten majority of the American
electorate has shown that, much to the dismay of the
globalist agenda, that they have not yet been replaced by
tens of millions of blue voting immigrants from abroad. And
it's again, you can kind of there's a debate as
to whether you can, I guess argue as to whether
or not he had always been sort of a fascist
and just felt like more comfortable as the year went

(01:41:59):
on open about it, or if he's getting radicalized. I
feel like he's kind of getting radical. I can see.
I can see in him like shades of everyone that
I knew back then at that point in time in
my life, including me, like, well in this reminds so
so I was I'm like a year older than he is, right,
so I I I was out of high school by sixteen,
but like I you know, i'd like I just graduated

(01:42:21):
right like good. And I remember this with like people
with people that I knew who were like because I
mean like, okay, like there were always people who were
like really really like like we had a lot of
like Fox News pilled like kill all the Muslims kids,
but there are also people who like weren't like that,
who were just like conservatives, and over the course of
sixteen like they went really really like they radicalized really quickly.

(01:42:45):
So it wouldn't surprise me if if she's doing the
same thing, because I think that was a lot of like,
like I I washed a lot of sort of like
more majority people get like who were kind of like
on who weren't on the like absolute like right wing,
like I don't know, like who weren't unli the absolutely

(01:43:06):
hard right of that thing. We're kind of like conservative,
but you know, like weren't actively invested in murdering every
gapers And yeah, like those people just like a switch
flipped and they like they just kind of went syco mode. Yeah,
and that's that's where he goes. He goes like full

(01:43:28):
on and I don't know you can. It's interesting because
like his his primary job for the sidekick, the Cupell
High school student newspaper is as like their their political cartoonist,
and he's he's mostly doing like really basic like clip
art ship, which is what you see him doing for
like Patriot Front. It's kind of the thing that distinguishes
them is his like art style, UM and the propaganda

(01:43:49):
he makes. So you know he's there at United the
right in seen one of the guys he's there with
commits a terrorist attack. They spin off Patriot Front and
for the next few years, most of what they'll do
is these events where they'll like show up and they'll march. Um.
It's worth noting that while they bring different kinds of

(01:44:10):
weapons to these events, mainly like you know, bludgeoning weapons,
the kind of things you'd have for like a street fight,
um and shields, these are not primarily violent events, and
that like their goal is not to get into a fight.
I think mainly not because they're not violent people, because
they're scared of getting into a fight, um, and Rousseau's

(01:44:30):
probably scared of getting in trouble for having a bunch
of people show up to riot. So most of what
they do is they'll do these flash mobs while there.
They'll get like a bunch of people together in the
middle of the night or like on a day when
nobody expects it, and they'll march around d C or something.
And then they'll get footage of themselves doing this march
where you know, they can kind of uh take care

(01:44:52):
to make sure the angles make them look as impressive
as possible, and then they'll put that up to try
and get more members, um, so that they can put
up more propaganda. Right, they've had a couple of well
publicized failures. They showed up in Philadelphia. I think this
was last year, right, and they again there's like thirty
to fifty of them. They all like pilot of a

(01:45:13):
U haul. They're marching is like in their fascist uniforms,
and like three dudes confront them and that fit like
three Philly guys just wreck their ship. Been so funny,
I understand. I think it was from that. We're just
like there's like there's a video, it's it's just them
running away and there's like there's like objects flying through
the air, you know, like their little army confronts, like

(01:45:37):
three random Philly We are just like, oh, this isn't
any good. I don't know who these guys are, but
there's no way this is good. Puck them up. Um,
it's a it's a perfect Philly moment. Um. So yeah,
and like that is their m o UM. And in
part because one thing you have to and I people

(01:45:58):
can misinterpret what I'm saying here. They're probably the most
disciplined of the fascist groups that do regular in person
events UM because there's a lot of discipline required in
getting several dozen people together, getting them all to the
the area in the exact same mode of transport together.
That's why they all pile into u Hall's right. Roussou

(01:46:18):
doesn't want to coordinate a big caravan UM. That would
be messy. People would be arriving at different times, people
would get lost or get stuck in traffic. He wants
everyone together because he's again he's a fascist. So they're
they're really um and they are are pretty consistent and
pretty good at getting everyone together and marching at the
same time. So like on a logistic end, there's some

(01:46:40):
things they do that are are competent, you know, um
generally speaking. Now, the downside of this plan I've just
talked about like why getting everyone in a U hall
can work and how it has worked for them in
the past. The downside of this is that everyone is
in a U hall together. I mean, I think I
think for them there there's they're I think there's some

(01:47:01):
upside like for them doing this, which is that like
I think on a sort of like on like a
discipline level, on level of sort of like building this
like like build building this sort of like culture of
like like community and like solidarity, but like the fascist
version of it is like, yeah, you have everyone suffering
together in the back of a U haul, which is
HoTT as shit and like has to smell like like

(01:47:24):
like like death, like like yeah, it's like like imagine
the worst locker room you've ever been in. But then
it's been it's every everyone has been trapped in there
for a week. It's like, yeah, it's a it's a
hot air balloon powered by Nazi farts, like that's that's
what's going on there. And they're all just like and

(01:47:44):
it's it's very funny because like when they had done
their last event or two and like this is like
in the dead of winter in the East Coast that
they do a couple of events and they have people
like nearly passing out from heat stroke in the back
of the van. Yeah. Um, in the back of the
U haul because like it's not great to be scrammed
in the back of you people. It's like, um, it sucks.

(01:48:07):
But also like like that that suffering sort of like
brings them together and makes them sort of like sure,
like yeah in a lot of ways, which sucks. But
also yeah, the second modistical problem with this that I
think you're about to get to. Yeah, so they try
to Rousseau actually puts out specific like information about like, hey,
here's how we need to prep for being crammed into

(01:48:29):
a U haul together, and like advises that his dudes
start um uh spending time in saunas and ship in
order to like toughen themselves up to avoid getting heat syncope. Um. Anyway,
there's a couple other things that are happening. One of
the things that we we know because one of the
funny things about Patriot Front, so they claim to have

(01:48:51):
an intense vetting process. You know, you're supposed to like
message them with an application and then they they'll vet
you before they let you into the chat rooms. They
have been compromised since the day there started being a
patriot Ye. I don't think there is a moment of
the time that they have existed that I haven't known
multiple people who had logs of every conversation. Like they're

(01:49:13):
so infiltrated. It is extreme, Like it's like it's like
the training wheels of anti fascist research, just like get
into Patriot fronts chat rooms, Like there's always multiple people
in their documenting their ship. It's extremely funny. Um. And
so because of that we know a number of their tactics.
One of the things that Rousseau has admitted to doing

(01:49:34):
in the past is that like, well, when we start
like heading towards wherever we're gonna you know, pile out
of the thing in march, we'll call the cops and
will inform them that we've seen a group of people
with shields getting ready to march and that they don't
seem to have weapons, but they're about to be an
x area. And they do this so that there will
be cops on scene who will provide like an escort

(01:49:56):
for them, right, so that they won't get beaten up. Um,
Like they want the cops to be there to protect them,
you know. Um. So Rousseau is like specifically bragged about
doing this in the past. There's also, like, as I stated,
like the or as an organization, their events are not
geared towards like killing people, right, Like they're not they're

(01:50:17):
doing these marches to get videos. They're not like they're
not even like the Proud Boys, where they're specifically showing
up to get into a brawl, right And every time
they do get into brawls they look very uncomfortable and
frightened in them, um, which is why he liked calls
for police escorts and ship. Um that said, there there
are like again, they're a Nazi organization. They specifically preach

(01:50:38):
replacement theory and yelled at their ancestors conquered America and
so they deserve to own it all this ship. So
a bunch of them have been arrested for like guns stuff.
There's been a number of like people of Patriot Front
members arrested for like illegal machine guns and ship like that.
That absolutely happens. People post about their illegal guns and
stuff um. But as an organization, their mainly yeared towards

(01:51:00):
providing like propaganda uh that Thomas Rousseau likes. So they
all gathered together and are heading into Quarterline, Idaho to
confront this, and I suspect their goal. I suspect their
Russeau's hope for how this was going to go was
they were going to pile out of their uhul, going
to get their thirty ish guys all in lines together

(01:51:21):
in their uniforms, with their shields and with their their
fucking fascist sticks or whatever, um, and they're gonna march
through the middle of the pride gathering and and they
get video of people like scattering or backing away from
in front of them, not wanting to confront them, because
you know, there was a big group of them. I
think that was the hope. I'm sure Rousseau was like, Hey,

(01:51:41):
and maybe some anti FOO will try to fight and
we'll get some videos of us like fighting them with
shields and that'll be good for recruitment. Um. But I
think the main goal was to get a video of
them scaring gay kids um and and looking like a
big scary nazi FEI links that they could use as propaganda.
Um now this goes to ship before they even get

(01:52:02):
out of the U haul, because somebody calls the police
and reports what looks like a little army of guys
with weapons and shields piling into a U haul. And
again the police are saying that this was a concerned
citizen and it based on the kind of most recent reporting,
it may just be a random citizen of Quarterline who
actually like was for understandable reasons, right, if you like
see this happening, you're like, yeah, maybe I should I

(01:52:25):
might need to call somebody about this. Yeah. Um, I
wouldn't call the cops necessarily, but you know, in this case,
it seems to have worked out that said, knowing their background,
you have to acknowledge the possibility that they that it
was one of them who called the police. Impossible. Um now,

(01:52:45):
there's initially reports that it was the FEDS reports, I
should say, from the cops on the scene. And again
it's reasonable that journalists overhearing that recording it would report
on it that said cops on the scene are no
more accurate about what actually has happened than like random
passers by, and they're more likely just openly lie and

(01:53:07):
and you know, I I would not. I'm certain there's
a FED or or or four inside Patriot Front that
said it doesn't seem like this was a FED bust,
although I you know, it's not impossible that it was,
because if you were the FEDS and you had a
guy in here and you decided you want to arrest
these people to avoid a potential Charlottesville kind of situation

(01:53:29):
happening again, um, maybe you would want to just say
it was like a random person who called I don't know,
this does not there's no reason that this needed to
be a FED bust. They were not like this did
not require the FBI's infiltration capability to deal with. Like
it it was a bunch of Nazis piling into a
U haul. I don't have trouble believing that some dude

(01:53:50):
was just like, hey, hey cops. Yeah, and it's there's
been a lot of like surprise online that like, the
cops did their job, but they went after these people.
I think the surprise there is kind of based on
some misconceptions, and these are misconceptions kind of pushed in
part by the fact that over the last few years,
when we have seen fascist groups rally in places like Portland, UM,

(01:54:13):
or like Charlottesville. UM. For the United the Right rally,
the cops tend to be on their side and tend
to protect them. UM. But what you're looking at are
two different things in a lot of ways. Because the
cops in a place like Portland, and I assume in
a place like Charlottesville, I'm not as familiar with their
police demographics, but I know this is the case in
Portland don't live in Portland. They live in places like Battleground, Washington.

(01:54:35):
You know. Um, they live in these these the surrounding
more rural and suburban communities, and they don't like the
city that they police, and they kind of see them
as an enemy. So when other people generally from similar
suburbs and rural communities as the cops show up to
fight the kids that Portland cops don't like, um, the

(01:54:56):
Portland cops are going to be on the side of that.
And this is again you see version of this occur
around the country. In quart Aline, this was not like
quarterline cops live in cort Aline, you know, like they
they're from that community. And even if I'm sure a
number of them, if not many or most of them
have like attitudes towards you know, have said some negative

(01:55:18):
things about gay people. These are also like they're probably
some of them are probably related to people with that
pride rally. Um this is and in general these are
like there's they are probably seeing this as like, well,
whatever I think about pride. These are people who live
in quart Aline and a bunch of folks from outside
of the state are driving into funk with them. They're
not generally going to be on board with that. And

(01:55:40):
as a general rule, also, cops don't like people coming
in to their town like home to cause trouble. And
these are people from like eleven different states entering Idaho
to like funk with people who live in Idaho. I'm
not surprised that the police actually did something here. Um.
It doesn't like mean that these are the good cops

(01:56:01):
that were mythically all looking for. It just means that
like nobody wants this happening in their hometown. Like nobody
nobody wants these assholes running into town dressed as like
little Hitler youth guys and marching around like that's like,
of course they don't want that. Who would? Um, So
the cops pull over this fucking new haul. Um, there's
the footage of it is some of the funniest ship

(01:56:24):
on the space of the Earth's so good because they
just roll up the back of this thing. There's like
some fucking quardling cop with an a R like pointed
in there, and there's just all these fucking goober Nazis
and they're they're fucking Polos and Khakis and their fascist gators. Um, god,
it's good. I look up this footage. If you can

(01:56:45):
find you owe yourself to do this. It's amazing. We
should state we're not really We'll be getting more coverage
to what happens and what happened elsewhere on this day.
You had a lot of ugly ship happened to day
in Quardlinge because there are a lot of heavily armed
fascists rallying who are are in many cases locals or
from nearby places like Spokane. Um, Matt Shay, who is

(01:57:06):
a former state legislator from Washington who lives nearby, who
is a accused domestic terrorist, leads a march through quard Aline.
These guys are not stopped by the cops right in
part because like they're not a bunch of dudes from
out of state showing up to march around in ridiculous
Nazi uniforms. Right, the police are notably less concerned about

(01:57:26):
the guys in a R fifteen and plate carriers than
they are about Patriot Front, which is again it's because
of like what's actually going on here, you know, um,
but there are like armed people fright like threatening and
and trying to confront or at least standing around outside
of a Pride march in a way that you know,
if you're doing that with a bunch of guns, that's concerning.

(01:57:48):
Anti fascists show up to protest them and very successfully
kind of keep a wall between the folks showing up
for Pride and the folks rallying with guns. Um, So
that it is a thing that is happening. I don't
want to This has been the thing that has kind
of like gotten the most attention from Quarterly and I
don't think that's bad, like from a standpoint of like

(01:58:10):
what is useful Seeing a bunch of Nazis get their
ship like wrecked is definitely an ideal takeaway from the
Quarterline event because, especially considering the amount of violence I
think we were all worried might occur there Um, I'm
very happy that the primary takeaway is Patriot Front all
got arrested. Um, But the things that we were concerned
about there again, there's a bunch of dudes show up

(01:58:32):
with guns to stare at a Pride rally. That's not
a not a positive development. But this group of Nazis
all get arrested, and that is positive because it's extremely
funny and sometimes it's nice for things to just be funny. Um.
So the next kind of thing you see from Patriot
Front is them all pulled out of a U haul
on their knees, handcuffed, getting arrested one by one, uh

(01:58:56):
and taken to a jail and quarterly there's some very
funny quotes were like the police are being gas do
you even have room for all these people? And they're like, oh,
we'll figure it out. Like, don't worry, it's um Rousseau
and a bunch of guys are in getting criminal conspiracy charges. Um,
they're all getting conspiracy to riot, which is a misdemeanor.

(01:59:19):
There's some rumors that a journalist posted that a number
of them have illegal had illegal guns and they're getting
illegal gun charges. I haven't seen confirmation about that. I'd
be shocked if some of them were not carrying guns
in the state of Idaho. Anybody can right. UM. I
do think they were specifically violating the law by having
firearms while sitting in the box back of a box truck,

(01:59:40):
because I think, for like reasons of accidents that have
happened hunting, you're not supposed to do that in Idaho. UM.
But I haven't seen charges as a result of that. Um.
It's debatable as to what's going to stick. However, there's
reasons to kind of suspect that something will because they
had like seven or whatever page plan for how to
handle the like they had their little riot notes. Oh god,

(02:00:04):
they had like sticks and a smoke bomb and stuff.
So it's not like an impossible case to convict them.
I will say, you know, like, you're not you're not
asking like the moon of the police in this instance,
to like or of the prosecutors or whatever to be
able to actually convict UM. So we'll see what happens. UM.

(02:00:24):
What's definitely happening is that this is very funny. Um.
Patriot Front is extremely incompetent. I would not take this
as a broader sign that like number one, the police
are taking threats against Pride rallies. More seriously, No, Um,
I would not take this as a broader sign that
like fascists are are are getting heavily stopped. I also wouldn't.

(02:00:46):
There's also been people saying that like and again this
is coming from that journalists who claim that, like there's
a bunch of gun charges pending, and maybe there are,
but like, I think the comment she made was like
a massacre was averted. I do not believe Patriot Front
was planning to massacre or anybody there's That's just that's
not their m o. That's not like again, not that

(02:01:08):
they're not Nazis, not that they don't want people dead,
but like they're like, these guys are like the milk
toast is baby ist Nazis, right, they show up and
they march around in their fucking like Tommy hill Figer
Nazi uniforms. You know, like they're not these are not
folks planning in an organized capacity to commit acts of

(02:01:29):
mass violence. Um, because that would be scary to them
because they're mostly like suburban middle class kids. Um. One
of the funniest things that has come out of this
is like one of the Nazis who get arrested in
Idaho's mom has started doing the news because she's like,
I kicked him out of the house. I keep trying
to get him to I don't know what to do
to get him out of this group. So I've told

(02:01:51):
him he can't live with me anymore because after his divorce,
he's been living with me. Um, and I'm going to
talk to the media about the fact that my son
is a stupid Nazi until he stops being one. I
don't know what else to do. And it does sound
like she's really legitimately like trying to grapple with like
I don't know why he's doing this. I don't know
how to stop it, but like it seems like the
best thing I can do is embarrass him, um, which

(02:02:13):
is I think probably a good move on her part. Yeah. Um,
there's a fun Daily Beast article about that. You could
really hear her frustrations, like I don't know why he's
doing this, like it all started around. It's very frustrating
you feel for her. So I don't know, Chris, you
got anything else to say about Patriot Front. I I

(02:02:35):
do think it's extremely funny that, like, well, I don't.
I don't know. In some sense, it's funny. In some sense,
it's kind of disturbing, which is that like the rights
reaction to this was immediately to accuse all of him
and being Feds. Yeah, I mean, which, like it's interesting
to me that, like that's just like anytime something happens
in the US now, like and this is this is
across almost the entire political spectrum, everyone immediately this was

(02:03:00):
the Feds or so sometime sometimes sometimes you get it
was Russia because sometimes you yeah, because it's like if
you're someone who like the Feds are the good guys,
it's like, well, you need another person who did all this.
So like that's disturbing and kind of grim to me
that it's it's literally everyone with everything has just turned
into Alex Jones. And it's like, yeah, you know, I

(02:03:21):
think the motivation for that on all the sides, there's
definitely like a core of legitimate belief that because the
Feds infiltrating the FEDS have infiltrated a lot of fascist groups,
and the FEDS have you know, had a history of
infiltrating left wing groups and whatnot, Like the Feds have
done a lot of this stuff, so that makes some
people paranoid. But also I think if you are on

(02:03:41):
the grifter end of things, right, and you want to
talk about this stuff, but you don't actually want uh
to put yourself at risk, Um, that's an easy way
to kind of divorce your listeners and supporters and stuff
from the stuff that's potentially illegal is by saying, well,

(02:04:01):
that's all the Feds. Um. Yeah. And I think also
especially like I think people are I don't know, it's
more frustrating on the left because people do it with
stuff that like the PR is actually pretty good. But
like with people on the right, there's a lot of
like this has become one of their sort of like
pr management things of like anytime something looks bad for them, no,
it was the Feds, and it's like no. And I

(02:04:22):
don't think that's on the right at least I think
it's there. I think there's more legitimate belief that it's
the FEDS on folks in the left to do this. Yeah.
I think on the right it is nearly always just
like this is how you do damage control, Like this
is how we this is how we distract from the
fact that our guys keep carrying out attacks or whatever,
or in this case that our our dudes are profoundly embarrassing. Yeah,

(02:04:46):
um is you is You're like no, that was the
FBI packing thirty federal agents into the back of a
U haul and getting arrested by the cord Alone police.
A classic FBI if I've ever seen what my favorite
one of those people who like, you're never going to
see the names of any of these people, like literally
two hours later, every single person got booked, all of

(02:05:09):
their names, of their names, every newspaper and it is again,
this does show you how the quarter Aline police don't
want people coming in from out of town to funk
with people who live in cort Aline. That's not a
them being woke. They like nobody no cops like that
sort of ship. Yeah, yeah, like yeah, yeah, these guys

(02:05:31):
are these guys are at the hometown fascist right, like
they're they're fine with Yeah, they're finely exactly Biblical basis
award dude, just like yeah, but these are like, these
are weird out of town fascists and it's like, yeah, cops,
I don't know there. Yeah, And it's they're very territorial.
One of the one of the ways you can see
the territoriality is like the first thing the quarter Aline

(02:05:52):
police do is be like, oh, we're going to give
everyone's name and where they live. Like we're doing that immediately.
And of course the the backlash to that from the
fascist has been that now a bunch of fascists are
doxing and calling in death threats to Quarterline cops. Um.
Which again there's this open question of like, are any
of these charges gonna stick for Patriot Front. The fact

(02:06:13):
that an organized flood of death threats is going in
for the police charging them is not good for their cases.
Oh no, they're just they're just it's like, guys, guys,
some free cop advice for me. Cops don't like getting
death threats, so that that really makes them angry. Yeah. Um,

(02:06:37):
so that's funny. I don't know what else to say
about it. Uh, it is pretty funny. Um. There's aspect
again the broader problem of there were a bunch of
dudes with a RS showing up to to threaten um
a pride gathering was not fun, although also a lot
of folks showed up to defend and support those people. Um.

(02:06:59):
And I I think I think also like from from
what I'm from they're putting. This is like one of
the largest part events I've ever had, So like I
think we're about people. Yeah, yeah, people. People aren't being
like as an intimidation tactic. It's not working. It does
not have worked. Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's work.
It's it's it's working in so far as it's it's
you know, it's further radicalizing the right. But like it's not.

(02:07:22):
It hasn't gotten to the point where, like I don't know,
people like it hasn't gone to the point where like
these things just are like Pride events just aren't happening
because there because the threat is great enough. So yeah,
and I I would say, broadly speaking, if you kind
of look at all of the things that we saw

(02:07:43):
in the quarterly event, it's some more more positive signs.
The negative ones. Um, the negative stuff is stuff that
we have seen a lot before. The militia ship um,
the folks rallying to defend those people, the people turning
up for the Pride event, Um, that's all positive. And
of course the most prominent fascists at the event embarrassing themselves.

(02:08:06):
Like that's positive. So I am I feel I I
do feel like we were all worried over here about
how the event in Quarterline was going to go. I
feel really good about how it it went, which is
not too especially I know that there's folks from Quarterline.
They're not to minimize the problems and the threats faced,

(02:08:26):
especially from people in Idaho, because boy, that is rough
territory to be organizing in defense of LGBT people. UM,
but I I think, broadly speaking, more good news than
bad news from from Quarterline. So I wanna give our
appreciation and thanks to the folks who showed up in

(02:08:49):
Quarterline UM to support this event to confront the fascists. UM,
y'all are awesome and doing something difficult in a place
that need you to be doing that. So thank you.

(02:09:18):
Here we go it could happen here podcast where our
intros get increasingly more segmented as you've realized we have
no idea who was going to do the intro. Yeah,
we've never, at no point during the existence of this
show or its growth, have we have we planned a

(02:09:40):
single thing or talked about how to do our jobs.
I've never. I don't even know who who we who
we are? UM, we are all meeting for the first time. Um,
I have that disease that Adam Sandler has or what's
her name has in that Adam Sandler movie where he forgets,
she forgets everything every day. That's me. But Drew Baron
wore is that? That's right? That's right, Cherie Drew anymore,

(02:10:00):
I forgot I forgot it. But I can just is
the same thing as a memento, because that's all I
can think of. Yes, Sandler and Memento. Yes, Adam Sandler's
Memento my favorite movie. Well, we should probably introduce the
episode today. Yeah, so it's me. It's just for Wong.
And today we're doing an episode that is uh, you know, okay,

(02:10:24):
we we we've we've we've we've been forced feeding you
really grim stuff for a long time. So today we
working to an episode about southern colonialism and politics and
board games because that's also extremely cool and it does
not I mean, it is kind of depressing, but it
involves less doom than normal. And yeah, and with me

(02:10:44):
talk about this that it is is Sharine or our
wonderful producer who also writes for us, and it is
great and we love thanks, I'm here. Yeah, and Robert
who we we tolerate. H Oh, that's nice to you.
You shouldn't, but we do. Kyle, it's nice to meet you. Yeah.

(02:11:05):
And also we have Kyle from Strange Matters. Yes, yes,
I'm Kyle Flannery. I'm my editor and co owner of
Strange Matters magazine. A. I guess we technically have now launched,
even with the print issues are not in people's hands.
A new leftist culture and politics magazine here to be,
uh the consulting super nerd h awesome. Yeah, I am

(02:11:30):
very sad. I mean, well, okay, I feel like weirdly
for a group of people that I'm in, I have
probably played the least board games of anyone here, which
is Yeah. So when when I was a kid, my
my board game was Risk. Yeah, I did a bunch
of others. I played like hero Quest and obviously Access,
and I'll say I say I played Access and Allies.

(02:11:52):
I set up Access and Allies forwards many a time,
and then gave up after like fifteen minutes of playing game.
I mean that's that's how. That's how I here. Request, Yeah,
because I was like a Request rule book and I
was like, I have no idea what's going on here?
Like ten but no, specifically my fucking thing. We would
speech and debate tournaments. You know, because when you do it,

(02:12:14):
you're basically out for a whole weekend, sometimes three days,
sometimes like four, um, and you're basically living in this school.
But but you have like maybe one or two hours
of stuff per day and the rest of the time
you're just hanging around hearing how your friends are doing.
Is like, the competition goes on and we would play
epic specifically Lord of the Rings Risk. We would have
these massive risk games. Oh I have Yeah, I have

(02:12:36):
very good memories playing Lord of the Rings risk with
my friends. Yeah, I just had the normal vanilla risk. Wow,
I was really missing out. I just think remember being
at a bachelor party where after we finished all the
normal bachelor party stuff, we crawled back to the place
where everybody's gonna camp out for the night, and so
we managed to convince one of the other groomsmen that

(02:12:58):
a game of risk when he takes about an hour,
he did this like this, like it was like three
in the morning. Yeah, it was the wedding that day. Yeah,
it was like three on the day of the wedding.
It was an act of extraordinary cruelty. Anyway, he didn't
get married, but he didn't take Comchotka, which is really

(02:13:19):
key to his his plans to assault North America. We
we we shockingly did all make it to the wedding,
which was very much a risk, very much a risk. Yeah,
very much a risk. Uh. Yeah, that's why it's called that. Yeah,
I was. I was smart enough to just go, no,
I'm going to bed. I'm not doing three am risk.

(02:13:39):
That's not happy. But yeah, I guess to kind of
back up in front a little bit of context about
why I kind of thought this was so worth talking about,
because I'm guessing that there's some readers at home who
are having a very common thought, which is, why why
are you talking about board games? Like who cares? Um?
And you know, I'm reminded little bit of the little

(02:14:01):
tweet joke from a while ago of a couple of
years ago. I'm gona talk about a little while ago
of on Star Trek they have the uh you know,
they've got there what do they call that? The Holi Deck? Uh?
They about the Holi Deck. And but for some reason,
every week everybody's into some weird new board game. What
the hell is going on? With that. Uh. And for
the people who aren't aware of this kind of sector

(02:14:23):
of nerddom, board games are actually massively more popular than
they were when I was a child, when osmlenules were young.
And a large part of that point has actually been
from game developers themselves. Uh. The people who make your
video games absolutely fucking love board games. Uh. And it's
for a pretty simple reason, which is that you know,
all of the rules to the game. Board games are

(02:14:45):
naked before your eyes. You have you have stripped them
down to their their atomic components before you have done anything.
And that means that if you are interested in the
art of how a game works, uh, they're actually wonderful
case studies because you can see very quickly the way
that you move from what the mechanic is doing to
like what it means. Whereas in a video game that

(02:15:06):
can be a lot more obscure, it can be a
lot more complicated, and it requires it can require a
lot of digging. You don't have to. You know, I
am enough of a turb owner that I have broken
into the game's files for video various video games I've
played and ripped out the code and looked at it
and been like, so that's the drop rate because again
I'm a consulting turb owner here. But with the board game,

(02:15:28):
you don't have to do that. You just know all
of the rules upfront. Uh, and so you know if
you're uh and so that that's you know, reveal, I
can reveal a lot about what the designer's intentions are,
what they're communicating, and how that communication all works. So
that's that was kind of my start point here. Should
I just keep on going and explain what the hell
is going on with this article that I'm about? Yeah,

(02:15:48):
I mean, I was going to note that the primary
board game played in Star Trek T and G was
was was Stratagema in the uh, the classic episode in
which data has to get really good at what is
basically holographic chess. Um. Yes, anyway, you talked about Star

(02:16:09):
Trek the next generation. So now that's that's all. That's
good the way to get to the awful board games
from d S nine. Oh god, yeah, there's I mean,
Strategy M is pretty ridiculous and the episode is very silly,
but it's it's one of the more fun data episodes.
Episode from d S nine I think is only considered
the worst episode in all of d S nine. Yeah, yeah,

(02:16:32):
I mean there's I think the worst episode of Star
Trek the Next Generation is not the board game, but
it's the one where Riker and his dad fight in
what's basically American gladiator, you do, where they have to
have the bandit sticks that they have to fight the
ultimate martial art. Anyway, please continue, So so talk. So
I wrote this article that has is upcoming in publication.

(02:16:53):
It's going to be in our first issue, uh, And
it's about a particular trend that I noticed in board
games that there were a lot of board games that
were in terms of what was actually going on on
the board, they were incredibly violent, but they managed to
make it look like there was no violence going on.
And so I actually I'm grateful for Robert for talking

(02:17:16):
about the games that you talked about, you know, Access
and Allies and Risk. Uh, even like Monopoly, these are
games that are in was generally known as the American tradition,
where the goal is to eliminate all the opposing players
to be the last last one standing. Yes, like everything
in American it is like one person wins by using
either violence or capitalism on the you you survive, you

(02:17:37):
outsurvive all of your opponents. Uh, because that was what
we do in America. We just survive. We just pray
to God that there is somehow at tomorrow and by God,
they're going to take Comchatka. Political stance as an American
is that we will take the Comchatka Peninsula and we're
going to take Australia. For those three extra armies that

(02:17:58):
Australia strategies, I feel like half the risk strategy, half
the experience I saw, were just waste to nerve the
Australia strategy. Uh. But um, in any event, that there's
a European tradition. Uh. And one of the things, and
that has been a lot that has been very popular
has made an absolute shitload of money over the last
several years, shipload being very relative because again, board games

(02:18:18):
are pretty small field compared to video games or gambling
or booze or something like that. Um even kind of
the dominant name in the game. And Uh. One of
the kind of major conceits of this style game is
you don't elimit other players, all players. Any player who
starts the game at the table is going to end
the game at the table. You you never limited anybody,
and this is I think an admirable enough goal. Yeah,

(02:18:41):
that's one of the things that's annoying about a lot
of games is like if you're trying to do a
party thing and people are getting eliminated. Although it can
be fun, if everyone is drinking at the same time
and while you play the game, people get eliminated and
then get drunker and heckle everyone else at the table,
that's actually not bad. That's actually not bad. I remember
it being like middle school in high school, where you
just have somebody sitting there bitterly four hours. Well, you
try to clean up a risk game. Um. Anyway, the

(02:19:04):
one that most people are probably the one that is
the most famous infamous is Sellers of katan Um, and
that's kind of what's my start point. Sellers of katan
Is is a board game where you play as European
colonizers to a almost uninhabited island and almost uninhabited island,

(02:19:24):
and you cannot damage the other players directly. There is
no mechanism for doing this. You can block them off
from building things, you can never send him. I always
go hard on the roads. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can
block people with roads. It's a very like it's kind
of like like about like a rivalry between developers almost.

(02:19:46):
But one of the things that that is kind of
outstanding about this is that, uh, it's not a technically
on inhabit island. There is a quote robber that starts
out on the island, uh, and the robbert is capable
of inflicting violence on the players and it can be
sort of controlled by the players. And so the part
that was again striking to me about this is you

(02:20:06):
can't directly, you know, if this would actually be the
right number players of me, Chris, Sherne, and Robert were
all sitting at a table playing out of Katan. I
could not eliminate any of them. None of them could
eliminate me. We could not harm each other directly. We
can just negotiate with each other, we can trade with
each other, but there is still ultimately a winner. And uh,
you know this is if you are willing to make

(02:20:27):
some some kind of specific historical amnesia about how colonials
I'm actually operated where you know, like wars of colonial
aggression also included like wars in Germany like the Seven
Years War, or you know, the wars of Spanish succession,
we're all happening at the same time, but you can,
you know, it can be viewed as similar to that,
and again it has this explicit theming, and that is

(02:20:50):
I do think that those things, those things are devetailing together,
right that the only people who are real people are
the colonizers. The colonized are non agent Dick, They're just set,
they're they're they're setting. Um. And the more you think
about it, it's just it's just kind of messed up.
It's it's just kind of, uh, it's kind of messed up.

(02:21:13):
And I do think it's kind of interesting that the
game doesn't really say this very explicitly, right um. And
I know, I know there's going to be somebody's going
to say, oh, you know, the game says rob or
it doesn't say Native American. How can you know? It's like,
come on, man, if you watched a movie where there
was some there was a group of people in the

(02:21:33):
movie who were portrayed as violent and incapable of acting
on their own, and all of these racist tropes, even
if they were not played by Native American actor, even
if they didn't use an explicit Native American references, if
all of the good guys are people who dispossessed this person,
you know what's going on. People don't look at the

(02:21:54):
tempest and they see Caliban and go, this person has
nothing to do with the Americans that yeah, yeah, they're
making him uncivilized, like it like civility or like civilians
in general, they come from somewhere else and they inhabit
the place. But yeah, you're right, like just like Columbus
discovered America, the natives are based like it's it's it's

(02:22:14):
a blank slate as far as white settlers are concerned,
and like the positionality of like like the game is
very explicit about who is a settler and who is not. Right,
the settlers are you and everyone else playing the game,
and then you have the other person who's on the
island who got here before you. And it's like, yeah,
I mean the name is pretty blunt, like you are,

(02:22:38):
like you know, there's no I don't know. It's it's
very it's very hard to evade. And you know, like
you can see the art from the game, like it's
all white people, uh, and it's it's it's kind of
interesting cause in the first edition printing, they're all kind
of medieval, but in later editions they're like colonial America.
Like it's I don't think it's like it requires some
very deliberate obtuseness to miss that this is what it's

(02:22:59):
going on. Um and uh so anyway that has um
that was that was released like twenty something years ago. Uh.
I find it very funny that sellers of Katan managed
to win Game of the Year awards in both two
thousand and five. Like it hasn't changed, mud, I don't know. Yeah,

(02:23:20):
those those are different years, like what's going on? Definitely, Yeah,
they did add boats. They did add boats. That's true.
You're not You're not wrong about you don't you don't
you don't have boats? Come on, that's true. Actually, it's funny.
My neighbors have a boat. I do not have a
boat because I'm a regular person who doesn't have lived
next to a lake. M hm oh yeah, yeah, I

(02:23:44):
also do not have a boat. So yeah, I briefly
had a commute to work that I could have kayaked,
but I don't know to kayak. That's New York baby.
I developed a desire to have a boat last year
because I yeah, I was in Spain and I met
a Spanish guy with a boat, and that does seem

(02:24:04):
like the life. But that's not you're you're, you're, you're
horrible descend into turning into some sort of Hemmingway adjacent character. Yeah,
just just I mean it is it is nice to
be drunk on about. It's also very expensive to have
a boat, so maybe I'll get drunk on an inflatable
raft instead. Yeah, I just get a sunfish and just
flip it over every thirty seconds. Um, the working man's boat. Yeah,

(02:24:27):
the working man's boat. Um. But yeah, and uh so
so from there, I kind of what has happened is
unsurprisingly that you know, board games are actually kind of
a summat demographic art form compared to video games, because
all you really needed some paper, Like really, that's all
you need. You need some paper. Uh, And you can
make a board game, uh if you have tabletop simulator.

(02:24:47):
You just need tabletop simulator. You're already done, like uh,
and then you just need to be able to bully
people into play testing your game. And that's really the
hard part. Uh. But you know, so list means that
you know, people will iterate on thing pretty quickly. You know,
it's very like fan fiction environment people will will iterate
rather quickly on your ideas and develop them further. Um.

(02:25:08):
And so I looked through some of the other games
that I've played and liked, and uh, you know, I
actually tend to like pretty much all the games that
I studied. Uh, Splendor is the one that is very fun,
very casual, very easy, and it just says this art
that bugs me, this art that really bugs me, where
it's about being a gem trader, and it's very much

(02:25:29):
seems to be based on Renaissance Italy or like Renaissance
on TWERP. You know this and m for some reason,
like you don't see people in minds. It's very weird.
All of the there will be pictures of minds. It's like, okay,
you bought this emerald mind and there's like nobody there,

(02:25:50):
which is very weird because I have seen pictures of
pre industrial I've seen pictures of minds from the nineteen eighties,
which is firmly industrial where there are thousands of people
you can barely see the ground, you know, thousands of
people everywhere. You know, mining is very labor intensive. Um.
You only start seeing mining become kind of like capital intensive,
like very recently, and even then only really in the

(02:26:11):
United States and a couple of other countries. Germany obviously
uses very capital intensive mining. Everywhere else it's very very
labor intensive, but splendor. They won't show you the people
doing the mining, but they will show you the people
short uh sorting the gems, which is they're skipping the
slavery part exactly, exactly the part there skipping. Yeah, even today,

(02:26:34):
like you ignore what your how your cell phone is made, right,
You're just like you're glossing over the unflattering parts and
going straight to making a gym. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're
you're going straight to you know, I've I've you know,
I've got my my pretty purple cell phone, you know.
And the the part where you know there was yeah,

(02:26:55):
pretty much of war in the Congo fought over it
and then they had to install suicide nets in China
gets completely glossed over and that all that stuff goes
into this phone. But uh, you know, to me, it's
just kind of a necessary hunk of plastic and metal
for surviving in America. Um, and I you know, I'm
not entirely I don't want to be too hard on

(02:27:17):
the designers here. It's very like there's a part of
me that wants to me and there's a part of
me that wants to be kind of forgiving and being
like do you really want to be playing this like
fun casual game and like be confronted with slavery? Uh
But at the same time, like yeah, you you really
try to have it both ways here, Like this is
like I don't make the game about something actually fun,

(02:27:40):
not yeah, not something that well. I mean there are
there and there are people who do that. You know,
It's like not that hard to find people like making
games about like theme parks or like haunted houses or
utopian or like like weird like utopian arcologies and stuff
like that. Like people make these things. But like so this,

(02:28:00):
this colonialism keeps on like coming back, and part of that,
you know, part of that is I guess, like all
sci fi is kind of colonialist. But wait, before we go,
do you know what else keeps coming back? You know what?
Tell me what? Sure? You? Capitalism? It's time for an
ad break and there's still more capitalism, but that capitalism,

(02:28:24):
that's true, that's different capitalism. Yeah, right now we're we're
in like more early capitalism. And uh so the the
game that like really stuck in like for all the
weirdest and uh, I might end up reading a quote
out from here. I'm sorry for being an incredibly irritating
person and doing that. As a game called Mombassa, um
and uh, Mombassa is so aggressive about how colonialist it is.

(02:28:48):
It is so so aggressive. The premise of the game
is that you are adventurers in the Scramble for Africa
and the goal is to be the player who retires
the richest um. And the ways in which the mechanics
of this game are messed up, uh, the part of

(02:29:10):
the mechanics that I will say is genuinely clever. And
if they hadn't made it about the Scramble for Africa,
I would have like no, I would just be like, yeah, cool.
So I still have to admit that this is This
is cool. Is that you start out working for a
different joint stock company, but anybody can buy shares in
anybody else's joint stock company. So the best strategy is
to buy somebody else's company and then they make the

(02:29:32):
company valuable and you contribute as little as possible. Free
rider problem. You know the classic of game theory that
the liberal economists fucking love talking about Uh, great thing
to do with the game. But the way you make
your company valuable is like it's it's pillaging Africa. Like
it's pillaging Africa, and it's it's very very weird. Like
there's do you have this map of Africa in front

(02:29:55):
of you, and the map of Africa has valuable things
in it has you know, dime that you can pick up.
It has Like there are books, which is unclear if
that represents, like you write an adventure novel like King
Solomon's Minds, or you write a naturalist guide, or you
write an ethnography, but you're writing some sort of book
is based on how you despoiled the African continent. Uh.

(02:30:20):
And what what always struck me as so weird is
that the territory is just when you enter the territory,
you just take everything. You just you just pillage it.
It's not like territory that you hold and really make
more productive. You don't develop it. There's at least it's
honest about that to a certain extent. At least it's
honest that like the Europeans were lying about any of

(02:30:40):
that development civilizing mission ship, like that they were there
to steal um and but what is so so weird
to me about it is that like there's there's no resistance,
there's no risk to expanding across the continent, there's no negotiation.
The only other characters at all are the other players,

(02:31:01):
other Europeans. Uh. You know this continent that at the
time had hundreds of millions of people, uh, many of
whom had legitimate kingdoms, that in some parts of Africa
where you know, had full gunpowder militaries just totally glossed over,
just totally not not mechanically represented at all. Um Well,

(02:31:22):
it's like they're only they're portraying the only future that
that is possible. Like you know what I mean, this
is how you become a civilization. There's no other that
there's one path. Um well, I mean it is. There
is one path to being a civilization, and it does
involve a lot of taking other people ship. To be fair, No,

(02:31:44):
I said that ironically, Robert, I know, I said in
their mind there is one path. Yes, But I do
feel like I've got to read this out from the
rule book because it was like so hypopic to me.
This is this is from the rule book. This is
the start of the rule book the opening quote. In Mombassa,
players acquire shares of chartered companies based in Mombassa, Cape

(02:32:05):
Town St. Louis and Cairo and spread their tailing paths
throughout the African content in order to earn the most money.
Chartered companies were associations formed for the purpose of exploration, trade,
and colonization, which links them inextricably to a very dark
shapter in human history, global colonialism. This period rough lasted
roughly from the fifteenth century to the middle of the
twentieth century and is associated with exploitation and slavery. Although

(02:32:27):
Mombasa is loosely set within this timeframe, it is not
a historical simulation. Is a strategy game with an economic
focus that roughly refers to historical categories and places them
in a fictional setting. The exploitation of the African continent
and its people is not explicitly depicted within the gameplay.
If you want to learn more about the underlying history,
we recommend the following read History of Modern Africa Each

(02:32:48):
hundred de pressent by Richard J. Reid uh End quote.
So they fucking new, but like they fucking knew that
this was some evil evil ship that they have made
into a game, and they want you to know that
they knew that you that you were going to call it.
It's like making like a candy Land version set in
the Congo where you have to call up hands or
rubber and being like, yeah, you can read a book

(02:33:14):
about this if you want. Yeah, this is like it's
such a cop out. It's like it's so bizarre, Like
it's so bizarry not how many people even read this stuff,
like like generously. One person I've ever before reads the
rule book when you're wearing a board game, like like
very generously. Like I'm just a huge nerd who likes

(02:33:34):
reading this stuff, and I would just like read this
in my jaw, was just like, holy shit, I think
you could try. It might even be wisdom and trying
to like make a board game about the Scramble for
Africa that's like framed in like a kid friendly way,
but is also like very blatantly horrific. It's just like

(02:33:56):
the kind of thing that if you think about it
ten seconds, I was like, Oh, we're just like subjugating
and massacreing people. But it's also like the the art
style is like themed off of Candy land or some
sort of ship like maybe, but even then you're probably
more likely to just get people enjoying it on ironically
than you are to actually convince anybody to read about
the Scramble for Africa. Well yeah, yeah, I mean, and

(02:34:18):
well it's actually kind of interesting because there's there's like
a good tradition of like making like kid friendly appearing
things that are actually quite horrifying if you think about
them more than two seconds. And yeah, well Monopoly for example.
And I mean I was going to take a slight
turn away from board games. I grew up with red
the Red Wall books. Yes, yeah, the Red Wall books.

(02:34:39):
Like even though like stoats are not a race of
people in real life, they are a type of weasel. Uh,
holy ship, those books managed to be incredibly racist. It
really is racist against like different types of weasel. But uh,
you know, they portrayed this this very cute, cie world
of you know, animals, you know, malise and badgers and stuff,

(02:35:01):
and they're just committing genocide left and right. It's just
portrayed is like totally okay, it's just like someone who
has no idea what you're talking about. This is crazy. Yeah,
he's popular children's series and like the eighties and nineties,
you know, I read this books. It was like, yeah,
it's like you flipped back and forth between like, yeah,
here is Martin the mouse, and he's the hero, and

(02:35:21):
also he's eating all of this really nice food and
then also we must exterminate like entire species. It's buck wild.
It is insane. Uh. The Red Wall Feast Spot, by
the way, it's like a really good Twitter follow. We're
just post excerpts from the food descriptions. Those are incredible. Um.
But the reason why I kind of made that turn

(02:35:43):
is that one of the games I considered that I
actually really liked is uh something of a post something
of an anti colonial game called Root. Uh. And this
is part of the part of what I was kind
of witnessing over as I was studying these is that
there is a bit of a discourse, a bit of
a development over time. Uh. And Uh. Two of the
games that I highlighted, Root and Spirit Island are kind

(02:36:04):
of are are fairly anti colonial. And Root is a
kind of horrifying game but with very cute see appearances.
You know, you play as like mice and cats and
and birds. Uh. And the birds are like like horrifying aristocrats. Uh,
like like you're like a feudal military dictatorship. The cats

(02:36:27):
are like trying to turn the entire force into like
a giant woodcutting factory and like subjugate everybody else under
the boot heel of like industrial capitalism. And you can
play as just like the concept of revolution, I guess,
like like there's a woodlanda lions who win the game
by like provoking revolts of the civilian population to overthrow

(02:36:50):
the other two. Uh. It's it's very weird. It's a
very very violent game by by comparison, it's very hard
to lend a player in it. But it was kind
of interesting to me to see that like you can do.
It's kind of almost see the exact opposite where it's
like a lot of like it doesn't have. It has
this very obviously horrifying and graphically violent mechanics, uh you know,

(02:37:13):
revolutions and subjugation, but with like the characters look cute,
like all the all the character art is very cute. Um,
you know, you've got like a little mice like making
pungi traps and stuff in the It's very odd. Yeah,
I kinda, I kinda jumped a little bit ahead here,

(02:37:36):
but I don't know that we need to go through
the everything I did in this in this paper that's
a little bit boring, and also we need to leave
thanks for the readers. And actually Root is UH a
little bit based on a game series that I think
would be particularly appealing to UH, to Robert Uh and
possibly the listeners. There's a company called GMT Games. Anybody

(02:37:56):
else heard of them? These guys are interesting. Could to you?
Gim T Games make games like Kuba Libre, a four
player asymmetric warfare about the Cuban revolution UM, and a
couple of ways, yes, yes, multiple. I one once as

(02:38:17):
the Mafia, which was an interesting side to play in UM,
an interesting and interesting series of interest to have. You know,
I could not build an army for ship. I just
had to count in the fact that other people didn't
think it was worth destroying casinos because they're too busy
trying to stamp out revolutionaries UM and or their revolutionaries

(02:38:37):
trying to stamp out fascists. And it was a they're
a very The reason why I think they're very weird
company is that, you know, I think they're they all
games like Cuba libre Twilight Struggle A Distant Plane, which
is about the war in Afghanistan. But they also are
like these guys are like Quantico psychos. Uh. They actually

(02:38:57):
they are the guys who make the actual four war
games that the Pentagon. Yeah yeah, Quantico, if you're not
up on things, is like the part of the Virginia
area kind of a suburb of d C where all
of the all of like the Fed FEDS live. Like
I'm not talking about like border patrol FEDS or ship.

(02:39:18):
I'm talking like, uh fucking CIA, motherfucker's Capital f Feds. Yeah.
Isn't the CIA is like training facility there, Yes, they have,
and I think the FBI also has a facility in quantity,
the Capital f FEDS agents are there. Yeah. Yeah. Don
don't think of like like your ocean inspectors here. Yeah,

(02:39:42):
I mean look well and also just like we're not
primarily talking about like the door kickers, We're talking about
the people who are like the doing the really scary ship.
You know. I will say, though, if if we gave
Osha like CIA powers, the world would be in an
obviously better place. I think we hand them the nukes.
I think we hand them the nukes and a mandate
to use them if security procedures aren't followed. Not cleaning

(02:40:06):
your counter after using chicken, that's the end of Detroit.
You know, there goes San Francisco. Uh, you didn't clean
your food cart well enough, you know, pretty soon, collective
of punishment, but just for workplace violations. Yeah, collective punishment
for like basic sanitation violations. I mean, in a way,
not following sanitation does lead to collective punishment, whether or

(02:40:28):
not you have a federal enforcement for it or not.
That's right, he's the deployment of our nation's nuclear assets. Uh.
Do you know what else is collective punishment? Capitalism? Yes,
listening to ads? Yeah, so let's all endure it together.
We've been collectively punished, solidarities, all all, all of us

(02:40:52):
who must endure advertising? Yes, Um, yes, I have been,
I've been, I'm long a lot and um yeah, Like
I said, I find this, this question of who gets
to be an agent to be very important. Who who
gets to be a player? Who is even given the

(02:41:12):
choice of winning? You know if if you're not a player,
you're completely written off from the possibility of ever winning. Um.
And you know this is something that like in in
video games. We've seen recurring debates around this, you know,
like civilization is an infamous one for this. You know,
who even gets to be a civilization? Um? Why are
some civilizations civilizations and some city states and some barbarians? Um?

(02:41:35):
And you know it does, uh, you know, it does
shape your thinking, you know. And there's there's games are
very valuable for how they create empathy. You know, a
game that can really immerse you can really teach you
a lot of very creative and powerful empathy for groups
of people that you might never have the chance to

(02:41:57):
interact with. Ah. And then when you keep on create
in games that ask you to empathize with the colonizers.
Mm hmm. Yeah, you think it's just the normal way
of things. This is what this is what happens. This
is the succession of events that leads to humans. Yeah,
this session of events the leads the humans. Those who
do not participate simply die out. Uh. This iswashing? Yeah, yeah,

(02:42:20):
yeah it is, it is. And I mean it's it's
you know, you can the same could be said of
all culture. But you know, I think it's worth being
um informed in critical consumers. UM. And I mean I
actually do you know. I actually you know, I know
that you want this to be an uplifting episode. And
I'm going to be optimistic here, I I you know,
it's not just that we're talking about software. The stakes

(02:42:42):
are not literal deaths. The stakes are you know, getting
mad at your friends over aboard game. But also I
do think that, uh, we have seen positive development of
people taking of people looking at these games. You know,
there's a game developer who said about some of the games,
who was playing, what what do the locals think about
these colonizers? Like, it's pretty rude that nobody's asking them,

(02:43:06):
and tried to design starting from there. And I have
some criticisms of how he executed that, how well he
executed on that visions. But the fact of matter is
is that even just through the sheer iteration of somebody
looking at a game like Settlers of Katan and going, well,
how can I do this difference? You know, I can't

(02:43:26):
just release the same game every single year. I I
need to do something new, and even just a simple
one of just reversing who is the players? Simple enough,
even that has been creating some iteration in some some
additional complexity which and and has caused people. I have
seen people, you know, go back and re examine, even
if they're not people who have any sort of like education,

(02:43:47):
any sort of formal education in anthropology of post corneal theory,
they will they'll look at like, oh, yeah, I was
playing this game where you're the colonize and I played
this other game where they reversed the roles, and I
was like, that was the bad guys earlier. Yeah, I
mean I think portray the other side and maybe winning

(02:44:07):
means you kick them out or or destroy them. I
would like to see that play out versus that is
Spirit Island. That is what Spirit Island is, that the
players cooperate to destroy the colonizers or to terrorize them
into abandoning the island. Uh. Weird game. Weird game. I
have some I think there's some good execution. There is
some critics and I've got some criticisms of it is

(02:44:28):
my favorite, but it does do some things a little
bit well patronizing. But um but yeah, like yeah, like
that's that's something I think is worth seeing and uh,
and I think it's something that um admittedly, maybe I
just really enjoyed the space of the world because you know,
if you look at very mainstream video games, for example,

(02:44:49):
kind of bored of the same, like five feeling the
same five games get released every year, you know, there's
some texture, Give me something new. But um, also, I
think that U I think that the I think there's
some cost for optimism for people like critically examining the
art that they're building, the art that they're consuming, in
the art that they're creating. And I don't know that

(02:45:11):
counting on that kind of stochastic, bouncy ball randomness of
people just kind of spontaneously going what if we what
if we uh played what if we reverse the roles
in Call of Duty? You know what if we played
the people living in the fafalo Well, Call of Duty
is happening on in the background, just kind of on,
like the randomness of that happening. Uh might not be

(02:45:32):
as fast as people want. I wish, I wish. Oh yeah. Yeah.
There was a game called I think it was I
think it was called This Is War. Maybe it's called
This War of Mine. That's what it was. That's a
good game. That's a really well done game. Yeah. Yeah,
And there's I'm I'm I don't know. I'm excited to

(02:45:53):
see the future of all this stuff and excited to
see where people go with this. Well, Chris, I have
a question, I did you decide to even bring on Kyle?
Like what do you what? What is it about this
topic that you think is prevalent today? What? What what
can we take away from this? Well? I think I
don't know. I think one of the things that I

(02:46:15):
got was reading the article is about like one of
the ways, like one of the things you see in
how settler colonialism gets perpetuated, and I think, um, why
am I now forgetting the name of the Yeah, declonization

(02:46:35):
is not a metaphor. It talks about this a lot,
which yeah, I'll talk about that another time someday. But
like one of the things that you get like immediately
is the sort of is that the settler move to innocence?
And that strikes me as like the sort of it's
the kind of like it's it's it's the kind of

(02:46:55):
perspective that you see, I think running across all of
these board games, and I think it it is actually
really helpful to sort of you know, like the way
you break that and then the way you start to
get actually it actually looks like the colonization. It has
to start with people like actually like realizing what they're
doing and not being able to sort of like retreat

(02:47:17):
to this position of innocence and being sort of confronted
by it. And I think that like that that is
a place where media could actually like be very helpful
because you know, like most and most mostly like it's
it's it's it's almost always working in the opposite direction, right,
But it's something where you can actually have this sort
of I don't know, it's it's a part of the

(02:47:37):
cultural spirit where you could like very like very easily
put someone into a role that is not the one
that they're normally doing and get them to like realize
that like what they're doing is like fucked. So yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean I could say the first when I was
in high school and played playing Sellers of Katan for

(02:47:58):
the first time, I didn't realize the like it took
me a while to understand that, like, oh I'm a
colonial list yeah, territory. Uh, And well because they yeah,
they present it as default innocence and also just like
exciting too. There's no there's no backstory to how you
get the wood or the ore or or anything else.

(02:48:20):
You just like somehow build a road, you somehow have
a town. There is no backstory as to who you're
destroying in the process. And I think it infiltrates in
your mind to the point where you subconsciously just deemed
that as normal. And it's it's definitely not unique, you know,
it's definitely like it's only just another tendril of reinforcing

(02:48:40):
stuff that we hear from the rest of our culture
so broadly, you know that. Then it's it's just this
is just one aspect, one expression, I should say, of
how many millions of different ways we get colonialism reinforced
to us as a normal, natural part of the world.
And uh, and you know, from you know, cowboy movies

(02:49:04):
to uh to just like the way the New York
Times will write about who owns land and who's who
has a who has a viable claim on owning a
piece of land? Uh, all of that you know, we
get reinforced was in our fiction are nonfiction every day? Um.
I guess again that's part of I guess why I
was drawn to board games in particular for this, because
it's so transparent, you know, it's so transparent, how all

(02:49:27):
how the all the propaganda works like it's not there's
no movie magic. Yeah, yeah, the rules are all there.
It's it's pretty much. I don't know, but yeah, but
you you sympathized with and I didn't know you empathize
with the colonizer because there who you're who you are. Yeah,
you want to win, you want to win, you want

(02:49:49):
to win. I'm very competitive. You want to win. Um
and and uh and you know, and they get to
and the people who may get to have this kind
of like this course that this kind of badge of
like oh yeah, we made like the friendly board game.
You know, they're comparing themselves to you know, making Monopoly,
where like there's like a chance of a divorce happening

(02:50:09):
every time somebody finishes the game of Monopoly. Uh. And
you know, they get to pursue themselves as the nice ones.
And it's like, yeah, we're the nice ones because all
the people who were being mean to don't get a
voice at all. I just can't believe we made a
game about paying rent, Like I really cannot believe that.
I history because it's very funny. I skimmed in your

(02:50:31):
in your articles like about it a little bit. But
it was called something that was much more to the point,
what was it called The Landlord's Game? Excuse me, yeah,
the landlords Game by Elizabeth Maggie. She was a Georgist
activist in the like early twentieth century. Close my mind,

(02:50:52):
fucking George's and the whole. I mean, this monopoly monopoly
being the most relevant contribution of George Is to world
history is somehow incredibly fitting. Let's all away from it,
brutal the number one selling economics book of American history.
Because they're used to a very bad board game, I

(02:51:16):
can't say it's unfair, and I guess that that's really
what I've got is that like it's I think it's
still I think it's very valuable to UM be a
critical consumer UM and UM one Boston maybe went over
the line, But for the most part, these games haven't
like ruined my ability to enjoy them. If my friends
want to play a game SLT was on, they might
just get an annoying lecture from me. But they're going

(02:51:37):
to get annoying lecture from me anyway, it just would
be about something else. I mean, it's like any media.
It's like phil and TV or whatever. You're going to
realize eventually that you should be conscious of what you're consuming.
So yeah, I'll still get into arguments about all those things,
except for except for podcasts. People should blindly consume our
podcast I mean, I mean, yes, podcasts are the only

(02:51:59):
true for was hearing an art form. That's right, that's right.
As Karl Mark said, listen to this podcast like can
the subscribe, share us on Facebook? And then and then
eventually one day podcast will wither away into bolish itself. Yeah,
that's right, that's right, classic Marxist podcast theory. That's right,

(02:52:20):
that's right. Is that the episode Well, Kyle, where can
people find you? Yes? I I personally am notoriously hard
to find on the internet, being a person who doesn't
have any social media whatsoever. Absolutely the right call. I
I have been off of Twitter for a couple of days.
I'm taking a break, and the best best decision you

(02:52:43):
could make get away from all that. Our our publication
is at Strange Matters dot co op. We worked hard
to get that dot co op registration. Uh. We just
published on Thursday a couple of days ago, Love as
a Verb in article reviewing UH and um Extrand expanding

(02:53:05):
the possibilities of bell Hooks all about Love two thousand
books all about Love, which is worth reading both the
both the review and the book. Yeah. I actually just
finished it, um four hours ago. Yeah, I heard up
for the first time during the pandemic. It was Yeah,
it's in Lightning read, It's in Lightning read. Uh. We
we tend to have a lot of really insane economics

(02:53:25):
stuff if you want to like read some truly insane
ship about money, about where money comes from and what
money is and what we can do about money. Uh,
we've oh boy, we've got you covered. Uh we have
we have a profile of Roberts where we have rendered

(02:53:46):
him as Baron Munchausen very flatteringly. Uh. A really wonderful
review of three different cyberpunk works by the wonderful anti
fascist author Elizabeth Sanderford. Um. Yeah, so come come check
us out at Strange Matters dot co opt. H if
for we are we are taking new writers all the time. Uh,

(02:54:07):
and we've got submission gidelines on there. And uh, if
you want to personally send me hate mail for besmirching
the good honor of settlers of Katan, I can be
reached at Kyle at Strange Matters dot co op. Yeah. Oh,
and we do have a Twitter for the for the company? Yeah,
what's your what's the Twitter for the company? It is
Strange Underscore Matters perfectly, Thanks Kyle. Check out Strange Matters

(02:54:33):
contribute to their fundraiser. I can't I can't recommend doing
anything on Twitter, so I simply uh and thank you,
thank you for having me on again. It's a it
was a lovely time. Yeah, absolutely all right. Again, as
as as with every episode, go with christ Hello, welcome

(02:55:08):
to it could happen here. This is part two of
I guess two part series about Dallas, Texas. Finally we're
getting in a Dallas, Texas resident to refute some of
this this slander. Sure my my, my flawless hometown. Uh

(02:55:29):
briefly host to Bernie Sanders when he had to take
care of something. I've spent a few summers in Dallas.
I've I've been around it. Unfortunate, I've been around the
DFW area. I wouldn't recommend spending summers in Dallas. Hold on,
hold on, I wouldn't recommend spending winters in Dallas either.
There's a couple of weeks in spring that it's tolerable

(02:55:51):
to be in Dallas. Try to make it. Then it
occurs to me that we should ask Garcy, where were
you when they killed JFK? Are you was? I'm Garrison?
I was. I was born in the twenty first century.
What have you ever a man liquor carcano rifle in
the back of American Rifleman magazine. Okay, let's let's open

(02:56:14):
by by first briefly talking about the thirty one Dorky
asked neo Nazis who got arrest in Idaho? We're playing
and you want to talk about it? That's right, That
is exactly why we've already done the episode. But I'm
always down to talk about this. I know we just
did an episode talking about it, but I wasn't on
that one. So I have a few paragraphs on how

(02:56:36):
it relates to today's topic of Christian fascist violence. I
just want to state that you and I were both
hanging out at a party when we got the news
about that, and it is the hardest I've ever seen
you laugh for like four hours. So hey, like Patriot
Fronts based on a Texas so that that there is
a degree of relevance here, yes to the bulk of

(02:56:58):
our of our topic today. So yeah, I think it's
pretty funny because the group fashions all dressed in the
same outfit. It's almost incomprehensibly fun trade and sauna, so
they wouldn't pass out well, crammed into a hot, sweaty
U haul truck driving from all around the country to
cord relate the Idaho so that they can march around

(02:57:19):
with flags and shields to yell at gay and transcits,
and you know what they did. Instead, They got filled
over in stetain a ditch while getting their little clad
hood masks taken off, and spent the rest of a
day to Idaho jail. And I'll go talxt it's really funny,
especially since again their best case scenario was spending a

(02:57:42):
day free in quarterlin, Ida. I know. And it's so yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'll be like, you can be against cops in the
carstral system while still recognizing how innately a certain and
hilarious supermarious like it's it's fine when cops in groups

(02:58:02):
like Patriot Front beef that's generally a win win for me.
I'm not cheering on police tactics, it's just it's just
recognizing that one of my enemies temporarily making another of
my enemies. Life's harder is pretty funny, It's really funny.
It's it's the same reason that we don't condemn police
violence when a cop shoots another cop like exactly like,

(02:58:25):
likes and like. Based on these charges, I doubt any
of these guys, in particular, we'll go to prison for
long enough to form like any like dangerous connections with
other InCAR straton people. Well, I'm sure there's a couple
of dudes in there that, if you know, they were
to go to a serious prison, could make meaningful inroads
with the Nazis there. But man, most of those dudes

(02:58:46):
Area Nations guys are just kind of like they're not
going to consider comrades like the the Yeah, it's yeah,
I think I think the Patriot Front Idaho situation seems
like it will know to just been inconvenience and national
embarrassment for them, And I think and I think we
can we can let this one just be as funny
as it is, considering there was thirty less Nazis there

(02:59:09):
to intimidate and attack people at pride Um and Patriot
Front maybe now less willing to pull stunts like this
in the future. Yeah, I've thought about this a lot,
and I just can't see anyways in which what has
happened could really be a problem. Um. It seems to
just purely be funny, so just enjoy it. Yeah. Look,
look this, this is what happens when you appropriate lesbian culture.

(02:59:30):
You get arrested. Actually, it's not all that different from
what Garrison was saying immediately after the arrest. That is true.
I made a lot of jokes about how Patriot Front
looks pretty pretty gay while getting handcuffed. Get the shine
the cancel radar, get the cancelometer out. We're canceling Garrison. Um. Anyway,

(02:59:54):
let's let's continue with this episode. So here is some
other fun facts about about the whole Idaho thing. So,
two of the Patriot Front members who were crammed into
that U haul last weekend, we're connected to a church
helmed by former Washington state Representative Matt Shay, who is
also associated with the Bundees, the Oath Keepers, and leads

(03:00:15):
the church at Planned Parenthood. Uh. He has advocated like
civil war if abortion and same sex marriage aren't stopped,
to kill all the men in left wing cities, all
that good stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And he was also
present at the protesting cort alane at the Pride event
this past weekend, and we can we can draw like
this direct line from the surge of groomer and anti

(03:00:37):
drag propaganda to neo Nazis deciding to organize and travel
across straight lines to threaten people in a Pride event.
In the days leading up to the event, Chaia right Check,
the woman behind the Limbs of TikTok account, repeatedly highlighted
it weaponizing pearl clutching Satanic panic. In right Check's first
post about the Pride event, it was about how the
Satanic Temple was promoting the event. In an Adelaide tweet

(03:00:59):
by someone claiming to represent local Satanists on June seven,
Lives of TikTok posted quote family friendly drag dance party
being promoted by the Satanic Temple in Idaho. We are
living in hell, which is a nice and I stop
un there that. I can't quite tell if that was
intentional or unintentional about Satanic Temple and living in hell. Anyway,

(03:01:20):
I thought that was funny. Um Dave Riley, a white
supremacist who attended the deadly Unite the Right rally and Charlottesville,
who also organized with the Identity Europa a few years back.
He actively solicited libs of TikTok to draw attention to
the Pride event and sought her help in trying to
like get publicity for the protests against it, Quoting the

(03:01:45):
SPLC hate watch quote, the Idaho Tribune also due attention
to it, Idaho Tribune far from a real newspaper, is
to obscure junkan news publication that on multiple occasions has
promoted Riley's political activism. Anti racist activists also tipped hate
watch off to infrastructural overlap between a website that promotes

(03:02:05):
Riley by name and Idaho Tribune. Hey Watch reviewed the
source code for Dave Riley's website and the Idaho Tribune
site and confirmed that the two sites share graphics from
the same web hosting account, meaning that they are likely
controlled by the same person unquote. And then on June nine,
Lips of TikTok posted screenshots taken from the Idaho Tribune

(03:02:25):
about the Satanic temple and the quarterly and Pride event,
boosting content from that white supremacist linked to website to
her one point two million followers. Every single one of
these figures using fascist rhetoric at utilizing stochastic methods including
Chia wit check, her financial backer Seth Dylan, and people
like Tucker Carlson are all responsible for inciting events like this.

(03:02:47):
Tucker led his show last week by using a Nazi
reference when referring to a Pride event in Dallas in
terms of stuff that's like outside of you know, conservative
states like idahoor Texas. Uh. Late last month, right check
as lips of TikTok targeted a Bay Area drag Queen
storytime event, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's

(03:03:07):
drag queen's reading children's books to kids in a public library.
And then on June twelve, it was stormed by a
group of around ten men dressed in proud boy attire
and shirts that read kill your local pedophile. They threatened
attendees while shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs, terrifying a bunch
of kids who had come to hear queens read stories.

(03:03:27):
So how did this kind of stuff and like how
did this rhetoric spread so quickly? Like how did this
groomer stuff get so volatile so quickly just in these
just in these past few months, in our war on
Transpeople episodes and my Operation Privateful episodes, we discussed the
history of this sort of like save the Children and
like pedophile rhetoric. Uh. And in my City of Hate

(03:03:49):
episode earlier this week, we talked about how this wave
of homophobia was able to write off the conspiracism of
Pizza Gate and Q and on and then in this episode,
we're an attack of out to the types of places
that this extreme bigotry was able to fester this past
decade and how it relates to Evangelical Christianity and Christian fascism.

(03:04:10):
I'm gonna play an audio clip from a city council
meeting in Arlington, Texas that happened on May twenty five.
Take a listen. My name is Jonathan Joey. I'm the
pastor has been as Badness Church, and I'm here today
because I have church members that live in Arlington. I
live only a few miles away from here. Enity business
in Arlington on a weekly basis. I'm horrified, ashamed that

(03:04:32):
the city has assigned to promote and solicit pride in
this city. Pride is nothing to be celebrated. In fact,
it's an abomination. The Bible says in Proverbs chapter eight,
the fear of the Lord is to hate pride, hate evil,
pride and mrogancy and the evil way and the throw
word mouth do I hate? According to God, we should

(03:04:54):
hate pride, not celebrate it. We should humble ourselves as
for actually the whole rooms that we were a nation
under God according to the American flag, and we were
a state under God if we're in the Texas flag.
We should humble ourselves to what the Bible says and
not what the small minority here that doesn't bully would say.

(03:05:15):
In June of Mayor Jeff Williams officially announced the steps
a Pride month in June for the city of Arleyington.
But I don't understand why we celebrate what used to
be a crime not long ago. The fact, I'm recording
to the Texas Penal Coach and Sexual respectful homosexual Conduct

(03:05:37):
that Curson commits an offense to be engaged in deviate
sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. In fact,
that is still on the books today, even though Lawrence
versus Texas overruled that in two thousand three. But God
has already ruled that murder adults three witch graft rate,
beastiality of homosexualities are crimes worthy of capital. Arlington, just

(03:06:02):
for context, is one of many towns in North Dallas
that if you happen to have weeed on you, you're
gonna want to tape it to the bottom of your
balls before driving through Arlington. Thanks for that great, great
weed tip from You're Welcome, You're Welcome Garrison. So that
is Pastor Jonathan Shelley, who lives in Grand Prairie. UM.

(03:06:23):
He was there at at an Arlington, Texas City Council
meeting casually advocating killing gay people while citing Texas is
laws against homosexuality. Their church, and this connected branch of
Baptists that will learn more about later, have an intense
record of preaching genocide against gay and transpeople and also
a fair amount of anti Semitism. Big big shocker there.

(03:06:45):
The previous pastor at this church, which is called Steadfast
Baptist Church. UM. But the previous pastor who resigned in
twenty nineteen due to allegations that he paid for sex workers,
was involved in gambling, and had smoked marijuana. I guess
he should have aped more of it to his pulse. UM.
He Garter a national attention for celebrating the Orlando Pulse

(03:07:07):
gay nightclub massacre, which killed people. From the pulpit, the
pastor said that God should finish the job and referred
to the murdered patrons as sodomites, perverts, and pedophiles. The
new pastor, John Shelley, continues this same strain of preaching
violence against gay people. Uh. This next clip is from

(03:07:28):
June one, right after someone died after getting hit by
a truck at a Pride parade in Florida, which we
later found out was a complete accident. But I don't
don't think the public knew that at the time. No,
and obviously people, I mean, I think all of our
assumptions was, oh, god, you know this is the thing. Yeah,
Well here's the clip. If it's going beyond just saying

(03:07:49):
you do all this week and stuff, it's saying you
enjoy it. You enjoy murder, you enjoy malignity, you enjoy
hating God. Look, there's only one group that enjoys that.
It is the Pride paradees going up down the street.
And you know it's great when trucks accidentally go through those,
you know, parades. I think only one person died, so

(03:08:11):
hopefully we can hope for more in the future. You say, well,
that's me. Yeah, but the Bible says that they're worthy
of death. You say, are you sad when fags die? No,
I think it's great. I hope they all die. I
would love it if every fag would die right now.
And you say, well, I don't think that's what you
really mean. That's exactly what I mean. I really mean it.

(03:08:33):
So yeah, it's it's a poor drummer. Like that's June,
even a year before the big wave of groomer stuff
got pushed this past spring with the help of Lives
of TikTok, and that kind of shows how susceptible modern
conservatism was to this resurgence of in your face homophobia.
There's been people to working to like keep it here

(03:08:54):
the whole time, just bubbling beneath the surface, and now
it's just completely boiled over. And I'm gonna say, like,
the rest of the episode is going to get into
some pretty dark stuff. We're there's gonna be a few
more clips that are pretty are pretty gross if you
want to, if you want to check out, that's totally fine.
After this episode, I myself. I'm going to take a
little bit of a break from covering this sort of

(03:09:16):
thing that's taking a little bit too much of a
mental toll, because it's a lot of jenocide. It's it is,
it's it is. It's pretty intense. Uh. If you do
feel the need to leave before you go, just remember
this simple phrase for keeping safe in the DFW area.
Tape it to your balls and your happiness won't be smalls.

(03:09:38):
So here's another clip from June of Shelley reiterating his
call for the government to execute gay people after he
received some public backlash for his the previous clip that
we that we used. And I personally believe that all
of these sodomites, you know, people that are men with
men are pedophile because that means that they just simply

(03:09:59):
are acted to children. They're attracted to. Uh, these people
that are the ages of seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, even though
they're grown adult, they're going after children and very young
children often cases, and lesting them and hurting them. And
you know, anybody that loves children, loves their family, would
want this person to be executed through the proper channels.

(03:10:22):
That's what I believe. That's what I teach. I'm not
a violent person. So my, my, my, my kind of
fear is that Shelley or someone like you know, John
Doyle that we talked about in our last City of
Hit episode. Is not that they themselves will bring a
weapon to some future Pride parade or go on a
rampage and assault or kill gay people, right. It's that
one of their followers or one of their fans will,

(03:10:44):
And these types of pastors and far right media figures
are intentionally leading people onto that outcome. Uh to quote Heymtmetta,
who's been tracking Steadfast for years, quote, Because while Shelley
is celebrating murder, he's also handing his congregation a metaphorical
loaded gun. And if somebody eventually uses a literal one

(03:11:05):
to follow through on what they believe to be God's orders,
they know that Shelley will be proud of them, even
as he tells the world he has absolutely nothing to
do with it, unquote. So, under the pressure of activists,
Steadfast actually got evicted from their old building in Hearst,
Texas this past March for spreading their extreme anti LGBT

(03:11:27):
hate and calls for violence, which was in violation of
the terms of its least, which prohibited violence and threats.
The church has an active gab page, which kind of
tells you a little bit about the people running this
sort of operation. Uh Insteadfast publicly organized and livestreamed their
sermons on a very active Facebook page, which is no
longer active for reasons that we will later discuss. And

(03:11:50):
then during these past few months, they've relocated their church
from Hearst to a building that's part of a strip
mall in Wattaga, Texas. Is at home say it. That's
That's the thing about any town in Texas is he
doesn't have It doesn't matter how you pronounce it, because
they're Texans. Watuga wat what do whatever you want? Anyway,

(03:12:12):
they're now a strip mall church, which I think is
to look for them. I mean that you're okay, I
will correct you here. You're saying that like it's it's
funny as opposed to just the way everything is in
Texas because Texas is a giant strip mall. Yeah. I
guess though. And while John Shelley is pretty bad, right,
We've we've heard a lot of bad clips of him

(03:12:33):
talking about how gay people are pedophiles and how they
should all be killed by the government. He's not the
only guy who's sad Fast preaching violent in genocidal rhetoric.
Enter Dylan oz formerly based out of Boise, Idaho, now
preaching at Stedfast Baptist Church in Watuga, Texas. On Sunday,
June four, Dylan oz Well, preaching from the pulpit, said

(03:12:57):
that the quote solution for the homosexual is for the
government to execute every single gay person. Here's here is
here of him that what does God say is the
answer is the solution for the homosexual in two thousand
twenty two, here in the New Testament, here in the

(03:13:18):
Book of Romans, that they are worthy of death. These
people should be put to death. Every single homosexual in
our country should be charged with the crime, the abomination
of homosexuality that they have. They should be convicted in
a lawful trial. They should be sentenced with death. They
should be lined up against the wall and shot in
the back of the head. That's what God teaches. That's

(03:13:41):
what the Bible says. You don't like it, you don't
like God's work, because that is what God says. I
don't think that the Bible says anything about guns. Actually, um,
it's it's it's been a while since I read the
King James version that said fast exclusively uses, so maybe
it's like a translation thing, but I don't I don't
remember anything about shooting or bullets or guns and inside

(03:14:02):
my Bible. Um. But speaking of translation things, I'm gonna
go on a little theology right here about quote unquote
lying with man or lying with men, um, and how
scholars actually believe if you look at the original Biblical texts,
not the crap like the King James version and the
nonsense based off that horrible translation, but the chapters where

(03:14:22):
people pull stuff supposedly condemning men for laying with men,
and quote unquote homosexuality, which is obviously like a very
modern word, does not belong in a text as oldest
the Bible, like that just wor didn't that wor didn't
exist yet. Um. But those passages would probably more accurately
translate to condemning adult men who rape young boys. Uh.

(03:14:43):
And even if they didn't, even if it was about
adult men with other adult men. I don't fucking care,
and neither should most Christians, because Christians are not following
all of the laws of Leviticus, nor should they, like
that ship was for Israelites thousands of years ago to
make their culture distinct from other surrounding nations. Like Christians
aren't railing against the use of mixed fabric for Christ's sake,

(03:15:06):
I am, there's there's a lot of there's a lot
of stuff. Believe in eating shrimp. But I think if
you use mixed fabrics, you should be executed. You should
be the back of the head. That's the mainly thing
that anyone using mixed fabrics death penalty instantly. Yeah, so,
like obviously there's not these churches preaching against mixed fabric.

(03:15:29):
Here's here's Christian preacher Dylanas again justifying his calls for
the execution of gay people by falsely claiming, obviously that
all homosexuals are pedophiles. Here's the thing, here's why reprobates,
Here's why homosexuals are so dangerous to society. They're not

(03:15:49):
like other sinners in the sense that every single day
that they are alive, they're being filled with more and
more and more unrighteousness. That is a scary thing. You
want to know why we say that all homosexuals are pedophiles,
And let me make that very clear. All homosexuals are pedophiles,
And people say, well, what about all the straight people

(03:16:10):
that molest children? There faces, I don't care what you
call them. If if a person is with a child,
your factor, you're reprobated, your sodomite. I don't care what
kind of classifications our government wants to give them. All
homosexuals are pedophiles. Now here's the thing. Here's here's what
I'm not saying. I'm not saying that every single homosexual

(03:16:31):
that's alive right now has committed that act with a
child already, because there it could be that they haven't
had the opportunity yet, and they will at some point
later in their life. This is why we need to
put these people to death through the proper channels of
the government, because the Bible says that they are being filled.
So here's the thing. Yes, maybe not every single homosexual
has been with a child yet, But what about tomorrow

(03:16:53):
when they're filled with a little more unrighteousness. What about
in a week from now, when they're a little filled
with a little more unrighteousness? What about twenty years from now?
What are they going to be like? You look up
the statistics on the sodomites that abused children, there with
so many children will make you throw up disgusting. These
people are not normal. They're not your average everyday centers.

(03:17:14):
They're what the Bible calls reverbates. They're rejected by God.
They have no hope of salvation. So in John Shelley
with Steadfast Baptist Church, with the help of a network
of aggressively homophobic churches, made a two hour quote unquote
documentary about how to quote protect your children called and

(03:17:37):
it's the title is called the Sodabite Deception. See all right, look,
we're going to look if we're going to do this
thing where there's licenses for people to buy guns, can
we have there be a license to make a documentary?
Can we marry that too? So the quote unquote Sadamite

(03:17:58):
Deception aims to expose how the LGBTQ community is contributing
to the collapse of modern society, which I mean based um.
The trailer opens with a real banger. Most Americans are
repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality. The CBS News
survey shows that two out of three Americans look upon

(03:18:19):
homosexuals we've discussed discomfort or fear. One out of ten
says Hatred. The documentary celebrates historical laws that criminalized homosexuality
and criticizes more recent laws that expand lgbt Q rights.
In the film, Shell, he advocates for the death penalty
to be used on the LGBTQ community and uses, you know,
many many slurs across this whole thing, all of all

(03:18:40):
of them use all kinds of slurs, as I'm sure
we've heard this past episode. Uh. The pastors of other
churches part of the New Independent Fundamental Baptist movement, also
featured in the documentary. Here's a collection of said pastors
screaming in the trailer for the Sodamite Deception. Thank you,
Gary Prison, thank you for playing us a trailer of

(03:19:01):
people screaming. That's gonna be fun. Starting off with Shelley saying, quote,
why aren't all these Baptists standing up and saying these
freaks should go back to hell, should go back in
the closet, put a bullet in your head. Why aren't
they saying it? Because some of some of what he
says his heart to hear. So I'm just saying that
for you guys, so you know what he's saying. Anyway,
here's some here's some of the trailer. It's pretty funny.

(03:19:23):
Why are all these Baptists standing up and saying, these
freaks and go back to hell, go back to the closet,
put a bull in your hat. Why aren't they saying it?
I'm called bagging, a bagging, a trance bestie, a disgusting gone.
No homos will ever be allowed on this turk as
long as I'm the pastor here. Never the law of

(03:19:47):
the Lord perfect or is it not? It's perfect? And
what did he say? Put them to death? You know,
people say like, well, aren't you sadt that you saw side?
Here's the problem with that. It's like the equivalent of
asking me, you know, have you asked me, Hey, are
you sad that fifty pedophiles were killed today? Um? No,
I think that's great. I think that helps society. You know,

(03:20:09):
I think Orlando, Florida was a little safer tonight now
that fifty. You know, the tragedy is that more of
them than Doe? I mean, the tragedy is I'm i'm
I'm I'm I'm kind I'm upset that he finished the
job because these people are creditive. So yeah, that sucks. Uh,
but man, there is just a lot of a lot

(03:20:30):
of like men in their forties screaming about gay people.
They they they seem really concerned. Yes yeah, um. Someone
in that clip is noted homophobe and the Holocaust denier
Stephen Anderson, who of of of Faithful Word Baptist Church.
He's he's the guy shrieking never never anyway. Uh. Steadfast

(03:20:55):
Church members and pastors have continued to show up at
city council meetings in multi cities throughout the Dallas Fort
Worth area. This past Monday, people associated with the church,
as well as residents opposing Steadfests bigotry, spoke at a
city council meeting in Watouga, Texas. I'm here today to
let the council know of the hate group that hasn'tered

(03:21:16):
their city. This hay group was called Steadfast Baptist Church.
It was in June one that I first came across
the offensive defamation against women and the LGBTQ community. The
hate statements, videos and social media posts prompted me to
join the protests that started in hers and now has
moved to your city. And I apologize for this, but
this is quoting him. They are all dirty discased disgusting

(03:21:39):
skank cores. In another video, he also states that women
in positions of leadership and authority are actually a curse
upon our nation. Council members, at the very least, you
should encourage the strip law owner Cider Property of Dallas
to revoke this church's lease. So yeah, there was there
was kind of like this back and forth at this
city council meeting. Multiple multiple people from Steadfast responded by

(03:22:01):
screaming into the mic and continuing to advocate the execution
of gay people. One guy that I'll that'll quickly play
a clip of as Philip millstread of of Steadfast. He
went further and made a veiled threat of violence the
city of Otaga. And if police officers are allowing this community,
the son of my community, to intimidate church members from

(03:22:24):
worshiping God the way he should be worshiped and truth,
and if you don't do something, something will happen bad.
So that's fun. Um. It's also a strong, strong definition
of the word veiled. Well, I mean like in terms
like obviously they're they're they're talking about execution and genocide.
He's talking about like actually doing physical like like actually

(03:22:46):
like as vigilante is doing physical violence, which is different
because Steadfast usually tries to frame their violence within like
it's okay because it's a part of the government. Right.
Uh So when they're like talking about just doing like
vigilantism or list saying like we're gonna take this into
our own hands, right, it's it's it's it's a little
bit different. Wattuga Mayor Arthur Minor this past Tuesday, so

(03:23:09):
that he is discussing the status of Steadfast Baptist Church
with the city attorney, while also stating that the attorney
has told him that it's a First Amendment issue, so
that there's quote nothing that the city can do at
this time, but we are looking at other avenues unquote,
and I mean that's to be that's probably probably fair.
It's hard to make a church leave a place. Yeah.

(03:23:33):
So he did not he did not elaborate further than that,
but he did encourage people to bring up the issue
with the person holding Steadfast's lease at this strip mall
in Watuca. Uh let his let us go on another
ad break. Do you know who won't shriek at gay
people and call on the government to kill them? Hope,

(03:23:57):
hopefully these these these ads, hopefully not for another couple
of years. Yeah, well that's why I said hopefully. Okay,
so let's let's talk a bit more about this, this
church's ideology and this network that it's associated with, because
it is actually kind of interesting. So Steadfast Baptist Church
is part of Steven Anderson's church network called the New

(03:24:20):
Independent fundamental Baptist Movement, uh, which I'm just gonna call
the New i FB because those are way too many words. Um.
And they claim it's not like a denomination, but rather
a revival of what the old Independent Fundamentalist Baptist Movement
once arepresented unquote. The New I f B churches just

(03:24:43):
like the old if the churches used the King James
Bible exclusively. And the Old Life b movement was founded
in the forties and was trying to reclaim the fundamentalism
of the nineteen twenties. And so we're just we're going
back from the two thousand twenties to that I twenties, uh,
in terms of their social views times of flat circle. Uh,

(03:25:08):
I'm gonna I'm gonna quote a little bit from the A. D.
L which of course is very hit and miss as
an organization. But they didn't, but they did, they did.
They do have any They do have a decent article
on the new U I f B churches because this
is like specifically the thing they focus on is this
sort of anti Semitism. So anyway, quote, the New I

(03:25:28):
f B ideology promotes the anti Semitic notion that Jews
today are impostors who are not the true Jews described
in the Bible, which by the way, is awfully close
to Christian identity. I mean that is essentially Christian identity.
It is. It's very very similar. I think the New
I f B stuff is slightly different. It comes out

(03:25:48):
from a slightly different direction, it's like, but they reach
a very similar conclusion. Like I don't think they believe
that Christians are like the true Jews, and they don't
talk about like Arians and stuff, and they're not doing
British Israelism, but they Judaism is the Synagogue of Saying.
But it's like, well, some of them do use the

(03:26:09):
term the Synagogue of Satan, but like you know, they
hate Judaism because as a religion, it's made up of
Jews who do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. So
therefore they are not truly descendants of Israel. Right, it's
it's it's they come at it from more of that direction,
but it is still extremely close to Christian identity. Like

(03:26:31):
it is, it is. It is just a tiny hop
of a pond like the kiss for sure. No, they
like they are so they are absolutely in the same
networks because they are preaching very similar ideology um back
to the back, back to the Idel quote. They often
claim that Jews today worship Satan and that the Star
of David represents the devil. The new i FB doctrine

(03:26:54):
promotes the notion of an Antichrist, whom they claim will
be Jewish. In their sermons very new various New i
FB pastors often openly state that they hate Judaism as religion,
and in addition to criticizing Judaism, many New i FB
pastors also promote andy Semitic tropes about Jewish power and
control over sectors like finance, news, media, and journalism. New

(03:27:19):
i FB pastors have also promoted Holocaust denial. In pastor
Stephen Anderson presented a number of false claims in a
video specifically addressing the so called quote Holocaust hoax unquote
saying the numbers don't add up, the facts don't add up.
Um Anderson alleged that quote some Jews were among the

(03:27:40):
many quote casualties on both sides matter, but he blamed
those deaths on starvation and poor conditions, claiming that quote
just because people were rounded up and putting for slabor
camps does not mean that they were systematically exterminated or
cremated to the tune of six million unquote. Unlike many

(03:28:00):
in the evangelical movement, New I f B Churches are
staunchly anti Zionist and anti Israel data christ Zionism as
quote jew worship unquote, and view the traditional support for
Israel among Evangelical Christians as a result of Jewish deception
in support of the anti christ. But they have a
ton of opinions about the sinking of the U. S S.

(03:28:20):
Liberty in line with their broader anti Simmitic use Judaism
as a false and evil religion. The modern nation of
Israel is regularly characterized as wicked and a fraud unquote.
And they do not dislike Israel because Israel commits genocide
against Palestinian people, because, as you say that, they're very
pro genocide as a concept. Yeah, and then to be honest,

(03:28:43):
probably pretty pro genocide of the Palestinian people. Yeah, they
just not that way. Yeah. So that's a little a
little right up on what this network of churches believes.
Like everyone you heard talk talk inside the Sodomite Deception
trailer is part of this network of churches. Um, they're
all across the South, some of them, and some summer

(03:29:03):
in like California, Arizona, Idaho, oh, Oklahoma, Texas, you know,
lots of other Southern states. And if you want to
carry out a sodomite deception, tape your drugs to your
junk when you drive through Texas. So thankfully, churches like
these are not standing unopposed. Specifically in the Dallas Fort

(03:29:27):
Worth area, there has been a number of protests at
the church's old location, which resulted in them getting evicted,
and protests at their new location. I'm gonna place some
audio from from protests that have taken taken place over
the course of the past few weeks. We're here to
protest that has Baptist churches to the registered hate group

(03:29:49):
here in Texas on spl center dot org. We protested
them and harst for non months. We found them here
and so we are back every Wednesday and every Sunday.
I am a mom of a kid from the LGBTQ community,
and I am not going to stand for you wishing
death upon my kid just because of who he is

(03:30:09):
and who knows. It's extremely exhausting, um, but at the
same time, it's very reassuring because we get nothing but
support from the people on the street to drive by
and give us plenty of hans and wives and it's
just so much love and support from the people that
live in the community here as well as first that's
my city, so it's very personal. And I've noticed that

(03:30:31):
we've gotten a lot of new people come out here
because this is their sit and it's personal for death.
So that's that's pretty good to hear that there's actually
people standing up to to say, hey, these guys suck.
In person. Uh, there probably should be more people going
in person because once you like, the church is obviously
facing a lot of a lot of confrontations like online

(03:30:53):
and stuff. Right, they're facing a lot of online pushback,
but once you bring it into the real world, it
definitely it's a only different thing in terms of how
how they're being viewed. I mean in some ways, you know,
they enjoy being persecuted, right, they enjoy the notion of
Christian persecution. But also it's great to have, you know,
people waving Pride flags outside their little church every Sunday. Um.

(03:31:16):
The church still has an active Instagram page um, and
still has a Twitter account, but their actual tweets do
keep getting taken down for hate speech. UM. A week ago,
YouTube striked Steadfast's main channel where they post videos and sermons.
As they weren't able to use their main channel on Facebook,

(03:31:36):
they began promoting their second YouTube channel as a platform
to stream their murderous anti gay hate sermons during Pride Month,
and a few days after I posted about that on Twitter,
their secondary YouTube got completely banned, and then after a
few days their Facebook page was also taken down. So
they are they do have, They do have a shrinking
online presence. There's this other clip from the Sodomite Deception

(03:31:59):
trailer that I think really gives you a peek into
the minds of these folks who are pushing this sort
of stuff. Um. And you can even see this the
same sentiment, uh in the rise of white nationalism and
West premacy, this past a decade. And my question is
why are we embracing all this change as person to
the Bible change. The Bible radically changed ten years ago,

(03:32:21):
my King James. Bible hasn't changed the work since it
was translated in sixteen eleven period, So why in the
world is everything changing. It's not from God, that's for sure.
You know what's coming from the working of Satan. He's
deceiving people thinking all all this normal now. So our

(03:32:41):
our challenge, as people who are you know, anti fascists,
people who stand against you know, our anti racist, pushback
against this type of anti queer um organizing, our Our
our challenge is to keep the change coming and to
push back against these freaks trying to hold onto the
twentieth century right. The fear of change and the fear

(03:33:02):
of the future is driving their you know, desire to
return to the past. The train of like social progress
was moving forward over the course of the past twenty years,
and they're scared and they're trying to stop it and
move it backwards. And it's up to us to make
that as hard as possible. Um. But yeah, that is

(03:33:24):
that is my that is my stuff on on Staidfast church.
I'm now going to open up, open up the floor
to anyone. Robert Chris, what do you guys think of
all of the stuff we just heard about the past
thirty minutes. One of the keys is you want to
use tape that has a good level of adhesion but

(03:33:45):
isn't going to actually damage your skin. Really, Yeah, like
scott tape. What are we what are we doing here?
Scotch tape will do, okay, you really want to avoid
duct tape, but something like painters tape generally isn't going
to have the adhesion that you need. Um, it's gonna
be a little bit unpleasant any time you're taking tape
off of and I do recommend actually putting it like
more in the taint area or the inner thigh. You're

(03:34:06):
gonna have a better better experience. You might want to
shave that inner thigh if you're not somebody who does normally,
just so that you have a better time getting your
drugs free. But you know, crotch it. That's always been
my motto. Just crotch it again. Great, great, great, great
Texas insight coming coming out of Robert Evans here. No,
I mean, like, okay, so seriously, the fact that there's

(03:34:28):
been resistance to these folks in the street. Um, and
that it's been significant that they've like not just people
showing up to yell at them and approach them in
the moment, but people you know, working to get them
kicked out of their locations and stuff. Um. That's really good. Um.
And that's that's honestly more the Texas that I have

(03:34:49):
known than or at least it's as much of the
Texas that I've known as like the shitty things that
this says about Texas. Um. First protest I ever went
to was against a church like this who you've probably
out of, the Westboro Baptist Church when they showed up
to protest at the Holocaust Museum. Uh. Um. And it

(03:35:10):
was like like a whole hundreds of people showed up
to like and there were like six of those fuckers. UM.
So I mean, the problem with Texas has never been that, Um,
there aren't a lot of awesome people in Texas. It's
that folks like this, these who really want to use
the mechanisms of the state to carry out a genocide,

(03:35:31):
have a lot of friends in high places. And many
of those folks spent decades ensharing that it's basically impossible
for anybody else to win election outside of like you know,
local elections and cities and stuff, which often city governments
in Texas. Again, if you look at a lot of
the the reaction to Abbot's anti trans bills and where

(03:35:52):
will be sort of the the actual resistance is Texas
is anti gay legislation gets more extreme um is in
cities like Dallas and Austin and Houston. And it is
like local laws and local local elected leaders as well
as local activists who represent an awful lot of Texas
but and you know, don't have any real power in

(03:36:15):
the levers of the state. But do you tend to
stand up and in a lot of cases like people
did for some of these these events in Dallas recently
put their bodies, you know, in between fascists and the
people they're threatening. And I mean the new I f B.
Churches are definitely probably a more extreme, more explicit than

(03:36:35):
most of your average Christian churches. But it is not
uncommon to preach this general strain of homophobia. Maybe it
turned down like one notch of the dial from the
pulpit in the majority of of of churches, specifically in
the South. Um, yeah, you don't. We should be lighting

(03:36:56):
these people against wall and killing them. But you say that,
you know this is not biblical. You know we're supposed
to live in a biblical society. And you say everything,
but that last like ten or Fife. It's the it is.
It is not like this strain of homophobia is has
been there this this entire time. Um, And people of

(03:37:21):
I feel like they have permission to say things now
that they honestly wouldn't probably wouldn't have said as explicitly
like five years ago. Um. But there was there's always
been people working to keep this thing within the culture.
As as stuff was progressing socially, there was people working
to keep this type of bigotry still alive in large
sectors of the American public. And a lot of those

(03:37:43):
sectors are related to Evangelical Christianity, and a lot of
those sectors are really related to the communities around church building.
So that's like a big part and how Christian fascism
has been so effective the past that you know, like
that basically the past decades, starting starting with the Tea Party,
is that they've had people with vested interests like keeping

(03:38:06):
this stuff afloat I mean, uh, Lips of TikTok receives
her funding from Seth Dillon, the guy who runs The
Babylon B, which started as a Christian satire site. Um
like now Elon Musk's favorite place on the Internet, which
is wild, I mean, but but yeah, like like you know,
like I I remember reading The Babylon B when I
was like fucking twelve years old, when I was like

(03:38:27):
a Christian kid like I. It was just like like
it used to be just a small, niche Christian site
and now it grew into this you know, big powerful
force in a modern conservatism. It is directly funding Lips
of TikTok, which is basically now just a gun that
gets pointed at whatever you know, targeted event that that
they want. So it's now it's like this completely like

(03:38:49):
AstroTurf thing with all of this funding and people choosing
what events to target. So like it all goes back
to this, It all goes back to these types of
churches and this type of this type of rhetoric coming
out of you know, these few misinterpreted Biblical passages. It
is weird, how Like I mean, when I was you know,

(03:39:10):
a teenager, when you talked about like Christian entertainment, Christian comedy,
Christian music, Christian media. You meant, like the most boring
milk toast ship and the planet. Like not that there
wasn't toxic and hateful ship within being preached in churches,
but like Christian media was, like it was pretty hard
to be offended and most of it. And now when

(03:39:33):
you say that, like you immediately go to like, oh, yeah,
somebody's trying to get gay people murdered. Um, Yeah, it's
something else. Yeah, there's been a large increase in the
militancy of Christian propaganda and posing you know, stuff that
used to be just very like very boring milk like
milk toast and like still very like you know, patriarchal, heteronormative,

(03:39:54):
you know, probably low key white supremacist um is not. Yeah,
now lots of the propaganda is way more focused in
this type of militant Christianity UM and focused on you know,
all all of like the end times. Stuff's gotten so
much more more of a thing um and just how
it relates to like physical violence against currently living people anyway. Yeah,

(03:40:22):
that's the that's the Steadfast Baptist Church and the Sodomite
deception Um brought to you by people out of Dallas.
So yeah, those are my Those are my two episodes.
I mean we started first episode this week was part one.
Last episode this week is part two, so they're spread out,
but those are those are my two two episodes on

(03:40:43):
the City of the Homophobia and Christian Fascism inside the
City of Hate. Look, if you want to help out,
find the addresses of one of these churches. Now, the
next thing you're gonna do is you're going to find
a good Torrent client and you're gonna download a DVD
rip of Morbius. There's a lot of them out there.
Then you're gonna burn that. You may need to buy

(03:41:05):
a burner. It's a lot of people aren't going to
have this equipment. But you're gonna burn that onto a DVD.
You can also put it on a flash drive if
you really wanted. And then you're just gonna start mailing
those in mass to the church. If we get them
enough copies of Morbius, I think we might be able
to turn them around. Hey, we'll be back Monday with
more episodes every week from now until the heat death

(03:41:26):
of the Universe. It could happen here is a production
of cool zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
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or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources
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media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.