It Could Happen Here Weekly 161

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 3 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 4 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 5 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 6 We got clear facts.

Speaker 8 Maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 10 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

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Speaker 14 Hey guys, it's Erin Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa.

Speaker 18 So as a sideline reporter, game day is extra busy for me, but I know it can be busy for parents everywhere.

Speaker 20 You're juggling snacks, nap time, and everything else.

Speaker 23 Well, Gerber can help create a more parent-friendly game day because they have the most clean label project certifications of any baby food brand.

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Speaker 20 I mean, Mac loves them.

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Speaker 22 Make sure to pick up your little ones' favorite Gerber products at a store near you.

Speaker 26 It's 1972.

Speaker 27 A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.

Speaker 30 Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 32 All they have left is a life raft and each other.

Speaker 34 This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive.

Speaker 37 Hosted by me, Becky Milligan.

Speaker 39 Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House.

Speaker 43 Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 48 It's the gaming event of the year, featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 56 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 62 Season 0 of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 65 Head over to globalgaming league.com.

Speaker 66 Com, com.

Speaker 68 Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode.

Speaker 68 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.

Speaker 68 If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 68 Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Siege.
I'm on Andrewism over at YouTube.

Speaker 68 And I'm not on YouTube right now. I'm on It Could Happen Here.
And I'm joined by the disembodied voice of the one and only.

Speaker 70 Garrison Davis. Yes.
Well, one and only that I know of, unless there's another one going around, which would be creaky.

Speaker 68 There might be. There might be.

Speaker 67 But today,

Speaker 68 I want to continue our journey through Latin American anarchisms and their histories.

Speaker 68 Now, compared to all the other countries I've discussed so far, such as Peru and Chile and Argentina and Brazil and Cuba, this one had a bit less information. about anarchism in its past.

Speaker 68 So this will be a sort of a smaller sandwich anarchist history, perhaps fit in of of the country that is sandwiched between Argentina and Brazil.

Speaker 68 I'm speaking, of course, about Paraguay, known for its fraught history of warfare, politically volatile landscape, series of dictatorships, and indigenously intertwined cultural and social fabric.

Speaker 68 Anarchism took root in this rather unique setting. And thanks to the work of Angel Capelletti

Speaker 68 and a few other scattered sources, I've been able to piece together the history of anarchism in Paraguay. Without further ado, nos comen semos.

Speaker 68 For much of its early history, Paraguay's identity was distinct within South America, from its time as a Guarani settlement to its formation as a Spanish colony in the 16th century.

Speaker 68 Spanish Jesuit missionaries wielded significant influence, and for over a century, Paraguay was a self-sustained colony with a rigidly hierarchical system based on the Spanish caste system.

Speaker 68 Paraguay's economy primarily revolved around agriculture and cattle hooding, unlike the mining economies in other Spanish territories.

Speaker 68 The Guarani people had a significant cultural impact throughout Paraguay's history, and the language and traditions remained central even as Paraguay evolved through the centuries.

Speaker 68 Even today, most of the population speaks some variety of Guarani alongside Spanish.

Speaker 68 Fast forward to the early 19th century, As South American nations began declaring independence from Spain, Paraguay took a unique approach.

Speaker 68 Rather than aligning with the neighboring revolutionary movements, Paraguay, under the leadership of José Gaspar Rodriguez de Verde Francia, declared independence in 1811 and adopted an isolationist authoritarian path.

Speaker 68 Francia ruled as the country's supreme dictator for nearly three decades, envisioning a self-sufficient, hermetic society.

Speaker 68 He strictly controlled foreign influences, banned European migration, and restricted trade.

Speaker 68 By the mid-19th century, Paraguay had built up a significant state infrastructure under Francia's successor, Carlos Antonio Lopez.

Speaker 68 However, this era of economic development was short-lived as Paraguay entered the catastrophic war of the Triple Alliance between 1864 and 1870 against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay over territorial disputes.

Speaker 68 This conflict proved disastrous for Paraguay. as they suffered staggering losses.
Nearly 70% of its population died. Its economy was shattered and its territory was significantly reduced.

Speaker 68 And yes, you heard me right, nearly 70% of its population perished, including most of its male population.

Speaker 68 In the war's aftermath, Paraguay was plunged into political chaos, economic ruin, and a period of foreign interventions.

Speaker 68 Due to the economic devastation of the war, the country became indebted to British creditors.

Speaker 68 And with that leverage, Britain pushed for the development of a free market economy and privatization, which brought Paraguay into closer contact with the global economy and eventually led to a more pronounced class divide and the establishment of an exploitative agricultural export system.

Speaker 68 Land that had once been communally managed was swiftly privatized, driving indigenous communities and small farmers off their lands and into the workforce of larger estates.

Speaker 68 On those estates, workers would find themselves in debt bondage, tied to the estates, as small debts that workers owed to landowners would spiral into insurmountable debts that would become nearly impossible to repay.

Speaker 68 Laborers, called peones, were typically paid in vouchers or scrip that could only be redeemed at the estate store, where prices were exorbitantly inflated.

Speaker 68 Any attempt to leave or challenge the conditions was met with violent repercussions from estate managers, creating a cycle of economic entrapment that was essentially slavery by another name.

Speaker 68 Paraguay became a country of ever more wealthy and powerful landowners with a struggling rural working class.

Speaker 68 As the 20th century approached, the labour struggles and social divisions within Paraguayan society were glaring.

Speaker 68 Growing inequality, exploitive working conditions, and the dislocation of indicious communities created fertile ground for radical ideas among rural campesinos and urban workers.

Speaker 68 European immigrants fleeing political oppression brought with them some rather radical ideas that began to resonate with Paraguayan workers who were desperate for a way out of their circumstances.

Speaker 68 For a people who had survived centuries of oppression and authoritarian rule, anarchism had a unique appeal.

Speaker 68 By the 1880s, workers in Paraguay had become organized in mutual aid societies, and one such society of typographers would organize themselves into a union, the first in the country's history, by 1886.

Speaker 68 That same year saw the rise of construction workers, carpenters, tailors, postal workers, and bakers' unions. Those bakers would also conduct the country's first ever strike action in October of 1886.

Speaker 68 The first distinctly anarchist publication I could find in Paraguay was organized by a group called Los Hijos del Chaco, who published a Libertarian Manifesto in 1892.

Speaker 68 They call themselves anarchist communists and declare their intent to abolish private property, the clergy, the state, and the armed forces.

Speaker 68 Quote, We seek the complete emancipation of the proletariat as we fight to abolish the unjust exploitation of man by man.

Speaker 68 we dedicate all of our moral and physical strength to overturn all tyrannies to establish genuine liberty equality and fraternity in the human family we seek to transform private property into a common good we seek to do so because individual property is the basic cause of all the evils that afflict us it's on that basis that the dregs of humanity government clerics lawyers militaries entrepreneurs maintain themselves in power live as parasites and the continued enjoyment of their funder finances large armies with the products of our labor.

Speaker 68 ⁇ End quote. Even prior to that manifesto, anarchists were making moves in the graphic, railway, and bakers unions as early as 1889, fighting for and winning the eight-hour workday by 1901.

Speaker 68 Strike actions in this period were focused on that goal alongside wage increases and other improvements to working conditions.

Speaker 68 The anarchists also tried to establish a national trade union center, but unfortunately did not succeed.

Speaker 68 In 1892, Thanks in part to the growing Spanish and Argentine immigrant populations, there was a wave of libertarian union formation throughout Paraguay.

Speaker 68 The anarchists were also quite successful among the peasantry, as they helped organize armed resistance societies to aid in their struggles against the landowners.

Speaker 68 Anarchists also managed to establish Rafael Barrett Cultural Center in the early 90s, hosting an impressive collection of books by fellow Paraguayan and foreign writers and emboldening the formation of even more trade unions.

Speaker 68 Rafael Barrett, by the way, is one of the most significant figures in Paraguayan anarchist history, according to every account I've read.

Speaker 68 Born in Tora Vega, Spain in 1876, Parrette's early life was typical of a well-to-do intellectual. He studied languages, piano, and eventually engineering.

Speaker 68 By his late 20s, he was drawn to Latin America, partly by adventure and partly to make a difference, driven by a growing commitment to justice and solidarity.

Speaker 68 He arrived in Buenos Aires in 1903, where he found work as a journalist. soon making waves with an article that condemned the stark inequality he observed in Argentina as capital.

Speaker 68 This critique cost him his job, yet it deepened his dedication to speak for those who were voiceless.

Speaker 68 Barat's experiences of seeing European immigrant workers toiling under brutal conditions fueled his indignation against unchecked wealth and poverty's vicious hold on the working class.

Speaker 68 In 1904, Barrett made his way to Paraguay.

Speaker 68 He was initially welcomed as a correspondent for El Tiempo and even held government positions, including as a director of the Department of Engineers and the Railroad Agency.

Speaker 68 But his commitment to exposing the country's political and social rot soon put him at odds with Paraguay's new liberal government.

Speaker 68 He saw that simply swapping out conservative leaders for liberals did little to improve conditions for ordinary Paraguayans, as demonstrated by the continuous labor struggles that arose in response to the industrialization undertaken by the liberal government.

Speaker 68 Workers were fighting to abolish child labour, improve their conditions, increase wages, and so on. He couldn't stand by in silence.

Speaker 68 So he resigned from government service, now fully committed to social justice, even as his growing radicalism began to alienate the political elite.

Speaker 68 Berette's personal experiences sharpened his perspective, transforming him from a sympathetic observer to a dedicated anarchist.

Speaker 68 His writings in Freminal became essential reading for workers and peasants alike, urging them to see beyond superficial reforms and to challenge the entire structure of oppression.

Speaker 68 Barrett condemned the government's abuses and spoke out against exploitative systems that kept the majority of Paraguayans marginalized.

Speaker 68 He was a fiery advocate for social justice, and one writer in particular, Augusto Roa Bastos, called him the discoverer of Paraguayan social reality, because Beret didn't just observe these injustices, he threw himself into exposing and condemning them with fervor.

Speaker 68 His impact was so significant that even when he was forced to flee Paraguay in 1908 under government pressure, his ideas endured.

Speaker 68 His health was deteriorating from tuberculosis, but he continued to write, receiving support from intellectual comrades in Uruguay and Brazil.

Speaker 68 His final years were just a continuation of his relentless dedication, even as his health continued to decline.

Speaker 68 In 1910, he went to Paris to seek treatment, but his health failed and he passed away in December of that year.

Speaker 68 But just before Barrett's exile and passing in 1906, the anarchists would form the first and for some time only workers' federation in the country by joining together the illustrators, carpenters, and drivers' unions.

Speaker 68 Rafael Barrett actually became something of a thought leader for this group, and this was the Federación Federación Obreiras Regional Paraguay, or FOP, partially inspired by the Federación Obreras Regional Argentina, or FORA, where they borrowed many of their programmatic ideas.

Speaker 68 If you recall the episodes I did on Argentina, you know that the reasoning for the name was ideological.

Speaker 68 By adding the adjective regional, it made plain that the country in question, whether Paraguay or Argentina, was not being considered a state or political unit, but a region of the world in which workers struggled for their liberation.

Speaker 68 Soon after its founding, on the 1st of May 1906, the Forbes held the country's first International Workers' Day demonstration, despite police attempts to shut it down.

Speaker 68 Forbes also launched their official publication, El Despertad, in the same year, and the paper carried articles about the anarchist movements in Europe and Latin America, printed works by authors such as Peter Kropotkin and Selma Lorenzo, published reports of the Forbes activities, named and shamed the known strikebreakers, and encouraged its members to pay their union dues promptly.

Speaker 68 Subsequent years would introduce other libertarian newspapers such as La Rebellion, La Tribuna and Aciel Futuro.

Speaker 68 After the 1908 coup by Emiliano, Gonsalves Naviero destabilized the economy and restricted Asunción's labor movement, anarchism still found strength among rural and tannin industry workers.

Speaker 68 Despite increasing hostility from figures like Presidents Condra and Jarre, labor strikes continued, which were met by fee shepherd, arrests, and forced deportations.

Speaker 68 With the outbreak of the Paraguayan civil war from 1911 to 1912, anarchists and other labor organizations faced a government crackdown. Groups like the FOP became inactive, temporarily at least.

Speaker 68 By 1913, in the wake of the war, a schism was emerging as some unions moved toward reformist ideologies, influenced in part by the populist Colorado Party.

Speaker 68 Meanwhile, FOP reaffirmed its anarcho-syndicalist roots.

Speaker 68 forming a federal council that included both workers and intellectuals, aiming to rekindle its union activities amidst a wave of reorganization.

Speaker 68 Post-World War I, a new surge in demand for Paraguayan exports revitalized labor activism.

Speaker 68 In 1916, the COP, or Centro Oberero Regional del Paraguay, took on the role of championing anarcho-syndicalism and labor rights.

Speaker 68 This movement gained support from a wide network, launching influential publications like El Combate and Renovación.

Speaker 68 Other groups like Mede and the Revolutionary Nationalist Alliance, which sought a federalist union of the peoples of Latin America, also took part in the resurgence of anarchist ideas.

Speaker 68 In 1922, the Paraguayan anarchists were able to finally establish links with the International Workers' Association.

Speaker 68 By the 1930s, Siriaco Puarte emerged as a prominent voice, advocating for workers' rights despite, you know, everything.

Speaker 68 He was a protégé of fellow anarchist and printmaker Felix Cantalicio Aracuyo. a Paraguayan mestizo of mixed indigenous and black ancestry.

Speaker 68 At one point, Aracuyo and his comrades had helped organize a tram worker strike in Asuncion, which compelled the government to round them up and dump them in the middle of the jungle in Matogroso, hoping that they would die.

Speaker 68 And yet Aracuyu and his friends made their way through over 1,300 kilometers of mountain jungle, surviving on roots, fruits, and game, to make their way back to their hometown of Incarnación.

Speaker 68 And speaking of incarnacion, both Tuarte and Aracuyu took part in the little-known attempt at an anarchist uprising in Paraguay, which was actually centered in Incarnacion.

Speaker 68 On the 20th of February 1931, a group of 150 workers and students, organized in a couple of popular assemblies, took control of the city of Incarnación with the goal of establishing a libertarian commune, part of a plan to spark a wider anarchist-syndicalist revolution in Paraguay.

Speaker 68 This was the culmination of a series of strikes and widespread leafletting by anarchists and students in support of revolution.

Speaker 68 It wasn't meant to be centered in Incarnación, as there was a planned construction worker-led general strike in Instunción and similar action in Villarica and Concepción.

Speaker 68 But key organizers in those struggles in those cities were deported in the days leading up to the action. So those planned actions ended up failing.

Speaker 68 After 16 hours, when their efforts were not reinforced by workers in the rest of the nation, the insurrectionists of Incarnación took over two steamboats and made their way along the river to Brazil.

Speaker 68 But not before they attacked the Yoruba Mate companies and burned the records related to indentured laborers in two ports. Their solidarity never died.

Speaker 68 Even after they went through everything they went through, they didn't lose their sight on what really mattered. Sadly, the 17 students and workers who remained in Encarnación were arrested.

Speaker 68 Duarte found himself jailed and interned on Margarita Island after Liberal Party President Jose P. Cughiari outlawed trade unions.

Speaker 68 Other revolutionaries were dropped off in the jungle to die at random points along the Parana River.

Speaker 68 Seven of the captured 17 met this fate, and the other 10 spent a few months in prison before being deported to Argentina.

Speaker 68 Movement then faced distinct challenges during the Chaco War from 1932 to 1935 between Paraguay and Bolivia, which halted much of the anarchist activism.

Speaker 68 Many anarchists joined the the war effort reluctantly, including Duarte, who performed duties in the rear guard while working as a typesetter for various presses, including anarchist presses.

Speaker 68 The Paraguayan victory, following the war, the return to domestic concerns saw a resurgence of anarchist and labor activities.

Speaker 68 The government's crackdown of leftist ideologies in the late 1930s and 1940s, under President Morinico's rule, led to severe repression of anarchist and syndicalist groups.

Speaker 68 Duarte spent some time as a weaker representative at the National Labour Department, or DNT, but was under considerable fire from the communists, who had taken hold of the trade union movement after anarchism waned in popularity.

Speaker 68 He finally resigned from his post in 1941 after a workers' coordinating committee of seamen, tram workers, bakers, print workers, and other trades issued a protest note to President Morinigo threatening to withdraw from the workers' delegate for the infringement of their rights of assembly, to unionize, and to strike.

Speaker 68 Of course, the protest note was completely ignored. The president's authoritarian tenure pushed several anarchists and socialist organizers into exile.

Speaker 68 Duarte himself ended up in exile in Argentina by 1942, but eventually was able to return and reclaim his appointment as a worker representative.

Speaker 68 Then, not long after, he became a victim of a police crackdown during the 1944 general strike.

Speaker 68 After the labor movement was hijacked by the Republican Workers' Organization after 1947, Duarte dropped out of trade union activity entirely and refocused to publishing articles and trade union publications abroad and urgent research into Paraguayan trade union history.

Speaker 68 He had faced repeated arrests and took part in strikes anyway, advocating for workers' rights across various industries.

Speaker 68 He continued his activism against fascism and authoritarianism, operating from Argentina at times, while still supporting strikes at anarchist literature in Paraguay.

Speaker 68 The 1954 ascension to power of General Alfredo Stroisner marked a significant period of intensified authoritarianism.

Speaker 68 Streisner's regime violently suppressed opposition, including anarchists, for over three decades. Even in his 70s, during the 1970s, Duarte was harassed by Streisner's secret police.

Speaker 68 Many other anarchists were imprisoned, exiled, or disappeared by Streisner, who imposed tight control of unions and labor organizing.

Speaker 68 The 1954 to 1989 dictatorship of Streisner stifled anarchist activities severely and forced them underground, where they would have to preserve anarchist literature and ideas through secret print publications and solidarity movements.

Speaker 68 The result of this dictatorship was that anarchism in Paraguay experienced resurgence much later than other Latin American nations, with the spark rekindled only in the early 2000s.

Speaker 68 This rebirth of anarchist sentiment emerged largely within the punk counterculture and youth-led social movements, often interconnected with struggles for indigenous rights, economic justice, and environmental causes.

Speaker 68 The establishment of spaces like La Teraza and Anarchist Squad provided platforms for activists and community engagement, while publications such as Autonomia, Zine and Grito Fanzine disseminated anarchist ideals.

Speaker 68 Despite Paraguay's history of anarchist repression, these newer movements, however small, signify some small hope for a renewed interest in libertarian ideas within Paraguay, one that can be seen even more vibrantly in other parts of Latin America.

Speaker 68 Paraguayan anarchists have shown us the drive for freedom and equality is a daily commitment to defy tyranny and resist exploitation.

Speaker 68 Despite facing decades of silencing under the straightest and dictatorship, anarchism did not disappear.

Speaker 68 The seeds of resistance lay dormant, but they are ready to bloom again as new generations can take up the struggle.

Speaker 68 As we conclude, let us remember the words of Rafael Barret, who fought tirelessly for the people he came to call his own: justice, justice above all things. Justice, even if it costs blood.

Speaker 68 All power all the people.

Speaker 44 Peace.

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Speaker 1 to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Speaker 2 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 3 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 4 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 5 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 6 We got clear facts.

Speaker 8 Maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 10 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 11 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 12 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 9 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 26 It's 1972.

Speaker 27 A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.

Speaker 30 Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 32 All they have left is a life raft and each other.

Speaker 36 This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan.

Speaker 41 Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House.

Speaker 43 Follow and listen on Apple podcasts.

Speaker 48 It's the gaming event of the year featuring T-Pain's Nappy Boy Grizzlies versus Neo's Gentleman's Gaming.

Speaker 56 It's a 4v4 matchup featuring Call of Duty, Tetris, Track Mania, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 Plus 4, and Tekken 8.

Speaker 62 Season 0 of the Global Gaming League is live streaming on YouTube and Twitch.

Speaker 65 Head over to GlobalGamingLeague.com.

Speaker 66 Com, com.

Speaker 71 This is Aaron Andrews from Calm Down with Aaron and Carissa.

Speaker 20 Now, I know I didn't invent being a busy mom, but during football season between the sideline gig, everything else I have going on, and my little one, it's a lot.

Speaker 75 That's why I'm seriously excited to be teaming up with Gerber.

Speaker 76 They do so much to make football season a more parent-friendly experience.

Speaker 78 I mean, over 95 years, they've been the MVP for parents who just want to nourish their little ones with stuff they can trust.

Speaker 80 And you can certainly trust Gerber.

Speaker 79 Did you know Gerber holds the most clean label project certifications of any baby food brand out there?

Speaker 81 And Gerber has certainly been a go-to for me.

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Speaker 83 If he's sitting and he starts to get a little frustrated, here, have a yogurt melt.

Speaker 13 It will put you in such a better mood, which means I'm in a better mood too. It all comes down to this.

Speaker 14 With Gerber, there's just one less thing to worry about.

Speaker 24 And that really lightens the load for me.

Speaker 14 So grab your little ones, Gerber favorites at a store near you.

Speaker 69 Hi, everyone, and welcome to the podcast. It's me, James, today, and I'm joined joined by Danny.

Speaker 69 Danny's an engineer and photographer who lived in northeast Syria from 2018 until 2023 and a founding member of the RIC, which is the Rojava Information Center, if you're not familiar.

Speaker 69 And she worked for self-administration and civil engineering while she was there. Welcome to the show, Danny.

Speaker 84 Hi, James. It's really good to be on.

Speaker 69 Yeah, cheers. Thanks for coming.
I know it's like a stressful time.

Speaker 69 So what I thought we would do is there's been a lot of reporting on Syria that people have probably seen if they're living in the US or the UK.

Speaker 69 Nearly all of it has either excluded or like footnoted what's happening in north and east Syria and specifically in the areas that are under the self-administration.

Speaker 69 So I was hoping today we could give people a little more introduction to what's happening there.

Speaker 69 There's been a lot of like jubilation about what's happening in Syria and things have been very far from universally positive, right?

Speaker 69 There's a massive displacement of civilians, ethnic cleansing of areas that have been captured by the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and genuine like peril for the self-administration project, the like of which we haven't seen for a long time.

Speaker 69 So perhaps if listeners aren't familiar, would you like give them the real basics of the self-administration of the AANES and what it means and what's going on there?

Speaker 84 Yeah,

Speaker 84 well, that's a big question because it's a big project. It's been going on for quite some time.

Speaker 84 Yeah, it really has kind of been lost in discussions and news about the Syrian civil war because it has been such a complex, multipolar, multi-axis, multi-ethnic conflict, and it's been going on for what, like 13, 14 years now.

Speaker 69 Yeah.

Speaker 84 Coming up to 14 years. The Kurds in the northeast had been preparing for some time before the outbreak of civil war back in 2011 for something like this.

Speaker 84 Obviously, they didn't know this was going to happen, but they had been working on revolutionary emancipation for decades.

Speaker 84 And in particular, since around 2000, they've been working on this concept of democratic confederalism, which is moving away from a sort of what they call an old paradigm of Marxist-Leninist thought to this system they've now quite effectively built up there, where democracy is bottom-up, it's structured around small communes and self-organizing units, cooperatives.

Speaker 84 There's a market economy, but it's not a capitalist economy, where there's sort of radical emancipation of oppressed peoples, particularly women, who are really centered in the revolutionary process and organizing there.

Speaker 84 And I think because they maybe you can't call them conflict avoided, like they haven't avoided conflict, they very famously defeated ISIS amongst other groups in the northeast.

Speaker 84 They fought against Al-Nusra Front and various other jihadi groups. They also didn't enter into serious conflict with either the FSA, as they were, or the regime and the Assad regime.

Speaker 84 And so they kind of managed to carve out a sort of democratic and semi-enclave. I mean people would describe it as a statelet,

Speaker 84 they quite vehemently say it's not a state in the northeast of Syria, whilst the worst of the fighting was between the Assad regime and the FSA and groups that came out of the FSA.

Speaker 84 in the west and south of the country.

Speaker 69 Yeah, I think that's a very good summary. I think like it gets missed maybe because of how relatively successful it's been compared to other like democratization projects within Syria.

Speaker 69 It gets missed that like when people are talking about what will happen in Syria now, bizarrely, and I don't quite like, I don't quite understand how we get here, but like people seem to go to like Libya.

Speaker 69 I understand how we get here. It's through a process of like orientalism and ignorance.

Speaker 69 But we have a functioning democracy, an example of like, it's not just Kurdish people right it's lots of communities living together in north and east syria and and because of democratic confederalism they're able to like coexist and still feel that they have enough sovereignty to be safe is that fair yeah yeah absolutely and i i think something that is hard to convey or fully understand unless you spend a lot of time there or you're deeply involved with any of these communities is quite how hard that was to do.

Speaker 84 A lot of the different ethnic groups, political groups there hate each other, you know?

Speaker 84 The Kurds, they brought in lots of different policies like the right to be taught in your mother tongue.

Speaker 84 When they took power 2012 onwards, they were very keen not to just sort of replace everything with Kurdish, make it a Kurdish state, you know, start being the oppressor instead of the oppressed.

Speaker 84 They made sure that they continue using Arabic as the majority language because it is the majority language there. The north and east of Syria is still an Arab majority area.

Speaker 69 And this is despite the the fact that they've been pretty horrendously oppressed by the Arab population through the Ba'ath party and its oppressive systems for decades so it has been a pretty hard ongoing process to negotiate and to put aside pretty serious conflicts between quite a few different groups that exist there yeah it won't be any easier of across the whole country than it was there but like they have a system that works and and it's kind of frustrating to see these discussions of what happens next that just ignore the fact that there's a functioning multi-ethnic democracy right there if we just look at women's liberation you know i've reported from lots of places around the world lots of places in that part of the world and the difference is profound in like everyday life it's not just a kind of rhetorical commitment right like at least my impression as a as a man is that like this is a revolution by women not a revolution and it's about women it's not a revolution by men that like seeks to liberate women says it's going to liberate women, you know, with the US invading Afghanistan saying it's going to liberate women.

Speaker 69 And look what we got. And like the difference in just the way people are able to, like, every aspect of everyday life is completely different.
But that's in danger right now.

Speaker 69 The narrative, I guess, that people will be familiar with from Syria is that the state has been defeated, the Assad regime has been refeated, and that therefore the revolution has succeeded.

Speaker 69 But the Assad regime is not the only state in play in Syria, right? So can you explain the Turkish antipathy to the project in north and east Syria and how that's manifesting itself currently?

Speaker 84 Yeah,

Speaker 84 it's pretty hard to discuss any of this stuff without talking about Turkey and without understanding where they're coming from.

Speaker 84 And I think

Speaker 84 it's something that isn't said enough or understood enough that the modern state of Turkey is an ethno-nationalist project. And

Speaker 84 I don't say that as a slur. That's like a basic founding principle of the state.
It's a state founded on genocide and the mass forced demographic change across the whole country.

Speaker 84 And it's continued that way. And there have been reforms for sure.

Speaker 84 But that's still a founding principle.

Speaker 84 And even now, sort of speaking a non-Turkish language in the Turkish parliament is a pretty serious violation.

Speaker 84 And the size of Turkey, the size of its economy, the size of its military,

Speaker 84 the regional power status they have in the Middle East means that they have an enormous gravity. They have an enormous amount of power over Syria.

Speaker 84 A lot of the goods and services that Syria relies on come in through Turkey or rely on Turkish industry.

Speaker 84 And the Turkish military is a huge supporter of the groups in the northwest, like Khayatri al-Sham and the Syrian National Army. And of course,

Speaker 84 the Kurdish question within Turkey is the main reason for their antipathy towards

Speaker 84 what's been built up in northeast Syria.

Speaker 84 As much as the self-determination for oppressed peoples and minorities is something that's an issue, the fact that it's Kurdish-led and in particular it's emancipatory for Kurdish people threatens this ethno-nationalist aspect of their state.

Speaker 84 And

Speaker 84 they kind of they see it as something that needs to be nipped in the bud, right?

Speaker 84 And they've sort of done that with northern Iraq,

Speaker 84 the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, by essentially vassalizing the KDP, the main party there.

Speaker 84 And they know they can't do the same in northeast Syria and the military option is their best chance, their best hope of nipping Kurdish emancipation and Kurdish self-determination in the bud and preventing it from sort of snowballing across the region.

Speaker 69 Yeah, I think we should probably mention that like,

Speaker 69 I guess if we talk about like the electoral method or the electoral path like people in in Turkish Kurdistan in northern Kurdistan if you want to call it in addition to the armed struggle which has been there since 1984 they have also like tried to vote and repeatedly seen their votes ignored or changed or their elected officials removed like this is within the last year I'm not talking about back in the 80s and 90s and like Turkey has been aggressively attacking any attempts at like self-determination within the country and then as you say like militarily attacking the Kurdish freedom movement within north and east Syria.

Speaker 69 Do you want to talk about the Syrian National Army or the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army, whatever you want to call them, and explain? Like,

Speaker 69 I think part of what we're dealing with is like that Turkey has a very well-established state media project and they seem to do very well on like creating viral social media content.

Speaker 69 So people might not be fully familiar with who the SNA are and specifically like Turkey's role in creating them. Do you want to explain that a bit to people?

Speaker 84 Yeah, I mean

Speaker 84 this is one of the reasons why I think it's so hard for people to report on the Syrian civil war.

Speaker 84 It's very hard to convey like a simple coherent narrative of one side versus the other, you know, like Ukraine versus Russia, the Russian world and Ukrainian world,

Speaker 84 because

Speaker 84 there are so many different groups and the SNA is an important one. And they are...
they're grouped together with this like concept of the rebels that have liberated Syria.

Speaker 84 Despite the fact that they're not actually part of Hayadsham, the liberation movement, as it calls itself,

Speaker 84 that have taken over Syria.

Speaker 84 Yeah, the Syrian National Army,

Speaker 84 it's kind of like a loose collection of various, some of them call themselves brigades or groups.

Speaker 84 It's essentially a military proxy force of Turkey. They don't have a coherent political framework.
They're not revolutionary groups.

Speaker 84 They're not liberatory or emancipatory, they wouldn't describe themselves as that in the same way that maybe HTS would.

Speaker 84 I mean, the Kurds in northeast Syria describe them as gangs, which kind of sounds like a propaganda term, but when you actually look at what they do, they really are like a sort of a criminal enterprise, a criminal gang that's used as a convenient proxy force by Turkey.

Speaker 84 Because ultimately, Turkey has like a massive military.

Speaker 84 Their navy is quite underfunded and not particularly well staffed. The Air Force has suffered pretty seriously from the fallout of the coup in 2016.

Speaker 84 But the army is massive, it's relatively well funded and their drone program is huge.

Speaker 84 The thing that they struggle with is the losses that are incurred against Kurdish groups, particularly the PKK in the mountains between Iraq and Turkey. And

Speaker 84 they need to control that because they realize that they've been fighting militarily, the Kurds, as you say, since the early 1980s. And they can't have a Vietnam situation, right?

Speaker 84 Of a mass movement against their military occupation and against their their military efforts in syria they can't afford financially or politically to get into a quagmire there and so by by funding this sort of collection of groups called the sna that's their way of being able to incur pretty massive losses without having to report on it without that creating unrest or opposition within the Turkish population of Turkey.

Speaker 67 Right.

Speaker 69 And I think especially when like some of the things the SNA have done, which we can maybe get into in Manbij, like

Speaker 69 it gives them a deniability that wouldn't exist if that was regular soldiers doing that.

Speaker 69 Like some stuff which is war crimes is, I guess, a nice way of saying it, like a more standardized way of saying it, but horrific stuff, really terrible stuff.

Speaker 69 This has been happening since at least 2018. But Turkey doesn't have to be held accountable for that because, like you say, it's not Turkish, it's not the Turkish army.

Speaker 69 Do you want to explain how the situation in North Syria has changed since, when was it like two weeks ago, a week ago?

Speaker 69 I guess that they moved south from Aleppo and the HTS largely with some support from SNA moved, moved towards Damascus. And then the SNA launched its own assault on the self-administration.

Speaker 69 Can you explain a little bit of what's happened there in terms of... displacement and in terms of the terrain that's the SNA have captured?

Speaker 84 Yeah, it's been very fast moving. Yeah, as you say, like it's only been two weeks since since the Battle for Aleppo started, if you can call it a battle.

Speaker 84 And so the SDF, so this is like the alliance of military groups that falls under the remit of the self-administration in the northeast Syria.

Speaker 84 So the YPG and the YPJ are like the most famous and largest components of this force, but there are a whole bunch of Arab and Syrian and Armenian units within the SDF.

Speaker 84 They held this a sort of salient pushing out into northwest Syria towards Afriyan, which was captured by the SNA and Turkey in 2018. That was on one side funded by HTS and on the other by the SNA.

Speaker 84 When things really kicked off, the SNA started a pretty concerted campaign to capture this area known as Sheba.

Speaker 84 And because of its position and its relatively difficult terrain and difficult logistical position to resupply, they pulled back from that towards Aleppo and Manbij, which is the only major city that the STS still held on the west of the Euphrates.

Speaker 84 So this is the area closest to Aleppo. They got hit pretty hard.
If you follow live update map or any of these sort of update maps, it looked like that collapsed pretty quickly.

Speaker 84 Actually, it ended up being a sort of large grey zone of guerrilla attacks and

Speaker 84 potentially still ongoing.

Speaker 84 It's been really murky and hard to tell what's going on there, but essentially there's a large area of uncontrolled but heavily contested territory between Aleppo and the Euphrates River now, which the SDF and the SNA have been fighting over.

Speaker 84 Like one of the curious things for me is that the Turkish Air Force and military did not get involved for a while, but after about a week they did and they started hitting Manbij very, very heavily.

Speaker 84 And at that point, when the centre of Manbij started being contested and fought over, the US stepped in. We don't know the details of it, but there seems to have been some kind of negotiation.

Speaker 84 Whereby the suggestion is that if the SDF I just pulled back across the Euphrates, the SDF would assure their protection from any further assaults. We don't know how true that is.

Speaker 84 And we know that today further negotiations on this failed. But

Speaker 84 it's really hard to tell right now as we speak what's disinformation and what's truth because stuff's only coming out officially in gibs and traps.

Speaker 69 Yeah, and stuff's coming out unofficially, often that is just not true

Speaker 84 every five minutes and getting blasted by maybe people who just don't understand or who do understand but have a certain agenda to push on social media especially but on telegram too and it can be really confusing and it's really frustrating yeah for instance like just before we came on air i saw a couple of videos being posted by pro-Turkish accounts of purportedly showing mass uh troop concentrations lined up against this border wall waiting to invade And I realized that they were from 2019 when Sarakani and Talabayad were invaded.

Speaker 84 And they were just reposting material from then,

Speaker 84 you know, as disinformation on these movements and whether an attack is going to happen, what the negotiations between the US and Turkey turned out to be.

Speaker 84 And the truth is, like, right now, we don't know exactly what's going on.

Speaker 69 Yeah. And like, you probably won't.
And that's probably a good thing. One other thing is that like.

Speaker 69 The SDF tends to have much better operational security discipline than the SNA does. So you won't see as much of like media with an SDF spin or people directly streaming.

Speaker 69 I mean, one thing the SNA likes to do is a war crime and then post it on Telegram. And so it can be easy to only see that and be like, oh, God, it's terrible.
Like, and it is terrible.

Speaker 69 Those things are horrific.

Speaker 69 But like, because you're not seeing when the SDF is making movements or making advances until a bit later, until you get something from like an official press channel, it can give the impression that the SNA is just romping around, which is not the case.

Speaker 84 Yeah, we saw this a few times when Manbeach was reported to have been captured by the SNA and they posted videos of themselves in the middle of the city.

Speaker 84 And then an hour later, the SDF posted a video from the centre of the city of 20 or 30 dead SNA littering about the streets and them flying their own flag. So,

Speaker 84 yeah, it's really, it's really hard to tell. It's also really hard as like anyone who cares about the region or has been there, has reported on it.

Speaker 84 Anyone interested in the kind of politics that the Kurds have built up in the region and others, I should say, it's been a multi-ethnic project.

Speaker 84 If you care about that, it's really hard not to be glued to social media to see what's going on. But it can be quite detrimental to Merau.

Speaker 84 It can be quite an act of self-harm to be like constantly checking on this because it's so murky.

Speaker 84 Yeah, and as you say, like things can turn around within two hours of info or disinfo getting out there.

Speaker 69 Yeah. And I think it's a super important time to like be looking at trusted sources and be considering if you need to be on Telegram that much.
Something I have been considering this weekend.

Speaker 69 So let's talk about like right now, certainly the focus is on Kobani, right?

Speaker 69 But there's also, well, there's a lot of the self-administration that could potentially be under threat if Turkey decides to go as hard as it as it can against the self-administration, against the existence of, I guess, any form of democratic project in north and east Syria if it attempts to kind of bring the whole thing under one government from Damascus.

Speaker 69 Can you explain like what might happen, what people can do?

Speaker 69 And like, we should talk about what's at stake as well, especially with the prisoner our whole, which maybe we can come to after those two things, because I think that's a lot to ask you in one question.

Speaker 69 But maybe if people aren't familiar with our our whole, we'll leave that one. But can you explain it first, like what could potentially happen if Turkey decides to go as hard as it wants to here?

Speaker 84 I mean, I think the best way to answer that question is to look at what's already happened.

Speaker 84 So in 2018 and 19, they already captured three significant cities that were under control of the self-administration.

Speaker 84 So the first and most famously was Afrin, which was in the far northwest of the country, like just north of Aleppo, sort of jutting out into Turkey.

Speaker 84 That was a majority Kurdish city. I don't know the exact details, but it was something like 80 or 90%, which I think is higher than any other city in northern Syria.

Speaker 84 And it was also like, it had seen the least fighting of pretty much anywhere in Syria by that point. So the war had been going on for like,

Speaker 84 what, seven years? And Afrin was pretty much untouched. So it was in a pretty good state.
And Turkey and the SNA invaded just as the war against ISIS was winding down.

Speaker 84 And I mean, it's become hell on earth. It's been almost completely depopulated.
I think it's less than 10% now Kurdish ethnically.

Speaker 84 It has been ruled by a number of different groups. We can say the SNA, but you know, different groups within the SNA and have fought over it.

Speaker 84 The HTS at times have had control over certain parts of the area. And there's been a lot of infighting.
There's been horrendous war crimes committed.

Speaker 84 rape, murder, and thousands of disappeared people. And as you say, say, they really like to openly put videos out of them committing this stuff.
I mean,

Speaker 84 they're pretty shameless about it.

Speaker 84 There are some pretty disturbing videos of them mutilating the bodies of fallen YPJ soldiers, of committing summary executions, of wiping out whole towns. It's been awful.
And

Speaker 84 the same thing happened again in 2019, around in October, when they captured Serikani and Tal Abayad.

Speaker 84 And it's worth also pointing out that these were not Kurdish majority cities as far as I understand. I think the Serikani maybe was about 50%.

Speaker 84 And Talabayad, which is kind of close to Kobani, I'm pretty sure wasn't Kurdish majority city, but it was organised under the self-administration and it was organized quite effectively.

Speaker 84 And they committed the same horrific crimes there.

Speaker 44 They are...

Speaker 84 an anti-Kurdish force, if we can say that. They are racist.
They do have a stated goal of committing genocide against the Kurds. That's not an exaggeration.

Speaker 84 This is something they openly say, but they don't seem to care who they steal from

Speaker 84 or who they rape or who they extort. Wherever they go, it's death and destruction.
And it still is now.

Speaker 84 And there's still something like a quarter of a million internally displaced people from these areas in northeast Syria.

Speaker 84 hoping to go back and now having to see the situation get even worse and not knowing if they ever will be able to.

Speaker 69 Yeah. And I think, like, you were talking about

Speaker 69 we're seeing it right now in Man Beach, right? Like, the SNA seems to largely be in control of the city, albeit with YPG fighters kind of more, and I guess in a guerrilla role.

Speaker 69 So it would seem still fighting there.

Speaker 69 But I believe we're on the second day of a general strike in Man Beach, like after less than a week of the SNA holding it because of looting and executions and other war crimes.

Speaker 84 Yeah, I think this is actually a really good political education to see what's happening because

Speaker 84 what's been built up in the northeast has been built up over decades, right? They like to use this analogy of the mycelium and the fruiting bodies of a mushroom.

Speaker 84 They appear to magically emerge from the earth.

Speaker 84 in the autumn out of nowhere but actually you know they've been brewing underground for years before and they they use this analogy because it took decades to put in place these structures That's why they were ready.

Speaker 84 As soon as the regime, the Assad regime, pulled out and collapsed in the face of ISIS in the early stages of the war, they were ready to build up these structures.

Speaker 84 They already had self-organized militias, they had the economy planned out, they set to work immediately. And the SNA don't have any of that.
They are a force of convenience.

Speaker 84 mostly sort of young men who were in groups before that were defeated in Syria, like ISIS, who are simply taking the opportunity to enrich themselves.

Speaker 84 And that's also very convenient for Turkey because they do the dirty work against the population of north and east Syria.

Speaker 84 So I think it's worth saying that that aspect of it, that preparation, that resilience is something that also works in favour

Speaker 84 in the event of the worst case of full invasion of northeast Syria. I do think they are significantly better prepared than they were in 2018 and 19.
And even if the worst happens,

Speaker 84 even if militarily it's defeated, that's not going to be the end of this project, right? It's not going to be the end of this emancipation.

Speaker 84 There's now an entire generation of young people in northeast Syria who have grown up entirely living amongst a liberated and emancipated region and people.

Speaker 84 That's not something you can militarily defeat. So I, you know, I'm not completely hopeless.
Obviously, I'll be like devastated if the worst does happen there.

Speaker 84 But like, I don't think it means the end of this incredible political.

Speaker 84 And it feels wrong to call it a project because it's not.

Speaker 84 It really is a revolution in

Speaker 84 every possible meaning of the word. And it's deeply embedded now.

Speaker 69 Yeah. And I think everyone I spoke to there,

Speaker 69 there's a deeply held conviction that they're not going back.

Speaker 69 Some people who have seen like firsthand the fascist violence of ISIS and fascist is the right word, is something maybe worse than fascism.

Speaker 69 But like, certainly like speaking to women in Rushabra about how they're not going back to the gendered violence that they experienced for decades to include ISIS, but by no means like only from ISIS.

Speaker 67 And

Speaker 69 I guess that kind of brings us on to...

Speaker 69 I wanted to talk a little bit about the situation in the parts of Syria that are controlled by HCS and inso much as they really are controlled, is perhaps the wrong word.

Speaker 69 they don't, they haven't like fully established their state project yet, but they're certainly moving towards that. They've sort of captured the institutions of the state rather than destroyed them.

Speaker 69 You'd spoken about like there's this very,

Speaker 69 I don't know, I think, I guess maybe I'll use an example. Sorry, I'm phrasing this question in a very meandering way.

Speaker 69 I saw this CNN clip where they're like, oh, we found a guy who's liberal, who's like in this prison and he was stuck here. And the second part of this was not broadcast on CNN.

Speaker 69 This person turns out to be like an Air Force lieutenant who was in fact himself someone who tortured and killed civilians.

Speaker 69 And like there's this very liberatory, very excited messaging coming from media in the West, I guess, some of which is good, right? Like it's good that the Assad regime is good.

Speaker 69 Assad was fucking terrible and tortured and killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. But that doesn't mean that things are all perfect in Damascus.

Speaker 69 Do you want to talk a little bit about like some of the worrying stuff we've seen in the last few days from those areas?

Speaker 84 Yeah, I mean, this is something that I worry isn't being spoken about enough.

Speaker 84 I don't, as a non-Syrian, don't want to say to people, you know, you shouldn't be celebrating your own liberation because people should absolutely should be. And it's their right to be.

Speaker 84 And I'm like, yeah, extremely happy that this brutal dictator has gone. I mean,

Speaker 84 it's hard to summarise quite how awful he was. And

Speaker 84 it's deeply frustrating that he's probably not going to see justice.

Speaker 84 But it's also really hard to see stuff which is really reminiscent of like 1979 Tehran, 2003 Baghdad, of a sort of jubilation whilst at the same time there are videos of sort of pogroms being carried out against minorities, minorities like the Alaites who were in control and you don't know if the person being executed in the street was a torturer, an intelligence agent.

Speaker 84 You don't know who they were, but like this is happening.

Speaker 84 But you're also seeing like Salafist groups raising their flag, you know, like hardline Islamists raising their flag in places like Latakia and Tatus that have significant minority populations.

Speaker 84 I am very, I mean, concern isn't the right word.

Speaker 84 Like, it's hard to feel that spirit of liberation when you see not only these things happening, but that the people who have captured these state institutions are admitted former members of al-Qaeda.

Speaker 84 And they are

Speaker 84 jihadis, hardline people that have now got to have very effectively made themselves out to be moderates.

Speaker 84 But my gut feeling is that we're going to see something like 1979 Tehran of a lot of talk of reconciliation, a lot of talk of

Speaker 84 the concerns of the Kurds or working with the communists, but mass executions and oppression is not far around the corner.

Speaker 84 And I guess when the jubilation dies down, my question is what's going to happen when minorities do demand their rights or women don't want to wear a hijab in you know inside the buildings of institute state institutions and i'm finding it very hard to believe that these these men who are professed islamists are going to allow a moderate future to exist

Speaker 69 yeah it's i don't know every day we get different information right but like i yeah i don't know if concerned is is the right word either. I don't quite know what the word is, but like

Speaker 69 I'm worried, I guess. I'm worried that i'm especially worried when like

Speaker 69 rather than what we saw in the self-administration was not like a continuation of institutions right when the assad regime left in 2011 and 2012 and areas that the regime or isis have left since then like it wasn't like okay we'll take over these institutions administer them differently it was we will build democracy from the bottom up not we'll just you know change the people in charge versus what it seems like we're now seeing for damascus is like hey can the the police from the Assad regime please stay at work?

Speaker 69 Which is concerning.

Speaker 69 Talking of police, the last thing I wanted to address was the Al-Hol camp.

Speaker 69 I've spoken about it before on this show and people can look back on other episodes, but if you've not heard about it, can you explain briefly what Al-Hol is and then the massive risk that this Turkish-backed invasion poses to our hull and other camps.

Speaker 69 I guess our hull's not the only camp, just the biggest one.

Speaker 84 Yeah, our hull is a really important point to talk about. Ahol is a very large camp.
It's hard to sum up what kind of camp it is because it's so vast and it has different sections.

Speaker 84 It's near Al-Hasaka, which is one of the largest cities in northeast Syria.

Speaker 84 It mostly contains families who were members or were resident in the Islamic State when it collapsed.

Speaker 84 So in the beginning of 2019, ISIS was sort of squeezed into this little corner in the eastern side of Syria between the Euphrates and the Iraqi border.

Speaker 84 And when the state collapsed, or the caliphate collapsed, a lot of people had nowhere to go. A lot of them were foreigners who were coming from abroad.
When I say a lot, I mean like tens of thousands.

Speaker 84 There were something like 20,000 families left within Susa and Bagos, like the last parts of the caliphate to hold out. And they didn't have anywhere to go.

Speaker 84 There were already camps set up for IDPs and for members of ISIS and families in northeast Syria, but Al-Ho was rapidly expanded to take these on. So it's a sort of semi-prison, semi-open camp

Speaker 84 that I think peaked at 75,000 people, which it sounds like a lot on its own, but when you consider that a large city in northeast East Syria is about 150,000 people, it still is significant.

Speaker 84 I don't, you probably have, well, I could have recent figures sent me by, I think the current population is about 40,000.

Speaker 69 Yeah, it's shrunk, definitely. I'm not sure what it is exactly.

Speaker 84 The big problem that the Assad administration have had is a multitude, really. Many of the people there are foreigners.
Many of them don't have papers.

Speaker 84 Many of them come from countries that either don't want them back

Speaker 84 or will almost certainly execute them if they're sent back, like Iraq, which is against the policy of the abolition of death penalty in northeast Syria.

Speaker 84 There are some in al-Hol, but mostly in other camps in the north and east of Syria, former ISIS members like Shimam and Begum who come from countries like the UK who simply won't take them back.

Speaker 84 The UK is taking back some families that simply refuses to take back their citizens who joined ISIS as card-carrying members.

Speaker 84 So they've made a pretty massive effort to repatriate as many families as possible. They've made a big effort to rehabilitate and de-radicalize as many people as possible.

Speaker 84 They have shrunk the camp massively, but there's still, yeah, 40,000 or something left there. And these are like really, a lot of them are really radical.

Speaker 84 Like I think, I don't know what an exact number is, but something in the order of 10,000 them are still like professed to be members of ISIS. And they have a lot of children.

Speaker 84 And this was something that shocked me when

Speaker 84 I was at the end of the caliphate in Baghdad and witnessed tens of thousands of people coming out, and I could not have imagined how many children there were.

Speaker 84 And this was like, what, five years ago now, coming up to six years ago. So some of them who were, you know, seven, eight, nine years old are now like heading towards their mid-teens.

Speaker 84 They've spent their entire lives being radicalized. And like, what do you do with it? Right.

Speaker 84 And it's no, I think it's no coincidence that in previous Turkish attacks, because Turkey's been attacking the north and east of Syria for, you know, the last five, six years now, through the air, through mission warfare.

Speaker 84 And a lot of their attacks have focused on trying to break these people out. They have bombed the entrances to prisons multiple times.

Speaker 84 They provided funding and arms and ammunition to groups that are trying to break them out. And they provided safe passage back to Turkey for those who have managed to escape.

Speaker 84 So it's massively in their favour, but of course, it's a Pandora's box because if that does break open, if these people aren't repatriated or aren't de-radicalised, then that's a lot of people who have pretty much only known their whole lives an extremely radical, yeah, fascist Islamist ideology.

Speaker 84 And I don't think they're just going to give it up, you know? Yeah, no. That they're not going to join this moderate future Syria.

Speaker 69 No, and like those people

Speaker 69 have probably experienced, like, probably have terrible experiences within that camp. And that's not going to make, that does, that don't tend to be moderating and sort of pacifying experiences.

Speaker 69 And I'm sure that they will,

Speaker 69 there'll be a lot of hate coming from there when those people come out.

Speaker 69 And I don't want to like you know apportion blame too much but we've had a long time to deal with this the world's had a long time to deal with oh i mean i would happily apportion blame

Speaker 84 yeah this is entirely uh on on the hands of the coalition northern east syria is a very poor place yeah and it's it's it's deeply impoverished um it's been kept impoverished by by sanctions by turkey you know the all the oil refineries the the industry the economy has been smashed to pieces that they've held on really well and that like all credit to them,

Speaker 84 they have maintained this camp. They have tried to give these people a life, but it's pretty awful conditions.

Speaker 69 Yeah.

Speaker 84 And this could have been solved if the international community, if the coalition, in particular the United States, had

Speaker 84 helped with these repatriations, who put political pressure on European countries in particular to take back their citizens. and had just provided the funding, you know, for

Speaker 84 they have provided funding. I'm not saying they haven't pretty much, but like it's a drop in the ocean compared to the, you know, Department of Defense budget.

Speaker 84 You know, we're talking a few tens of millions here and there, as opposed to a concerted effort to de-radicalize and repatriate people that could pose a serious threat to Europe and the US.

Speaker 69 Yeah. And like.
you've got Britain doing the opposite of what's helpful, which is fucking like removing people's passports, right? Like de

Speaker 69 nationalizing them, leaving these people stateless and like saying it's not our problem, which is pathetic.

Speaker 84 And very incredibly short-sighted yeah i you know i don't like using the word terror or terrorism because i i think it's they've become meaningless terms but like like isis did commit horrendous acts of terror in europe and the united states and and these people a lot of them i'm sure would happily do so given the opportunity so i don't think the the the threat uh is is like sufficiently understood in the west yeah no and like it's going to end up biting them in the ass because they've you know they've put this off and put this off and wouldn't spend the money to like have justice, right?

Speaker 69 Like to go through a system and to have a chance to plead their cases or have a tribunal, whatever it is. Instead, these people have just been essentially abandoned by most of the world.

Speaker 69 The self-administration has been forced to take care of the people who did horrific things right there.

Speaker 69 And yeah, at some point, this... population will continue to grow if we don't keep removing people from it.

Speaker 69 And that's going to be a problem problem for the whole world, even if the whole world wants to pretend it's not happening right now.

Speaker 69 And it is just endlessly frustrating to see it not even be covered, let alone kind of addressed in the West.

Speaker 84 Yeah, I think that's a really important point.

Speaker 84 When similar atrocities have been carried out in Europe, we see international tribunals, we see the ICC and the ICJ step in, we see arrests, we see prosecutions, you know, like Milosevic, like the Nuremberg trials.

Speaker 84 And ISIS was a massive state. It had something like 10 million inhabitants.
It committed multiple genocides.

Speaker 84 You know, and this isn't just, you know, people in the region saying, oh, they're committing genocide.

Speaker 84 These are like Western, highly studied, highly understood, accepted by Western states as genocide against the Yazidis.

Speaker 84 They committed horrendous atrocities.

Speaker 84 They pose an international threat and a massive regional threat.

Speaker 84 And at the end of the caliphate, as a territorial realm, as a serious military presence, it just, yeah, it just disappeared off the radar.

Speaker 84 I think this is like a, you know, a really, it really shows the sort of racist and colonial mindset behind this rules-based international order that the people who were their victims and who have left to pick up the pieces of it's got very little support or recognition.

Speaker 84 And they've been calling for tribunals for years, and it's just fallen on deaf ears.

Speaker 69 Yeah, and sadly, I don't see that changing given the incoming administration in the United States.

Speaker 68 Like, it's

Speaker 69 deeply concerning. I deeply concerned the wrong words, just fucked.
I want to ask, like, people, I think, want to be in solidarity with the revolution. They want to help if they can.

Speaker 69 They want to support. Like, I did a fundraiser last night.
Thank you to everyone who gave their money and came. That was really nice.

Speaker 69 But what can people do to, you know, it's one thing to like be in solidarity or post or whatever, but like what concrete actions can they take to help?

Speaker 84 This is a question that gets asked a lot.

Speaker 67 Yeah.

Speaker 84 I think doing anything

Speaker 84 is helpful.

Speaker 84 It's also a question that's really hard to answer given how things are just across the border in Palestine.

Speaker 84 I personally find it hard to engage and ask for help and ask for solidarity when

Speaker 84 there's a genocide being committed next door. But we might be about to see the same thing happen in Syria.
And I do think we should be taking it seriously. And yeah,

Speaker 84 anything from raising awareness to actually going there and lending support,

Speaker 84 anything on that spectrum, it's not just like it's not just the material contribution that you can make, it's the people that do

Speaker 84 really feel left out, they feel betrayed, they feel let down by the international community, by the rest of the world. Yeah, and any act of solidarity goes down incredibly well.

Speaker 84 Like the first year I was there, I was basically useless because I didn't speak the language, I didn't know my way around, I was like a burden on society, more or less.

Speaker 84 And people were just like happy that you're there, you know, showing solidarity. And it's not about being useful.
It's about that act. It's about more than that is what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 84 And if you can show solidarity in any way you can, like, this is, you know, incredibly, incredibly important time to do it.

Speaker 69 Yeah. I think like, I don't know, if I go back to when I moved to the US, which was 2008, George W.
Bush was president.

Speaker 69 And like, I have my little free Palestine badge when I got off the plane and my little kefir and like i was immediately sent to secondary inspection by the customs people because like that was not really

Speaker 69 of course there were palestinian people and people in solidarity with the people of palestine in the us then and they were for a long time before but like i would never have imagined that i would see thousands of people in the streets uh for the palestinian cause and like that the only thing that has materially held back the genocide of the palestinian people has been the solidarity that they've experienced and like that shows the power power that people have although obviously it's been able to do comparatively little and israel still seems to be killing little children every day but like it shows that we can build solidarity really quickly and really meaningfully and like you don't have to go but you you can go you get it's much harder to get to palestine than it is to get to uh north and east syria i went last year and i think like people who are already organizing can can bring that into their organizing too.

Speaker 69 These things don't have to compete. Like they can be, there's a a lot of solidarity to go around.

Speaker 69 But I would say a lot of the news we see, unfortunately, from Turkey, and that will unfortunately give you information that's extremely biased when it comes to Northeast Syria.

Speaker 69 So being conscious of your media consumption is very important.

Speaker 84 Yeah, absolutely. I think I would just add to that to say that solidarity with any group is a long-term project, right?

Speaker 84 You're not going to jump in and be able to make a huge difference immediately.

Speaker 84 But also at the same time, if the worst happens, if Turkey invades Fulon and there's a genocide in northeast Syria, that isn't the end of it. It's a massive international movement

Speaker 84 and there are practices from it that are being put in place in things that actually don't even have anything to do with the Kurds as a nation.

Speaker 84 And there are ways of organizing, there are methods that they use, there's personality analysis, there's

Speaker 84 criticism and self-criticism that there's a lot of that that goes far beyond a single geographic region.

Speaker 84 And I think engaging with that can, I mean, I've seen with my own eyes since I've been back, like there's a lot of groups around the UK that use techniques for self-organization within land rights movement, within worker struggle, within anti-cuts campaigning.

Speaker 84 And these got nothing to do with Rojava, but they have seen that through solidarity with Rojava and Kurdistan, that there are ways they can improve their own practice and their own actions.

Speaker 69 Yeah, I think that's really important too. And those are things maybe we'll cover in the future and there are plenty of good resources online.

Speaker 69 Are there any resources you'd like to plug or like personal social medias, things you think people could follow to get good information on what's happening?

Speaker 84 Definitely the RIC, that's the Rojava Information Centre. They are probably the best source on the ground in Rojava and

Speaker 84 they are a collective of journalists, a mixture of locals and internationalists who've been working there for six years now. So they're Rojava IC on various social media platforms.

Speaker 84 You can follow me as at Lapinesk, L-A-P-I-N-E-S-Q-U-E. I'm also posting about it, although I'm not there anymore.

Speaker 84 I'm posting updates from friends, people I know there, and my take on the situation based on my experiences of being there for almost five years.

Speaker 69 Yeah, I think... Good to follow if you can.
Thank you very much, Danny.

Speaker 69 What we're going to do now is I got some voice notes from some friends who are at the front with Atekosin Anasist, which means anarchist struggle in Kurdish.

Speaker 69 They're a group within the SDF that is an anarchist group that's there

Speaker 69 fighting and in this case, actually doing frontline medical support on behalf of the self-administration, on behalf of the revolution. They sent me some notes this morning.
It's Monday today.

Speaker 69 from their positions on the front line. So look, obviously, those notes will be a little bit, they'll be like 24 hours old by the time you hear them.

Speaker 69 But I still think it's very important to hear from people who are there when we can, not from like someone who's supposed to be an expert but hasn't set foot in Syria in 15 years and hasn't really talked to anyone who's Syrian either.

Speaker 69 So we'll drop those in after a little advertising break here. And with that, I'll say thank you very much, Danny.
Thanks for giving us your time. And we really appreciate all your insight today.

Speaker 84 Thanks very much, James.

Speaker 44 Hello, talking from the Provisional Post Office of the Cushing Anarchist.

Speaker 44 And we wanted to share a bit about the situation ongoing here in northeastern Syria. Because as you probably know,

Speaker 44 the regime has fallen. Barshara sadly left the country in the 8th of December after a big offensive that started from Italy

Speaker 44 that took over quite soon, quite fast, the city of Aleppo, and continued moving on.

Speaker 44 We wanted to explain how is the situation right now on the ground and also give some insight on the situation of northern Syria and what the media is such covering of the different

Speaker 44 events and situations that are annoying here. The main theme to remark that this can be a bit of a

Speaker 44 confusing interview for those that are maybe not familiar with the annoying situation.

Speaker 44 To give a short context, we can mention that there are right now two main conflicts ongoing, like military conflicts. One is what you reported, the other not so much.

Speaker 44 We are talking about the war that HDS, or the offensive that HDS launched against the Syrian Arab Army, and the other is the offensive that the

Speaker 44 SNA and Turkish proxy forces

Speaker 44 that write under the name of Syrian National Army, but that they are trained, paid, and supported by the Turkish state.

Speaker 44 The offensive that they have been launching against Northern Syria and the Democratic Administration of Northern Syria, that is the area also known sometimes as Rajaba, that is started as a the Kurdish liberation movement leading the the war against the Islamic State and establishing this autonomous administration.

Speaker 44 So let's go shortly to the first conflict, this offensive of HTS or the fifth of Riyadh Sham.

Speaker 44 It's an Islamist group, direct heritage of al-Nusra, that was the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.

Speaker 44 It has been governing, having somewhat government structures in the region of Ukraine, in the northwest of Syria, and was under heavy siege from the Norwegian forces, the Syrian Arab Army.

Speaker 44 On the 27th of November, they launched this big offensive that led to the collapse of the regime. We could reflect deeply about the reasons.
Now,

Speaker 44 on one side, the Syrian Arab army was exhausted after years of war here in Syria, but especially their main allies and supporters were also in a bad situation.

Speaker 44 We are talking mostly about Russia and Iran. As we probably know, Russia has been entrenched in a war in Ukraine for three years almost.

Speaker 44 Iran recently had been also engaged in supporting their militias in the conflicts against Israel after the

Speaker 44 virtual occupation that Israel started on Naza a year ago. So

Speaker 44 these two conflicts create a situation that both partners like Russia and Iran were not able to support the Syrian Arab army as they did in the past.

Speaker 44 And

Speaker 44 this led also to the collapse of the front lines of the Syrian Arab Army, allowing the offensive of HTS to overrun very fast the defenses in the city of Aleppo and also taking control of the city of Hama.

Speaker 44 This sparked also other groups that also opposed the regime for a long time to start also taking action and in southern Syria in the regions of Sueza and Dara

Speaker 44 and Coneta

Speaker 44 there was also an altonamous military operation room that started coordinated insurgents and the regime. This sparked the collapse of the regime.

Speaker 44 A lot of soldiers were defecting their positions and finally

Speaker 44 the different military groups within the offensive took Damascus. This was an offensive that was really

Speaker 44 not very bloody in the sense of like a lot of the Syrian right army soldiers were just leaving their positions and running away and the offensive was able to advance very fast, very easily.

Speaker 44 Right now

Speaker 44 this offensive led to the transition that we are seeing in Damascus

Speaker 44 where the leader of HDS

Speaker 44 had been doing

Speaker 44 public speeches and declaring the triumph of the revolution, trying to harvest the

Speaker 44 revolutionary spirit of 2011 for their own benefit. And they

Speaker 44 imposed or proposed

Speaker 44 a transitional government that is formed exclusively by like members connected or aligned to HDS.

Speaker 44 Could Could be good to discuss more about HDS, but maybe it's not the focus of our interview right now.

Speaker 44 Just mentioned that their authoritarian government in Egypt has been also

Speaker 44 really criticized by local population organizing protests against it. And right now, running this interim government, they are already making proposals for like a morality, police,

Speaker 44 Islamic courts. So

Speaker 44 I don't know how much this comparison has been already shared, but clearly what we saw in Afghanistan with Taliban taking over the state structures is probably a good guide to understand what could be happening in Syria if HDS takes control of the state as it seems to be happening.

Speaker 44 So this is one of the conflicts ongoing that is widely reported. The only one maybe is not so much reported.

Speaker 44 We see how the Turkish has been for a long time, Turkish state has been for a long time attacking the region of North Syria, especially the Kurdish areas.

Speaker 44 And this is connected not to their war against the Kurdish liberation movement that has been going for more than 40 years.

Speaker 44 And the last chapter of this started in coordination with this offensive of HDS,

Speaker 44 where the proxy forces

Speaker 44 started to attack many

Speaker 44 the region of Tarifat. It was an area where a lot of the refugees from Afrin were living.

Speaker 44 Afrin was a region that was already occupied by Turkey in 2018 and a lot of the people from the city was displaced and living in refugee camps

Speaker 44 in the region of Shava and the city of Tagrifat.

Speaker 44 And these Turkish proxy forces attacked and conquered that region, forcing all these people that already had to leave their homes more than five years ago, 2018.

Speaker 44 Yeah,

Speaker 44 so forcing them to flee once again. A lot of these people was trapped in a caravan that suffered brutal raids, attacks, kidnapping, ransoms.
Like

Speaker 44 it has been like a really terrible experience for a a lot of people that was trying to flee the offensive of these Turkish Polish forces.

Speaker 44 And most of them are now arriving to Tabka and to Raqqa, to the regions of the self-administration where they are founding and they can find shelter.

Speaker 44 And for those willing to help, we can mention that Heivasor is the humanitarian organization, one of the biggest humanitarian organizations working in northern Syria and has been providing tents and food and blankets and everything they can to support all these people that is arriving on these areas.

Speaker 44 So those willing to support economically and this humanitarian crisis that we are experiencing, they can easily find

Speaker 44 the red side and the Bangakama Khebazar to donate to them to support

Speaker 44 all these people that once again lost their in their homes.

Speaker 44 But the offensive didn't stop on Jaffa Jaffa and the SNA continued their attacks and took over the city of Manbij already right now.

Speaker 44 This was a really

Speaker 44 heavy crash, like it was a really serious military conflict that has been totally supported by Turkish artillery and air force.

Speaker 44 We are talking about drones sitting and different positions and even airplanes that of course are like NATO Air Force have been bombing positions of the Syrian Democratic Forces, allowing these different Islamic groups that are out of this coalition of the SMA, these Turkish Paksi forces, to control of the city.

Speaker 44 At the moment there is already several days that Manbij, this

Speaker 44 city, have been organizing protests and even a general strike that started yesterday against the occupation

Speaker 44 because these groups that occupied the city are looting and even killing local population in a really like terrible situation that is experiencing the local people living in Malmi.

Speaker 44 And they

Speaker 44 are

Speaker 44 willing to continue. They have been threatening the city of Kovani, the symbol of resistance of the Russian revolution against the Islamic state.

Speaker 44 And these threats on the city are not just the bombings of Turkey Air Force and artillery, but also a lot of military personnel of the Turkish Proxy forces gathering on the bridge that connects the divisions of Mandij and Kovane and all across the Alphrates River.

Speaker 44 So

Speaker 44 this war is not so reported, but it's been really

Speaker 44 brutal attacks against the self-administration in Northeast Syria. We are trying to report and update about the situation.
We also published two statements to call out attention for

Speaker 44 comrades about what is ongoing here.

Speaker 44 And maybe it also talk a bit about the work that we have been doing on the ground.

Speaker 44 We need to remark that this offensive of the Manbij and now the stretch on Kholani have not been the only attacks that the Turkish army and the Proxy forces are doing.

Speaker 44 All around the street that they occupied in 2018 and

Speaker 44 2019, the areas around the city of Selkania and Einisa, next to the border with Turkey,

Speaker 44 also host a lot of Islamist groups that are part of this Turkish Proxy coalition. and they have been intensively bombing the areas and their surroundings and there have been

Speaker 44 quite widespread rumors of

Speaker 44 these Zionist groups gathering forces to continue their attacks on the self-administration of Northern Syria and the war of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Speaker 44 We from Tekoshina RCS, we have been working in a medical capacity providing materials for the medical points in the front lines and being present in the frontlines together with the Syrian Democratic forces

Speaker 44 in case that a new invasion is happening. Right now the bombings are hitting different areas and it has been really intense in the last days.

Speaker 44 The Syrian democratic forces are in maximum alert and especially there is an

Speaker 44 important call in solidarity with the city of Kovane, a symbol of resistance that is now once again under threat.

Speaker 44 We have been seeing also

Speaker 44 demonstrations all around the world in solidarity, with like the revolution here.

Speaker 44 And this has been also bringing a lot of motivation to continue the resistance on the ground. Right now

Speaker 44 this situation of instability and political frontier is still playing in ways that are difficult to predict.

Speaker 44 We can see how the South administration has been sending political organizations to the masses to negotiate with this new provisional government, with the attempt to reach autonomy for the region that connects with the ideas of democratic conflict.

Speaker 44 The ideas of democratic conflict

Speaker 44 don't expect to run

Speaker 44 a state institution because we don't want

Speaker 44 to live in a society that is ruled by a state and are calling for autonomous

Speaker 44 autonomy in a local governance where the different communities can live together, coexist together, administer their social affairs together and also their defense.

Speaker 44 We see how the Syrian Democratic Forces is like a military coalition of different local military forces.

Speaker 44 that it's based on the principles of self-defense.

Speaker 44 Maybe to give a bit of context also of what we have been doing here for several years that our organization has been operating in northern Syria.

Speaker 44 As anarchists, we came here in solidarity, international solidarity with this revolution because their political values and their political project is really close to our ideas. We see

Speaker 44 big similarities with the ideas of libertarian socialism and social ecology like thinkers and murder goods have been a big inspiration for Abdul Rojan, leader of the Kurdish liberation movement,

Speaker 44 that has been proposing this political frame called democratic confirmation, where especially with the principles of modern liberation, social ecology and stateless democracy has been the political compass.

Speaker 44 of the revolution here.

Speaker 44 Building autonomy in the different regions

Speaker 44 has been also a very important element to develop the project,

Speaker 44 especially during the war against the Islamic State.

Speaker 44 As soon as the different territories were liberated, there was a big emphasis on creating local councils, civilian and military councils both, that can

Speaker 44 run their own affairs.

Speaker 44 This is very interesting from an anarchist perspective, not to see how one of the main political points is this promoting self-defense and creating a military force that is not based on a centralized monopoly of violence, but on allowing every community to take care of their own defense and their own affairs.

Speaker 44 This is a really inspiring element that for us has been also a really extraordinary learning process. Being part of a revolution, living

Speaker 44 day to day the developments that are happening here, and

Speaker 44 seeing what does it mean to make a revolution?

Speaker 44 Because it's something that sometimes we anarchists look back often in the epic times of like Spain in 36 or Ukraine in the 20s to see examples of an anarchist revolution.

Speaker 44 And this is something that today is happening here.

Speaker 44 Kurdistan has been for a long time leading a resistance against the logic of national states, especially in Turkey, but we saw how it has been finally in Syria, where this movement found the space to put in practice these ideas and to develop the revolutionary society that has been theorized for a long time.

Speaker 44 So even if we cannot say that Rojava is an anarchist region, but we can say how anarchist principles inspired the project

Speaker 44 and that it's been developed here and implemented. This is a really

Speaker 44 an important school. It brings a lot of lessons of the big challenges of like reorganizing a society with principles of libertarian socialism.

Speaker 44 It is especially complicated here because of external reasons as like the situation of the Barbara, the constant threat of the Turkish army.

Speaker 44 This is something that for sure we can point out as like, well, it's very difficult to make a revolution with these factors.

Speaker 44 But this is also a lesson that making a revolution will always be difficult and will always have like really big factors that make the situation very difficult.

Speaker 44 If making a revolution would be easy, we would already have done it. So of course it's something that brings a lot of difficulties, a lot of contradictions, a lot of challenges.

Speaker 44 And being here day to day living what it means to like build a revolutionary society brought a lot questions and reflections, that we also aim to translate and to reflect together with anarchist movements from all around the world to learn from this experience and to be able to analyze together and reflect and discuss together of what it means to build anarchism in the 21st century, what it means to build libertarian socialism nowadays in the current society with all the different elements that we see.

Speaker 44 And of course, in the military conflict that is ongoing, it can seem maybe sometimes far away, not for coming in Western countries, but I think it's important to remember that revolution and war have been always two sides of the same coin.

Speaker 44 It's in these moments of instability, of war, where the logic and the status quo of national states is more weak because

Speaker 44 we can also see it now in other times, in other moments, or even in other places nowadays, what is happening, for example, in Yemen, what is happening in

Speaker 44 different areas where the logic of a national state is being questioned, creates instability, creates a situation where different actors will push to take control.

Speaker 44 And we know that often those actors will be led by a nationalist and fascist mentality with an authoritarian logic to just impose their ideas and their aims by force.

Speaker 44 And it's very important that we think and we reflect and we organize

Speaker 44 force that is able to react to that situation. Because authoritarian and hierarchic

Speaker 44 military structures are quite fast to react.

Speaker 44 We as anarchists, we need time to organize horizontally because our structures function based also on trust, based also on knowing each other. And even if

Speaker 44 I really believe that they are much more solid and much more reliable in the long term, in the short term we can face big, big challenge.

Speaker 44 So it's important to see fascism is actually advancing all around the world

Speaker 44 and we can see how the tensions are growing.

Speaker 44 So maybe this is a special call more like to learn from the lessons here, to learn from how the Kurdish movement have been working and preparing for decades.

Speaker 44 And what happened in Syria made possible for the revolutionary movement to

Speaker 44 put their cards on the table, to organize together with the people and to defend their people and their communities, building this revolutionary process that nowadays so many people have been taking inspiration from.

Speaker 44 So yeah,

Speaker 44 probably

Speaker 44 this is a bit confusing and maybe not so current.

Speaker 44 Sorry we have been quiet some hours. We had several weeks that have been extremely challenging with like really few hours of sleep.
But I hope this is more or less clear.

Speaker 44 And please if there is something that um it's not so understandable.

Speaker 44 I'm always

Speaker 44 welcoming new new questions and hoping we can

Speaker 44 answer and share more perspective.

Speaker 44 We

Speaker 44 have been also writing some statements and we are also trying to answer all those people interested in learning more about the situation here and in ways to support this revolution.

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Speaker 2 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 3 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 4 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 5 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 8 If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 10 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 11 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 12 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 10 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 26 It's 1972.

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Speaker 71 This is Erin Andrews from Calm Down with Erin and Carissa.

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Speaker 70 Welcome to What Could Happened Here, a show about things falling apart.

Speaker 70 I'm Garrison Davis, and this episode is going to be a special audio companion piece to an article published last night on Substack at Shatterzone.

Speaker 70 That's Robert's usual Substack, though last night I published an article detailing the online history and transvestigation discourse regarding a school shooting in Madison, Wisconsin.

Speaker 70 The article has pictures and hyperlinks, which might help explain some of the stuff I'm talking about, but I'll do my best to relay it here to you. on the podcast feed.

Speaker 70 Another Monday in America and another school Shooting.

Speaker 70 On the morning of December 16th, a female student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin shot and killed a teacher and fellow student and injured six others before killing herself.

Speaker 70 Initially, police falsely reported the shooter was 17 years old, but late Monday night, they correctly identified the deceased shooter as 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, who went by Samantha or Sam.

Speaker 70 In the aftermath of this horrific event, right-wing influencers and content creators wasted no time in blaming the shooting on trans people, labeling the suspect as another in a series of alleged transgender terrorists.

Speaker 70 But what really happened here had nothing to do with trans people and is sadly ordinary for the United States.

Speaker 70 In August of 2024, the father of the future school shooter took his daughter to a gun range to do trap shooting. Samantha wore a shirt bearing the logo of a band, KMFDM.

Speaker 70 In another photo of the shooter, we can see the front of the shirt. The same design was famously worn by Columbine shooter Eric Harris, who was a fan of the band.

Speaker 70 The bulk of this new shooter's online footprint suggests a general obsession with school shooters and the TCC or true crime community, a nickname used for the de facto international Columbine fandom.

Speaker 70 This sort of content dominates Samantha's Tumblr, which last posted in May of 2024.

Speaker 70 An alleged online friend of the shooter said that she, quote, posted about school shooters all the time, unquote, and quote, had school shooter leanings, unquote. Samantha is hardly alone in this.

Speaker 70 There have been over 100 copycats inspired by the Columbine shooting since 1999.

Speaker 70 A Twitter account believed to have belonged to the shooter posted posted a series of videos that teased and glorified school shootings in the days leading up to her own shooting.

Speaker 70 The account was created in December of 2024, and the profile picture featured a young man in camo pants and a tactical backpack.

Speaker 70 The male profile picture was used as evidence by some conservative influencers that the shooter must have transitioned.

Speaker 70 Though these same influencers cannot agree on whether she was female to male or male to female.

Speaker 70 One user constructed an overlay trying to compare the photo of the shooter with her Twitter profile picture.

Speaker 70 This is a ridiculous diagram with about seven images overlaid at different opacities trying to layer the faces and body shapes of these two people on top of each other.

Speaker 70 This post is only proof that most of what gets passed off as quote-unquote osent online today is just completely incompetent rambling and propaganda.

Speaker 70 The main issue with this diagram is that the male profile picture is actually another Columbine copycat, a school shooter from Russia, who, similar to Samantha, was only 15 years old when he carried out his shooting.

Speaker 70 Hours after the shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, while right-wing accounts were still arguing about what sort of transgender the shooter had been, A neo-Nazi Twitter account named Nitro claimed to be friends with the shooter on Discord and repeatedly denied accusations that the shooter was transgender, calling her a quote-unquote biological woman.

Speaker 70 An early complicating factor in establishing the motive and identity of the shooter is that her alleged Twitter account posted a link to a Google Doc of her manifesto, but seemingly forgot to make the visibility setting public.

Speaker 70 So you couldn't access the Google Doc. You had to put in an email for approval, and the person who was supposed to approve your email was now dead.

Speaker 70 So there was no way to actually look at this person's manifesto.

Speaker 70 The shooter's alleged Discord friend, Nitro, claims to find what he believes to be a snippet of a manifesto draft shared by the shooter in a Discord group chat.

Speaker 70 Nitro is based out of the UK, and so if this is legitimate, and that is a big if, this message would have been sent about an hour and a half before the shooting per the Discord timestamp.

Speaker 70 I'm going to read a bit of this alleged writing from the shooter. Quote, women are the only hope for this wretched world, but even women have been brainwashed by moids for too long.

Speaker 70 They've internalized the patriarchy and turned on each other, always begging for male approval and validation. It's disgusting.
I realize the truth. Men are irredeemable.

Speaker 70 Radfemm Hitler was, is, fucking vindicated now. They can't be reformed or redeemed.
They are a fucking scourge upon the earth. The only solution is to total exterminate them.

Speaker 70 and every foid who worships these fucking parasites. Every single male must be wiped out, from babies to the elderly.
Only then can women be free to create a new world. I'll be the pioneer.

Speaker 70 I'll be the first one to take the first step. I don't care if they're fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, teachers, police, and especially N-words or politicians.
I've been craving to kill them all.

Speaker 70 This is my mission. Only when their parasitic sludge has been expunged from the earth is when, then, the world will be clean and women can start over.
It's the only way.

Speaker 70 In approximately 10 minutes, I should be dead. It's strange, but it feels good.
Unquote. Hopefully, to most people, this should read like unintelligible gibberish.

Speaker 70 A reactionary, quote-unquote, feminist screen about initiating a wave of male-targeted violence to cleanse the earth.

Speaker 70 With pepperings of moids and foids, which is internet incel slang for male and female, respectively. Also included are racial slurs and something called quote-unquote radfem Hitler.

Speaker 70 That last part is a reference to a Twitter influencer by the same name and the handle Hollow Earth Turf, whose content is a mix of trad-influenced right-wing feminism with anti-trans flourishes, advocating for a mass purge of moids.

Speaker 70 This includes trans women.

Speaker 70 This account is derided by those both on the right and left, but has a small dedicated following of conservative radfem and anti-trans women with trad or often occult interests.

Speaker 70 The Discord Nazi Nitro claimed that the shooter was quote-unquote a fan of Radfem Hitler and talked about the account frequently on Discord, though Nitro previously believed her interest in the account was merely ironic.

Speaker 70 Now, obviously, an anonymous Twitter Nazi is certainly not the most reliable source, but Nitro was the first person to correctly identify and post photos of the shooter, though they could be utilizing this newfound clout to troll a widely disliked Twitter user.

Speaker 70 But the fact that he's been right about all other details inclines me to not discount his claims just altogether, but instead just hold them with a billion pounds of salt.

Speaker 70 Allegations that the shooter was a neo-Nazi radfemme certainly sent Radfemm Hitler into a panic, who quickly deleted her account.

Speaker 70 Meanwhile, some of her online associates worked damage control, claiming to have contacted the alleged boyfriend that the shooter had been quote-unquote e-dating, with the apparent intention of disproving any ties the shooter had to the Twitter radfemme orbit.

Speaker 70 Through this alleged online boyfriend, the right-wing TERF ecosystem claimed to have acquired a copy of the quote-unquote full manifesto.

Speaker 70 This purported manifesto lacks the anti-male, anti-moid, ramblings of the Discord screenshot, but unsurprisingly shares its use of racial slurs and glorification of violence, at times evocative of Pekka Erik Avenan's manifesto, a Finnish school shooter from 2007 who killed eight people.

Speaker 70 Avenan considered himself a quote-unquote natural selector who had evolved beyond the classmates he gunned down.

Speaker 70 In Samantha's purported manifesto, he is mentioned by name as a quote unquote true inspiration.

Speaker 70 Over the course of eight hours, a Radfem Twitter account released six pages of what they claimed to be Samantha's writing.

Speaker 70 It contains general misanthropic rambling about humanity and parents being quote-unquote scum.

Speaker 70 The writing describes a difficult family life, suicidal thoughts, and admiration for school shooters and white supremacists.

Speaker 70 Though it briefly references the accelerationist terror gram saints, the whole of this piece of writing is much more reminiscent of old school columbiners than the modern white nationalist terror milieu.

Speaker 70 The alleged manifesto directly names the two columbine shooters and includes a paragraph on Vladiskov Roslyakov, another Columbine copycat but from Crimea, who also cosplayed as one of the Columbine shooters during his own mass shooting.

Speaker 70 Though the Discord Nazi and the reactionary radfems question the authenticity of the other's alleged manifesto, what both sides of the incel war do agree on is that Samantha was not transgender.

Speaker 70 We're going to go in a quick ad break and come back to discuss trans investigation and the trans terror panic.

Speaker 67 Okay, we are back.

Speaker 70 It seems these days the fastest way to get transvestigated is to do a school shooting. Transvestigating is the practice of trying to determine if an individual is transgender.

Speaker 70 It's often leveled against celebrities, athletes, and politicians. But in recent years, there's been a new common subject of transvestigation.
Mass shooters. In particular, school shooters.

Speaker 70 Myself, Robert Evans, and James Stout previously reported on this trend back in 2023, right as it grew in prominence after the Nashville Covenant School shooting, which police say was committed by a trans man.

Speaker 70 We theorized that the online right was testing out a new strategy to attack trans people by associating them with mass shootings via the use of selective bias reporting and plain disinformation.

Speaker 70 That fear has come to pass.

Speaker 70 The modicum of believability provided by the Nashville shooting, as it's the only legitimate trans-related incident that meets criteria for mainstream mass shooting databases, was enough to fuel this ongoing strategy for the next two years.

Speaker 70 Since then, conservative influencers have attempted to link nearly every viral mass-slash-school shooting to trans people to create a false trend. The strategy operates as follows.

Speaker 70 During the first few chaotic hours after a shooting, a small group of right-wing content creators weaponized the lack of verified information to make posts framing an alleged shooter as being transgender.

Speaker 70 This can be done through the use of out-of-context social media posts, doctored photographs, photos of other people, or simply pictures of long or dyed hair.

Speaker 70 All they need is a collection of loose evidence to affirm on social media that a mass shooter is really transgender.

Speaker 70 For more context on this, you can listen to an episode of It Could Happen Here I wrote earlier this year covering the rise of fake trans terrorists.

Speaker 70 The goal is to get as many of their followers to see and spread these claims as fast as possible.

Speaker 70 Even if it's widely debunked the next day, many who heard the false claim won't be aware of the verified correction.

Speaker 70 All these anti-trans influencers need is a brief window of time to plant the idea into people's minds. And then that becomes remembered history.

Speaker 70 If this strategy is repeated every few months, whenever there's a new mass shooting, then it's pretty easy to create the false perception of a growing trend.

Speaker 70 Now, in reality, trans people per capita are actually way less likely to commit a shooting compared to cis people

Speaker 70 and are much more likely to be the victim of gun violence. But this past Monday, conservative and anti-trans influencers tried once again to weaponize a tragedy for their own hateful agenda.

Speaker 70 Monday afternoon, Ian Miles Chung posted, trans terrorism must end.

Speaker 70 Hours later, Laura Loomer wrote, quote, the trans movement is really turning out to be a terrorist movement, unquote.

Speaker 70 Just minutes after police responded to the shooting, the conservative influencer Matt Wallace posted that an unknown, quote-unquote, witness, said that the shooter, quote, looked to be transgender, unquote.

Speaker 70 Wallace, who has over 2.2 million followers on Twitter, provided no source or citation and has since deleted this post.

Speaker 70 But others in the online mega orbit parroted this language before any identifying information was released.

Speaker 70 With the user Just Jeff from Cali writing, a trans person targeted an opened fire on students at Abundant Life Christian School in Wisconsin, 12 hit, unquote.

Speaker 70 The right-wing content creator Ryan Mata baselessly claimed that the shooter was on hormone replacement therapy, calling the shooter, quote, another mentally unstable psychopath who was prescribed puberty blocker and hormones, unquote.

Speaker 70 Mata hosts a show on the right-wing YouTube alternative Rumble and has over 123,000 followers on Twitter.

Speaker 70 His tweet claiming the shooter was on HRT racked up 1.6 million quote-unquote views and 17,000 likes in just 12 hours.

Speaker 70 Larger accounts like Chair Raichek's Libs of TikTok fueled undue speculation about the gender identity of the shooter, seeding confusion into the growing discourse and weaponizing a tragedy for political gain.

Speaker 70 Quoting the police chief saying, quote, I don't know if the shooter is male or female, unquote.

Speaker 70 A small group of conservative influencers have just so successfully created an alternate reality in which nearly every new mass shooter is transgender that they don't even have to outright say it anymore.

Speaker 70 Accounts like Libs of TikTok and Malaysian blogger Ian Miles Chung can merely gesture to this reality tunnel they've intentionally created.

Speaker 70 And now thousands of people will affirm this fake reality as the obvious truth, backed up by historical precedent of fabricated memory.

Speaker 70 Matt Wallace posted a photo of the shooter and the male profile picture, saying, what do you notice about the shooter again?

Speaker 70 Ian Miles Chung posted, quote, Police are unable to identify if the school shooter in Madison, Wisconsin is male or female. But they do know who did it and identified them as a student.

Speaker 70 Is anyone else thinking what I'm thinking? Unquote.

Speaker 70 This speculation fueled conspiracy theories, which spread, claiming that police were intentionally withholding information about the shooter's gender identity in service of some hidden agenda.

Speaker 70 And actually, they were just waiting to let the family know that their daughter was dead and making sure they had the correct identification. Very basic stuff, police always do this.

Speaker 70 But no, it's all part of some secret agenda and some hidden narrative.

Speaker 70 As early as 1 p.m.

Speaker 70 EST on Monday, which is just like an hour after the shooting would have taken place, the neo-Nazi Twitter account Nitro correctly identified the shooter as his online friend Sam/slash Samantha.

Speaker 70 As this name spread online, the multi-gendered nature of the name added to the speculation that the shooter was trans.

Speaker 70 Scarlett Johnson, an activist with the ultra-conservative parents' rights group Moms for Liberty, shared self-admitted unconfirmed reports that the shooter was quote-unquote a transgender teen who went by Sam or Samantha.

Speaker 70 As alleged pictures of the shooter started to spread online, courtesy of Nitro, the trans investigation of the shooter only intensified.

Speaker 70 An unfortunate coincidence is that the shooter's given name matches the ancient Sam Hyde meme, in which extremely online people try to trick journalists into believing the culprit of a new mass shooting was the American comedian Sam Hyde.

Speaker 70 In recent years, the meme has turned into the Samantha Hyde meme used to falsely label mass shooters as trans women.

Speaker 70 One Hyde post from an unassuming boomer named Ed Massey raked up over 600,000 views, 4.5,000 likes, and 1,500 retweets.

Speaker 70 Massey posted, quote, when you put disturbed children on hormone blockers and sexually mutilate them, you're not curing them, you're creating potential school shooters, unquote.

Speaker 70 Now, it should go without saying, but the use of puberty-suppressing medication has no link to increased violence.

Speaker 70 We're going to go on one last break and return to conclude our discussion of transvestigating school shooters.

Speaker 70 Okay, we are back. Time to talk about the potential double flipper.

Speaker 70 So, as this trans investigation continued, the quote-unquote we can always tell crowd ended up transvestigating in both directions, seemingly unsure of what assigned gender at birth the shooter must have had.

Speaker 70 Some believed the shooter was trans femme, while others concluded they were trans mask.

Speaker 70 With one reply to an end-wokeness tweet reading, quote, those do do not look like female hands,

Speaker 70 and another trans investigation post saying, the shooter is a trans kid, a female pretending to be a male.

Speaker 70 Exactly why we keep our Second Amendment rights to protect our children from this mental health crisis. Zoom in close on her shirt and hand gesture, unquote.

Speaker 70 A now-deleted post from a TERF account also attempted to pass off the shooter as a trans girl, saying, quote, the Wisconsin school shooter was a 17-year-old trans-identified male.

Speaker 70 It just keeps happening. Now, quote-unquote, trans-identified male is usually a transphobic dog whistle to refer to a trans woman, as in a male who identifies as a trans woman.

Speaker 70 But sometimes transphobes get confused by words and use the phrase to refer to trans people who quote unquote identify as men.

Speaker 70 Like this other trans investigation post saying, quote, Shooter was a 17-year-old trans but identified male.

Speaker 70 Now, one of the most widespread posts posts claiming the shooter was a trans guy came from an anti-Semitic doctor in Denmark with 1.4 million followers.

Speaker 70 She falsely claimed, with no evidence, that the shooter was taking testosterone, writing, quote, the Wisconsin school shooter has been identified as a 17-year-old trans identified male, another mentally ill girl on testosterone, unquote.

Speaker 70 As of Tuesday morning, this post has over 3 million views, 22,000 likes, and 8.3,000 retweets. In a following post, this doctor blamed quote-unquote the Jews for inventing transgenderism.

Speaker 70 As a note, extremism researchers have argued that transphobia is structurally similar to anti-Semitism.

Speaker 70 Now, a common piece of anti-trans memetic propaganda deployed in the wake of mass shootings is the trans shooter collage.

Speaker 70 This format spread after the Nashville School shooting in 2023, and this week, Matt Wallace provided us with a brand new version.

Speaker 70 This post is an ugly mishmash of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven people's faces with a variety of backgrounds, a purposeless red circle in the middle of the image, and text that reads, quote, almost every child killed in a mass shooting in the last few years was killed by a transgender shooter.

Speaker 70 Now, out of all those pictures in this collage, only one person in this collage is actually reported to be transgender, the Nashville shooter in the upper left.

Speaker 70 The rest of the people pictured are not trans and have never claimed to be trans.

Speaker 70 The person with long hair in the lower half of the image is Colt Gray, who was falsely labeled as trans by far-right influencers like End Wokiness and Mike Cernovich.

Speaker 70 Colt Gray's Discord posts reveal he actually held transphobic beliefs.

Speaker 70 A more classic version of the trans shooter collage format is just five pictures with text next to each of them reading, the ex-shooter identified as trans, the X shooter identified as trans, right?

Speaker 70 Just a big list of five of these names saying that they all identified as trans.

Speaker 70 The version I'm using here is courtesy of libs of TikTok admin Chaya Raichek, who posted this earlier this year.

Speaker 70 But just as before, the majority of the subjects in this meme aren't actually trans, and it's just full of disinformation.

Speaker 70 The Colorado Springs shooter who targeted a queer club is not actually non-binary and simply tried to weaponize a false identity to get out of hate crime charges.

Speaker 70 The person labeled as the Denver shooter is not trans, has never claimed to be trans. He just has dyed hair.
This individual pictured did plan the shooting with a transgender male who is not pictured.

Speaker 70 Now, lastly, though the person pictured as the Uvalde shooter is trans, this is not the actual Uvalde shooter.

Speaker 70 It's a random trans girl who was one of two trans women whose photos were used to falsely label the shooter as transgender.

Speaker 70 The other two people in this image is the Nashville shooter, who does appear to be trans, and the perpetrator of the Aberdeen workplace shooting. But back to Madison, Wisconsin.

Speaker 67 So after all of that trans investigating, what do we have?

Speaker 70 Just another columbiner with neo-Nazi ties. The right has gotten so good at deploying the trans shooter as a smoke bomb.

Speaker 70 It obscures the reality of the overavailability of firearms, the dynamics of online radicalization, and the social issues that fuel alienation and anger in youth.

Speaker 70 Instead of focusing on all that, on the victims of this epidemic of white supremacist violence, we instead have to spend a whole day debunking the late shooters' pronouns. And that's the point.

Speaker 70 That's what they want us talking about.

Speaker 70 Those who delete their quote-unquote trans-terrorist posts after being conclusively proven wrong will try the exact same shtick in a few months, after the next mass shooting goes viral.

Speaker 70 Others won't even care that much. They'll just leave up their post, secure in the stability of the reality tunnel they helped to create.

Speaker 70 I'm going to close with a quote from Sartre.

Speaker 70 Never believe that fascists are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge, but they are amusing themselves.

Speaker 70 For it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. This post has been deleted.

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Speaker 4 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 5 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 6 We got clear facts.

Speaker 8 Maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 10 NBC News brings you clear reporting.

Speaker 11 Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 12 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 9 NBC News, reporting for America.

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Speaker 67 Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about the worst coups in all of history i i'm i'm your host bia wong and we are returning to one of the worst coups i have ever seen because a whole bunch more stuff has happened in in our most recent unbelievably dog shit coup in south korea the the six-hour coup in which president yoon declared martial law and tried to shut down the national assembly and then the national assembly got together and voted to end the martial law and then it stopped.

Speaker 67 Extremely bizarre and baffling series of events. And, you know, when we last left our intrepid heroes, the people of South Korea, they had just successfully overturned a coup.

Speaker 67 No one quite knew what was going to happen in the aftermath. We knew an impeachment vote was coming,

Speaker 67 a vote to impeach President Yoon.

Speaker 67 The reason we're coming back to this, though, is that the aftermath of all of this has been absolutely baffling.

Speaker 67 And I think this has all been lost in the news cycle because about a trillion things are happening right now. But the situation in South Korea has been unbelievably weird.

Speaker 67 And so we're now going to take a look at the actual impeachment of President Yoon and the unbelievably bizarre path that led to it.

Speaker 67 Because, oh my God, the more I talk to people, the more I realize that people don't know how unbelievably unhinged everything has been since since the military coup because everyone has moved on.

Speaker 67 So we're going back.

Speaker 67 So immediately after the coup there is this whole wave of military guys going like we didn't know we were taking part in the coup we're totally innocent like ah they just let us out of the trucks and suddenly we were at the national assembly we were like oh what are we doing and there's also been this whole thing of all these special forces guys going like oh yeah no no yeah we we totally could have taken the national assembly in 20 minutes if we wanted to we just uh we just like didn't want to take a national assembly like we didn't we didn't really want to do it man like our heart our heart wasn't in this coup and like really i i have seen the videos of that shit man like i didn't see you like going in there and kicking ass and taking names i saw you getting your ass kicked by a guy just like blowing your ass up with a fire extinguisher and like not being able to break a bunch of very well-constructed barricades set up by like fucking senate aides so that's been extremely funny so you like vanished for the entire time this coup was going on and like nobody knew where he was and no one had seen him and things were kind of of fiasco-y.

Speaker 67 He was just gone. So he finally like reappeared, right?

Speaker 67 And as he sort of reappears, he tries to like do this explanation of why he did the coup. It goes about as badly as you would expect from someone who just failed the worst coup that we've ever seen.

Speaker 67 Here's from NPR. Quote, in his speech on Thursday, Yoon, a former chief prosecutor, attempted to justify his actions and downplay its significance.

Speaker 67 He argued that the opposition's, quote, legislative dictatorship, unquote, paralyzed state affairs and disturbed social order. Now,

Speaker 67 this is going back to the thing

Speaker 67 he did at the time, right?

Speaker 67 He has this thing where he keeps calling the parliament, which is controlled by the Democratic Party, which is like the liberal opposition party.

Speaker 67 He kept calling the parliaments like opposition anti-state forces. And like, my brother in Christ, what the fuck is a legislative dictatorship?

Speaker 67 I mean, like, you know, you could be really strictly anarchist about it and be like, well, yeah, all legislators are dictatorships.

Speaker 67 But my dude, you are not living under a dictatorship because the parliament that your country elected hates you and refuses to pass your dog shit budget because no one likes you.

Speaker 67 That is simply not what the word dictatorship means. It reminds me of this thing where like, you know, if you go back and you read like

Speaker 67 people in the 1800s talking about, or like in the 1800s, like 1700s too, you'll read them talking about monarchies, right?

Speaker 67 And they'll be like, ah, if the king can like overrule the will of the nobles, we would be living in a peer dictatorship. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 67 Like, sir, you live under a monarchy. Like, you are already in a dictatorship.
You are also like part of the authoritarian apparatus of the dictatorship.

Speaker 67 And this is just like the inverse of that, where it's like, ah, the legislature won't let me do whatever the fuck I want. So this is now a dictatorship.

Speaker 67 And so like,

Speaker 67 you know, that's simply not what the word dictatorship means.

Speaker 67 And you can't get away with that shit as much in a country where people, like in living memory, have lived through an actual military dictatorship and understand what that's like.

Speaker 67 The parliament refusing to pass your terrible budget, that's not an excuse to institute martial law and try to shut down the legislature. So

Speaker 67 this was not received well, as you would expect from whatever unhinged speech that was. He did apologize for imposing martial law, which is a very funny place to end up.

Speaker 67 It's like you try to do a coup and then you have to go on TV and apologize for trying to do the coup and also try to argue you didn't just try to do a coup.

Speaker 67 And so, this is received very poorly. As we sort of predicted immediately, the opposition Democratic Party immediately tries to impeach Yoon.

Speaker 67 And from the way the headlines kind of work in the West, and from the way this is being talked about, and even from the way this episode sort of opened, you'd think that this impeachment vote was how he got impeached.

Speaker 67 But no, no, the first impeachment vote is not how Yoon gets impeached. Everything is way,

Speaker 67 way weirder than that. Now,

Speaker 67 Yoon's party, the People's Power Party, which is henceforth going to be called the PPP because I am not going to say the words People Power Party over and over again. Good lord.

Speaker 67 The PPP get a lot of credit from people outside of South Korea for like, you know, some of their members legitimately did show up to parliament to vote against the martial law declaration.

Speaker 67 And at the time, in the last episode, I said, that's bullshit. You don't get credit for voting against martial law.
And also, like, most of them weren't there.

Speaker 67 And I, I kind of got shit for this. And I have been absolutely 100% vindicated because the appeachment vote, the first one, rolls around.

Speaker 67 The first one happens very quickly after the first coup, right?

Speaker 67 Well, the first coup. Hopefully the only coup.
Hopefully it's not the second coup. But this happens very quickly.
And, okay, so the vote rolls around.

Speaker 67 And the entire PPP, the entire party, except maybe like two people.

Speaker 67 Just walk out of the chambers. And because they walk out of the chambers, the vote fails because they don't have, they don't have quorum.

Speaker 67 If you don't have a quorum, is it like there's like a minimum number of members that has to be in attendance for whatever you're doing to be legal to stop like two people from showing up in the middle of the night and being like, haha, I am the parliament, we've just passed this like order that makes me dictator or whatever.

Speaker 67 And again, the entire PPP just walks out and they leave, and the vote fails because the PPP managed to whip basically its entire membership into trying to keep you in power.

Speaker 67 And here begins the what the fuck is going on part of this episode because A, all reports we have suggest that Yoon was planning to have the leadership of the PPP arrested.

Speaker 67 And B, he just literally tried to do a coup and they're still backing him.

Speaker 67 And C, we stumble into a very, very thorny question that I saw from people in Korea, like the moment after all this stuff happens, but didn't really hit the Western press until later, if at all, and didn't really hit like the mainstream consciousness?

Speaker 67 And this question will become apparent in a second. So here's from The Guardian.
Senior PPP politicians have claimed Yu can continue as president while delegating his powers to the prime minister.

Speaker 67 An arrangement Park, that's Park Shandae, who's a very powerful Democratic Party politician. An arrangement Park described as, quote, a blatant constitutional violation with no legal basis.

Speaker 67 Now, this is true. What Park is saying is right, right?

Speaker 67 And the fact that the Guardian is saying like that their way of framing this is, oh, the opposition party person says that this is a blatant violation of constitutional law with no legal basis.

Speaker 67 That's not just a thing that he says. Like, this is true.
Like, there is no legal mechanism for, well, we don't want to impeach our presidents, but... Also, he just tried to do a coup.

Speaker 67 So instead, we're going to take his powers away and give it to the prime minister so he can still serve without us impeaching him. Like that's, that's not a thing.
You can't do this.

Speaker 67 There's no mechanism for this. The Democratic Democratic Party people are just completely correct here, but because for some reason the Guardian feels it, I mean, it's the Guardian, right?

Speaker 67 Like, but they feel it necessary to sort of both sides again a fucking coup. This is where we are.

Speaker 67 Here's more from The Guardian.

Speaker 67 Quote: The leader of the PPP, Han Dong-hoon, said at the weekend that Yoon would not be involved in foreign and other state affairs, with control of the administration shifting to the prime minister, Han Duk-soo.

Speaker 67 Han said Yoon's televised apology was effectively a promise to leave office. Now, no, it wasn't.
It was not a promise to leave office. What the fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 67 Like, everyone could just go listen to his apology. He didn't say that.
He did not say he was going to leave office, right?

Speaker 67 And know how he says it's effectively a promise to leave office, but it simply isn't, right? Everyone could just, like, see this.

Speaker 67 And again, like, you know, okay, so like the thing that the thing that the PvP is trying to do, right? The PPP is trying to have... their prime minister like gain control of of the administration.

Speaker 67 Now, there is a mechanism to do this under the constitution.

Speaker 67 it's called impeachment the thing that happens when you get impeached is that you get kicked out of office as we're going to get to this later but you get kicked out of office and the prime minister gets put into power and this happens until the supreme court decides whether uh whether whether your impeachment should go through or not right so like there's a mechanism for this but the ppp doesn't want to like impeach yoon but they also don't want him seemingly running the country because he appears to be like absolutely unhinged and just again declared martial law and tried to knock off the legislature so you have this you have this whole sort of steaming mess of a situation where the PPP is trying to like have it both ways of like not having Union power, but also not impeaching him.

Speaker 67 But this also begs one very important question.

Speaker 67 Who the fuck was running the country between the first impeachment vote and the second one? No one knows. No one knows who is running this fucking country.

Speaker 67 This is a country with 51 million people and nobody knew who was fucking running the country. And this, this barely made the news.
I'm going insane.

Speaker 67 how how why why why is this a thing that'll just like completely disappear beneath the fucking like chatter of the news waves this just this just vanish entirely

Speaker 67 and and speaking of vanishing entirely we're gonna vanish entirely to do these

Speaker 67 ads

Speaker 67 And

Speaker 67 we are

Speaker 67 back.

Speaker 67 So as you would imagine from a situation where, again, you have a country of 51 million people where no one knows who is running the country, things have been extremely chaotic.

Speaker 67 So, you know, we covered in the last episode that like a bunch of ministers were resigning, right? Because, you know, they had just taken part in a coup and they were like, well, shit.

Speaker 67 The ex-defense minister, who's one of the people who's been sort of implicated as being like...

Speaker 67 Saying that he's to a large extent behind the coup like is true. But I mean, this was a cooperative cooperative effort between Yoon, the defense minister, and a bunch of the people in the army.

Speaker 67 And the defense minister, who resigned in disgrace, like, got thrown in jail. So that's fucking wild.
Like, he just got like arrested by the police.

Speaker 67 A bunch of testimony also has come out from the National Assembly investigation, which I'm not covering much of the testimony from the National Assembly investigation because it's really unclear exactly how reputable all this stuff is.

Speaker 67 Because a lot of people are just saying shit, right?

Speaker 67 And some of it may be real. Some of it may be stuff that people have, you know, obtained through their sources, but some of it's probably not.

Speaker 67 But like to get a sense of like the kind of stuff that is coming out in this investigation.

Speaker 67 One of the big claims was from, I think it's from like a TV host who claimed he got texted it by a guy in the army.

Speaker 67 But apparently he was saying that the plan by unit in the army, the plan was to to have the head of the ppp killed and then drop a north korean uniform nearby to like do a false flag and implicate north korean special forces now this is unbelieved right what the fuck and it probably isn't true but you know the source isn't great but like

Speaker 67 who knows right like we don't we don't actually know if they were planning to do this and fucked it up or if they weren't planning to do this or if this person is this person just lying.

Speaker 67 This person did get this text, but the person was misinformed. We don't know if this is just like misinformation that's being spread around.

Speaker 67 This is a good demonstration of what the sort of chaos of this moment has been.

Speaker 67 And, you know, and there's been a lot of other stuff that I think in any other time and place probably would have been like front page news.

Speaker 67 So one of one of the things that happens in this whole process is that the South Korean police tried to raid the house of the president.

Speaker 67 And, you know, like as part of their investigation, there's a whole thing where Yoon's been ordered by like the investigatorial services to not leave the country because he's just actively under investigation for this military coup being illegal by just like the regular ass police.

Speaker 67 And so South Korean police like try to raid his house and they can't do it because the South Korean equivalent of the Secret Service stops them from doing the raid.

Speaker 67 And this in and of itself is something that like, again, would be a giant news headline at any other point in time and it's just been completely lost and it's like it's not sort of clear right now how this is all sort of going to play out and whether the police are going to be able to do this and

Speaker 67 you know what's actually going to happen to yoon after he presumably leaves office i mean i guess the supreme court could save him but like you know there's there's there's a real chance that he and we're going to get into this more in a second there's a real chance that he just like fucking goes to prison right and unlike the last president who was removed from office, like I can't imagine him getting pardoned by the next administration because that was merely an unhinged corruption scandal involving the president of South Korea being under the influence of a shaman and doing a bunch of corruption that did a bunch of horrible shit.

Speaker 67 But this is, you know, this is like

Speaker 67 he tried to do a coup.

Speaker 67 Right. So it's sort of unclear if he's going to get saved from that.
It does seem very likely that he's going to face a bunch bunch of charges for this because everyone is unbelievably pissed off.

Speaker 67 Here's from DW.

Speaker 67 On Monday, former head of Special Warfare Command, Kwok Jung-gwin, and former head of the Capital Defense Command, Lee Jinwu, were arrested on charges of deploying military personnel to the parliament.

Speaker 67 Former chief of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, Yeo-in-Hung, has been accused of orchestrating the implementation of martial law, and Army Chief Park-Ansoo has been suspended from his role.

Speaker 67 Yoon's former defense minister Kim Jong-hyun, who stepped down immediately following the aborted martial law declaration, and former interior minister Lee Song-min also face investigations.

Speaker 67 So what we're seeing here effectively, right, is the house cleaning of the ranks of the Korean military who've been involved with this whole thing, right?

Speaker 67 And they're going through a lot of different people.

Speaker 67 Part of this is also clearing out some of like the cliques in the military who've been sort of backing Yun and who people have suspected have been a bunch of the people behind a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 67 And this is a good and necessary process. The entire time this has been going on, everyone has been terrified of the possibility of a second coup.

Speaker 67 And the only way to avoid that in the short term is to remove the senior leadership of the military and get them away from their troops. They don't have the ability to sort of plan anything.

Speaker 67 And sometimes this can make people just go for it, right?

Speaker 67 Like that's that's what happens in Bolivia, it looks like, where the failed Bolivian coup was a product of, you know, people trying to do house cleaning and get rid of military guys before they did a coup.

Speaker 67 And so this makes them go off half-cocked. And like,

Speaker 67 you know, that's a bad situation for, I mean, it's a bad situation for everyone in the sense that there's a coup happening, but it's a bad situation, especially for the military, because they don't have their coup preparations in place.

Speaker 67 So it's easier to knock them off.

Speaker 67 But what's interesting about this too is that to a large extent, we're seeing other parts of the Korean state like really go after the the military, right?

Speaker 67 And this, I don't know, I mean, like, I'm hoping this kind of like

Speaker 67 has a precedent inside of the sort of Korean like liberal democratic societal norms that like you can't let this just unhinged military do all of this stuff.

Speaker 67 The precedent of this sort of like military house cleaning, I think, is a good one, right?

Speaker 67 This is going to be a rare, a rare Mia agrees with the people who founded the U.S. moment because, oh my God, those people suck shit, like a bunch of slave-owning, genocidal bastards.

Speaker 67 But, you know, one of the things that they were right about is the political danger to any democratic system of having a standing army, right?

Speaker 67 And especially when you have a standing army that's like permanently on a semi-war footing, the way that South Korea is,

Speaker 67 there's always a real political risk that they attempt to seize power. And you have to fucking stop them from doing that.
And ideally, you just fucking axe as much of it as you possibly can, right?

Speaker 67 I mean, I think you should, you axe the entire political system to make sure this doesn't happen. But, you know, this is a, this is hopefully a good first step.

Speaker 67 I also want to mention that the specific charge of insurrection is being thrown at a lot of these people and also at Yoon himself. And like, he absolutely did it, right?

Speaker 67 Like, there's not much of a dispute that he did in fact do

Speaker 67 an insurrection under sort of Korean law.

Speaker 67 law and this technically like carries the death penalty but i i i don't think they're gonna kill him but you know this is the the sort of severity of of this stuff under under the korean legal system and okay so like all of this chaos is happening right and eventually there's a second impeachment vote and this time the public pressure is enough that the ppp stays in the chamber to vote no And only about a dozen, like per NPR, only about a dozen PPP lawmakers actually vote to impeach the guy who just tried to have their fucking parliament disbanded.

Speaker 67 You know, and this is like one of the really depressing things about this, right? Even after everything, right?

Speaker 67 And this is something that we can trace back to sort of the roots of the conservatism of the PPP. Even after all of this shit, right? Like these people still backed him.

Speaker 67 And that's a really...

Speaker 67 really grim and depressing thing.

Speaker 67 And part of the reaction to this has been from the South Korean trade union movement, which has been calling for just straight up the disbanding of the PPP as a political party, right?

Speaker 67 And that's something that I think is extremely reasonable. Again, if your party's president tries to do a military coup, I think you shouldn't be allowed to have a party anymore.

Speaker 67 This is the mealiberal opinions, right?

Speaker 67 Okay, so like eventually this vote does go through.

Speaker 67 And the stage that we're at right now is that, okay, so once you get impeached by the National Assembly, you're suspended from all your duties and the prime minister takes power.

Speaker 67 So what's happening right now is he doesn't have any power formally, but we're still in this sort of holding period.

Speaker 67 We're waiting for the Supreme Court to weigh in and either like approve the impeachment or not.

Speaker 67 And that's that's kind of where things stand now after an unbelievably unhinged week and a half of just everything being extremely unblooded two weeks i guess everything being just unbelievably extremely weird

Speaker 67 and yeah but i i think i think there is the a mild hopeful note, which is that like, if you fight back against these people, they can be defeated. It sucks, but you can eventually get them to crumble.

Speaker 67 And all I can really say for this is I hope the South Korean people prevail over the shitty military dictators.

Speaker 67 And I hope that we too are able to sort of prevail in the US against our sort of equivalents of these forces.

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Speaker 67 Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast that I introduce the same way almost every time. I don't know.
You listen to the show, right?

Speaker 67 You're listening at like some point in the future. You probably know the things falling apart, putting back together again, intro.
I don't have to do it.

Speaker 67 We are doing something that we have done before and I guess we'll continue to do, which is talking to other anarchist media projects about their work and how things are going.

Speaker 67 And yeah, the general why, how, what of it all. And today we're talking with the collective of anarchist writers.

Speaker 67 And very specifically, we're talking to Shuli Branson, who is a writer, translator, and teacher currently living in so-called New York.

Speaker 67 Carla Joy Bergman, who lives across the border in Canada and is a mom writer, artist and loves crows. Very important.
We'll be coming back to that in a second.

Speaker 67 And Vicki Osterweil, who is a worker, writer, and agitator based in Philadelphia. And all three of you, welcome to the show.

Speaker 85 Hi. Thanks for having us.
Hi.

Speaker 67 Thanks so much for having us. Thanks for having us.

Speaker 86 Love your project. I also just wanted to give a shout out to our fourth member, Danny Burleson, who's not here today because she's working, paid work, who just rounds us out so beautifully.

Speaker 86 And just wanted to say her name.

Speaker 67 Yeah, I'm excited to talk about this. And partly I'm excited to talk about it because so the acronym for this is Kaw and there's a whole crow theme going on.
And we love a crow here in Portland.

Speaker 67 It is maybe our big thing.

Speaker 86 Yeah, I'm in Vancouver. Well, I was in Vancouver.
I just stopped from there, but Pacific Northwest. And so it's crow highway, you know, thousands and thousands of crows.

Speaker 85 Oh, yes, I get it. I think the crow is like what ultimately sealed the project for us, honestly.

Speaker 67 Yeah, Yeah. Hell yeah.
Yeah. It was, it really came together around around the Corvid theme, I think.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 67 The combination of enjoying shiny things, extreme intelligence, and never-ending spite, I think are all sort of motivating factors for all of us. So

Speaker 86 and that they're a collective and have meetings often throughout the day.

Speaker 85 No, a collective called a murder, which is also pretty badass.

Speaker 67 Yeah, there's a huge thing in Portland here where we have, we have the mega murder. So every

Speaker 67 like morning, all the crows sort of fly off into their different little murders and they go,

Speaker 67 you know, they go out and hang out in the city. And then at around sunset every day, all of the crows fly back into the city.
They have their like giant mega murder meeting.

Speaker 67 There's thousands and thousands of them. You know, you look up and you just see them, like the herds.
like the murders of crows flying past.

Speaker 67 And if you, there's there's specific spots in Portland where you can just go see all of the

Speaker 67 all the crows hanging out and, you know, doing, doing, doing whatever the things things crows do when literally an entire city's where the crows gather together every night.

Speaker 85 Oh, no, it's a spokes council doing the stool.

Speaker 67 Well, but I don't, it's not a spokes council though, because all of them are there. Oh, true.
So I feel like that's an assembly.

Speaker 86 It's more assembly, yeah. Yeah, in Vancouver, it's called it's called the um crow highway, yeah.
Hell yeah, because it's so massive and goes forever and ever and ever to their roost.

Speaker 86 Brief story on crows and resistance.

Speaker 86 Um, a really incredible story in Vancouver when a park was a colonial person created a park in the downtown, which was like displaced a lot of indigenous people in their homes and designed this park that was filled with crows as well.

Speaker 86 They also brought in animals from Europe as well to make it pretty. And so

Speaker 86 the crows made it really hard for these animals. And so the city of Vancouver for 50 years from 1900 to 1950 gave free range to the Vancouver gun people to go into the park and shoot crows every day.

Speaker 67 Oh my God.

Speaker 86 And when I see like the amount of crows that are still alive, it's just a metaphor for Indigenous resilience, you know, like it's just so powerful.

Speaker 86 So it's another reason why I'm like interested in terms of where I was like living.

Speaker 85 As I've been gathering images for our project, I've been specifically trying to find images of crows attacking people because I think that's that's good.

Speaker 85 So it's like, you know, the follow-up to what you were saying, Carla, is the crow's revenge.

Speaker 86 Yes.

Speaker 67 Yeah, one of the things that, you know, you kind of have to do here in Portland is you have to kind of like negotiate with the crows.

Speaker 67 You have to like, you leave them like peace offerings and you sort of, you know,

Speaker 67 when your friends come, you let you introduce them to the crows. So the crows know that you're okay.
And it's, it's, it's very sweet.

Speaker 85 Shiny things.

Speaker 67 Yeah.

Speaker 67 We love a crow-based crow-based society. And speaking of a crow-based society, yeah, do you want to, I guess, give a brief sort of overview of what CA is before we get sort of more into it?

Speaker 67 Yeah, I'm happy to take a spin at that. This is Vicki, by the way.
Yeah. So CA is sort of like, I mean, it's an anarchist journal of arts and culture that is a collective of anarchist writers.

Speaker 67 It's also a Corvette Appreciation Working Group. There's a lot of different acronyms for it.
And what we are doing is we are bringing all four, at first, just all four of our efforts together.

Speaker 67 So a lot of us work on separate podcasts. We have pedagogical tasks.
We have many activist projects that center around culture. You know, I have a newsletter.
Shuli has a Patreon.

Speaker 67 Carla has a newsletter. Danny has has also has like an email list.
There's all these different projects.

Speaker 67 And we realized that like for all of our talk about mutual aid and working collectively, when it comes to writing and creativity, the market has been so fractured and so alienated and sort of so turned into like everyone has an individual newsletter that they're competing with one another, you know, even though they don't want to be like they want to be, but that's sort of ultimately what's happening is that there's limited sort of customers.

Speaker 67 And there's also this other trend going on right now

Speaker 67 of this really exciting trend of worker-owned journals, a lot of them local, local journalisms.

Speaker 67 There's some in New York and Chicago, and there's one in Asheville and all over the country, as well as like on special topics.

Speaker 67 So like Aftermath, which like does, I think early video games, and there's 404 Media, who does tech. There's just like all these different sort of sites doing this sort of thing.

Speaker 67 And I think in some ways, all of us are sort of collectively reinventing the newspapers that have been sort of stolen and destroyed by capital, you know, in a big way. Yeah.

Speaker 67 So there's sort of two goals that we have. And I think Carla, Carla speaks really eloquently to some of this, but one of which is to make writing radical culture work.

Speaker 67 beautiful, joyful, fun, and also critical like movement work to make it sustainable for us and for anyone else who wants to share in this project who we can sort of expand towards, but also to make it easier for people who are reading to have access to these things like in one place instead of having to decide who they care for and who they like in order to sort of

Speaker 67 do that math of like, who can I afford to subscribe to?

Speaker 67 Like I personally, I don't know if this is true for everyone else, but personally, I usually have about two or three people I can afford to subscribe to a month and they switch it out just like on a very arbitrary basis, you know, or something like that.

Speaker 67 That was very technical and financially focused.

Speaker 67 But what we're really excited to do mostly is support our each other's work because I think we all really love and admire each other's work and have for a long time.

Speaker 67 And this is is just this really exciting opportunity instead of my writing just being for me it's for shili and carla and dannino and that just makes it feel more inspiring and exciting as well as a collective process yeah i i mean connected to the financial aspect but i think when we were initially discussing this the experience of being a writer is trying to find outlets for your writing.

Speaker 85 And if you're trying to get paid for that, you have to sell it to people, right? And so it's very hard to get paid at all for writing.

Speaker 85 And it's very hard to place your writing in venues that publish it, especially if you're coming from an anarchist angle, because people do not really want to publish things that come to anarchist conclusions.

Speaker 85 Like they want you to do all the analysis and whatever, but they don't want you to think about like what an action is like.

Speaker 85 So like, you know, you could write for some of the lefty, so-called lefty socialist, whatever. rags, but they don't, yeah, they won't feature anarchists.

Speaker 85 They basically even just act as if anarchism doesn't exist, never exists, you know, never existed. They erase the whole history of it.

Speaker 85 The only serious kind of political force is some kind of democratic socialism.

Speaker 85 So to us, we wanted to create a place where we can do the writing we want to do without having to make compromises in what we want to say just to get published.

Speaker 85 Because that, yeah, just that game of like, of shopping your stuff around is, it's demeaning. It's totally time consuming.
It distracts you from actually doing the work.

Speaker 85 So we were like, let's band together instead of each of us going off wasting our time trying to write.

Speaker 67 Yeah. And I think one of the other issues with this too, also, is like the pay is just so bad.

Speaker 67 Like even the, like almost especially the leftist groups, like page is so rancid and all of the combinations of those things make it really, really hard to just sort of be an independent writer.

Speaker 67 And also, okay,

Speaker 67 jumping back a second to the erasing anarchism exists. This is why I, the one that makes me always lose my mind is like, I'm specifically going to name Jacobin here because I don't like them.

Speaker 67 But like, one of the things that Jacobin will do is they'll be covering a strike that is organized by the IWW. It is an IWW union.

Speaker 67 They will have pictures of the strike where there are a bunch of people holding IWW banners and they will never mention that it was the IWW who organized the strike.

Speaker 67 So like, yeah, there is this real sort of... conspiracy of silence, I guess, about

Speaker 67 our politics and the stuff that we do in the world.

Speaker 85 It's so glaring. Jacobin is definitely a big culprit.

Speaker 85 And then the podcast associated with the dig, like they will specifically, they will be talking about history where anarchists have been very involved and then they just will not mention them.

Speaker 85 And sometimes there's really good history and analysis on that podcast, but like this is an omission that they clearly are choosing.

Speaker 67 Yeah. And I think self-organization is.

Speaker 67 effectively the only way out of this because otherwise you just sort of, I don't know, have to deal with all the sort of media gatekeepers like sitting there in front of you with a stick going, no anarchism.

Speaker 67 Bonk. Yeah.

Speaker 67 And even the projects that have sustained, that have survived, which are all really awesome, you know, like, and exciting, like very few of them have offered real sustainability like on a professional level.

Speaker 67 And like, I've been publishing like.

Speaker 67 quote unquote professionally for 15 years and like i'm the like newest writer on the scene like from our crew basically like we're incredibly experienced and all of us have books out all of us have edited volumes all of us have like podcasts and like are people who I like really respect, whose names I think are big and important in the world of theory and activism and like in the Anglophone world, especially.

Speaker 67 And none of us can sustain ourselves as writers as such because of the way that just, you know, both politically, but also just like the way the market has come down. Yeah.

Speaker 67 And it just feels like something we could apply our politics to solving as a workplace issue rather than just sort of as like a, you know, are you committed enough to sacrifice all your time issue?

Speaker 67 And so hopefully like that will also function to make more work available to produce and to platform and to, yeah, to sort of work as an example simultaneously.

Speaker 67 Unfortunately, speaking of sustaining work as a platform, unfortunately, the way we are sustained here is with these ads. So hold on.

Speaker 67 And we are back. And this, I guess, brings us to the kind of work that's happening here.

Speaker 67 And I was very excited because one of the things y'all have done is an interview with Raul Zebecki, who is the author of like one of my favorite quotes of all time.

Speaker 67 I think I've said on this show like multiple times that I really ran into in a sort of completely unrelated book called Rhythms of the Patchacudi, which is about the sort of the water and gas wars in Bolivia.

Speaker 67 I talk about this book on the show like all the time. This quote goes roughly, like struggle illuminates the divisions of the society like lightning illuminates the sky.
And I love it.

Speaker 67 It's like, it's like, it's the best explanation of what happened during 2020 that I've ever seen.

Speaker 67 And this is sort of what's happening like right now, too, is like you have these sort of flashpoint moments where, you know, suddenly like all of how society works very briefly becomes visible.

Speaker 67 And you have this sort of moment when you're illuminated by it to act. And so I'm, I don't know, I'm really excited that y'all are talking to him.
And

Speaker 67 yeah, because he talked maybe a lot more about what's been going on and what's to come.

Speaker 87 I'm sure. thanks.

Speaker 86 That was a highlight definitely to share was talking to Raul. Obviously, you know, Pad Casco, we talked for quite a bit longer than what was on the show.

Speaker 86 And I think like reading his newest book that was translated and then doing that show with him was completely connected to me like reaching out to Shule about doing Ka because there was a way that

Speaker 86 he talked about this whole idea of disappearing symmetries that the Zapatistas are working on, like this idea of really truly looking at all the fault lines within horizontality or autonomy that we don't actually enact in our day-to-day lives.

Speaker 86 And so I really started to reflect on my own life that way.

Speaker 86 Not so much Vicki at this point yet, but like Shuli and Danny, both of them, like we just were blurbing each other's books and like supporting each other connecting to publishers or trying to connect each other to publishers and just this, like trying to disrupt the competitive nature that's running underneath even when we're all really committed to not being competitive but there's like it is like there's a you know so all this to say that for me like collaboration is at the heart of what we're doing here in a deep deep way and for me collaboration just means that when something is created that wouldn't be created otherwise without this collaboration.

Speaker 86 So I'm just really excited to see what sparks and comes up individually, but also like with each other and even like through collaborations, like the show with Raul and like how that spreads seeds and ideas.

Speaker 86 Yeah, so like for myself, I'm going to definitely focus on collaboration in a deep way. I don't think I'll write very much solo stuff for the, for Kahl.

Speaker 86 I think it will always be in conversation with others and just trying to double down on

Speaker 86 doing it together. instead of individual pursuits.

Speaker 67 Yeah, and that's something I think is useful for everyone listening to this is that like, it's a lot easier to develop better ideas. And, you know, it makes your writing more clear.

Speaker 67 It makes the way that you, you know, just the way you act in the world a lot more clear when you're working with other people.

Speaker 67 And it's, you know, it's, it's, it's the process by which the best stuff gets created. Yeah, I mean, I think that's really like true.

Speaker 67 And I think like, I have for a long time now sort of accepted that writing is never going to support or sustain me.

Speaker 67 And all I needed was a push from a few other people to be like, wait, what if we like actually tried to do it collectively to be like, oh yeah, like I could actually try that.

Speaker 67 Like, I don't have to just accept that like, I'll always have like a full-time job plus whatever writing, like what in whatever hours I can steal, you know, and like, you know, with great difficulty, put out some writing sometimes and then always feel guilty when I'm not putting out enough to like sustain myself.

Speaker 67 Like that whole process, I think a lot of creatives right now know that struggle, you know, of having gigs and work and lots of other important things to do.

Speaker 67 And, you know, sort of accepting that that's the conditions.

Speaker 67 And I think like what's so inspiring about, because Carla, as Carla was just mentioning, they sort of brought, I'm the last one on the, on the crew and I was sort of the closer, you know, or whatever.

Speaker 67 But I think like, I don't know what that means,

Speaker 67 genuinely,

Speaker 67 but

Speaker 67 I was brought in.

Speaker 67 And I think just having them propose it already, just as a project that we've been thinking of has like changed the way I've been thinking about what is possible with the writing I'm already doing.

Speaker 67 And so I think like just to underline that point and go on and on and on, collaboration is really, really like important and supporting one another is so powerful.

Speaker 85 Yeah, when Carla and I initially had like the seed conversation of this, like Carla said something about collectivizing as writers, like we talk about it with all these other

Speaker 85 workplaces and industries and whatever. And it was like, like when she said that, I was like, oh yeah, like that makes so much sense.
Like we're off here doing our own thing.

Speaker 85 And as Vicki said, you do it sort of with the knowledge that it's not sustainable. you steal your time to do it right even the supposed jobs that are

Speaker 85 there to enable you to write um actually make you do all this other work so like the time for writing is always like endlessly deferred and you know we have that image also like of the patron or something or like virginia wolf says you need like money enough to have a room of one's own but if we put ourselves together in this way then

Speaker 85 we are trying to, yeah, I don't know, create more time for ourselves to write.

Speaker 85 And then like, going back to something Vicki said earlier about like reinventing the newspaper, there was a time in anarchism where, like, I think we talked about this amongst ourselves, like, where like every block had like a Yiddish anarchist newspaper, right?

Speaker 85 It wasn't like you had one newspaper telling all the anarchists what to think. It was like, it was hyper-local in a way, and there was so many voices.

Speaker 85 And so, I think that's another thing that we want to do is like help for that proliferation.

Speaker 85 Because, in the sort of spirit of collaboration, like the reason to write as an anarchist for me is to have conversations, to produce the possibility for people to like receive it and then contact me and I get into conversations with people and learn things from them.

Speaker 67 Yeah, and I think there's an angle there too, where like, I think we're kind of, okay, so I was a tiny baby when all this was happening. So I'm going to have to rely on y'all for this.

Speaker 67 But like, I, you know, one of the things I get from sort of reading the record about like, the older anarchist movement.

Speaker 67 I mean, when I say older, I mean like like anti-anti-globalization era stuff was like there were, there seemed like there was a lot more of a kind of like anarchist media sphere are you talking about like the late 90s yeah like like like to the 2000s to some extent like uh battle seattle yeah yeah

Speaker 86 i mean that was like the you know the birth of anarchy again right was yeah i i was definitely around i'm in my late 50s

Speaker 86 but the same struggle was there like that yeah that we're swimming in liberalism and like that socialist worker like capturing of the movement was just as powerful then.

Speaker 86 And it was, you saw it at all the rallies and stuff. And, you know, immediately anarchism was marginalized and pushed off as irrelevant and not practical for the revolution.

Speaker 86 And this is why it splintered up in all these kind of sectarian movements. And that's my take anyway.
I think that's...

Speaker 67 No, it makes sense. It makes sense.

Speaker 86 I mean, I've hashed this out with so many older anarchists. I was part of Institute for Anarchist Studies.

Speaker 86 Like, we talked about this a lot, this phenomena with Scott Crowe, and you can just see the direct line of where it went into sectarianism from

Speaker 86 this sort of rebirth. Sorry, I went off on a different thing instead of like journals and media, but yes.

Speaker 67 No, no. Well, this is good too, because like, I think that's the other thing I've been realizing is like people don't.

Speaker 67 I mean, in my generation too, but like people younger than me don't really know the history of this stuff.

Speaker 67 Like all the time, I have conversations with people where I start talking about like the Oaxaca uprising and they have no idea what I'm talking about.

Speaker 67 And I'm like, oh, no, we need to like, we, we need to, we need to like resuscitate the the history of like the 2000s because stuff happened there.

Speaker 67 So I wasn't actually active at that point, but I was like very adjacent to some of that stuff at the moment.

Speaker 67 And some of that was actually because a lot of what was going on in the alter globalization movement in that period was happening through culture.

Speaker 67 I think most famously, like touring punk bands would also bring zine libraries with them. So they would have someone distroing zines and playing the show.

Speaker 67 And like, I mean, I got radicalized through punk. I know a lot of people who did.

Speaker 67 That was, you know, when I finally did, it was after that movement had largely crested but i think there was a lot of focus on on culture and also um a critique of culture was also pretty central um to to how people were thinking and moving and i think the explosion of social media and like posting and like the sort of

Speaker 67 quote-unquote democratization and leveling of communication capabilities, which in some ways was more real in the early 2010s than it is, certainly than it is now.

Speaker 67 It wasn't totally like a made-up narrative, but there was also, it was also over-relied on.

Speaker 67 I think people sort of reached for a kind of like, well, anyone who can use these tools to communicate, like that's valuable.

Speaker 67 So critiquing sort of media in general or critiquing sort of capitalist media is sort of beside the point because we can go around it.

Speaker 67 We can sort of go, we can, you know, go on Twitter and subvert it. And we can like do all these, you know, go sideways around it.

Speaker 67 So I was, you know, a participant in Occupy Wall Street in 2011, which people also don't know anything about because that's me just being older.

Speaker 67 But Occupy Wall Street was started by a magazine magazine called Adbusters, which came out of the WTO movement and sort of managed to stick around.

Speaker 67 And by 2011, when they did that, we thought it was like a joke.

Speaker 67 It was like, oh, these culture jammers who like make fun of advertisements, like they started the movement, like that's ridiculous, right? Like that's silly. And like, this is not to defend Adbusters.

Speaker 67 I think whatever.

Speaker 67 Yeah, there's some issues with them, but they also did.

Speaker 67 I don't know. Yeah.
But also, I think that reaction of like culture jamming is sort of stupid or like, you know, like talking about, who wants to talk about culture at at this point?

Speaker 67 I think that that made sense in the context in which we were moving and organizing.

Speaker 67 But like now, once again, it is clear that by abandoning the cultural sphere in many ways, we have in fact lost a tremendous amount of ground.

Speaker 67 So I think it's actually really important to have cultural organizations that aren't just theory, that aren't just news, but that are like really talking about art and beauty and like excitement and joy and fiction and all these things that we find really important.

Speaker 67 Because,

Speaker 67 you know, I think a lot of people sort of think, well, it's a crisis moment, you know, the world's ending. Why would you do that? But like the world has been ending since 1492.

Speaker 67 Like the world worth defending has been ending since then. And it hasn't ended yet.

Speaker 67 And one of the ways it hasn't ended is by Indigenous and Black and other marginalized cultures and stories and narratives and works of art.

Speaker 67 That's been an important mode of history and resistance, just as much as organizing and struggle. And yeah, I think we can move some struggle onto that terrain right now.

Speaker 67 And I think there's a lot of craving for it now, because I think also for a while, things felt really oversaturated. But the last five years, the internet doesn't feel helpful anymore.
No.

Speaker 67 Everything feels like streaming is a mess. Like everything's a mess.
There's no access to culture that feels good. Everyone hates what they're doing.
They know it's exploiting the artists.

Speaker 67 They know, you know, Spotify is giving people pennies and that, you know, HBO and all those mat, you know, all the, all the streaming services, you know, support Amazon and they're, they're just miserable, right?

Speaker 67 And I think there's, there's a real opening and a real desire for something else at this moment at the same time that things are indeed quite on fire, literally, ecocidally, but also sort of politically.

Speaker 67 Yeah, speaking of everything being on fire, we need to take an ad break and then we will come back and I think the deliberate political intervention here.

Speaker 67 We are back from capital hellscape to mildly less capital hellscape. Yeah, actually you were going to say.

Speaker 85 Yeah, I wanted to just build on this culture thing because when, you know, when after October 7th, when people are getting together to try to figure out how in the United States to do some kind of work in action and support and solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian liberation movement, like people were just sort of like, what the hell can we even do?

Speaker 85 And one of the things that I would say to people is like, just putting up stickers and writing about Gaza on the walls, like in graffiti, has a huge impact.

Speaker 85 And it's overlooked often, I think, as like something that's effective.

Speaker 85 But we can see that there has been a giant cultural shift after October 7th in terms of people's awareness of the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians and then support for the Palestinians.

Speaker 85 I think that has to do really, you know, post-October 7th with the fact that this was like kind of plastered everywhere. And so it's easy to kind of think that that isn't action.

Speaker 85 But to me, in a way, doing something like that is more effective than the kind of marching in circles that we can do, that we call protest.

Speaker 85 and you know like going back to punk i think also punk has has gets a bad rap sometimes because you know in that line of like the kind of book shin lifestylism but yeah i don't think we should downplay like punk created its own culture of people doing everything themselves to make it happen it's where i got radicalized too and they were like it was anarchist right it was like explicitly anarchist and you were living in an anarchist way and like creating things in an anarchist way.

Speaker 85 And it was this whole other world.

Speaker 85 So like if we put our anarchist energy into culture, it's part of making a world that we want to live in, you know, over and against this world, this hell world that we're also trying to destroy at the same time.

Speaker 85 So I think we shouldn't kind of just like dismiss this as less important than the other kinds of actions that we can take.

Speaker 67 Here, here.

Speaker 67 Yeah, and that brings me to something I wanted to sort of ask about like more deliberately, which is like, what's the kind of specific political intervention that you're trying to make into this moment with this project and both sort of, I guess, a bit more generally too?

Speaker 86 Big question.

Speaker 86 I mean, I, my work has always been about intervening

Speaker 86 around any kind of dominant narratives that things are just now bad or that. people don't know what anything or pedagogically they're lacking.

Speaker 86 Like I've always tried to intervene around this idea that we've always been otherwise and we always are.

Speaker 86 And there's always cracks everywhere and eruptions of radical ways of being and knowing and doing. And so it's like a deepening of that.
And I think probably on a systemic

Speaker 86 thinking systemically is really about disrupting individualism or liberalism or empire, whatever you want to colonialism, to really like live it in the everyday. So that's.
partly that.

Speaker 86 And then on a just a super practical level, like, you know, all of us don't have wealth, don't have generational wealth, are working all the time to try to meet ends meet.

Speaker 86 And some of us are have housing insecurity and other real

Speaker 86 basic needs are insecure and health stuff. And so like actually showing up for the each of us is at the core of it for me.

Speaker 86 Like I, it feels so good in my body to know that I'm not just showing up to think about what to do for Ka. For me, it's like it's in the act of collectivism for each other.

Speaker 86 And so I'm just open to what sparks and emerges with our work. I don't have an agenda except for to disrupt and intervene belief systems that are ideologically driven by empire.

Speaker 86 And I also came of age in the early 80s in the punk scene and had a venue space.

Speaker 86 And to me, punk is, and I would say hip-hop as well, underground hip-hop stuff, is like always the way to disrupt being captured by empire or from liberalism is to keep that punk ethos of doing it together and keeping it low to the ground.

Speaker 86 Yeah.

Speaker 67 Yeah. Yeah.
Just to like to build on that, Carla, because I think that was really beautiful.

Speaker 67 I'd second everything that you said is that like many of us have a perspective, you know, that huge structural change is going to need to come.

Speaker 67 And that often that will come through these big social movements, that these explosions of energy that, you know, these lightning strikes, right? But you can't force those.

Speaker 67 You can't make those happen. Yeah.

Speaker 67 And in the meantime, meantime, you can, I think I've spent a lot of my in the meantimes in

Speaker 67 trying to sort of organize stuff that's sort of oriented towards mass movement, you know, and it just feels, it often feels like wheel spinning.

Speaker 67 You know, like I'm building, I'm trying to build mass movement organizing, like, you know, like whatever that means.

Speaker 67 And in the 2010s, like one of the things that happened from like 2011, arguably 2009, but definitely 2011 to 2020 was that.

Speaker 67 wherever you were, it was never more than probably 18 months before there was like something else going off in the streets.

Speaker 67 And so, although those could be very hard, those waves could be very difficult, you still had a lot of periods where, you know, you could just sort of be waiting and it would just sort of happen again.

Speaker 67 That was certainly what I was doing in that decade in a way that I don't think I appreciated until it was over. Yeah.
Because the last four, the last four years has been very different.

Speaker 67 The rhythm has been very different since the

Speaker 67 pandemic started. And I can't just say Panini on this podcast.
Okay.

Speaker 67 Everyone does it, right? Yeah,

Speaker 67 since the pandemic started,

Speaker 67 you you know, those rhythms have been disrupted. And I think the Biden counter revolution against 2020, which has also really disrupted those things.

Speaker 67 And in that space, it has felt very clear to me personally. And I'm older, you know, whatever.

Speaker 67 I'm like, you know, a movement elder at this point, just because our movements are so youth focused, not because I'm actually old.

Speaker 67 Like the decade before 2011. from like 2001, you know, from 9-11 until sort of Occupy is sort of how I periodize it a bit.
There wasn't a ton of street movement.

Speaker 67 You had the Iraq War stuff that was really, really big. And there were important exceptions to that in the U.S.
I'm doing a pot of history here.

Speaker 67 Obviously, there's exceptions to this, but you definitely had all this time. And the stuff that was sustained and remembered were largely like sort of cultural projects.

Speaker 67 And so I think like now as we're moving into this era here in North America on Turtle Island of extreme repressive danger.

Speaker 67 right like we shouldn't like joke about it or downplay it like we're facing a lot of extreme repression and fascists back in the streets in a big way it doesn't feel like big political organizing of the kind that happened during the first Trump administration where people did a lot of marching in circles, but there were targets for the pressure.

Speaker 67 You know, like they don't feel as relevant now.

Speaker 67 Now I'm really off. Now I'm way off.
No, no. But no, I think, so I think like, I think like we're in this moment where the fascists both are quite empowered and very unfocused.
They're confused.

Speaker 67 They don't really have us in their sights. Like they think Liz Cheney is just as much a revolutionary as Asada Shakur or whatever, right?

Speaker 67 And like that leaves us some space to move and to build things that can maintain a spirit of resistance, that can reproduce a culture of resistance, that can also organize.

Speaker 67 And another, another thing that has really been important for me recently with Ka is that I've been doing an organizing project that I won't talk about the details of, but that the skills have largely come from punk music that I did in the 20s, in my 20s, being in a touring punk band.

Speaker 67 And those skills have made this organizing really easy. And that's been a huge thing for me because I'm working with other people who are younger who don't have that experience.

Speaker 67 They're like, oh, how do you do this? And I'm like, oh, no, no, it's so easy. You just like do this.
You know, here's these skills I learned just from doing music.

Speaker 67 And like, I don't think that's just like accidental. As Julie was saying, like the DIY nature of some of that work, the culture work, you know, maybe the band wasn't revolutionary.

Speaker 67 The bands I was in certainly weren't like the revolution or whatever, but they gave me all of these powerful skills and ideas and concepts for doing really important work.

Speaker 67 And I think that that's also a reason to pursue DIY culture in a way that's that's genuinely sustainable and world-building.

Speaker 85 I think like if I can build off this too, and I'm going to try to do some tying together of things, but like one of the ways that I think about my contribution is to think about like, let's not like, don't look there, let's look over here.

Speaker 85 And that can mean multiple things, which is often when people think politically, they're looking at these big moments or big actions or like top-down solutions, which means that we take our attention away from these other places where we're doing all the stuff, like Carla was saying, like we're already doing a lot of important kind of like life-making work.

Speaker 85 And then also, there's moments in our movements where we have to be like, you all look over here while we do stuff over here, right? Like, you don't want to be seen all the time.

Speaker 85 So, we have to be able to direct our attention to the things that we do and then also keep some of that stuff under wraps. And that means it's hard sometimes to see.

Speaker 85 And because it's so decentralized, and anarchism really functions through decentralization, like we, we're not always aware of how much power we actually have and what's going on at any one moment.

Speaker 85 And going back to the kind of moments, even tracing back to, you know, the Battle of Seattle, and I think it's like ever more present today in all of the kinds of organizing for street actions that are being done, that a lot of the groundwork for any of these moments is done by anarchists.

Speaker 85 And then it's not either claimed by anarchists or it's stolen from anarchists.

Speaker 85 like we make everything sort of run and anarchism makes everything run And then it just gets ignored because it's not about taking credit. It's not about kind of imposing itself.

Speaker 85 And so I think like that kind of in-between of saying what we're doing and sharing that knowledge and then keeping under a wrap so that we can keep chugging along.

Speaker 85 And then just also being aware of when our work is being stolen and then repurposed for something that goes against what we want.

Speaker 85 I think these are all ways for us to prepare for those moments of like explosion or eruption where anarchy really manifests and then we can kind of taste freedom for a moment.

Speaker 67 Love it.

Speaker 67 Yeah, I think though the way I've always thought about it was this kind of like, it's this like flame tending process where in these sort of low cycles, your job is to keep the flame alive.

Speaker 67 And eventually you know that you're going to see it like, you know, you're going to see the explosion again, right? You're going to see the flame.

Speaker 67 roar up but like that that doesn't happen unless the flame is still there and unless people have been tending it and people have been trying to make it grow and you can't necessarily just like add fuel to it and be like ah it's gonna it's gonna grow now right it you know you don't you don't really have control of how it sort of moves and grows it expands but you have control over your ability to like make sure that it keeps going absolutely all about the ambers yeah and i i think also like I'm thinking about the punk metaphor a lot like one of the ways that I've been thinking a lot about like what we're doing here and it could happen here is we kind of took the like we took the rage against the machine gambit which is to say we were like we're like okay we're going to go to try to go somewhat mainstream in order to i mean rage obviously like went way bigger than we did but like we're going to go try to some we're going to go like somewhat mainstream so we can like spread this thing to a larger group of people that's also very very dangerous in the sense that like it's very easy to sort of just lose yourself in the kind of mire of like the field you've walked into but on the other hand the upside about it is that we're not the only people doing this right and there's all of you out there who are doing this.

Speaker 67 Like everyone on this call is doing this, like

Speaker 67 is doing the like, like the DIY work that is going to be the core of what this whole thing becomes. And

Speaker 67 the more of these media projects we get and the more that people are able to sustain themselves doing this, the more that we're sort of able to break like, I don't know, just like the monomaniacal substack control of like taking your money and giving it to transphobes kind of thing, the better shape we're going to be in in the years to come.

Speaker 67 Exactly. And speaking of which, one thing anarchists are famously bad at doing is accepting that we do require money and asking for it.
So I'm going to do that for the squad.

Speaker 67 We are currently fundraising because it's actually really hard to make something sustainable for four people. Yep, yep.
So we have a fundraiser going on.

Speaker 67 If you like what we're talking about here, you can donate to our Indiegogo. Literally anything helps.
Once we fully launch in February, we're going to have a pay what you want subscription model.

Speaker 67 So everything will be subscribed. But we really want to have three months worth of living wage for all of us to do two days a week on it.
Right.

Speaker 67 So we're not even, you know, we're not talking full salaries.

Speaker 67 And that's $45,000 because four people for three months, it's not even a tremendous amount of money because we're including solidarity funds in that and like paying any writers who contribute like lots of other stuff.

Speaker 67 So yeah, if you have a few bucks and, you know, maybe you're thinking about, you know, getting off of one of those sub stacks or something and you want to throw our way, we would be absolutely honored.

Speaker 67 I'm very excited to accept anything in this launch.

Speaker 67 And if you don't have that money, which is, I know, true for a lot of us, which is why we feel bad asking for the money, because there are so many people who need it right now, you can subscribe online.

Speaker 67 You can find us on social media and keep in touch until we do launch. And then you can join and subscribe that way.
That's also a really great way to support us.

Speaker 67 But if you have a few, few bucks you want to throw, if you want to give someone a present of a year's membership, you can get that for $100 for the holidays, you know, radicalize your uncle, you know, just with our work.

Speaker 67 We'd really, really appreciate it. And yeah.

Speaker 87 Thanks, Vicki.

Speaker 67 Yeah. And I don't know.

Speaker 67 I'm excited for this. There's already been a bunch of great stuff that's up on the site.
We will have links to everything in the description. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you three for coming on the show.

Speaker 67 And I'm really excited about this.

Speaker 86 Well, thanks for having us.

Speaker 85 Yeah, thanks for the chance to share it. And like I always say, like if anyone is interested and wants to get in touch, I'm happy to hear from you.
And

Speaker 86 yeah, same. And reach out to us too if you have ideas on what cost stands for.
We love hearing from people.

Speaker 86 My favorite is Can the Anarchists Write? That's what it stands for.

Speaker 87 I don't know who came up with that.

Speaker 86 I think that might have been Sheila or Vicki, but it's a good one.

Speaker 44 TBD, TBD.

Speaker 2 So yeah, send in what you think.

Speaker 86 And we also are going to have an advice column. It's going to be launched soon.
Yeah, so send us questions and or individually or whatever, but you know, disrupt individualism. Reach out to us.

Speaker 67 Yeah, thanks so much. And yeah, as a long time listener, first time caller, it's really exciting to be on here.
So thank you, Mia, so much. That's not true.
Hold on.

Speaker 67 Dang it. All all right sorry i was on

Speaker 67 hold on i just go on so many podcasts mia like can you blame me no i'm just kidding

Speaker 67 sorry yeah well anyway uh this just really exciting to be here and talking to everyone and we hope to meet y'all in the future and ka will have a well we will have a discord community we'll be having like writing class we're gonna have a lot of like really exciting stuff so even if you can't throw in money right now please sign up to our website kawashanythings.com to stay in touch uh and find out all the really cool stuff we're doing and just to reiterate, like all the stuff that we're already doing is now going to have a home in CAS.

Speaker 85 So like my essays and podcasts, Vicky's

Speaker 85 reviews and essays, and Carla's many projects, which include podcasts and writing and these interviews, Danny's writing and classes. Yeah, this is all moving there plus new things.

Speaker 86 Doing it together.

Speaker 67 Yeah.

Speaker 67 In that spirit, you two, dear listener, can do things together and go disrupt this world. So go do that now instead of listening to whatever else is happening on the show.

Speaker 67 This ending is not going well, but go disrupt. Thanks.
Get it.

Speaker 86 Thanks so much.

Speaker 67 Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

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Speaker 1 You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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