It Could Happen Here Weekly 182

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

So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want.

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Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about it happening here, which is normally focused on the United States because that's where we all live.

However, we do like to cover the rest of the world and the ongoing struggle against the global far-right movement.

And today we're going to talk about a place that we don't cover often on this show, Ireland.

And it's not because Ireland doesn't have a problem with the far right,

because as our guest today is going to talk to us about, it most certainly does.

And so I would like to welcome to the program a great guy, Padre Gorourk, author of Burn Them Out, a History of Fascism and the Far Right in Ireland.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

No problem.

Delighted to be here.

Thanks very much, Robert.

Yeah, you know, there's this attitude, and I think as you noted in some notes you sent along, there's a degree to which it's true that Ireland has some resistance to the far right that has led to maybe it growing slower or taking a little longer to get off the ground to the same extent that it has in the UK or the US as a result of kind of the history of Irish republicanism.

That that's not comprehensively true across the island, and that that's you know certainly has not stopped it from having some pretty significant problems, which we're going to talk about today.

Yeah,

sadly, as long as fascism has existed since Mussolini's march on Rome and his political rise, we have had fascist groups here of one sort or another.

We've had fascist groups in Ireland that were pro-British in politics, fascist groups in Ireland that were pro-Irish or Irish independents.

You know, obviously we were neutral during World War II.

We weren't occupied by Nazi Germany or anything like that.

We did have one very big fascist group here in the 1930s, the Blue Shirts, who were extremely violent and got 68 members of parliament elected.

They were the main political opposition.

They were kind of the largest non-governing fascist organisation in the world per capita.

But as you said, Irish republicanism has kind of inoculated us against a lot of the far-right stuff we'd have seen in Britain and Germany and France in the 90s.

Because you know, while the conflict was going on in the north of Ireland, basically, if you were an angry young man with very strong patriotic feelings who was given towards political violence, you would probably end up in the provisional IRA.

And their politics were very left-wing and internationalist.

I mean, I remember going into their political wing, Sinn Féin's bookshop in Dublin in the 1990s, and it was all pictures of, you know, Yeser Arafat, and it was pictures of Nelson Mandela and like the Zapatistas.

And, you know, it was very much about...

Irish independence being an anti-colonial struggle.

You do, of course, get like on the opposite side of that, on kind of the loyalist, pro-British side in the north, you did get as kind of reaction to that, pro-British paramilitaries, the Ulster Volunteer Force,

the UDA, Ulster Defence Association, the Ulster Volunteer Force, the UVF.

They would have linked up with neo-Nazi groups like Combat 18 in England to get guns, to get finances, to get their hands on explosives and things, which were easier to get in England than in the north of Ireland.

But really, we never had a party here, either in the north or in the south, that was as successful as groups like the Front Nationale in France or the British National Party

in England.

But sadly, in recent years, certainly in the last 10 years, the far-right are kind of back.

They're alive and kicking and they're taking to the streets.

And to what do you credit that?

I mean, it seems like there's a mix of things.

First off, you suddenly do have people immigrating into Ireland from elsewhere in the world in significant numbers for, you know, the first time in quite a while.

And then on the other hand, it sounds like there's also the kind of, as we see everywhere in the world, the conscious exporting of far-right figures and ideas into the country.

Yeah, well, Ireland's greatest export was always people.

And, you know, we have huge Irish American communities in, you know, Chicago, New York,

you know, all over.

You have Irish people in Australia and Canada and England, all over the continent.

So in the early, you know, 2010s, we started like there had always been a trickle of migration and people coming back and forward.

Like we had some, you know, vietnamese refugees here we had you know historically we had russian jews coming here and and and so on escaping pogroms in tsarist russia but really the first time that we had very large numbers of people coming was in the 20 teens and it was things like the mediterranean migrant crisis it was people fleeing climate change in africa the syrian civil war taliban in afghanistan and more recently of course putin's invasion of ukraine and the far right had always been these tiny little fringe parties and figures there was a very very active anti-fascist group here called Anti-Fascist Action Ireland.

And anytime these groups tried to organise or take to the streets, they were challenged and they were run off.

But really what brought them all together, Ireland's kind of attempt to unite the right, was the COVID-19 pandemic.

Because we had one of the strictest COVID lockdowns in Europe.

You're talking about originally you weren't allowed to travel more than two kilometers from your home.

That's one and a quarter miles for you Americans.

And

basically, you could go to the store, but other than that, you couldn't, you know, you couldn't travel very far.

And of course, everyone was locked at home with their internet and started going down the rabbit hole.

And what we saw was the anti-vaxxer COVID conspiracy movement took to the streets in Ireland very quickly.

And that brought together all of the disparate, tiny

far-right and neo-fascist factions, the closet neo-Nazis, the anti-vaxxers, the fundamentalist Catholics like the Society of St.

Pius X, the sovereign citizen types, you know, the people who were on about 5G conspiracies and chemtrails, all got onto the streets, all got active.

On the Irish left and the anti-fascist side, we kind of dropped the ball because we were following the healthcare advice.

And the cops were quite happy to ignore the far right mobilising on the street.

but there were striking workers like Debenhams and Cleary's who'd been striking before COVID struck.

And the cops were going up and moving these trade unionists on saying, you know, know, you're breaking the pandemic.

So it wasn't policed evenly.

And, you know, suddenly for the first time during the pandemic, we were starting to see groups of three, 400 far right in Dublin, which doesn't sound like much, but I mean, last weekend there was a march in Dublin City, and they had probably around 5,000, maybe up to 10,000 people marching.

And that's something we haven't seen here since the 1930s.

Yeah, and that's such a, I think, an important point, the degree to which, because this is a global issue, the degree to which everyone else attempting to abide by public safety measures during COVID-19 strengthened the far right because they were out in the streets, this kind of organizing equivalent of getting to steal a march on the enemy.

It makes sense to me that it was, because in the U.S., that was interrupted, at least by the George Floyd uprisings.

But in Ireland, you know, it seems like there was a much more significant period of time where these folks were essentially acting and organizing unopposed.

And the police were, when they chose to act at all, acting against folks on the opposite side of things who were organizing during COVID.

Yeah, and it was let kind of rumble on to the police.

The cops didn't really start taking action on any of this stuff until, I would say, it was in early November 2023 when they had this rally called,

I think it was called to the Doll, or maybe slightly earlier than that, in September 2023.

The doll is the Gaelic word for our parliament.

And basically, the dregs of the COVID movement kind of came together again.

You had all these tiny far-right and fascist parties popping up.

And the best thing about them is they all get into Fuhrer fights.

They all start arguing with each other about who's going to be the leader and they haven't united.

But they took to the streets in the autumn, in the fall of 2023.

And there was one really violent and disgusting riot

outside the parliament where the far right were throwing bottles of urine at politicians trying to get in, were shouting racial abuse at anybody who wasn't white who was you know working in the building as a as a cleaner or a parliamentary assistant or or anything any opposition politicians they could see they were screaming at them um in imitation of you guys and uh january the 6th they had built a mock noose and they were uh using it to hang effigies of of politicians And you also had police, cops being attacked for the first time by the far right, really.

There have been one or two other incidents, but it's only when cops started getting attacked by them and politicians were being directly, their safety was being threatened, then the cops started to act maybe in the last 18 months or so.

But it was really closing the stable door about five years after the violent far-right horse had already bolted.

Yeah.

And, you know, so I'm kind of thinking here, this is part of why you've started to see, you know, guys like, we started this conversation before we began recording, talked about Tucker Carlson coming over to talk to Conor McGregor, who's becoming an increasingly large part of this.

And I wonder if it's maybe these different kind of international folks in the international movement sort of sniffing that, you know, they're hoping the cancer has metastasized, so to speak.

I mean, is that kind of how you see it?

Well, they definitely have an influence here.

I mean, the politics, the talking points, the buzzwords that the far right use in Ireland have all been learned from the likes of Alec Jones, have all been learned from watching, you know,

crazy stuff

on Twitter.

And it's all American and British far-right talking points that are being replayed here.

Stuff about the Calergy Plan, stuff about the Great Replacement,

and so on.

I mean, 100 years ago, it was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and now they're just spinning the same conspiracies, same talking points again.

Like, for example, one of the things we had here was we had a party called the Irish People's Party, and some of their campaigners were really fundamentalist Latin Mass sedevacantus Catholics.

And they were going down and protesting about drag queen story time at Irish libraries.

We don't even have drag queen story time here.

But these guys have been so inspired by what was happening in America, they just went in and started taking books off the shelves, you know, and anything to do with any LGBT plus theme,

even basic sex education guides for kids, stuff that's pretty mild.

I'm perfectly happy to give my own kids.

And I'm not the most woke guy, but they'd start ripping them up.

They'd start taking them out of the library, filming themselves, burning books at home.

It was really crazy stuff.

And at that stage, again, you did get anti-anti-fascist organising.

But what you kind of get is figures like Conor MacGregor being amplified by the likes of Elon Musk, being amplified by, you know, Tucker Carlson coming over, interviewing him, or Donald Trump, of course, inviting him to

the White House.

I mean the Prime Minister of Ireland as we'd say in Gaelic the Taoiseach, Michal Martin, he was invited to the White House on the 12th of March.

But the guy that Trump chose to actually have there on Patrick's Day itself was of course Conor MacGregor.

And MacGregor has links to, I wouldn't say far-right figures, but certainly very populist figures.

And MacGregor has kind of started, he's become God-pilled and he started rambling on about,

you know, rosary beads and the power of Christ and all this kind of stuff and he doesn't strike me as a particularly religious man and now with the help of Tucker Carlson

he you know and and and Elon Musk and others he says he's going to run for president we have a presidential election coming up here in six months did you watch the the interview Robert no no I haven't yet I caught some clips of it on social media yeah but I haven't gotten to sit through the whole thing it's it's wild it bears absolutely no resemblance like what Connor puts across bears no resemblance to what's actually happening in Ireland like he starts ranting about how the police are so corrupt.

Element that's true, but he starts talking about how the

traffic corps, the road cops who give you like speeding tickets and stuff, they're the most violent and repressive and all this kind of stuff.

And it just so happens that Conor McGregor has a string of speeding violations in his sports cars.

And then Tucker Carlson chips in and says, oh my God, you've got these armed cops and they're repressing the Irish people, but they're letting these immigrants do whatever.

My My dad was a cop here for 30 years.

My dad was on the border in the 1970s with the IRA shooting at him, and he didn't even get a gun.

Our cops aren't armed.

But Carson is just throwing this stuff out,

being undeducated about it.

And he says at the very end of the interview, McGregor says, oh, there's been a government kind of hit job on me.

They're planning to bring me down.

And what he's referring to is a civil trial.

Now, not a criminal trial, a civil trial that Conor McGregor lost when he was brought to court for alleged rape and sexual assault.

And the jury believed his accuser, a woman called a hairdresser called Nikita Hand.

And Conor McGregor was forced to pay damages of a quarter of a million euro to her, plus costs in the Irish High Court, which are about one and a half million euro.

Now, to you or me, that would be a huge sum of money.

Conor MacGregor, that's nothing.

And I have to say, for legal reasons, he is appealing it.

But the reality is that's standing in the way of any political ambitions Conor McGregor has.

And And we just had here in the last six or last year, we had a local election for like local councils, a general election, a European parliamentary election.

Any one of those, all he needed to do was put up 150 quid and he could have stood.

He would be on the ballot.

In fact, under Irish electoral law, he could have stood in every single constituency in the country.

and he didn't stand for election.

And now he's complaining that he's being debarred from the Irish presidential race.

And he's not.

It's just it's an exceptionally difficult ballot to get on.

You can't just stump up the money in America and become a third-party candidate or a writing candidate or whatever.

That doesn't work here.

You need the support of a large number of democratically elected politicians to get there.

So I think McGregor's real aim is not to get into the presidency because really he can't.

He's not even going to be on the ballot.

But I think he wants to be

Ireland's answer to Tommy Robinson.

And I suppose if Tommy Robinson is the the answer, what the hell was the question?

Yeah, we'll get into that more in a second.

I do want to throw to ads here really quickly, and then we'll continue to talk about Connor for a moment.

We're back.

So you say he wants to be the Irish answer.

to Tommy Robinson, which is such a

like aim higher, man.

Like

that,

it's odd to me.

Like,

I had kind of been worried because we've had so many cases of guys in the United States who start out as these absolute jokes on the far right, and then you just see them pick up more and more attention over time.

And that was kind of my worry with Connor.

But, but you're saying you're kind of concerned more that he's going to continue to be like an organizing presence on the far right rather than someone who has much of a chance of picking up actual like political office.

Yeah, I think with Connor, it's all about his ego, which is probably what you'd expect from an MMA star.

You know, there's going to be an element of ego and showboating and KFAB and so on.

I mean, it's interesting in his interview with Tucker Carlson, he was giving out that the Minister of Education, you know, isn't a teacher.

They're unqualified for the job.

And the Irish government's minister for health isn't a doctor.

And it's like, well, what qualifies you to be president, Connor?

You're a former plumber turned MMA fighter, you know?

Yeah, getting hit in the face.

Yeah, and we've had um ministers of education who were teachers and ministers of health who were doctors who happened to be totally awful.

The reality is, like, we have a PR system, we have a you know, a very democratic and fair process, and we have more than a two-party system here.

But I think, like, as emerged during the uh, during that uh, civil rape trial, which McGregor lost, you know, he had to admit to his cocaine use during it.

Um, he has been sending out kind of fevered, uh, I would imagine cocaine fever trip tweets saying, as President of Ireland, I have the power to.

And it's like, man, the election hasn't even happened yet.

He's way ahead of himself.

He's not going to get in the ballot.

He knows that.

He wants to present it.

And I mean, the fact that he's even talking about getting on the ballot shows he doesn't understand the constitutional system here, which it's not like Britain.

We have a written constitution.

It's not that complex if you know the basics of the law.

He's never going to get in the ballot, but he wants to present it that he's being denied the opportunity to stand.

And unfortunately, what we have around the country is an increasingly violent anti-immigrant street movement that whenever these what we call them your IPAS international protection applicants services, these IPAS or refugee centres basically, when these are picked as places of accommodation by the government while these people's applications for refugee status are, they have to stay somewhere while these are being examined, you tend to get large protests in towns, villages, cities all over Ireland.

Sometimes these turned quite violent.

Sometimes there's been more than 30 arson attacks on these centres.

And I think what Conor McGregor ultimately wants is he wants to be able to tour the country attending these protests and having everyone queuing up to take selfies with him and telling him what a great hero he is.

And I think that's his ultimate aim.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

And he's obviously he's going to grift off the back of it.

The guy has money already, but it was so funny, this multi-multi-millionaire being interviewed by Tucker Carlson saying, We're going to start fundraising for my campaign.

It's like, man, you've more money than you could ever spend on political posters and flyers and adverts, you know?

So, you, it almost sounds like this is like a retirement plan for him, right?

Like, he's, he's, he's clearly past his prime in terms of the getting hit in the face thing for money.

And now he's sort of moving on to like grifting off of these far-right events and probably traveling just ahead of a series of riots, you know, like that's, that seems like what's in his future.

Yeah, And I mean, we've had some, you know, at the time of an outbreak of rioting in Dublin, anti-immigrant violence, which caused 20 million euros worth of damage and, you know, trashed the city center in November of 2023, Connor, and I'm not saying he directly caused it, but he was tweeting at the same time, Ireland is at war.

Yeah.

And around the same time, he was tweeting like any property that's been taken over by foreigners evaporated.

I think really his plan is to kind of, if he can represent himself as a political martyr figure he's hoping that it will overshadow the uh you know his loss in the rape case and he is of course appealing that and claiming he has new evidence and everything but i think really that's what it's about yeah so let's talk a little bit about the way far-right violence has looked in ireland like when these when these protests have really kicked off because it seems like there's been this kind of fairly significant acceleration in the last three or four years in terms of particularly arson attacks.

And one thing that I was kind of struck by in your notes was the degree to which like no one's been arrested for any of these yet?

No, what happened, these started around 2018.

So maybe just before COVID, you had one or two of them.

And my book went to print in December 2024.

So I stopped counting in December.

And by then, I had over 30 arson attacks and there hasn't been a single conviction or any of them.

So it's when usually former hotels that have been closed down with years are that the government moves in or some local person moves in to renovate them and use them as one of these centers, they'll just go up and smoke in the middle of the night.

And I mean, we have already a very significant homeless problem here.

I mean, there's more than 10,000 people homeless in Dublin, both Irish and refugee.

And I mean, that probably sounds small to someone listening in a big American city.

We thought we had a housing crisis when we had 2,000 people homeless and we got more than 10,000, almost 15,000 people homeless now.

And

some of these anti-immigrant protesters have actually burnt down homeless accommodation designed for Irish homeless people in the mistaken belief that it was going to be used for refugees.

Yeah, so that's their contribution to the housing crisis.

You've also seen stuff like attacks on politicians' homes.

Sometimes it's just pickets, sometimes it's graffiti.

In the case of Martin Kenney, who's an opposition TD, he'd be from Sinn Féin party.

Most of your listeners would probably have heard of an Irish Republican, kind of left-wing Irish Republican party.

Oh, yes.

There was a refugee centre planned for where he lived in Leitrim.

And in fairness to him, he spoke out against it and he condemned what he called, quote, the far-right ideology that has been peddled in this country about asylum seekers.

A week later, he was sleeping in his house with his wife and kids, and

his car in the driveway was petrol-bombed, was firebombed.

And they came back a few months months later and did it again, and he was forced to move house.

So arson attacks in politicians' homes is something we haven't seen here since the original fascists were around in the 30s as well.

And

this violence, again, like as I said, there hasn't been a single arrest.

And I'll give you a perfect example.

The title for the book, Burn Them Out, is from an event that happened in February 2023.

A guy stood up.

in front of a Garda police station here in Finglis, which would be a big suburb of Dublin.

And there was a huge crowd of anti-immigrant protesters around.

One of them was waving a swastika flag and this guy stood up in front of them with a megaphone in front of the police station said there is no point standing here outside a Garda station.

The only way to deal with refugees is to burn them out.

Go where they are fucking staying and burn them fucking cunts out.

That's a direct quote.

And of course, had he been threatening that violence against the Gardeee, had he been threatening that violence against a private business or a politician, I have no doubt he would have been arrested straight away.

But this, you know, masked guy threatening violence and arson was just allowed to walk off.

So there you go.

They're certainly not on the ball.

And we've even had during the COVID pandemic when there was a cop nearly killed that had a fireworks shot at him during one of these riots.

The police commissioner in the south of Ireland, who's formerly a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a very controversial pro-British police force that used to be in the north.

This guy's our new police commissioner down south, and he tried to blame Republicans and the IRA for the violence and left-wing extremists for the violence that was happening.

And it was so clear that, you know, Republicans, Irish Republicans, have been on the streets opposing these people and their marches for years.

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit.

Like the actual organizing of the anti-fascist movement in Ireland, how is it kind of responded to the

explosion and in some cases, a literal explosion in far-right violence on the street?

Like, are you seeing it kind of reach like new heights, or does it kind of seem like it's unprepared for the moment that we're hitting?

Because, like, I mean, in the United States, it's kind of hard to tell because things have changed so much since 2020, right?

Like, a lot of the fascist violence that we're seeing is now explicitly from the state.

And so there's just not a lot of on the ground, there's not the same kind of on-the-ground response to it that you were seeing when it was groups like the Proud Boys.

And I'm wondering kind of how things have changed since 2018 in that regard regard in Ireland.

I suppose, like, if you think back as far as 2015, Tommy Robinson, a friend of the pod, attempted to organise his anti-Islamic, he's Islamophobic Pagida movement, tried to launch a branch of it in Dublin.

Yeah.

And they couldn't even get to their rallying point because there were 5,000 anti-fascists on the street there against them.

Irish Republicans, Irish language activists, Muslim community from Dublin were there, LGBT activists, and they couldn't even get to have their event.

So, up until COVID, certainly the anti-fascists and groups like Anti-Fascist Action Ireland were excellent at closing down small groups.

You have a lot of people who are doing online research and exposing these people's sordid histories and their international connections.

So, that's one thing we're pretty good at.

And what it turns out is that a lot of these guys, like one of the main proponents of the QAnon conspiracy theory here, was a guy called Rowan Croft, who just happened to be a former British Army soldier.

So that doesn't fly too well in Ireland when somebody's standing up saying, I'm a great Irish patriot and I'm going to stop the foreigners.

Like, well, hang on a minute.

When you chose to fight in the military, you chose to serve the Queen of England.

So you have big national groups like Anti-Fascist Action.

You have groups like Anti-Imperialist Action Ireland.

Thankfully, as these protests have sprung up around the country, these far-right anti-immigrant protests, they have always been countered.

And I'm thinking of in Cork city when the library was being attacked and it had it would actually had to be closed down for a period and it was the first time that the cork library had closed since the british burnt it down during our revolution in the 1920s and um you know you had a crowd of maybe 100 far right and people on the opposite side uh the anti-fascist scene kept building and building until by the end and i was there for some of these protests we had four or five hundred against them and eventually we decided right we're going to stand and protect the library and that happened in other places like Limerick, and it happened in Dublin.

And eventually, the far right said, well, we can't even get near the library to have our protest anymore.

And they dissipated.

One thing that's very interesting here is the optics.

And sometimes on the left and on the anti-fascist side, we're not as good at the imagery and the using new technology and stuff.

And one thing you'll always see is, you know, when anti-fascists are mobilizing in Ireland, you know, they'll have often red flags, they'll have the Palestinian flag, they'll have Irish left-wing Republican flags like the Plough and the Stars.

But often we don't carry our national flag, the tricolour, as much.

And of course, the far right love fetishising flags and they have the green, white, and orange Irish tricolour everywhere.

Often, of course, these people are so ignorant they fly it the wrong way around and it's the orange, white, and green.

So it's like vive le Côte d'Ivoire, it's the Ivory Coast flag if you have it the wrong way.

But

it's interesting in some of the clashes, you'll have anti-fascists with the Irish flag and fascists with the Irish flag.

But I think just in terms of optics, it sometimes looks very bad when the far right are able to clip out a section of the opposing crowd and say, look, they have Palestinian flags, they have all other LGBT pride flags, but they're not proud to be Irish.

They don't have Irish flags.

And there could be some Irish flags clipped off at the side.

So these people in the far right are very good at using the history of Irish politics and resistance to Britain and using the imagery of that struggle and co-opting it.

And I think it's very important that we on

the anti-fascist side don't surrender any of that to them.

and I mean, the Irish flag, what it stands for, the green bit is for Catholics who wanted independence, the orange bit is for Protestants who wanted to be linked with Britain, and the white was for peace and unity.

So, it's a flag that, at its very essence, you know, talks about respecting a religious minority and people from a colonial or immigrant background who arrived here as strangers.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I want to continue this discussion and then close things out, but first, we've got one more ad break to do.

And we're back.

So, yeah, I kind of wanted to end this by looking into a little like, what are you kind of looking for in the future, like in the kind of the next year or two in Ireland?

Like,

what are you expecting?

What are you worried to see?

Like, yeah, what do you kind of see moving forward here?

I think what's tending to happen now is genie is out of the bottle and the far-right message is spreading.

And you had this big far-right rally of, you know, 10,000 five to 10,000 people at its maximum that came down O'Connell Street in Dublin, the main street in the capital city.

It's not huge by political standards, but it is worrying.

I think we're going to see that grow.

And

I think on the left, sometimes, and particularly in the trade union movement, we have this idea that, oh, this is a flash in the pan and we'll organise a few big rallies and they'll go away.

they won't this is like the national front in britain you know these people are going to be around haunting irish politics for at least a decade and then they're never going to fully go away they'll pop back up uh again i think we're going to continue to see the regional protests and i think as well we have started seeing the irish government which is a coalition of two centre-right parties kind of tighten up their own language on immigration.

We're starting to see an increasing number of deportations as well.

The police really still aren't fully on the ball.

They are, of course, being given new policing powers by the government to deal with violent protests.

They're being issued with things like, you know, new non-lethal technologies, you know, pepper splay and extra equipment and body cameras that they wouldn't have had before.

But of course, the classic thing is that these will always be used as much, if not more so, against the left and the anti-fascist side than they will be against the racists.

Yeah.

Thankfully, these groups, you know, they're all in fighting with each other.

They have tried to do like electoral pacts and to plan out political strategies.

But thankfully, they're all so fixated on wanting to be the Fuhrer that never really works.

But what I was going to say a minute ago is that that 10,000 people, if there were that many on the street, not everyone in that is far right.

You know, some of the people are from working class communities that have been betrayed by the government and have been abandoned.

And they are starting, they've just fallen down the rabbit hole.

And I can think of an incident.

I was in the gym a couple of months back and just sitting there and there were a few guys, didn't know them, they were around chatting.

Obviously, we were in the gym.

None of us are in the sauna.

None of us had many clothes on.

And none of these guys had like questionable far-right tattoos or anything like that.

But the conversation suddenly started about immigrants and how they were bringing crime and how they were bringing disease and all this kind of stuff.

And I listened to it for a minute or two and I just stood up and said, lads, everything you are saying about immigrants in Ireland now is what was said about Irish people in America in the 19th century and in England in like the 70s and the 80s.

So I think it's important that even in our workplaces on public transport, when we hear it, this kind of talk, we call it out.

If it's a friend of ours who's fallen down the rabbit hole into these conspiracies, because that's how their message is spreading now.

Often when you see people involved in some of this anti-immigrant rioting, they have no history of involvement in

far-right groups, but it's that message has spread beyond those those groups thanks to our friends in the Nerd Reich.

And I think if we have a work colleague or a brother or somebody who falls into that, that we don't abandon them.

We don't immediately start calling them a Nazi and whatever that we try to

talk them around with.

But look, I suppose the thing is, there is hope.

And everywhere these people have organized, there have been anti-fascists there to meet them.

I think we need to get better at planning that on a national scale.

Of course, in the left, you always get this factionalism and infighting.

I'm not standing beside him.

He's Trotskyist.

Well, I don't like his views in the north, whatever.

We need to kind of say, as long as we're fighting with each other, the fascists are winning.

Thankfully, none of these people have ever gotten more than 2% in an election.

They have nobody elected in our national parliament.

They only have four or five, maybe six councillors elected in the entire of the southern part of the country.

And that's out of 949 councillors.

But we can't just laugh at them.

We can't worry.

This isn't a threat.

Because when the Nazis stood for election the first time, I think they only got 2% to the vote as well.

And look how that turned out.

Well, yeah.

And as we've seen in the U.S., like what starts as this tiny, tiny number of freaks and weirdos can wind up being a mass movement if it's not, you know, cauterized, right?

Like that's, and that's, that's kind of the challenge in front of Irish anti-fascists right now is ensuring that that cauterization happens.

Absolutely.

And I mean, look, if you think of this, you know, Elon Musk has tipped McGregor for president and we're all laughing at it now.

But, you know, it wouldn't be the first time that Elon Musk has tipped a reality TV star with a questionable sexual and criminal history for high office, and they got there.

Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, thank you so much.

Do you want to have anything you want to plug here at the end of the episode?

I mean, your book, obviously.

Yeah, well, obviously,

I'm not on X, Twitter, anything like that.

I don't have a sub stack or anything.

So just the main thing I want to plug is my book, Burn Them Out, a History of Fascism and the Far Right in Ireland.

It is published by Bloomsbury, head of Zeus.

So it should be available in any to order via any bookshop.

Obviously, if you are going to support a bookshop, support a small independent one rather than Barnes and Noble.

And if you are buying it online, obviously buy it from direct from the publishers Bloomsbury.

Don't buy it off Amazon if you can, because God knows Jeff Bezos has enough money.

Yeah,

there's certainly plenty.

Well, thank you so much.

And yeah, that's our episode, everybody.

Come back tomorrow when we'll have another one.

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Welcome to Could Happened Here, a podcast that I forgot to write an introduction for.

I'm your host, Mia Wong.

And we are, well, okay, we're not taking a break from the horrors because this is also still a podcast about the horrors and what you can do about it.

But, you know, I am transgender.

One of the ways that we have been like depersonified via transgender is through a, you know, a massive attack on trans, like trans women in sports.

And this has led to, you know, like the acceleration of like the broad-scale attack on all of us being able to exist as people.

And with me to talk about this is someone who has written a book that is about this and also kind of not about this in a lot of ways.

And that is Victoria Ziller, who is a writer, author, writes about the Buffalo Bills for our friends over at Defector sometimes and is the author of a new book, One of the Boys, out today when you're listening to this?

Wow.

Crazy.

Probably wild.

Yeah, it has synced up like this completely on purpose.

We were 100% planning this from the beginning.

Hello.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, I'm excited to have you on.

So you would think that the question that your book, One of the Boys, asks is what if a trans girl played football?

But the actual and more important question it asks is what if a poster could write fiction?

And the answer is that it fucking rips.

Thank you.

This book rules.

I genuinely, I think these are the best written group chats.

I've ever read in a book.

It rips.

It's so good.

I am very passionate about group chats, you know?

I mean, like, posting is writing.

Hello, audience.

If you don't know me, my name is Victoria.

I'm online.

You may know my Twitter or Blue Sky accounts at DirtbagQueer.

I'm like largely posting about football when football is in season.

I kind of just post about random shit these days.

But yeah, I've allegedly written a book.

The weird thing about writing a book is that I feel like I've just totally blacked out actually writing it.

And I'm like, that's crazy.

Who did that?

Couldn't be me.

But yeah,

in terms of like how I would like very quickly pitch one of the boys, boys, high school senior named Grace comes back to her high school football team.

She quit over the summer because she came out as trans because her teammates want to make a push for a state title.

And it's like trans coming of age, Friday Night Lights, handshake meme.

But also when I was like big picture thinking about what I wanted to do with this, I wanted to tell kind of a like traditional high school sports story, but through an outsider lens.

Like if you think about the average like high school football story, you you think, like, well, what we're going to do is we're going to win state, we're going to get the scholarship, and we're going to get the girl.

And I wanted to sort of like deconstruct those three things by making the protagonist trans and making the protagonist a kicker instead of like a linebacker or a quarterback or whatever.

And that is who I am.

Yeah.

And this, this book rips.

That sounds like a fun thing going on where it basically has like the football iceberg where like you can come into this knowing zero ball and you will get stuff out of it.

And you can come into this where I am knowing like a some ball and you will get stuff out of this.

And then like the unhinged people who have like 16 different PFF tabs like pinned their bookmarks will be like, holy shit, the world building.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was,

it is, it is hard writing fiction about sports if you're writing young adult fiction, you know, which is what one of the boys is.

Don't be weird about that if you're an adult.

Teenage girls are like,

you don't have to hate the things they like.

You can like calm down a little bit

uh but um yeah writing about football for for an audience of like teenagers is like fascinating because you have to assume that the audience knows very little and you have to figure out how much you want to give them so that they get it without like overwhelming them which is like really just not at all what i wanted to do uh but also yeah if you're a sicko like me you can be like ooh uh i'm really into what this offense is doing or i'm really into this like onside kick play design.

So I tried to like do I tried to do a little bit of both and also again This is a trans coming of age story.

So

Yeah, it's also dealing with you know the horrors so yep ball plus horrors is what we're working with here Yeah, so I think okay we're gonna get more into the politics of this in a second But first I want to ask one bald question since I have now I have now introduced my audience to the fact that I talk about football by managing to get a rant about the Sean Watson on here for like 10 minutes.

The Sean Watson trade.

But okay, my one bald question for this was: how happy did it make you when you figured out a way to write a football team that does not use the forward pass?

Oh, man.

It's

without

without spoiling what happens at the end of the act one turn, circumstances occur so that this high school football team has to move a player who is who is not a quarterback to quarterback, at which point passing just goes away.

And we are just running the ball, baby.

We are, we, we are pounding the rock.

It's so sick.

It is.

Kind of

sort of like loosely what I based this on was the year that the University of Kentucky football team, like all, like every single quarterback got hurt.

And they were like, okay, Lynn Bowden, you are our best wide receiver.

We're just going to put you a quarterback and, you know, we're just going to see what happens.

And that's like, that was the fun of writing fictional football is that I can make my fictional football team do whatever I want.

And I don't want to ever see conservative trickery that is the forward pass.

Get it out of here.

Yeah, it's just one of the things I love about your writing is that you are very much just like an old school, like traditionalist football pound the rock.

None of this, like,

none of this fucking RPO bullshit person, which is, which is also just, i don't know it's it's just very funny that you have like you have like the football personality of like an extremely cranky like 75 year old like coach from like the 70s yep and i'm a trans woman yep

which like again i tried not to do too much of it in this book like Part of the reason that I made my main character a kicker, which we will also talk about other reasons later.

But part of the reason is that kicking is this sort of like own separate siloed off thing.

so I really only have to like get the audience to understand kicking and what happens when Grace is on the field.

I don't have to get into like

what a football team that like never passes the ball is doing on a technical level.

We don't have to do all that.

I give you just enough that if you are a sicko, you're like, Yeah, baby, let's like rules.

This is the sickest offense of all time.

Um, but also, yeah,

but also, like, you know,

trying to uh trying to help the queer kiddos understand that, like, running the ball is the

official football position of the working class, of the proletariat, you know.

Okay, we're going to get more into the class dynamics of football in a second, but the place I kind of want to start in terms of like, you know, talking about the parts of us that aren't just ball is.

So in a lot of ways, this is a book about scriplessness, which is something that I think,

I don't know, like we've been seeing a sort of resurgence of trans, or not resurgence, but a kind of like surgence.

Emergence?

Is that the emergence?

There we go.

There we go.

There we go.

Yeah, of trans literature.

And I think this is a very interesting angle to take on it.

And it's, you know, when I say scriplessness, it's about the ways in which trans women in particular don't have,

you know, sort of examples and paths to like follow, right?

There's not like a, you're supposed to go from A to B to C.

This is like what you're doing with your life.

And you have to just figure it out because suddenly you're you and you just, you just have to, you know, there's, there's, there's no rails, there's no guides, you just have to do it.

I think the Zapatista line about it is, is the road is made by walking.

Can you talk about how like having to just figure this shit out influenced the way that you write Grace and the way that you sort of write this book?

Yeah.

So this is something that Grace struggles with a lot.

I mean, like

specific to her, it's because she's a trans woman who's playing football.

Something that if an openly trans woman has ever openly played like American football, there is not a lot of documentation of that online.

So

like Grace, she is like walking a path that has like never existed before.

But I think like more broadly and more like thematically there is that like Grace is also frequently I call her stupid and I don't think that she's stupid, but comma, but Grace struggles a lot to like express herself, I would say.

And like, I wanted her to like challenge what a reader might expect from a trans girl in young adult fiction specifically.

We're like, I think she's like frequently kind of like grading, or at least I find her grading.

She is not.

traditionally feminine.

I don't think she's unfeminine, but she like struggles a lot with like feeling okay enough to like express that about herself.

Yeah.

And like, I feel like a lot of stories about trans kids have this view of being a like younger trans person of like, well, it was always easy for me and I took to femininity like a fish in water and like this was like natural to me.

I wanted to write a character for whom it is not necessarily natural for Grace to be this person.

And I wanted her past and the way she is now to sort of like challenge a like cis reader specifically.

But also in terms of scriptlessness in a more like macro way, there's not a lot of YA

contemporary fiction about trans girl characters like at all.

Yeah.

There is now thankfully a good amount of trans male representation in the genre.

But there are a few authors who are out here writing trans femme contemporary, but like not a lot.

So like figuring out like where I wanted to like slot in to this like genre that is kind of like struggling to be born.

Yeah.

You know, not a lot of

trans femme like 17 year old protagonists who are like going to like parties and drinking beer and worrying about whether or not they want to go to college, which is all.

is all stuff I wanted to like touch here.

Yeah, and I think there's a bunch of levels that this stuff sort of operates on, and I think it's very like-I don't know, like a lot of being trans, and I say this, at least for me, I don't know, like, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe this time for other people, it's just like having no idea what the fuck you're doing, and just you know, waking up one day and realizing, like,

wait, what the fuck do you mean?

I'm doing this, and it's like, you know, I got this like doing this job.

It's like, wait, what the fuck?

I'm a trans podcaster, like, what?

Like, what, how, like, I can't even do my makeup well.

Like, what the fuck are we doing here?

Yep.

I think that, like, another thing that I've talked about, I talked about this a lot in the show is, but it's also just like

how kind of like

normal the trans girls who just like suddenly something blows up and they're like internet famous or whatever the fuck are that they're just like some kid until like yeah you know there's just like an explosion and everyone is suddenly interested in every intimate detail of of your life and is trying to deconstruct it in order to destroy you.

Yeah.

Grace is, um, again, I don't really want to like spoil act

three stuff here, but uh later on in the story, Grace achieves some amount of like internet notoriety for what she's doing.

And yeah, Grace is like an extremely typical kid.

She has like typical kid problems, but then this like microscope gets put on her and she's she is sort of like forced to like become this like different thing that, like, if she wants to be that thing someday, it's not now.

Yeah, yeah, I think in a lot of ways, my book is about how we ask teenagers to like do too much and be too much, but like, especially trans kids, when you transition at any age, you are building the plane of your personality while you are flying it, baby.

Yep, yep, yep.

And like, that's so much pressure to put on anyone, but like, especially anyone who is a kid, it's just like, it's a lot of pressure.

And I wanted to, I wanted to like juxtapose the parts of Grace's experience that like a like cis boy or girl could read and be like, yep, I also don't know where I want to go to college, but also like sort of like show like, well, because

she is like this, she is

facing this like unreal level of scrutiny that is like not normal, deeply unnatural, and like fucked up and like unfair.

Yeah.

Now, speaking of unfair, we have to go to ads.

When we come back,

that's one of my better pivots.

I'm proud of that one.

When we come back, we're going to talk about masculinity.

We are

back.

So, One of the Boys is weirdly the second football involved book about a trans woman that I've read in the last year.

And I think it's fascinating because in the like pure archetypal sense from like anthrop, like structuralist anthropology, it is like a pure structural inversion of Alison Greaves's How to Fly because How to Fly is this is also a good book, but How to Fly is about a girl getting force femmed to escape masculine violence violence by becoming a cheerleader, and one of the boys is about a trans woman going back into like into a hyper-masculine space to become a football player.

It's like they're just literally perfect structural versions of each other.

And so, I wanted to ask you about

how were you thinking about

doing this thing, right?

Which is which is going back into these hyper-masculine spaces that a lot of people come out of pre-transition, you know, when you were sort of writing this?

Because this is not a thing thing that people tended to write when they're writing about trans femmes.

Totally.

And

sort of the like irregularity of

Grace's path this way is like one of the reasons why I was like drawn to like writing a, a, a sports story about like a, a trans girl playing football specifically is because like, I probably have a like more,

I don't know if complicated is the word, but I have like a very like interesting relationship with masculinity.

And as much as I'm like fascinated by it, like I think it is like endlessly interesting to see the ways that like men construct the like various kinds of masculinity that they live in and the like

various outcomes that men can end up finding via their weird distinct masculinities.

For instance, for me personally, I'm still in my like old high school like boys group chat like that we like started like a decade ago.

And like, I have never once had a problem fitting in there.

When they all found out I was trans, it was like, oh shit, cool, whatever.

We're going to keep talking about like the NYS, you know?

Um,

and like, again,

Grace's journey with masculinity is different from mine, but kind of like her.

I had like some amount of like

difficulty in like

very masculine sports spaces when I was a kid, but then like once you adapt and once you like learn how to like perform this thing, like I never had a problem existing in these worlds.

And like something that Grace is really annoyed by is that people are always like, I just can't believe that like you would be trans.

And what is hidden in there is like, you were kind of a dick.

You were like kind of a douchebag.

Yeah.

So like, I very much wanted to write a trans protagonist who has a relationship with like

her past self and with her male friends that was like a little more complicated where like she has a like

very good, solid group of like male friends who are not like perfect,

but are still like, that's my friend.

So like, I think for my friends and for a lot of trans women's male friends, they're like, well, I was friends with you before.

So like, you're still like, you know, you're still you.

I'm still going to be cool with you.

So I guess that means that I have to think about like,

that I have to like, okay, now I have to like think about how like trans people are like treated by society more broadly.

And it's like interesting seeing

men in my life.

like suddenly become like cognizant of like trans issues

and it's all like personal.

It's all like, well, I know this person, and therefore I'm going to show compassion to this person that I like.

And then,

you know, politics starting at the personal and sort of like growing out from there.

So I want to ask a bit, a bit more, just digging into sort of the masculinity aspect specifically, because one of the things I think is, I don't know, there's a part of being a trans femme that isn't super well understood outside of it, which is sort of

a lot of trans women have a phase where you

really try to be a man, right?

Where you get like really into like hypermasculinity in order to try to like

try to make yourself do it.

Like I had Gamer Mia phase, which was a fiasco, not even Gamer Mia phase, I'm still sort of Gamer Mia, but I had like, you know, I, I had, I had like

top 0.25% Hearthstone player like Mia, who was

a wreck, a disaster, was substantively a worse person.

yeah and and you know so like and like that's a thing that has a lot of complicated social ripples where like this this process of like like doing this you know sometimes it's like your final thumbs sometimes it's just it's just what you're doing to try to get by it's like trying to force yourself to be a man and like do this masculinity in a way that's like really shit because you're trying to like reconcile it with yourself yes so this is like a thing that a lot of like trans femmes experience i think it's written interestingly in this book And I was, I was wondering, I don't know, like the way you talk about being in this, in like fitting into these spaces is as like, okay, well, I figured out how to like do the performance okay, and then it was sort of fine.

So I'm wondering, like,

this is almost universally seen as like, this is like a form of structural violence that's been enacted on you, that you sort of have to like do this.

But there's also

a kind of

I don't know,

a kind of complicated dynamic of like, these people are still like your friends and you like them.

And I guess I want to know sort of how you've been thinking about like that specific angle and like this sort of process of fitting in and becoming and also just this sort of unbecoming you have to do to like become yourself.

Yeah.

So my book has flashback sequences that are written in second person.

This is mostly a book that's written in first person.

But I tried to like really lean into this like phenomenon of like closeted trans women like

butching up at like certain moments in their lives in order to like pass and cram

down

this like

feeling that is like really fucking scary at first yeah so like

i want

the second person grace flashbacks to her like starting fights and being a like asshole to to to her

girlfriend i want them to feel like jarring and i want them to feel like grace is being a bastard in a lot of these flashbacks but like i also wanted to show like how she gets there in terms of like

various moments earlier in her life where she was sort of like shunted into this more like

masculine path in order to like pass and like not be um bullied or like other eyes.

And like, it definitely is,

it's tough.

And I think that I, I think that I personally have a like complicated relationship with like, yeah, like I hated football when I played it.

And I did it because

like I like the sport, obviously, because I'm a fan and because I wrote this book about it and because I write about football sometimes and I post about it a lot, but like playing it made me miserable.

But like I also made friends with that team who I still talk to.

So it's like, I definitely want it to feel like violent and imposed, but also like, it isn't something that can be like erased.

It's something that you have to deal with.

It's something that like, as you grow up and as you continue to self-actualize, you have to like decide what parts of that version of yourself are worth keeping and what parts aren't.

And that's like something that I wanted to show like Grace struggle through kind of in

real time.

She's like very early in her transition and she doesn't know how she wants to present and she doesn't know how much of of like her old life and the people in her old life that still want to associate with her or

does

existing on this football team drag her back towards something that she doesn't want to be anymore um it's all stuff that i wanted to play with and is not like overtly political but is like subtextually political, you know?

Yeah.

Well, it's it's political in the sense that like, you know, we were talking about sort of scriptlessness earlier, right?

And I think one of the one of the sort of alienating factors about being trans is that like,

especially if you're like kind of alone and you're like, you know, like you're like the only trans femme that you're spending time with, right?

This is just true for like a lot of things.

Like a lot of how sort of oppression functions and a lot of how violence functions is by convincing you that this is the only, you're the only person who's ever gone through this.

And there are always going to be unique aspects of it, but like,

you know, one of the ways that alienation is maintained is by convincing you that no one else can understand the thing that's happening to you and that, because no one else has ever done it.

And it turns out like, no, actually, this is something that like all of us have gone through.

And

when, when you sort of start to realize this and the kind of solidarity that it could be built based on this collective well of experience we've all gone through and how it can be, you know, changed by actual actions of a bunch of people working together.

It changes things.

So I think it is in a lot of ways political in the sense that like, in order to have politics, you have to have sort of like collective assemblages of people who fucking understand each other and who understand that they're not alone and that they can do things.

Totally.

And this is part of how you get to that.

Yeah.

We can

talk a little bit more about the like very start of something that could be seen as a political awakening that Grace has in this book.

But like, Yeah, part of the reason that she is imperfect is because she doesn't know any other, like, there are no other trans women characters in this book.

And that was very deliberate.

Yeah.

Grace is like on her own.

She is like figuring this shit out as she goes.

Yep.

And I wanted it to feel rough and like ad hoc.

Yeah.

Because like, that's how it is for a lot of people.

That's how it was.

Like.

You'll drill by walking.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I guess, I guess I want to kind of move into the more directly political realm.

One of the things that's interesting about this book is that like

Grace, and this is something that like I my brain has been so melted by having been like the politics kid since i was like 15.

because i was like like my high school was like interrupted in the middle of it by me trying to overthrow the turkish government and so like my brain is so melted

we'll get aired one one day we already can't go there for our coverage of kurdish uh guerrilla movements very good stuff you'll find many many such things i think but like one of the interesting parts about this is that Greece is like not political, right?

And most of the people in this aren't.

And there's kind of a divide between the politics knowers who are like the more,

you know, who are like, okay, yeah, like we are, we are like the queer kids.

We are like the activist kids.

And then like the, you know, like the ball players.

And then Grace sort of fits more into the like, not even more into, like, Grace isn't like a politics person.

Grace is a like, hey, like, transphobia is bad.

We shouldn't do that.

But also like, just wants to fucking go kick a, go kick a rock in between two posts.

So yeah, can you talk about like how, how you sort of decided to make her just be like kid who doesn't follow politics?

Yeah.

So like that was like not any kind of like statement about how like politics is bad.

You know, that was like

Grace is 17 and most 17 year olds, if they have politics at all, have like completely incoherent politics.

Yeah.

Mine was like, holy shit.

Yeah.

So like Grace has the like barest outlines of like ideology and those were like put on her by people in her life.

We know that her dad is a union man, and from a small age, she has internalized that unions are good.

Does she know why?

Probably not, but, or also, we know that her friend Tab, who is boring, has been like educating her on like Puerto Rican independence, which was like, which was a like

that was a very funny line to write

because

Grace is this like dumb as shit white kid from the suburbs uh but so like in as much as she's like piecing together the person she is bit by bit she's also kind of like piecing what she thinks about the world together along with that in terms of like most of the straight white players on the football team like do not have like basically don't have politics.

There's a scene where one of my minor characters is like, yo, I just figured out that like transphobia is bad.

Yeah.

And

I loved, I, I fucking loved writing that scene.

But like,

I imagine that up until recently, Grace was exactly like this.

And just like, just like, yep, I'm a middle, lower middle class, white, straight boy.

Uh,

air quotes on all of that.

She never had any kind of like thought about that.

That does not reflect what was going on in my life when I was a teenager because I was a very annoying.

Like

me and a friend of mine, Siobhan, got in trouble for putting a Bernie Sanders 2016 sticker on her locker because

that's the kind of shit we were doing in high school in 2015.

So like, I was like, very much had sort of like vacant liberal middle class kid politics, but like Grace, Grace is.

Um,

I imagine that like later in her life, she kind of has more political thoughts in her head, but I also kind of imagine that her brain works.

Like, um, I don't know if you've played Disco Elysium, but I kind of imagine,

I kind of imagine Grace has a like thought cabinet, and it's like she has like

she has like two slots in it, like She just like cannot hold that many ideas in her brain at once.

So she's, she is in all aspects of her life trying her best and trying to get better.

And yeah,

I want like, I feel like a lot of contemporary YA that comes out these days, a lot of the kids have like overly coherent politics.

I was like, nah, nah.

I wanted to write a kid who has like good intentions, but has no idea what she's doing.

Yep.

God, my brain's doing the the Trump line in many cases.

I have no idea what they're doing.

Yeah.

Oh, Jesus Christ, our brain's so broken.

Okay.

Speaking of things being broken, the products and services to support this podcast, unrelated statements.

We are back.

Okay, so

having now gotten like many far into this interview without directly being like, here's the football politics.

Let's talk about the politics of football because one of the things I think is fascinating about

the way that you're sort of talking about this and the way that Grace like runs into this and the way that this is just like a thing that happens in the U.S., which is that like

giant portions of the entire U.S.

economy and like structural elements of the U.S.

like education system from like the ground up and like all of these sort of contracting services and like massive portions of like how every single part of of the education system from like fucking like middle school through college are all bent around

this game yep and and and i think

one of the things that happens there is that like the the kind of like default ambient politics in it is very conservative and i think in ways that you know are very easy to understand and that when people tend to talk about this they immediately go like well yeah so like you know, like the left is talking about football.

It's like you're talking about the militarism, which is like, yeah, I mean, they're fucking flying jets over games.

Like, we're not even in wars anymore in terms of like U.S.

ground troops deployed.

Like, why the fuck are there troops showing up on the field?

There's like the cult of masculinity stuff.

There's, you know, I mean, like, there's been some engagement now with the racial politics of it with Kaepernick.

People realize, like, holy shit, wait, there's been like stuff happening here for ages.

And, you know, and you get sort of the masculinity politics, but there's,

I think, a lot of stuff here that we don't talk about on the left in terms of like the class dynamics of this and the way that football

just like functions in a lot of very very weird ways in terms of like sucking together this weird pool of a bunch of like non-white working class kids and like

i don't know fucking

see if i knew ball i could i could pull an example off top of my head of like some some quarterback prospect who'd spent his family and spent like two million dollars on like personal trainers for him absolutely yeah

I grew up sort of like middle, lower, middle class, and like playing football specifically.

And I grew up playing mostly like soccer and baseball, a little bit of basketball, but I sort of like, I sort of ended up playing football when I was like a teenager because I was large and that's how that works.

Yep.

Yep.

And like, in terms of like connecting with people who weren't white and of my exact class status or higher, like football is how it happened, man.

Like most of my like earliest friendships with black kids with Hispanic kids was like all through football and like

it is a like very interesting sort of like class and

racial melting pot at least at like I went to a like pretty big suburban middle and high school but like lots of

lots of very different kinds of people ended up at my school and lots of very different kinds of people ended up playing football.

And like, you're going to get a more

diverse slice of that student population on a football team than you will

on the fucking yearbook committee or in like school band, class government, whatever.

All of that came very naturally to me in terms of writing this book where like, I've ended up with a book that's like quite diverse, but I didn't really do that on purpose.

I just kind of like, who are the kinds of kids who end up playing football?

And it's like everyone.

You have like poorish kids like Grace, and then you have like richish kids like Ahmed or Dre in my book, who like, I very much wanted to like show that, like,

maybe one of the reasons that Grace is going to end up having a more coherent politics is because like, she has friends of different backgrounds that she might not if she had not ended up playing this this like fucked up evil violent game to be clear yeah i mean i think any football fan who is honest with themselves and has politics that are not evil has a very complicated relationship to the game for a like variety of reasons because it will like chews up people's brains and there's that but there's also like implied conservative politics.

There's also a big factor here is that high school football, even at a public school like mine the religion is all over it baby like all over it yeah that's a huge part of it jason kirk of the shutdown full cast uh is working on a book about the like history of uh Christianity and college football called Church and State.

I'm very fucking excited for that book.

Hell yeah.

Yeah.

That sounds awesome.

But it's this like really interesting political space because of how diverse it is and because of how like homogenous a lot of the like religion and politics of it are i guess if that makes sense yeah

and it's also weird because like you know so like i don't know i i refuse to watch college football like i draw i draw the line there like i thought i'm not doing this i'm not doing this they can't make me watch like fucking colorado state or whatever the fuck but like what one of the things that you get in the nfl too is it's like On the one hand, like you have all of this really, really conservative shit, right?

Like every fucking, everything is God.

Like every single time someone holds a thing in front of a player there there's like at least three lines of like all of this is possible because of god and like

someone's like it's it's like that the only place you see people regularly saying christ is king where they're not also like holding an ar to like a non-white person's head you know so so there's all of this like

really really conservative religious shit But then also, there's like a union.

Yes.

That everyone's in.

And it's like a large like i mean it's not that powerful and there's there's weirdness there too because you yeah you get to see all of the really interesting dynamics of unions that you don't really get outside of kind of like i mean like i guess like sag kind of has this

but it's it's this union in this place where one the owners have like an unbelievable amount of control like a hideous amount of power and they can churn through people really quickly they have you know these are some of the richest people in the world And then also, secondly, there's, there's this like marketization force that's happening where, you know, you get to see in miniature the way that capitalism has like

moved to sort of deal with unions, deal with sort of the class movements of the 20th century, which is that like they're also trying to turn all of these kids like into entrepreneurs.

I think in the NFL, I think it's more coherent because there is a players association, not a union, a players' association.

Yeah.

Although, also, also,

shout outs to the PA for backing our for backing a unionization attempt here.

Thanks for that.

I don't know if it mattered, but meant a lot to me.

Yeah.

Also, like, sports players unions are fascinating because

these are people who are part of a union who are like, at least some of them, millionaires.

So it's

a very interesting sort of like class dynamic happening there.

But like college, like the college game right now is just

charnel house.

Um, I mean, like, it is better now that players are being paid, like, unambiguous good that players can profit off of their name, image, and likeness.

But again, it makes like, I remember, um, like, I'm not on Twitter much anymore, but like.

In the like early Elon days, you started getting Twitter ads, and these were 16 and 17-year-old high school football players.

The post is like huddle highlights and like a like quick recruiting profile of like, hey, class of 2027, defensive back, wide receiver out of Palo Alto, and just like blasting that onto like Twitter timelines everywhere.

Just like, please, God, somebody see my, like, somebody see these fucking huddle highlights.

The feudalism stage of high school and college ball has like ended.

And now we are in the

no regulations baby just like completely unfettered capitalism stage can we can we explain like just how like very briefly people who do not know any football like what name image likeness is and how this is different from like a system that would be normal which is you pay the players yeah so for like 70 years the the precedent with college football in the United States of America is that all these players are amateurs and they cannot be compensated in any way.

They cannot profit off of their name, image, likeness.

So that means that they can't like sell autographs.

The school isn't going to sell jerseys that have their name on them.

You are meant to make exactly zero dollars from your time as a amateur college athlete.

And this was the like ironclad system for like 70 years.

And then it kind of got like destroyed overnight.

Yeah.

When the NCAA finally legalizes players profiting off of their name, image, and likeness.

So that means that they could sign like endorsement deals.

And when this was first made a thing in 2021, it mostly manifested in like Decoldist Crawford for the Nebraska football team is filming a ad for a local air conditioning company because his name is Dekoldist.

And it was sort of like very like quaint and cute at first.

But then NIL collectives got going, which are these, I don't even know how to, how to like

describe what an NIL collective is.

These are like investment groups that operate independently of universities that pool resources and then pay players

for like extremely scant public appearances so that they can say that they're just profiting off of name, image, and likeness.

But in reality, they exist as a way to pay college football players without paying them via schools.

Now, there is the house settlement happening right now, which colleges will soon be able, probably, maybe, God, who knows, will soon be able to directly pay college athletes a certain amount of money.

Lord knows where that's going.

Like this stuff is all changing at like lightning.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So like we have just straight up gone from like, nobody gets paid for anything to like, we are in fucking like Gilded Age robber barren shit where like,

because none of this shit is regulated, schools schools or ni al collectives will go back on agreements and everything's negotiated every year there it's like like it's it's a mess yeah in the college game right now so i mean all that makes the like nfl having a kind of shitty union look a lot better yeah well and i i just i was thinking about the kind of like

This is by way of kind of bringing it back to transgender, but like one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot in terms of

I mean just like what I do right and but also just like the way that capitalism has been moving in the last like

few decades is it's increasingly about you know because like okay so like capitalism's fundamental basis has always been like you sell your labor

right but now it's it's it's been increasingly transforming into like you're selling like the image of yourself you're selling your identity you're selling like yeah you know you're selling your personality you're selling as much of like and this is this is what name image likeness is right it's like we're not going to pay you for like your labor, which is like you playing football.

We're going to pay you for like this nebulous image of yourself.

So you get all these people who like are, you know, you're forced to turn all of yourself into an object for consumption.

And like, I think that's the thing with like, fucking, I don't know.

That's what I'm doing on this show, right?

To a large extent.

Like, I am like the Asian transgender.

And like, yeah, obviously like a lot of this is like research, but it's also, you know, this is what like brand and identity is.

And this has had these like seismic impacts on the entire global economy.

Like I, I talked about this in an episode on, when I talked about Temu, but like Temu is literally the product of this happening with Chinese farmers, where like Chinese farmers were doing this like farm social media thing.

And someone was like, holy shit, what if we like, they become these things where they were selling food, but they were also just selling the like the identity brand of like themselves as farmers.

And Temu was like, well, PDD, which is the Chinese company, was like, what if we just brought all of these things together in one spot?

So you could just do direct to like consumer sales through it.

And now that's like the entire fucking economy is just this morass of like selling every single part of yourself.

And I don't know, like, I'm wondering, how much of yourself did you have to, do you have to like leave in a book like this?

And how much of it can you like kind of like keep away from the market?

Oh boy.

Um, if so, separately,

you're good.

Yeah.

Oh, gosh.

Um, everything is, uh,

everything is

personal brands now.

You know, there's a lot of pressure as an author to

use all your social medias in a very particular way.

You're supposed to, you're,

you're, supposed to make your cute little Canva graphics and like talk about your characters and engage with like prompt posts on Instagram and,

you know, whatever social media du jour.

And like

my personal experience is a little irregular because I do have some amount of like

sports, Twitter, niche micro celebrity from posting.

So like

I'm not out here making promotional TikToks for one of the boys.

Yeah.

That was like something that was very important to me was like, oh, I'm not going to be doing that.

Thank God.

Fuck that shit.

Yeah.

And

the way that authors have to promote themselves and turn themselves into brands is like a whole other can of worms that like sucks.

So like, thankfully, I think I've managed to avoid the most alienating

like forms of that.

But I did have a review not too long ago very confidently state that this book was loosely based on my life story, which was news to me.

I was like,

word?

I didn't know that.

So like, I think especially if you write fiction as a person of any marginalized identity, if you're, if you're black, if you're gay, if you're trans, whatever, people are going to assume that you're writing like autofiction because I think a lot of people react to women's fiction this way because I think a lot of people subconsciously have a hard time believing that like women have interior lives and can like imagine things you know um

like i think a lot of people assume that authors are always writing about themselves and writing about the people in their lives and uh i mean i'm writing about experiences that i have had similar ones to but like nah dog that is not how this works yeah

there's a really great um

essay about this by a friend of mine rosemary ho who's an absolutely brilliant writer um who wrote about the,

she's writing about Zadie Smith.

And one of the things that she talks about is like the way that people just assume that Zadie, that like Zadie Smith's politics are just like didactically coming out of the mouth of a character.

It's like, well, no, that's not how this shit works.

Like,

yeah.

It is,

it's frustrating.

And I think like a lot of authors have their own experiences with this.

So

yeah, I mean, I like you have to turn yourself into some kind of brand.

That's why I'm going on podcasts.

You know?

So that's all, you know, that's fun.

But I'm trying not to like, you know, completely give myself over to the fucking torment nexus.

Yeah.

Yep.

You know?

And there's like, I, I don't know.

This is also just like, this is a way you can just completely lose your mind.

I don't know if I've ever actually talked about this on this show.

Weirdly, one of the people whose career trajectory is the most similar to mine is this Asian American writer named Wesley Yang, who was like this guy who got brought in to write about like, I think it was Columbine.

It's like some mass shooting that was like a Korean kid did and his friends were like, hey, you're Asian, write about this.

Oh, God.

And he, you know, for a bit, he was like, he was like the like, he was like, he was like the guy who was like the big like Asian American.

Like, this is like the literary thinker.

He was like interviewing.

Aaron Schwartz.

He was doing like profiles of a bunch of like interesting people.

And then he just became this like incredibly boring, bog standard reactionary.

and he became one of these a very common kind of person who you experience on the right is like someone who's experience who's whose like understanding of race comes from like watching sports where they're like there are black players in basketball and there's a bunch of them and because of that this means that like actually black people are like overrepresented and like as a class they're like privileged or whatever the fuck because there's just like a bunch of black basketball players

and i don't know i think it's like there's like a really interesting intersection here of like the way that people understand

politics as just

like politics are just like the thing that I see on my screen when I'm watching football.

Yeah.

And how we have to sort of like

just deal with that shit and deal with the sort of micro-identity formation that is real, but also isn't like a depiction of what the world is.

Yeah.

So, one of the interesting things in this book is that, like, the right-wing media, like, right-wing football media kind of isn't in it that much, really,

which I think is fascinating.

And I wonder part of how much of this is just that, like, this was kind of a book that was originally being written before, like, Aaron Rodgers was going on Pat McAfee's show in front of like half a million people every single day and like screaming about trans people.

So,

this book has excerpts of like articles and outside media and like social media, et cetera.

Originally, it had like a lot more.

I had to cut a lot in order to make this book like

legible as a book.

This book is already like pushing the edges of what you could really communicate in YA in terms of like, I have a lot of characters.

I have a lot of shit going on.

So like.

Part of it is just that like, I had to like, you know, trim, et cetera.

But like,

that makes sense.

Originally, it had a lot more of that stuff.

And there were like interstitial snippets from a fictional sort of like football podcaster guy who was like Pat McAfee and all of the like barstool former athlete podcasters

in a blender.

And he like,

he was this like really pathetic former like special team or

linebacker who just like keeps reliving the fucking glory days.

yeah eventually i just had to like refocus and like yeah yeah bring that conflict closer to home with like school administration's kind of shitty um and like there are plenty of dudes on the football team who also suck so i kind of like left it in via some like shitty tweets that you see

or you get a lot of it like indirectly you can imagine what is happening on the fucking pat mcavey show oh my god yeah but like also part of it is what you said that the weird timeline of publishing means that i started writing this book in february 2021 wrote the majority in 2022 and edited in 23 and 24 and like kind of this like very organized anti-trans reaction was not as prevalent in 2021 at all.

Like I kind of had to like track it as it started to like really like form up in real time.

This is not the world that I thought I was going to write my stupid little football book

and

like have it emerge into.

A lot of people are say that this book is very timely.

And I'm like, dog, this is a Biden administration book through and through.

So one final bald question on behalf of my beloved and accursed Seattle Seahawks.

Okay, so think about Sam Darnold, who's now our quarterback after they traded my beloved Geno Smith for a fucking third round pick.

Okay, so like, is the thing that's going to happen this season not just by week five, Abe Lucas goes down for the 12 millionth time, whatever child they dragged out of a kindergarten to try to block the Neil Hunter gets liquefied in 10 milliseconds, and Sam Darnold just like starts seeing the ghosts of men who haven't been born yet?

Like, isn't this exact?

Is this just what's going to fucking happen?

Why did they build this team like this?

Can I attempt to give you a small amount of Seattle Seahawks optimism?

I thought they were going to win 11 games games last season they should have so we lost to the giants

so

i i i really like some of what the seahawks did they drafted a lot of players that i really like it's true they they finally took a interior offensive line player in the first round yeah congratulations uh yay

Gray Zable is a good player.

He's also MAGA as shit, which is what you want on your offensive line.

No, that's what you want on your offensive line.

It's true.

It's true.

But also, like, God fucking damn it.

So

you got Gray Zabel.

You got Jalen Milro, who

Jalen Milro isn't good at football right now, but a sports media friend named Derek Classen put it that he's he's the kind of player you want to bet on and then be wrong about just just

because he's fun because he's a like

legit actual like special athlete, special with the ball in his hand.

He's cool.

I really like Jalen Milro.

But you also drafted later on, you took Tori Horden and Ricky White, who are two of my favorite sort of like small school wide receivers in the draft.

You took Damian Martinez, who is a running back who I think could end up being a lot better than someone who's drafted in the seventh round would indicate.

And also, you took a fullback.

You took Robbie Oates.

That's great.

His name is Robbie Oates.

Great name, great name.

All name, all name.

All name team.

He is a, he's like the squarest football player I've ever seen.

Love, love Robbie Oates.

However, the Sam Darnold situation is

tough.

It's tough.

I have a hard time seeing it happen.

He would literally, if you had put it behind last year's Seahawks offensive line, he literally would have died by about week eight.

Like, he just, like, straight up would have died on the field.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

And, like, it's a bit better this year because you have Crazy Zabel, but you still have Abe Lucas, you know, you still have Abe Lucas.

We'll have Abe Lucas for three weeks, and then we won't have Abe Lucas.

And then.

And also, like, God damn it.

Sam Darnold was in, like, the perfect spot for him.

Yep.

Yep.

And now he's going to be throwing the ball to, I mean, you know, you got Cooper Cup, you got, you know.

For four weeks.

You got JSN, but you also have Marquez Veldez Gala.

Is he gonna

get load-bearing snaps?

Like, is that really, is that really what you want?

My cop last year was that, was that JSN Metcalf and Lockett was the most underrated receiver trio in the league.

Yep.

And this year, it's like,

all right, we get six games of Cooper Cup, and then we get fifth rounders.

Yeah,

it's tough out here.

Yeah, I don't expect Sam Darnold to work here, just like straight up.

Like, I, I have been a Sam Darnold truther for years, but it is the classic thing of like, I think Sam Darnold's better than most people think.

And then a lot of people are like, $130 million, Sam Darnold.

And it's like, what?

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

I didn't think he was that good.

I didn't think he was trade Geno Smith good.

No.

Oh, God.

So that's unfortunate yeah so this this this has been the football section of this of this podcast yeah so victoria do you have anything else that you want to say before we head out and where should people buy your book from not amazon that's like really all i have to say about that um yeah one of the boys my name is victoria zeller and you just buy that from bookshop buy it from your local indie uh you can buy it from barnes and noble because we don't hate them as much as we hate amazon

but like i would say buy it from your local indie bookstore is like ideal for me i make the same amount of money wherever you buy it so it doesn't matter but if you want a signed copy you can also order it from my home bookstore so there's that hell yeah but uh yeah my website is at victoria.monster and all my links are there yeah okay i really i realized i had an actual final question that i wanted to ask that i forgot to do before this the fucking we started the outro so i apologize so the odds here are much much higher than they are in most places that there's going to be some queer kids who fucking play ball to some extent listening to it and i wanted to i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm throwing something from your book at you which is i know what would you say to the what would you say to the kiddos who are going through it this is so mean

okay

okay i'm gonna be real with you right now guys do what's best for you yeah fight if you have it in you to fight but like you you got to be a kid first and foremost.

And like,

trans kids, queer kids deserve the chance to be fucking kids.

They deserve the chance to make mistakes and listen to music too loudly in

their

friend's shitty car.

And they deserve to play sports if that's what they want to do.

I think in a lot of ways, my book is about how we ask teenagers to be braver than they should be.

And I think that's bullshit.

So I'm not going to put it on you.

Have as much fun as you can.

Like ball if you can,

but do what makes you happy and

what feels safe to you is like really all I've got.

Like, just have fun while you're able to as a child is like, yeah.

No, and it's like, yeah, it's not, if you are like a little ass kid, A, A, I am so sorry for how much I swear on the show.

B, like, it is not up to you right now to save the world.

That is the job of fucking everyone else who listens to the show.

Like, if you, if you want there to be more queer athletes, if you, if you want trans kids to be able to be kids, that shit's on you.

Yeah.

All of the rest of you who listen to the show.

If you are also, you know, like the fucking one bazillion trans people who listen to the show, this is like a bit less on you than it is on fucking everyone else.

But

yeah, but the best time to started organizing was like five years ago.

The second best time is right now.

And the best time after that is tomorrow.

So go fucking build a world where trans kids can be kids and ball out.

Let kids like me hoop.

Let them hoop.

Let them hit dingers.

Let them ball.

Hell yeah.

My people need rings.

My people need titles.

They need trophies.

They need championships.

The reviews and ratings are in, and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer.

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Hello and welcome to It Could Happen here.

Today, we are talking about white genocide.

And when I think of genocide, there is only one name that comes to mind, and it's Molly Conger.

Molly, welcome.

i just i wanted you to be here as we talked about the genocide of the white race i mean who better to talk about it than uh two pasty fellows like us

yep yeah i'm sure we're uh like soon for the chopping block here molly what what's happening why why are we why are we well i i will explain a little bit of what's happening and then you can tell me how on earth we got here the united states terminated its refugee admissions program in january of this year right uh when donald trump became the president and signed a time of executive orders.

So since then, the United States has not admitted any refugees.

In February, it also stopped, the United States terminated its cooperative agreement with refugee resettlement agencies, which meant that even refugees who had arrived weren't getting the assistance that they previously got.

However, on the 12th of May, the United States admitted 59 Afrikaner refugees from South Africa.

And concurrently, Donald Trump told the press that what's happening was a genocide of the white people.

He said it wasn't because they're white.

He said if there was black people, he would do the same thing.

I mean, there are several genocides impacting black people right now, and they are not getting refugee admissions to the United States.

Apparently, these people are

being genocided.

So, Molly, can you explain what's going on here?

How

genocide happened?

Sure.

I mean, the short answer to that question is it is not happening.

It is not real.

It is not a thing that is happening or, in my opinion, really could meaningfully happen under the conditions that they're talking about.

So, again, like you said, they have terminated all refugee resettlement programs.

So, people coming from active war zones, active ongoing genocides, people fleeing political persecution all over the world, they don't deserve our help.

They don't need our help anymore.

Right.

But these people, these people from South Africa are uniquely experiencing the worst thing that can happen to a person, I guess, which is white genocide.

So, white genocide, I think, is often sort of used interchangeably with great replacement theory.

So, the white genocide conspiracy theory and the great replacement theory.

I think they're hand in hand.

They're very similar.

There's a lot of overlap and they're used interchangeably.

But, white genocide is much more specific and it's more recent iteration on the theme.

It comes from a mid-90s book written in prison by a neo-Nazi terrorist named David Lane.

David Lane notably coined the 14 words.

We, you know,

You know the 14 words.

We don't need to say them.

He had a lot of anxiety that if we don't do something, white people will become extinct.

We'll be pushed out of existence by immigrants who are outbreeding us.

You know, there's this sort of concurrent belief that pornography, which is, you know, in their minds, something that is a Jewish tool of oppression of the white race, it is, you know, it's causing us to do interbreeding.

It's diluting our bloodline.

So, you know, all of these things together are going to push white people out of existence, which again, not happening, not true, not a real thing that can happen, but it's something they're very anxious about.

But when you spend a lot of time talking about how white people are being pushed out of existence, you got to be able to point to something.

You have to point to a place where a white person has been meaningfully harmed, and they can't really do that.

So the talking point that they fall back on most often when you're talking about white genocide, you know, if you're really wringing your hands about this and you have to be able to point to something, they point to the South African farm murders is this idea that white farmers in South Africa are being targeted for murder en masse, that it's this massive ongoing campaign of violence, which again is not happening and is not true.

There is more violent crime in the country of South Africa than in other similarly positioned nations.

They do have a little bit more violent crime than we do here, for instance.

But if you break down the numbers, and they have, they have conducted a multi-year study of this

hypothetical phenomenon,

white farmers are not being targeted for murder.

They're not being murdered in larger numbers than any other demographic.

It's just not a thing that's happening.

Yeah.

I know.

It's almost like a laughable claim, or like, except that it's also terribly sad when like Israel is just kind of babe-rooting a genocide in Gaza now.

They're not even trying to pretend anymore.

They're like, no, we're going to kill everyone by starving them.

That's what we would like to do.

And obviously, those people cannot enter the United States as refugees, but these folks from South Africa can.

How did it go from a neo-Nazi in prison to the brain of the president of the United States?

I mean, that idea sort of filtered into American right-wing

think space over the last, I guess, 30 years since Lane wrote that manifesto from prison slowly and through multiple origin points.

But I have argued repeatedly over the last several months that we can point to exactly the moment that Donald Trump heard about this.

There is a specific moment in time in August of 2018 when Donald Trump first found out about the plight of the white South African.

And I have the date somewhere in my notes, but it was, it was one evening in August of 2018 when he was watching Tucker Carlson.

Shocking.

He was watching an episode of Tucker's show back when it was still on TV, and he had some policy analysts from the Heritage Foundation on to talk about this, this terrible thing that's happening.

And about 45 minutes after that segment aired, Donald Trump tweeted the word Africa for the first time.

He has tweeted thousands and thousands and thousands of times about a lot about Robert Pattinson's relationship with Kristen Stewart.

You know, you know, things about Diet Coke, things about vaccines.

He's tweeted a lot of things, but he tweeted about Africa for the first time 45 minutes after the segment on Tucker Carlson.

And he had bought into this idea that these people are being uniquely persecuted.

God.

Yeah.

Carlson has mainstreamed a lot of these like white nationalists talking points.

But yeah, this one, and you have a really good series on this on your show, right?

Like if people want to, people want to learn more about the plight of the Afrikaner,

you can

explain that over several hours.

Yes, I spent three months sort of tracing this story in painstaking detail.

If you're interested in checking that out over on Weird Little Guys,

and you should.

It's great.

It's great good podcast i highly recommend so like

we've seen that this thing like gradually gain momentum i guess and then at some point obviously someone got into trump's ear in the last month

uh and and he made an executive order right he he shared this executive order i'm just going to read from it now quote refugee resettlement and other humanitarian considerations The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take appropriate steps consistent with law to prioritize

humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.

Such plan shall be submitted to the president through the assistant to the president and homeland security advisor.

So, like, he's asking them to develop a plan basically for resettling these white South Africans in the United States, right?

Right.

So when he says that it's not about race now, and he's pushed on that now and he says, oh, it's not about race, it's not because they're white.

The word Afrikaners appears in the executive order.

And that doesn't just mean South Africa.

That's not a demographic term for people from South Africa.

It is a racial term for the descendants of Dutch settlers.

Those people are white.

Yeah, no, like by definition, right, they are white South Africans.

They are like, therefore, definitionally the group that benefited from the apartheid era.

Very much so.

As if this

wasn't clear enough, Christopher Landau appeared at a press conference meeting these refugees wearing a orange, white and blue tie.

It's quite a unique tie.

I actually googled orange, white, and blue tie.

Couldn't find one.

For people who are not familiar, that is the apartheid era flag of the Republic of South Africa.

That is a deep cut.

The decision to use that particular color scheme when you're greeting these Boer refugees is very intentional and very odd.

Yeah,

it's got to be a choice, right?

Like no one has a striped orange, white, and navy blue tie like lying around.

And the sort of dedication to reviving that as a symbol is not without precedent.

So with Dylan Roof, the Charleston church murderer had on patches, he had the flag of Rhodesia, obviously.

They love Rhodesia.

But he had the apartheid era orange, white, and blue South African flag.

And that was strange and and unique enough as a symbol that an American would dig up and identify with that the South African press noted it at the time of the Charleston Church shooting.

Yeah, it was not in the mainstream.

That is a troubling sartorial choice.

Yeah,

it is worrying.

Yes, like you say, there's a line from

the Afrikaners through Dylan Roof to this

horrific ideology, right?

Do you know what?

What probably doesn't have a direct line to apartheid?

We can't be sure of that, I guess.

But

hopefully that these products and services do not have a direct through line from apartheid.

Well, hopefully it's not the Washington State Patrol again.

All right, we're back.

Hopefully that was something nice.

I want to talk a little bit about the U.S.

Refugee Admissions Program.

Because I think people sometimes misunderstand the program, what it means, where it comes from, who it's for.

So to begin with, I want to distinguish between asylum seekers and refugees because I think in the popular lexicon, these two words are used interchangeably.

A refugee is outside of the United States and makes an application through the U.S.

Refugee Admissions Program, and that application is processed and approved or rejected or delayed or...

you know, left for years and years and years while they are outside the United States.

An asylum seeker is someone who is either inside the United States or presenting at the border of the United States and requesting asylum.

So they're different categories, right?

Generally, to be a refugee, one has to register with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, and

thus one has to have fled one's home country.

It's somewhat notable that this flight came from Johannesburg, right?

Like these people were in South Africa.

But apparently, DHS set up office space in Pretoria and they were conducting these interviews in Pretoria.

Right, which again is unusual, right?

So you have to normally go to a resettlement support center, right?

And I want to talk about the process of background checks in a minute because surprise, surprise, it didn't happen here, at least not as far as I'm aware.

Like if it did, it's the most expedited version of this process that we've ever seen.

So These refugees have been admitted as P1 refugees.

And people talk about P1 like it's a a visa category.

It's not actually, it's a priority category.

There are four priority categories for people getting refugee visas.

P1 cases, the highest priority, are normally referred by embassies, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees or non-governmental organizations.

If people have heard of this at all, it's probably with reference to Afghan folks who worked with the United States who are not being admitted under the United States refugee admission program right now.

Some of them are stuck in third countries, even at airports, if they don't have a visa for that third country, right?

Waiting to work out like what the U.S.

is going to do this time after lying to them for decades and letting them down again.

And unlike these real estate agents from Johannesburg, they can't just go back home.

Yeah, right.

Like they actually have fear of persecution if they do, which is not the case for you South African folks.

P2 are people, like there are special groups designated for humanitarian concern, like some congolese people living in rwanda uh in the past some burmese groups living in thailand have been p2 p3 are family reunification cases so you can uh you know if one person has refugee status come to the united states they can bring the rest of their family and then p4 are people who have sponsors through something called the welcome corps familiar with the welcome corps molly i am not No, it sounds like the coolest branch of the military, you know, like you've got the Marines and then the Welcome Corps next door.

The Welcome Corps was set up in 2023 by the Biden administration to allow five U.S.

citizens, I think a minimum of five, to get together to sponsor someone for refugee admission for the United States and basically take responsibility for their housing and for like reorienting them in the U.S.

community, right?

Getting their kids enrolled in school, helping them find a job, all that kind of stuff.

It was a cool program.

It lasted less than two years that Donald Trump rolled that up in January of 2025.

So we don't really have P4 cases anymore.

So all admissions were halted in January.

In February, the government, as I said, cut all cooperative agreements with resettlement agencies.

So let's talk about what the normal process looks like for refugees.

Generally, they require several years of background checks and interviews.

For many, it's not possible in their countries for most, right?

For instance, there is not a resettlement support center in Afghanistan.

so people have to leave that's how you see them in pakistan right what you're seeing now actually is afghan people who are in pakistan have timed out on their like visas in pakistan so they're now facing like immigration enforcement there because they haven't been able to get resettled in the us before their pakistan visa expires

They go through medical and biometric checks.

There are at least two interviews.

There are security checks.

When they do their first interview, they have to give in things like their identifying documents, work history, declare all their family relationships, all that kind of stuff.

Then they have an interview with US Citizenship and Immigration Services after that.

Then, if they are admitted, they take cultural orientation classes before traveling.

That's when you learn how to be an American, right?

I don't know what it involves, but they have to take those before they come.

And then the US government works with the IOM.

for travel, right?

And that travel is funded through a zero interest loan to the refugee.

So like in every other case, you pay for your flight.

You have to pay it back starting six months from when you get to the United States.

That has not been the case for our Afrikaner refugee friends, right?

It appears that the United States government chartered a flight on their behalf.

Once the refugees arrive, they are referred to a resettlement agency.

Some of the names people might be familiar with are like HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, who have literally been resettling refugees since the refugee and asylum seeker category was created, right?

As a response to the Holocaust.

Maybe IRC is another one people are familiar with.

Which, interestingly, Hayas was the target of ire of a great replacement theory-motivated mass shooter here in America.

Yes.

Robert Bowers posted a lot about Hayas in the days and weeks before he carried out that mass shooting.

Yeah, the Tree of Life Sin.

It got great.

People aren't familiar.

Yeah.

And that was at the time of the quote-unquote migrant caravan, fall of 2018, would it?

Yes, that would be that time period.

Yeah, that was a pretty, pretty bleak time.

I was in Tijuana a lot at that time with seeing the migrant caravan folks, right, interviewing folks, trying to help.

Yeah, coming back to that was, I remember thinking, like, what a fucked up world.

So those people didn't get refugee admissions, right?

Those people were here seeking asylum.

The system right now is suspended, right?

And as many as 12,000 people who have been approved are waiting for travel authorization come to the United States so they're they're completely in limbo right they're in limbo and at great personal risk yeah yeah they're in i mean people spend 20 years in refugee camps waiting to be admitted to the united states and like it's hard for me to describe i tried to in my daring gap series right how desperately sad refugee camps are as places right and i think people think of refugee camps as like oh you go there for a few weeks and you sleep under the big white 10.

no children are born and raised there.

Yeah, people live their whole lives in refugee camps.

You know, they're the ones that they, the Thai Burmese board, have been there since the 1940s, but they live their whole lives often without even basic essential services, right?

I did see, for instance, Hayes had a little school in Las Blancas, which is one of these UN refugee camps in Panama.

The reason they have a little school is because children spend so long there that they miss out on their education if they don't have a little school for them.

And so that's just like insult to injury in this whole process, process, right?

It's not only is he shutting off this avenue for refugee status for everyone else and giving it to these people who, you know, I think it's fair to say don't deserve it.

Yeah.

But he's made this process so simple and so easy and so painless.

And that not only are they not fleeing persecution, but they're getting this fast track, this easy pass.

Yeah.

And like

we're paying for it.

I mean, I remember recently some friends and I were helping someone who had been admitted to the U.S., not as a refugee, actually on a different visa category, but like

they were really having a hard time navigating the basics and funding that.

So like we were able to help them out.

I mean, obviously, international immigration is a difficult process.

It wouldn't be easy.

I mean, you and you've immigrated internationally, right?

It's not a simple process.

No.

But looking at the people who have taken Trump up on this offer of refugee resettlement, these appear to be people who could have simply immigrated had they chosen to.

Yeah, it seems that way.

But they could have just moved.

Yeah, they could have, I mean, come here on like a B1 visa or like, I mean, pathways to citizenship are relatively rare.

If you just like, say, you want to move to the US, right?

Like you just want to become an American unless you have a bunch of money.

So like these guys will have a pathway to citizenship.

It's not quite clear how Trump said that they will have one.

What does that mean?

I know.

Normally, if you're admitted as a refugee, you can file for permanent residency in a year.

And then after a number of years, you can file to be a citizen.

I just notice as we're talking, so, you know, I'm not familiar with how the process normally works, right?

That's that's your wheelhouse.

That's something you're very familiar with.

So maybe this is normal.

It just looks strange to me.

So I've been on vacation the last week.

So I'm just back today.

So I just opened up the

embassy's website because, you know, as I was writing this story and sort of tracking this as it developed, there wasn't good guidance from the consulate on what this process would look like.

So I'm just looking at it again today, and they have updated it as of yesterday.

This is the U.S.

Embassy and Consulate in South Africa.

Yep.

New update yesterday.

There is a form you can fill out.

James, it's a Google Doc.

It is a Google form.

The US Embassy website has a link to a Google form that you can fill out if you want to become

great.

I'm sure that's highly secure.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Wow.

It's funny.

I was on that website earlier today as well.

That is,

oh dear.

That is sad.

I mean,

yeah, I don't think a Google Doc can possibly be as secure as it would need to be to have the amount of information the government gets on you when you become a refugee is all the information, right?

Just to outline the criteria to be eligible for U.S.

resettlement consideration, individuals must meet the following criteria.

They must be of South African nationality and must be of Afrikaner ethnicity.

or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa.

I thought it wasn't about race.

Yeah.

I thought it wasn't about race, Jeeps.

Yeah,

right.

It seems, and then they must be able to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution.

What they don't mention here is that, like, normally there are protected categories into which refugees and asylum seekers have to fit, right?

Those are race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

I mean,

I guess you could argue that like the Afrikaners are not per se a race, right?

Like there are, there could be, it's conceivable that one could be white and of South African nationality, but not be Afrikaner.

Oh, very much so.

Very much so.

I mean, there's a Afrikaner is a very specific sort of genealogical lineage.

Yeah.

And like,

which is political, which is why I think they have been careful here to say, or a member of a racial minority, because they're saying, like, look, we're not going to do the genealogy.

We don't care if your great-grandfather was Dutch.

We just need you to be white.

We just need you to be white.

Yeah.

When you arrive, you can do a 23andMe test, and then they do your percentage, and you know, then they put you back on the plane.

No, they just got the Pantone color scale, they're just gonna hold up the peach-colored paint chip.

Yeah,

they get you at uh, what's it called?

Fucking the paint shop there, where you go in and they mix it for you.

So, yeah, they don't mention these protected categories here.

The U.S.

State Department has said it has received 8,000 inquiries from people seeking information about the refugee program.

That's a lot of people.

That's that is a large number of people.

The

Episcopal Church here in the United States, right?

Not like a notably woke organization, I would say.

I mean, they do good.

Episcopal migration ministries do good work.

You won't find me shit talking them.

They do good things for people who need help.

It has ended its partnership with the United States government.

So I'm going to read a little bit here from presiding bishop Sean Rowe.

First time for me, quoting a bishop on the podcast.

Since January, the previously bipartisan U.S.

refugee admissions program in which we participate has essentially shut down.

Virtually no new refugees have arrived.

Hundreds of staff and resettlement agencies around the country have been laid off, and funding for resettling refugees who have already arrived has been uncertain.

Then, just over two weeks ago, the federal government informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa, whom the U.S.

government has classified as refugees.

In light of our Church's steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of South Africa, we're not able to take this step.

Accordingly, we have determined that by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S.

federal government.

Skipping a bit, then, it has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years.

I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country.

They also grieve that victims of religious persecution, including Christians, have not been granted refuge in recent months.

Good for them, honestly.

Yeah, like because I think, I mean, maybe people don't think about this or don't realize that a lot of these programs, like this is a federally grant-funded federal program through a partnership with the Episcopal Church.

So like, you know, in the early days of Doge, you know, they were saying, like, oh, we found all this wasteful spending, all this, you know, suspicious payments to these religious organizations.

Those are social programs.

We have outsourced, we have outsourced all of these government functions to these church-based social programs.

You know, for better or worse, say about that what you will, but that is in fact how many of these things function.

Yeah.

Like.

When I think about like, you know, I've spent a decent amount of time in refugee camps.

The majority of the services there are provided by faith-based programs.

Highest,

there's Bethel World World Ministries, I think it's called.

It's Catholic Charities, Episcopalian Migration Ministries, there's Kulsa Aid, the Seek Group, right?

I don't think they receive any federal, maybe they've, I don't think they receive federal funding.

But I think for the Episcopal Church as a massive organization to come out and say,

we won't dirty our hands with this, that's incredible.

No, it's great.

And like more organizations should.

I think they're being resettled in Virginia for the most part.

Good.

That's where I live, James.

Oh, good.

Yeah, great.

Well, you know, you could take one in, Molly.

You could have a little Afrikaner come live with you.

Which, God, so Charlottesville, where I live,

is home to a large number of Afghan refugee families.

It's like, I know people who work with our new Afghan neighbors and like helping them get settled in our community and helping women get driver's license and get them sewing machines so they can sew their traditional garments at home.

And like, it's a beautiful community effort to welcome these people into our town.

but I just can't, I just can't imagine the worst people on earth coming here.

Yeah, well, you can help with sewing machine, right?

You could help us sew up a little

pre,

a pre-Rainbow Nation South Africa flag for them.

But yeah, it is like, I've helped people arriving here on refugee visas.

And like, it's actually a really, really affirming and wonderful thing to do in your community.

And like,

Now is a time when you can still do that.

All the people who were resettled here before January, the funding that was supposed to help their kids enroll in school, that was supposed to help, especially women learn to drive, right?

That was supposed to help people orient themselves in the U.S., find education, find work, right?

As a person who moved to America, it is a very confusing place.

You have like 75 different layers of government.

None of them really want to help you.

There's a lot of forms to fill in.

The rent is insane, right?

And then

you add people drive like fucking maniacs.

So, like, and we don't have healthcare here, James.

I'm sure that was a culture shock for you.

But, like, when I was poking around in some of these Facebook groups for these, for these South Africans who were sort of interested in maybe seeking this opportunity and they were talking about sort of the pros and cons and whether they would go and how the process was going to work.

And the one fear that I saw come up over and over again is like, well, I heard the healthcare is pretty bad there.

Like,

yeah, dude, it is.

Damn.

Yeah, damn.

Don't come here.

Yeah, yeah.

In some states, right, there are state-funded like uh safety net programs.

I don't know about Virginia.

Oh, and I'm sure, I'm sure as as America's special and only refugees, they will be afforded access to all available programs.

Yeah, put them on TRICARE after we've kicked the trans folks off.

That's how we're making up for the gap.

Yeah, it's it's pretty bleak, honestly.

I would really encourage folks, like if you are listening to this and thinking, oh, it fucking sucks that those people have not been granted refugee status.

Like, I'm thinking of like, I met a woman from Zimbabwe when I was in Darien Gap who had come with her daughter, right?

She had faced persecution at home in Zimbabwe, a country that is not Rhodesia anymore, if we're keeping score.

A country that was never Rhodesia.

Rhodesia never existed.

Yeah, yeah.

She went to South Africa, right, to attempt to be safe and persecution followed her there.

So then she took this journey all across the Americas, carrying her kid through the, through the jungles and over the mountains and through the rivers.

And it's where I met them and we've stayed in touch right she's in the united states now she's working on her asylum process and it is expensive and it is by no means secure and this is like a woman who has faced who fits multiple categories right in their protected uh they've protected categories here right it's going to be very hard and very expensive for her and it really genuinely fucking breaks my heart to see someone who like would be such an asset to any community who was such a ray of light, even in like some of the hardest places I've ever been.

She might not get to stay here.

And these folks will.

And

that really makes me sad.

But yeah, if you have a chance in your community, like

almost the way I sometimes find out about refugees arriving or being settled is like on next door.

I'm realizing next door is mostly a site for aging racists.

But like, Sometimes people will be like, hey, there's an Afghan family here.

And they don't like one of the things in California is that you can rent a house and they don't have to give you a fridge.

Yeah, a fridge is like a luxury, it's not, it's not for the poor.

So, like, trying to help people find a fridge before Ramadan, right?

Like,

I, I, I have a truck, I'm a bigger guy, I can lift a fridge into the back of my truck if someone has a fridge they don't want.

So, like, that's a thing I can do to help, and it makes me happy to do that.

And, like, I can carry a fridge upstairs.

Like, that's not something you can do.

There are a million other things you can do, right?

Including just like having people over for dinner, cooking food for them,

offering to take them out on a walk and show them your neighborhood like there are so many ways that you can welcome people and like while people aren't newly arriving there are people who are still recently arrived who really could do with some help the government isn't paying for it anymore we can't stop the government paying for flights for afrikanas but like you can do something uh you can do something positive and will maybe make you feel better about the fact that you know your taxpayer dollars are bringing the the poor downtrodden Afrikaners from South Africa to neighborhoods near Mali.

It's just such an ugly intersection, right?

This is not just like our addled-brained president falling victim to a racist conspiracy theory that he saw in Tucker Carlson, right?

Like that, that's how the idea got into his mind.

But I think this resurgence of his alleged interest in the plight of the white South African is this terrible intersection of personal grievance and financial interest, right?

That, you know, it's no coincidence that the text of the executive order, it's not just about like, you know, whites are being persecuted, but there is a pot shot on the side in the first section of the executive order that, like, well, and South Africa has been very unfair to Israel, right?

That South Africa being a leading voice in the international community on the genocide in Gaza is part of this, that

they need to be punished for their advocacy against the genocide.

When their ambassador was expelled, it was not a coincidence that he is a Muslim South African who has been very vocal about the genocide in Gaza and that he appears in public in a kufiya, that he's, when he was, when he returned to South Africa after being expelled from the United States, he was talking about Palestine when he got home.

And that's not a coincidence.

And it's also not a coincidence that Elon Musk is currently fighting to launch Starlink in South Africa.

Yeah.

And so this is sort of a longer explanation, but just sort of in brief, since apartheid ended in 1994, they have racial equality laws that if you have a national level company, something like Starlink, something you're going to provide a national

telecommunications contract that serves the whole country, there has to be some black ownership of the country.

They're not saying like there can be no white executives.

They're not saying, you know, white people aren't allowed to do business, but there has to be some black ownership stake in the company.

And large corporations around the world manage this by establishing a local subsidiary that is owned locally by a majority of black shareholders.

Microsoft does it.

Like every big company does it.

Companies operate in South Africa.

International corporations operate in South Africa and they do it every day and they do it easily.

But Elon Musk refuses to do that.

He refuses to have any black ownership stake in his company or a local subsidiary.

So he's not allowed to have Starlink there.

And so for the last couple of months, he's been, you know, walking out of meetings.

He's been, you know, yelling at the president of South Africa about how he's racist against white people.

And so like, this is personal, it's financial, and it is a racist conspiracy theory.

And now we're, we're all having to live it.

Yeah, it's also not a coincidence that, like, Musk has started interacting with some of these, like, white farmer accounts on his racism app, right?

Like, that, I think that one, I think it's, and maybe its screen name is just Boar.

Oh, yes.

Um, a South African news site recently unmasked that particular individual.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, I haven't read the article yet.

Like I said, I've been on vacation, but they're they're on the case.

Yeah, great, good.

And the thing about these, you know, white identity South African nationalist kinds of guys is apartheid wasn't that long ago.

Yeah.

30 years ago, right?

So anybody

50 or older who's talking a lot about white identity in South Africa, I would just like to ask you, what were you doing in 1990?

Yeah.

Just tell me who you were hanging out with in 1990 because I have questions.

Yeah.

Like I remember the end of apartheid very, like, that's one of my earlier like political memories.

I remember like Nelson Mandela coming out at the Rugby World Cup in 1995 and like that being a big

people like, I guess maybe our listeners, a lot of our listeners are younger than me, but like South Africa was something of a pariah state under apartheid, right?

Like they couldn't, people wouldn't even play sports with them.

They didn't even go to the IOC Olympic Games.

And the IOC, not an anti-racist organization, an organization which famously sent the Olympic Games to Adolf Hitler's Germany.

But yeah, they were a complete global pariah.

And to have gone from that to like the US has to intervene in the plight of the persecuted Afrikaner within my lifetime.

It's pretty fucking bleak.

It is a quick turnaround and an ugly one.

But

like I said, the average white South African who is very vocal about white rights may have a very close connection to a very recent act of terrorism, if you know what I'm saying.

Yeah.

They're not just talk.

It was very violent in the early 90s.

Yes.

Yeah.

Molly's done some good stuff on the

violence of white South Africans.

And I guess, yeah, white folks in the U.S.

who are inspired by them.

Molly, do you have anything

you want to plug?

Otherwise, um kuntu wesiswe, I guess, is what you want to plug, right?

Yeah, I'm keeping an eye on their treason case against Afroforum.

I mean, it's just political talk, but it's fun.

We'll see.

Apparently, the investigation is ongoing.

But no, if you are interested in more about how this happened, I did an eight-part series about political violence at the end of apartheid and its connections to American neo-Nazis.

You can check that out on Weird Little Guys.

It's a good time, I think.

There's a really fun episode about a Dolph Lundgren movie from the late 80s that was secretly funded by South African military intelligence.

Yeah, it's a good time, and we live in hell.

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Oh my God, it's it's it could happen here.

It is, and it's talking about it happening here,

you know, about uh what we're, you know,

what's happening in a galaxy far, far away.

These are the Andor episodes.

We're talking about episodes, Jesus, what is it?

Seven through nine?

Seven through nine.

Seven through nine of Andor season two.

When this is done, we'll be three quarters of the way over with,

I mean, one of the best seasons a television ever made.

So, you know, save for it, folks.

Enjoy it and enjoy these podcasts.

Yeah.

Arg.

Arg?

Eloquent, Garrison.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Arg me hearties.

Raise the Hondo Anaka flag and let's watch some and or

this is episode three of our Star Wars Andor Politics Review podcast.

The person grumbling in the intro is Robert Evans.

I'm Garrison Davis.

We are also joined by Mia Wong.

Let's start with episode 7.

I think this arc in general might be my favorite arc of the whole show, frankly.

They did some really fun stuff.

Oh, yeah.

And the seven's mostly set up.

This is episode seven titled Messenger.

I'll do a quick overview and then we can discuss some of the setup to the Gorman massacre.

So, rebel militias are forming an army on the fourth moon of Yavin.

Wilman returns from the planet Gourmand with a special mission for Cassian.

Lucent wants ISB agent Deedra Miro assassinated to protect the Axis network.

The Empire's failed to secure an alternative to the Gourman mineral calcite, and ISB Command tells Deedra that an Imperial fleet will be sent to Gorman in two days and to prepare for a declaration of martial domain.

Yeah, I want to note at the start of this kind of what we see, because we're watching one-year jumps between these.

This is the first time where it's been made really clear the rebellion has moved on from scattered insurgent groups to a functional army.

Oh, yeah.

Like when we're introduced to Yavin, there's a transport landing.

A group of soldiers are getting off and they're being told, like, okay, your ration cards are here and like you need to report in here and here.

This is where you're billeted.

It's very like standard professional military stuff.

So

we are now at the point where the rebellion that Andor has been portraying previously is

not around anymore.

The rebellion has moved on largely, and those old networks still exist to some extent, but that is not the heart of it anymore.

Yeah, and that's a big part of what this episode is starting to set up.

Now, on Gorman, Imperial presence on the planet has already increased dramatically in the past year.

A new imperial headquarters, the towers above the capital city of Palmo.

Security forces are stationed throughout the city with checkpoints and a mandatory curfew.

The past few weeks, there's been stories of insurgent attacks against the Empire, most recently the bombing of a naval depot.

Imperial News reports that quote-unquote inexplicable Gorman terrorists

are getting help from quote-unquote outside agitators.

Which is not untrue, actually.

For once.

But also not like the core of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, and I think that that's

part of the point, right?

Like that's part of what Luthan's going for is he he wants to keep them sort of obsessed with this side of things.

In part because Luthen knows that it's moved on, right?

Like Luthen knows that the rebellion is in Yavin now.

You know, he is, he's not entirely a sideshow, but he's no longer the heart of it.

And every resource they waste looking at his network is a time they're not spent looking at Yavin.

Yeah, and Luthan's still trying.

I mean, like the outside agitators here is probably mostly like Luthen's guys who've been trying to build up the insurgency on Gourmand, simply to make some sort of political crisis and then, you know, also help the people who have already committed to resisting the Empire, help them actually

do that beyond what the Gorman front's been like parading around and doing, you know, little protests in front of the memorial for the past few years.

Luthen was like, if these guys want to do this seriously, let's see what happens when we do it seriously.

And that's kind of what we've resulted to here.

The Empire has sent sent a quote-unquote crisis specialist and a riot team to assist Deadra in managing any civil unrest.

Cyril Karn starts questioning what the Empire wants with Gorman and what he's really been doing these past two years.

Yeah.

Deadra tells him to pack his things as they'll soon be leaving together for Coruscant.

Back on Yavin 4, Bix takes a skeptical Cassian to a force healer to help with a stubborn blaster burn.

Though Cassian resists, the healer can sense that Cassian is somehow important.

He has main character energy.

Cassian is split between Luthan and the growing organized rebellion, but decides to take a rebel U-Wing starfighter to Gorman.

And undercover as a journalist, Cassian checks into the hotel at Palmo Square and sets his sights on ISB agent Deadra.

So yeah, a lot lot of this episode is like

showing how the rebels are actually like growing an army before they've really put together the formal rebel alliance.

Like,

they're getting much closer to that.

But at this point, it's like a whole bunch of little like militias that are operating out of the same base and are starting to set up like rules and guidelines.

And like Cassian butts up against some of those rules a little bit here.

Because he can't go and come as he pleases anymore, right?

Like it gets him in trouble with General Draven.

Yeah.

It's not just rebel cells that are operating independently.

Now they are trying out working together and that has some growing pains.

Yeah.

Well, and it's not just working together too.

Like it's it's the command structure

structure is becoming increasingly centralized in a way that it hasn't been.

Well, it's the the the previous to this it's been like the centralizing thing has been like Luthan kind of being an asshole to everyone, but like moving stuff between them.

And now it's like or Saw Guerrera, right?

Where he operates as like a cult of personality type thing with his own militia.

Yeah, yeah, right.

Well, no, but I mean, I mean, like, like between all of the different networks, the central forces.

It's been Luthan.

Yeah.

And now it's like, no, we have this place where we're developing a chain of command and we're developing these sort of like

where you're going to become increasingly rigid like hierarchies in this in this whole thing.

Luthan's becoming a somewhat controversial figure and is kind of getting pushed out of the actual organized rebellion because he's a little bit difficult to work with.

Yeah,

because he's an asshole.

Like, it's like.

Yeah.

And well,

he's doing what he has to do.

I mean, i'm i'm i'm luthen's last defender if he's only got one fan it's me and luthan is doing is handling this exactly how he like has to there's no room to be nice uh and there's no room for anybody's feelings in this but that you know what we do see is people choosing now i want to be involved in this kind of bigger and more structured thing where the way i am treated is less dependent upon the whims of this guy at the spoke where i don't get to know anything where there is a command structure, where there is, there is a degree to which it's more like predictable how things will be day to day, right?

A lot of people do prefer that.

And also this at this stage of the rebellion, if you're going to take on a military like this, you need a formalized force.

You need more of a command structure.

You need a chain of command and people need to know who is calling shots in what situations because you simply can't function effectively in a large scale in combat without it yeah we'll talk more about kind of luthen's situation in episode nine yeah the luthan of it all yeah because that kind of gets more into like what his current place is in the rebellion but like really like the role that he occupied is is frankly no longer needed like like and he's even acknowledging this like they're they're they're going beyond the sort of like you know like small scale like intel network arms deals like all this type of like like covert you know the eldani raid they're going beyond what Luthan really specialized in.

And now they're doing a full-on military.

And Luthan's always been operating kind of like a DIY like spy agency.

And now

they're doing a whole military.

And that kind of butts up against how Luthan wants to operate and

what he's like, frankly, just capable of doing.

He understands the importance of Yavin, but he's also okay with not

being there in person.

Well, I don't think he thinks he fits there, right?

Yeah, totally.

Yeah.

Like his whole thing is such an idiosyncratic organization that's that's just based around him and Clea, you know, this young woman that he works with.

Like, there's no place for him in a military command structure.

That's not his thing.

The other thing this episode really focuses on is like, you know, news propaganda and like the idea of like terrorism outside agitators and using those things as justifications for state crackdowns.

The senator from Gorman talks with Monmothma Mothma about how he believes that the empire is lying about what's happening on Gorman and these bombings must be like a false flag attack.

So you have to see a whole bunch of different people's perspectives on like validity of the actions that are happening on Gorman.

Like there's questions over who's doing this.

Is the state just making these things up so that they have a justification to crack down on us?

Are these things genuine?

Are they being done by by people on Gorman who are like aligned with the resistance, but maybe are getting like outside help?

You have all those sorts of questions and then the news media is like manufacturing consent for an imperial crackdown like what was discussed in like the very first episode yeah it's it's very it's very 70s italy like because there's these bombings happening because there's all this weird shit and because nobody knows exactly who's doing what everyone is like

kind of become conspiracy brained and like half the conspiracies are true but not the ones people think are the ones that are true and it's it's just like the information space just becomes so messy when you're dealing with such a combination of like of like of these attacks and of these like different kinds of above and below ground organizations where nobody knows exactly, no one's exactly talking to each other.

And yeah, it just gets so messy so quickly.

Even the Gorman front itself is like debating this.

They had this whole meeting where they discuss like tactics, like the role of the role of violence.

And as these big arguments erupt, they start to reflect on how the empire is actually set them up for infighting.

And the more time they spend doing this, the less time they're actually doing anything helpful on Gorman or

doing anything that actually can secure their own liberation or their own

combat against this oppressive force.

There's a good part in that scene where they're debating it, where the guy who gets who kind of stumbles upon them doing the robbery in the last

like yeah, yeah, yeah,

has a speech where he's basically like, look, man, everyone's like, whatever they're doing, whatever their attitude about the right way to resist, they're all Gormans to me.

And so they're all on my side.

Yeah.

Right.

And I like the way that he that he expressed that because it very much as we're going to talk about next episode it comports with who that guy is as a as a resistor right there's like national identity is a big concept in these episodes but not in like a fascistic nationalist sense no as in we're all in this we're all going to hang together is what i think he's saying but like like national solidarity yeah yeah it's like 1820s kind of like or even like ireland right like Yeah, yeah.

And like, you know, I can give a speech here about where this is going and about how Sinn Fang's like turning against immigrants and trans people, but it's also like, that's just like not what's happening right now.

This is like 1820, not like 1920.

The last thing I want to talk about in this arc before we go on break is this force healer that Cassian reluctantly visits in the Yavin for mess hall.

Yeah.

This was a super interesting scene to me.

And this is the first time we have seen any mention of the force, really.

Yeah, this this is like the big like spiritual moment in this series.

Andorra has kind of veered away from like the mystical side of Star Wars in favor of the more like materialist politics.

The Star War.

The way that they included this here, I thought was really interesting and really well done.

And the reason why I like it so much is that like throughout the Rebel Alliance, They always like to greet each other and like say goodbye by saying, may the Force be with you, which is a little bit odd because the Rebel Alliance isn't like a a Jedi revivalist cult.

They're not like a Force cult in the way that so many other groups in Star Wars TM are.

And the fact that you have people who engage with the Force in this more like regular manner, more similar to like kind of like hippie-woo spiritualist stuff that props up in like radical spaces, I find really interesting.

Yeah.

And obviously in Star Wars, that has more of like a legitimate backing because we all recognize the force is real in Star Wars.

The force is fake.

It's a psyop it's just the alien god thing in the black holes

force treatment i love in part what i love about andor is how big it makes the universe seem because cassian yeah cassian isn't like uh he doesn't have like the you know there's that line in uh the in a new hope where basically hans like i don't know man like hans clearly heard of the jedi but he's like i don't need like i don't i don't give a shit about this i don't need hokey religions or special events yeah it's like somebody talking about yeah like like wicca right like if you're just like a dude who's a fucking drug dealer, you're like, I don't need to hear about that man.

I got, I got fucking heroin to move.

Like,

yeah, it's very, it's very much like, it's very much like faith healer coded.

It's like, oh, God, no, I'm not going to see the faith healer.

Come on.

Like, no, yeah.

And, and he talks about how him and his, like, his mom had like a bad experience with a horse, with a horse healer, like, 10 years ago.

And you're like, this is, this is a whole like scam operation as well.

Yeah.

Like, fake force healers.

And beyond that, the the thing that's unsaid is what we know about Cassian is he was raised on a planet completely cut off from the rest of the galaxy.

His childhood was as a hunter-gatherer in the deep jungle.

And he was presumably, as all peoples in that situation always have, raised with a set of beliefs about the universe and spirituality that were completely shattered when his entire planet was annihilated by the Empire, right?

Was it by the Republic?

Well,

it was in that transition of the world.

The fuzzy period between the Republic and the Empire, yeah.

Yes.

But of course he doesn't believe in anything right like he had some sort of set of beliefs and the entire cosmology of his planet was annihilated like why would he believe in anything i just like what this does for like the alliance itself and it shows that the force is like a regular part of these people's lives and like specifically the way the force healer talks is more about like the force as this as this like operator of like fate and destiny and it can sense that cassie and andor is the main character in rogue one a star wars story and is important for the story of Star Wars.

And she can feel that this is important.

And so can Bix.

And Andor is also freaked out by that feeling.

And I do like that version of the Force a lot.

I think that's a much more interesting way to do it than just like.

you know, force cults in like a forever religious war with each other for thousands of years.

Yeah,

if you pay us an unbelievably large amount of money, Garrison and I will have our six-hour argument

every time about the force and Star Wars.

We will divide.

I do also like that it's not 100% clear that this person is even force sensitive.

She can like feel through the force, but like everyone can with some degree of training.

Yeah, but it's but it's well, but it's also, it's also like not clear that it's like...

She's just a girl.

Yeah, yeah, but it's not a hundred.

His back seems to feel better.

Yeah, no, yeah, totally.

Yeah, but but also like that's a thing, like it's, it's not, it's not like a thing like, okay, this is like a Jedi, right?

They're using the force and you can tell we're using the force.

This is a lot more kind of like nebulous and it's not 100% clear if it's happening or if it's everyone is like think just thinks that it's happening or like what's, you know, it's very, no.

Yeah.

That's why I like it.

Like,

it's not a Jedi.

It's just, it's just someone and everyone in this universe can have a connection with the force.

Because that's how this universe works.

And some people don't want to or think it's fake and other people get really into it.

Some people get way too into it.

And then they, and then they do genocides in the name of the, of their religious order.

But for a lot of people like this who aren't like a jedi or aren't like a sith or you know a whatever a guardian of the wills

it's it's just it's just a thing you can like connect with and you can like feel your way through like fate and destiny well and i i really like that they must have there must have been a discussion should we have her say she used to be like a padawan right who somehow escaped order 66 that must have been thank god she's not thank god they just didn't we don't know what she is we don't need to tell

because no one in the situation would give a shit Right, Cassian's not going to be like, so yeah, tell me about like your fucking bat.

He doesn't give, he doesn't give a fuck.

There's so much else going on in his head at that moment.

It's so much better that she's just a random person.

Yeah, and we never know.

We never know.

All right, let's go on a break and come back to talk about the Gorman massacre.

Yay.

Okay, we are back.

Andor, season two, episode eight.

Who are you?

Yeah.

I just, I will talk a lot about the name of this episode.

Oh, yeah, baby.

Because I love it.

Because it's just some of the best writing that this show or any show has ever had.

Yeah.

Yeah, please go ahead and give us the over there.

Let's do a quick rundown.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

As mining equipment lands across Gorman, troops barricade the Imperial headquarters in Palmo Square as they prepare for a mass protest.

The Gorman Front prepares to retake the town square, distributing weapons and rallying just regular Gorman citizens to march on the town center.

The old leader of the front realizes too late that this protest is probably an imperial trap and is powerless to stop this unfolding spectacle.

He encounters Cyril Kern on his way to the Imperial HQ and confronts Cyril about misleading the Gorman resistance and why the Empire is mining on Gorman.

Oh, and this scene is the guy who plays Ryland.

There's so many great monologues in this.

The dude who plays Rylands, who's the old, rich guy who's kind of the organizing center of the Gorman front.

The original one, yeah.

Has a beautiful speech here where he's just, how can you say these things?

What kind of being are you?

What kind of being are you?

Yeah.

It's excellent.

It's perfect.

It's devastating.

Yeah.

Cyril breaks free and makes his way through the chanting crowd that's filled the square.

Yeah.

After arriving at the barricaded Imperial Tower, Cyril sneaks into Dedra's office to demand to know what the Empire wants on Gorman.

He chokes Deedra as she confesses that this has all been for the Emperor's new energy program, and she promises that they will soon return to Coruscant as heroes.

We'll get everything we want.

The Empire will reward us for our loyalty.

This is this is it.

This is the last fucked up thing we have to do, and then we can live happily ever after.

Yeah, didn't you want this promotion?

Yeah, yeah.

She says that this might be the previous episode or this one, but like when Cyril kind of like protests, Dedra's like, yeah, but you weren't complaining when you got promoted into this, into this job.

But Cyril wishes Deedra good luck, and he leaves to join the crowd outside.

Cassian is stationed on the outskirts of the crowd trying to line up a shot to take out Deedra.

But stormtroopers soon kettle the crowd and Imperial riot cops are sent into the square to jumpstart a flashpoint.

Protesters throw rocks and bottles, but it's an imperial sniper who is ordered to shoot their own riot cops that starts the Gorman massacre.

And they make a beautiful point.

The kettling is done by stormtroopers, who are the elite, right?

These are their very best infantry.

The riot cops, from the moment they're introduced, because we see these guys land with their kit bags, their sergeant clearly has a lot more experience and is like, these guys don't know what the fuck they're doing.

We cannot put them in any kind of dangerous situation.

They have no idea.

And that's the point.

That's why they're there.

These men were handpicked to be the worst of the Empire because they're expendable, right?

And because you can count on them to panic, and that's what's needed.

They're cannon fodders.

Yeah.

They're sacrificial lambs.

Yeah.

Now, Sir, Cyril watches the chaos unfold as the Gorman Front tries to defend against the Imperial slaughter and KX security droids are sent into the town square.

But when Cyril sees Cassian,

he suddenly lunges at him, and the two get into a brutal brawl.

Cyril gets the upper hand, but is shocked when Cassian does not remember who he is.

While frozen, pointing his blaster at Cassian, Cyril gets shot dead by the old leader of the Gorman Front.

There's Rylands.

It's an incredible moment.

Yeah.

While trying to exfiltrate, Cassian meets up with Willem, who decides to stay and help the resistance in the aftermath of the massacre.

The Gorman Front broadcasts the final message about the Imperial siege, claiming there are thousands dead in the streets.

Cyril's mother is in tears watching news reports coming out of Gorman that frame the Imperial troopers killed as fallen heroes.

Yeah.

Oh boy, what an episode.

Maybe the best episode in the series.

Just phenomenal.

It's phenomenal.

I'll give you that.

I don't know which I'd pick as the best, but.

It's tough.

It's tough.

I think it's the Prison Break 1 still.

Prison Break One's very good i i'm gonna go on a little rant about the name of this episode who are you because that moment between cassian and uh cyril is one that tony gilroy has said in interviews he had to fight for everyone was like just crazy and diego luna said it was one of the hardest lines for me to deliver because luna likes the show and is a fan of the character Cyril and his acting.

And he knows every and has the degree of sympathy that you almost have to have for Cyril at this point.

Totally.

And so it was such a difficult challenge for him to be like, to really sell who the wait, who the fuck are you?

Shatters Cyril's self-perception.

Well, and

it's not even,

I'll even push against a little bit that, because I don't think it's entirely that.

I think what I like about Cyril's journey is that, and what I like about this episode is that who are you is not just about that line.

It is about every character that we see in this.

We are learning.

who they all are and they are learning who they all are.

Rylance in the beginning, right?

This guy who had been so gung-ho about the Gorman resistance, who had been the, when he realizes what's happening, that they're all going to be massacred, that his family and his culture are going to be wiped out as a result of this act of resistance that he's helped to organize, he tries to stop it.

He says, we have to pull back.

And he learns he's not a rebel, right?

He's not a rebel.

And there's always been hints of that.

He's not a rebel.

He's always, you know, the emperor can't know about this, right?

We've seen hints of this from Mark Rylands.

He learns that about himself.

And then a little later in the episode, when it's become, because we watch his kids get massacred.

Yeah.

He doesn't see them, but he knows they're dead.

He hears the gunfire.

He understands no one's making it out of there.

He's not a dumb man.

And when he comes in and shoots Cyril in the head, he learns again who he is.

And now he wasn't before, but now he is because they've taken everything from him, right?

Yeah.

The quote from earlier when he's like arguing with people in the streets, he's like, the only path forward is silent resistance.

Yeah.

And by the end of the episode, he is

a little beyond that.

And I love for him that he gets a chance to learn who he is and be wrong and then learn again and be right, right?

Which is not a chance Cyril is going to get.

Cyril does.

And I'll Cyril is, we see, we see a lot of characters in this who could only have been themselves in a fascist state.

Debra's one of them, right?

Degre could not have been the person she is outside of the empire.

Totally.

I think Pardigaz probably is too.

Could never have been himself fully outside.

Certainly.

Well,

I think if you put Pardigas in the CIA, he is mostly the same guy.

I think he must have been in the Republic CIA.

Yeah, he feels very like Republic transitioned into the Empire like guy.

Yeah, and I think Krennic obviously is one of our best.

Krennik is only Krennick is an Empire guy.

Yeah, Krennick is an Empire under fascism.

Cyril is not an ideological fascist.

Cyril never really embraces fascism fascism as a belief system.

He never understands the empire that way.

He just understands the empire as law and order.

Law and order.

If you look at it from Cyril's standpoint, he gets brought into this not because he wants to

clamp down on the evil rebels and he loves Palpatine and wants to kill freedom.

It's because two guys are murdered that he considers colleagues and he thinks it's wrong, right?

He has a sense of like justice.

And he believes he's following that.

And he believes that his girlfriend is invested in that.

And he truly believes he doesn't want to hurt the people of Gorman.

He wants to find the outside agitators who are driving them to disaster, right?

And the moment when he learns that that's all a lie, he beats the shit out of his girlfriend.

Very violent.

I had an argument with someone online about like, is this domestic violence?

And I'm like, in a literal sense, these people are in a domestic partnership and he is doing violence to her.

In a moral sense, if you find out that your significant other has been hiding a genocide from you,

I think it's okay.

like and you've been made complicit in it it's such a fucked up it's such a it's such like every everyone is everyone's fucked and everyone's evil and everyone's complicit yes and they're all like calling their own commitment to like the state and what they view as justice and law and order into question and like for cyril like he's he is just committed to this idea of like justice and what he sees as as law and order and the empire is the physical manifestation of law and order so therefore the empire must be good right and and that and that's his view yeah And when he realizes maybe the empire actually doesn't really care about law and order.

No, they just

so confused.

Like he doesn't know how to orient himself in the world.

He doesn't know where a sense of morals can be derived from.

No.

If the state is not the representation, is not like the lawful good representation of like justice.

And we've seen from Cyril previously that he has physical courage, right?

He's not afraid of violence.

He's not afraid of putting himself in physical danger, right?

Like he's not a Cassian and or level comfortable with it, right?

Because he just doesn't have that kind of experience.

But

he's not physically a coward, but he's a moral coward the whole series.

And that changes.

And again, going back to who are you,

he learns one thing about himself, which is that he is not a genocide committer, right?

He is not someone who will consciously participate in the annihilation of a race.

right when he learns that those are the stakes he hits he chokes deedra and he fucking runs he doesn't know anything else about himself at that point.

And my interpretation of his reaction to that line from Cassian isn't just, because I think what I love about the scene when he chooses to attack him, it's not him making a decision to go back to the Empire.

He's not trying to

fight Cassian because he wants to get back in good.

It's just the only thing that makes sense.

He's nothing else.

He's according to his like child self.

Yes.

Yes.

It's crazy.

And it's animal.

The way that he goes after him is like a rabid dog charging, you know?

Like, this whole situation on Gorman calls into question how he sees the empire and therefore how he sees himself as he realizes that he's just been a pawn in the empire's larger game.

And, like, in a way, Gorman's the first time that Cyril's been part of like a real community, maybe since he was like a corpo cop.

Like, there's no like solidarity and community like on Coruscant.

There's not in the Bureau of Standards.

Yeah.

Like, Gorman's the first time he's actually kind of been a part of a community.

And, like, this happens with like, with like FBI double agents infiltrating radical organizations sometimes.

It's, it's, yeah, it's, It's very odd.

So like when he decides to join the crowd, this is like he's aligning with them.

But then when he sees Cassian, all of this psychological like progress and questioning that he's done just gets immediately rolled back because then he sees the guy who he thinks like kind of like ruined his life, who like who who altered the trajectory of what Ciro's life was supposed to be.

And therefore he just, he, yeah, he like turns into an animal.

He

undoes all of all of this psychological progress and attacks the guy that he views ruined his life.

and then in his final moments is is is in part like confronted with the idea that like the guy that he's been obsessing over for years doesn't even remember who he is and like cassian's been living rent-free in his head this whole time and and like he didn't need to like cyril could have moved on cyril didn't need to do this and he's been obsessing over someone who doesn't even remember him so i i think the other thing that's really important about cyril's character is like if you remember him in like the very beginning of season one right he has like well like like what he like goes home.

Like he has like a storm, he has like stormtrooper like figurine.

He has clone trooper like action figures.

And he has, and you know, and he's like tailoring his own uniform because he has this conception of himself as this like, you know, as like this like this brave cop, as this like sort of like, like this, like, this very specific kind of like fascist bureaucrat with a gun.

He's like platonic figure.

Yeah.

And the thing is, Deadramiro is that actual person.

And this is, and this is a tension that, that, they, that is kind of worked out, of course, season one of like, Deadramiro Miro is a character who in a conventional show is a hero, right?

Like, she is, she is, she is like the cop that's willing to work outside of the restrictions of the thing in order to get the job done.

Yeah.

And that, and you get to see what that actually is in real life, which is she's just fucking torturing people.

And, you know, and she's torturing people and she's going, and she, and, and when she gets offered a chance to do the genocide in order to turn investment, she gets that.

And I think part of what's going on with Cyril is like, Cyril's whole thing is that he has been trying to be this cop.

And then he has this moment where he's like, oh shit, none of that's like real.

The actual thing that it means to be this cop isn't just this, isn't this like, I dress up in my, in my clayless clothes.

And he gets this in season one, too, where he like actually goes into the field and it's just like everyone's fucking dying around him and he's shell-shocked and things are exploding.

And it's like, he's getting that here again, where it's like his like thing where he's been cultivating this like intelligence person.

And then he, he, he, he sees it.

And it just like,

it just sort of it it it rips away the facade that's like that is the facade of how

like on a kind of macro level like how we how film and television and how american media thinks about like spies and thinks about cops sure and and you see that the actual brutal reality of it which is like through the eyes of this person who who who like through through through this sort of like media stuff has always wanted to become this person and is like oh you're just doing a genocide the one thing part of being a cop that i can do is

like choking my partner.

So, my interpretation of kind of his ending moments

is that, number one, I don't really feel it is necessarily that he undoes all the progress.

I think that there's this animal moment when he sees Cassian that just overrides everything because nothing else about his life makes sense anymore.

He's completely lost any sense of sanity.

Sure.

And Cassian makes sense.

Fighting him makes sense.

And so he does it.

And we do see he has a chance to shoot him and he hesitates and he lowers the gun just a bit and then he's immediately shot.

And in that moment, number one, one of the themes of this is that like everyone has their own rebellion.

There's an argument you can make that him not doing that was was his last little act of that.

There's an argument that like maybe he would have, you know, tried to engage him in conversation or like, you know, monologued or whatever, but he didn't get the chance.

We just don't know.

We'll never know.

And he's, he's kind of contrasted with Rylands in that Rylands does get the chance to see who he is and have it be not enough and then become enough.

Cyril gets the chance to see who he is.

And he does do one, he gets one win.

And it is a win to realize there's a genocide going on and I refuse to be a part of it, right?

That's not nothing that he makes that choice.

We don't know where he would have gone from here.

There's a version of Cyril that could have been a part of the rebel, that could have, if he had just left Cassie and helped some Gormans escape on a ship, used his Imperial credentials, gotten them out of there, becomes something else.

We'll never know because he doesn't get the chance.

And I see in that last moment, not just him being like, you don't know who I am?

Oh, that shatters me.

But him being asked, who are you?

And realizing I have no answer to that question.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he just doesn't get the chance ever to do that.

It is a very like Greek tragedy

moment here.

Yeah.

Phenomenal.

Phenomenal screenwriting.

I will argue it's going to get paid off a lot in the next three episodes, but

this idea that does run through the series that even if you are someone working within this machinery of death, within this evil empire, you're not unredeemable or unsavable, but you don't have unlimited time,

right?

Yeah.

You can be something else.

You have that chance.

But you don't have infinite days to make that choice.

This is like the entire message of Star Wars.

This is,

This is like Luke Invader in the throne room.

This is like what this whole series is about.

It is this moment.

Yeah.

Yep.

I do have a few other things I want to talk about in terms of the massacre.

I really like that we see a return of Imperial military police, not just stormtroopers.

I think putting a face on the Riot Cops is really good for the audience because Stormtroopers are backpacks and t-shirts.

and little fun toys and riot cops are riot cops.

I really like that Willman is sleeping with a French militant.

Many such cases.

Many such cases.

Koomstamong Us.

Hardegraz in a phone call with Degra is talking about how, like, yeah, like, you know, propaganda, news media has been useful and like spreading like rumors and like, you know, like COINTELPRO, that sort of stuff, it's been useful.

But now the only, the quote is like, now the only story is Gorman aggression.

Yeah.

Like this is all that we can focus on.

There's, there's no, no more of this like outside agitators thing.

No, no more of this like long-term slow planning.

We just have to focus on how savage these Gourmans are.

And meanwhile,

Space Fox News is outside stoking divisions on Gorman, talking about how there's rumors of a quote-unquote general strike,

how the Empire is negotiating for a peaceful demonstration.

Even though the leaders are obviously

making people agitated in this growing insurrection, the Chance got me.

I have heard way too many.

The whole world is watching chance.

So as soon as they started going,

we are the gore.

The galaxy is watching.

I started sweating.

I started having a panic attack.

No, no, that gave me a little breakdown, too.

It's my least favorite chance.

No, no, it's happening again.

No, no.

The galaxy isn't watching.

No, it's not.

It's not.

Oh, God.

I hate that chant.

I hate that fucking chant.

Retire it.

Retire it.

But it's very real.

It's very real, right?

Like,

these these are these guys right yes we get we get like a real proper riot set up right like the last riot in andor was on ferics and like that was like a funeral riot right it's almost like some of the writers have seen kettles

it's crazy like it's crazy and like this time like this is not like a morning ritual like it like it was on fairs like this is this is this is a protest riot there's there's signs there's banners there's fireworks there's smoke there's space molotovs there's state affiliated news crews there's tie fighters flying overhead like police copters and police drones.

It's excellent.

I got a little flashback of being buzzed by a police helicopter at standing rocks so close that it knocked my car off the road.

That's what happened with the TIE fighter.

It was so good.

And it's like, I mean, like, right down to like just like the microdynamics of like how the crowd is interacting with the riot shields.

It's like, oh, shit.

And I got the same knot in my stomach when I can tell that shit's about to go down.

Yeah.

I get this same knot in my stomach watching this.

Like, they really nailed it.

What's great, too, is that

just in the face acting, with Cassian and with Willman, you can see the music.

They know, they know too.

They've been in this.

They know Willman is like, okay, okay, okay.

I know what's happening.

I also really like that.

Okay, so, so, okay, so the challenge that Gilroy has here is we have to introduce the concept of kettling to the average Star Wars watcher.

And with the average Star Wars watcher, you can't be like, okay, the police are going to form a wall.

You have to physically make walls come in around the thing.

Some people have said that the Gorman massacre is very clearly inspired by what's happened in Palestine.

These episodes, I'm sure, were informed by other massacres in Palestine, but these were written prior to the most current outbreak of really intense genocidal violence.

In like 2021, 2022, probably.

Again, there were other similar massacres that occurred in Palestine, but also like this is very clearly patterned off of Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland.

This is very clearly patterned off of,

I would argue, my suspicion, the Amritsar massacre in India by the British government as well.

Like, I think that there are pieces of all of that in here.

There's also elements that I heard a friend of the show.

Emmy, who's great, talking about like the Tladalako massacre, which is like that massacre in 1968 in a square in the middle of Mexico City, which is this massacre where there's like these giant student, the 68 student protests are happening, and they just like put snipers on the roofs and shoot everyone.

And I think, so when I saw this, like I thought it was going to be a lot more of just like a straight massacre, everyone dies.

And it kind of turns into a shootout.

And I wasn't sure how that was going to play.

Although I think it is also worth.

remembering that like also a lot of the sort of famous historical massacres aren't like some people do shoot back yes like this is the thing at yet like some of the, some of some of the students like take workers from soldiers that they fought and like shoot.

Well, yeah, this is, this is more the workers.

And by the time they get into the square with the students, like those people don't have guns.

Some of the workers like try to fight back and just get massacred.

But it seems to have been really effective

in just like conveying that like, yeah, this shit happens.

constantly.

It happened in my Dawn too, right?

Where you have, you know, both you have Berkut snipers shooting and killing protesters and you have protesters firing back from behind the barricades.

Yeah.

I really liked the singing the Gorma national anthem as a way to like

stop the chanting, which is like calling towards, you know, like

we're safe because the galaxy's watching us.

And like the guy who starts the song realizes, like, that maybe that's not true.

And instead, the song unites people in like national solidarity to prepare them for what's about to happen instead of like gesturing outwards at like this at like, you know, those off-planet watching this.

And that ensures our safety.

Like, no, our safety is from like each other and the fact that yeah so many of them do fire back and like it is it they do not like lose their agency and that doesn't like make this less of a massacre yeah there's another example of this is like the red summer which was like a whole bunch of like anti anti-black race riots in the us

and it's it's another one of these things it's like yeah it's remembered as like a bunch of white supremacists just murdered a bunch of black people and that's true but also people fought back like people had guns people fought back people resisted them and you know a lot of people fucking died, and also people in these situations fight back, and it's good.

The last thing I want to discuss in this last section is the based hotel porter who throws that bomb.

Oh my god, oh, yeah, and again, yeah,

we are learning.

He already knows, clearly, he knows who he is.

He never has any question about that, but we don't know who he is.

Cassian doesn't fully until he's like, Yeah, I wiped you from the system, bro.

Get out of here, right?

That's what I want to talk about.

Yeah, is this base hotel porter?

And also that the way the way Cassian works as a spy is different from the way that other Luthan operatives do.

Like Cassian gets to know this guy in the previous arc of episodes when he's when he's going to like survey the Gorman front like a year ago.

And he gets into a conversation with this hotel porter who was at like the Tarkin massacre.

and was like was there when there was like 500 people died and like his dad died and his dad died protecting him yeah like watches like like and or like converses with him in his in in his hotel room to like learn about like the local people and to like learn about the actual actual history from like a regular guy who experienced it.

And this isn't something that like Vel and Cinta really do.

This isn't something that Luthan really does.

Like Andor has a connection or like Andor values making connections with just like the regular people and wherever he's operating.

And this, this always like turns out to help Andor in the long run, even if he doesn't really know it in like the immediate.

Because when Andor comes back a year later under a different name with a different job, the hotel porter recognizes him and and is like, I got you, buddy.

I'll take care of you.

I know that you're up to something and I will protect you.

Like we're, we are in this together.

Like I recognize you and I like value you.

And that is what like helps helps Andor like in this episode.

And then also the grenades that he throws is, you know, cool.

And there's, there's a beautiful, Andor's last line to this kid is, I hope things work out for you.

And the last thing we see see that kid do is detonate a bomb to kill himself and a bunch of other people.

Rebellions are built on hope.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he tells him rebellions are built on hope, which is where we get that line from Rogue One.

I like that Sam, the guy with two M's, who killed Cinta last dark, is still in the fight and is killing Imperials.

He is, yes, he is killing them in the name of Cinta.

He is, he is showing up.

He is real.

And

he, again, he learns who he is in this episode, right?

Like, he's not just a fuck up.

He rams a truck into that K2 unit and saves Andrew.

Saves Cassian.

Saves the whole deck.

And yes, he learns who he is.

Yeah, he learns who he is.

I do like that.

Everything good that happens to Cassian, all the people who do it are like in part responsible for the destruction of the Death Star, which shows how the butterfly effect works in a really fun way.

Yeah.

And like a good Luthan operative, Cassian takes K2 to get reprogrammed.

But like this episode ends on this on this Gorman cry for help, this like final broadcast done by Willman's French GF.

And I was legitimately tearing up at this.

It got to me.

Andor starts tearing up, but

it really got to me.

And then we zoom out of Gorman, and you can see how unnatural the Imperial tower is above the regular Palmo skyline with this

historical architecture.

And you have this,

just just like hideous, like imperial

citadel, like casting a dark shadow over the town.

And then we cut to Cyril's mom crying, watching Fox News, where they're talking about how outside rebel assistance helped the Gorman front.

And they question, what's the price we'll pay for our own safety?

And that's how the episode ends.

What a sode.

What a sode.

All right, we'll go on a break and then come back to briefly discuss this last episode, which is also quite good.

Okay, we are back.

Episode 9, Welcome to the Rebellion.

Clone Wars heads are feasting.

So much Senate.

Very fun.

So, on Coruscant, fake news spreads about what has happened on Gorman, and the Gorman senator is arrested with no warrant and no charges.

Mod Mathma plans to make a final speech in the Senate and then leave Coruscant with Bael Organa to lead the rebel alliance on Yavin.

But Senator Organa doesn't want to leave yet.

He wants to stay and buy time for Yavin to get fully up and running.

But he advises Mon to go through with the speech and offers an extraction team to help her get off Coruscant.

While writing her speech, Monmothma's Senate aide, Erskine, finds an ISB listening device in her office.

She goes outside to practice the speech.

while Erskine continues to search for more bugs.

Waiting outside for Mon is Luthan, who tells her that Erskine's been secretly working for him for two years and that Bale's extraction team is somehow corrupted.

Mon grows upset at Luthen's deceptions and secrets and is unsure of who to trust, but Luthen says that he is sending a highly trusted operative as an alternative extraction plan.

Cassian, still undercover as a conflict journalist, agrees to escort Mon Mothma as his last job for the rebellion.

Other senators mourn the imperial martyrs slain by the savage Gourmans before Bale Organa invokes a Senate article to hand the floor to Mon Mothma, where she gives her speech calling what's happened on Gourmand a genocide and labels Emperor Palpatine a monster that, empowered by the Senate, has hijacked the truth and reality.

The ISB orders to shut down the Senate feed and detain Senator Mothma, but as Mon exits the Senate chamber, Cassian is waiting outside.

As Luthin suspected, one of Bale's extraction team members is an ISB double agent and kills another one of Bale's operatives once they're found out.

The undercover ISB agent tries to arrest Mon, but is killed by Erskine and Cassian.

Mon helps navigate through the Senate building as it's put into lockdown, eventually reaching her vehicle outside, where Cassian kills her driver Cloris, who's also an ISB plant.

Well, was.

Maybe.

We'll talk about that.

Yeah.

Cassian takes Willman to Yavin for medical attention while Gold Squadron finishes Mon's escort to the rebel base.

Back on base, Bix breaks up with Cassian via Snapchat message and leaves Yavin to fight for the rebellion elsewhere and to keep Cassian on Yavin.

And later that day, rebel engineers reprogram the salvaged KX droid.

Okay.

This episode has a lot of politics, a lot of politicking,

a lot of Capitol Senate stuff.

I want to read a little bit from Mon Mothman's speech here.

Sure.

What I think is kind of the

nut of it here.

I believe we are in a crisis.

The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss.

Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous.

The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil.

When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.

Ah, boy.

It's a little orange man bad, but hey, the orange man is is bad.

It's not just orange man.

It's making a broader, more historical point that totally.

Yes.

All of this works by destroying any kind of shared concept of reality.

You can get people to, if you can get people to believe absurdities, you can get them to commit atrocities, right?

I mean, this is what

the Nazis understood as well.

Yes.

And I love that speech.

I think it's really

one of my favorite bits of this is that it continues to show the degree to which, as in nimex manifesto tiny spontaneous individual acts of rebellion are constantly occurring and are a key part of the movement even when they're not organized mothma only gets through her speech and maybe only lives because a team of door repair guys who do not appear to be anyone's secret agents just

up purposefully at their job and are like we can't get in i don't know man we can't get into the thing like you're gonna have to wait we're still working on this

and it's kind of inferred that like it's it's weaponized incompetence right?

And I really appreciate that bit.

We have a showdown with her and her driver because she becomes aware before her speech that her driver, who she's been taking in as a confidant in the last couple episodes.

Well, no, no, no, no, no, like her drive.

She's known her driver, Cloris, has been like ISB for like two seasons.

This is a different driver, I think, than first.

No,

this is the same driver.

Because she's been talking, she's been talking to Cloris a couple of times.

She makes a comment about how this one hurts.

She's been talking to like Erskine.

Oh, shit.

yeah she's she she's been getting closer to like her senate aide Cloris has always been like a dipshit who they've kept around because he's like kind of bad at his job he is bad at being an ISB like like paid informant so they like keep him around even though they know he's reporting to ISB there's a little bit of an insinuation with him looking at his gun and listening to her that maybe he's rethinking things but again we never get the chance to see that because Cassian just I think he's like thinking about if he's gonna have to like arrest or shoot her yeah that was that was my read on it I think he's making up his mind about what he's going to do.

And I don't think we actually see that.

But I mean, I think it's open to interpretation.

Yeah, because Cassian domes his little

thinking.

Because Cassian does not take chances like that.

He does not take chances.

And also, Cassian employs great tactics in asking Mon what his name is first to engage him in conversation to distract him enough to like totally surprise him.

Yeah.

Very good.

I also, I like the one of the kind of, it's not stated directly, but like Lanny, the Imperial deep cover agent within the ISB,

is the guy who put these people there, particularly the incompetent ISB agent who Cassian first shoots the lady.

The person who's infiltrated Mon's team, or Bale's team, yeah.

The reason why Luthan knows that there's something wrong with Bale's team is because the agent that has that has infiltrated like Bale's network is one of Lonnie's agents.

So Lonnie was able to get word to Luthan that there could be a problem with Bale's extraction team.

And that's what helps get Mon to Yavin safely.

Yeah.

And it's just kind of more confirmation of the value of Lonnie, of

having him there and

how much he was worth the sacrifice of Ando, Krieger, and his rebels in season one.

No, Lonnie, Lonnie is MVP.

Like a lot of this episode is kind of

showing how much Luthen's accelerationist project has kind of succeeded.

Like how much he's he's in somewhat set up Gorman or at least like fed the fire of Gorman slightly to create this political crisis to further his like accelerationist goal of creating this like big conflict and like we see some of that start to work out even though Luthan himself is like having a much harder time and the kind of the house of cards he's built is starting to crumble and he's probably not going to be able to like work with many people for for very much longer Yeah, and that's like that's like the other thing I want to mention about this episode about the way Luthan operates is that because the way Luthan operates is by fucking not telling anyone anything and by manipulating people and by spying on them and by like having this whole network of double agents and like people who doesn't like the problem with operating like that and this is the problem that he's running into here is like mon mothma does not fucking trust him because the thing that she learned when luthan comes to tell her like hey the the you can't go with bail's team yeah bail's team is going to kill you she's like you fucking this you've had my own aides spying on me for two years my own assistant what the fuck

yeah like it's like like this this is like a persistent problem with the like and you start to see this i

Have we seen Vel like not working with him anymore?

I think we have in these episodes.

Vel does not seem to be working with him anymore.

She's more or less completely gone in on the actual like military part of the alliance.

Vel's on Yavin.

Yeah.

Well, and this, and this is the, this is the thing about this is like, you get to watch everyone.

People are walking away from Luthen.

Yeah, you got to watch everyone who Luthan had worked with.

Everyone walks away with him because they're like, this guy keeps being an asshole and he keeps hiding things from people and he keeps manipulating everyone.

And it's like, it's like he's doing, and is, this is like also, this is the kind of person also that you run into where it's like, they're doing really important work.

And also interpersonally, they're impossible to fucking work with.

And like, like, and you can, you can watch it.

Even Cassius dealing with this.

He's having like real political ramifications.

Yeah.

Where it's just like, no, this guy has been just like jerking our chain around and like lying to us and manipulating us for so long that all of the relationships that

He needs are breaking down and it's no longer a position where because he's the guy with the money and the arms and the coordination everyone has to work with him they now have a choice to like go do literally anything else and everyone keeps walking away and it like almost gets mon mothma killed because she's so pissed at him that he's been like spy having her spied on but it it it also saves her like it it it's it's it's it's a double-edged thing

right it does seem distrust with mon yeah but it also is what got to do because it is it is him who gets mom out yeah yeah and it's it's like it's just this like really messy that's what makes him a good character is that he is both like...

He understands who he is.

He's like fucked up and morally compromised and is obviously hashtag problematic, but it's also completely necessary within the plot that they've created.

Yeah.

And like somewhat defensible.

And like he knows that he's like fucked.

Like he says like, there's no Yavin for me.

Like I'm not going to Yavin.

I'm never going to see the sunrise.

Like that's not what my role is.

I have to be the asshole here.

And yeah, it sucks.

And we start to see like his fake Luthan like gallery persona starting to collapse here too.

Like this whole episode, he's not in his like wig.

He's not in his like fancy clothes.

He is like insurgent Luthan.

This rule that he's he's cultivated these past few years is no longer needed.

And it does have negative consequences.

Yeah, Mon is not.

trusting him in this moment where she kind of really has to.

Like Mon thinks that Luthan might just be trying to like protect himself, that Luthan might not actually care about Mon's own safety.

Cassian is tired of always being a tool for someone else and is dealing with trauma and burnout.

And Erskine's just caught in the middle of this whole, this, this, this whole shitstorm.

And yeah, this is what makes it compelling.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's just good character writing.

We've all been bent by secrecy, is what he says.

Yeah, and

by God, he has.

And

there's a couple of really good moments in this that I don't want to skip over.

There's the

next year in Yavin moment between Mon Mothma and Bael Argana, which I saw some, someone on Twitter

decree to be Zionist propaganda.

Sorry, yeah, like that, that is definitely based on next year in Jerusalem, a term that has been in use for like way more than half of a millennia that has nothing to do with Zionism.

You're just being racist.

I'm sorry.

And it's a nice, like, it's, I think, a nice nod to the travails of like what we are seeing is like a diaspora, right?

As people have to flee their homes to participate in the rebellion, right?

I think it's an appropriate kind of callback to real world history there.

And the line where I think that moment between her and Bail works really effectively.

And the thing that he's doing works really effectively.

This interaction between her and Bail also shows like the difference between how Bale operates and Lutheran operates because like Mon asks Bail

if he trusts his people, like if he trusts his extraction team.

And he says like, of course.

Yeah.

But he, but, but he has to admit that he doesn't actually know them personally for quote-unquote safety.

And

this is where it shows like the difference between someone like Bale, who's maybe less manipulative than Luthan, maybe a little bit less morally compromised than Luthan, but also in moments like this,

in specific moments like this, comes up a little bit short compared to Luthen's

semi-like destructive and bridge-burning.

uh tactics which which which he which he openly describes as bridge burning i i think i think this episode like

are there any bridges you haven't burned yet?

Well, we're going to deal with that soon.

Yeah, we will be dealing with that soon.

I would like to call out Monmothma's face acting in both the scenes where Cassian just immediately domes a motherfucker.

Soy Jack face.

Oh my God.

Incredible stuff.

Yeah.

She's like, holy shit.

She's known intellectually, and it's even hit her because she had a friend of hers killed, right?

A former lover.

She didn't order it, but it was done and she knew it was happening.

So she's not had to cope with it totally naive but the rebellions i i would argue not fully real to her until she sees a man shot through the brains

it's funny because she like like minutes earlier has a line where

she's like like hi hiding in this set this whole time will have been the hardest thing we've ever done and then it's immediately faced with like the lethal consequences for her actions yeah it's like i don't know this is actually much worse well and it's also like it's interesting too because it's like the second person she's seen shot in this episode, right?

Because, like, there's also like the first ISB agent who they have shot, but it's like she doesn't know the person

she knows, right?

No, it's just like some cop, and she's known Chloris for years, yeah, yeah, yeah, and she's just watching her just like, yep, nope, and the way And or just instantly's like, yeah, no, fuck dead immediately, yeah, and she's like, Holy shit, what have I gotten myself into?

Nathan's strongest soldiers kill two undercover ISB this episode.

Give him a hand, folks.

Um, yeah,

no, this is this is a really, a really, a really sleek episode.

I do like that, that, like, Bale's, like, infiltrator has, like, a real ISB look to her face.

As soon as I saw that actress, I'm like, that one has got to be the undercover ISB, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

She just got that fed look.

She has that ISB jaw.

Very good.

There's one thing I'd like to bring up at the end of these episodes.

That's kind of a callback to the very first episode of the show, because the first time we see our boy Cyril, he's just convinced that something is.

And people, I've seen people point out, Cyril's actually really good at his job.

He points this out that, like, I solved a murder in two days, right?

He figured out who had killed these officers very quickly.

And one of my favorite little undercutting of Cyril's points is that his boss solves it even faster.

Like in that first conversation, because his boss is an older guy, he's a corporate cop.

He clearly has been doing whatever he's been doing since probably before the Clone Wars, right?

He's been near the end of his career than the beginning.

And he doesn't like the Empire, right?

He's not even that much of a law and order guy.

He's more of a get through the day and do my fucking job guy.

When Cyril brings up Cassian killing these cops, he's like, yeah, man, they're at a brothel.

I know their salaries.

They can't afford that.

They were shaking people down.

They shaked the wrong guy down and they got killed.

Best to ignore it.

You don't want the empire over here.

And

every aspect of Cyril's life would have been better if he'd listened to this guy, who I'm sure spends the rest of the empire sitting on, like, barely notices the end of things.

You know, he's probably retired by then.

Just a shout out to the smartest, the smartest guy in security services we meet over the course of these entire series.

That old dude at the desk who's like, not worth it, not getting into it.

Yeah, I wouldn't ask anybody anything.

Poor Cyril, what, what a little weasel.

Yeah, no, he fucked up.

He fucked up bad.

I always love being in the Senate.

She does call the Gorman Massacre a genocide.

Performs a whole speech.

Very, very solid acting, as usual.

Genevieve O'Reilly, fantastic work as mom this entire season.

Everyone's great.

God damn.

Oh, we should also talk a little bit about Dedra's breakdown after the Gorman Massacre.

Yeah, in episode eight, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, which also does fit into the whole who are you thing, where

we see that she's not like a complete sociopath right she's not absolutely devoid of horror over what she's doing she's just willing to accept the horror in order to get what she wants out of life which i think is just like a much more realistic portrayal of human evil than we tend to get yeah she she finds ways to cope and justify yeah and like you know lonnie is having to find ways to cope and justify but he's he's doing that through being a double agent and and feeding and feeding luthen like very very important intel as we see in this episode and and and the next.

Let's see.

Yeah, I think this is most of what I, what I had on, on, on this episode.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, Bix,

Vix, Bix breaks up with Cassian to force Cassian to stay in the

alliance, even though he's probably not going to be working with Luthan again.

I'll have more to say about Bix next week, I guess.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I have a lot to say about this, but I think we'll wait until last episode to fully discuss Bix.

I think that's probably best.

Yeah, yeah.

But this batch specifically, I think, is

some real solid.

Real solid sews,

wow.

Star Wars.

The stars have never been more wars, Garrison.

The stars have never been more wars.

We can all agree on that.

The reviews and ratings are in, and Ice Cube's Big Three is the surprise hit of the summer.

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Who will make it to the big three championship?

This no-holds-barred action starts Sunday at 3 p.m.

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Be honest, how many tabs do you have open right now?

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Sounds like you need close all tabs from KQED, where I, Morgan Sung, Doom Scroll so you don't have to.

Every week, we scour the internet to bring you deep dives that explain how the digital world connects and divides us all.

Everyone's cooped up in their house.

I will talk to this robot.

If you're a truly engaged activist, the government already has data on you.

Driverless cars are going to mess up in ways that humans wouldn't.

Listen to Close All Tabs, wherever you get your podcasts.

I couldn't even believe it was real.

Join me, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media at Variety, for a four-part tale of youthful ambition, artistic integrity, and the dark side of fame.

Just like my parents talk about they knew where they were when John F.

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Listen to Variety Confidential on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I will get way too mad if I talk about the DNC anymore in this preamble.

This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you.

I'm Garrison Davis.

Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Robert Evans.

That's right, everybody.

This episode, we are covering the week of May 8th through May 15th.

Trump gets bribed by Cutter.

Stephen Miller wants to suspend habeas corpus, and a Twitch streamer gets interrogated at the border.

How are we doing, fellas?

I don't know.

Bad?

Like every time we do that.

I'm not talking to

Border Patrol willingly.

That's what I'm doing.

That I'm not doing.

I'm staying the fuck away from the border, although it's also impossible to stay the fuck away from the border because like 90% of the country lives technically within 100 mile enforcement.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But if you are happening to go through the border and you do get stopped by law enforcement, you should not talk to them.

You should, you should say that you're staying silent and will only speak with a lawyer.

You have certain things that you have to say, right?

If they decide to talk to you about something other than, you know, here's my passport, etc.

Do I have anything to declare?

Which you do have to answer.

If they attempt to engage you in other conversation about, say, your political beliefs, all you have to say is, is, am I being detained?

And if they say yes, you say, I plead the fifth and I demand to speak to a lawyer, and then nothing else.

There's nothing else you say.

That's how you should handle this situation.

Yeah.

You definitely do not need to debate your politics.

Not required.

With the Border Patrol.

Tell them how you feel about Palestine.

That's, yeah, not going to end well.

No, not necessary.

And yeah,

like, it's one of those those things.

I have no desire to like get into an online beef with the fellow who got stopped.

He is a big boy and able to make his own choices, but I do not recommend you make those same choices because there's no actual benefit to you in doing that, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, don't talk to cops.

It's very easy to not talk to cops.

I'm doing it right now.

Uh-huh.

That's what you think.

Trivially easy.

Yeah,

it's simple and unnecessary.

And it's just like largely the problem is that, and this is even something that he talked about where, like, well, the guy seemed really nice and he and apologetic and like he didn't want to have to do this.

And if you're having a conversation like that with them, then

they're getting what they want out of it, which is for you to feel like that, right?

For you to feel like, oh, okay, this guy's, this guy's nice.

I can chat with him for a little while.

You feel safe enough to talk.

Yeah.

Yes.

That's the whole thing.

That's their entire job.

That's what they try to get you to do.

Yeah.

And again, like, this is, this is specifically if you are like a U.S.

citizen coming to re-enter the country.

There's

different rules and different suggestions which you should talk with an immigration lawyer about if you are not a U.S.

citizen.

Yes.

This is not advice for people who are coming here and not citizens.

Yeah.

Yeah.

None of this is legal advice.

But yeah, you really, really do not need to get into a debate with the border guard about your politics when you're trying to enter the country.

Or any other time, really.

Just don't do it.

Or really any time, frankly.

Yeah.

There's no point in time in which that's useful to you or anyone else.

You ain't changing that mindset.

Maybe there's more to politics than debate.

No.

Speaking of more to politics, the PKK.

What's going on with the PKK, fellas?

We should give a brief overview of who the PKK is.

The PKK is the Kurdish Workers' Party, and it is originally a Maoist and now not that terrorist group.

That's legally how it's defined by the United States and by most Western countries.

That was started in southern Turkey like in the late 70s, close to 50 years ago.

And it started out as a rather different kind of organization than it is.

It's one of its founders, and generally, the guy referred to as its founder is a dude named Abdullah Ajalan or Appo, who got captured in Kenya a few decades back and has been in a Turkish prison ever since, but does continue to write stuff that informs, because there's kind of this strong Maoist core at the heart of the foundation of the party, continues to have a lot of influence over it.

And this is the root of kind of the different organizations that sprang out and became what we call Rojava, is this group that kind of came in during ISIS's invasion and, you know, had changed significantly from its Maoist roots at that point.

And kind of from the PKK, we get the YPG and the YPJ and, you know, these different social and militant movements in northeast Syria.

Anyway.

Yeah.

They would dispute the from the PKK.

They sure would.

Yes.

But Robert's not wrong.

For a good legal reason.

Yes.

Yes.

But they're all inspired by the political thought of Ojulan, right?

Like we can say that safely.

Yeah.

And Ojulan, I guess, addressed by video the 12th Congress of the PKK, which occurred earlier this month, at which they voted to disband themselves and lay down their arms.

So that's the uh, they had a meeting, right?

They get together.

Obviously, it seems that Turkey decided not to airstrike that meeting.

Turkey has been carrying out airstrikes against the PKK in three different countries for decades, and sort of small arms engagements as well, and artillery and the whole nine yards.

So, yeah, at that conference, they decided to lay down their arms and begin disbanding themselves and return to

they're still pursuing their struggle, I guess, for freedom for Kurdistan, but this time through the democratic process.

Yeah.

We're going to cover this subject in more detail on Tuesday, next Tuesday.

But suffice it to say, like, this does not mean that like the PKK is like that all of the kind of different movements that came out of and were inspired by the PKK are like folding up and setting up shop.

This is more of a pragmatic decision made as the result of the changes of situations on the ground and the progress that a number of these other movements have made.

And yeah, this is worthy of deeper discussion.

We'll give it deeper discussion.

But this is something that's going to hopefully at least mean that Turkey spends less time bombing northern Iraq.

Although that, that it may be foolish to hope too much for that.

Yeah, I do indeed love to bomb northern Iraq.

I guess they're calling it their like Good Friday moment.

So for people who are familiar with the IRA situation.

Yeah, when the IRA was like,

maybe we've done enough.

And significantly when there were releases of people who were incarcerated.

Right, right.

And the British government did make some significant concessions, too.

Yes.

So we'll learn more if there were concessions involved in this process or if it was a kind of unilateral thing.

Yeah.

There's a lot of rumors, again, just to go briefly, that

the Turkish government essentially needs, that Erdogan essentially needs some of the support of the Kurdish parties in order to maintain, keep doing Erdogan shit.

So, again, we'll see on all that.

Yep.

Speaking of not blowing each other up, India and Pakistan.

Well, yeah, slightly blow it, lightly blowing each other up.

Can we say that without minimizing it?

Yeah, there's been some blowing up.

Yeah, so let's talk about this.

We are thankfully no longer on Nuclear War Watch.

Yeah.

Which is great.

Nuke Watch, put on pause.

It's all cool.

It's group.

Everything's fine.

I was talking with a friend last night about whenever this sort of confrontation happens, one of the nice things about a globalist world order is that if the rest of the world goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, fellas, guys,

come on now.

It kind of works.

Pull him back.

Hold me back, bro.

China got a hand on Pakistan's chest.

Cold buddy.

It's not worth it, mate.

It's not worth it.

It's not worth it.

They're not worth it.

That's the role of the United Nations.

JD Vance, like, massaging India's shoulders.

I know, man.

I know, but it's cool.

Whenever things get really spicy between two equal powers, if one of their buddies just can go, hey, hey, dude, whoa, whoa,

whoa,

it kind of works, which is a little bit silly, but yeah.

Yeah, just remind everyone in charge, do you know how rich you are?

Come on, you don't want this.

Like,

you've got hot tubs in your mansion.

It ain't worth it.

Yeah.

Foreign politics, so much of it is just so unbelievably stupid.

Like, it is just like weird nationalist masculinity bullshit where it's like, okay, so we killed some of your people, and then you're going to kill some of our people.

And then we can both agree that we like retaliated, neither of us backed down, and then we'll do a ceasefire.

So the good news here is that we did actually get a ceasefire.

The ceasefire is holding and has continued to hold.

This is not like a kind of like Israel-Palestine ceasefire where the Israelis immediately just start like shooting everyone an instant later.

This is actually holding.

It's good.

It will probably continue to hold.

We got some more details from Reuters who talked to a bunch of officials from different camps.

But we know now

we're going to do a longer episode about this next week.

Tuesday.

Yeah.

All the wars on Tuesday.

Probably Tuesday, unless like, I don't know, like some other shit happens.

Who knows?

I don't want to ever promise an episode's going out on a day because

Tuesday or Wednesday.

If like we could wake up up.

Trump has like declared that like his meme coin is now the official currency of the United States or something.

Who knows?

Tuesday or Wednesday, we'll say.

Yeah.

So what seems to have happened that really escalated everything is that India fired on a critical Pakistani airbase and Pakistan was like, all right, got to go fucking sicko mode now.

And so they do their retaliation.

India appears to not have understood exactly how pissed off Pakistan was going to be about them hitting hitting this airbase, which also, like, you would,

I don't know what their military planning is like.

You would assume countries normally love it when you hit their air bases.

Yes.

Like whenever one Naruto ran in Area 51.

Yeah, like, what are we doing here?

What are we doing here?

But the thing that does seem to have worked is that Marco Rubio seems to have actually been like able to kind of pass information along between them.

Vance was also sort of involved.

It seemed mostly like Rubio was able to pass a thing to the Pakistani government being like, hey, the Indians are going to stop.

And the Pakistani government was like, yeah.

Yeah, right.

Right.

But fuck this.

This is getting done.

We did our retaliatory attacks.

We fucked up a bunch of expensive jets.

That is key is that everybody can sort of, this didn't go on so far that.

that like everyone has a lot to avenge and it it went on enough that everybody can claim some wins pakistan could be like we really did some damage to india's best chunk of their air force.

And India can be like, we blew up some stuff, you know?

Everybody's got a,

if you, if you don't have enough information to know that like nobody really won, you can pretend you did, right?

And that's what both of them are doing.

Yeah.

And I think this was, this was what we were talking about this last week, like the best case scenario for this is actually kind of better than the best case scenario I was thinking of.

I mean, not this is like a, none of this is a good outcome, but the outcome here of like, it's like a very abbreviated version of like an Israel-Iran thing where they shoot at each other a few times and then stop.

Hopefully this will continue to hold and hopefully both sides will not take this.

And this is something that they were talking about.

One of the experts that Rose was talking to was talking about was like, hopefully both sides don't see this as a like, oh, we can have conflict between two nuclear armed powers and it'll be okay.

Hopefully both sides were going to be like, this was very dumb.

But right now, it seems to be over.

The ceasefire is holding.

Hopefully more people don't die.

Yep.

Yeah, that the salt stock price, though, that that took a fat L after all those refiles got shot down.

That was kind of funny.

You know what else is funny?

Hopefully,

ads, yeah, sports podcast.

Nice one, yeah.

That's why they pay me the mediocre bucks.

Oh, yeah.

Welcome back to something ED.

If you have ED, please consider him.

Hims.

Hims.

Yeah.

Cutter, I hardly.

Okay.

No worries.

No, no, Garrison, I'm so proud of you, buddy.

That was the right thing to say.

That was the right thing to say.

What a beautiful moment.

Ahead of Trump's planned trip to the Middle East, Cutter has offered a gift to President Trump, a $400 million Boeing 747-8 luxury jet known as a palace in the sky, which Trump does plan to accept.

Stupid fucking plane.

You got to look up a picture of this thing.

It is absurd.

And I got to say, honestly, my primary thoughts, I know they should be like offense and anger, but they're mostly, ah, Cutter, you know the assignment.

You knew exactly how to.

This man can't turn down a luxury palace plane?

Of course not.

Someone should offer him the fucking snow piercer.

You know it's all gold up in there.

It is.

It is all gold up in there, actually.

You can look it up.

It absolutely is.

It's not.

Yeah, yeah, no.

I don't need to, Garrison.

In my mind, Palace, I've already seen the palace in the sky.

Oh, God.

Okay, no need to speak.

All right, hit me with the link.

Why did we allow this to be constructed?

Because it's one of those things.

This is not, this is like, again, should it not be legal for Trump to do this?

Is it not legal for Trump to do this?

Of course.

Is it physically possible for the man Donald Trump to say no to this plane?

No.

No.

That never was in the cards.

This is a temple to the defeat of the international workers' movement.

It's funny.

Right.

Oh.

I want to see pictures of this plane.

Someone send me pictures of the plane.

Oh, man.

Oh, oh, good lord.

Oh, good lord.

Okay, I'm putting it in.

Yeah, I mean, it's exactly the plane you'd think it was.

Okay, of course.

It's the most Trump thing you could ever imagine.

Yeah, it's so funny.

I'm so angry.

It's just Trump Tower in the Sky.

No, it's actually what I will say about that, Gears.

Trump Tower in the Sky is like

a shit built to look fancy to

tasteless Americans.

The Qatari version actually is

actually extremely nice.

Yes.

The Emirate of Qatar knows what they're fucking doing when it comes to interior design for fucking evil rich people.

You could have had this, if you replace the walls that are clearly a plane, this could have been like a set on Andor from like a high-level coruscant, like rich person's house.

Like that's, that's what we're talking, especially that like room with the elevator in the middle.

Like that's a set where Mon Mothma yells at her husband.

Like it's beautiful.

So this plane would be used as a new Air Force One.

Sure, buddy.

And after his term, Trump would retain ownership through his presidential library foundation.

Of course.

That's miserable.

There is so many issues with this, from like national security to like a very clear bribe.

On Monday, Trump told reporters, quote, I could be a stupid person and say, no, we don't want a free, very expensive airplane.

I thought it was a great gesture, unquote.

Of course.

Of course.

Owned.

Someone made a comment that we received the Statue of Liberty as a gift.

That's not really the same thing.

Yeah, that's not really the same thing, guys.

If, like, I don't know, it's Jefferson, I don't know who was president when it arrived, but if the president was living inside the Statue of Liberty, Chester?

I think it was Chester A.R.

over there.

Yeah.

Okay.

I don't remember exactly.

I do also love that Trump isn't making the same argument that like the old that Clinton supporters used to, which is like, well, you can take money from a thing without being influenced by it.

And like the New York Times is making this argument.

They're like, well, just because people are spending $1 million to have dinner at a crypto thing with Trump doesn't mean that he's actually being influenced by the money, so you can't call it bribery.

And I was like, this is great society.

We love this.

We love this.

Just

give the president the fancy...

Quid pro quat?

Yeah.

To be fair, Trump does have something of a history of entering into a financial contract with people and then totally abandoning his end of it.

So

you could make that argument.

Yeah,

it's so bad.

Trump did get into an argument with ABC anchors when they asked him if he thought this could be seen a bribe, I'll play a short clip here.

You're ABC fake news, right?

Why not?

Because only ABC, well, a few of you would.

Let me tell you,

you should be embarrassed asking that question.

They're giving us a free jet.

I could say, no, no, no, don't give us.

I want to pay you a billion or 400 million or whatever it is.

Or I could say, thank you very much.

You know, there was an old golfer named Sam Sneed.

Did you ever hear him?

He won 82 tournaments.

He was a great golfer.

After that, he goes on to talk about golf for a whole minute, building an analogy based on making an easy putt on a golf course.

I'm going to quote from BBC: quote: Attorney General Pam Bondi reportedly investigated the legality of the deal and determined that because there are no explicit conditions attached, it would not amount to a bribe.

Conservatives and others were quick to point out that Bondi was registered as a lobbyist for Qatar prior to joining Trump's cabinet, at some point earning up to $115,000 a month for her work for the Qatari government.

Yeah, no one's going to be like influenced by a mere $114,000 a month.

You couldn't, for example,

pay me that much money and get me to say everyone should buy a Chevy truck.

The new Ram.

That's the vehicle of the proletariat.

Ram.

We know that this is fake as Robert would never knowingly endorse a Chevy product.

Here said, for $114,000 a month, you think I wouldn't sell Chevys?

This is the most corrupt administration we've ever seen before.

It's absurd, just completely flying it in your face.

Even Ted Cruz said that this gift could impose, quote, significant espionage and surveillance problems, unquote.

Because sleeping that plane is going to be so fun for the secret system.

Oh, my God.

How they're jumping at the bottom.

The whole plane is just a bug.

It's a flying bug for so funny.

Tariq government, they're going to listen into every Air Force One meeting.

Not only are they going to listen into it, the guy whose job that is, like, they've already been paying almost as much as the plane cost for him to get preemptive therapy to sit and listen to that many Trump inner circle conversations.

The fucking emir himself is putting a hand.

I know, man, I know it's going to be hard.

Like, we're all back, we're all behind you.

Everyone from, like, Ben Shapiro to Laura Loomer have have opposed this de facto bribe as quote-unquote sleazy, while also pointing to Cutter as a terrorist-aligned state.

Who did you think your guy was?

Come on.

Yeah, you watched Donald Trump.

You believe that.

You think he's going to take a golden palace in the sky?

Come on, man.

Didn't they also wheel out a mobile McDonald's family in Carter so he could

yeah that was in Saudi Arabia they're also planning to possibly construct a new Trump tower in Dubai sure that's honestly not both Dubai and Trump deserve that kind of like shade yeah sure they belong together yeah the people that Trump is negotiating with here just really know how to like get wins out of him.

They're like, yeah, you can build a Trump Tower.

Here's a mobile McDonald's.

Here's a $400 million free jet.

Yeah, I know they really have him on law.

It's tragic because mobile McDonald's and Burger Kings used to be a sign of American logistical dominance.

I was wondering if it had invaded Iraq.

Like, fuck our ability to airstrike anyone anywhere.

We can put a fully operational McDonald's anywhere on the planet in about 16 hours.

Like, no one else can do that.

Yeah.

We invaded Iraq with Burger King trailers in 2003.

And to see it turned against our values so much is just deeply if no, I mean, I'm joking here, but it is funny.

Speaking of foreign trade,

what is that I hear?

Is that the lucid melody of Tariff?

Tarif Garrison.

We're all thinking about the best way we ever spent our company money.

Every penny of that $114,000 a month Chevy gives us for telling people to buy the new Rams.

It went to a good place.

Yeah.

If we could just get one more automotive industry sponsor, then I can finally rewrite White Riot to be about white genocide in South Africa.

That's right.

We're courting Shell right now.

So don't worry, James.

We're going to get that cover.

I'm glad to hear it.

So I heard all the tariffs are gone, basically.

I heard we're back to normal.

Nothing ever happens.

I can go back to buying Timu all day long.

I can't stop playing those T-Mu gambling ads.

And everything's normal, right, Mia?

Okay, so let's,

where are we at with the turf tariffs?

So there were actual negotiations between the U.S.

and China, and so they agreed to a 90-day pause on the 145% tariff and the 120% tariff that China had imposed in retaliation.

However, comma, there's still still 30% blanket tariffs on all Chinese goods, which is in and of itself alone enough to cause a recession.

Oh, my just what everyone seems to have forgotten this.

China's is back down to 10% across the board on all U.S.

goods.

Now, again, this is a 90-day pause, which has been like, this is just the way that all this functions now is nothing ever ends.

It just gets kicked off like down the road for 90 days.

So we'll be back here in...

90.

Well, okay, we'll be back in the crisis zone a bit

before that because we're still on the other 90-day countdown, which the liberation day tariff tariff one for every single country on earth.

Honestly, I don't think these countdowns are real.

And I know this is like, this is like different from the way like other commentators will talk about how these tariffs aren't real.

Like, I'm not saying these tariffs aren't real.

I don't know if there's someone in the White House who is literally counting down each day here like this.

No, I think there is.

I think it's Navarro.

Because Navarro actually wants all of these tariffs.

And

that's the driving thing behind this.

Is Trump kind of wants wants these tariffs but there's not enough of him there psychologically to like push it unless navarro is doing it

but the reason these are taking the form of pauses is because trump like actually wants them until he can like negotiate his big shiny deal or whatever the fuck that like can't happen structurally for reasons we'll get into but like i'm just remembering the canada-mexico tariffs that trump put on a 90-day pause and then we completely forgot about and instead did the liberation day tariffs which then got another 90-day pause no but there was also the but but also like the the auto tariffs got paused, and then those came off and like went into effect.

Yeah, I think that's it.

So some of these like have happened.

And like, and I think, I really think the actual thing it comes down to is like, will Navarro be the last person in the room with Trump, or will it be one of his other cabinet people who don't support this stuff?

And I think it's just a coin flip, basically, as to like who rap fucks the other one successfully as to whether like all this stuff happens.

And there's still like more tariffs that are like floating in the air that we haven't heard anything about from last week.

Wild, wild tariffs frolicking in the woods.

Yeah.

Like sourdough.

They can just float it.

I want to actually explain what the fuck is going on with the Chinese tariffs, though, because the reporting on it has been really bad and no one has any idea what the fuck is going on.

So, okay.

On the one hand, there is still the 30% across the board on all Chinese goods.

However, the fee for small packages, right, which is the stuff that was in the de minimis exemption that we talked about getting reduced.

So that tariff is at 54%

or a $100 flat fee for the package.

What qualifies as a small package value?

I think it's like sub $800.

Okay.

Roughly.

So,

yeah.

And they also still have to go through like actual full customs, which the packages from DeMinimus weren't going through, right?

Okay.

So this is still lethal to like Taimu and Xi'an and like all of the all the companies that have been relying on this stuff.

It's still lethal to like vast quantities of the supply of like parts of the supply chain that we haven't even seen yet that we're getting like the one kind of screw that they need in cheap Chinese packages because you could just do that.

And so and so that's what's still in effect right now.

And as best I can tell, there hasn't actually been any negotiation.

It's also unclear whether the Chinese government like knew that those were going to go back into effect.

Because Trump did this whole thing of like, ah, the tariffs are over, blah, blah, blah, blah, like no other 30% tariff on all goods.

And then the next day, he was like, oh, yeah, no, but the small package one's still there.

And that rates also change.

So it's also possible by tomorrow the rates are different because this is the dominant feature of all of this structurally is just complete chaos.

Like it's, it's just chaos.

Nobody has any idea what the fuck is happening.

And this is just a complete fiasco for literally everyone because the shifts in tariff rates that are happening on a day-by-day basis are shifts large enough to shift the entire structure of the global economy.

And they're just happening every day.

And that's, and that's the thing that's like.

fucking the economy almost as much as like the actual tariffs is just the chaos and the uncertainty and the inability to do any kind of like, even the short-term planning that businesses usually do.

It's also worth noting that like there's no actual trade deal, right?

Like there isn't actually a U.S.-China trade deal.

There's just they both agreed to like back off for a while while they do negotiations.

There's also no structural way to actually like resolve the problem that Trump sees here, which is that like Trump and Navarro and the hardliners don't want there to be a U.S.

trade deficit with China.

And that's not a thing that could be solved.

That's never going to happen.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so, you know, and this has been playing out in other negotiations too.

The U.S.

has been in negotiations with India.

Trump just like came out and straight up lied and said that India had agreed to get rid of all their tariffs.

And India was like, no, we didn't.

What the fuck are you talking about?

Part of the deal.

Yeah.

So, you know, this has all turned into just an utter fiasco.

Meanwhile, we're starting to see signs that, yeah, the price increases that we all knew were coming are coming.

Walmart is doing massive price increases.

A bunch of other companies are considering them.

They're probably going to start very soon.

I want to read this quote from an economist named Marcus Nolan that NBC talked to, who is a senior institute for the Pearson Institute for International Economics.

He said, quote, I think we're in for a lot more turbulence and a lot more back and forth than the market seems to grasp, which I'm glad someone else is finally fucking saying this because like, yeah, no shit.

And part of what's going on here, too, is the market is just incredibly easy to manipulate because the people running the markets are very stupid.

And the moment they realize like you can just very, very easily make an unhinged amount of money by being like the terrorists are going to go into effect and then betting against the market.

There's been so much like insider stories of like insider trading from this stuff.

And I don't think that's like the major thing going on, but it's also like, it's just such an easy grip to pull if you know what's going to happen.

Like I could have made a bunch of money if I'd been willing to be like, hey, friends, give me a bunch of money to put to the stock market.

Let me short a bunch of shit the day before the Liberation Day terrorist or whatever.

And that's a plug for our new weekend show where Mia does Jim Kramer.

We're going to start doing stock portfolio suggestions.

It's called Mockets with Mia.

Markets with Mia.

Thank you, James.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I will, I will fucking I will throw darts at a dartboard and then throw the dartboard at a larger dartboard and I will outperform Jim Kramer.

Yeah, we're calling this the do whatever the opposite of Jim Kramer says power hour.

We've literally just reversed his audio.

It's such a powerful investment strategy.

Never been defeated.

Okay, so, so the one last thing I want to talk about, which is not quite tariff, but is econ related, is that there are, per the Financial Times, there is a plan in the Trump administration to roll back a bunch of the rules about leverage ratios that were imposed on banks after 2008.

And so, okay, Mia, what the fuck is a leverage ratio?

Thank you.

But the very short part is a lever underneath the bank.

And if you want to tip it over, you have to be quite a long way away from it, actually.

And then you pivot on the other end.

I think this is a very funny joke, but no one else is laughing on the call.

No, I would try to figure out how to write part two of it, but then you just brought up Archimedes.

I was trying to remember Archimedes' name, and I couldn't do it.

So, okay.

So, basically, basically what this is, is that, so banks have just like a bunch of unbelievably risky assets, and this is a requirement that they actually have assets that are safe.

Yeah.

So that if the assets that are risky go under, they don't get fucking nuked like everyone did in 2008.

Now, this is worth noting because one of the other kind of stories that's kind of flown under the radar is that in the past couple of years, a bunch of banks and a bunch of investment firms have been getting back to the literally the exact types of extremely risky mortgage-backed securities that caused the 2008 financial collapse.

It's literally the same people.

They're bringing them back, do the same thing again.

They've also been doing it with auto loans, which is great.

And in the middle of this, the Trump administration wants to roll back a bunch of the protections that have been maintaining this very, very precarious balance that the banking system has been in to like not really collapse for the past decade and a half.

So that's going to be fun.

The rumor is it's going to happen over the summer.

If he does this over the summer, right as everything kicks off, it's going to be a trip.

Do you know what else is a trip?

These products and services that support this podcast.

Woo!

All right, we are back.

We're going to close this episode with me and James talking about a whole bunch of really bad immigration stuff that has happened again, which I feel like is kind of an evergreen for us.

Same thing with Tariff Talk.

We always have some bad immigration news.

And this week is no different.

On Friday, May 9th, Stephen Miller announced that the administration is, quote, actively looking at suspending habeas corpus.

James, do you want to give a...

very brief definition of what habeas corpus is?

Yeah, it's a foundation of like most legal systems in the world which draw i guess on english common law means bring me the body right like the idea is you have to present some evidence before just incarcerating if you're going to say this guy killed somebody there better be a corpse right needs to be like reason and due process for detention yeah yeah

you can't just lock someone up because you wanted to yeah actually you can but uh you should you sometimes can and

this does predate the united states and the united States itself has suspended habeas corpus a few times, usually in specific states.

For instance, following the Pearl Harbor attack, habeas corpus was suspended in Hawaii to detain Japanese civilians.

President Grant and Congress worked together to suspend habeas corpus in South Carolina during Reconstruction amidst terrorist attacks from the KKK, which is kind of crazy to think about in retrospect.

And the very first time habeas corpus was suspended was in the lead up to the Civil War when President Lincoln called for its suspension in the state of Maryland.

Now, that unilateral action was later deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and now it's widely recognized that only Congress has the right to suspend habeas corpus.

This is in the case of rebellion or invasion.

Now, this is something that Stephen Miller is talking about.

It should be incredibly worrying.

Obviously, they've kind of tried to make this happen just already without like explicitly saying so, which is also what like FDR tried to do during World War II, where they don't formally like call for the suspension like nationwide, but they start instituting policies that definitely like

do that.

Yeah, exactly, which is why we're seeing so many habeas petitions being filed across the state when people have been detained unlawfully.

Homeland Security Secretary Christine Noam said on Wednesday in a congressional hearing that the level of border crossings under Joe Biden provides sufficient legal justification to suspend habeas corpus following Trump's declaration of invasion.

Yeah.

So this is something to watch out for as they start trying to basically codify all of the actions that they're currently doing, which can be construed as illegal or certainly legally questionable.

They're going to try to find ways to make them more explicitly legal.

So,

probably the most notable immigration happening this week is one that we already covered on the show, and it is the reopening of the United States Refugee Admissions Program.

We're taking refugees again.

We did it.

We did it.

We did it.

Yep.

Unfortunately, we're only taking the persecuted Afrikaners of South Africa.

Wait, what?

Yes, Garrison.

The survivors of the white genocide.

Those who made it through.

Quote-unquote white genocide.

The white genocide that Evan Grok doesn't agree exists.

Yeah, let me say that.

Elon Musk can't make his digital trial believe in.

No, let me actually quote from a Grok doing a George R.

Banks impression.

We don't have to do this, Garrison.

Misa Grok, oopsie, you said asking about the replies, but Misa tigs, you meaning the big talk about South Africa, yeah.

Do white genocide talk mucho controversial?

I'm sorry, I can't do the rest.

That's not even good.

Jar Jar, I'm sorry.

He speaks Spanish.

I think it's chucking all the racial stereotypes.

Yeah, why are we?

How did they make it more racist?

Starting white farmers getting attacked too much.

Like two hundred and fourteen attacks a year and political words like kill to poor, making it worse.

No more

saying twenty twenty five.

It's too bad.

I'm not getting hazard pay for exposure to this.

He does go on for like four more sentences.

There's so much more.

I like it.

I love how you said, like, it's a fucking dubstep record or something.

If only we could cut in the song, I've Never Met a Nice South African right here.

Yep.

I think we can.

We'll just do the first verse.

We just discussed it.

We're fine for copyright.

Yeah, yeah.

Throw that in here.

Yep.

It's even got got a reference to Myanmar, so we're fine.

We've covered it before.

It's

a worldly song.

Misa says, no, thank you.

Stop.

I've gone.

Sophie's giving a double thumbs down.

Everyone is very upset right now, apart from Garrison, who's laughing like a little imp,

having to introduce Jarjar Binks to the call.

Right, back to the Afrikaners.

The 59 Afrikaners who were brought to the United States came after the United States halted all refugee admissions in January.

Thousands of people, including Afghans and Iraqis who worked for the United States, remain stranded.

Some of them are stuck at airports.

Most of them are in third countries where they only have limited visas, and they're looking at timing out their visas in those third countries.

As a direct result of the Trump administration's fuckery with the white genocide stuff, the Episcopalian Church, not the most work of organizations, has suspended its contracts, its resettlement contracts with the government.

Critical support?

Yeah, I mean, I read the letter from one of their bishops

on our show about this, and like he was very forthright.

And

I generally, genuinely do have critical support for the faith-based organizations who help refugees.

It's a good thing to do, and I'm glad that they are doing it.

Especially if they're not trying to turn it into a weird missionary operation like evangelicals do.

For sure, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, what's it called?

The fucking Glenn Beckworn doesn't.

It's not a resettlement agency, luckily.

So, in Worcester, Massachusetts, a place that I didn't know there was a Worcester in America, actually.

Yes.

Oh, yeah, baby.

So, how is it then that as a nation, Americans are incapable of saying Worcestershire?

Oh, boy.

Yeah.

Because that's just one state and it's not a good one.

Also, that's sauce, right?

It's also the place I was born, Garrison.

Oh, well.

Yeah, Worcestershire.

For those of you wondering, there it is.

People, yeah, I get.

I do, we do have to call it Worcester because that's what it's called in this country.

I care a lot about accurate pronunciations of places and names, so it is Worcester.

Yeah, Worcester's a city, and Worcestershire is the county in England, too.

So you don't have the county, and well, you have Massachusetts.

So Worcester, Massachusetts, IC threatened to arrest a 21-year-old woman named Augusta Clara.

And they told her that they'd have to take her three-months-old baby as well because they couldn't leave it with her 17 year old sister on account of the younger woman being a minor.

As it turned out, this was a ploy to lure out her mother.

Clara called her mother who came out to take the baby and they arrested her mother, which was who they'd been wanting to arrest the whole time, right?

This arrest came the day after they had arrested the baby's father in what Clara says was a response to him honking his horn at an undercover ICE agent.

Neighbors tried to intervene in the scene, which resulted in the Worcester, Massachusetts Police Department responding.

The cops proceeded to body slam a 17-year-old girl, arrest her, and arrest a local woman for what they claimed was pushing them.

Locals have been protesting since.

The city council has moved its meetings online, citing public safety concerns.

And in another bungled raid in the same state, ICE agents left a 12-year-old child alone on the sidewalk.

and drove their vehicle aggressively towards a city councillor who was trying to document the situation.

Meanwhile, in Florida, DeSantis has sworn in 100 Florida Highway Patrol deputies as special U.S.

Marshals.

And they're claiming this allows them to conduct immigration enforcement operations of their own outside of cooperation with ICE or CBP.

That adds to the 2,000 ATF and DEA agents the Trump administration has requested to join ICE teams.

So when you're watching videos, sometimes you'll see when there are these like ICE snatch squads, right?

There are ATF agents agents with them.

And what they're generally there to do is like to secure, to provide additional security on the team while the ICE agents do the actual apprehensions.

DeSantis has also offered, quote, new detention facilities.

I haven't seen much reporting on this, but in the same statement on his website where he talked about cross-swearing the highway patrol guys, he also talked about these quote new detention facilities.

I want to take this opportunity to reflect on the existing detention facilities in Florida because they are the worst in a system of horrific detention facilities.

The ACLU has documented, quote, persistent emotional, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of staff of these facilities.

Detainees are reportedly being punished for simply seeking medical care, being denied medical attention despite having pre-existing conditions.

The report also found ample evidence of gendered and racialized mistreatment.

The Chrome detention center, that's K-R-O-M-E, is in particular horrific.

Migrants there in one instance were held in chains on buses for 16 hours and told to use the bathroom where they were sitting on the buses.

A migrant named Osiris Azahel Vasquez-Martinez somehow kept his phone inside the Chrome detention center and was able to live stream or at least post videos that showed horrific overcrowding.

Some sources claim there are as many as 4,000 people in the detention center, which has a capacity of 500.

And two people that we know of has died there since January.

Florida looking to add more detention centers.

Not great.

That's about all I got.

Garrison, talk to us about Project Homecoming.

Who's coming home?

Yeah, and again, we will actually close on some good news.

So it's not all horrible stuff this entire time.

But We do need to mention Project Homecoming.

So this was a proclamation issued by Trump on May 9th entitled Establishing Project Homecoming, which aims to curb a quote-unquote full-scale invasion.

It claims to devote more federal resources to assist self-deportation via the CBP Home app,

including paying for flights for those who are, quote, voluntarily and permanently departing the United States, unquote.

It says, quote, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall create a concierge service whereby any alien illegally present in the United States may arrive at an airport with or without appropriate travel documents, book air travel to permanently relocate to a different country.

So they are really strengthening these self-deportation mechanisms.

Section 2 promises to provide financial incentives in the form of a quote-unquote exit bonus for each illegal alien who voluntarily and permanently departs the United States.

Yeah.

So a couple of really weird things there just off the bat.

Yes.

A like permanently departs.

It seems to suggest that you would be permanently barred from ever entering the United States, acquiring a visa again.

Secondly, if you don't have travel documents, the country that you're traveling to or through has no reason to admit you, right?

The U.S.

government cannot force other countries to admit people without travel documents.

There are things called refugee travel documents, which allow people who have had their passports, et cetera, stolen to travel.

I don't think that's what's going to happen here.

Yeah, it does mention something about trying to negotiate with other countries to allow people without documentation to arrive there, but like yeah, will they actually do that?

Probably not.

Like they've claimed to not have to need to do that before.

So like, yeah, that's not like a solid promise.

Now, those who choose to remain will face quote sweeping consequences, including removal, prosecution, incarceration, and fines, as consistent with applicable law for immigration-related crimes, the garnishment of wages, and the confiscation of savings and personal property, including homes and vehicles, unquote.

So they're threatening to steal all of your things.

This proclamation follows this propaganda video shared by Cristino and the Department of Homeland Security.

This video was released a few weeks ago, and it contains some similar rhetoric regarding self-deportation and fines being imposed for those who stay in the country.

An illegal alien from Guatemala charged with raping a child in Massachusetts.

An MS-13 gang member from El Salvador accused of murdering a Texas man.

A Venezuelan charged with filming and selling child pornography in Michigan.

These are just some of the heinous migrant criminals caught because of President Donald J.

Trump's leadership.

I'm Christy Noam, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security.

Under President Trump, attempted illegal border crossings are at the lowest levels ever recorded, and over 100,000 illegal aliens have been arrested.

If you are here illegally, you're next.

You will be fined nearly $1,000 a day, imprisoned, and deported.

You will never return.

But if you register using our CBP home app and leave now, you could be allowed to return legally.

Do what's right.

Leave now.

Under President Trump, America's laws, border, and families will be protected.

The whole style of this video is very bizarre.

Yeah.

It's like a Marvel trailer.

It's like a Marvel trailer with like the aesthetics of like mid-2000s like dystopian sci-fi.

Yeah.

Again, the end of that video, she talks about being able to return legally, which is in contrast to the language in a Project Homecoming, which says that people would be leaving the United States permanently.

Finally, the proclamation directs the Secretary of Homeland Security to, within 60 days, supplement existing law enforcement and removal operations by deputizing and contracting state and local police, former feds, and quote, other individuals to increase the enforcement and removal operations force of the Department of Homeland Security by no less than 20,000 officers in order order to conduct an intensive campaign to remove illegal aliens.

And now, as of this morning, May 15th, the DHS has requested to mobilize over 20,000 National Guard troops from the Department of Defense to comply with Trump's order to expand its immigration crackdown.

And on Wednesday, the FBI ordered agents to deprioritize white-collar crime investigations for the remainder of 2025 to instead focus on immigration enforcement.

Field offices notified their agents that now one-third of their time must go towards assisting Trump's immigration policies.

I'm going to quote from Reuters: quote: The orders came on the same day that Matthew Galiotti, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division, issued new guidance to prosecutors that scales back the scope of white-collar cases historically pursued by the department and orders prosecutors to, quote, minimize the length and collateral impact of such investigations.

Jeez.

Again, the most corrupt administration ever, ever before seen.

Yeah.

And now for the good news, to close the episode, the Tufts University student, Rasmay Oz Turk, who was blackbagged on the streets of Massachusetts for co-authoring a pro-Palestine op-ed, has been released on bail as of May 9th after spending six weeks in ICE detention.

The judge said that Ms.

Oz Turk's claims of her First Amendment and due process rights being violated are, quote-unquote, very substantial.

And then on Wednesday, May 14th, the Georgetown University researcher from India named Batar Khan Suri was released from immigration detention as he continues to fight two deportation cases brought against him by the Trump administration for his support of Palestine.

So this is now the third or fourth

person that has been released from ICE custody following political prosecutions based on their activism.

Yeah.

And that's a good thing.

Now, these cases are still going to be continuing in courts, but the fact these people have been released from ICE detention is good news.

And in most cases, they were released on their own recognizance, right?

Without GPS tagging or any like yeah, they're free to move throughout the country because most of them have cases in like multiple states.

ICE is trying to move them around to many different locations.

And I know that Surrey and Azturk are able to go back to like their homes.

Yeah.

So like it's good.

It shows that the courts are still able to stop some of this stuff at this time.

Yes, and that the actual ability of a lawyer to intervene when you were treated illegally by the state is not nil.

Yeah.

Yet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good point.

Positive developments here.

But, like, yeah, as we'll see with Miller's goal of getting rid of habeas corpus and accelerating law enforcement operations with these 20,000 new National Guard troops, this is this is something that's still going to be a very, a very hot issue for quite a while.

And we will continue to report on it as it develops.

Well, everybody, until next time, remember something.

WeSa reported the news.

To fuck's sake.

We reported the news.

Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

It Could Happen Here is a production of CoolZone Media.

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