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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. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Robert Evans here, and welcome to it could happen here, a podcast about how things are falling apart and how to maybe put them back together. Obviously, the biggest story probably in the world right now is the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, and a major corollary of that story is how dramatically things in Russia have taken a turn for the totalitarian the country has become increasingly isolated from most of the global community. This is due to a mix of sanctions. To a lot of businesses pulling out just because of the social consequences of not doing so, and of policies that have been put down by Putin's government in order to crack down on dissent and further remove Russia from any kind of contact with the West. As a result, it's kind of difficult to get in touch with people who are resisting Putin's government from within Russia. Anarchist activists in particular are not easy people to reach. However, we did recently sit down. With one of these individuals and talk to them. So this episode will both be an interview with that person and a bit of history about the anarchist movements within Russia. Russia has actually a very long history of anarchist organizing, 2 of them men, generally considered foundational thinkers in anarchist political theory. Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin were both born in Russia, both lived and agitated under the Czars. Bakunin was an advocate and a major theorist of political terrorism. He fled the country. Was returned and ultimately spent like 10 years in prison there. Kropotkin was the author of a seminal anarcho Communist text titled the Conquest of Bread, and he was only able to return to Russia after the 1917 revolution. He died there in 1921. It's also worth noting that Peter Kropotkin is canonically the ancestor to Tommy Pickles of the Rugrats, but that's something you can look up on your own now. While some of the most influential anarchists in history were Russian, and anarchist organizing was a potent. Part of Pre 1917 Russian political history, the success of the Bolsheviks after 1917 led to the movements near annihilation. Emma Goldman was yet another major anarchist activist and thinker who was born and educated in Russia. She immigrated to the United States in 1885 where she promptly helped try to assassinate a steel magnate in revenge for his brutality against striking workers. Goldman grew to prominence as a labor activist and women's rights activist in the last decade of the 1800s in 1901. Her work helped inspire Leon Choga gosh to assassinate President William McKinley. Well, Emma Goldman had no direct connection to Cho Gosh. She defended his actions by saying, as an anarchist, I am opposed to violence. But if the people want to do away with assassins, they must do away with the conditions which produce murderers. There's much more to say about Emma Goldman, but for our purposes what matters is that she was arrested for opposing the draft in World War One and eventually deported back to Russia right after the revolution. Goldman was initially psyched that the Czars had been deposed, but quickly became disillusioned by the violence of the forming totalitarian Soviet state. She considered this a betrayal of the revolution and wrote a series of articles for the New York world that have gone down as one of the first exposes of conditions in the Soviet Union. Goldman's work was criticized by many left wing intellectuals. Outside of Russia. But she was correct about political repression and the new Bolshevik workers paradise. Matters did not improve for anarchists in the 1st 20 years of the new regime. In 1937 in his history of anarchism in Russia, E Yaroslavsky wrote in the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. At the present time the anarchists no longer enjoy any influence over the masses. They are met with only as isolated individualists. The fall of the Soviet Union, the coming of democracy, and the slow rise to power of Vladimir Putin did not enormously alter the state of affairs. Russian anarchists still exercise relatively little influence over the masses. Most of them struggle towards autonomy as isolated individuals. In March of 2022, in the third week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I sat down with one of these people. We've been chatting online through Reddit for a couple of weeks, and the process of setting up a proper audio interview was difficult to say. At least repression of all political dissent under Putin is extreme. More than 13,000 people were arrested at anti war protests in the first two weeks of the war, so you will understand why our source was paranoid about his identity. I had to download a secure app I had never even heard of before and he only agreed to speak with me while using a voice changing application to further disguise his identity. Due to the difficulties this created, I will be paraphrasing him and quoting his words myself at a couple of points here in order to make listening to this. A more comfortable experience. But here he is ohk mean kind of politics for what, ten years or was never? So it's basically speaking with the. Of course, for my initial sale was into week two years ago was was with 50 ohm, 50 folks. So just to make it clear, he's saying that he's been involved in anarchist organizing for more than a decade, since around 2011. The initial sell he organized with was affiliated with an umbrella organization called Autonomous Action. We'll talk about them more in a minute, but it's important you understand that his cell at about 50 people. Wrong was considered quite large for Russia. All except for in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, or there are some popsicles or. Protests in weddings, etcetera, with pickets order. Or they will work for hundreds. Or supplements more, cheese more. But of course, and the voters it is. There were so many people there. Professional tool. One stone or almost 450 people is always gonna be there. Wasn't considering quite large. Even in 2011, organizing as an anarchist was rather risky. As a result, our source actually started his career in activism on his own. As a single protester, he would stand out in public places, sometimes during other protests, sometimes on his own, holding a sign that said, in Russian, peace to the world. Now I'm reading you the English translation of what he put down the the literal Russian words that he had on his sign were a reference to a famous Soviet slogan officially adopted in 1951. The phrase actually has a much older origin in the country, which begins under the Orthodox Church and grew more popular among revolutionaries after the February Revolution. The first leftist to use peace to the world as a slogan in Russia may have actually been a F Karinsky who headed the brief Democratic government that ran things after the Czar stepped down. In our sources case, his sign was an act of protest against a number of things, including the recent Russian invasion of Georgia and Russian military operations in Syria. I was kind of, uh, so I can't. And I was just, you know, pushing for. One for us and for the gold against all the old stuff and all that stuff. It was once once of physicalism, almost nothing in effectiveness or realization or whatever, or that somehow we managed to do it until winter or spring. So fast. Correctly. It's OK. After he'd been seen doing this for a while, members of a local anarchist cell found this person and started asking them questions. Hey, who are you? What are you doing? What do you think of this and that? He was not specific about the individual political questions they answered, and we probably don't need to get into that. They invited him eventually to a building where a number of them tended to gather and prepare for actions. In short order, they started organizing together. At the time our source started organizing as an anarchist. The most notorious recent action was the kimki. Forest conflict in brief Kimki is a forest with a long history, as in nature preserve. It's kind of outside of Moscow. It's so densely forested that in the 1600s and then in the early 1800s, when the Russians were resisting Napoleon, it was used by partisans and insurgents as a base of operations. When the Bolsheviks took over, it was preserved to act as a sort of open air therapy Center for tuberculosis patients. In the early 2000s, local city planners started to advocate for a toll road to be built through the middle of the forest. Their argument was that a large amount of traffic passed through the Leningrad Highway and that had caused huge amounts of air pollution in the city of Kimki. Since the forest was protected by national environmental codes, turning it into a road was a long political process. Activists protested, arguing that it would be an environmental disaster, which spoilers it was like anarchists in the United States in the period before the green scare, Russian anarchists carried out a series of occupation actions to try and protect the wild lands. I don't understand. Uh, it was before I joined. Sorry, I don't understand or what's right or the governments or trying to put it all is it wasn't political or they call it just for against it, against it. Our time being or it was. 41 direction or with really between the shoes for one or straight to get there to do their job because. Trace. Thanks. In the end it was. The guardians. In 2012, shortly after our source began participating in anarchist demonstrations, the government carried out a major crackdown against certain anarchist activists. They focused primarily on groups and individuals who were doing things like making Molotov cocktails and engaging in property destruction. Now our source participated in food not bombs and other non aggressive types of direct action, most of which involved handing out food and supplies to people or helping them to get resources. He did not disavow insurrectionary anarchists, the kind of people who threw. Bombs. But that wasn't the kind of thing he did, and he didn't have a lot of connections with those people, because roughly a year after he started organizing as an anarchist, most of them, in his area at least, got cracked down on and either killed, forced out of the country, or arrested by the government. This crackdown on insurrectionary Russian anarchists led to an even more paranoid security culture among those who remained our source in his comrades mostly distributed food, but they also provided support for a large number of children whose families had abandoned them due to crushing poverty. Even though these things were not illegal, they had to maintain intense security culture to avoid being part of future crackdowns. One of the winners said all players were. Most don't talk to anyone or, you know, like or. For special compensation. Communicating with people, but not don't give all the information. Don't give them information or them they need to know. One long standing tradition among Russian anarchists was a sort of defensive isolation. People gave each other as little information as possible about their real identities. As a result, despite the fact that he has participated in multiple protests since the invasion of Ukraine and people have been arrested at those protests, our source insists that he doesn't know if any of his comrades have been taken into custody. Now, some of this probably has to do with the fact that he's not organizing in a major city. But a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that he just doesn't particularly know any people by name. Polls which are imperfect but cannot be entirely discounted suggest that most Russian civilians support the war and their military. Even so, the scope and scale of the anti war protests in Russia have beggared anything from recent memory. Our source says that this has actually helped to mitigate some of the despair you might expect Russian anarchists to feel given the Titanic increase in state repression. From the town and from what I see, monitor. All start again to get to get home. That's why it's still there. If for maybe one year goal or group, they were just like, ohh come on, we can do it. Everything will just go down and if it's been all foreigners, whatever, no or there is no despair. The place where I don't see it. They want to virtual. They'll want to preparation for what I understand or not all the artists or other radical groups or gathering in Russia or in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Class. We're seeing talking there multi building careers with us. Ohh soon. Some, some even before we bought us. People streets. So it's probably time that we talk about autonomous action or AD. The Revolutionary Anarchist Federation that our friend and his comrades are affiliated with a D actually has members in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. It was founded in 2002 and briefly had affiliates in Armenia before they disbanded in 2005. That's the story in and of itself. AD advocates direct action in order to quote, create a tradition and basis for a new humanist culture social self organization. And radical resistance against militarism, capitalism, sexism, and fascism. They consider the existing government of Russia as entirely illegitimate. They refused to take part in Russian electoral politics, seeing even left wing opposition parties as essentially controlled by Putin and only existing to provide a sham vision of choice. AD activists call themselves the autonomy and see their calling as twofold to exist as autonomous free individuals within an unfree system and to spread revolutionary. Sentiment and weaken the state. Much has been said in the West of Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition politician who, whatever else you might say about him, is certainly not controlled opposition. He has survived an assassination attempt by the Putin regime and is currently incarcerated after leaving his exile in the West to return to Russia and fight the sham case against him in court. No one can doubt that Navalny possesses significant physical courage, and it seems fair to say the man believes in what he says. 80 activists from what I have. I mean, do not fault him in his willingness to suffer for his beliefs, but they believe that he is at the very least, deeply misguided. Navalny, they say, holds to a fundamentally errant belief that Russia could ever be a parliamentary democracy in the Western tradition. Their argument is that corruption investigations and electoralism are useless in Russia and always have been. And from a historical standpoint, it is difficult to argue with these claims. Autonomous action members do not support the Ukrainian state, and I have read articles. From where they describe the conflict in the Donbass which simmered for eight years before exploding into the current configuration as two fascist paramilitary forces backed by two capitalist governments. However, they have been consistent for years that the proper stance of Russian anarchists is to support the Ukrainian people against aggression from the Russian state. Before Putin commenced his broader invasion in February of this year's autonomous Action published an article with the title why we should support Ukraine quote. Putin is not just the gendarme of Europe, but the gendarme of the whole world, from Syria to Myanmar. Whenever a dictator tortures and kills thousands of his old people, Putin is there to support him. There are no elections in Russia anymore. Even the most moderate attempts to change something results in criminal cases and persecutions. I do not believe that the result of this, yet another round of threatening declarations and building up pressure is a full scale war. But as the conflict is not disappearing, a full scale war may start after 5 to 10 years, even as a result of a cycle of escalation. Even if no one really wants it, and in case of a full scale war, we should be on the Ukrainian side, as Malatesta said, for me there is no doubt that the worst of democracies is always preferable, if only from the educational point of view. Then the best of dictatorships, neutrality and a war between Ukraine and Russia would mean neutrality in an invasion of a democracy by a dictatorship. Now, our source concurs with the egeston evidence that Russian citizens still broadly support the war, as I stated earlier, was from what I see here, from people, even more ex colleagues supporting people work. Yeah, yeah. Corners and mental Turkey. Russia with oil. But not like that. Do people still believe? He was certain to acknowledge that there's still a great deal of propaganda, largely pro NATO propaganda, on the anti war side of things. Given the information situation within his country, he admitted that he'd had difficulty parsing some things out while acknowledging that his side also lacked perfect information. He felt that their stance against the war was safe because in the end it opposed bloodletting. Flame or troll rule? Went on to some kind of. Western Crimmins or whatever. Ohg. Even if you do some kind of forget most Western, it's basically a case as well. You still have this rule on your side because you don't want to. Let's do it. Did admit that a number of people in his life, family and close friends, knew about his political sympathies. And he claims that the outbreak of war and the massive totalitarian swing Putin has taken over the last month have caused some of these people to be more open to his beliefs. So I'm kind of open. Watch once or all my friends. Do you know what and what stuff went into or after the war has started or the? Just came to me personally. Yeah, alright. Hey, you've been preparing for this week for years. You've been doing this for years. We thought you were annoyed, but knowing that you're right, what we what do we do? Just so we don't have people knowing about me 'cause, you know, they're seeing the picture. At the moment, the political situation within Russia is tremendously uncertain. All manner of dubious sources have claimed that a palace coup is in the offing or has been attempted. Some have even spoken of the possibility of a revolution, or at least a massive protest campaign that forces Putin from office. Our source did not consider that likely. In the unlikely event the government collapsed entirely, he was not particularly optimistic about what might result. Well, you mentioned the centralized government has fallen. Do you? And there is no big winner culture in the world. Or yours? They just want more. That's fine, I just found it. Someone in the originals and we will have all morals, whatever, basically we're going to. Like that. Oh, it's a science fair. That can happen. He mentioned to me that a number of his loved ones had come forward recently to ask what they ought to do. I asked how he responded to that question right now. We tried to organize and help each other, because there is. There is a chance all the currency will cost nothing or just need to support it. That's the first thing. Quick ohh so so factorization or interactions or any currency. Proceed with the good way or the campaign is that we need to use the training or store? Because there is there is a town in or English or other kinds of every week don't matter when you have all the infrastructure. For now, we need to. No fault enough, yeah. You always walk and treat, even with the four groups. He particularly mentioned the revolutionary importance of finding some way to either smuggle or produce medical supplies and medications. He knows one person who already had to flee the country because his wife could no longer get the medicine she needed. He mentioned the sanctions levied against Russia as a major issue for regular working people. But when I asked what he felt Western countries could do in this conflict, he was actually quite focused on something else entirely. He believes the United States has access to high quality satellite images of what happened in the immediate lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Putin's government justified much of their invasion on so-called attacks from the Ukrainian government that they claim had escalated against the separatist regions. Our source believes his government is lying about this. Down. Umm. Quick multiple store because you're working in. Fast right now or I'll start point. Many states. Ohh, so here's the same thing. Ohh you. We need to come up. The northwest. Wait, so it's don't believe that Ukrainian forces or being with let's say always some else or compared to Russia or so she stuff? So we do need more things come out polished. Maybe not as soon as possible, because it's still going on. The place to help poor people. Yet there are points more clear from comments. Since the invasion, it has gotten notably harder, but not impossibly hard, for Russian citizens to get information about the conflict that does not come from the Kremlin. Our source explained how he does it a combination of using VPNs and understanding the nature of authoritarian propaganda. In short, even when the government is lying to you, you can get an idea of what the truth is by understanding what they want you to believe. With you or work or turn stuff. Sources, yeah. What sides? I saw it to, you know, sort of sort of career side, Russia side, right side or so dependent stuff as well. I don't really believe any official. Sleep boosts messages because they are. They say what's going to, what's they're trying to get into, or bonds, or if you have not. What's the best way? Ohh when Russian or? Ministry of Foreign Affairs and selling all of us. They are working on the useful solution and. At the same time, we hear all that Syrian slows Syrian or mercenaries are going to real, yeah. For me it means one thing they want to it was Paul or the fighting to get some time so. Just saw. Orders. He felt that one way US activists could be helpful to Russian activists was by continuing to document and study the different munitions and tactics used by police in cracking down on demonstrations. He noticed that Russian police used similar, and sometimes even the same weapons to the ones that the US police used on crowds in the 2020 protests. He believes the documentation done to study these weapons is helpful to people all around the world. He expressed some frustration at friends and colleagues of his who, after years of failing to truly grapple with the degree to which Putin had. Centralized power. We're now fleeing Russia to avoid living under an increasingly totalitarian state. Going to you because of her radio, talking, whatever. Or he was trying to support me like. Yeah, so this stuff's going on the sports going Russians. If you're not into politics, what's stopping you from? We must try to blame him for not being exports. It's cold. And that's why you we were against this, yeah? Against the government. He has decided to stay and to resist. While he has admitted to now studying martial arts and military tactics, he did not have high hopes for any kind of confrontation with the Russian state. And as a generally peaceable person, he has decided that he will continue to resist in the way that makes the most sense to him, by helping people and providing them with things that they will increasingly need as the economic situation in Russia degrades further. Or. Sense concept course .1 course sensaphone. Yeah, I've been struggling with guns for at least six years. I wouldn't say that the pressure point it was having we. Them or stop that. Once we think our guests and wish like always self and you. Before he comes through from the locus, then I should league or one simple thing, or you need to know. We don't know if it will be more or what are we talking about. Welcome to it could happen here, the podcast where this. Today I sit down with my buddy Jake Hanrahan and we talk about Corsica. Jake, how's how you doing? How's the show? How how how you how you feeling? Yeah, I'm alright, thanks. I got a bit of a. Blue. But otherwise, everything's really good, man. Yeah, we you just took a little reporting trip down to the island of Corsica, which is not a place I know much about, and I'm going to guess not a place most of our listeners know much about. So why don't you, why don't you start with kind of like, what what brought you down there? Yeah, no, that that's a really good point. A lot of people don't even know it exists. I sent the documentary made with Popular Front to a friend of mine today and he said, bro, that's the first time I've ever heard of Corsico. Like, yeah, like a lot of people don't know about it. So it's a very old island, you know, more than 200 years people have inhabited the place. But generally for the last kind of 200 years, there's been an on again, off again, independence movement there, people that don't want to be under the control of France. Whoever they want control of their own island because Corsican is quite a specific culture. It's very different to French culture, it's different to Italian culture. They even have their own language called course. Unfortunately it's kind of dying out, as you know, a lot of languages do in kind of contested areas if you like. But yeah, so, so they've always kind of wanted to be independent in some way, not everybody, not the whole place. I'm sure you'll find some course comes that will say their course of conference. But generally the majority of people, if you go there and say, why are you though tell you we're Corsican, we're not French, we're Corsican. So in the 1970s that kind of coalesced was rebirthed, if you like, with the backdrop of, you know, guns, bombs and independence movements, of course, Europe and a group called the FLNC formed the. The Nationalist Liberation Front for Corsica. And they arrived with 21 bombs on the island in one night. I mean, not arrived, you know, they were already there. Of course they were, but they they bombed 21 times in one night, mostly French infrastructure. And they were all very, very well armed. There was literally hundreds of members. And at one point I have to, I don't want to say this 100% because it's been a while since I I looked at the research, but if I'm right. At one point in the in the late 70s or early 80s, the FLNC was actually the most active militant or terrorist group in the whole of Europe. Even even more active than the Provisional IRA now. Yeah, Provisional IRA killed a lot more people. The FLNC, their targets weren't really to kill people, they were to blow up holiday homes and blow up French infrastructure. They did have open gunbattles, and they did assassinate the the highest ranking French officer on Corsica. On the island eventually, but yeah, so so there was this real backdrop of very militant. Independence. When I say nationalists, it's not, it's not what we might associate with. Like far right nationalists, you know, when an independent movement doesn't have its own country, you know, the ultra nationalism in their sense comes out in a very different way. It's not we want to ban everybody else from here, it's simply we want our country, you know what I mean? So when I say ultra nationalist, that's not to be confused with fascist ultra nationalists. It's very different. Not to say that cause guns all believe in in leftist causes and that that wouldn't be true. A lot of them do. There's a big socialist element to to the cause and there's also quite a right wing element to the cause. But ultimately they all kind of want the same thing, autonomy or independence for Corsica. So yeah, so that that's the kind of history, very briefly of of militant independence movements in Corsica. In 2014, the FLNC put down their guns and recently one of the FLNC was suspected FLNC militants who shot this, this high-ranking French official that I told you about. This this guy is called Ivan Colaner. He was arrested after the shooting in the 90s and sent to a French prison for life. And on March the 6th, I believe it was he was no, sorry. March 2nd, he was attacked in a French prison by a jihadist inmate and beaten into a coma yesterday or two days ago. Now he died of his injuries ever since. He was beaten into this, The youth would just kind of lit the place on fire, you know, they were really clashing very violently and for for the last. For seven years since there was a was a relative calm on the island in terms of political activism and militancy. The politicians, the more moderate parties have tried to do this politically and for the first time in a while, the youth have gone. No, **** it, we're not playing that anymore. We're we're going to knock the place about, we're going to smash the shop up. And basically it's kind of worked, which we can go into. But yeah, sorry to go on a lot, but there's quite a lot to it's obviously, like you said, a lot of people don't know, but one thing I will say is Corsica is just one of the most beautiful places. Anybody will go to like objectively it's idyllic. It's not really had this horrible holiday home vibe there because genuinely when when some contractors tried to kind of gentrify cause to come and turn it into the next IB through. I believe one of the quotes was from one of the the people doing this, the FLNC kind of waited for them to build their homes and then blew them all up and blew up all their hotels. So it was like, you're not going to do that here and a lot of these companies were infringing on the environment. Which is beautiful there. And yeah, so there's a lot more to it. But generally, you know, this all kind of revolves around militant independence. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, I, I, I I think it's fascinating the idea of targeting like the the degree to which a lot of this seems to be focused on stopping this place from turning into another vacation destination where like rich people second homes push out the the population that's born there. I think there's a lot of places that like. Organizer complain about that sort of thing. Umm, but I'm not aware of anyone who's gone to these kind of lengths to stop themselves from turning into another Ibiza. Yeah, yeah. And honestly, if you go to Corsica and see how beautiful it is, not just, I mean, it's one of the few places in Europe where you can see the mountains from the beach, you know, it's Incredible Island. I've been obsessed with this place since I was about 24 years old. Firstly, from the nature and the beauty there, but secondly, I was very interested in the militant group there because the culture there is so different. But yeah, if you look at the place you go there, you realize like, right, this place is very much worth preserving. I don't want to act like. There hasn't been businesses doing their thing there. They definitely is but certainly it feels preserved. There's no high rises all of the old buildings are still there, they're still intact. And you know, when when these big businesses came in and a lot of these businessmen were almost showing off, like, yeah, we're gonna turn Corsica into Ibiza, which, as a Brit, I will apologize to anyone living in IB because we're one of the worst export ever. You know, like having sex in the street and throwing up at bars and everything. When we go there, it's kind of been turned into one big not the great club. Yeah. Not the great club, definitely. Yeah. So, so, you know, it's one of these ones where it's like, yeah, I could kind of understand. I'm not saying anything we should bomb anywhere. Certainly not. But I do understand the sentiment there. And one of the one of my courses and friends said some people were calling it, like, the cold bed policy. So you come to our island, you buy a holiday home, and if you leave that bed cold is in, you're not even living here. It's going to get blown up. You know, if you're like, so very militant, very violent, but effective, I mean, it doesn't mean that you have to agree with it. But no one can deny that it hasn't been effective. But at the same time, there's a very big mafia presence on the island as well. So that, you know, it's not to say that everything is all for the people. Certainly not. I'm going to guess that the mafia is more or less on the side of, you know, turn this place into a vacation destination because that's where the money is. That that would be my assumption. Really. That's interesting. Fortunately that the independence movement, not all of them, but there is an element to it that is very hand in hand with the mafia. Most definitely interesting. Perhaps some people that were independent militants are now mafia, if you like. And people have been killed on the island quite a lot. There's quite a lot of, you know, unsolved murders there. It's quite sad. But no, they they were more for keeping their own interests. You know, we have this island, we can run the docks, we can run this, we can run that. And whilst what you said like makes sense, right, you would think, Oh no, they'd be for this money. I think what they want, they're still nationalists at the end of the day. They want control, but they want control in their own way. And it's a big business comes in and starts saying, Oh yeah, we're doing this and that and the other and we're bringing all these people in via the docs, I guess they lose control of that essentially. So they were very much on the side of. Yeah. Do what you like sort of thing and that's fascinating. Yeah. So yeah, very unique, very specific place. Yeah. You mentioned that this action you showed up for people bombed 21 targets. Was it 2121 and one night in one night? Yeah. When you say bomb, are we talking like your standard Molotovs or where were they were or were they kind of like more elaborate devices, shall we say? How would you describe what they were using? Yeah. No, it's a good question. I mean, when you think of 21 in one night, you think, right, like Molotov. Something simple. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, they weren't even pipe bombs. You're talking fertilizer bombs? Ohh. Wow. Yeah. Like blowing up whole buildings, you know, not all of them. You know, there were some smaller ones, but some very significant ones and very, very big the way Corsica is the way it's laid out. Like I said, it's a small place. I think only like 300,000 people live there, roughly. And there are mountains. There were beaches. There were very rural communities. It's an island. It's quite far away from France. Actually, it's very close to Italy and Sardinia is just to its S and it's just for them. If you you couldn't ask for a better location, if you wanted to be a kind of guerrilla group, you know, you really couldn't. It's kind of built for them. So they just got away with it, you know, farmers, whatever. They went into the mountains, build bombs, dropped them off. And not to say that everybody was for them, but there is some, it wasn't just we want independence. There was there was subjugation by the French, you know, firstly there like we don't want to be a French colony or whatever you would call it anymore. Which I think anybody that wants their determination to not be held by a former colonial power is fine. Or current colonial power, if you like, for sure. I think, yeah, fair play to them. But secondly, they're one of the most poorer regions, despite having all this holiday stuff, despite having a lot of produce, despite having a lot of reasons to be there. So there's definitely something I I won't claim to know too much about the law situation, and I'm sure a lot of French people get angry whatever, but it is genuinely doing very badly in many different aspects. Is that mismanagement by them? Is it because of the French? I couldn't tell you. I don't know enough about it. But I certainly find it very weird that all of these beautiful things that are happening on that island and they're they're constantly in, you know, the the lower bracket of situations, economically, culturally, they're getting kind of sidelined a bit. So I do. I do understand. And certainly when the clashes or even protests happened in the 70s, the police, you know, French police, I'm sorry, but there's some of the worst ******* police ever, you know, and I, I've been in front of Turkish. At least, like, French police are ******* up there, they're horrible and they beat the **** out of a lot of people in Corsica just for peacefully protesting, you know? So it didn't come from nowhere, you know what I mean? There is, there is more to it than just nationalism and independence. There's a lot more to it. They want to, they want to, they want to deal with their own affairs. A lot of them, you know, yeah, most people probably now want to do it democratically. But like I said, the youth were said, no, **** that. We're not getting anywhere. And they've actually, it's actually worked because the day after the riots that we filmed on a. March 13th the the Interior Minister of France basically said, right we're willing to discuss this with you. We will go as far as autonomy. That's literally a quote he said, which is quite significant. Yeah after seven years of basically stalemate through the politicians so the youth in a way one of the very few examples of this specifically in Europe the Youth what they're doing kind of worked. You know what I mean? Like yeah direct action got got some goods start started the process of. Getting the goods, hopefully, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, it has. And the thing about the Corsican youth is they're very intelligent. They're very. They're very authentic in their political activism in the sense of it's just they're born into it, it's in them, you know, from the age of like 1213, they're understanding it. They're getting told about the legends of blah, blah, you know, there's there's militant group and whatever, whatever. So they it's very much in them in that sense, kind of in a, you know, like the Kurds are kind of, you know, not on the same level but that kind of vibe. So when they go to students, when they go to uni and they become students, they're not really forming their political opinions. They already have them. They already got them. And then they they sort of hire, they sort of germinate together. So that's from what I understood anyway, that's from what I gathered. And you know, your average trendy young man and woman on the street there is very political. It's kind of like Greece in that sense. Like it's cool to be political, but in the sense of not the kind, not like. You know, not, not something you bought into as a teenager, something that was already there and then which there's nothing wrong with it. You know, most people form their political opinions in unis or whatever, but for them, it's already in them. You see what I'm saying? So they already have, they're already united in that sense, you know, so when they get to the Union, they get there. It's like, OK, well, we all want independence or autonomy, but then the other things are lesser. So, you know, for the in that, in that sense, I think that was quite interesting. And we saw like 8009 thousand people marching. Maybe. And then when the clashes started, you know, it's Robert. Like, normally it's like, what, 103 hundred people stay, you're talking like 2000 people are now full power clashing. And men and women like young girls, young men like many, many, you know. So it was really, I was like, wow, OK and one one thing that I've never, I haven't seen for a very long time. I've very rarely seen it. Normally when the clash happens, everybody, you know, your grandmas, your working man, you know, the people that support. What's going on? But not able to clash or don't want to clash. They normally step back in the course of come protests. Everybody just stayed like we were getting tear gassed next to like 50 lads with balaclavas on next to like Grandma or Auntie, you know, we're like helping people into the side street to get away from teargas. It was very weird. And they they just didn't leave. They just were there the whole time. Wow. Yeah, it's weird. When you're talking about like, tactically, what is this? How are these kind of bombings being pulled off as you? So you've got like this huge crowd and they're just kind of like marching from target to target? So the youth are not really, I mean they have some small kind of ID's, you know what I'm saying, that youth student, the youth protesters, but generally it's Molotovs, bricks burning, barricades, but they very clearly. Know the island inside out. They know their streets, you know, obviously because they live there. And most of the police, from what I understand are actually French called in from the island for from the mainland. Sorry to the island, a lot of the CRS riot police, thousands of them were brought in there was that they were actually completely outnumbered. They had to retreat at one point in in the evening to go back to the prefecture kind of cultural French administrative building where main the main target of violence. They had to retreat to get more ammunition because they just, they just shot so much tear gas. They just couldn't, you know, they couldn't do anything. There were some teams, like the youth, some of them had Green arm bands or green leg bands, so they were very clearly like a different unit, and they were very well organized. They didn't have walkie talkies, mind you. Normally that that shows a closer sign of organization, but some of them were like that. Some of them were just turned up to fight, and some of them were splitting off into different groups. You would see one come in, they'd fight. Fight, fight. And then they leave. And as they're leaving, another load would just come in in the line. It was it was really quite interesting. You know, they'd really thought about it. It wasn't just a free for all which it might look like. But, you know, after a while of covering riots, there's certain things you notice where you're like, ah, OK, they're planning this. They're planning that. You know what I'm saying? So it's quite interesting in that sense. But yeah, man, it's, yeah. Thousands of thousands of youth fighting. It did get messy. I think 44 police were injured. 13 protesters and one pedestrian. That was the official figures. I saw at least three pedestrians injured and I think probably more protesters and definitely more *****. I would say, yeah. I mean, obviously, it also depends on, like, what your rating is, an injury for that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of folks probably are avoiding the hospitals and being dealt with at homes and whatnot because they're committing some crimes. It's like, you know, at home with super Glue instead of stitches or whatever. Yeah. Do you have a sense of like, how long with the kind of the back end of this was the preparation process was for this? Yeah. So the questions have been ongoing before we got there for about a week. So Evan Kolinahr was beaten into this, He was, he was attacked in prison. There's some rumours that he said some kind of Islamophobic thing to the inmate. Don't know how true that is, but all we know is the guy was. Actually, a, you know, a convicted jihadist, it's not kind of essay the, the guy at the inmate was a convicted jihadist because obviously Evan Kolinahr is in the type of prison where what the state says it's terrorists are there. You know what I mean? Anybody terrorist is there. So it makes sense he's amongst these people. And I think he was attacked in the gym when he was on his own and he was strangled. And this this is where. Yeah. Yeah. This is where there's a weird point of contention. He, because of the special status he had as such, a violent. Militant, whatever. He shouldn't have really been on his own like that. And some people speculating did something happen. But generally, most people we spoke to were like, it was probably just negligence. You know, they weren't very conspiratorial. There was some were like, oh, the French, the French planned this. I doubt it. It doesn't make much sense to do this right now. Like, you know, they would know what would happen to me uncle and our to, to the people. Sorry if you uncle and I was hurt because he's a big, you know, a big name there. There's also some. You know, it may be interesting arguments around the case, the way he was arrested. Apparently the gun doesn't match up. I don't know. I didn't really get into that. But either way, he's like a, you know, people there love him. You know what I'm saying? He's like a martyr for them. Even though, you know, he shot this guy in the back in, in cold blood, essentially. But for them, that was a political assassination, whatever. So. So for about a week, the, the, the youth were fighting. And I I saw a video or anything happens and causes crime. Like, right. I'm looking at it. And I was like, OK, this, this is a little bit. Different, OK, Molotovs are out again, hasn't, haven't seen that for a while. And then the next day and then the next day, and then it spread one night to like 5 different cities or or like, sorry, three different cities, like big, big places. And then they burn like a very specific monument. So that was like, oh, it's on so at least for at least a week. They were. They they were planning something, you know, and there was enough kind of momentum there, I think, for them to organize. Certainly we know that there was people from Ajaccio, the capital city in Bastia where we filmed it like a lot of people drove in. They came, you know, specifically for this clash. So that was quite interesting. I think the youth movement have a very strong network there and there's also quite a big football ultra scene there. So the day before the clashes, Bastia and Ajaccio had a Dhabi. So obviously I imagine a lot of the ultras, or at least I know a lot of the Ultras were also. Part of the independence groupings and part of the clashes. So I imagine that a lot of the football ultras kind of organised, you know, you know, the the match the day before or at least a week before. So I think there was quite a lot of organization there, you know? What do you feel like is next, is this the kind, do you get the sense that because the government has announced their willingness to sit down and talk that maybe folks are going to wait to follow up this or do you get the sense that they're going to kind of keep the pressure on? Well, The thing is, there was one option before Evan Columnar died, and now there's a new option that he's died. You see what I'm saying? Right before he died, of course, I think what you're saying would have would have happened. Like I I I mean, I don't know, but I think the youth would have. They would have held off the fact that the Interior Minister of France, who answers directly to Macron within one day or less than one day, said we're willing to go as far as autonomy in these discussions. Stop being violent. I think the youth was smart enough to realize. All right, let's stop. Let's see what he's got to say. I'm sure if things faltered, if things didn't move quick enough, they would have very quickly stepped up the stepped up the violence again. However, now that Evan Kolinahr has died. I don't think that they're just going to wait now. From what I understand from speaking to contacts and friends in Corsica, there's a period of mourning right now. You know, his funeral. He died in a prison in Marseille. He wasn't even transferred to to Corsica today. Sorry for a lot of them. That's incredibly offensive. That's the kind of. Spark that started these clashes. It's all about independence and autonomy on one level. But the thing that drove this and sparked it was Evan colonized attack and and the fact that there's a lot of course from prison prisoners, which are political prisoners are in prison in France that of course go anyway. So now that he has died, I really think that there will be a moment of calm due to the funeral and respect for Evan culinary and whatever. And then I think maybe a week after this week, I think it's almost inevitable. We will see some form of violence again. I've spoken to some people that are maybe going a bit far, maybe being a bit dramatic, I don't know, but they speculate that there'll be a little bit more than just clashes. One one person I know said I think they're going to blow something up again. Do I think that? Probably not. But certainly when we were in the streets they were using there's, there's photos of it as well. They were using very crude but very small improvised explosive devices. Now when a group even starts to do that. No, OK, it's a very small device. It was in a kind of like a basically a tennis ball type thing with it, with whatever in it, but it was ******* loud. It wouldn't really do much unless it probably blocked right next to your foot. But when they're even considering that, in my experience that tells you that people are there's an element that are ready to go further up the ladder to the next level. Does that mean they're gonna blow somewhere up? I don't know. I don't see it personally. You know, these these young people are very clever. I think that would be an insane decision because. It would. France would have no option but to basically flood the island with a lot more police and maybe even military type police. I don't know, maybe not. But but yeah. Anyway, we'll see what happens. But again, like my point is not not that I think this is gonna happen, but there's that talk which we haven't seen that kind of talk in Corsica for quite a while, you know what I mean? And there's actually people now genuinely worried, like, OK, where's this going to go? Which can never be a good thing. I guess the the French state really has to be careful here. And. I think the fact they've now said we're going to go as far as autonomy, maybe they at the very least have to be shown to be doing that very quickly. I think you know otherwise for a lot of people in Corsica. It's like Evan calling a calling our died in vain. I guess and it's not just the youth. It's everybody. Even people that perhaps really don't like that. The youth were fighting really don't support. That level of violence. They still support Yvan Colonna and a very sad. He's dead. You see what I'm saying and the way. He died and even even Basty FC. The The football team. One of the main football teams in Corsica. They they said. Oh, you know, we're very sad that he's dead. You know a hero has died. That kind of thing, so he's a very he's seen as a martyr now. Definitely, yeah, I mean, that's. A predictable outcome from, uh, killing a guy who's in prison. Right, right, right, right. So we're kind of in this, like waiting to see what the next step is then I guess, like the the it's it's kind of this weird, sort of like political liminal space, I guess where the next steps are, there's a number of things that could happen. That's right. The way to describe it, yeah, definitely. It's this very. Everything's in transition. It's it's very it's it's either calm before the storm, or it's calm that turns into something positive. But I I just don't see it, you know, after almost two weeks of extremely violent clashes, very well organized after seeing them on the ground as well. These are brave lads, these and and women as well. These these are not your kind of average weekend warriors. They're very, very up for it. You know how people clash in Paris, like French people. They're very up for it. As soon as, yeah, fine, they'll fight, you know, it's like that times 10 for from what I experienced. Because it's. But the the kind of incubated nationalist identity separate from France, but whilst also having kind of fiery French culture and fiery Italian culture influences and fiery Corsican culture. Not to say that they're not very nice people. Everyone was absolutely lovely, very, very friendly, but you can tell they're, you know, there are fiery people, they're active, they're about it, they mean what they say. So I I don't think that the youth will just go quietly from this, essentially a political prisoner. Uh, Martin, now and then for them to just go. OK, we'll just relax now. I don't see it. You go. You're talking from, like, you know, probably in the full week of clashes, maybe 4-5 thousand people together, throwing rocks, burning barricades, throwing small improvised devices at cops to then just to go to nothing after Evan columnar dies. I'd be very, very surprised. I think the only way that that would happen would be for France to go, OK, here's your autonomy. And then that energy could be turned into a celebration. You know, I'm saying that should or shouldn't happen. I just think theoretically that's the only way that it could avoid violence because the energy is there now. You see what I'm saying? Yeah. Not on like a esoteric level. It's just the level of, like, they're revved up, they're ready, you know, and the attitude that kind of it's in the air. It's in the air right now. So you published just a couple of days ago, your little documentary, like short documentary from Popular Front, which has footage. Yeah, little dispatch, which has footage from this, which people should definitely check out, especially if they like to see. Some of the the tactics that we've talked about on this this episode so far. Is there anywhere else you might recommend they go for further reading on this subject? Not not to be all your only Popular Front, but we we have. It's just something that I've just been specifically fascinated and obsessed with for a long time. So when the time came, I was very well prepared. Everyone has said like, oh, you know, this is this is crazy, like, you know, you. How did you understand all of this so quickly? It's because I've been reading about it and and the problem with a lot of the French reporting is, you know, it's it's naturally very French skewed. It's a little bit sneery like all the island people are. Taking off again, whereas it's like, no, come on, like this is an incredible, beautiful place. Of course they want to preserve it, of course they want to control it in whatever way they want to. So again, it's very difficult, but I will say that there are some really good reporters there. There's a a friend of mine from Corsica, Lionel Dumas. He runs like a thing called Corsican passport or used to, which was kind of a kind of humorous, but at the same time in our news about. And of course, can related patriotic stuff. And then who we worked with, Jean Colonna. He's not related to Yvonne collar like. It's, it's quite a, you know, comment. Last name. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. To us it sounds quite, you know. Oh, right. You must be related. But over there, it's like not Smith, but, you know, it's quite common. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Jean culinary. He's great. And there's also the local papers in Corsica course, Martin. They're really good. You might have to translate. Stuff, but they're very on the ball, you know what I mean? They're they're focused on everything. So if people are interested in it, honestly, I would say like seek out local French reporters. From what I gathered as well, there's there's a quiet but really thriving kind of youth media. I wouldn't say it's a it's a movement, but there's something growing there. You know, I spoke well before I went out. I spoke to quite a few reporters. Really nice people, really enthusiastic, really, you know, love loving their island, but not full of hatred or anything like that. That that's something that I've seen a lot of French people say, ohh, Corsicans are really full of hatred. They're racist, they're blah, blah. And it's like, I I didn't experience that. And at the same time it's like, have you been to Paris? Are you seeing a French riot? Yeah, yeah. You know, like it. It's like I end of the day. I think the whole region probably has an issue with that, but certainly the youth are very open minded, very nice. And like I said, this isn't just me basing it off of one trip. I've been fascinated with this place for about 6 to 8 years and I I have not experienced anything like that. Sure, you'll hear the old comment like, oh, you know, very yeah, it's Europe. Yeah, it's Europe. Exactly. Exactly. It's Europe. ******* ****. Not to minimize it, but like, it's not, yeah, just Corsica, exactly, like, whatever. But generally, you know, for a small island, it could be way worse. And and so I had a lot of French people. Like, they're really nasty. They're really violent. And it's like, they're not actually, like, they're very angry, but they don't hate. They don't hate the French in that sense of like, oh, you're a French person, kill you. It's the same thing as we hate the state, you know, like. And at the same time, they have a very quite a few people brought up Island. And the Basque situation and Sardinia, and so they have this, they have an internationalist mentality as well actually. And in fact, years ago there used to be a youth conference in Corsica hosted there. I don't think it goes on anymore, but it was hosted in Corsica by what was a very well organized radical socialist youth movement in Corsica, where people from Northern Ireland, people from the Basque Country, people from. What's the one in Barcelona? Oh, colonia. Yeah. Catalonia. Yeah. People from there would come, you know, all people from different breakaway regions or or whatever, and they would all come and they would all meet in Corsica and they would talk about tactics and politics and whatever. So it's a very, very interesting culture place. Amazing history. Bucking the Poland is from Napoleon is from there. You know, that's what you want. So, yeah, it's a really cool place. And, you know, we only documented one side of it, a very radical side of it because that's what was happening that weekend. Yeah. Dispatch. But there are a lot of moderates as well. There are a lot of, like, political, very smart political, moderate moderates that are like, look, we don't want violence, but we do want autonomy. We want something. And they, you know, they said, oh, you only showed the militant side of it. It's like, well, you weren't on the street that day, you know, these kids were. So obviously that's how it works. But yeah, I would like to answer your question again. Sorry. I would say just if you're interested in the region, check it out. And there's, there's a film, if you can find it in English subtitles. Send it to me, but there's a fictionalized film about the FLNC. I think it's called a life of violence. That's actually, like, quite good. It's a bit romanticized, but it's quite good in terms of explaining the situation there. Yeah. If you speak French, check that out. And just check out, like, course, Martin and all these, these other kind of local reporters there, people like, oh, it's too hard to find them. It does feel like that. But once you find them, you find them all. So yeah. Awesome. Well, Jake Hanrahan, thank you so much. Check out the new Popular Front dispatch on Corsica. What a way to put this on YouTube. Yeah, yeah. So check out all the Popular Front stuff on YouTube. You've got a great documentary out also about the territorial defense militias in Ukraine that you filmed right before **** went. Yeah. You know where it is? Yeah, yeah. A bit like how do we how do we make this much relevant? But it's it's coming. It's it will be quite interesting. Excited. Yeah. The perspective beforehand. Yeah. Yeah. The **** you're posting on Twitter was really interesting. Yeah. So, yeah, check that out when it's out. Check out all the popular fronts, other stuff. And yeah. Thank you, Jake. Let's we'll we'll we'll have you back on soon. Alright, man. Thank you very much. Yeah. Welcome to it could happen here. The podcast. The podcast. Every episode? Yeah, that's like when you open too many podcasts, you you lose the ability to open podcasts. Anyway, Saint Andrew, this is your episode, so I'm going to let you let you take it. Take it away, take us on a journey. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hi. Good day. Good afternoon and good night. Today we just wanted to cover a rather broad topic. I don't even know if it's going to be released. Before the end of February, probably not, but in honour of Black History Month, I wanted to cover the history. Of Caribbean resistance to slavery and the different ways that manifested across the Caribbean. For those who don't know, slavery. In the Caribbean. Took place for several 100 years, beginning with the enslavement of the Amerindians. The. And continuing up until the abolition of slavery in 1834, at least in British territories. Before then. There were multiple struggles against the institution. Both passive and active and in every step of the process. And then of course post. Slavery. There were also multiple rebellions and insurrections and strikes that took place in the region. But. I can't cover the. Probably about 7000 islands in the Caribbean give Ortique, but I can't cover the histories of all of those for the past couple of 1000 years. But I will try to cover fairly generally the different forms of resistance that took place. Starting with, of course, the resistance took place in Africa. I mean, even before. And state people were put on these ships even before they were captured. They were measures that were taken to protect themselves from enslavement. There was of course flight in the sense of running away, but there was also. Evidence of Africans moving their villages to inaccessible areas like mountains or. Or deeper into the forest, where is less accessible for enslaved people. Sorry for enslavers to try to capture their people. One of the more famous enslaved people. Alwada equino. He founded a society in. Britain after being? Enslaved and taken to the Caribbean and. Eventually moving to Britain after becoming a Friedman and starting the sons of Africa abolitionist group, he had written his own autobiography, the interesting narrative of the life of Alwada Aquino, in 1789, and he detailed some of the horrors of slavery from an enslaved person's perspective. And so a lot of what we knew about slavery and how it occurred. Uh. Comes from his poost no account among others, of course. So he spoke about some of the measures were taken in his own village to defend against capture. But. He after being captured, of course, from the Kingdom of Benin around 1745. He ended up being taken on the slave ships, separated from his families and carried with 244 other people across the Atlantic to Barbados. And then eventually taken to Virginia and then from Virginia being bought by a Royal Navy Lieutenant and. Eventually being freed. During the voyages that occurred, and there were multiple during the whole triangle trade, it has been said that one in ten of all Atlantic crossings through the Middle passage had some kind of rebellion. Whether it be? Through taking control of the ships and attempting to seal them back to Africa with the assistance of the crew without or of Africans battling against other ships. Or, in one case, in Amistad, in 1839. Some Africans were taken captive above aboard a cargo ship and they freed themselves, kill the captain and the cook and forced them to take them back to Sierra Leone. But instead. The owners of the ship and that I'm taking them to the. United States, where they were captured by the Coast Guard. Jesus. Yeah, so it's a lot. One slave ship, Sujan guy named Alexander Falconbridge became an abolitionist because he saw all the well. First of all, he saw the horrible conditions that were. Present on those ships in the middle passage, where you know hundreds of people were shackled together and crammed into these tight and closed dark wet? Infected species for weeks on end, rubbing taken across. And of course, a lot of. The so-called cargo, the people who were on route to be enslaved were killed by the conditions present on those slave ships. However, despite the fact that you know so many people were dying from. The. Terrible conditions of the ships. The slave trade was so profitable for the enslavers and for the economies of the colonial nations. That. It was still there, still you have no no they were still not only able to break even, but profit massively from the excursions. And even though the middle passage got more and more dangerous for crews as rebellions became more and more expected. Production for more shackles, more weaponry to keep captives secured arose in England and helped to. Secure some of their travels. Of course, they were also times where. Africans would boom the ships they were on or where they would jump off of the ships, as I'm sure many people remember. Kill Monkas Fema's final woods in Black Panther and. From what I remember, the fluid sensitive people who arrived in Hispaniola immediately ran away and were able to escape before being recaptured. Once and save, people arrived in the horrible conditions at the various colonies in the Caribbean. One of the. Major projects of. Their colonial overlords was to. Convert them while in the process of, you know, enslaving them. Of course, a lot of enslaved people were dying very rapidly due to the diseases and the terrible working conditions they had to endure. But for those who did survive? Separated from their families, from their ties to kinship from. Really, their home and everything that came along with it as displaced indigenous people. They had to figure out ways to maintain and protect their cultures. Umm. From you know naming conventions to craftsmanship to language to philosophy to beliefs to music to dance. These are all elements of African cultures that. Would provide psychological support. For captives, we need to resist the process of enslavement. Because enslavement is an act of breaking the will and. Erasing the humanity of the enslaved. Practices like voodoo in Haiti or Obia in Trinidad. And Jamaica. We will to strengthen the. Revolutionary efforts of rebellious. Africans and so. In the Haitian Revolution, you know, they were fueled by. Voodoo and the ceremonies that it could then, and we're able to. Eventually, you know. Free the people of Haiti and. Establish the first independent Black Republic in the New world in each room 4. So other forms of cultural resistance, and one of the main forms of cultural resistance was the preservation of African culture through. Creolization through the melding and the hiding, in some cases, of elements of African culture with European cultural forms to create these new cultures and new languages. Quoll is one example particularly Antillean Creole which is related to Haitian Creole. These languages helped to. Maintain. Some measure of identity for people who will be actively being stripped of it. Women in particular played a major role in this process of. Cultural resistance and cultural preservation, because in African societies there were African societies were often meet chilling Neal and matrilocal and women played a key role in passing traditions on to their daughters and other young women, and to the community at large, through storytelling and through. The sharing of skills and beliefs and ideas. And so African women played a major role in keeping that tradition going at lineage going, maintaining the memory of people like Nancy and rare rabbits and. Mary Lou and Suki Yont and all these other folkloric figures who bear the marks of. African traditions. Women under slavery also had to do what they could to resist the. Consistent, consistent. Violence, sexual violence that was being done to them. By their cruel masters. Portion and. Birth control. And other forms of resistance against sexual assault, resisting their masters, feeling illness, all of these things. Works to. Not necessarily protect them. But to. Keep them going and try to stave off the worst elements of violence so it's being done to them. As I mentioned, the Haitian Revolution and it being fueled by voodoo and whatnot, it really scared planters across the Caribbean and across the world. Really like this is the first time something I just said have happened before and. I'm sure the US audience knew is a bit about the. Consequences in the US whole, you know, Southern slave masters were so terrified by the Russian Revolution whole France imposed. Restrictions on Haiti and how the US and other European powers were complicit in that. Attempts to strangle the first black Republic. But. There were cases and other parts of the Caribbean where planters in their terror. Used the revolution as an excuse to crack down on the enslaved. For example, in Trinidad in the Christmas of 1805, the Haitian Revolution ended in 1804, so. In Christmas of 1805. The planters were sewer freed and had really seen some acts of poisoning that were occurring on some of the estates because. Part of the cultural resistance involved the passing down of certain recipes and poisons and concoctions. And so many enslavers. You know fell victim quote UN quote so poisonous and so they had to. Try to find a way to prevent what they saw was a planned uprising. They basically invented this idea of a conspiracy. In their paranoia, there was men still wipe out this entire slaveholding population in Trinidad in one go. So of course, as historians have uncovered, the conspiracy most likely didn't actually exist. Or or maybe, perhaps not to the the scale that. The slave owners thought. But it was more so an attempt by the planters to impose greater authoritarian rule. As Christmas do you need to know five approached the details of this conspiracy of this plot, sort of to be uncovered by the planters. They thought that, you know, at this place called Shanz estate, enslaved people were organizing to launch the revolution. And of course this terrified them because at that point in time the instate population was somewhere around 20,000, whereas the white slave winning class. Was like half that number. And so the authorities declared martial law and. Apprehended those involved. If they were even involved, oftentimes they would not. But it does bring attention to an important part of enslave resistance and that being. The conspiracy and actual existence of slave secret societies. Secret societies are something that. Uh. It's something that's common in the African mainland. Where? Tribal rights and initiations and invanz advancements through those rights in secret groupings with a coup. To sort of denote levels of rank or maturity. And so in Trinidad slave society as different tribes mixed and mingled on plantations. For security reasons, these secret societies continued, but. Had assimilated some European systems of order and designation, so they gave themselves names like major or captain, and describe their societies as regiments, and the echoes the descendants of those societies. Still exist to this day in Trinidad. They are highly obscured. I honestly don't know much details about them. I just know that I have some friends whose relatives are involved in those secret societies and. In some places like for example, Gran Couva Wednesday. People seized land and sort of held that land and kept it and passed it down across the generations. Such secret societies and membership and secret societies is not unheard of. So is is what the the modern ISH versions of them do. Like what are they doing I guess? Like these days, if that's something that is I don't know much about about them or how they operate. Yeah, and so I I don't think all secret societies in Trinidad are descended from enslaved serious societies. Like, obviously not. There are other. Secret society use their society use of doctors and of lawyers and different treads. They're of course. Meeson groups as well. And I. Well, you know the most superficial details of most of these groups. Yes, it's anything that comes up below that. There's a whole bunch of like these sort of secret society groups that like wind U being part of 1911 revolution in China, but they sort of like. Most of them kind of go bandit like after the revolution happens, and so it's interesting to see. I guess like different contexts where they don't seem to have like just overtly turned into organized crime groups, right? What's the so like organized crime groups descended from secret societies in China? Yeah, triads, for example. Yeah, I actually don't think the triad just send it from them. A couple of them joined the communists. A lot of them kind of got wiped out in the sort of. Just general warlord fighting. And then some of them kind of got caught up by the communists because they were basically turned into organized their own organized crime. Things that were sort of distinct from the other ones existed. But right, there were seven major rebellions in the colony of Jamaica between 1673 and 1686, and several others in Antigua and Nevis, in Virgin Islands, in, you know, Barbados, in just. Across the Caribbean. There was continual African resistance and rebellion, and that really is what struck fear in the slaveholders at the time. In one case in 1733, during the Amino Revolution, rebellion on Saint John, which is part of the Danish Virgin Islands or was part of the Danish Virgin Islands. The African insurgents took control of the island for six months before being defeated. And. The most slave rebellions really occurred in Jamaica. In fact, more than all the other colonies. More than all the other British colonies in the Caribbean combined. One of the most famous of the Jamaican rebellions was one that started in 1760 by a man known as Tacky, and it lasted for over a year before being suppressed by British colonial forces. Because Jamaica's population was massively, overwhelmingly black in comparison to the very small minority of. Large sleeve hauling weights. They were more likely to launch and more likely to succeed in safer foods. Steve, would Someone Like You tapping? Of course. We're slaves out number whites. We're masters are absent where there's economic distress, where they're split within the ruling elite. And when you know large numbers of native one Africans from one area of rotten one time, which is why they often had to split up their with people that they captured so they wouldn't be able to collaborate with their kin. We often remember the flashier forms of revolt, such as the revolt in Saint Joseph in 1837, led by Dagar, who was a former African chief in Guinea and the leader of the first British W India Regiment. Umm. He mutinied along with 240 men and. Although they were taken into custody and. Sentenced to death. They marked just one example of. These sort of bold actions that were taken by instead of people in Tobago in the year 1770. There are numerous omnivores over the next 11 years from 1770 to 18016 armed revolts, 1 by led by an enslaved man named Sandy in 1772 in 1771, one in June and the other in August, 1 in 1773, another in 1774, another in 1801. And so these revolts that concert in one specific area of the island, they would happen in some cases over the entire island. Tobago is of course a separate from Trinidad. Until 1899 we became a ward of trying to be ago. But. And so their history is the history of Trinidad and history Tobago. Were separate running separately for the. First couple 100 years of the age of colonization. But. To beagles history of resistance is still. Connected in some ways to Trinidad's history of resistance, in the sense of the bold action so witikon. Buying slave people. Of course, not all resistance to slavery was so bold. Day-to-day resistance was by far the most common form of opposition to slavery, whether it be through feeling illness, staging slowdowns, pretending ignorance, deliberate carelessness, awesome, and sabotage, breaking tools. These sorts of expressions. While the. Reinforced previously held perceptions of enslaved Africans at the time. They also. We we use of enslaved people to express their alienation and to sort of carve some level of space or breathing room or to give themselves some sense of catharsis in that brutal. And So what we see is a sort of continuum of resistance from that sort of individual level of. Slowing down or feigning ignorance or. What or whatever to the sort of broader cultural. Methods of passive resistance, such as you know. Cultivating and passing down culture and cultural memories to the more bold aspects of resistance, such as revolts and rebellions and revolutions. And of course. There was the practice of maroon edge. Both petite and Grand Marronage petite marronage. Was an effort by. Individuals or groups of enslaved people. To escape from their plantations permanently sometimes, but usually for a limited amount of time. To escape mistreatment, to negotiate better treatment, or to even just catch a break. Honestly, Grand Munich is more commonly understood and recognized, where communities of fugitive slaves would establish communities on the fringes, in the swamps of Louisiana, for example, or in the mountains of Jamaica. And these maroon communities have been established since the very beginning, since the early 16th century, when the first enslaved Africans were brought to the Caribbean by the Spanish, they would often unite with Amerindians, whether it be, you know, tiny nose or kalinago's or. God, that's a bees and. Unite with them in their. Resistance in carving out settlements or strongholds of safety. For example, in 1546 in Hispaniola there were over 7000 Maroons among a slave population of 30,000. After the island was split between the French Santo Ming, which is later, which is now known as Haiti, and the Spanish Santo Domingo, which is Dominican Republic. In 1697, Maroons took advantage of the hostility between France and Spain to maintain settlements along the border between the two throughout the period of slavery. In addition, there were ruins in Cuba, in Puerto Rico and in some cases with Puerto Rico. Fugitive slaves from the Virgin Islands would literally set seal to Puerto Rico to settle and escape the enslavement there. In Jamaica, of course, there are many ruined communities and in fact there is still an active maroon community in Jamaica to this day that has persisted and maintained their traditions in seeing kits in Antigua, in Barbados, in Martinique and Guadeloupe. All of these islands have had ruined communities established. However, as European cultivation of the islands increased, as Europeans ventured further and further into the islands, into the depths of the islands, it became more and more difficult to establish roots settlements because if you look at some of the smaller islands. It's kind of difficult to hide. Or to establish any sort of sustainable community on the fringes of. An island that you could easily jog from one side to the other. Or, you know, walk from one side to the other. Of course, even on those small islands, there were still attempts to maintain ruin settlements, such as in Saint Vincent or Dominica. In Saint Vincent the Garifuna, which are an indigenous group makes who mixed with Africans, presume they defend their independence against both French and the British and they ended up spreading to, if I recall correctly, Central America as well. Answer. The Garifuna community is still very much alive and well to this day. In Jamaica and Cuba and Guadalupe and Hispaniola. Marine communities were able to last longer because they had more mountainous terrain to hide in, particularly in Jamaica. Umm. But they were also marine communities on the South American mainland. You know, in Brazil, there was the famous maroon community, or kilombo, known as Palmaris, which had existed for nearly. 100 years from 1605 to 1694. There is acid invasion by both the Dutch and Portuguese and had at least 10,000 organised. Military members ready to defend their population. They were governed by a king who used the political traditions drawn from Central Africa. But. The unfortunately, we eventually destroyed in the guyanas, French Guyana. British Guyana, which is now called Guyana. Dutch Guyana, which is now called Suriname. Marine communities was able to establish themselves and they still persist to this D due to the. Umm. Amazon Rainforest on the river weaves that allowed them to conceal themselves from colonial encroachment. Of course, in the US there were all submarine communities like the Black Seminoles of Florida or the maroon communities in I believe it was Louisiana. In most places, of course, ruined communities were not very large. Or often, then at last very long. They're usually small guerrilla bands led by an elected chief. But of course, these small bands. In there, although they were small, that sort of protected them to some extent from detection and from recapture. In Cuba, for example, there were hundreds of small marine communities and they were guarded. And they were, and they had their settlements guarded by ditches and steaks and secret paths, and these settlements communicated with each other while remaining isolated, so they could grow their own crops and hunt and fish, and treed in peace sometimes with other islands in order to prevent again capture and destruction. I think there's a lot that we can learn from the different forms of resistance, small and large, that instead of people undertook throughout the period of colonial settlements and expansion and enslavement. Elements of their practices that I think could be applied to today's struggles. Do you have any thoughts before we wrap? Yeah, one thing I kind of want to plug is Russell Maroon, Schultz wrote. A really interesting. Aye. I don't know exactly what. The the name for a essay, I guess called the Dragon and the Hydra. Which is yes, study, yes, yeah. Yeah, it's contracting the hydro study of historical study of organizational methods and it's about basically a comparison of like different, different kinds of resistance to. Colonial linsman enslavement that talks a lot about the human movement talks about sort of the the. The problems that these sort of like highly centralized top down movements ran into versus the kind of stuff that the that these sort of more decentralized, less hierarchical marine movements. Face and it's really interesting and I it's pretty short, so everyone should just read it because it's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He covers the US ET, Suriname and Jamaica and you know how those different rural communities dealt with their conditions. I'm pretty sure you wrote this from prison too, if I'm remembering my timeline history correctly. Yes, I I highly recommend folks give that a read. I mean, I don't want to give the impression that ruined communities where he is like. Valiant utopias, I mean, in some cases, maroon communities were. Manipulated. Against the other and. Often in exchange for maintaining their autonomy. They were made to sign treaties where they would have to turn in fugitives, so it was not by any means a perfect situation to be in, but. They were trying to cough up their survival. Yeah, I guess. Do you want to plug your stuff so you can find me on Twitter, at under score scene true and on YouTube scene and tourism? Where I have lots of stuff, I mean if you were interested in for example. The details of how spirituality played a role in African resistance. I have a video on that if you were interested in. You know how? World Wide Equine new established? The sons of Africa Group and however, that was one of the. Foundations of what eventually became the anarchist movement. I have a video on Pan Africanism that you could check out soon. Yeah. That's it for me. That was great. I didn't know there were still maroon communities, actually. Yeah, yeah. The one in Jamaica, the one in Surinam, they are still very much alive and well, yeah, that's fascinating. St. Andrew, thank you for that. That was wonderful. And that's that's our episode for today, so. Go home and Doom scroll for several hours probably. Or or do something productive. Or take another product code or something. Had a cat bake some cookies, hand out food to people who are hungry? You know, fix some cookies and then hand out the cookies to people who need it. Or doom scroll. You know, all productive things that are. Some significantly more productive than others. Alright friends, that's that's the episode. Peace. Ohh. Robert, two better. Try harder. That's how you start a podcast. This is. It could happen here. That's right. That's Robert talking. That's right. Also with us, both of these things, you're accurate. Christopher Wong and Garrison Davis, do your podcast. Yeah. So we're all gathering today on, on the day after what I think will go down as the single most momentous moment in the 21st century. Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Oscars, so the entire world has pivoted from obsession with the massive land war in Eastern Europe to discussing how Chris Rock getting slapped is like the massive land war in Eastern Europe, or or 911. Or 911. Yes, yes, yes, so it's a it's an amazing like an unprecedentedly incredible time to be on on Twitter right now. That said. We're going to talk about Nazi catboys today. I, I've, I've seen everyone's posts on the subreddit being like, why aren't you guys giving blow by blows about the war in Ukraine? And this is, this is the most pressing topic, and we're going to talk about Nazi cat boys. Previous to the Chris Rock slap, this is the most pressing topic of the 21st century is why there's not sea cat boys. And now we're going to talk about it because, I mean, the roots of the crisis in Ukraine are the different kinds of catboys. It's Alinsky and Putin are. Yes, Robert, that is true. Fan art up. It's going to be fine, I'm sure. I'm sure we'll find some horrible fan art, yes. Yeah, well, we have to figure out if if Putin's ever watched Helsing and then we'll be able to know. So I don't know what that means, but OK, you're you're about to find out how great. So we we we have gathered here today to talk about to talk about the curious case of why there are Nazi catboys. No. Throughout 2020 and 2021, Tik T.O.K and Twitter pushed Femboys and Cat Boys and to kind of the cultural mainstream, plunging these once much more niche subcultures out of the dark depths of 4 Chan, Reddit, Tumblr, and discord, and the the latest rebirth of these kind of gender bending communities. It's pretty socially progressive and affirming. Jet, like generally most, most femboys cat boys are, are, are, are, are lefties. There's a whole bunch of like. Twitter communists. I'm sure there's a whole bunch of cat boys who like Stalin or something, but they're they're generally more generally more on the left. But, but but for for those who've dug deeper into the history and origins of these Internet subcultures, you may have found a dark, racist and hateful underbelly. So we're going to talk about that today. I do have to note, Garrison, as soon as you said that I found a Stalinist cat boy. The Twitter it's an incredible account so that their their background image for their Twitter account is a picture of Deng Xiaoping and the Ayatollah of Iran having a meeting. They're their PFP is a lavender haired. It's like a it's like an anime picture. Avatar catboy. Yeah, with like a Soviet hat and then Marxist Leninist bisexual catboy Stalin did nothing wrong at North Korea stand. Incredible. Incredible. This is why the left will never win. Uh, that's perfect. I'm pretty sure this is like illegal in most of those countries which would have had this person shot in the second. Someone tried to describe a cat boy to Joseph Stalin. He would have had this person executed. Oh yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, I see. I see it now. That is, that is intense, outstanding. You know, The thing is this type of thing is not going to be uncommon. We're going to be again, we're going to be going into like actual fascists who are also catboys and obviously they would have been. Would have been killed for being degenerates as well. But now we're going to kind of talk about how this, how this kind of came to be. And I I've been writing this for like over a year, actually. I've interviewed a few people for this that have kind of contributed to the script. And initially this was going to be conceived as a video, and you can't really talk about these things in a video format without dressing up like a silly character. So I am, I'm wearing a very, actually a very, very high quality catboy outfit right now, which the audio will just have to, you'll have to, you'll have to see it through the audio. So good luck with that synesthesia. Yeah, yeah. So you are at the same time you've done that enough that I don't know that anyone really noticed. I've never dressed as a cat boy for recording before you dress as something. Every other recording that is true, I guess is something. I generally addresses something. So first Section 1, section one. What is? What is the cat boy? What is? What is? What is this so? But first of all of a few ground rules will be circling back to often one, not all. Fat boys and femboys identify as LGBT or queer, and two gay people can still be racist. These are these, these are these. These are two points that are going to be coming back to over the course of these of of these deep state episodes. So First things first, let's let's let's define what a cat boy is for all of the boomers in the audience. And if you if you are a boomer listening to this, how, why, how did you find this? Why are why did you choose to listen to Garrison? The instant I became a boomer was the first time you tried to describe. Explained Catboys to me like I I I suddenly developed a strong opinion on HR Haldeman because of because of you. So that was the most ministration joke, but most simply a catboy. Is this what I'm doing right now? So someone who is kind of kind of boyish, who who who who sometimes enjoys dressing in cat like? Apparel I guess it's like cat ears it is different from furries from and we will we will get into this that's good I mean but I'm definitely less boyish than I first was when I wrote this like a year ago now that I'm on recreational estrogen. But nevertheless someone who's a boyish and dresses or likes to dress in cat like kind of outfits generally on an anime trajectory of aesthetics. Now this is this is this is different from furries for multiple reasons the physical cat like attributes on catboys. Mostly confined to ears and pause, sometimes with tails, but it's it's iffy. Whereas, you know, furries like to have like the full fursuit thing going on, whereas catboys, they still have like human faces and they wear like human clothes. So this is actually a very key difference, which we'll lots of made costumes like and yes, a lot. And the other other big kind of recurring trope is that is that, well, they, well, catboys don't usually wear clothes is that they usually dress up in something similar to like a French maid outfit. Or or like different outfits like anime girls will wear. So like the tennis skirt thing, but generally I made outfit to animate trajectory. So despite despite the animal ears, right despite like the furry cat ears, the cat boy or cat girl thing has much more in common with the femboy community than the furry community in a lot of instances. But more more more more on that later. So after some initial research into the Nazi Cat Boy meme, I decided it would be useful for tracing back the roots of this kind of. Mod online phenomenon to broaden the scope of research to include femboys as well, which is succinctly just catboys without the cat part. It's like boys or generally male identifying people who dressed in like feminine ways. Not a lot of Femboys will turn out to be trans. Not all of them do. A lot of femboys identify as straight but, you know, like to wear, you know, boys generally kind of in the ***** variety who likes to wear skirts, dresses, whatever. So I'm about to move into Section 2, which gets a little bit more silly, but but yeah. So Van Boys more silly. Great. It's exciting this, this doesn't get less silly as we go on, but but yeah, cat boys, femboys femboys identify as male. Dress up in more. Stereotypically feminine ways. There's a lot of similarity and crossover between femboys and Cat boys, but since femboys have more of an established online history, including them in the research seems like the best way to kind of dig into like the fascist femboy Nazi Cat boy idea. So Speaking of Section 2, the racist femboy meme, the the past, the past few years, there's been kind of a growing meme and perception across social media that femboys are, like, really racist and just kind of pretty fashy in general. Even really homophobic and transphobic and a lot of in a lot of senses as much as a homophobic or transphobic femboy may seem contradictory at first, but again, more more on this later. So what I'm talking about this going forward, I'm probably going to be mixing words and terms like Nazi and Fascist and alt right or far right now not, not all of these racist femboys are what I would call Nazis by any means. And not, not, not all advocate for, even joke about genocide. But there were absolutely recruitment attempts from self-described Nazis. And you know, the line between jokes and actual beliefs is intentionally very foggy on this kind of Internet subculture. So I'll kind of be lazily lumping together everything from racist to far, far right wing folks for the sake of simplicity, because it's all like in the same spectrum. And like I mentioned in the beginning, not all femboys and cat boys identify as being queer, and gay people can still be racist. These are these are points we're going to be circling back to a lot. So. At this point, the Altright fanboy meme has kind of actually or overshadowed the actual phenomenon of it happening right. In the past few years, the popularity of leftist FEMBOYS has skyrocketed. Yet if you still do digging on like Twitter or discord, you can indeed find users who appear to be femboys, but are also everything from racist to just openly fascist. Now, naturally, that leaves people wondering, how can one have such a kind of contradictory lifestyle and belief system? Which leads us to Section 3, the Internet and that's it. That's kind of, that's kind of the answer we that's we can kind of pack it up here. That's the answer. It's the Internet. That's that's why that's why this is happened. Well, Gores fault. That's what I'm getting out of this. Yeah, sure. Whatever. It's Garrison are you are you are you. Have you been caught up on why people say Al Gore invented the Internet on where that joke came from? Are you aware of the oh, boy, oh, you have to you have to remember Chris Carson's. This report after 2000, I was, I was. So there was like, Al Gore was among a bunch of different people who like, voted to fund some of the different government kind of projects that became the Internet, right? Like you had the ARPANET and **** all that stuff. Like he was one of the people who, like, pushed that. And then in the debate with George Bush while running for President in 2000, he like basically made some claims that you could uncharitably translate as him saying that he invented the Internet. He didn't actually say that. It was more like he was saying, well I you know supported from an early stage the development of the Internet. But it got turned into like Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet because it was funny. Yeah. Abstraction essentially, yes and and so now that's that's that's the joke is is even though he he didn't really he just was not you know but anyway so so there you go. So we can we can blame Nazi catboys on Al Gore's great. Absolutely. Well that that does it for us today. Find us on weight. OK, we still have a few. We still have like half an episode to do. That's good. Alright, well, here's, here's Speaking of of of Al Gore and the Internet, here's some ads brought to you by the Internet. Ah boy, those ads were so good they made me want to be a cat. OK, alright. Wow. Moving on. If you're in any way familiar with fascism, you are probably aware that one of its more consistent traits is that it's notoriously ideologically inconsistent. So for for this project, I interviewed multiple people who have a more personal history in the Catboy and femboy online communities than I do. So those interviews, plus my own online, digging through like hundreds of threads from various forum websites, I've I've literally looked through hundreds, hundreds of catboy posts on 4 Chan, but doing doing all that. That's been very helpful for understanding kind of this intersection of politics and subculture. And since I did all this research, you don't need to. So there you go. But one of the first kind of big takeaways I had after the research and interviews is that the Nazi femboy cat boy thing is not actually unique at all in terms of Internet radicalization. It just has some aesthetic abnormalities that can confuse on liquors or normies, which makes the Internet phenomenon seen more outlandish than it actually is. But before we dig deeper into this litter box of hate. I would like to divide the Femboy and catboy kind of racism spectrum into actually 22 succinct categories. First we have we have type one, which I'm calling the femme fashion people, who are initially into the femboy community and aesthetic and then got introduced into far right politics online. And then we have Type 2, the flash farm people who were already into far right politics and only then got introduced to the Femboy community online. So I usually break down lots of instances of fascists. Mixing with various subcultures into these like similar like 2-2 categories of people starting off with politics and then getting into the culture, and people start off with the culture then getting into politics. I think it's actually kind of, it's useful for understanding a whole bunch of how there's like differences between different types of fascist people in various subcultures, so. These two types I'm gonna, I'm gonna be using to help to help talk about these the different kind of strains of of the fascist femboy. For for now, we're going to focus on the first one, the the femme flash. So let's let's let's wind, let's wind the clocks back, let's say, a decade. Broadly, gay people can't get married, and to to most kids, trans people are ostensibly a myth. So what kind of person is going to become a femboy in this, in this type of in this type of environment? Simplest answer is like a certain sect of social outcasts and anime nerds, as well as some people who maybe don't consciously know or accept that they're queer. That really the only way to get initially exposed to the femboy aesthetic back then was via anime, manga, ****** **** and you know, select video games, specifically multiplayer games and random and Internet browsing, right? This is this is how you're going to get exposed to this type of aesthetic. In fact, one of the probably the oldest example of a Nazi catboy is from an anime called Hellsing where they had a they had this Nazi catboy character who is The Who was the source of a lot of Nazi cat. Memes on 4 Chan like it's very, very popular meme figure, and this is, I think, a lot of where that aesthetic tied to fascism actually really starts from. But of course there's a lot of Fascist fans of anime in general, so. The type of aesthetics that the type of aesthetics of femininity that anime kind of presents get used by fascism a lot. Even among like they're more like a cottage core styles, it's still that very like patriarchal type of femininity that is popular among Japanese animation. So now the reasons that someone might be drawn to this specific community can vary from person to person. Maybe they just don't feel as connected to like the hyper macho, masculine style that American culture promotes. Maybe it's a way to get attention and validation. Or maybe you just like wearing skirts or find it kind of hot. There's there's there's always the possibility that someone is trans or gay and they just don't fully know it yet. This is a case with a lot of these people actually, but some of you may be surprised to hear that before our modern Tik T.O.K Femboy craze, most femboys did self identify as straight ancis. There is a lot of reasons for this, including like increased homophobia and transphobia back then. Plus like non binary was hardly even a thing like culturally at that at that point. One of the people I interviewed for this project talked about how some of the straight femboys he knew back then now do identify as trans or queer, but back then that wasn't really the case. The other person I interviewed for this called themselves this is gender femboy at the time of the interview, but has now since come out as trans. So like this is, it is definitely a recurring pattern, but it's not a thing for everybody. Like there is definitely like a lot, like a lot of these people do call themselves straight even still now. That is something that a lot of kind of people don't have a don't have the easiest time kind of comprehending, and that's going to what I'm going to kind of try to get into. So let's let's let's say you're a kid, young teen, and like 2011, you're getting into anime and video games. What kind of websites are you going to gravitate to? Right? You're gonna gravitate to Reddit, you're gravitate to 4 Chan, especially in like 2010, right? These are the, these are kind of the cultural meccas of of those types of types, types, types of subcultures. So what is relevant? On these websites, well on 4 Chan we have slash B which is their random channel which also has a not safe work designation and it's was often flooded with femboy pics. And since there are so few female users of that site, you see a lot of ****** and occasionally boys dressing up like not safe for work female anime characters just because there's people still like femininity, but there's so few actual girls using those sites that the femininity that you see is either through anime or it's through kind of cross dressing. Then there's also the slash D page, which is just completely dedicated to ****** so you get a lot of a lot of, a lot of that type of like anime style of femininity through kind of that type of a appropriation and fetishization on the slash D page. So there's there's a decent chance that anime and gaming nerds that browse their interest online will get exposed to femboy stuff at some point, right? Nowadays it's discord, used to be 4 Chan, used to be Reddit, so it becomes this type of. Figure Infinity loop of people who are exposed to something and then start propagating it, then get exposed to new people to it. And it's just like continuous cycle. Because if if you're a kid who discovers they kind of like this super niche, almost taboo thing, where are you going to go to find other like minded people that you're going to go back to? Online multiplayer gaming, Reddit and 4 Chan? It's it's it's all it's all the same circles. So if even if you don't get exposed to it in places like 4 Chan, you're probably going to end up there or somewhere similar regardless and. The other other and the other thing that's important to talk about, which is going to talk about like how how the femboys start getting into politics is like who else is very prevalent and actively recruiting on these types of sites with on like on on multiplayer gaming, on Reddit and 4 Chan. It's it's Nazis, right that the the people who are who are into very far right politics try to mask, try to mask some of their beliefs initially and like humor and memes, you know a lot. A large large part of an Internet radicalization. Done through is done through memes, especially, especially back in 2010. There's like so, so many like memes is memes is a social and recruitment tool, or very, very common, especially on like, you know, if you're on like an image board, that's the whole point is that you're sharing images. So a big part of this overrepresentation of racists in the femboy community was simply the online proximity between these groups of people, between the femboys and then the fascists on 4 Chan, early Reddit and certain online games. Whether it be like second life, whether it be like MMO's, you know all these types of places and and and any place that you can like design your own character as well. You got got a lot of this type of like anime femboy type thing because a lot of a lot of these games that are made in Japan can like give like more feminine options for like male characters or just have like cap boy like ears and stuff available as a cosmetic option so. A lot, a lot of this fetish fetishization that we see on 4 Chan and on and in the early 2000s and 20 teens is now is now applied to discord like this. He did kind of carry over for trans, obviously not the kind of cultural behemoth that it used to be. A lot of this stuff just happens on discord now where you can kind of cultivate to online communities that are more self-contained. So throughout the entirety of the 20 teens, fascism was pretty successful in festering among nerd spaces, right nerds and geeks of many types, whether that be gaming or anime or these more like esoteric communities. Esoteric as in like niche. But these communities generally they attract people who are more disenfranchised, right? And Femboys generally feel disenfranchised in one way or another, which just pushes them into this, you know, less mainstream subculture. At this point, they could be pretty easy targets for fascist. Recruiters to start suggesting that maybe some of their problems in the world are actually coming from feminism, immigrants stealing jobs, affirmative action, and slowly leading into talk of like IQ and racism and anti-Semitism. So for those who found these ideas initially like abhorrent, it can be explained that all this talk is simply edgy jokes and irony attempting to trigger the normies, which is a big part of that type of propagation of this type of humor. And then politics masters humor on these sites and all these like gaming. That's this isn't unique to Femboys or Cath boys in any way, right? The the the more people I interviewed and the more kind of old forums that I read, I started to actually see stuff that seemed much more familiar. And there's a lot of parallels between this far right femboy thing and the far right furry phenomenon, which I know Robert and the worst year ever podcast put together 2 episodes that do a great job. Kind of talking about the far right, the only real episode of the worst year ever that we ever got to do. Yeah, yeah, you guys, could you guys just briefly kind of. Talk about the the, the furry the furry kind of thing and how that because there is there's a lot there's even though these cultures are different between femboys and furries, the tactics that fascists used to get into these communities is is exactly the same and it kind of plays on the same same tropes. Yeah. I mean it's weird. So you've got, I I think it kind of. Harkins to the fact that, like, whenever you have a fandom, no matter kind of what the fandom is about or the message of the media it's about, you're going to have like, Nazis in it. And and that's obviously like Star Wars, right where the point of Star Wars is Empire, Bad Empire, basically space Nazis, bad guys. And there's a whole bunch of people who have just like made that into their life and get tattoos of the imperial sigil or whatever on their ******* chest. Or you've got like Disney movies where like, there's these, there's weirdos who will take far right nationalist messages at like every like everything everything has its Nazis, the punk community, right punk music is supposed to be anti authoritarian and kind of inherently left wing but there's Nazi punk so like it. It's all like every community has their Nazis and the furries are no different. One of the things that does make the furries different is I think because of how and this this is something probably you're a little too young and I guess a lot of our audience may have missed out on aspects of. But like early on in the Internet, and I'm, I'm talking like the first decade of actual Internet culture from like 1995 or 96 to like 2005 or 6, which is really the first decade of like, mass Internet culture. The punching bag of the entire Internet was was furries. Like, they were the people that like it was the safest to make fun of jokes about, like, killing them all sorts of really ****** ** ****. And so I think they developed kind of this very strong defensive impulse within the Community. And so while every subculture has their Nazis, the furries have gone kind of the furthest in documenting and working to like ostracize those people and they've done, they're on the level with like punks in terms of the the degree to which they have, like, that has become kind of a guiding principle for a lot of furries. Yeah. Is that kind of what you're looking for? Yeah, because a big, a big. And the thing you mentioned about like furries being such the punching bag, that's something that's something that. So he's even definitely kind of grasp on to as a way to do grooming and recruitment, right is if, if, if, if, if fascists can present themselves as friends to these people who are always punched down upon, then they can kind of put them into their in groups, right? They can. They can support them, give them, give them a sense of validation, give them a sense of community, tell them like that they, they, they belong. You're, you're, you're always going to be kicked out of like like real life social groups, right? You can only exist here with us. We're going, we understand. You like, right? They can kind of foster this thing, even though obviously it's dealing with things that are not the most. Like not the most like assistant straight thing in terms of like regular heterosexuality maybe like a lot a lot of furries or stripe. But like in terms of like the way they approach that is is definitely different than a lot of regular people. But they so white supremacists and different fascists can like grasp onto this, respond to this kind of disenfranchisement and offer this sense of community. Be, you know be very friendly initially be being very being very kind of open these people and start and start. You know the term would be like red Pilling. Right. To talk about that. A lot of their social issues are actually, you know, the fault of JW's talking about those, you know, all of these Jewish bankers. You know, it can start. You can start crafting the propaganda very carefully if you're friends with them first and then only start slowly introducing them into your more extremist kind of view of politics. Yeah, it's just no one's really surprised when an anime nerd or like a capital G Gamer starts spewing far right talking points, but when a femboy does, that just seems. Off because, like, aren't they also a degenerate, right? Like, like, it's like there is a bit of a cognitive dissonance there, and like, yes and no, right? You you may be overestimating some people's commitment to the fascist cause here. Because a recurring pattern I found when talking to people with history in these communities, especially if they're more of like the 7th fashion variety, right? Starting out, starting off with Femboy statics, then getting into being racist and and like like pretty racist and then getting into fascism is that look, looking back, these people and they say like themselves and others, all of their kind of parroting of racist and fascist talking points, especially online, was like they claim much more due to having to like fit in. With these, with these already pretty reactionary online spaces and make friends at seemingly one of the few places that people with similar interests gather. You know, some people deep down don't really care about the political beliefs that much and we're still looking for a community. And it just so happened that back then, in the early 20 teens, the places where these communities of outcast found each other were also places that other outcasts used racism as a lazy, attention seeking Shaka comedy and like the triggering of normies, which was basically like a sport. On these on on these forums, now obviously this is not excusing any abhorrent behavior and or horrible things said, but that whole idea plus the active like grooming and the active recruitment from Nazis made the nerdy outcast to Fascist pipeline that we see today. That's really how it built up and became such a powerful tool, you know around 2016. But there is, there is the other. So all of this just generally more applies to the people who are into femboy aesthetics and then got kind of railroaded. Into internationalism and to fascism, right? It's because they they're femboys on these platforms. There's also racists on these platforms, so these things start to kind of mix. But there's still that other type of femboy Nazi, the one who started off online with far right views and then discovered femboys and started to feel things will be starting by talking about them next on on on Part 2. But I guess, does anyone, anyone have any any questions, at least to close off part one, about the more kind of femme fashion? Variety of people who are generally kind of more regular politically, but are into into like femboy and catboy kind of a sex, and then and then get put into into into more reactionary ideas. Uh. Stay off the Internet. Yeah, that's not a question, but yes, that is that is a, that is a good, that's a good mission statement, which yeah, in terms of like in, in terms of like the. And this topic can whenever whenever I bring it up. I thought about this a lot. When I try to explain it to people, there is always a bit of like that. Oh, that doesn't make any sense, and I'll be getting to some of the more kind of semantics of it in in parts too, but at least at least for like the initial initial kind of dive into. How? The online community aspect is used as such a powerful tool for people who are feeling so alone that just the the idea of there being an online community, whether it be racist or not, can it's just super appealing. Because if if everyone thinks that you're weird and an outcast, if these other people who are also weird and outcast start kind of trying to make friends with you, then it can be a very powerful, like recruitment tool. Which then of course will there'll be people, they'll be people. Yeah. Who eventually try to like take them out of the whole femboy statics and a lot of in a lot of ways, but a lot of fascists also get into the femboy static because of the because of the proximity issue, right. Because these things are so like next to each other. And the thing you're the kind of important broader realization there and this is something that a radicalization scholar named Scott Atron has been talking about for 10 years now probably more, is that people get radicalized in communities people like when we talk about. Radicalization? Like, why? Like I I guess the other half of the explainer that I started this with being like, you know, every subculture has their Nazis. It's not because like, the reason every subculture has their Nazis is that subcultures are like, people get radicalized as part of communities, as part of subcultures. They don't get radicalized as individuals. Just like people don't aren't just walking out in the world and and decide to become a Nazi. They become a Nazi because a Nazi reaches them in something they're already into. Right. Like that. That's just the way it happens. Yeah. There's definitely a large part of this is like a group of like group dynamics, especially in places like forums where you're, you know, trying to trying to get like this, like attention battle. And I guess the other other big part about the femboy kind of idea, especially on image boards, is like, it is such an attention seeking and validation seeking place, right you, you want to, you want to post things that gets you a lot of comments, like not votes, whatever the kind of the metric is. So people will do things that. Get them visibility. Even if even if half the people interacting with you are calling you a degenerate, at least there's people still looking at you, right? At least you feel seen. And then the other half people will be like, no, it's actually fine, you know? So as long as there's that visibility and that that sense of community, then a lot of the more cognitive, cognitive dissonance aspects can kind of be passed by. But we'll we'll get into more of that for, for for for Part 2 anyway. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram. That happened here. Pod and Colson media. You can find me talking about cat boys occasionally on Twitter at Hungry Bow tie and I'm happy about it, Gary. Well, it's you know I've I've been I've been trying to edit down this episode because the script was way too long. We're trying to make it more succinct the past few days so my my my my my I am I am pretty excited to be to to to close this Google doc at the end of the day. Well, congratulations on all your hard work, Garrison and listeners at home go dress like a cat boy. Yep, and and don't be a Nazi. Yeah, I mean, that's also important. Recording in progress. All right, well, that's my opening, Garrison, welcome to Part 2 of why they're Nazi catboys. What is this podcast, Garrison? It's it could happen here talking about the that the **** together the, the catboys have Nazis which did, which did actually happen here they're actually, we'll talk about how they actually happened. But before we before we get into the topic of Fascists becoming femboys via exposure, because I I do, we're going to start off by talking about kind of, well, generally the book book the episodes be talking about people who are fascists, who then get into femboys topics, right? Last episode we talked about The Tempest, people who are femboys, who they get to fascism. Now we're talking about the fascists who now get into femboys. But. Before we get real into that, I think it's going to I think it would be helpful to get a bit more into what these online communities were like in the 20 teens. Now. All this infos like a combination of what I've gleaned from interviews, direct messages, my own pulling up of old like 4 Chan and Reddit threads, and may not necessarily reflect your own experiences perfectly, but it's the most in-depth I can do on an audio only medium. Some won't be thrilled about this, but we do need to discuss traps and their place within the online community at the time. Of which means we must divine, which means we first must define another term for the blissfully unaware. So it's really heartbreaking because when I was a child Garrison, I know trap was was just a house where you hid your drugs. It is. It is not a trap house. This is a different, different, different type of track. Was before Trap House turned into a podcast. Yeah, and a bunch of New York people didn't know what a trap house was. This is great. Heartbreaking. Therapist using it here, at least from the Internet originates in the in the early 2000s on image boards specifically 4 Chan and it it it got to be as it as it got more popular to term got more kind of widely recognized as a slur, specifically usually a slur against trans women or a slur for like any like feminine presenting a person who was assigned male at birth. So it's it's it's use. In origins at least from the Internet comes from people posting pictures, usually from anime of very like feminine looking boys alongside the meme of Admiral Ackbar saying it's a trap, right. So this is this is how this idea of the trap kind of started, at least online. I talked with some like other trans friends of mine. They say that it definitely they in their opinion they they they remember it being a term even before the the 2000s on the Internet of being kind of more of a slur towards trans women. I can't find any kind of stuff. Online about that specific angle, but the term the term may be older than that offline, but at least the online use of it really comes from the Admiral Ackbar meme. So of course the it's a trap idea. Kind of implies some form of deceptions that play right with these drawings that appear feminine but may actually be depicting adolescent males or, you know, worse transsexuals. Right? Woo. Very scary. So this this soon got transferred over from being applied to anime drawings to being applied to pictures. And then in person encounters of real femboys or trans people. So you know, it's as in like if you found someone that looks female enough as the men would go if to be attractive and later found out that they were actually a boy or they were a trans woman, the idea was like, you were deceived. Thus you must be on the lookout for any kind of potential attractiveness of femboys or trans women, or else you too might be trapped. So this is again, this is, it's it's it's often. It's a very transphobic and it's like it's comparing femboys to trans women because these are these are not the same thing. Obviously there's is very, very #problematic for a lot of reasons. But there there's also the, uh, the the meme of the of our traps gay, which is referring to a kind of like satirical debate around whether or not it's gay defined a femboy, a male cross dresser, or even a a trans woman attractive. Now the meme does riff on the whole like, fellas, is it gay thing? And Gee whiz, am I glad the fellas meme has surpassed the R traps gave meme, because obviously, obviously, not only is the are traps gay thing pretty homophobic and transphobic. It's also tied to a lot of, like, real world violence against trans women by men. All of the trans panic defense, right? The, the, the whole the whole trap idea kind of does tie into the trans panic defense. A lot of you know men who claim they simply had to attack or kill trans women once they found out that that she had * **** *****? Or maybe used to have * ****. Not even anymore, right? It doesn't even matter. It's more commonly or commonly called the trans panic defense. Yeah, yeah. So and like, the mere thought of that was so scary that they. They used the trans panic defense in court when violence against trans women is enacted. Now, obviously this is also much more attacks against trans women in this vein are much more common on trans women of color than than than white trans women. That's another that's another important thing to mention, but circling back to to 4 Chan Nazis and Femboys in in the 2000s and 20 tens trap was almost like a badge of honor and self descriptor for many femboys as well. Like being able to trap or like, you know, pass for a woman while having * **** was like the highest level of Femboy Ness. It was like it was like top shelf femboy was being was being able to to achieve this feat. Usually this was, you know, for the purposes of taking like lewd pictures of yourself and then having them be, you know, well liked or spread across online forums, in my interviews with people from these online spaces longer than I've been around. It was it was like described to me by them being like femboys are just trying to look feminine whereas traps are really trying to look like girls. And that is kind of like the distinction in these in these places at the time now you know, all while calling yourself trans was heavily discouraged and ridiculed in 2011, you know 4 Chan it was, it was, it was, it was hard to be. It was hard to even be openly gay like let alone transgender. So, but being self-described as a trap was a much more accepted. So a lot of people would actually self describe as this or you know. Want to be self-described as this? Like want to be at the point where they feel like they could say this. And it's interesting. It's like a lot of a lot of the attraction to traps. Was in, in a lot of ways genuine, but also all wrapped in this, like joking, ironic kind of exterior being like, oh, it's all like, it's all like a bit that we're that we're all in on the joke for, right? That that's kind of how this was explained away. Another quote from the interviews is like. Quote if you actually admitted to being actually actually romantically attracted to traps or femboys, you would be heavily ostracized. People would say things like, Oh my God, you actually did it like you actually did the thing, because it is, it is. It was like wrapped in this sense of of of of like irony and and and any hint of sincere attraction was masked in this like ironic joke, like facade. So at this point 4 Chan is basically an amateur **** filled cesspool of anime gaming, edgy jokes, and increasingly. That politics with poll really taking the shape of, like, the Nazi machine that it is today, so close proximity and probability is all that's necessary to make these racist and femboys have this, you know, uncomfortable awakening once they start seeing a whole bunch of pictures with people with ***** wearing like, made outfits. So with with all these like, edgy, ironic and not so ironic jokes, the racists populating these CHANS forums and online spaces, it's only a matter of time before they get exposed. You know, boys posing in Japanese tennis skirts and pink wigs, which helps create this Infinity loop idea of like femboys who get into racism and then fascism and then and fascists who discover they **** **** girls and when boys wear dresses and then it's it's because they're because things are happening right next to each other. It's this whole phenomenon of self contradiction that just keeps itself going. So we're now, we're now done this section. Thankfully, I did not want to get into having to talk about all that stuff because I know it's not. People don't like talking about it. It's pretty, it's pretty. It plays on a whole bunch of extremely like transphobic, like tropes. But it is it is a big part of this, this, this kind of phenomenon. So now we're going to the next part, which is in cells, gamergate and anti feminism. So. I I'm I'm not gonna focus a lot on the idea of repressed queerness here, right the the idea of, like, Ray Jacobs being secretly gay, because I think that idea gets a little too much attention when we talk about this sort of thing. Now, don't get me wrong, this absolutely, absolutely does happen, but I generally view sexuality, gender identity, and gender expression as much more fluid attributes, even among people who consider themselves assistant straight. So I I don't like defaulting to this, like, explainer of being, like, oh, they're homophobic. That means they're secretly gay and like. That's I think that's kind of lazy and stupid. But when we're talking about the curious case of Nazi catboys, most individuals involved not only identify as straight and cisgender, but are also very homophobic and very transphobic, despite their overly like queer behavior. Because it is. It is like queer and like the original sense of the word, and I think there's much more interesting ways to analyze this beyond the repressed gay trope. We've already we've already talked about some femboys and femboy appreciators adopting reactionary and conservative social beliefs to fit into the larger culture around 4 Chan and parts of the online gaming community to find this sense of belonging and, you know, shared shared community among other people. But in order for the fascist femboy to be such a lasting meme and trope in and of itself, in my mind, there needs to be a bit of a stronger justification for the inherent contradictions beyond just finding community itself. And we will. We'll talk about that when we come back. From from from our break. Here's here's some ads that, uh, that are hopefully about how you 2 can go on Amazon.com and buy a maid outfit. And we're back, OK, we're going to talk about incels. Of one of my yeah yeah. It's. It sells. Or like involuntarily celibate people. Whatever. I I assume people who are listening to this know what in cells are. But the incel movement gained traction in the mid 20 teens alongside Gamergate and the growing kind of anti feminist, and alongside a mass shooting, it's probably worth acknowledging multiple mass shooting. There's been there was, there was, there was also the Toronto attack when the Incel ran over people in that van. There's been multiple mass acts of violence. Tied to the Incel idea and how they spend, a lot of us just call them ***** ISIS. I've never heard anyone call them that before. Well, they are, I mean immediately. Also, this is this is also the same. Where just ISIS is on Twitter, so they sure were. That was the daily basis. I really want ISIS to chime in on the Will Smith to face. No, you don't like. I I would love that **** here. No, I'm waiting for the Talibans take. No, no, no, no, no. The Internet is violence against violence. Comedians, comedians justified. The Taliban weighs in at 6. The Taliban are. You could get the Taliban arguing with ISIS, OK? By God, it could be done. What a what a what a better world that would be. Especially if Trump was still on Twitter and could mediate. Oh God, that would have been so funny if if Trump had been around on Twitter to it's the only time I've missed him. Just like, Oh yeah, yeah, that would have been that would have been the good ****. Anyway, yeah, in cells there, it's a pretty good, like, ostensibly violent movement because it's it's all about making young men disenfranchised about their future, right? It's this fatalistic idea that they were promised things, and now those promises are no longer being kept by society. So you are kind of doomed to live a pathetic life forever, right? So it is a very fatalist idea that really kind of encourages. Acts of violence. But the in Intel limit was gaining traction around this whole time right right beside Gamergate and the growing anti feminist movement. And I think the key to putting this puzzle together is in the hatred and resentment of the women itself as like a thing. I think this is actually a key part of why the femboy and femboy fascist thing kind of caught on. Most of the loose organizing of these movements were happening on 4 Chan and Reddit, right? Eventually, eventually Discord as well. These were the same places that were home to the anime posting femboy amateur **** community. And one of the most common viewpoints at the time was that feminism is ruining women's right? That's it's it's disrupting the natural patriarchal order that many boys were taught existed. You know, with promises of girlfriends and wives that are like rightfully theirs as some kind of, like, obligation. Yeah, I mean this. When we talk about like prominent people being men being promised women, we're generally talking about like the way in which fiction kind of implicitly promises women as a as a reward for heroics or you just being good. Yeah, it's like it's it's specifically like a cultural idea. That is probably the best example of this. Star Wars, Luke Skywalker becomes a hero and gets to gets to kiss his sister. You know, that's that's probably just the, which is the driving ovation of many. Million cells so they too can one day because their sister thank thank you Robert for that for that instinct analysis I used to I used to be a a films reviewer Garrison so like if you're taught and raised like thinking that something like this exists right like this this this this correct patriarchal order like it's like it's it's it's almost it's almost like this like righteous truth and you if you end discovery like that's kind of a lie and that like women are actually individuals with value. Not tied to the ownership by a man. Some men have a very, very unhealthy, often violent all reaction to this realization or confrontation. So some people then decide to do mass shootings. Some people kill people, some people just do. You know, some people might just do, you know, like intimate partner violence, right? Say that they do get a a partner at some point and it's not going the way they want and they just become abusive, right? So there's a whole bunch of ways this type of thing can manifest. So faced with the work of like not being * **** and trying to combat this ingrained misogyny and then having to like actually put effort into being attractive and desired, a lot of men instead opt to either like attack outwards or withdrawal inwards and sometimes the mix of both. So with the with the fascist fanboy thing, a lot of this is like withdrawing in words, right? A lot of these people are too introverted and too kind of cowardly to actually do it, like a mass shooting, which is like, that's that's that's that's probably good. Umm. But then with them and drawing in words we're going to. It's kind of manifests in this in this in this different way, so. When dealing with this almost like misogynistic nihilism, a lot of dudes really lost hope in the prospect of a future romance with women. So instead of putting in effort to adjust their personality, adjust their behavior, change their change their patriarchal outlook, and improve their physical appearance, many guys and said we'll retreat to the online communities full of other guys facing similar issues, right? It's easier to live in front of a screen and not have to face other humans in person. These these people don't really have much substantial experience in real life interacting with the opposite. Better so these perhaps, you know these these so-called straight guys that were drawn to femboys also may have had just had, like, bad experiences with women. They may have faced rejection, and that rejection may have really brought them down. And then they assume that they're always going to be rejected by women because of like, a few bad experiences. And the kind of guys who are on these CHANS forums and Reddit online gaming, they tend to be generally more socially outcast people who aren't necessarily super physically, naturally like, attractive and masculine, right? You have to like people. Everyone, almost everyone can be attractive. You just have to, like, put in work if you if you just never do that. Like, a lot of boys are never taught how to actually make themselves look good. So they're just kind of like, just like, like storing attractive is is a much like they if you go on these incel forms, they'll focus a lot on like, well. I have, you know, there's these folds in the creases of my eyes are like the way that my nose is. They get very possible physically impossible for a woman to be intimate. And it's like, no, yeah, like more than people. Like, there's all sorts of different preferences people have for physical things. But overall, like the number one thing you can do to be attractive is, is to be a person that people like, be confident and be their life. Like, have like a good personality, like learn how to do a variety of things. Yeah, just like have have a life. A lot of the all these guys like that seems neat. They think that they can achieve, you know, they think that women should flock to them even if they put in, like, no effort at all, right. If they just do what they're doing, they feel like, why is this not working or or the effort they put in is like Ellie again, Elliot Rogers, the perfect example of these kind of people, like the effort that he put in was he like made his dad buy him a really nice car and he dressed in expensive clothing and it's like, well, that's actually very few people are attracted to that. And yes, the people who are attracted. Solely to someone having a nice car and clothing, probably shallowly weird specific like physical things they're also only looking for. Yeah, but that's because you were like like that. That's not making yourself attractive. As opposed to, I don't know, learning how to cook or or learning, you know, a foreign language or, you know, being an emotionally available person who's not purely viewing relationships in a transactional nature where you're you're paying for sex by being friendly. You know, but you know with you know which way. But you know what's easier than doing all that is just hating women or that is that's a much easier thing for these people to do. So defaults to this. So the Internet has taught me one thing it's that it's quite easy to hate women. So while these like Alt right hellholes like 4 Chan and you know Reddit online gaming right online gaming is full of misogyny. All these all these places like really hate like actual women. It's they still heavily. Letter size, femininity, right? It's still viewed as this, like, glorious like, like thing that's put put put put put on a pedestal even though they hate, like actual women themselves. So feminine dudes can be femboys or cosplay anime to garner attention or social praise. You know, admits to some, you know, standard. You know, like people like, oh you're a ****** you're disgusting comments, but you can they they can still like, cosplay and dress up and post pictures without being totally shunned by their fellow. Edgy alt writers because it's kind of funny, and some of them may actually find it cute even though even though they may not admit it, femboys often do have think. You know, I generally think cute and effeminate features they can in. For these people, a big part of the goal is to like trick the brain into thinking that you're just looking at a girl that might just so happen to have a penis. So therefore, when like viewing these pictures, these guys are also like getting a sense of familiarity with girl like imagery while thinking that like, they also might have a shot with interacting with this individual because they don't have a vagina. So that makes it makes interacting with them like easier because there's like more things to relate to I guess. You would see a lot of, like, role-playing and like, role-playing of sexting and like role-playing of dating girls through this femboy framework of just actually a really common occurrence as like, and it was, it was explained, it's like, it's like a sort of practice for imagining their future of dating women. It was like, it was like they're doing this to, like, practice interacting with women. So they're just gonna be role-playing dating femboys while being Nazis, but they're doing it so that it's like a practice so that they'll be better at dating women in the future. It's like so that that's that's actually a really common thing. Or like, you know, like sexting as as as like, yeah, I'm just doing this for practice. Like I'm doing this so that I will be good at sexting in the future. Just doing it with these femboys on, you know, discord on 4 Chan, whatever. Because, like, all of like, the whole femboy thing is still dealing with the patriarchal views of beauty, right? It's it's femininity as this sort of performance put on for the enjoyment of others. And because it's about that, like, appreciating femininity itself, it's seen as a lot safer than full on homosexual attraction, right? Because it's it's allowed. If you're if you can appreciate the femininity, then that's allowed to propagate, despite also kind of being degenerate because the person generally femboys usually self. Ideas male. But because it's wrapped in this feminine package, it's allowed to be appreciated. And for the people that did eventually come to terms with their queerness, the 4 Chan femboy thing allowed them to safely dip their toes into exploring how like exploring homosexuality, bisexuality, exploring like gender bending without, like, abandoning the typical masculine, feminine roles that were kind of raised to be comfortable with. Right? It's still in the regular masculine, feminine like role sets, but. It's approachable because it's allowed to be done through this both both this like ironic joke, but then also it's still it's still based off these patriarchal views of feminine beauty. So it's it's, it's, it's it's a weird thing. It's, it's that's it's the other part of it that I like to explain to people because like, ohh, that is like trying to picture fascists fake dating each other online so that they'll be better at dating women in the future. It's just a very absurd idea. It's I. It's very I'm actually fine with this, but, like, it makes like it it makes sense. Like it like it like, I understand it. And you can like, yeah, like, I, I I I get it. And it did help a lot of people eventually realize maybe I'm not the straightest stick in the shed, or maybe I'm not the straightest stick in the fascists. Yeah, I mean. Everyone needs a safe space to figure out what they are, and I guess that even includes. Fascists. Maybe because, like, not because I want fascists to be fascists, but because maybe some of them, through this weird role-playing role, will, like, get over some stuff. Absolutely. Like, recognize that? Like, oh, maybe maybe I'm just, like, gay and I need to knock on myself, like, work on myself. And like, I I'm. I'm maybe I've been barking up the wrong tree with all this Nazi stuff. Yeah, no, because, like. And it's like the Gamergate and the height of the insult era. These guys felt more comfortable exploring their burgeoning sexuality in these male dominated online spaces right there. It's easier to relate to other males when they're when they're all like growing up, coming of age, dealing with, dealing with these like feelings of like abandonment, loneliness, right. If they do this in these male spaces, they feel a lot safer to express themselves, you know, whether or not they're full of fascists or like other people who are like very like reactionary, because at least they can understand male desire. And that's and they're they can relate to that and interact with people who are, you know they they can eat interact easier with people with ***** well wrapped in this feminine package, which is so much easier than the much more scary and much more elusive like females out there, right. It's it's that that's kind of the framework that this was propagated through. It's it's it's really interesting that it's like. You have these people who like. They're they're like they're they're transmisogyny is such that like they they've escalated to a point where it circles back around. Yes, it is it is so intense. It is such a it's it's there's so much going on. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, it's like it becomes this like. Like I don't know if it becomes like. The, the, the, the fact that it's, like conceptually impossible. For them, for just like a woman to have * **** like that has like circled back around and just completely come to define how they have gender in such a way that someone who is like just is performing gender like as a woman like. To the extent that like they're trying to like they're they're trying to have people use like anti trans slurs against them, yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting there's there's so there's so much going on because yeah, it's rooted in a whole bunch of. It's people exploring gender in this weird way while also, like, relying on heavily like, misogynistic, trans, misogynistic, homophobic kind of ideas. But it's it's also, it's like it's very queer in this in like, the way in, in the way they're going about it, because it's a whole bunch of, like, self. It's a whole bunch of, like, self justification. It's a it's a whole bunch of like, stuff around like what they view as feminine, what they view as masculine, what what they view like being a woman means. It is. It is. It is. Uh, it's a lot. Yeah. Like as as like a more as like a genderqueer trans person. I like, I like. Look at them go through all this work and like, wow, they could have bypassed a whole bunch of ******** if they just were like less of * ****. Like if they're just less of. If they were just horrible people, they could have experienced these same things. But again, like they were, they're in their own isolated communities. They're they're dealing with the same ingredients, just from this weird, backwards way. So, like. It's it's obviously very transphobic and in a lot of senses, but a lot of, a lot of these people eventually realized, oh, maybe I'm actually trends. So it's this, it's like, I don't know, it's obviously. Not great in a lot of ways, but I don't know how to discuss it when saying like yes. It's obviously not great for how like trans misogynistic it is, but. They're all working through some stuff. Yeah, well, you know, one thing I will say about this is like, yeah, like if kids were actually allowed to be queer normally, like, this **** mostly would not happen. Like you. You wouldn't get so many people who get locked in these, like who are queer, who get locked into these spaces. But then also like the only way that they could express themselves in these, like narrow, isolated right wing spaces is to like this ****. Or they're into the like, just let people express themselves normally. And this you can deny the fascist. Recruiting grounds, like, yeah, I mean it's it's interesting. Like, it's like when all these people are looking at interacting with femboys. I think a lot of the reason why they were able to play with these ingredients is that they did not experience the same like anxiety or like heightened stakes or negative or like negative connotations in their mind that that they normally do when thinking about women because women are just so other. So and especially like, if you can rationalize this this attraction to femboys as simply a prelude to dating, like quote UN quote real women and whatever, like fantasy cottage core future they might imagine, then this idea is way more approachable. Years and you're gonna need to explain cottage core for the I am not I already we have we we are having an ad break I still in in brief it is this like return to tradition obsession you see among like chunks of the far right who were obsessed with the idea that if they if culture was the way it was in the 50s or in like the the 185350 would they would live on. They would live on a small farm with their wife and children who would be utterly submissive to them and everything would be perfect but like the only thing in between them. Happiness is that they're not able to live in a in a in a small like farm with a woman who they essentially own. The gist I will say a lot of college course antics are also used by liberals and people on the left as well. Just as like an aesthetic thing. We all want to live on a small farm in the woods. The thing that makes it the cottage core that we're talking about is specifically the idea of I want to own a woman and and own my children and have like no no power capable of like stopping me from. Yeah, whatever. Because like cottage corn, tick tock is pretty sanitized and pretty much like more of an aesthetic thing, less tied to those patriarchal kind of structures. But anyway, like everything we're talking about, there's the version that's Nazis and there's the version that's like, boy, it sucks, living in a $4000 a month apartment in New York City that I share with nine people, I sure would like to live on a cottage in the woods anyway. Speaking of living in a cottage in these woods, if you buy these products, it'll get you closer to your cottage core lifestyle. So. Give it away or sponsored entirely by the concept of big cottage, big cottage, cottage industrial complex. Alright, we are back. And now we're talking about the point of the Nazi cat boy debate that everyone I think who is familiar with the topic knew was coming. No, no breakdown of Nazi cat boys and the Nazi catboy phenomenon is complete without talking about Nick Fuentas and Catboy Kami. So Nick Fuentes? Yeah, this is, this is, this is part of the part of the show that everyone's been waiting for. I don't know that most people would know to be waiting for this, but yeah. Broadly recognized by our audience. So in short, if George Lincoln Rockwell has the permanent body of a 17 year old boy, that would. That's Nick Fuentes. But if you know the phantasm white nationalist, live stream, and political activist that runs the Fascist America first organization, he's known for fostering a farther right conservative base than, say, Ben Shapiro or a turning Point USA, and has pulled stunts like sending his fans called Groypers to turning Point USA events to take over the Q&A sections and basically asked Charlie Kirk why he isn't more fascist. Yeah. And so he runs this whole organization, mostly known by doing his daily live streams. He's been doing this since he's like 16 or 17 years old. ******* nonsense. And it's kind of a running joke or widely acknowledged secret that Nick is kind of gay, based on the way he talks about women and based on what he said about his own dating history and snide comments from fellow homophobic Nazi friends. Has LED a lot of people, has LED a lot of people to this conclusion that Nick might not be again the straightest stick in the fascists. Yes, thank you. Thank you. You did good there, Garrison. Thank you. Proud of you, proud of you for that one. And as as a significant contributing factor to this like question like of sexuality is due to his 2018 to 2020 Catboy Ark of so, so this, this arc begins in January 2018. Finally, giving our audience the important, important news. Is what you need to know people. That month Nick created a catboy themed channel in his own America First Discord server. Hell yeah he did with Nick with Nick messaging post Catboys in here please with weird with weird capitalizations throughout the throughout the thing. So Nick cheered on, along with other people posting pictures of various cat boys from pop culture and Cat Boy edits of Nick Fuentes. Yourself. One America first server user posted catboys are trad. And which means like traditional list in kind of the sense that like Nazis are traditionalist. That's that's what that person is saying. He also posted very funny. He also posted cat boys, more like Cath boys. God, so like again. The Catholic fashist, yeah. Yeah. So that's that's that's the that's the joke. Lives together. I know. Here, this is so funny. You're you're out of control right now. This is it is so I've I've looked through this disco, but he's arguing this isn't very funny. I have looked through this discord server multiple times for the for the screenshots of I know you when you have the cowboy channel and it always makes me happy. It is. It's one of the most funny things ever said. As as your friend, I'm always worrying between wanting you to be happy and worried that this is a cry for help. But please continue. Eventually, Nick faced some pushback from inside the server for fostering degeneracy. With with others, with with others defending the CATBOY channel by saying brotherly love is Christian. Amazing. Outstanding. See, this is this is this is exactly, this is the good ****. This is what we've been building towards as a civilization right here, baby. Other people, other people, other people defended the Catboy channel by saying women don't respect Christianity. Your tribes thought etery always leaks out eventually. Good God, yes. That's that's that's the good stuff I got. I got no comment, just just perfect. Thank you. But because Nick is fundamentally a coward, he did cave under pressure and deleted the Catboy channel. We we lost. I think the America first movement today could be so different if he kept this is This is why the cause of Americanism is doomed, this kind of cowardice. But, but but as as we will see cuck **** from Nick Ohh, absolutely this, this whole, this whole section is about Nick Fuentes being thoroughly cooked. But as as we will see, Nick continued to use the exact rhetoric I laid out in my in cells gamergate and anti feminism section while defending what he calls attraction to traps. And we can, of course, we can apply this this defense broadly to catboys and femboys as Nick does. I'm going to try to, I'm going to try to play a video about about Nick Fuentas. Traps gay? Yeah, traps are gay. I've always maintained traps are gay. Of course you have sex with the man that's gay. There's no getting around that. Now, that said that said, look, it's gay. I get it 100%. I agree. Now, that said, it's, you know, we're in times where the women are not really meeting their obligation. So I'm not saying you're not. Look, if you have sex with a trap, you're gay, no doubt about that. And you should be ridiculed. It should be made fun of. But it's a little bit different than if you did it like 20 years ago. That's all I'm saying. If you in the 1960s, in the 1960s, we're banging a trap, I would say what's wrong with it? Like I would say that now. I would say that now. I would say, well, you're some kind of sick freak. We have all these beautiful girls and they're normal, you know, and you have sex with a trap. What's wrong with you? But in 2019, it's like, well, it's it's different. It's a different circumstance, different options. There's still disavowed, I disavow, it's condemned, it's gay. It's all that. But, you know, it's just different. I think everybody understands that. Ohhh my God. But I'm still missing out and I hate this thing. We just have to have a little, just have to have a little nuance, all right? Just a little nuance. Different times at different times I maintain strong disavow, strong disavowal. Do not, do not do that. It's gay it's immoral you're going to hell and it's weird and it's growing Oh my God, wrong with you? What's wrong with you? What female the Samoyed racing their burden? Yeah, I haven't heard that one in a minute. Said. That was horrible. Femoid since the Davis Aurini days, which looks at home if you don't, if you if you missed Davis Aurini, you missed the one brief moment where the far right was purely funny. Well, that was bad. So so be the the worst. So yes, being being attracted to traps makes makes it gay, According to him, but not really because the female race isn't carrying their burden like it once did back in the 60s. It's like it's like they they could back in. That can yield days of the 1960s. It's like they have like almost gotten back to the like the the. I mean I guess it probably still exists on, but like the, the, the the thing you got with fascist sometimes where they were like, yeah, like I ****** dudes, but I'm a top so it's not gay. It's like they're like so close to getting back there. Like they're so close and it's like, it's not like Roy Cohn kind of, yeah, yeah. It's like I think I think like I think once we get like just slightly like maybe like 20 more years out from like the evangelical evangelicalism as I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe maybe it's research is gonna be like a big enough heyday thing. But it's like, I think if you had like 20 years with the right wasn't completely dominated by a sort of evangelical homophobia like, I think you would just get back there and we we're already on that way. And but the the nick front has kept by Saga does not stop here. No, no, no, no, no, no. I am is it is. Funny may be the wrong word, but fascinating that we are heading, inevitably barreling towards this future where, simultaneously, homophobia is still a massive part of conservative politics and conservatives are gay as hell. Like, yeah, that's that's absolutely something where we are speeding towards like a drunken family on the back of a four Wheeler about to break all of their necks at once and crash in the woods. So Nick Fuentes love tweeting about cat. But he doesn't. A lot. He sure did. And for a while, Nick's catboy jokes and like a memory was tolerated under his banner of like irony, poisoned, reactionary comedy. But every ironic joke has tipping point, and that makes that makes enough people wonder is is this actually ironic? And for Fuentes, that moment came when he live streamed A10 hour date with a fellow fascist live streamer who went by the name a catboy kami. Now first let's let me explain who catboy Kami was right at the time. Then we'll get into the date and then it will get into the fuentes's brief Alt right cancellation. So Tor Brooks AKA catboy. Amy formally going under the user name Lolly Socks. So that's fun. It's an Australian fascist live streamer who first came to prominence by uploading clips of himself harassing users on the popular video chatting site oh Mogali Ogilvy. I've never know how to say this one's a mogul, a mogali. I don't know. Yeah, I have no help for you here. People will know what I'm talking about. It's this. It's this randomized chatting app. That does video chatting with the randomized users. Oh yeah, it's omegle. I never know how to say it, but it's this he he would he would upload himself videos of him harassing people via via this chatting app. In one of them he dresses up in blackface and while brandishing guns and trying to, he was trying to find like black black kids to taunt on this platform. And another one he dressed up as a policeman and kneels and an effigy he made in the likeness of George Floyd. He it's it's he is he is he is pretty gross. He is he's he's he's a pretty horrible person. But for a long time his bit was dressing up in anime costumes and dressing up as a cat boy to then talk about like neo-Nazi rhetoric while dressed as a cat boy. And this was his funny bit that he would do. At one point he was streaming like 24 hours a day for 10 days for like for the for the days and days on end. And he was earning thousands of followers from places like US and Russia. And he became the seventh highest earning streamer on D Life and live was the popular live streaming platform used by fascists in in. So in late 2019 was when Catboy Kami popped up in like in America, initially catching the attention of Nick Fuentes over over. Over the course of a few months he kind of made friends with various people in the American far right Internet sphere, like Milo Richard Spencer, a Baked Alaska. But but Nick Fontez was his original. Of entry point into this. Nick saw Nick, saw his videos online and was interested in like, what he was doing. Nick said that he had a good sense of humor and he's good looking and demonstrated and demonstrated his repeatability, that he's able to achieve viral moments and retain a streaming audience. So Nick became friends with him because he thought Catboy Kami would be like a growing Internet presence. I wanted to kind of move his his type of like his type of pretty, like racist and horrible, like joke pranks and tried to give them more. Give them more of a platform to kind of frontline reactionary ideologies. So when when Nick was getting familiar with but Cami, Cami something. Online activities were mainly consisting of dressing up as an anime cat boy to do random like political debates or live streams, or show that like anime conventions to harass people and doing like various gags and pranks. One of the most infamous incidents is was when he was deep ********* a massive horse **** ***** hooked up to a bucket of fake seamen. Good, good. OK, yeah. So in December, in December 2019, Catboy Kami flew from Australia to go visit me at the Horseman Garrison. The server was fake. It was it was ohk. OK, got you got it. Was it? It was a massive horse **** ***** hooked up to a bucket of, like, fake semen. Right. OK, so just like cornstarch. And I'm happy. Yeah, if we want to go over recipes later, I'm sure we could make that a whole episode, but no, I know how to make fake come. In December of 2019, Catboy Gabby flew from Australia to go visit Nick Fuentes and then just proceeded to live stream the 10 hour totally straight hangout session with Catboy Kami dressed up as a catboy the entire time. I mean, this does sound very straight to me, Gary. They go to a they go to an arcade, they play games together, they get food and milkshakes, they go clothing shopping and try on matching outfits, all while laughing and giggling. The entire time, while while while while driving and listening to extremely gay pop music, Catboy Kami says to Nick that he reminds them of an ex. It's great, and by the end of the 10 hour stream it's implied that they it's the end of stream, and it's implied that they share a room for the night. I'm sure they did. And it's 10 hours of pure, horrible Nazi flirting. And it's pretty it's it's a thing. It exists. But as so as news and details of the live stream started to circulate, a wave of a wave of infighting among the alt right and the gropers spawned some amazing articles and headlines from neo-Nazi news sites. There's the headline from the Daily Stormer, called the grouper. Revolution is cancelled after Nick Fuentes reveals to be a catboy and gay ******. Let's just. Prettiest, prettiest tarnishing? Yeah, of that sounds that sounds about right. OK, other other great headlines. We have a Fuentes disavows catboy after pressure from Trad news. If you're if you're sitting down, and for your movement that you want to take over the government, typing down Fuentes disavows catboy, perhaps you need to think about some things. We got another headline as Cat Boy Cammy versus Richard Spencer. Richard Spencer tried to cancel Nick for this. Because Nick was getting more popular than him. And we have another great headline, which is a Nick Fuentes's cat boy BFF is a mockery to his sexuality. Anyway, it's it's pretty good. There's there's this great this great a bit from one of these articles which, which, which which I'll quote start out. Start out by saying is Nick Fuentes attracted to women? If you trusted the plan you wouldn't ask such questions. I will say that I don't think the 10 hour live stream helps King Nick of the grapes at the moment. He had a good thing going by trying to promote a more Christian and normal presenting nationalist movement and was gaining a lot of traction until he ruined. This image. By associating it with this, none of his various enemies did this to him either. He did it entirely to himself. So yeah. But like obviously like the the point of this is not to like. Not to, like put Nick Fuentes's sexuality on blast like I do. Do not care one way or the other. It's not a problem. The problem isn't, is that the problem isn't that Nick may find Catboys incredibly hot, but the problem is that he's like a Nazi and stuff and calls for the extermination of gay people while also doing all of this ****. And you know Nick. Nick still maintains that he isn't gay and gay people should be exiled from society and he would never associate with homosexuals, blah blah blah, all while doing all this incredibly straight behavior. Well for up, up up update, update on Catboy Kami later in 2020, Catboy Kami made multiple appearances at Trump rallies and various other political events going viral multiple times for screaming incredibly racist, anti-Semitic and openly fascist rants. You probably saw footage of Cat Boy cameo in 2020. He was just just, he was just, he was just dressed as like a regular person. But he there was a few clips of him at Trump rallies that went very, very viral and Nick even disowned. Disavowed catboy kami for bad optics during, during, during these incredibly racist rants. He would he would go on at at at Trump rallies. And then of course we have America. America first and and Nick Fuentes then being, you know, an escalating part of the protests in DC leading to January 6th. We have the person alleged to have stolen Nancy Pelosi's laptop being in those America first discord servers and and grooming young boys by dressing up as a cat girl. So all part of this all part I we this will get talked about later in like news articles and stuff. This is not been talked about. Some people already know about it, but but yes so it's all part of the same like Nick Fuentes Catboy sect of things of these these like people who call themselves trad caths who then do all this weird cat boy ****. And yes the the the person who stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop who was like an open Nazi was was grooming like minors on on discord by dressing up his cat girl by. My dressing up as a cat girl. Yeah, so there's a whole bunch of this, this whole sphere of stuff you can find some incredibly dark, dark corners. But nowadays, in 2021, in the year of our Lord 2021. Femboys are way more of like, it's like generally acknowledged to be like a kind of like a leftist like communist thing, almost like and I think the reason why this debate got so. I think the reason why the fascists like the fascist femboy debate got so kind of heightened in the past two years. Like, ever since, like Tumblr banned **** there's been a migration of Tumblr users onto Twitter. And a part of this migration is not safe for work users and content, including fanboys and people who fetishize fanboys and even fetishize racist fanboys. Moving, moving on to Twitter, right? Twitter has become the new has become the new de facto Tumblr, and in a lot of senses. So the past three years, more and more normies have been exposed to these types of, like, off the cuff. People, then of course Tik T.O.K has sent femboys into the mainstream because Tik T.O.K is also, it's not an image board but it is a visual medium right where you're posting small videos of yourselves. So a lot of lot of cat boy and femboy content on Tik T.O.K. There's even this horrible article from 2 from August to 2020 by Vice called introducing Femboys, the most wholesome trend on Tik T.O.K as the Femboys were invented in 2020. Just my God mind boggling article. But yeah, Femboys are now much more if. If you take the vice article as an example, femboys are now fully mainstreamed, right? Femboys used to be a small subculture, but among Gen Z kind of culture as a whole, now femboys are very popular. They are, they are kind of, they are one of, one of like one of like the hot new pokemons to collect and I'm going to Harrison. That's cultural appropriation from millennials. You're not allowed to talk about pokemons. I don't. I don't care. We we own those. So they're just to talk about like, scale of memes here. I have some good I've seen like Google Trends on like Nazi cat Boys and Nazi fem boys, and we see the amass the biggest, biggest spike in Nazi femboy is January of 2021, which makes sense. This, that's when I started writing this, this script actually, yeah. For, for Google Trends got a massive spike in January of 2021 and it's kind of been decreasing. Then, but still, still like it was, it was like you would see blips every once in a while. There's a small blip of Nazi femboys in 2017, a small blip in 2018, and then a small blip at the start of the pandemic in March of 2020, because people are alone and isolated. So they're doing this instead. And then, yeah, January 2021, massive, massive spike. Same thing with a very similar to racist femboy. It's basically the same exact trajectory. We do get a pretty big spike in racist fanboy in June of 2020 and then another big spike of actually of November 2021 is the highest is the highest searches for racist fanboy. So it's still very much an ongoing meme of like a thing of being like, yeah, fanboys are pretty racist. It's still completely, completely ongoing, thank God. Yeah, it is. Don't worry, it's not. It's not a closed case and that's good. I said I was really worried for a second. No, people, people. And this is like, I think, I think if you're not extremely online, you probably even you like, you might not know about this. Like, this is like, this is an actual discourse on Twitter. Like, Oh yeah, like this. There will be like a week where the only thing people argue about is whether femboys are inherently racist, which obviously they're not. Like, it's it's awful. So, and the last thing to mention here is in the is in the IS in the Unicorn riot. Discord leaks when they leaked a whole bunch of information from lots of different fast channels. We have over 1000 mentions of cat boys inside the Unicorn riot fascist discord leaks. Garrison, I have a question for you. Yes. Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he's created here on Earth? So if you want to have a fun time, you can go to discord leaks dot Unicorn Riot dot ninja slash discord slash search. Then put in put in Cat boy and just scroll, scroll, scroll through thousands of posts from these Nazi channels. It is not mentioned in cat form here. We got stuff from like Sargon of Akkad, the we have the Discord Channel, domestic terrorism planning, discord, cat food channel. We of course have a, we of course have Nick Fuentes. You got everything. Whatever you would look for, you could find it here. And that is, that is the curious case of Nazi catboys. So they're there you go. Any any questions, class? Garrison uh? Why did why did you do this to us? Because I thought it would be funny if it is. On the on the inside, it's funny. I'm anyway happy. Well, that is a so yeah. Now I hope, I hope you all have a better look into why the fascist femboy meme exists and how people can have the cognitive distance in their own heads in terms of, you know, fetish, fetishizing feminine attributes while still hating women and then leading into the Nick Fuentes catboy craze that has swept the nation as a whole. So just, OK, just just just be queer and a leftist. You don't have to do this ****. You do not have to wrap your brain in *******. 17 layers of ******** of like weird misogyny, transmisogyny. You could you could just be gay and a leftist. And as as we as we showed you can, you can. You can be a leftist, you can love Stalin and be a catboy. It's totally fine. I think you can be anything and be a catboy. That's that's the the main message of the 21st century. Vladimir Putin is going to come out as a cat boy when he releases his next. Unhinged rant in support of JK Rowling. That's that's that's where the discourse is headed. It's inevitable. It can't be stopped. I wanted the beam of. Nick Fuentas and slapping your Putin holding hands being a capital. Alright, well that's where we're going. That does it for us today everybody. If you wanna follow the show you can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at happen here pot and cool Zone media. You can follow my cat boy posting at Hungry Bow tie. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Whoo. Whoo. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen here as a production of cool zone media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. It could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources. Thanks for listening.