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It's autumn time to get cozy and nothing is cozier than one of Casper's award-winning mattresses. Of course, they've got their most popular mattress. The original hybrid, it's engineered for cool, comfortable sleep. You can get a more restful and more soothing night sleep if it's a little warm in your August with the wave hybrid mattress, which provides more support than foam alone. Or upgrade to the wave hybrid snow mattress with snow technology to give you a full night of cooler sleep if you need to try it to believe it, Casper offers free contactless delivery and a risk. Free Hundred night trial. Discover the Casper difference today at casper.com and use code here 100 for $100 off select mattresses that's code HERE 100. Thatcasper.com for $100 off. Hey there. I'm Scott rank, host of the podcast history unplugged. Now, it really is a dream come true to get paid to talk about history without all the stress while still being able to make a living. And I did it with Spreaker from iheart. Not only did they make it super easy to monetize my podcast, but ad revenue is 3 to four times higher with spreaker than with any other host I've worked with. So if you want to turn your passion into a podcast and give this a try, visitspreaker.com, that's SPREAKER. Dot com get paid to talk about the things you love. 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. Christ, Christ, Christ. Your children should be home. Your kids aren't actually gay. You've just groomed them. You're a groomer. Welcome to. It could happen here. Today we are talking about something that did happen just a few days ago and will be discussing its possible ramifications going forward and similar subsequent attacks that are most likely going to take place throughout this next month. I'm Garrison Davis. With me is Chris. Hello? Blue ready, ready to hear about a lot of threats of genocide and a whole bunch of. Audio clips of fascists, you know, OK, I got, I got one episode where there was like. A pretty clean win and like a good thing happened. And so now I'm, I'm, I'm ready to go back to that's getting exterminated. This episode is going to be kind of, I don't speak German style. I guess if if we were to compare it to another one of our competitors in the field. Yeah, so. Huh. I mean there's been a lot of threats against pride events over the course of the past month. There's we've we've pointed towards some in Idaho, there has been some in Arizona, there has been lots in Texas. By the time this episode has dropped, the gun delayne event in Idaho would have already taken place. We are recording that just just before on on on June 10th. So I'm I'm unsure of how that's gone at this point. Hopefully nothing horrible happened, but but but. If everyone dies that, that's why we're not talking about it, because it hasn't happened yet. Uh, But yeah, we're going to be talking about an attack on a pride event in Dallas, TX that happened on June 4th. So starting starting kind of closer to the lead up to this. On May 30th, the conservative trend setting libs of Tik T.O.K who now has over 1.2 million followers. On the Twitter account ran by Chaya Reichek, they started a thread titled quote Mega Drag Thread. They say it's innocent. They say it's about inclusion and acceptance. They say no one is trying to confuse, corrupt or sexualize kids. They lie. Increasingly, many on the far right are targeting family-friendly drag events, including drag time story events that libraries across the country. The gun delayed event in Idaho was precursores by a whole bunch of attacks on drag story events at the libraries inside Idaho and the very church gathering that they announced the event to oppose the Pride on June 11th, that whole gathering at the church was about removing. LGBTQ materials from libraries and targeting any drag Queens who do any types of story times. So this this over 30 tweet long thread by lips of Tik T.O.K contained a list of drag queen story hour Flyers with dates and locations and family friendly or all ages strike events that had recently took place over upcoming for Pride Month. One such event Reichek posted about was a Pride themed family-friendly drag event that was to take place on Saturday, June 4th, hosted at a gay venue in the Progressive neighborhood of Dallas, TX. In their post, lips of tick Tock included the date and location for the upcoming event, as well as an unrelated picture of one of the drag performers wearing a skimpy outfit. I think raichik just searched the Internet for a picture of this one person wearing as revealing clothing as possible based on their entire Internet presence. And, like, it's still not a nude photo. It's just like someone, like, like a skimpy outfit. But anyway, you know, trying to be like, this is what your kids are going to see, which means it's it's not, but, you know, you know the thing they're trying to do. The tweet was shared by a new fall right group called Protect Texas Kids, who had also declared that they were organizing a protest to oppose what they called a, quote, child grooming event. They tweeted out the address of the venue and called on people to join in on opposition. To the family friendly drag show, the initial libs of Tik T.O.K tweet about the Dallas all ages drag event racked up over 1000 retweets and thousands and thousands of likes. Less than a week later the anti queer tax moved from the online sphere to the outside physical world. Instinct is going to come out in three years when the mainstream Democrat party platform and they want to rape your kids. And they're all going to think it's one big, smug little joke. These people, by the way, understand that there is a bigger difference between 10 years ago and now than there would be between now and in five years, when they're openly advocating for pedophilia like they've already started doing. You people are the symptom of a dying society, and you know it. You're scaring children. That's John Doyle, a self-described Christian fascist, standing outside the family friendly drag event at 9:00 AM in the morning, yelling through a megaphone at the families with kids lined up to get inside the brunch event. A crowd, mostly in khaki shorts and button ups surrounded the venue and chanted groomer, groomer. As the group of men kept screaming at the families stuck outside, waiting in line, kids just a few feet away covered their ears. Amidst the screams and megaphones, one person waved a Christian dominionist flag. A man holding a rosary shrieked verbal abuse at the children and parents. That will come down on you very soon. With this, is that your first job with this? You just got. This is what was described as a quote. Protest immediately materialized as a group of men and self-described Christian Fascists who came to attack families at Pride just yelling abuse at the events, attendees and staff threatening people as they arrived and left and creating an actually unsafe environment for children. Along with a gaggle of far right grifting videographers who quote infiltrated the event to film kids without their consent to create viral propaganda. There was a very good article by Melissa Gira Grant published a few days after the incident titled A Pizzagate. In every city with the subheading quote these conspiracy theories were once fringe. Now they're being fueled by Republicans and driving far right anti LGBTQ violence now. I'm going to read a few quotes from this piece throughout our episode today because the writer does a very good job tying the current grooming rhetoric to the pattern of escalating violence. And Conspiracism embraced by the right over the past few years. So to quote the article quote from the idea that children inside this venue were being abused and that such abuse was a plot by Democrats to the call to Internet provocateurs to record their own evidence, as well as the false claims of child rescues made by those promoting these conspiracy theories. The attack on Mr Mr which, which was the venue that the strike event took place at, called to mind the same fears, if not the same threat of gun violence. As the assault on Comet Ping pong in Washington DC in 2016, a man motivated by the Pizzagate conspiracy theory arrived at the restaurant with a rifle to quote a rescue children from the nonexistent sex trafficking ring supposedly orchestrated by prominent Democrats. Now, a little more than five years later, 25% of Republicans identify as believers of the Pizzagate successor Q Anon, and the far right's capacity for street violence has grown at the same time where once most elected Republican officials. Would at least nominally distance themselves from Pizzagate pushers out on the fringe. That wall has largely eroded across the country. GOP lawmakers have waged a legislative crusade targeting queer and trans kids. Smearing opponents as groomers, language that rhymes with the pedophile claims that inspired the attack on Comet Ping pong, and where once the targets of these conspiracy theories were largely confined to a select group of Democrat lawmakers and their allies, the fear mongering, amplified by Fox News and prominent conservative social media accounts, is now targeting all LGBTQ people, from national figures to members of your local community. The stage is set for a pizza gate in any city. And just like Pizzagate, where cases of threats of violence escalated to the point of an attempted arson and a young white man storming the establishment to firing a rifle inside, the homophobic and transphobic violence that is advocated or physically committed is truly seen as like, righteously justified by those who do it. And even if those who promote it don't sincerely hold those like illogical beliefs, successful propagandists know how to effectively frame bigoted violence as a moral imperative. Simply as a way to encourage attacks on their own ideological enemies. You guys are disgusting. Prepared for your sins, the far right conservatives and fascists who made explicit threats of genocidal violence were not met unopposed. There was what seems to be a mix of more official security from the gay venue that usually functions as a bar, as well as community defense volunteers and anti fascists who put their body in between the fascists and the families with children's community. Community members wore Loki pride, infected block attire, black masks, and rainbow bandanas. With some holding trans and queer pride flags which can come in handy for blocking off unwanted persons. Not only did the Community defense protect families and attendees, but also works to protect the performers who are being followed after the event was over by fascists. The Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club did a stand up job documenting the event as it happened and also doing work after the fact to ID the people who are leading the homophobic attacks. I truly believe if there was less of a Community defense effort, the day could have gone much, much uglier. And I think that's a part that's worth emphasizing. Like everyone who showed up to oppose the fascists did an amazing job. I mean, like they it honest, I've I've looked at so much footage. Of this day. From the footage the fascists were filming to the footage that the John Brown Gun Club was putting out, and there was so many times where people with rainbow masks were physically preventing fascists from chasing down kids, there was barely enough of them, right? You would always you would always want more, more community defenders there, but the ones who didn't show up deserve much gratitude for putting their bodies on the line. Eventually police did show up and tried to keep some of the conservative protesters who were screaming groomer at children on one side of the street across from the venue. But even with the cops there, self-described fascists continue to chase families as they walk with their kids to their car. And anti fascists and counter demonstrators were the ones to block the homophobes path to prevent them from further harassing kids and families, while while the counter demonstrators were yelling at the fascists to leave the kids alone. After the police did arrive, Christian fascist leader John Doyle talked about how police should quote, go in there and put bullets in their heads. They should be rewarded for it. That's what the badge is for. And now I'm going to play a clip of of him saying that. It's a it's a little bit hard to hear, but here's my due diligence. Everything. The sheriff's. That's what the. So yeah, that is hearkening back to the very real history of police's willingness to enforce homophobic laws, something that these Christian conservatives and fascists want to bring back. And if you think some police wouldn't enforce such laws, then, oh boy, I don't know what to tell you. Like that's their entire job is to enforce whatever the laws are. And lots of those cops I'm sure don't have great opinions on gay people. So yeah, I I know there were like, like. I've had conversations with people who are like, I don't know, like 1617 eighteen who like, you know, like who. And I don't wanna get you hard on them, but like, people who got their sort of education to queer history on Tumblr. And they'll say things like, well, like, sit assist. White gay men were like never oppressed in the US. That it's like no, boy, like, like, like you, you. Yeah, you, you, you. You could be just a CIS white gay dude and like, look like. Really? Like, not like, really. Like 15 years ago, it was pretty common for people to just, like, get the **** beaten out of him on the street for being gay. Yeah, and cop cops are participating in this. Like, just regular people participate in this. And this looks like what we're heading back to, but possibly even worse. So if you if you look around the social media feed of many, many cops, as I do for fun sometimes. Just like, you know, like cops. And they're like personal feeds. And if you look at like who they follow, what right wing influencers they follow, what churches they attend, you can don't be fooled into thinking that cops will not enforce homophobic laws. Yeah, they love this ****. Like, and I mean like, anyway, one of one of their stated goals is to regress on gay rights and to have their version of a Christian hegemonic order enforced by the violence of law. And here is Doyle again saying. As such, at the event. Every scenario. I'm gonna read what he actually says there, in case you could not hear it quote it's going to be so fun when we take away all of your rights. Every single one of them. Let's now talk about some of the people and groups who organized this confrontation and the resulting propaganda piece put together by the right. So one of the main people was Kelly Newbert Neidert nude, I think. I think. Workers one of the they suck. Yes, one of the people was Kelly Niedert, one of the Christian fascist organizers responsible for setting up the Facebook group for the attack on the Pride event this past weekend. She's worked with Groypers and proud boys in the past for her young conservative of Texas events at University of North Texas and is a self-described quote based Christian Fascist. Her words not mine. She's also hosted a campus event with Jeff. Younger, an anti trans Republican candidate for the Texas House of Representatives who came to prominence on the right for attempting to block his daughter's access to gender affirming healthcare and who ultimately failed on both accounts. Good, good for her. Please stay Kelly's current project is a new anti trans hate group called Protect Texas Kids who she's she calls herself the executive director of. But she's basically the the main driving force behind. It was under the Protect Texas Kids banner that she organized the harassment attack on the All Ages Drag show. Quoting from Pizzagate in every city again quote with her new group leader says that quote, we will host protests of clinics that do. Gender affirming care for minors and school districts. Slash teachers who teach LGBTQ propaganda and critical race theory. Protect Texas kids is a friendly sounding vehicle with which self avowed Christian fascists in Texas can go into LGBTQ community spaces armed with video and claims to be there to investigate. All of this expands on a now common playbook. Produce local events antagonizing queer and trans people, then go on Fox News, Newsmax, and other right. Media outlets to put the videos in front of an even broader audience, UN quote. The other major figure is obviously John Doyle, the guy we've talked about, uh block this episode so far and we've included many audio clips of him screaming horrible things that kids. He is the Christian fascist leader heard saying things like every single one of gay rights should be taken away and encouraging police to go in there and put a bullet in their heads. I guess the the parents or drag performers. He has a large YouTube channel with over 300,000 subscribers. Don't don't worry, Chris. It's going to get worse. Christian Fascists, led by both Kelly Nuder and John Doyle, have been terrorizing the University of North Texas campus for months. On one occasion they brought proud boys, armed security and a technical pickup truck. Now when I say technical, I mean like the military style vehicle like that. It was a technical built onto a pickup truck. So it's basically a massive truck armed with a pretty, pretty intense gun. That seems not legal somehow, but it's Texas. Ohh OK, it is absolutely legal. I'm going to play some audio from a University of North Texas campus event that took place last October featuring Doyle and his crew of fascists. I went Christian fascism. Make sure you get this. Go ahead and get my face. I have a YouTube channel with 300,000 subscribers. I am a radicalizing, the youth, and you can do something about it. You guys better approve your tone, because when we have our bad, things are going to happen to you. I would play more audio, but a high pitched whistle drowns out the rest of what he says. And I will not subject you to the audio of the whistle because it does a fantastic job making the audio completely unlistenable. So much so that very soon Doyle just like gave up talking because the whistle did a really good job. Try to come out. But for more background on Doyle, I'll quote from a pizza gate in every city again, quote John Doyle, who yelled about rape at children through a megaphone, has organized a stop the steel rally with Nick Fuentes was a special guest at the White Nationalist America First PAC Conference in 2022, and as the leader of a group titled the American Populist Union, he was in audience at a 2021 event billed as Hitler Youth without the Hitler. Wait, so can I ask a question about this? So I've heard about this event. Did they literally write that? Yes, it was called that by one of the organizers, Ariel, early 18 year old white nationalist social media influencer, billed as a special guest at the Camping retreat. Saying I always say these events are Hitler youth without the Hitler. And what do I mean by that? You have to get to the youth. They claim Gen Z might be the most conservative generation, but honestly I'm not seeing it. I mean, I guess that's good news, but also if you ignore them, if you know, if you ignore the Hitler part, then yes, that's yeah. Maybe they'll follow their leader also. Kyle Rittenhouse says that he's a John Doyle fan. So great and we are back. I'm going to continue to quote from the Pizzagate in every city article again. Quote given many existing media connections. Videos from the event made by far right content creators, some confronting attendees and performers, were widely picked up across right wing social media by people including Andy know, Betty Johnson, and Pizzagate promoter Jack Zodiac. Who shared a video of OneDrive performer and instructed his followers to contact the state's Department of Family and Protective Services. When some of these same videos made at 2 Tucker Carlson's show on Monday night, he introduced the segment by saying just another weekend in VINMAR selectively airing moments when adults yelled back at people like Doyle accusing them of abuse, or when other adults use their bodies to block men from forcing their way into the event. All of this was used to portray the people threatening the pride event. As the actual victims. UN quote. So yeah. Less than 48 hours after the all ages drag event had began, it was headlining on Tucker Carlson. Just another weekend in Vimar. On Saturday, a nightclub in Dallas held an event called Drag Your Kids to pride. At the event little kids dance with drag Queens and tipped them with dollar bills. This is grotesque. Sexualizing children always is. So there were a small number of brave protesters outside. One of them was our friend Alex Stein. He tried to get into the event because it was a public event. And so he was assaulted. Watch the event on June 4th also attracted an assorted collection of far right media personalities, or those who aspire to be. They themselves referred to their group of far right videographers as the quote Avengers of homophobes. Among which, as mentioned by Tucker, was aspiring comedian and small far right commentator Alex Stein, who was prevented entry to the venue by event security and community defenders or as Tucker would say, was assaulted. Here's a audio of that interaction. Also, I want to note that in the video Alex Stein has a big old smirk on his face the entire time, and I think you can actually hear that through the way he talks. We're asking to leave. They're so big. It is. They're not letting me in here. I can't believe they're not letting me in the game. But I thought you guys were inclusive, right? Hey, look, I'm not allowed in here, but they let children in here dance. You guys don't need that. Children and that in that grooming. Alright, alright. Some of these videographers did make it inside with their cameras, shooting videos that misrepresented the drag performances as threatening to children or acting in an inappropriate sexual manner, all while making threatening comments of their own, online or outside in person. One who interrogated a drag performer captioned his video quote. These groomers need to be exposed for what they are. A woman who shot some video from inside of the venue later tweeted quote this summer is slaying groomers summer. Too far right members of the self-described homophobic Avengers who made it inside the event to film kids were Taylor Hanson, who got a lot of notoriety after filming the Ashley Babbitt shooting as he was participating in the storming of the capital. Similar to how Elijah Schaffer was like making the event seem like it was this big heroic thing and then getting a lot of press coverage off of off of his footage and someone else who was who was going inside the event to film kids. Was Aldo bassiani. After the event, the little collection of self-described Christian Fascists and their propagandists got together on Elijah Schaffer's Blaze Media Podcast to do a sort of round table report back now. Elijah Shaffer was not actually on that episode. John Doyle was filling in as the host self self-described Christian Fascist Doyle, but Schaefer brands himself as a classic. I'm going to say Christian fascist because that's what his rhetoric means now. Schaefer himself doesn't use the word. Fascist. But he does share sanrad memes on Twitter and his and his rhetoric is indistinguishable from Doyles, who of course Doyle does use the word fascist. And of course Schaefer is totally fine with having Doyle fill in as him for host on his own show. Anyway, here is Doyle introducing people on that episode, including Turning Point USA Representative Elizabeth L Riley. We also have fellow E girl Isabella Reilly and I want White confetti, please. White confetti. She likes her confetti how she likes her country. So anyway, tell me what you saw, Aldo, because you got there a little bit before I did, and now we all had this sort of like, you know, homophobic Avengers Assemble kind of thing where everyone did their part. I knew that I probably couldn't get in, so I just thought that I would assemble my army of young men to go and confront these people. But although, and Isabella actually infiltrated the event and got the viral footage that you've probably seen if you've been watching literally any news coverage of this event. So that podcast can be found on YouTube and Apple Podcasts. Just openly hosting content that's that's hosted by a Christian fascist saying **** about wanting a white America. Half a million subscribers on YouTube? Just Yep. So this ecosystem of aspiring right wing content creators is part of this wave of like 20 something conservative influencers, like 20 something I said like age, like they're all like their mid 20s or something. But these conservative influencers that are trying to market like old school right wing evangelical bigotry to young people as like a cool trad counterculture using Mima statics. Fundamentally these people are attention hounds as they cover events like these. On the ground, you can see them smirking the entire time. Even when people are acting hostile to them, like the spectacle is the point. If they're not posing an actual like active threat, what these far right videographers hate the most is non engagement, right? So if if there's the ability to do non engagement that's what they don't like. The the most annoying these people get is when they're met with cold still silence like in this case with Taylor Hanson. Can you guys can either you guys give me any information on, I mean how you feel about what took place in here today and about these counter protesters? What do you guys think? Anything. No words. What about you, brother? Why do you hide your face? Is it because you're committing crimes? Maybe crimes against children? Let's see. So they hide their face because they're too scared of being identified as pedophiles and groomers. So I mean, you see this, this is a constant reoccurrence with antifa and with left wing anarchist groups. They'll hide their face because they think they're all tough and hard in big groups. But the minute that they're soloed out and are actually ask questions, they have nothing to say about their ideology, their beliefs or about the fact that they are actually the fascists here in this situation. So, I mean, I'd really like to just get one word out of you, ma'am, because, I mean, you just want to be so silent, but you're so vehemently. Defending this, I mean, do you have anything to say? One more chance. They know they are saying ridiculous things, like none of which reads as genuine, like they know the absurdity of their own replies. In their podcasts they talk about how disgusted they were watching people dance together, but in their own videos they're smiling, like relaxed, excited about what's going on and how they'll spin whatever's happening to boost their career. If they were actually concerned about children, they wouldn't be having little giggle fests while inside events like these, right? They call it a child grooming. And and they are not acting like there's anything bad happening like you you can say like, oh, they're trying to play it cool because they're doing infiltration. Like, no, they're just being chill. Like they're they're giggling and laughing and looking like, look at this. Silly gay people doing these things. I can't wait to use footage of this to boost my career and misrepresented to a wider audience. We're in this like, post irony world in many, in many aspects, the level of sincerity does not actually matter, right? All that's necessary is saying the lines from the script that the audience wants to hear. It's like algorithmically generated politics. You can talk about how victims of sexual abuse should themselves be locked up so they won't go on to abusive people in the future. And even though you look at the camera at the end and give a knowing smirk, it doesn't matter because you're just saying the things that are going to get traction and you're saying the things that you're misogynist. Audience wants to hear. Here's the turning Point USA representative Isabel Riley on the Blaze Media Podcast, who at the end of the clip does indeed give a very knowing look to camera and a little smirk. It's a total cost. Should we lock up people that have had sexual trauma in their childhood because they tend to become abusers in the future? Also, just a few other notes on this on this Blaze Media podcast. So I I listen to the whole podcast like twice to get to get clips for my coverage here and just to kind of get a sense of what they were doing. One of the speakers on the on the podcast blamed, like the recent mass shootings, on the presence of nearby sex shops. Some of the videographers who were on the show went on to Alex Jones's show the next day. You know, it was, it was full of. Pretty. I mean, it was pretty bad homophobic rhetoric, but I mean, it's just so ever present that it's hard to even selectively get certain clips of it. Like, they they they were doing a lot of work to to tie mental illness to gayness, saying that these two things are like intrinsically linked and that if we just locked up more into mentally ill people in institutions, we wouldn't have as many gay people. I think the other interesting thing that I've had to be really funny at the podcast is that for for their first ad break. They were selling testosterone boosting supplements. So in this, in this very like anti trans like podcast, the first product they were selling was some supplements to boost your natural male testosterone. And it's just very funny because like they're, you know, they're talking about how evil HRT is and how evil and irreversible it is. And then they're also selling things that are supposed to boost testosterone levels, right? Like we are in a post irony world, it doesn't like this. Anyway, here's here's one more clip from the podcast talking about how the bigoted community is so diverse. And you'll notice too, our group was very diverse, which I think we made this point yesterday as well. The bigoted community is so accepting. All you have to be is also bigoted and you're allowed to hang out with us. And so we have this nice mob of well dressed, handsome young guys to go confront these people because no one else would. All right, that is, that is enough of that. On onto our final section of the day. So. Texas based journalist Stephen Monticelli reported that later that same night of the drug event, incidents that police categorized as terroristic threats of an anti homosexual nature were reported by bar owners in the same neighborhood. After the event, the venue and Gay Bar released a media statement saying that its weekly drag brunches are normally for guests who are 21 and over, but decided to host a special pride drag brunch for all guests, including those who can't. Attend other drag shows because of the drinking age restrictions and as a part to raise money for a local LGBTQ youth organization, adding that it was quote more than happy to open our doors to celebrate pride in a family friendly, safe environment because we believe that everyone should have a space to be able to celebrate who they are, UN quote. Huh. I'm gonna going to read another quote from this is this is our last quote from Pizza Gate in every city. Quote the street confrontation to video to Fox News to Republican Party pipeline took only a little more than two days to complete by the next Monday. Texas Republican State Representative Brian Slaton cited the protect Texas kids attack on the Dallas event in his announcement to introduce, quote, a bill to ban drag shows in the presence of minors in Texas, UN quote. A Florida State representative pledged to follow suit US representatives Marjorie Taylor. Green and Lauren Bobbert voiced their support. By then, protect Texas kids had already moved on to a new target, an LGBTQ affirming church that was having a service next to Sunday, and the group had already announced several more plans to protest LGBTQ spaces this month. What we are already seeing this pride season is alarming, but it did not come out of nowhere. It is a continuation of campaigns targeting drag queen story hours. It was fed by Republican attacks on queer and trans kids in the state legislatures across the country, and it is coordinated by people on the far right who have names and very specific movement affiliations. As these threats continue, as they generate yet more videos of confrontations, they may also give heft to the lie that supporting. LGBTQ youth is grooming and that queer community spaces are commercial settings for child abuse. No Republican would say the Pizzagate shooter had a point. But now, simply based on videos of deliberate confrontations with kids at pride events, they're happy to cosign UN quote. While makers won't be able to consider Clinton's proposal on a statewide ban of kids being around drag performances until the 10th of January in 2023, which is when the next Texas legislative session kicks off. But if the no drag around miners log it's enacted, that could have many, many ramifications depending on enforcement. One possible scenario is not being allowed to have draget pride or people under the age of 18 just not being allowed to attend pride, right, because those if if if you're having a pride, pride and the strike performers and these kids there now that's a crime, you're all going to jail. You could also just see this as an attempt by Texas to re criminalize cross dressing because by and large, drag shows and events. Are usually taking place at 21 and up bars, right? Generally unless it's the drag time, story time, stuff like drag's not around kids super often, right? And including like very like nonsexual Dragons. That's just because of because of how laws work around bars. Usually those things don't have much crossover. But that's not what they're targeting though, right? They just don't want gay people or men in dresses to be around kids, right? If you're seeing cross dressing. Well, a child is nearby now that's a drag show. You're going to jail. And if you think a ban on quote, drag in front of children won't be applied to just trans people existing in public, then again, I don't know what to tell you because depending on how they define what drag is like, they're not limiting this to like drag shows. They're talking about men in dresses like that. That's that's what it's going to be because they're targeting library events. They're targeting events in public. It's not. It's not about like. Drag shows with tickets and stuff. It's about men wearing dresses or you know in the in the case of trans people just existing here. Here's the help of public adventures talking about the introduced legislation after their little propaganda campaign but wow the guys we really did and I'm not trying to pat ourselves on the back, but which Brian Slaton with the legislation he's trying to put through exposing these people. We really did take a W in the culture battle. We didn't win the culture war yet. I don't think I've ever seen. Such an I mean an after effect of an event. I mean in positivity for us. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen, you know, a bunch of journalists go and expose an event like this and then have actual legislation drafted almost immediately after. I think this is a new sphere that we're entering in. And I think, I mean we got a freaking roll. Yeah. I really hope that the momentum is maintained. To close off, I'm going to, I'm going to riff off a point made by Stephen Monacelli at at what point will become clear to those in media who run quotes or use. Collective footage from these people that intentionally obscure the extreme nature of their beliefs, right? These are not like simple economic conservatives, however, if contemporary mainstream conservatives are willing to accept this sort of politics in their movement. Then it's the case that mainstream conservatism in America has become almost indistinguishable from fascism. Much of the coverage of the protest of this Pride event gives credibility to the fascist side, basically endorsing their homophobic framing, positioning the drag performers as somehow inherently sexual for wearing FEM outfits and doing dances that are in reality more conservative than your basic high school cheerleading team. Mainstream media and pundits, and even some leftist ones quote like quote UN quote, leftist pundits fell for the bait and treated kids playing musical chairs with people in drag and giving the performers cash from their parents as more inappropriate than the mob of open fascists hurling verbal abuse at kids and chasing them down as they head to their cars. So that is my little write up on what has happened in Dallas last week. They are. The protective Texas Kids group is planning more and more events in Texas for for for Pride Month, it's. They're they're they're they're targeting not just events with kids. They're also targeting 21 and up drag brunches. They're targeting churches. They're doing the bit right. They're doing the thing and. People really fell for the bait on this one. People really did, if I've seen all of the videos from the events. There's nothing inherently sexual about. These people's style of dancing, there's nothing inherently sexual about their outfits, right? Playing with gender isn't inherently sexual. It's playing with gender. It's it. Those are. Those are two different things. And that's so. But yeah, a lot of a lot of a lot of people sell, sell for the bit. A lot of people took the bait. We're sharing photos and being like look at this, how can you defend this and like defend what it's people dancing. You would you would see it's it's the dances are not like. They're not about sex, they're not imitating sex acts. It's just it's fun and chill. People got really mad that there was there was a sign at the at the venue that was an innuendo and there is a ice cream shop like a block away from the venue with the very same sign. They're not actually about that. Like, that's not what they're actually about because you can walk down the street and look at so many, so many things that are innuendos if you want. If you watch a Pixar movie right though, there will, there will be innuendos. That's not what they're talking about. They're talking about gay people being around kids and I would like people to stop falling for the bait. Anyway, I'm we're gonna be doing another episode on the City of Hate on the homophobic stuff in Dallas later, later, later this week, and we're going to be talking about Steadfast Church. I'm still writing that episode at the moment, but I'm planning to put that out later this week as well. And depending how the gunderland event went in Idaho and the various other things, I'm sure we'll be talking more about this type of stuff as as pride goes on. So yeah, Chris, any thoughts on the word vomit I just gave for the past 40 minutes, you know? And mostly, just like. I don't know, it's, it's. We've somehow managed to create a version of like. The like, worst at parts of like the the queer bashing 2000s, but like even worse because now there's there's an even larger media cycle around it. Yeah, and. Like I I think it's worth mentioning that like one of the ways that stuff ended was that like a lot of people, most of whom were like like systems straight, right? Like people, a bunch of people who weren't queer were just like literally **** this and started attacking people back. And you know, you see this working class neighborhood, right? There be a period of time where you have these evangelical churches who are just, you know, like openly inciting attacks on people until they got the **** beat out of them by a bunch of working class kids and that's when that ****. Not ends. Unless we ******* fight these people, they're gonna keep doing this until people start getting murdered. And I guess I know a more positive thing to end on would be. Saying big thank you to everyone who showed up to physically oppose this. I when I was listening to the homophobic Avengers uh podcast, John Doyle said that there was a few points where he was scared. There were some people who, uh, some some people wearing like pride bandanas and stuff who had handguns. And he did not. John Doyle did not like that. At one point he talked about how he was heading to his car and there was and the counter, the counter demonstrators were following him to make sure he was actually going to leave. And he saw that some of the people were carrying and he freaked out. He he he screamed for police and he said that these people were threatening to shoot him. Which is mean just an attempt to get police to shoot the counter demonstrators, right? Like it's it's it's it's just, it's John Doyle screaming, these people have guns. They're trying to shoot me, right? And even though they they were, they weren't even holding their guns. They were, they were, they were, they were just have having guns. But like, these people can't be scared. And again, no one was even violent against John Doyle. That was just people who were who were carrying standing near him. And I just big thank you to everybody who showed up to. Try to prevent these fascists from chasing down these kids from. Hurling abuse at these kids. I would recommend you follow the Elma Fork John Brown Gun Club on Twitter. They did a really good job documenting this. And then for this stuff in Idaho you can follow readout anti fascists. Those those would be the two, the two people I say to follow on Twitter right now for tracking these attacks on pride in Texas and inside Idaho. I guess, I think, yeah. Yeah, I guess the last thing I would say is like. It's important to remember that unlike a lot of the periods in queer history, like, these people are actually a minority. And and, like, they're trying to regress, right? Like, they yeah, we've already got to this point. They're trying to pull it back. Yeah, this is kind of a new thing. Yeah, but it's like, but yeah, it's like this thing like we like on on unlike the ******* 70s, like we we are actually the silent majority here, yes. And if enough people ******* show up and just like, these people need to be framed as. Yeah, hi. Excuse my, I guess, semi ableist language here, but like I I deal with my ideal mental I deal with mental health issues of my own. But like these people need to be framed as wackos, right? They these people need to be framed as framed. These people need to be framed as as crazy extremists. They they need they need to be belittled, they need to be put down. They need to be, they need to be viewed as as, as as pathetic, as as scared. Right like that. That's the way to do successful propaganda framing. Because they need to be they they need to stay outside the majority, right? Like they they they need to be othered. That's the way to win this, right? That that's the thing they always that's the thing they always try to do, right. That's why they always try to frame gay people as being severely mentally ill at the time, right, like that that that's all what they try to do. And because enough of progress has happened, we we just need to defend the line that is already drawn. Because. Like like I said before right like these people are not regular economic conservatives right. But if mainstream conservatism is going to be is? Is is going to continue to accept the this politics in their movement. Then mainstream conservatism will be the same as fascism right so you need to point at the people like John Doyle point of the people who call themselves Christian fascists and be. So demeaning to them and so making them feel so separate from every part of regular social life. And because their whole goal is to integrate themselves into the larger conservative movement, integrate themselves into larger American politics, and that can't happen. Football is back and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. 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For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you. For the first time ever in a book format, you can preorder stuff they don't want you to know. Now it's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Introducing the biz take you're all things music, business and media podcast. Join me, Joe Waslewski and my co-host Colin McKay every Wednesday where we discussed the breaking news, changing the music industry, and what your favorite artists and creatives are up to. Colin, who's your favorite artist? Oh, you know the track vector? Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande? Captain Beefheart? Snap back to reality. Eminem style join music industry professionals Joe and I as we pull back the curtain of the successes and failures of the biz. You guys have been hanging out a while. What are they doing, Colin? I guess listening to an ad? Sorry. Listen to new episodes of the biz tape every Wednesday on the Nashville podcast network, available on iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Ichidan here, a podcast where you all keep telling me that we keep doing depressing episodes, and we never do any episodes that aren't homerism. So today, this is a podcast about how you can find the people who are making your life really bad and make bad things happen to them instead. And with me to talk about how this has been done and also can be done is, Janet you who is a tenant organizer with the Chinatown community for Equitable Development in LA and on IE, who's another tenant organizer and leader at Northside Villa on IE. Janice, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Yeah. And it's hillside via hillside. Sorry. No worries, this is what happens when I have MRI brain. I guess, OK. So the the the the first thing I wanna sort of walk through is basically can can can you describe the win you all had a couple of weeks ago? Yeah. I can go ahead and start it. And then I know if you want to fill in at all. So a couple weeks ago, we were able to successfully push our City Council to approve a loan to acquire Hillside Villa from Slumlord Tom Bots. And so just to make it clear, this isn't the. End of the fight. We have not fully expropriated Tom Botts at the moment, but this is a huge victory and commitment from the city to take the building from him. So it was really, really exciting for all of us, you know, I guess one thing I wanted to clarify from the outset is that a lot of the reporting about it seemed like a lot of the reporting about it was saying that the city had had voted to use eminent domain and they have not done that, which is my understanding. Yeah. Yeah. So to clarify that part too, the motion. That was passed. It does include that eminent domain will be used if the landlord does not willingly sell, which he most likely will not, of course. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So he's not gonna will and he sell his building. It does include that it will be used and as part of the pathway, but it does not specifically pass the eminent domain piece. So that will be something that we will probably have to organize around. Yeah. And if I'm understanding correctly, that understand that that requires a second vote, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. But I guess, OK, First off also congratulations, this rules. This is really exciting. Thank you. Yeah, and and I guess the the second thing I wanted to ask about was how how this organizing process started and how are you able to do this? Because this is a, this is a rare massive W that. Yeah. Hmm, yeah, so this has been a three-year struggle and I can give a little bit of context around how how it got started and then maybe Anna, you can take it from there. So basically Hillside Villa is part of a massive amount of buildings that were built in the 80s. Saying different kinds of federal and state subsidies. And basically, yeah, it was subsidies that were used to fund private developers to keep buildings affordable for a temporary period of time. So using affordable housing covenants and so hillsides covenant expired in 2019 after 30 years of being kept affordable for the tenants and as soon as that. Happened. The landlord of course tried to increase the rent to market rate, so folks were receiving up to 200% rent increases. Yeah. So you know, to actually like talk about what those numbers are, people who are paying $800.00 for rent, we're now being asked to pay like 2500. So that's a de facto eviction, right. And as soon as that happened, there's actually this like origin story that I really love is that one of our tenant leaders, Leslie, who's a bilingual like Spanish and English speaker, she came up to a tenant who is a monolingual Cantonese speaker. Pulled up one of the rent increases, ripped it to shreds. The Benson are Cantonese tenant leader just said OK, and that's like one of the origin stories that really just shows like how yeah like oppositional our tenants were from the beginning. And then what happened was that another tenant leader, Luisa, who actually has since passed away due to COVID, she actually called like all the news stations in LA just blew this the **** ** and yeah, and then that's how organizers. And have got involved and maybe Anna, you can share your personal experience of going through all of this. Yeah, for sure. So about right a little before the association was started at Hillside Villa, we had been living here for about 7 years and. At that time. So I was working with my mom at the time and we went out in the morning for work. We came back around the afternoon to find that we couldn't get into our apartment. Our keys were actually. They weren't going into the locks, so we went to the manager's office and asked them, like, why our key wasn't working. So they sent management up to our our floor and they told us that we had been evicted and that we couldn't, like, go back. And yeah, that we couldn't go back into our apartment. She's just just within. That one. That one morning, you know, our whole pretty much our whole life was like flipped upside down. They told us that they actually worked, unfortunately with them, and I think this is a very common thing, is that landlords work directly with the Sheriff's Department. So the Sheriff Department came in and switched out our lock. So we were pretty much. Uprooted that day, we had to figure out, like, what to do. We were all separated like that day we all, you know, my sister went to her friend's house, my mom had to go rent a hotel to stay with her husband, and then I went to my partner's house. So that lasted about two to three days. And in those two to three days, we were personally I started looking up tenant laws, tenant rights, and we found thanks to to a friend. She recommended the eviction defense network, who provides free lawyers for tenants facing eviction in LA. So they heard us up with a lawyer and they found that the eviction had actually been an illegal eviction and that we also we also had like the paperwork to show that that it was an illegal eviction. So we threatened to sue the landlord and because of that he dropped the case. Then let us back in to our apartment after like three or four days or something like that from what I can remember. But in those days, it was. It was. Really enraging. Obviously. Like who wouldn't be like super ****** *** at this? Like it would boil your blood, you know, and and it did. And that's one of the the things that like. Kind of made me very much so more involved in like tenant rights and. And organizing and then also, like, just to throw this in a little more detail, when we were locked out, they actually locked our animals in into the apartment. So we couldn't even get our dogs right away. God, they like, were they OK? Like, did were you able to like, was anyone feeding them like? They weren't there all three days. I think we were. We had to like, really like push for them to open up the apartment so that we can get them like the day of. But then, like, we couldn't just, like, grab all our things, including like medication that was like needed for for my mom's husband who has a diabetes and whatnot. So I think that was like the first time we acted as a family to, like, not let someone pretty much bullying harass us into a forced eviction that was completely. Illegal. And that's. Within that time it was also happening to all the tenants around us. I mean there was the word was going all over the apartment. I mean you you could see management was doing a cash for keys, which is also an illegal tactic for landlords to do. And they were trying what that is. Sorry. Yeah. So cash for keys, it's probably going to be like a rough definition of what it is, but it's when. When a landlord offers a certain amount of money in order for you to give up your apartment, and this could be a couple thousand 10,000 to 20,000, sometimes way less than that. So that was a tactic that he was trying to use to evict people from our apartment so that he could remodel and then. Move it up to like market rate and get pretty much all of our community out of this apartment, which was an affordable apartment. It worked for a lot of some tenants did end up doing that. A lot of people didn't want to fight back. But the ones that did started the association. And there is also a lot of like language barriers with the tenants, some that only spoke Spanish and didn't understand what was happening they were trying to get people to sign contracts for. For the increase of the rent, yeah. So that was my experience here to begin with and and why we decided to fight back and not allow this to. To happen to our family, but also like our community here who are also experiencing the same thing, you know, it wasn't just an Ice Age. I say this all the time. It felt like an isolated situation at the time, but it on there like broader perspective, it was not an isolated thing. And that's what brought our community together. That is a really powerful be, incredibly enraging. And yeah, there's a lot of really interesting things there. Like, I mean one, obviously the cops doing like the the sheriff's, like helping them do the illegal eviction is just incredibly on the nose. And everything I think is really interesting about, yeah, the way that like, I mean OK the, the, the, the, the, the way the law only exists for rich people if you can like throw it into their faces and make it embarrassing enough that like the state has to enforce it. So I read a lot of media coverage of this and not a single person who who covered this story that that that I saw from these articles mentioned that the the that cash for keys is illegal. A lot of the articles mention it, but they they don't, they don't mention that, like you legally can't do this. And so yeah, I think that's a that that that's, I don't know, I guess it goes to show that like. Even among the press like, whose job it is to do this, there's, there's such like, there's such little knowledge of what what what practices are and are and aren't allowed and that, yeah, I mean, I think you're talking like that. That's one of the they're they're relying like, in order to do this with. Landlords are like, yeah, they're relying on people not knowing their rights to relying on being able to trick people. They're relying on just. Straight up handing people stuff they can't read and forcing them to sign it. Which? I don't know that there's any brains. Weird, but like the thing that reminds me of is like that the Spanish conquistadors showing up and then read, like, ask asking people to convert to Christianity in Spanish language they didn't speak and then shooting them and they didn't do it. It's like, yeah, that's a fitting analogy, honestly. Yeah. It's a new form of colonization. Yeah. Hmm. And what one that we're, you know, resisting. Yeah. That was one of the other things I wanted to talk about in terms of resisting this kind of stuff is. Yeah. What what was it like dealing with the kind of language barriers that you get here? Would you have, I don't know, like, I mean, you've mentioned, like at least three languages that people are speaking. There's probably more because that's just that's how working class communities work. Hmm. Yeah, if you like. That's been such a central part of our fight is language justice and the tenant meetings that we've had every single week for the past three years. So that's like about 150 meetings. Every single one of them has included some form of translation. So yeah, we've had a lot of support from folks from Union de Vecinos organizers there have gear where we can do like simultaneous. Let's sensation. Yeah. So if you go to one of our meetings, it's folks who, if they're monolingual Spanish or English speakers, they're having a headset on, where we then have someone who's offering simultaneous translation. And then since we have fewer Cantonese or Mandarin speakers, we'll also have organizers on the side doing consecutive translation for them. So our meetings are run and, like usually three if not more languages. That's awesome. And I guess it leads into another question that I had which was. So how? How did I? I think from my understanding this one of the parts of the story is. Like is people, people, people who've been doing established tenant organizing. Like getting getting involved with this stroke and I wanted to, I guess, talk about how that happens and. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I think because that original tenant, Louisa, like really blew this story up. Different orgs heard about it and eventually Latu. So the LA Tenants Union and then CD and the organ that I'm in, we heard about it and got involved long term. And even with that, like I'm a relatively new organizer. I only started volunteering with CCD a couple years ago, so it's really been like one of my first. Site fights, we like to call them, but there are other folks who have had more a bit more experience with different buildings in LA as well. But I think what's important to emphasize is that this fight has really been tenant LED and even though we have like these kind of, yeah, outside organizers, it's always been the tenants demands and the tenants interests first. Yeah, it seems, I mean, you know from from your descriptions like people showing up with translation equipment. Yeah. It seems like a really good way to do this kind of stuff, which is you show up and you give help to people, but it's it's, you know, it's it's them doing the organizing, which I don't know reminds me a lot of like I mean if my experience union organizing stuff, which is like, yeah, I know it's it's some, yeah. Like you have people who have experience with stuff and they come in and their job is to like help. The people who are actually trying to organize the place. Hmm, yeah, exactly, exactly. The people who are like actually directly impacted. Yeah. I feel like our role has really just been facilitating, offering like the Technical Support more of that stuff. But I I think you can really talk about how so much of this fight has really been building the tenants power and becoming more and more like militant and radical and just the tenants like. Yeah, really just definitely feeling their own fire. Hell yeah. So we are like super duper grateful for the. Organizers that have come out for the last three years or however long they've decided to or have joined the the Association to help and a lot of the tenants always, always like give things and. They're super appreciative of the organizers, but sometimes they don't give themselves the credit either. They think it's only like they they think the organizers, which is obviously like super important and we're super grateful, but they don't realize that they're a huge part of of the fight. For example, actually my mom has been a part of the association for longer than I have. I've only been organizing for about. Well, not only that. A year and a half. But she's actually been in the organization for three years. Because not only because she needed the support and the organizers really helped to. To guide her to like, learn to use her voice for. For the outcome that we all want to see. And a lot of the tenants are are women their elders, you know third generation elders. So they're very strong people. They lot of like the. Alter like like. I guess Latina with I don't know how I feel about that term, but you know women. Our. Our natural leaders and with the help of the organizers, they really just helped to. To help them to, you know, use their voice and to empower them to, to do what they can naturally do, which is speak up and ask for what they want. So yeah, my mom is, you know, learned over the last three years how to talk in front of politicians, how to communicate the process and the struggle that we've all been enduring, but to also demand what we rightfully. To serve, which is housing, safe housing, and for politicians to do their job, which is to represent, as they should be, the community that they are working for and not. And you know. Not to beg them to do things, but to demand that they take action in the way that. We have taken action much more than. Than any politician has in the last three years. It was up to the tenants and it still is. And thanks to them we have gotten as far as we have. That that was those, yeah, really well said. And I wanna, I guess, shift a little bit into talking about like what specifically y'all were doing because. I guess I guess both. That is like what, how, how, how, how did you actually do this and then how can other people sort of like how can other people replicate it? Yeah, I I don't know that we necessarily have like a model. That other people can apply. Because I think reflecting about this whole fight, it was such a like just dynamic campaign where at first when it started, folks were kind of using more, you know, like legal tactics, just like looking for errors in the rent increases that bots would hand out. And this would, you know, lead to being able to stall the rent hikes for months at a time. But then that obviously wasn't enough. So then people started escalating and eventually, like, putting pressure to get this on the radar of our districts like City Council Person, Gil Studio. And eventually through that, they were able to get studio to make a deal with the landlord to extend the Covenant and have his, like loans be his debt be forgiven. But the landlord just like reneged on that deal, right. So classic landlord behavior. Yeah, yeah. So then I think it's through those experiences that the tenants really learned. Like, OK, it's like the this politician's not gonna save us. So then I think our fight became, like, more and more militant. So just directly going to the landlord's Malibu Villa and shouting, like, **** you and you know, just like, Oh yeah, yeah, just like those direct confrontations. And then even Sadio himself. It has not been, you know, this friendly relationship where we're thanking him for, yeah, putting our putting our story into City Council. It's been extremely confrontational and oppositional the entire time. And I think thinking about what got us this recent win, it was as it has been this whole fight, direct action, because we ended up the first day that City Council opened up to the public again. A group of US went in kind of like. Slid our way through security and went to his office. And surprisingly he opened the door and it was him and not a staffer. And of course he saw it with us. He hates us. So she he immediately tried to close the door. And one of our amazing tenant leaders, Rosario, who's, yeah, this elder Latino woman, she stuck her foot in the door and refused to let him close it. Yeah. And because of that we were able to just like. Directly confront him, like, where the **** have you been? It's been three years. And you haven't seen this through like you said you were going to. And we got all that, you know, recorded video evidence of him just, yeah, fumbling around and he sent the cops on us, of course. Yeah. And yeah, I think that was such a great action because all of the, we call them like the maheras. So the Latino women who have been leading the fight, they were just so defiant towards the cops, not scared at all and just, you know, standing there. Found and that they're just defending, you know, their human right to housing. And a week after that confrontational action, we got this. This City Council motion passed. So, you know, I think it from our experience trying to go through the next way and like, you know, doing traditional lobbying, trying to schedule meetings and like texting, calling, all of that, things didn't happen for years. And then once we did more and more militant actions, things happened really quickly. Yeah, another thing I'd like to add on to that that I actually heard was something that not a lot of. Other associations that are fighting for their housing do often was to bring the community together and like, I mean really coming together. I mean, we're meeting every week for the last three years and even during the pandemic we weren't in person. We actually were on zoom for a really long time. And that's one of the biggest things was the consistency that we all pushed through, even during the pandemic from the beginning was meeting every single week and some other. Organizers also meet more than once a week. You know, we're we're meeting multiple times a week to kind of talk over like the fine detail of. Of, you know, the next steps, but definitely consistency has been one of the biggest things in the last three years that has gotten us where we are today. Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. I know I keep going back to this because this is the sort of, I mean I guess I did some tenant organizing but this is the thing that I know now. I was like, yeah, it reminds me a lot of just like the way the way the Union campaigns that like work run of just you have to keep. You have to have to keep getting people together to do the thing. Yeah, most definitely. Yeah. I don't know, have you all seen like, like how how did that change? Like your relationship with just like the other people in the building? I'll give you an example from like my mom. I think for her it's been changed a little more drastically than it has for me because a lot of the tenants here are a little older. So before the association was started, she she's kind of like a person that keeps to herself a lot, you know? But since that, since the association, she's actually made like so many friends here now, like. And she's actually made like a best friend here, one of our neighbours. And they like. Yes. And they've become like really good friends. They even go, you know, have breakfast together. Like almost multiple times a week. The other day I saw them like. I saw my mom's best friend, Adelita or Adela, giving her some sugar, and I was like, oh, I should have gotten a picture of that. Like that's, you know, that's so cute. Like posted it on like Instagram so that, you know, like everyone knows like what it looks like when community comes together. It's it's the small things like that. But I think it has. Made some. You know, made us gain like trust with the neighbors that have been consistent and see the same. Kind of vision that we like have to keep this building affordable. Umm. And yeah, not everyone, not all the tenants here have been supportive of our fight. Some, you know. Participated for a few months and then immediately gave up. But one of the things that. That my family has done is to keep fighting. Umm. Even for the ones that don't want to show up or don't want to do the work. Which is hard work that. We're not just doing it for ourselves, but we're doing it for. For everyone, whether they're supportive or not, you know this is going to benefit them and it's going to benefit the whole community. And hopefully the city, the whole city in the future, yeah. I don't know. It's something I've definitely seen with organizing. Is that like? Yeah, like, just living in this world can be really isolating. And I don't know, like, I've lived in a lot of places where it's just like, yeah, like, I have no idea who any, like, literally who anyone who lives around me is like, you know, like there's still, they'll be like the one person you see at three in the morning coming back to their apartment. And it's like, oh, I finally remember this person. But like, yeah, like, I think. I don't know, just. The this this being something that just on a broad level, not just about like, I mean is it like? This is something that's a solution to both like in immediate fight and then also this sort of like broader. Just. I don't know, like, nightmarish isolation that everyone's like, not everyone, but like is is a huge part of a lot of our lives now. I don't know, that just struck me I guess. Yeah, yeah. I feel like this just makes me think of to celebrate the recent win we had this party at Hillside just last week and. You know, it was like potluck style. Everyone brought their own food. Someone had a connection with like a mariachi van. So we had mariachi playing. One of the tenants owns a food truck and just wanted to cook for the community. So she was whipping up these like amazing tacos and bacon wrapped hot dogs. And then someone had brought this pinata of the landlord and people were just like ******* destroying it like one of the tenants. Movie was just. Their fist fighting it and cracking it open. The kids were just like grabbing as much candy as they could from this broken tombob's pinata and. And like, I felt like that was just like exemplifies the sense of community that there is now at Hillside. And I think as Annie was talking about, those personal connections have been so key to keeping this fight going for three years because it's hard. It's so hard to keep showing up and it's those personal connections that keep you coming. Yeah, most definitely. It's almost like a support system that like my mom and like some of the neighbors have created like adalita or one of our second generation tenants, Leslie you know, she's they can confide with one another. They can vent with one another and. Yeah, yeah. So they've definitely like created strong bonds and I think that's one of the reasons why they keep showing up, you know, it's it's women supporting women and. Umm. You know, they're the protectors of the family. They're the nurturers. And that's what my mom taught me. So that's why definitely one of the reasons why I continue to fight for hillside to keep the housing, not only for my mom, because I'm like her protector and she's mine, but we're also like here. To protect the community from from harassment or from literal bullying. This is really. So I guess looking forward. I think at the beginning interview you said, yeah, it looks like there's going to be another fight over sort of forcing that, forcing the city to actually use eminent domain. Yeah, do you have? Well, OK. I don't know if you can talk about your plans for that, but. Yeah, I guess. Two things. One, if if if people want to support what y'all are doing and, you know, put pressure on the city, what are the best ways for them to do that? Hmm, yeah, I think just following our our socials and staying updated about the fight and any like action items that we put out is a great way to support and just amplifying the struggle, yeah, in terms of our specific strategy for holding the city accountable. We actually haven't, haven't, yeah. Gotten super into the weeds of it yet because we are just taking a break for a while. So yeah, you know, you know, yeah, yeah, to celebrate, celebrate this win and yeah, kind of have folks get perspective. I think our, our view is that because the city has now approved the funds to make this happen that. Yeah, that there shouldn't be any barriers to them seeing it completely through. Yeah, I think we can, we can maybe apprehend some like ideological barriers because actually using eminent domain to expropriate a landlord is not something that's been done before. But yeah, we'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean, look, if if, if if they can displace tenants with eminent domain, they can, they can, they can use it to keep tenants in their homes. Like exactly. I guess the other question I have with that is. What is OK, so like say like, I don't know, a miracle occurs and like your landlord is visited by like 3 ghosts at night who like show him increasingly horrible features and he decides to sell it to the city. What is that like? What is the city owning the building look like? Hmm. Yeah, I can start with that and then I can chime in. But I think the vision of the tenants has always been collective stewardship and tenant ownership of the building. So the fight definitely does not stop at the city taking the building, but there will also be a push for actual tenant stewardship of the building too. Yeah. And I think the exact structures of that are aren't so clear yet. There's still a lot of like discussions. And work to be done around that. But yeah. And the conversations that we've had with folks from the Housing Authority, which is going to be the agency that's actually purchasing the building they have expressed openness to, to us actually. Yeah. Having another nonprofit takeover and eventually building towards like a Co-op kind of structure, that would be really cool. Yeah, I know. I know. I've heard a lot of talk among. Well, I know, I think people have done it in Detroit about. Things like community land trusts as a way to. Yeah. Have tenants actually like control their buildings? Yeah, yeah, that's definitely been part of the discussion. Yeah, that's that's awesome. Because yeah, this is this is a much better solution than the state is now your landlord. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the, yeah that's that's the what we hope for in the future. Like John has said, we still have a lot to work through and this isn't done. Obviously we wouldn't, like you said, want the state to be landlords here. They wouldn't be the best landlords. But yeah. Yeah, we. We are like Janice said, taking a. A pause and we will reconvene to plan out future steps to take, but this was a really, really great win. It was such a relief off of so many people. Back and. Something we've been fighting for over three 3 1/2 years now. So it's good to finally get somewhat of positive news and it's been such an emotional journey for the last three years. I mean, that doesn't even justify how how much of an emotional rollercoaster it has been for a lot of these tenants or for a lot of our families here. When we got the news. Everyone broke out in tears and joy and. And. And everyone was so surprised. I mean, I couldn't help myself but to like cry and smile and ugly cry some more for like the whole day. Just yeah, so. Yeah, we're hoping for. For the process to be. Somewhat smoother now that. That we've done a. A large portion of the fight, but yeah, we saw we were still at the tail end of things. Where can people find find yalls organizations and groups and stuff to go? Follow them or yeah, help them in places. I'm a for CCD, which does post a lot of hillside content. I think all of our socials are just at CCD LA and then for hillside I think. There's different handles for all the different different platforms, unfortunately, but if folks just look up hillside, Villa or hillside tenants, they should be able to find it. And if you just send me the social media handles, you can put them in the description. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well thank thank you both so much for so much for talking to us this was this was awesome. I'm so happy for you. This is great. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for thanks for listening. Yeah this has been huge. Yeah. And I guess for everyone out there are you 2 can take and start taking back your cities and yeah with with. With, with with any luck, and with a lot of struggle, this is this is going this is going to be the first of Betty. And yeah, **** landlords. We can beat them. Yeah, **** them. Yeah, we got this. Communities first. Yep, landlording is not a job. We're here to take it back. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. 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For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes there are answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research. With you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Introducing the biz tape. You're all things music, business and media podcast. Join me, Joe Waslewski and my co-host Colin McKay every Wednesday where we discussed the breaking news, changing the music industry, and what your favorite artists and creatives are up to. Colin, who's your favorite artist? Oh, you know the track factor? Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Captain Beefheart? Snap back to reality, Eminem style. Join music industry professionals Joe and I as we pull back the curtain of the successes and failures of the biz. You guys have been hanging out a while. What are they doing? Calling, I guess, listening to an ad? Sorry. Listen to new episodes of the biz tape every Wednesday on the Nashville podcast network, available on iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Oh boy. It could happen here, the podcast about it and and happening and could. Chris, take us away. I'm taking it away. Oh boy. I think I promised too. So, uh, this is this has been a fun week so far. We're all kind of sitting through that in that awkward. Where we know the Supreme Court is about to. Do some **** with Roe V Wade and that that's going to light a whole bunch of stuff on fire. And so we're all waiting for that and we're all waiting for. Uh, the big Pride Month demonstrations in the wake of a **** load of, uh, uhm threats from the right and kind of in that awkward interstitial. We got this this little burst this weekend of of of happiness, of just of pure joy. So obviously we had covered a little earlier the Guendolin rally in Quarterline, Idaho, which was a right wing kind of counter rally to Coeur d'alene's regular local pride. Rally and you know, it was a an event that the, the, the, the, the PR 4 ahead of time was deeply unsettling. There were a lot of like threats and talk about, you know, let the fight start here and all that stuff. A lot of people were worried about a massacre, including us. Because when you have a bunch of right wingers saying that anyone queer is grooming kids and it's time to shoot them, it's reasonable to be worried about a massacre. Now what we did see on the day and this is something. You'll note a lot of times when you get the events where there's a lot of threats around them. That's what kind of provokes enough attention and enough of the state response that that it's not where people try to ****. You know, it's often kind of at the edges of events or the events that people don't take seriously enough ahead of time that, like, things go to ****. You know? Charlottesville would be a great example because prior to Charlottesville there was a lot of, like, discussion. About how big it was going to be in the city, you know did not really take it seriously. There were a number of I, and this is one of the things frustrating the ******* mayor of Charlottesville is after what happened in court Alene and stuff has been like on the news talking to people about how to, how to avoid demonstrations going badly and ****. Which like you know, he received a lot of warnings from anti fascists about how many people with you know, pending violent charges were going to be at unite the right in Charlottesville and how many threats were going on. It was kind of ignored. And as a result it got really ******* ugly because you know you had a smaller numbers on the on the first night you know when people got surrounded by that torchlit mob you had smaller numbers of anti fascists outnumbered by fascists and no real counter to them until you know the next day. And obviously that's the day that that that James Alex Fields drove a car into a crowd and that kind of starts our story today because the the thing that was the bright ray of sunlight. In the midst of what has been a pretty rough couple of weeks, news Wise was 31 members of the hate group Patriot Front getting arrested in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, jammed into the back of a U-Haul. The story of Patriot front and the story of how that that beautiful moment happened, UM, starts in Charlottesville in 2017. Actually, it starts significantly before that in Texas. But the group that becomes patriot front starts as a group called Vanguard America. And Vanguard America is one of the groups that is responsible for kind of carrying out the the Unite the right rally. And this is this is a different group than American vanguard, right. Wait, let me double check here, because sorry, they all use such similar names. Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, there is an American vanguard. There's also the American Vanguard corporation. No, no, no. I think it's some American guard. American Guard is the group that. Is a kind of more coming out of the KKK's sphere of orbit because some of them are former Klansmen. That's another story for another day. So you've got Vanguard America, they're one of the groups kind of behind bringing a lot of people, a lot of fascists shouldn't call them people to Charlottesville in 2017. James Alex Field is marching with them and carrying one of their Shields earlier in the day before he carries out his car attack. And as a result of the bad press that him murdering. A woman and and maiming a bunch of people with his car in a terrorist attack brings down the leader of Vanguard America, Thomas Rousseau splits off like kind of ends Vanguard America and spins it off into Patriot front, which is less explicitly just as fascist, but less branded as fascist, more kind of branded in Americana. They all of their PR and all of their like images look like rejected. Stills from a Bioshock game. Yeah. It's it's it's pretty amazing. I I'm pretty sure. Yeah. These are the guys who like, there's a video of them, like talking like like like they're literally, they go like on camera. It's like, Oh yeah, we're we're doing America stuff. We we're we're not Hitler people. And then like the the boat with the camera turns off, they're like, oh, God, the cameras off. We can say kale now. Yeah, yeah, it's it's great. I mean, Vanguard America's logo was literally like an eagle carrying a bundle of fasces. Yeah. They're they're not not subtle and I should say Vanguard. America I think was actually founded by another guy in in California, but Thomas Russo was was pretty quickly prominence in there and he splinters off into into Patriot front. I I need to be specific because there's people listening who will yell at me for getting that wrong. So for the purpose of, of what we're talking about today, we should chat about Thomas Russo before we get into some of the funnier stuff because he's got a really interesting background for a fascist. So in the last couple of years since Patriot front became a thing, Rousseau has held a number of kind of like flash demonstrations where they'll get a few dozen patriot front guys together and they'll March around in their ******* Gators and their their little fascist uniforms that are like. I don't know. They look like Country Club Nazis is like the way they they prefer to dress and they'll carry their Shields and they'll, you know, film propaganda videos. Most of what they do is hand out, like, put out stickers, put out other kinds of propaganda to the extent that, like, they are probably the primary national purveyors of, of Nazi propaganda in, like, the real world, like in terms of stuff that actually gets put out where people can see it. They are. I've like, I've, I've found like stickers from them, just like random places in Chicago. Yeah, yeah, I've seen a couple of them like 2019 Patriot front was and this is the ADL's estimate. So they're not the most accurate they could be. But also no one else is really keeping track of this. So I'll say they're probably broadly correct. The in 2019, the ADL listed Patriot Front is responsible for 80% of all propaganda incidents nationally of like Nazi type groups. And then in 2020, that number doubled and they were responsible for like 90 plus. I think sometimes you'll hear 92% of like the the Nazi propaganda distributed nationwide. Their propaganda efforts are most active in Texas, Washington, California, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia. And it's one of those things this is not. The the goal with the propaganda is for them to be seen as very large and influential. The way that they manage to do it is that patriot front is effectively like a key parasocial relationship for most of the people in it, right? It's a series of like chats and and and discords and whatnot. And these people like come to feel like it's their community. And one of the things Russo did that was very smart is if you want to stay a member of Patriot front, you will get banned and purged from the organization if you are not regularly posting proof. That you're active in the real world. And the easiest way to do that is by putting up stickers, right? So that's not only how they fund some of their operations because, you know, their guys are buying stickers, but that's how you keep people engaged. If you want to, like, stay in the clubhouse with your friends, you have to go put up stickers every couple of weeks or every so often. And you know, when you have a couple of 100 people doing that, stickers are not that expensive. You can get a lot of propaganda out that way. And so Russo has been very successful in in that end of things. So let's chat about him a little bit. He is was born in 1998. So he's what, 24 ish right now? Yeah, he grew up where I did. He comes from the suburbs of Dallas, the Metroplex, specifically Coppell. And if you're not, if you don't know much about the DFW suburbs, so Dallas. Sizable city, about four million people last I checked. And then you've got these, these suburbs that are 1,000,000 more and it's it's effectively DFW is kind of this megalopolis, like it's this massive sprawling city, larger than several States and its geographical area. At some point in the future, assuming growth continues, you're going to see like all of the big cities in Texas merge and when they're metroplexes start to mingle. But these, these, these Texas suburbs are all laid out very orderly and grids. They were all, they're all like planned communities and in the area around like this particular chunk around Dallas, they're all pretty wealthy. And of these wealthy suburbs, Coppell is like where the the money money is like the like coming up and Plano, which is, was a fairly well off suburb we would like the Coppell kids were like the rich kids, right. Like when we would compete against them in football and speech debate, like you'd feel like, yeah, we're like ******* with the rich kids, let's get them. So this is this is this is like, this is like this is like Dallas Fort Worth like Evanston. I assume so, yes. And when we would like obviously, like, yeah, they were the rich kids. They were also like the kids I would often get drugs from when I was like 19 because they had like, they had. They had good drugs, you know. So the other thing you should know about and Coppell is where, you know, our boy Thomas Rousseau grows up in the early 2000s and in fact, his senior year is the year of the 2016 election. And another thing you should know about Chapel is that like. All the Dallas Metroplex. It's incredibly diverse, and it's also, I should note, incredibly diverse in a specific way. It's not hugely economically diverse. But it is has a massive population of people from Southeast Asia, from India, from Vietnam, from China and from Japan. And the you can kind of see that if you look at so Thomas Rousseau as a kid works for the Coppell High School newspaper, the Sidekick. And if you if you go to the Sidekicks website today and if you look at its writers and its editorial staff, it is a bunch of kids from Southeast Asia now. Thomas Russell is extremely white and he has, you know, his big thing is like replacement theory. He's been yelling about this for a very long time. And so one kind of assumes this is probably where he started feeling that although it's interesting, if you look up like one of the earliest articles, the SPLC has a pretty good profile on him and back kind of at the start of a 2016 in February, he wrote writes this article about the school's diversity. Club, which is just a pretty normal you would not. There's no signs in there, not that I saw that like he's going to be a Nazi in about a year. Like it's just it's how like basically anybody who is writing a straight piece of reporting on a diversity club would write it, you know? It's not like there's no signs in that article. Yeah, it's just because, like the the next article he writes is like completely off the rails. Yeah, like it's like Trump is at that point because, you know, February 2016, Trump is still. Like, I don't know he he's definitely becoming the front runner, but it's not clear what's going to happen yet. And by the time he writes his next article, a couple in like October, it's a. Full on trumpy. Yeah, he's like, I mean he he he's like by that point, like he started his great replacement stuff. He started like, I mean he he's doing that kind of like the the, the white working class has been like oppressed for too long. And I people keep calling them racist. And so they're voting for Trump now because they're simultaneously poor, but also like. But, but you know, I think it's interesting, it's like, you know, it's an interesting sign of that kind of like what actually generates that kind of right wing populism because it's like, so you have, you have someone who's like going fascist really quickly writing this and it's like, oh, where is he from a weight. He's like he's from like the incredible rich kid place. It's like it's it's, it's, it's, it's fun he's doing. Yeah, he's he's doing this sort of fascist version of the like working class whispering that you have like. Rich pundits doing, and it's one of the things, the kind of black box mysteries with Rousseau that I haven't seen a great is like when when does the actual switch flip in his head? Like when he writes that article about the School Diversity Club. Is he already a fascist or is he one of these people who like is kind of conservative and gets super radicalized by Trump because he had you, you see, throughout kind of 2016? Because I I get the feeling from him that he was always kind of like. The conservative kid in his school paper and school media and like you get, you see like, he's writing like the month after that Diversity Club article. He writes an article about campus carry and is like supporting concealed carry on college campuses and is is pretty like, but it's also these are also like kind. It's also kind of a milktoast conservative take. Like it's not. He's not like, making it explicitly fascist argument. He's making the kind of arguments that, like I would have made in speech and debate class as a conservative. Did in North Texas when I was a senior. You see, like in May, he's writing an article about, like, bathroom bills and stuff that's that's getting closer to kind of modern American fascist rhetoric. And then, of course, by like October, he's he's fully on the Trump train. And he actually has a removed opinion column after the election about like the silent majority where he says, quote, the truth is white voters, especially the working class, have had more than enough of being called racist, sexist, sinophobic, Islamophobic, homophobic, and the rest of the usual trite buzzwords. The forgotten majority of the American electorate has shown that much to the dismay of the globalist agenda that they have not yet been replaced by 10s of millions of blue voting immigrants from abroad. And it's again, you can kind of, there's a debate as to whether you can, I guess, argue as to whether or not. He had always been sort of a fascist and just felt like more comfortable as the year went on being open about it or if he's getting radicalized. I feel like he's kind of getting radical. I can see, I can see in him like shades of everyone that I knew back then at that point in time in my life, including me, like, well. And this reminds so, so I was, I'm like a year older than he is, right? So I, I, I, I was out of high school by 2016, but like I, you know, I'd like, I just graduated, right, like like 2015. And I remember this with like people, with people. I knew who were like, because I mean, like, OK, like, there were always people who were like, really, really like, like, we had a lot of like Fox News pilled, like, kill all the Muslims kids. But there are also people who like weren't like that, who were just like conservatives. And over the course of 2016, like, they went really, really like, they radicalized really quickly. So it it wouldn't surprise me if he's doing the same thing because I think that was a lot of like. Like I, I watched a lot of sort of like moral majority people get like, we're kind of like on. Who weren't on the like, absolute, like, right wing like. I don't know, like who weren't on like the the absolute like hard right of that thing who were kind of like. Conservative, but, you know, like. Weren't actively invested in murdering every gay person. Yeah, like those people just like a switch flipped and they like they just kind of went sicko mode. Yeah and that's that's where he goes. He goes like full on and I don't know you can. It's interesting because like his his primary job for the the sidekick, the Coppell High School student newspaper is as like their their political cartoonist and he's he's mostly doing like really basic like clip art **** which is what you see him doing for like Patriot front. It's kind of the thing that distinguishes them is his like art style and the propaganda he makes so you know he's there at unite the right in 2017 one of the guys he's there with. Commits a terrorist attack. They spin off Patriot front, and for the next few years, most of what they'll do is these events where they'll like show U and they'll March. It's worth noting that while they bring. Different kinds of weapons to these events, mainly like, you know, bludgeoning weapons, the kind of things you'd have for like a street fight. And Shields, these are not primarily violent events, and that, like, their goal is not to get into a fight, I think mainly not because they're not violent people, because they're scared of getting into a fight, and Rousseau's probably scared of getting in trouble for having a bunch of people show up to riot. So most of what they do is they'll do these flash mobs while they're they'll get like a bunch of people together in the middle of the night, or like on a day when nobody expects it, and they'll March around DC or something, and then they'll get footage of themselves. Doing this March where, you know, they can kind of take care to make sure the angles make them look as impressive as possible, and then they'll put that up to try and get more members so that they can put up more propaganda, right. They've had a couple of well publicized failures. They showed up in Philadelphia, this was last year, right? And they just left. And they again, there's like 30 to 50 of them. They all like pilot of a U-Haul. They're marching is like in their fascist uniforms and like 3 dudes confront them. Direct fit. Like 3 Philly guys just wreck their **** I've ever seen. So funny I've ever seen. I think it was from that. We're just like, there's like there's a video. It's it's just them running away and there's like there's like objects flying through the air. Yeah, no, like the their their funniest little Army confronts like 3 random Philly guys who are just like, oh, this isn't any good. I don't know who these guys are, but there's no way this is good. **** them up. It's a it's a perfect Philly moment. So yeah, and like that is their MO. And in part because one thing you have to and I people can misinterpret what I'm saying here, they're probably the most disciplined of the fascist groups that do regular in person events because there's a lot of discipline required in getting several dozen people together, getting them all to the the area in the exact same mode of transport together. That's why they all pile into you. Falls, right. Russo doesn't want to coordinate a big caravan. That would be messy. People would be arriving at different times, people would get lost or get stuck in traffic. He wants everyone together because he's again, he's a fascist. So they're they're really and they they are are pretty consistent and pretty good at getting everyone together and marching at the same time. So like on a logistic end, there's some things they do that are are competent, you know generally speaking now the downside. Of this plan I've just talked about like why getting everyone on EU haul can work and how it has worked for them in the past. The downside of this is that everyone is in a U-Haul together. Yeah, I mean I I think I think for them there's, there's, I think there's some upside like for them doing this which is that like I think on a sort of like unlike a discipline level on level of sort of like building this like like building this sort of like culture of like like. Community and like solidarity, but like the fascist version of it. It's like, yeah, well you have everyone suffering together in the back of a U-Haul, which is hot as **** and like has to smell like, like, like like death like you cannot imagine. Yeah, it's like, like, imagine the worst locker room you've ever been in. But then it's it's every everyone has been trapped in there for a week. It's like, yeah, it's a, it's a hot air balloon powered by Nazi farts. Like that's that's what's going on there. And they're all just like, and it's it's very funny because like when they had done their last event or two and like, this is like in the dead of winter in the East Coast that they do a couple of events and they have people like nearly passing out from heat stroke in the back of the van or in the back of EU haul. Because, like, it's not great to be scrapped in the back of the 30 something people. It's like, it sucks, but also like that that suffering sort of like brings them together and makes them sort of like, sure, yeah, yeah, in a lot of ways, which sucks. But also, yeah. The second logistical problem with this, I think you're about to get to yeah. So they they they try to. Rousseau actually puts out specific, like, information about like, hey, here's how we need to prep for being crammed into a U-Haul. Together and like, advises that his dudes start. Spending time in saunas and **** in order to like toughen themselves up to avoid getting heat syncope. Umm. Anyway there's a couple other things that are happen. One of the things that we we know because one of the funny things about Patriot front. So they claim to have a an intense vetting process. You know you're supposed to like message them with an application and then they'll they'll vet you before they let you into the chat rooms. They have been compromised since the day they're started being a patriot. I I don't think there is a moment of the time that they have existed that I haven't known multiple people who had logs of every conversation happening like they are so infiltrated. It is extreme, like it's like it's like the training wheels of anti fascist research, just like get into patriot fronts chat rooms. There, there's always multiple people in there documenting their ****. It's extremely funny. And so because of that, we know a number of their tactics. One of the things that Rousseau has admitted to doing in the past is that, like, well, when we start, like, heading towards wherever we're going to, you know, pile out of the thing in March, we'll call the cops and we'll inform them that we've seen a group of people with Shields getting ready to March and that they don't seem to have weapons, but they're about to be an ex area and they do this so that there will be cops. Unseen, who will provide like an escort for them, right, so that they won't get beaten up, like they want the cops to be there to protect them, you know? So Russo is like specifically bragged about doing this in the past. There's also like, as I stated, like the OR as an organization, they're events are not geared towards like, killing people, right? Like they're not, they're doing these marches to get videos. They're not like, they're not even like the proud boys where they're specifically showing up to get into a brawl, right? And every time they do get into brawls. They look very uncomfortable and frightened in them, which is why he like, calls for police escorts and ****. That said, there there are like, again, they're a Nazi organization. They they specifically preach replacement theory and yell that their ancestors conquered America and so they deserve to own and all this ****. So a bunch of them have been arrested for like, gun stuff. There's been a number of like people of Patriot front members arrested for like illegal machine guns and and **** like that. That absolutely happens. People post about their illegal guns and stuff. But as an organization, they're mainly geared towards providing, like, propaganda that Thomas Rousseau likes. So they all gather together and are heading into Coeur d'Alene, Idaho to confront this and I I suspect their goal, I suspect they're Rousseau's hope for how this was going to go was they were going to pile out of their U-Haul, going to get their 30 ish guys all in lines together, in their uniforms, with their Shields and with their their ******* fascist sticks or whatever. Umm. And they're going to March through the middle of the pride gathering and and they'll get video of people, like, scattering or backing away from in front of them, not wanting to confront them because, you know, there was a big group of them. I think that was the hope. I I'm sure Rousseau was like, hey, and maybe some Antifa will try to fight, and we'll get some videos of us, like, fighting them with Shields, and that'll be good for recruitment. But I think the main goal was to get a video of them scaring gay kids and and looking like a big, scary Nazi phalanx that they could use as propaganda. Now this goes to **** before they even get out of the you all because somebody calls the police and reports what looks like a little army of guys with weapons and Shields piling into a U-Haul. And again, the police are saying that this was a concerned citizen and it based on the kind of most recent reporting, it may just be a random citizen of cordyline who actually, like, was for understandable reasons, right. If you like see this happening, you're like, yeah, maybe I should, I might need to call somebody about this. Yeah. I wouldn't call the cops necessarily, but you know, in this case it seems to have worked out. That said, knowing their background, you have to acknowledge the possibility that it they that it was one of them who called the police themselves. Like that is not impossible. Now, there's initially reports that it was the Feds reports, I should say, from the cops on the scene. And again it's reasonable that journalists overhearing that recording it would report on it. That said, cops on the scene are no more accurate about what actually has happened than like random passersby. So and then we're likely to just openly lie, which is and and you know, I, I, I would not. I'm certain there's a fed or or or for inside patriot front. That said, it doesn't seem like this was a fed. Trust. Although I you know, it's not impossible that it was because if you were the feds and you had a guy in here and you decided you want to arrest these people to avoid a potential Charlottesville kind of situation happening again, maybe you would want to just say it was like a random person who called. I don't know, this does not. There's no reason that this needed to be a Fed bust. They were not like, this did not require the FBI's infiltration capability to deal with. Like it it was a bunch of Nazis. Piling into a U-Haul. I don't have trouble believing that some dude was just like, hey hey, cops. And it's there's been a lot of, like, surprise online that, like, the cops did their job, but they went after these people. I think the surprise there is kind of based on some misconceptions. And these are misconceptions kind of pushed in part by the fact that over the last few years, when we have seen fascist groups rally in places like Portland, or, like Charlottesville for the Unite the right rally, the cops tend to be on their side and tend to protect them. But what you're looking at are two different things in a lot of ways, because the cops in a place like Portland, and I assume in a place like Charlottesville, I'm not as familiar with their police demographics, but I know this is the case in Portland. Don't live in Portland. They live in places like Battleground Washington. You know, they live in these, these, these surrounding more rural and suburban communities, and they don't like the city that they police, and they kind of see them as an enemy. So when other people generally from similar suburbs and rural communities as the cops. Show up to fight the kids that Portland cops don't like. The Portland cops are going to be on the side of that. And this is again, you see versions of this occur around the country in Coeur d'Alene. This was not. Like Coeur d'Alene cops live in Coeur d'Alene. You know, like there's nowhere else to live like, yeah, they they're from that community. And even if I'm sure a number of them, if not many or most of them have like attitudes towards, you know, have said some negative things about gay people. These are also like they're probably, some of them are probably related to people with that pride rally this is in. And in general these are like, they're they are probably seeing this as like, well, whatever. I think about pride, these are people who live in Coeur d'Alene and a bunch of folks. From outside of the state are driving in to **** with them. They're not generally going to be on board with that. And as a general rule also, cops don't like people coming in to their town like home, to cause trouble. And these are people from like 11 different states entering Idaho to like **** with people who live in Idaho. I'm not surprised that the police actually did something here. It doesn't like mean that these are the good cops that we're mythically all looking for. It just means that, like, nobody wants this happening in their hometown. Like nobody. Nobody wants these ******** running into town dressed as like little Hitler youth guys and marching around like, that's like, of course they don't want that. Who would? So the cops pull over this ******* U-Haul. There's the footage of it is some of the funniest **** on the face of the Earth. It's so good because they just roll up the back of this thing. There's like some ******* quarterline cop with an AR like pointed in there, and there's just all these ******* goober Nazis and they're they're ******* polos and khakis and their fascist Gators. God, it's good. Look up this footage if you can find you. You owe it to yourself to do this. It's amazing. We should state we're not really. We'll be getting more coverage to what happens and what happened elsewhere on this day. You had a lot of ugly **** happened this day in court Alene because there are a lot of heavily armed fascists rallying who are in many cases locals or from nearby places like Spokane. Matt Shea, who is a former state legislator from Washington who lives nearby who is a domestic accused domestic terrorist, leads a March through Coeur d'Alene. These guys are not stopped by the cops, right? In part because like. They're not a bunch of dudes from out of state showing up to March around in ridiculous Nazi uniforms, right? The police are notably less concerned about the guys in AR fifteens and plate carriers than they are about Patriot front, which is, again, it's because of like, what's actually going on here, you know? But there are like armed people fight, like threatening and and trying to confront or at least standing around outside of a pride March in a way that, you know, if you're doing that with a bunch of guns, that's concerning. Anti fascists show up to protest them and very successfully kind of keep a wall between the folks showing up for pride. And the folks rallying with guns, UM, so that that is a thing that is happening. I don't want to. This has been the thing that has kind of like gotten the most attention from quarterly and I don't think that's bad like from a standpoint of. Like, what is useful, seeing a bunch of Nazis get their **** like, wrecked is is definitely an ideal take away from the Coeur d'Alene event, because especially considering the amount of violence I think we were all worried might occur there. I'm very happy that the primary take away is Patriot Frontal got arrested, but the things that we were concerned about, there, again, there's a bunch of dudes show up with guns to stare at a pride rally. That's not a not a positive development, but this group of Nazis all get arrested. And that is positive because it's extremely funny, and sometimes it's nice for things to just be funny. So the next kind of thing you see from Patriot front is them all pulled out of a U-Haul on their knees, handcuffed, getting arrested one by one and taken to a jail and quarterly. And there's some very funny quotes where, like, the police are being asked, do you even have room for all these people? And they're like, oh, we'll figure it out. Like, don't worry. It's. Rousseau and a bunch of guys are in getting criminal conspiracy charges. They're all getting conspiracy to Riot, which is a misdemeanor. There's some rumors that a journalist posted that a number of them have a legal, had illegal guns and are getting a legal gun charges. I haven't seen confirmation about that. I'd be shocked if some of them were not carrying guns in the state of Idaho. Anybody can, right? I do think they were specifically violating the law by having firearms while sitting in the back of a box truck. Because I think for like reasons of accidents that have happened hunting, you're not supposed to do that in Idaho, but I haven't seen charges as a result of that. It's debatable as to what's going to stick. However, there's reasons to kind of suspect that something will because they had like 7 or whatever page plan for how to handle the like they had their little riot notes with them. They had like sticks and a smoke bomb and stuff. So it's not like an impossible case to convict them. Inspired, seen a riot, I will say, you know, like you're not, you're not asking like the moon of the police in this instance to like or of the prosecutors or whatever, to be able to actually convict. So we'll see what happens. What's definitely happening is that this is very funny. Treat front is extremely incompetent. I would not take this as a broader sign that, like #1, the police are taking threats against pride rallies more seriously. No, no, I would not take this as a broader sign that like fascists are are are getting heavily stopped. I also wouldn't. There's also been people saying that like. And again, this is coming from that journalist who claimed that, like, there's a bunch of gun charges pending and maybe there are, but like, I think the the the comment she made was like a massacre was averted. I do not believe Patriot front was planning to massacre anybody. There's that's just that's not their MO, that's not like, again, not that they're not Nazis, not that they don't want people dead, but like, they're like, these guys are like the milktoast, babylist Nazis, right? They show up and they March around in their *******. Like Tommy Hilfiger Nazi uniforms, you know, like, they're not, these are not folks planning in an organized capacity to commit acts of mass violence because that would be scary to them because they're mostly like suburban middle class kids. One of the funniest things that has come out of this is like one of the Nazis who got arrested in Idaho's mom has started doing interviews because she's like, I kicked him out of the house. I keep trying to get him to. I don't know what to do to get him out of this group. So I've told him he can't live with me anymore because after his divorce, he's been living with me. Yeah, and I'm going to talk to the media about the fact that my son is a stupid Nazi. Until he stops being one, I don't know what else to do. And it does sound like she's really, legitimately, like, trying to grapple with, like, I don't know why he's doing this. I don't know how to stop it, but like, it seems like the best thing I can do is embarrass him, which is I I think probably a good move on her part. There's a fun Daily Beast article about that. You could really hear. Her frustration was like, I don't know why he's doing this. Like it all started around 2016. It's very frustrating you feel for her. So I don't know, Chris, you got anything else to say about Patriot front? I do think it's extremely funny that like, well, I don't, I don't know. In some sense it's funny. In some sense it's kind of disturbing, which is that like the rights reaction to this was immediately to accuse all of them of being feds. Yeah. I mean, which, like, it's interesting to me that, like, that's just like anytime something happens in the US Now, like, and this is this is across almost the entire political spectrum, everyone immediately goes, this was the feds or sometimes you get it was Russia because sometimes was Russia. Yeah. Because it's like if you're someone who like, the feds are the good guys, it's like, well, you need another person who did all this. Yeah. So, like, that's disturbing and kind of grim to me that it's it's literally everyone with everything has just. And Alex Jones and it's like, yeah, I, you know, I think the motivation for that on all the sides, there's definitely like a core of legitimate belief that because the Feds infiltrate number, the feds have infiltrated a lot of fascist groups and the feds have, you know, had a history of infiltrating left wing groups and whatnot. Like the feds have done a lot of this stuff. So that makes some people paranoid, but also I think if you are. On the grifter's end of things, right? And you wanna talk about this stuff, but you don't actually want? To put yourself at risk, that's an easy way to kind of divorce your listeners and supporters and stuff from the stuff that's potentially illegal is by saying, well, that's all the feds. Yeah. And I think also especially like, I think people who are. I don't know. It's more frustrating on the left because people do it with stuff that, like, the PR is actually pretty good. But like, with people on the right, there's a lot of, like, this has become one of their sort of like PR management, things of, like anytime something looks bad for them. Yeah, no, it was the feds. And it's like, no. And I don't think that's on the right, at least. I think it's. I think there's more legitimate belief that it's the feds on folks on the left who do this. Yeah. I think on the right, it is nearly always just like, this is how you do damage control. Like this is how we this is how we distract from the fact that our guys. Keep carrying out attacks or whatever. Or in this case, that are are are dudes are profoundly embarrassing. Yeah, is you is you're like, no, that was the FBI hacking 30 federal agents into the back of a Uhaul and getting arrested by the Coeur d'Alene police. Classic FBI caper. If I've ever seen what my favorite one of those is, the people who like, you're never gonna see the names of any of these people. Like literally 2 hours later, every single person got booked and all of their like, a list of all of their names showed up at every newspaper. And it is again, this does show you how the Coeur d'Alene police don't want people coming in from out of town to **** with people who live in Coeur d'Alene that's not a them being woke. They like nobody. No cops like that sort of ****. Yeah, yeah, like. Is yeah. Yeah, these guys are. These guys are the hometown fascist, right? Like, they're fine with, like, Shay. Yeah, they're fine. Exactly. Yes. Biblical bases award, dude. It's like, yeah. But these are like. These are weird out of town fascists, and it's like, yeah, cops. I don't know there. Yeah, and it's they're very territorial. One of the one of the ways you can see the territoriality is like the first thing the court Alene police do is be like, oh, we're going to give everyone's name and where they live. Like we're we're doing that immediately. And of course the, the backlash to that from the fascist has been that now a bunch of fascists are doxing and calling in death threats to Coeur d'Alene cops. Which again, there's this open question of like, are any of these charges going to stick for Patriot front, the fact that an organized flood of death threats? Is going in for the police. Charging them is not good for their cases? Oh no. Like, they're just, they're just passing the cops off. And it's like, guys, guys, this is some free cop advice from me. Cops don't like getting death threats so like that that really makes them angry. Yeah. So that's funny. I don't know what else to say about it. It is pretty funny. There's aspect again, the broader problem of there were a bunch of dudes with AR's, yeah, showing up to to threaten a pride gathering was not fun, although also a lot of folks showed up to defend and support those people. And I think, I think, also like from what I'm reporting, this is like one of the largest private events we've ever had. So, like, I think it brought out people, yeah, yeah, people, people aren't being like. As an intimidation tactic, it's not working. It does not seem to have worked. Yeah, it's it's it's it's, it's it's it's it's working. Insofar as it's it's, you know, it's further radicalizing the right, but like, it's not it. It hasn't gotten to the point where like. I don't know people like. It hasn't gone to the point where like these things just are like pride events just aren't happening because they're because the threat is great enough. So yeah, and I, I, I would say broadly speaking. If you kind of look at all of the things that we saw in the quarterline event, it's some a more more positive signs than negative ones. The negative stuff is stuff that we have seen a lot before. The militia **** the folks rallying to defend those people, the people turning up for the Pride event, that's all positive. And of course the most prominent fascists at the event embarrassing themselves like that's positive. So I I am, I feel I, I I do feel like. We were all worried over here about how the event in Quarterline was going to go. I feel really good about how it it went, which is not to. Especially I know that there's folks from quarterly in there not to minimize the problems and the threats faced, especially from people in Idaho, because boy, that is rough territory to be organizing in defense of LGBT people. But I, I think broadly speaking, more good news than bad news from from Coeur d'Alene. So I want to give our appreciation and thanks to the folks who showed up in Coeur d'Alene to support this event, to confront the fascists. Y'all are awesome and doing something difficult in a place that needs you to be doing that. So thank you. Football is back and better. MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bedmgm.com and enter a bonus. Vote champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 188853235. 100. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on tick tock. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we here at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Introducing the biz tape. You're all things music, business and media podcast. Join me, Joe Waslewski and my co-host Colin McKay every Wednesday where we discussed the breaking news, changing the music industry, and what your favorite artists and creatives are up to. Colin, who's your favorite artist? Oh, you know the track factor? Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Captain Beefheart? Snap back to reality, Eminem style. Join music industry professionals Joe and I as we pull back the curtain of the successes and failures of the biz. You guys have been hanging out a while. What are they doing, Colin? I guess listening to an ad? Sorry. Listen to new episodes of the biz tape every Wednesday on the Nashville podcast network, available on iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Yeah, here we go. It could happen here. It's a podcast where our intros get increasingly more segmented as you realize we have no idea who was going to do the intro. Yeah, we've never at no point during the existence of this show or its growth have we have we planned a single thing or talked about how to do our jobs? I've never. I don't even know who who we who we are. We are all meeting for the first time. I have that disease that Adam Sandler has or what's her name has and that Adam Sandler movie where he forgets. She forgets everything every day. That's me. Drew Barrymore is. That's right. That's right. Shereen Drew Barrymore. I forget. I forgot it. This is the same thing as in Memento, because that's all I can think of. Yes. Figure out Sandler and memento. Yes. Adam Sandler's Memento, my favorite movie. Well, we should probably introduce the episode today. Yeah. So it's, it's me, it's Christopher Wong. And today we're doing an episode that is. Uh. You know, OK, we, we, we've, we've, we've we've been force feeding you really grim stuff for a long time. So today we're going to do an episode about Senator colonialism and politics and board games, because that's also extremely cool. And it does not. I mean, it is kind of depressing, but it it. Involves less doom than normal and yeah and and with me talk about this that it is is Shereen or or our wonderful producer who also writes for us and is great and we love. Thanks. I'm here. Yeah. And Robert who we we tolerate. That's nice of you. You shouldn't. A bit weak. And we do. Kyle. It's nice to meet you. Yeah. Also we have Kyle from strange matters. Yes, yes. I'm Kyle Flannery. I'm an editor and co-owner of Strange Matters Magazine a I guess we technically have now launched even with a print issues or not in people's hands. And new leftist culture and politics magazine here to be the consulting super nerd. Uh. Awesome. Yeah, I'm very excited. I mean, well, OK. I feel like, weirdly for a group of people that I'm in, I have probably played the least board games, if anyone here. Which is I'm excited. Yeah. So when I was a kid, my, my board game was risk. Yeah, I did a bunch of others I've played like Hero Quest and obviously accessing it. I'll say this, I say I played axis and allies. I set up access and allies boards many a time and then gave up after like 15 minutes of playing the. I mean, that's how I that's how I played heroquest, yeah, because, like, I was like request rule book and I was like, I have no idea what's going on here. Then no, specifically my ******* thing. We would speech and debate tournaments, you know, because when you do it, you're basically out for a whole week and sometimes three days, sometimes like 4 and you're basically living in this school. But but you have like maybe one or two hours of stuff per day and the rest of the time you're just hanging around hearing how your friends are doing is like, the competition goes on. And we would play Epic, specifically Lord of the Rings risk. We would have these massive risk games. Oh, I have. Yeah, I have. Very good memories. Ohh, playing Lord of the Rings risk with my friends. Yeah, I just had the normal vanilla risk while I was really missing out. I I distinctly remember being at a bachelor party where after we finished all the normal bachelor party stuff, we crawled back to the place where everybody's gonna camp out for the night and somebody managed to convince one of the other groomsmen that a game of risk only takes about an hour. He did this at, like, this is like, it was like 3 in the morning. Yeah. Like that's the wedding that day. Yeah. It was like 3:00 AM the day of the wedding. They missed the wedding because it was an act of extraordinary cruelty. Yeah. Anyway, it didn't get married, but he did take Kamchatka, which was really key to his, his plans to assault North America. We, we, we shockingly did all make it to the wedding, which was very much a risk. Very much a risk. Yeah, very much at risk. It was, yeah. That's why it's called that. Yeah, I I was. I was smart enough to just go, no, I'm going to bed. Yeah, I'm not doing 3:00 AM risk. That's not happening. But yeah, I guess to kind of back up and provide a little bit of context about why I kind of thought this was so worth talking about, because I'm guessing there's some readers at home who are having a very common thought, which is why are you talking about board games? Like, who cares? And, you know, I'm reminded a little bit of the little tweet joke from a while ago of a couple of years ago when I talk about a little while ago of on Star Trek. They have the. You know, we've got their what do they call that? The holodeck? They've got the holodeck and but for some reason every week everybody's into some weird new board game. What the hell is going on with that? And for people who aren't aware of this kind of sector of nerdom organs are actually massively more popular than they were when I was a child, when I was millennials were young, and a large part of that push has actually been from game developers themselves. The people who make your video games absolutely ******* love board games, and it's for a pretty simple reason, which is that. You know all of the rules of the game. Or games are naked before your eyes. You have you have stripped them down to their their atomic components before you have done anything. And that means that if you are interested in the art of how a game works, they're actually wonderful case studies because you can see very quickly the way that you move from what the mechanic is doing to like what it means. Whereas in a video game it can be a lot more obscure, it can be a lot more complicated, and it requires, it can require a lot of digging. You don't have to. I'm enough of a turbo nerd that I have broken into the games files for videos, various video games I've played and ripped out the code and looked at it and been like, oh, so that's the drop rate because again, I'm the consulting turbo nerd here, but with the board game you have to do that. You just know all of the roles up front and so you know if you're. So that's, you know, reveal. I can reveal a lot about what the designers intentions are, what they're communicating and how that communication will works. So that's that was kind of my start point here. So I just keep on going and explain what the hell is going on with this article about. Yeah, I mean, I was going to note that the the primary board game played in Star Trek TNG was was was stratagemma in the the Classic episode in which data has to get really good at what is basically holographic chess. Absolutely, yeah. Yes. Anyway, I you you talked about Star Trek the next generation, so now that's that's all. It's good that we didn't get into the awful board games from DS9. Oh God, yeah, there's some real. I mean, strategem is pretty ridiculous and the episode is very silly, but it's it's one of the more fun data episodes. Board game episode from DS9 I think is generally considered the worst episode in all of DS9. Yeah, yeah. I mean there's I think the worst episode of Star Trek. The next generation is not the board game, but it's the one where Riker and his dad fight in what's basically American gladiator judo where they have they have the bed at sticks that they have to fight. Yeah, the ultimate martial art. Anyway, please continue to talk. So I wrote this article that has is upcoming in publication. It's going to be our first issue and it's. About a particular trend that I noticed in board games that there were a lot of board games that were in terms of what was actually going on, on the board. They were incredibly violent, but they managed to make it look like there was no violence going on. And so I actually, I'm grateful for Robert for talking about the the games. He talked about, you know, axis and allies and risk even like monopoly. These are games that are in was generally known as the American tradition where the goal is to eliminate all the opposing players, be the last, last one standing. Yes. Like everything in American, it is like one person wins by using either violence or capitalism on the other. Yeah, you, you, you survive, you out survive all of your opponents because that's what we do in America. We just survive. Just create a God that there is somehow it tomorrow and by God we're going to take them chatka. Yeah, that's my only political stance as an American is that we will take the Kamchatka Peninsula and we're going to take Australia for those three extra armies. That Australia strategies, I feel like half the risk strategy, half the risk variants I saw were just wasted. Nerf The Australia strategy. But in any event, there's a European tradition and one of the things, and that that has been a lot of that has been very popular, has made an absolute **** load of money over the last several years. Shitload being very relative because again, board games are pretty small fields compared to video games or gambling or booze or something like that. But I've been kind of the dominant name in the game and one of the kind of major. Concepts of this style of game is you don't eliminate other players, all players. Any player who starts the game at the table is going to end the game at the table. You you never eliminate anybody. And this is, I think, an admirable enough goal. Yeah, that's one of the things that's annoying about a lot of games, is like you're trying to do a party thing and people are getting eliminated. Although it can be fun if everyone is drinking at the same time, and while you play the game, people get eliminated and then get drunker and Heckle everyone else at the table. That's actually not bad. That's actually not bad. I remember it being in like, middle school and high school. You just have somebody sitting there bitterly for four hours while you try to clean up a risk game anyway, the the one that most people are probably the one that is the most famous infamous is settlers of Catan, and that's kind of what's my startpoint. Sellers of Catan is is a board game where you play as European colonizers to a almost uninhabited islands and almost uninhabited island, and you cannot damage the other players directly there. There's no mechanism for doing this. You can block them off from building things. You can never send your yeah, conquer there. I always go hard on the roads. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can block people with roads. It's a very like, it's kind of like thinking about like a rivalry between developers almost. But one of the things that's kind of outstanding about this is that it's not a technically uninhabited island. There is a quote robber that starts out on the island, and the robber is capable of inflicting violence. On the players, and it can be sort of controlled by the players. And so the part that was against striking to me about this is you can't directly, you know, this would actually be the number of players if me, Chris, Shareen and Robert were all sitting at a table playing sounds of Catan. I could not eliminate any of them. None of them could eliminate me. We could not harm each other directly. We can just negotiate with each other. We can trade with each other, but there are still ultimately a winner. And you know, this is if you are willing to make some, some kind of specific historical amnesia. About how colonialism actually operated where, you know, like wars of colonial aggression also included like wars in Germany like the Seven Years War or, you know, the wars of Spanish Succession were all happening at the same time. But you can, you know, it can be viewed as similar to that. And again, it has this explicit theming and that is. I do think that those things, those things are dovetailing together right that the only people who are real people are the colonizers, the colonized, are non agentic. They're just. Sets they're they're they're setting and. The more you think about it, it's just, it's just kind of messed up. It's it's just kind of it's kind of messed up. And I I do think it's kind of interesting that the game doesn't really say this very explicitly, right? And I know, I know there's going to be somebody who's going to say, oh, you know, the game says Rob, or it doesn't say Native American. How can you know? It's like, come on, man, if you watched a movie where there was some, there was a group of people in the movie who were portrayed as violent and incapable of acting on their own. And all of these racist tropes, even if they were not played by Native American actor, even if they didn't use any explicit Native American references, if all of the good guys are people who dispossessed this person. You know what's going on? People don't look at The Tempest and say, see Caliban and go, this person has nothing to do with the Americans. That doesn't. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's. They're making him uncivilized. Like, yeah, like civility or like civilians in general. They come from somewhere else and they inhabit the place. But yeah, you're right. Like, just like Columbus discovered America, the natives are race. Like, it's a blank slate as far as white settlers are concerned. Yeah. And it's like the the positionality of like of like. The game is very explicit about who is a settler and who is not, right? The Settlers of Catan are are you and everyone else playing the game? And then you have the other person who's on the island who got here before you. And it's like, Umm, yeah, I mean the the name is pretty blunt. So yeah, you talk like you are like, you know, there's no, I don't know. It's it's very, it's very hard to evade. And, you know, like you can see the art from the game, like it's all white people. And it's it's it's kind of interesting. In the 1st edition printing, they're all kind of medieval, but in later editions they're like Colonial America, like it's I I don't think it's like it requires some very deliberate obtuseness to miss that this is what is going on. And so anyway, that that has that was that was really like 20 something years ago. I find it very funny that Settlers of Catan managed to win game of the year awards in both 1995 and 2005. Wow. Like, it hasn't changed much. I don't know. Yeah, those are different years. Like, what's going on? Yeah, they did add votes. They did add bots. That's true. You're not wrong about this. You don't. You don't. You don't have boats. Come on. That's true. Actually, it's funny. My neighbors have a boat. I do not have a boat because I'm a regular person who doesn't live live next to a lake. Oh yeah, yeah. I also did not have a boat, so yeah. Yeah. I briefly had a a commute to work that I could have kayaked, but I don't know. Kayak, that's New York, baby. I I I I developed a desire to have a boat last year because I yeah, I I was in Spain and I met a Spanish guy with a boat and that does seem like the life, but that's neither here nor there. You're horrible descent into turning into some sort of Hemingway adjacent character. Yeah. Just just. I mean, it is it is nice to be drunk on about. It's also very expensive to have a boat. So. Maybe I'll get drunk on an inflatable raft instead, yeah? I just got a sunfish and just flip it over every 30 seconds. Yeah, there you go. The working man's boat. Yeah, the working man's boat. But yeah. And so, so from there I kind of what has happened is, unsurprisingly, that, you know. Board games are actually kind of a somewhat demographic art form compared to video games, because all you really need is some paper. Like really, that's all you need. You need some paper and you can make a board game. If you have tabletop simulator, you just need tabletop simulator you already done. And then you just need to be able to bully people into play, testing your game. And that's really the hard part. You know, so this means that you know people will iterate on things pretty quickly. You know so very like fanfiction. Environment people will will iterate rather quickly on your ideas and develop them further. And so I looked through some of the other games that I've played and liked and, you know, I actually tend to like pretty much all the the games that I studied. Splendor is one that is very fun, very casual, very easy. And it just has this art that bugs me, this art that really bugs me where it's about being a gem trader and it's very much seems to be based on like Renaissance Italy or like Renaissance Antwerp. You know this and. For some reason, like you don't see people in minds. It's very weird, all of them. There will be pictures of mines like OK, you bought this emerald mine and there's like nobody there. Which is very weird because I have seen pictures of pre industrial, I've seen pictures of mines from the 1980s, which is firmly industrial, where there are thousands of people. You can barely see the ground, you know, thousands of people everywhere. You know, mining is very labor intensive. You only start. Being mining become kind of like capital intensive, like very recently and even then only really in the United States and a couple of other countries. Germany obviously uses very capital intensive mining. Everywhere else it's very, very labor intensive. But splendor, they won't show you the people doing the mining, but they will show you the people sorting the gems. Which is just skipping the the slavery part there. Yeah, exactly, exactly the part they're skipping. Yeah. Skipping. Yeah, yeah. Even today, like you ignore what your how your cell phone is made, right. You're just like you're glossing over the unflattering parts and going straight to making a gym. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going straight to, you know, I've got, I've got my pretty purple cell phone, you know? The the part where you know there was. You know, pretty much a war in the Congo, fought over it, and then they had to install suicide Nets in China, gets completely glossed over and all that stuff goes into this phone. But, you know. To me, it's just kind of a necessary hunk of plastic and metal for surviving in America. And I, you know, I'm not entirely. I don't want to be too hard on the designers here. It's very easy. Like there's a part of me that wants me and there's a part of me that wants to be kind of forgiving and being like, do you really want to be playing this, like, fun, casual game and, like, be confronted with slavery? But the same time like. But making something else? Yeah, you you really tried to have it both ways here. Like, this is like, I don't make the game about something actually fun. Not yeah, not something that involves slippery. I mean, there are, there are people who do that. You know, it's not that hard to find people making games about theme parks or like haunted houses, haunted houses or utopia or like weird like utopian arcologies and stuff like that. Like, people make these things, but like this, colonialism keeps on coming back. And part of that, part of that is, I guess, like all sci-fi is kind of colonialist. But wait, before we go, you know what else keeps coming back? You know what? Tell me what, Sherry? Capitalism it's time for an outbreak. And there's still more capitalism, but that's true. That would be more capitalism. That's true. That's true. Different capitalism. Yeah. Right now we're in, like, more early capitalism. And so the game that really stuck in my crawl, the weirdest. And I might end up reading a quote out from here. I'm sorry for being an incredibly irritating person and doing that as a game called Mombasa. And Mombasa is so aggressive about how colonialist it is is so, so aggressive. The premise of the game is that you are. Adventurers in the scramble for Africa, and the goal is to be the player who retires the richest. And. The ways in which the mechanics of this game are messed up. The part of the mechanics that I will say is genuinely clever. And if they hadn't made it about the scramble for Africa, I would have like, I would just be like, yeah, cool. So I still have to like, admit that this is, this is cool is that you start out working for a different joint stock company, but anybody can buy shares in anybody else's joint stock company. So the best strategy is to buy somebody else's company and then they make the company valuable and you contribute as little as possible. Free rider problem, the classic of game theory the liberal economists ******* love. Talking about great thing to do with the game, but the way you make your company valuable is like. It's it's pillaging Africa, like it's pillaging Africa and it's it's very, very weird. Like there's. You have this map of Africa in front of you, and the map of Africa has valuable things in it has, you know, diamonds that you can pick up. It has like there are books, which it's unclear if that represents, like you write an adventure novel like King Solomon's Mines, or you write a naturalist guide, or you write an ethnography, but you're writing some sort of book that is based on how you despoiled the African continent. And what what always struck me is so weird is that. The territory is just. When you enter the territory, you just take everything. You just you just pillage it. It's not like territory that you hold and really make more productive. You don't develop it. There's is at least honest about that. To a certain extent, at least it's honest. Like Europeans were lying about any of that development, civilizing, mission ****. Like they were there to steal. And but what is so, so weird to me about it is that, like, there's there's no resistance. There's no risk to expanding across the continent. There's no negotiation. The only other characters at all are the other players, the other Europeans. Uh, you know, this continent that's at the time had hundreds of millions of people? Many of whom had legitimate kingdoms that in some parts of Africa were, you know, had full gunpowder militaries just totally glossed over. Just totally non not mechanically represented at all. Well, it's like they're only they're portraying the only future that is possible. Like, you know what I mean, this is how you become a civilization. There's no other that there's one path. Well, I mean it's. That is, there is one path to being a civilization, and it does involve a lot of taking other people. ****. To be fair, I I said that ironically, Robert. I know I said in their mind there is one path, yes, but I do feel like I've got to read this out from the rulebook because it was like so eye popping to me. This is this is from the rule book. This is the start of the rulebook, the opening. Court in Mombasa, players acquire shares of chartered companies based in Mombasa, Cape Town, Saint Louis and Cairo, and spread the Tating pass throughout the African continent in order to earn the most money. Chartered companies were associations formed for the purpose of exploration, trade and colonization, which links them inextricably to a very dark chapter in human history, global colonialism. This period lasted roughly from the 15th century to the middle of 20th century and is associated with exploitation and slavery. Although Mombasa is loosely set within this time frame, it is not a historical simulation. It's a strategy game with an economic focus that roughly refers to historical categories and places them in a fictional setting. The exploitation of the African continent and its people is not explicitly depicted within the gameplay. If you want to learn more about the underlying history, we recommend the following read history of modern Africa, 1800 to present by Richard J Reed. End Quote so they ******* knew, like, they ******* knew that this was some evil, evil **** that they have made into a game and they want you to know that they knew that you knew that you were going to call them. It's like making like a candy land version set in the Congo where you have to collect hands or rubber and being like. No way. You can read a book about this if you want, yeah. It's such a cop out. It's like, it's just, it's so bizarre. Like it's so bizarre now. How many people even read this stuff? Like, like generously. One person I've ever four reads the rulebook when you were in a board game. Like, like very generously like. I'm just a huge nerd who likes reading this stuff, and I was just like, read this in. My jaw was just like, holy ****. I mean I think you said I think you could try. It might even be wisdom and trying to like make a board game about the scramble for Africa that's like framed in like a kid friendly way but is also like very blatantly horrific. It's just like the kind of thing that if you think about it 10 seconds you're like, oh, we're just like subjugating and massacring people. But it's also like the the art style is like themed off of Candyland or some sort of **** like maybe. But even then you're probably more likely to just. To people enjoying it on ironically than you are to actually convince anybody to read about the scramble for Africa. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, it's actually kind of interesting because there's there's like a good tradition of like making, like, kid friendly appearing things that are actually quite horrifying if you think about them for more than two seconds. And monopoly. Yeah. Well, you know, Monopoly, for example. And I, I mean, I was going to take a slight turn away from board games. I grew up with red. The Red wall books. Gosh, yes. Yeah, the Red wall books, like. Even though, like stouts are not a race of people, in real life, they are a type of weasel. Holy **** those books managed to be incredibly racist. It really is racist against like, different types of weasel, but they portrayed this very cutesy world of animals, mice and Badgers and stuff and they're just committing genocide left and right. As portrayed as, like, totally, OK. It's just like someone who has no idea what you're talking about. This is crazy. Yeah. Popular children series in, like, the 80s and 90s. Yeah. No, I I read this book. It was like, yeah, it's like you flip back and forth between like, yeah, here is Martin the mouse, and he's a hero. And also he's eating all of this really nice food. And then also we must exterminate, like, entire species. It's buck wild. It is. It is insane. The Red wall feed spot, by the way, is like, really good Twitter follow. We're just post excerpts from the food descriptions. Those are incredible. But the reason why I kind of made that turn is that one of the games I considered that I actually really liked is something of a post, something of an anticolonial game called root. And this is part of the part of what I was kind of witnessing over as I was studying these is that there is a bit of a discourse, a bit of a development. Overtime and two of the games that I highlighted, root and Spirit Island are kind of are are fairly anti colonial and root is a kind of horrifying game but with very cutesy appearances. You know you play as like mice and cats and birds and the the birds are like. Like horrifying aristocrats. Like you're like a feudal, militaristic dictatorship. The cats are like trying to turn the entire forest into like a giant wood cutting factory and like, subjugate everybody else under the boot heel of industrial capitalism and you can play as just like. The concept of revolution. Like it's getting like there's a wood, Linda Lyons, who win the game by, like, provoking revolts of the civilian population to overthrow the other two. It's it's very weird. It's a very, very violent game by comparison. It's very hard to eliminate a player in it, but it was kind of interesting to me to see that like. You can do. It's kind of almost the the exact opposite where it says like a lot of like it doesn't have. It has this very obviously horrifying and graphically violent mechanics. You know, revolutions and subjugation, but with like. The characters look cute, like all the all. The character is very cute. You know, you got like a little mice, like baking pungy traps and stuff. And the artwork, it's very odd. Yeah, I kind of, I kind of jumped a little bit ahead here, but I don't know that we need to go through the everything I did in this in this paper a little bit boring. And also we need to leave things for the readers. Yeah. And actually root is a little bit based on a game series that I think would be particularly appealing to Robert and possibly the listeners. There's a company called GMT games. Anybody else heard of them? These guys are interesting. Continue. Guys, Jim T games are make games. I like Cuba Libre, A4 player, asymmetric warfare about the Cuban Revolution. And where they could go a couple of ways. Yes, yeah, yes. Multiple II won once as the Mafia, which was an interesting side to play. And ohh nice. Ohh, an interesting and interesting series of interest to have. I could not build an army for ship. I just had to count on the fact that other people didn't think was worth destroying casinos because they're too busy trying to stamp out revolutionaries. And or they were revolutionaries trying to stamp out fascists. And it was a they're a very. The reason why I think they're very weird company is that, you know, they all games like Cuba Libre, Twilight struggle, a distant plane, which is about the war in Afghanistan. But they also are like, these guys are like Quantico psychos. They actually, they are the guys who make the actual for real war games that the Pentagon uses. Yeah, yeah. Quantico, if you're not up on things, is like the part of the Virginia area, kind of a suburb of DC where all of the all of, like the Fed feds live. Like, I'm not talking about like Border Patrol feds or or or ****. I'm talking like ******* CIA *************. Yeah, capital F feds. Yeah. Isn't the CIA's, like, training? Utility there, yes they have so and so does and I think the FBI also has a facility in Quantico facility there, capital Feds. All the agents are there. Yeah. Yeah. Don't think of like, like your OSHA inspectors here. Yeah, yeah. I mean, look. And, well, it also just like we're not primarily talking about, like, the door kickers. We're talking about the people who are, like, the doing the really scary **** you know? Yeah. I will say though, if if we gave OSHA, like, CIA powers, the world would be an enormously better place. I think we hand them the nukes. I think we hand them the nukes and a mandate to use them if security procedures aren't followed, not cleaning your counter. After using chicken, that's the end of Detroit. You know, there goes San Francisco. You didn't clean your food cart well enough, you know, pretty soon. Collective punishment, but just for workplace violations. Yeah, collective punishment for, like, basic sanitation violations. I mean, in a way, not following sanitation does lead to collective punishment, whether or not you have a federal enforcement force or not. That's right. Hence the deployment of our nation's nuclear assets. Do you know what else is collective? Freshman. Capitalism, yes. Listening to ads? Yeah. So let's all endure it together. Ohh, we've been collectively punished. Solidarity to all of us who must endure advertising. Yes. But yes, I have been. I've been rambling a lot and. Yeah, like I said, I I find this this question of who gets to be an agent. To be very important, who who gets to be a player? Who is even given the choice of winning? You know if if you're not a player, you're completely ridden off from the possibility of ever winning. You know, this is something that, like in in video games, we've seen recurring debates around this. You know, like civilization is an infamous one for this. You know who even gets to be a civilization? Why are some civilizations civilizations and some city States and some Barbarians? And you know it does. You know, it does shape your thinking, you know, and there's there's you know. Games are very valuable for how they create empathy. A game that can really immerse you, can really teach you a lot of very creative and powerful empathy for groups of people that you might never have the chance to interact with. And then you keep on creating games that ask you to empathize with the colonizers. Yeah. You you think it's just the normal way of things? This is what this is what happens. This is the succession of events that leads to humans. Yeah, this is a session of events that leads the humans. Those who do not participate simply die out. This is low key brainwashing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is. And I mean, it's the same could be said of all culture, but I think it's worth being informed and critical consumers and. Actually, do you know, I actually, you know, I know you want this to be an uplifting episode, and I'm going to be optimistic here. I, you know, it's not just that we're talking about software. The stakes are not literal deaths. The stakes are, you know, getting mad at your friends over a board game. But also I do think that. We have seen positive development of people taking of people looking at these games. You know, there's a game developer who said about some of the games he was playing. What do the locals think about these colonizers? It's pretty rude that nobody's asking them and tried to design starting from there, and I have some criticisms of how we executed that, how well we executed on that vision, but. The the fact of the matter is, is that even just through the sheer. Iteration of somebody looking at a game like Settlers of Catan and going well. How can I do this different? You know, I can't just release the same game every single year. I I need to do something new and even just the simple one of just reversing who is the players. Hmm, simple enough. Even that has been creating some iteration in some additional complexity, which and has caused people, I have seen people go back and reexamine, even if they're not people who have any sort of education, any sort of formal education in anthropology or postcolonial theory, they will. They'll look at like, Oh yeah, I was playing this game where you're the colonized and I play this other game where they reversed the roles and I was like. That was the bad guys earlier. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think portraying the other side and maybe winning means you kick them out or destroy them. I would like to see that play out versus the alternative. That is Spirit Island. That is what Spirit Island is. The players cooperate to destroy the colonizers or to terrorize them into abandoning the island. Weird game, weird game. I have some. I think there's some good execution in there some and I've got some criticism of. It is my favorite, but it does do some things a little bit. Well, it patronizing, but but yeah, like, yeah, like that's something I think is worth seeing. And and I think it's something that admittedly, maybe I just really enjoyed this space of the world because if you look at very mainstream video games, for example, you can kind of bored of the same feeling, the same five games get released every year. You know, some texture, give me something new. But also I think that. I think that the the I think there's some cost for optimism for people like critically examining the art that they're building, the art that they're consuming and the art that they're creating and. I don't know that counting on that kind of stochastic bouncy ball randomness of people just kind of spontaneously going. What if we what if we played? What if we reversed the roles in Call of Duty? You know, what if we played the people living in the favela? Well, Call of Duty is happening on in the background, just counting on like the randomness of that happening might not be as fast as people want. I wish, I wish. Oh yeah. There was a game called. I think it was. I think it was called this is war. Maybe it's called this war of mine. That's what it was. That's a good game. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really well done game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's I'm. I'm, I don't know. I'm excited to see the future of all this stuff, and I'm excited to see where people go with this. Well, Chris, I have a question. Why did you decide to even bring on Kyle? Like, what do you what is it about this topic that you think is? Prevalent today? What? What? What can we take away from this? Well, I think. I don't know. I I think one of the things that I got was reading the article is about like. One of the ways like. What one of the things you see in? How sadly, colonialism gets perpetuated and I think. Why am I now forgetting the name of the? Yeah, decolonization is not a metaphor. It talks about this a lot. Which. Yeah, I'll talk about that. And other time someday, but like what one of the things that you get like immediately is to sort of is the the the settle and move to innocence. And that strikes me as like the sort of, it's the kind of like. It it's it's it's the kind of perspective that you see I think running across all of these board games and. I think it is actually really helpful to sort of. You know, like the, the, the, the way you break that and then the way you start to get actually it actually looks like decolonization. It has to start with people like actually like realizing what they're doing and not being able to sort of like retreat to this position of innocence and being sort of confronted by it. And I think that. Like that that is a place where media could actually like, be very helpful because you know, like most and most mostly like, yeah, it's, it's, it's it's almost always working in the opposite direction, right? But it's something where you can actually have this sort of. I don't know. It's a part of the cultural sphere where you could like very like. Very easily put someone into a role that is not the one that they're normally doing and get them to like, realize that. Like what they're doing is like, ****** so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I could say the first when I was in high school and played playing Settlers of Catan for the first time, I didn't realize the like, it took me a while to understand that, like, oh, I'm a colonial Leslie. Yeah. Yeah, territory and well, because the yeah, they present it as default, innocence and also just like exciting to. There's no, there's no back story to how you get the wood or the OR or or anything else. You just like somehow build a road you somehow. Over town there is no back story as to who you're destroying in the process, and it I think it infiltrates in your mind to the point where you subconsciously just deem that as normal and and it's definitely not unique, you know, it's definitely like it's only just another tendril of reinforcing stuff that we hear from the rest of our culture. So broadly you know that it's it's just this is just one aspect, one expression I should say, of how many millions of different ways we get. Colonialism reinforced to us as a normal, natural part of the world and. And, you know, from, you know, cowboy movies to to just like the way the New York Times will write about who owns land and who is, who has a, who is a viable claim on owning a piece of land. All of that. We get reinforced those in our fiction or nonfiction every day. And I guess, again, that's part of, I guess, why I was drawn to board games in particular for this because it's so transparent. You know, it's so transparent how all, how the all the propaganda works. Like it's not. There's no movie magic. Yeah, yeah. The rules are all there. It's it's pretty much. I don't know. But yeah, but you you sympathized. And I I didn't tell you. You empathized with the colonizer because they're who you who you are. Yeah, you wanna win. You want to win. You want to win. I'm very competitive. You wanna win? And. And yeah. And, you know, and they get to. And the people who made it to have this kind of, like, discourse that this kind of badge of like, Oh yeah, we made like, the friendly board game, you know, they're comparing themselves to, you know, making monopoly where, like, there's like a 5050 chance of a divorce happening every time somebody finishes the game with Monopoly. And, you know, they get to force themselves as the nice ones. And it's like, yeah, we're the nice ones because all the people who were being mean to don't get a voice at all. I just can't believe we made a game about paying rent. Like, I really. Not believe that I literally history of it, because it's very funny. I skimmed in your in your articles like about a little bit, but it was called something that was much more to the point. What was it called? The landlord's game? Excuse me? Yeah, the landlords game by Elizabeth Maggie. She was a Georgist activist in the like early 20th century. Blows my ****. ******* George is a whole damn. I want this monopoly. Monopoly being the most relevant contribution of Georgism to world history is somehow incredibly fitting. Let's all take away from it. Yeah, brutal. The number one selling economics book of American history, because we used to have very bad board game. But I can't say it's unfair and I guess that that's really what I've got is that like it's I I think it's still, I think it's very valuable to be a critical consumer. And. Mombasa maybe went over the line, but for the most part, these games haven't, like, ruined my ability to enjoy them. If my friends want to play a game of Settlers of Catan, they might just get an annoying lecture from me. They're going to get annoying lecture from me anyway. I just would be about something else. I mean, it's like any media like film, TV, or whatever, you're going to realize eventually that you should be conscious of what you're consuming. So yeah, I'll still get into arguments about all of those things except for except for podcasts, people should blindly consume our podcast. Oh, I mean. I mean, yes, podcasts. That's the only true proletarian art form. That's right, that's right. As Karl Marx said, listen to this podcast, like and subscribe, share us on Facebook. And then and then eventually, one day podcast will wither away and abolish itself. Yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right. Classic Marxist podcast theory. That's right. That's right. Is that the episode? Well, Kyle, where where where can people find you? Yes, I, I personally am a notoriously hard to find on the Internet, being a person who doesn't have any social media whatsoever on you. Absolutely the right call. I have been off of Twitter for a couple of days. I'm taking a break and best, best decision you could make get away from. All of our publication is at a strangematters.co op. We worked hard to get that Co-op registration we just published on a couple of days ago. Love as a verb, an article reviewing and and extend expanding the possibilities of bell hooks. All about love 2000 book all about love, which is worth reading both the both the review and the book. Yeah, I actually just finished it. 4 hours ago ohhh yeah I got it for the first time during the pandemic. It was yeah yeah, said on lightning green. It's enlightening read. We we tend to have a lot of really insane economic stuff. If you want to, like, read some truly insane **** about money, about where money comes from and what money is and what we can do about money, we've oh boy, we've got you covered. We have, we have a profile of Roberts. Where we have rendered him as a Baron Munchausen. Very flatteringly. Yes, a really wonderful review of three different cyberpunk works by the wonderful antifascist author Elizabeth Sandifer. Yeah, so please come check us out at strangematters.co op if for we are taking new writers all the time and we've got submission guidelines on there. And if you want to personally send me hate mail for besmirching the good. New Settlers of Catan I can be reached at kyle@strangematters.co op yeah. Oh, and we do have a Twitter for the for the company. Yeah. What's what's the Twitter for the company. the IT is strange. under score matters. Perfect. Yeah. Thanks, Kyle. Check out strange matters. Contribute to their fundraiser. I can't. I can't recommend doing anything on Twitter, so I simply should. And thank you. Thank you for having me on again. It's a lovely time. Thank you for coming. Yeah, absolutely. Alright. Again, as with every episode, go with Christ. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to betmgm.com and enter bonus code champion. And place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1-888-532-3500. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Introducing the biz tape you're all things music, business and media podcast. Join me, Joe Waslewski and my co-host Colin McKay every Wednesday where we discussed the breaking news, changing the music industry, and what your favorite artists and creatives are up to. Colin, who's your favorite artist? Oh, you know the track factor? Demi Lovato, Ariana Grande, Captain Beefheart? Snap back to reality. Eminem style join music industry professionals Joe and I as we pull back the curtain of the successes and failures of the biz. You guys have been hanging out a while. What are they doing? Calling, I guess, listening to an ad? Sorry. Listen to new episodes of the biz tape every Wednesday on the Nashville podcast network, available on iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, welcome to. It could happen here. This is Part 2 of a, I guess two-part series about Dallas, TX. Finally we're getting in a Dallas, TX resident to refute some of this this slander my my my flawless hometown. I've I've spent the formerly briefly host to Bernie Sanders when he had to take care of something. I I I've spent a few summers in Dallas. I've I've I've been around. It's unfortunate I've been around the DFW area. I wouldn't recommend spending summers in Dallas. Yeah, hold on, hold on. I wouldn't recommend spending winters in Dallas, either. There's a couple of weeks in spring that it's tolerable to be in Dallas. Try to make it then. It occurs to me that we should ask yourself, where were you when they killed JFK? I was. I I I'm. Yeah, Garrison, I was, I was born in the 21st century. What have you ever made? Ordered a Mannlicher Carcano rifle in the back of American Rifleman magazine. OK, let's let's open by by first briefly talking about the 31 dorky as Neo Nazis who got arrested in Idaho who are planning to just said. Have you missed that and you want to talk about it? That is exactly why we've already done the episode, but I'm always down to talk about this. I know we just did an episode talking about it, but it wasn't on that one. So I I have a few paragraphs on how it relates to today's topic of Christian fascist violence. I just want to state that you and I were both hanging out at a party when we got the news about that, and it is the hardest I've ever seen you laugh for like 4 hours. So and hey, like Patriot fronts based on a Texas so that yeah. That also connects it to degree of relevance here. Yes to the to the bulk of our of our topic today. So yeah, I think it's pretty funny because a group of over 30 fascists all dressed in the same outfit, it's almost incomprehensibly fun trade didn't saw this so they wouldn't pass out all crammed into a hot sweaty U-Haul truck driving from all around the country to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, so that they can March around with flags and Shields to yell at gay and. It's kids. And you know what? They didn't stitch. They got pulled over and said in a ditch while getting their little clad hood masks taken off and spent the rest of the day in an Idaho jail and I'll go and talked. Really funny. It's really fun. Especially since, again, their best case scenario was spending a day free in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. I know, and it's didn't do that. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be like you can be against cops in the carceral system while still recognizing how innately absurd and hilarious superfluous. Yeah, it's it's fine, wouldn't cops, said groups like Patriot Front beef. That's generally a win win for me? Yeah I'm I'm not cheering on police tactics. It's just it's just recognizing that one of my enemies temporarily making another of my enemies lives harder is pretty funny. It's really funny. It's the same reason that we don't condemn police violence when a cop shoots another cop. Like, exactly. Yeah, yeah. On blue violence, like and, like, just funny. And like, based on these charges, I doubt any of these guys in particular will go to prison for long enough to form, like, any, like, dangerous connections with other incarcerated people. I'm sure there's a couple of dudes in there that, if, you know, they were to go to a serious prison, could make meaningful inroads with the Nazis there. But, man, most of those dudes, Aryan nations guys, are just kind of like, they're not going to consider comrades. Like the the yeah, it's yeah. I I think, I I think the patriot front Idaho situation seems like it'll mostly just be an inconvenience and national embarrassment for them. And I think, and I think we can we can let this one just be as funny as it is, considering there was 30 less Nazis there to intimidate and attack people at pride and Patriot front maybe now less willing to pull stunts like this in the future. Yeah, I've thought about this a lot, and I just can't see any ways in which what has happened could really be a problem. It seems to just purely be funny. O just enjoy it. Yeah, look, look. This is what happens when you appropriate lesbian culture. You get arrested. Actually, it's not all that different from what Garrison was saying immediately after the arrest. That is true. I made a lot of jokes about how Patriot front looks pretty, pretty gay while getting handcuffed. Wow. Get the shine the cancel radar. Get the cancel ometer out. We're canceling Garrison. Anyway, let's let's continue with this episode. So here is some other fun facts about about the whole Idaho thing. So two of the Patriot front members who were crammed into that U-Haul last weekend were connected to a church helmed by former Washington State Representative Matt Shea, who is also associated with the Bundys, the Oath Keepers, and leads the church at Planned Parenthood. He has advocated like civil war, if abortion and same sex marriage aren't stopped, kill all the men and left wing cities. All that good stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was also present at the protest in Coeur d'Alene at the Pride event this past weekend. And we can we can draw like this Direct Line from the surge of groomer and anti drug propaganda to Neo Nazis deciding to organize and travel across straight lines to threaten people in a pride event. In the days leading up to the event, chair reichek the woman behind the limbs of Tik T.O.K. Account repeatedly highlighted it weaponizing Pearl clutching satanic panic in Wycheck's first post about the Pride event. It was about how the Satanic Temple was promoting the event in a now deleted tweet by someone claiming to represent a local satanists. On June 7th lips of Tik T.O.K posted quote family-friendly Drag Dance Party being promoted by the Satanic Temple in Idaho. We are living in hell, which is a nice a nice little pun there that I can't quite tell if that was intentional or unintentional. About Satanic temple and living in hell anyway, I thought that was funny. Dave Riley, a white supremacist who attended the deadly unite the right rally in Charlottesville, who also organized with identity Europa a few years back. He he actively solicited lives of Tik T.O.K to draw attention to the Pride event and sought her help in trying to like, get publicity for the protests against it. Quoting the SPLC Hatewatch quote the Idaho. Tribune also your attention to it. Idaho Tribune, far from a real newspaper, is to obscure junk news publication that on multiple occasions has promoted Riley's political activism. Anti racist activists also tipped Hatewatch off to infrastructural overlap between a website that promotes Riley by name and Idaho Tribune hey watch reviewed the source code for Dave Riley's website and the Idaho Tribune site and confirmed that the two sites share graphics from the same web hosting account, meaning that they are likely controlled by the same person. UN quote. And then on June 9th, lives of Tik T.O.K posted screenshots taken from the Idaho Tribune about the Satanic Temple and the Quarterly Pride event, boosting content from that white supremacist linked to website to her 1.2 million followers. Every single one of these figures using fascist rhetoric and utilizing stochastic methods, including charity check her financial backer, Seth Dillon, and people like Tucker Carlson are all responsible for inciting events like this. Tucker led his show last week by using a Nazi reference when referring to a pride event in Dallas. In terms of stuff that's like, outside of, you know, conservative states like Idaho or Texas late last month, right? Check as slips of Tik T.O.K targeted a Bay Area. Drag Queen Story Time event, which is exactly what it sounds like. It's drag Queens reading children's books to kids in a Public Library. And then on June 12th, it was stormed by a group of around 10 men dressed in proud boy attire and shirts that read kill your local pedophile. They threatened attendees while shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs, terrifying a bunch of kids who would come to hear Queens read stories. So how did this kind of stuff? And, like, how did this rhetoric spread so quickly? Like, how how did this grimmer stuff? That so volatile so quickly. Just in these just in these past few months, so in our war on trans people episodes and my operation Pride full episodes, we discussed the history of this sort of like Save the Children and like pedophile rhetoric. And in my city of hate episode earlier this week, we talked about how this wave of homophobia was able to write off the conspiracism of Pizzagate and Q Anon. And then in this episode we're going to talk about the types of places that this extreme bigotry was able to fester. This past decade and how it relates to evangelical Christianity and Christian Fascism. I'm gonna play an audio clip from a City Council meeting in Arlington, TX that happened on May 25th. Take a listen. My name is Jonathan. Baptist Church and I'm here today because I have church members that live in Arlington. I live only a few miles away from here and I do business in Arlington on a weekly basis. I'm horrified and ashamed that this city has decided to promote and solicit pride. In this city, pride is nothing to be celebrated. In fact, it's an abomination. The Bible says in proverbs, chapter 8. The fear of the Lord is to hate pride, hate evil pride and arrogancy and the evil way and the froward mouth do I hate. According to God, we should hate pride, not celebrate it. We should humble ourselves as virtually the whole room said that we were a nation under God according to the American flag, and we were a state under God according to the Texas flag. We should humble ourselves to what the Bible says and not what the small minority here that is bullying would say. In June of 2020, Mayor Jeff Williams officially announced the sense of Pride month in June for the City of Arlington. But I don't understand why we celebrate what used to be a crime not long ago. In fact, according to the Texas Penal Code and section 21.00 respectful homosexual conduct, a person commits an offence to be engaged in deviant sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. In fact, that is still on the books today, even though Lawrence versus Texas overruled that in 2003. But God has already ruled that murder, adultery, witchcraft. Beastiality and Homosexualities are crimes worthy of capital punishment. Arlington, just for context, is one of many towns in North Dallas that if you happen to have weed on you, you're going to want to tape it to the bottom of your balls before driving through Arlington. Thanks for that great great weed tip from Robert Evans. You're welcome. You're welcome, Garrison. So that is Pastor Jonathan Shelley, who lives in Grand Prairie. He was there at at at at an Arlington, TX City Council meeting casually advocating killing gay people while citing Texas laws against homosexuality. Their church, and this connected branch of Baptists that will learn more about later, have an intense record of preaching genocide against gay and trans people. And also a fair amount of anti. Emotivism big, big shocker there. The previous pastor at this church, which was called Steadfast Baptist Church, but the previous pastor who resigned in 2019 due to allegations that he paid for sex workers, was involved in gambling and had smoked marijuana. I guess he should have taped more of it to his balls. Yes, he kind of national attention for celebrating the Orlando Pulse Gay nightclub massacre, which killed 49 people from the pulpit. The pastor said that God should finish the job and referred to the murdered patrons as sodomites, perverts, and pedophiles. The new pastor, John Shelley, continues this same strain of preaching violence against gay people. This next clip is from June 2021, right after someone died after getting hit by a truck. That pride parade in Florida, which we later found out was a complete accident. But I don't think the public knew that at the time. No. And obviously people, I mean, I think all of our assumptions was, oh, God, you know, this is the thing. Yeah. Well, here's the clip. If it's going beyond just saying you do all this wicked stuff, it's saying you enjoy it. You enjoy murder. You enjoy malignant. You enjoy hating God. Look, there's only one group that enjoys that. It's the pride praise going up and down the street. And, you know, it's great when trucks accidentally go through those, you know, parades. I think only one person died, so hopefully we can hope for more in the future. You say, well, that's mean, yeah, but the Bible says that they're worthy of death. You say, are you sad when **** die? No, I think it's great. I hope they all die. I would love it if every *** would die right now. And you say, well, I don't think that's what you really mean. That's exactly what I mean. I really mean it. So, yeah, it's important to remember. Like, that's June 2021, so even a year before the big wave of groomer stuff got pushed this past spring with the help of lives of Tik T.O.K. And that kind of shows how susceptible modern conservatism was to this resurgence of in your face. Aphobia there's been people to working to, like, keep it here the whole time, just bubbling beneath the surface, and now it's just completely boiled over. And I'm going to say like the rest of the episode is going to get into some pretty dark stuff where there's going to be a few more clips that are pretty are pretty gross if you want to, if you want to check out, that's totally fine. After this episode, I myself am going to take a little bit of a break from covering this sort of thing, so it's taking a little bit too much of a mental toll because. It's a lot of genocide. It's. It is. It's. It is. It's pretty intense. If you do feel the need to leave before you go, just remember this simple phrase for keeping safe in the DFW area. Tape it to your balls and your happiness won't be smalls. So here's another clip from June 2021 of Shelly reiterating his call for the government to execute gay people after he received some public backlash for his his the previous clip that we that we used. And I personally believe that all of these sodomites, you know, people that are men with men are pedophile because that means that they just simply are attracted to children. They're attracted to these people that are the ages of 1716151413, even though they're a grown adult. They're going after children and very young children, often cases and molesting them and hurting them. And you know, anybody that loves children, loves their family would want this person to be executed through the proper channels. That's what I believe. That's what I teach. I'm not a violent person. So my, my, my, my kind of fear is that Shelly or Someone Like You know, John Doyle that we talked about in our last city of hit episode is not that they themselves will bring a weapon to some future pride parade or go. On a rampage and assault or kill gay people, right, it's that one of their followers or one of their fans will. And these types of pastors and far right media figures are intentionally leading people on to that outcome. To quote Hematometra who's been tracking steadfast for years. Quote, because while Shelley is celebrating murder, he's also handing his congregation a metaphorical loaded gun. And if somebody eventually uses a literal 1 to follow through on what they believe to be God's orders. They know that Shelly will be proud of them even as he tells the world he has absolutely nothing to do with it. UN quote. So under the pressure of activists, steadfast actually got evicted from their old building in Hurst, TX this past March for spreading their extreme anti LGBT hate and calls for violence which was in violation of the terms of its lease which prohibited violence and threats. The church has an active gab page which kind of tells you a little bit about the people running. Sort of. Operation UH and Steadfast, publicly organized and livestreamed their sermons on a very active Facebook page, which is no longer active for reasons that we will later discuss. And then during these past few months, they've relocated their church from Hearst to a building that's part of a strip mall in Wataga, Texas. Is that how I'm saying it, Robert? That's that's the thing about any town in Texas is she doesn't have, it doesn't matter how you pronounce it because they're Texans. Watauga whacked out? Do whatever you want. **** them anyway. They're now a strip mall church, which I think is a good look for them. I mean that you you're OK. I will correct you here. You're saying that like it's it's funny. As opposed to just the way everything is in Texas because Texas is a giant strip mall? Like, yeah, I guess so. And while John Shelly is pretty bad, right? We've we've heard a lot of bad clips of him talking about how gay people are pedophiles and how they should all be killed by the government. He's not the only guy who said fast preaching violent and genocidal rhetoric. Enter Dylan Awz, a formerly based out of Boise ID, now preaching at Steadfast Baptist Church in Watauga, TX on Sunday, June 4th. Dylan Oz, well, preaching from the pulpit, said that the quote? Solution for the homosexual. Is for the government to execute every single gay person. Here's here is that? Here's a clip of him saying that what does God say is the answer is the solution for the homosexual in 2022 here in the New Testament, here in the book of Romans, that they are worthy of death. These people should be put to death. Every single homosexual in our country should be charged with the crime, the abomination of homosexuality that they have. They should be convicted in a lawful trial. They should be sentenced with death. They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head. That's what God teaches. That's what the Bible says. You don't like it, you don't like God's word because that is what God says. I don't think that the Bible says anything about guns. Actually, it's it's it's been a while since I read the King James version that steadfast exclusively uses, so maybe it's like a translation thing, but I I don't. I don't remember anything about shooting or bullets or guns in inside my Bible. But Speaking of translation things, I'm I'm gonna go in a little theology rant here about quote UN quote lying with man or lying with men and how scholars actually believe. If you look at the original biblical texts. Not the crap like the King James version and the nonsense based off that horrible translation, but the chapters where people pull stuff supposedly condemning men for laying with men and quote UN quote homosexuality, which is obviously like a very modern word, does not belong in a text as old as the Bible. Like that just wouldn't that wouldn't exist yet. But those passages would probably more accurately translate to condemning adult men who rape young boys. And even if they didn't, even if it was about adult men with other adult men. I don't ******* care, and neither should most Christians, because Christians are not following all of the laws of Leviticus, nor should they. Like that **** was for Israelites thousands of years ago to make their culture distinct from other surrounding nations. Like Christians aren't railing against the use of mixed fabric, for Christ's sake. Are you not sure? I am too. There's there's a lot of, there's a lot of stuff. Believe in eating shrimp, but I think if you use mixed fabrics, you should be executed. You should be. The back of the head, if you use, that's the only thing that anyone using mixed fabrics death penalty instantly. Yeah, it's like, obviously there's not these churches preaching against mixed fabric. Here is here's Christian preacher Dylan Oz, again, justifying his calls for the execution of gay people by falsely claiming, obviously, that all homosexuals are pedophiles. Here's the thing, here's why reprobates here's why homosexuals are so dangerous to society. They're not like other sinners in the sense that every single day that they are alive, they're being filled with more. And more and more unrighteousness. That is a scary thing. You wanna know why we say that all homosexuals are pedophiles? And let me make that very clear, all homosexuals are pedophiles, right? And people say, well, what about all the straight people that molest children? They're I don't care what you call them. If a if a person is with a child, you're you're reprobate, you're sodomite. I don't care what kind of classifications our government wants to give them. All homosexuals are pedophiles. Now, here's the thing, here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that every single homosexual that's alive right now has committed that act with the child already, because there it could be that they haven't had the opportunity yet. And they will, at some point later in their life. This is why we need to put these people to death through the proper channels of the government, because the Bible says that they are being filled. So here's the thing. Yes, maybe not every single homosexual has been with a child yet, but what about tomorrow, when they're filled with a little more unrighteousness? What about in a week from now, when they're little, filled with a little more unrighteousness? What about 20 years from now? What are they going to be like? You look up the statistics on these sodomites that abuse children there with so many children, it'll make you throw up. Disgusting. These people are not normal. They're not your average everyday centers. They're what the Bible calls reprobates. They're rejected by God. They have no hope of salvation. So in in 2021, John Shelley, with Steadfast Baptist Church and with the help of a network of aggressively homophobic churches, made a 2 hour quote UN quote documentary about how to quote Jesus protect your children called and it's the the title is called the sodomite. Perception? No. See? All right, look, it's going to look. If we're going to do this thing where there's licenses for people to buy guns, can we have there be a license to make a documentary? Can we mandate that, too? So the quote UN quote sodomites deception claims to expose how the LGBTQ community is contributing to the collapse of modern society. Which I mean based. The trailer opens with a real banger. Most Americans are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality. The CBS News survey shows that two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals. We've discussed discomfort or fear. One out of 10 says hatred, the documentary. Celebrates a historical laws that criminalized homosexuality and criticizes more recent laws that expand LGBTQ rights. In the film, Shelley Advocates for the death penalty to be used on the LGBTQ community and uses, you know, many, many slurs across this whole thing. All of all of them use all kinds of slurs. As I'm sure we've heard this past episode, the pastors of other churches, part of the new Independent Fundamental Baptist movement, also featured in the documentary. Here's a collection of said pastors screaming in. The trailer for the sodomite deception. Oh, thank you, Garrison. Thank you for playing us a trailer of people screaming. That's going to be fun. Starting off with Shelly saying, quote why aren't all these Baptists standing up and saying these freaks should go back to hell, should go back in the closet, put a bullet in your head. Why are they saying it? Because some of some of what he says is hard to hear. So I'm just saying that for you guys, so you know what he's saying. Anyway, here's some here's some of the trailer. It's pretty funny. We have this standing up and saying, these freaks. Go, go. Was. I'm a ****** a ****** a transvestite, a disgusting dog. No ***** will ever be allowed on this church as long as I'm the pastor here. Never the law of the Lord. Perfect. Or is it not? It's perfect. And what he say put them to death. You know, people say, like, well, aren't you sad that 50 sodomites say, here's the problem with that. It's like the equivalent of asking me, you know what? Have you asked me, hey, are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today? No, I think that's great. I think that helps us society. You know, I think Orlando, FL is a little safer tonight now that 50, you know, the tragedy is that more of them than God. I mean, the tragedy is I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm kind of upset that he finished the job because these people are predators. So yeah, that sucks. But man, there is just a lot of a lot of like men in their 40s screaming about gay people. They they they seem really concerned. Yes, yeah. Someone in that clip is noted homophobe and the Holocaust denier Stephen Anderson. Who of of of Faithful Word Baptist Church he is. He's the guy shrieking never. Never anyway steadfast church members and pastors. Have continued to show up at City Council meetings in multiple cities throughout the Dallas Fort Worth area. This past Monday, people associated with the church, as well as residents opposing steadfast bigotry, spoke at a City Council meeting in Watauga, TX. Still know of the hacker that has entered their city? This hate group is called Steadfast Baptist Church. It was in June of 2021 that I first came across the offensive defamation against women and the LGBTQ community. The hate statements, videos, and social media posts prompted me to join the protest that started in Hurst and now has moved to your city and I apologize for this, but this is quoting him. They are all dirty, disgusting, disgusting ***** ******. In another video he also states that women in positions of leadership and authority are actually a curse. Upon our nation Council members, at the very least you should encourage the strip mall owner cider property of Dallas to revoke this church's lease. So yeah, there was there was kind of like this back and forth at this City Council meeting. Multiple, multiple people from Steadfast responded by screaming into the MIC and continuing to advocate the execution of gay people. One guy that I'll that I'll quickly play a clip of is Phillip Millstead of of Steadfast. He he went further and made a veiled. Threat of violence. The city of Watauga and its police officers are allowing this community, this side of my community to intimidate church members from worshipping God the way he should be worshipped and truth. And if you don't do something, something will happen bad. So that's fun. It's also a strong, strong definition of the word veiled well, I mean, like in terms of like, obviously they're talking about execution and genocide. He's talking about like actually doing physical, like, like actually like as vigilantes doing physical violence, which is different because steadfast usually tries to frame their violence within. Like, it's OK because it's a part of the government, right? So when they're like, talking about just doing this like vigilantism or like saying like, we're going to take this into our own hands. Right. It's it's it's it's a little bit different. What Shuga Mayor Arthur Minor this past Tuesday said that he is discussing the status of Steadfast Baptist Church with the city attorney while also stating that the attorney has told him that it's a First Amendment issue. So that there's quote nothing that the city can do at this time, but we are looking at other avenues, UN quote. And I mean that's to be that's probably, probably fair. It's hard to make a church leave a place. Yeah, so he did not. He did not elaborate further than that, but he did encourage people to bring up the issue with the the person holding steadfast selise at this strip mall in Watauga. Let us let us go on another ad break. Do you know who won't shriek at gay people and call on the government to kill them? Hope. Hopefully. These, these, these ads. Hopefully not for another couple of years. Yeah. That's why I said hopefully, OK, so let's let's talk a bit more about this, this Church's ideology and this network that it's associated with because it is actually kind of interesting. So Steadfast Baptist Church is part of Steven Anderson's church network called the New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement, which I'm just going to call the new IFFB because those are way too many words. And they claim it's not like a denomination, but rather a revival of what the old independent fundamentalist Baptist movement once represented, UN quote. The new IB churches, just like the old IB churches use the King James Bible exclusively. And the old IBM movement was founded in the 40s and was trying to reclaim the fundamentalism of the 1920s. And so we're just, we're going back from the 2000 twenties to the 1920s. In terms of their social views times the flat circle. I'm going to, I'm going to quote a little bit from the ADL, which of course is very hit and miss as an organization, but they did, but they they did a they they did. They do have, they do have a decent article on the new IFB churches because this is like specifically the thing they focus on is this sort of anti-Semitism. So anyway, quote the new IFB ideology promotes the anti-Semitic notion that Jews today are imposters who are not the true Jews described in the Bible. Which by the way is awfully. Close to Christian identity. I mean, that is essentially just Christian identity. It is. It's very, very similar. I think the new I FB stuff is slightly different. It comes out from a slightly different direction. It's like the difference. They reach couples in Catholics, but they reach a very similar conclusion. Like, I don't think they believe that Christians are like the true Jews and they don't talk about like Arians and stuff and they're not doing British Israelism, but they exactly. Judaism is the synagogue of Satan, but it's like. Look, some of them do use the term the synagogue of Satan. Yeah, I'm aware of. But like, you know, they hate Judaism because as a religion it's made-up of Jews who do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. So therefore they are not truly descendants of Israel, right? It's it's it's they come at it from more of that direction, but it is still extremely close to Christian identity like it is. It is. It is just a a tiny hop of a pond. Like they're kissing Cousins for sure. No, they like they are. So they are absolutely in the same networks because they are preaching very similar ideology. Back to the back to the DL quote, they often claim that Jews today worship Satan and that the Star of David represents the devil. The new IFB doctrine promotes the notion of an Antichrist, whom they claim will be Jewish. In their sermons, various new various new IFFB pastors often openly state that they hate Judaism as a religion and in addition to criticizing Judaism. Many new ifb pastors also promote anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish power and control over sectors like finance, news media, and journalism. New IFP pastors have also promoted Holocaust denial. In 2015, Pastor Stephen Anderson presented a number of false claims in a video specifically addressing the so-called quote, Holocaust hoax UN quote, saying the numbers don't add up, the facts don't add up. Anderson alleged that quote some Jews were among the many quote casualties on both sides well, but wives did matter. But he blamed those deaths on starvation and poor conditions. Claiming that quote, just because people were rounded up and put in forced labor camps does not mean that they were systemically exterminated or cremated to the tune of 6 million UN quote. Unlike many in the evangelical movement, the new IFFB churches are staunchly anti Zionist and anti Israel. The christianism as quote Jew worship, UN quote and view the traditional support for Israel among evangelical Christians as a result of Jewish deception in support of the anti Christ. But they have a ton of opinions about the sinking of the USS Liberty in line with their broader anti-Semitic abuse of Judaism as a false and evil religion. The modern nation of Israel is regularly characterized as wicked and a fraud, UN quote, and they they do not dislike Israel because Israel commits genocide. Against Palestinian people because as we've stated, they're very pro genocide as a concept. Yeah. And to be honest, probably pretty pro genocide of the Palestinian people. Yeah. They they just not that way. Yeah. So that's a little little write up on what this network of churches believes. Like everyone you heard talk, talk inside the Sodomite Deception trailer is part of this network of churches. They're all across the South. Some of their somewhere like California, Arizona, Idaho. Oh, Oklahoma, Texas. You know, lots of other southern states. And if you want to carry out a sodomite deception, tape your drugs to your junk when you drive through Texas. So thankfully, churches like these are not standing unopposed. Specifically in the Dallas Fort Worth area, there has been a number of protests at the church's old location which resulted in them getting evicted and protests at their new location. I'm going to play some audio from from protests that have taken taken place over the course of the past few weeks. We're here to protest Steadfast Baptist Church, which is a registered hate group here in Texas on splcenter.org. We protested them in Hurst for nine months. We found them here, and so we are back every Wednesday and every Sunday. I am a mom of a kid from the LGBTQ community and I am not going to stand for you wishing death upon my kid just because of who he is and who he was. Really exhausting, but at the same time it's very reassuring because we get nothing but support from the people on the street that drive by and give us plenty of honks and waves. And it's just so much love and support from the people that live in the community here as well as first, that's my city, so it's very personal and I've noticed that we've gotten a lot of new people come out here because this is their city and it's personal for them. So that's that's pretty good to hear that there's actually people standing up to to. Say, hey, these guys suck in person, uh, there probably should be more people going in person because once you like the church is obviously facing a lot of a lot of confrontations like online and stuff, right? They're facing a lot of online pushback, but once you bring that into the real world, it definitely. It's a totally different thing in terms of how how they're being viewed. I mean, in some ways, you know, they enjoy being persecuted, right? They enjoy the notion of Christian persecution, but also it's great to have, you know, people waving pride flags outside their little church every Sunday. The church still has an active Instagram page and it still has a Twitter account, but their actual tweets do keep getting taken down for hate speech. A week ago YouTube Striked Steadfast's main channel where they post videos and sermons as they weren't able to use their main channel on Facebook. They began promoting their second YouTube channel as a platform to stream their murderous anti-gay hate sermons during Pride Month and a few days after. I posted about that on Twitter, their secondary. YouTube got completely banned and then after a few days, their Facebook page was also taken down. So they are they. They do have, they do have a shrinking online presence. There's this other clip from the Sodomite deception trailer that I think really gives you a peek into the minds of these folks who are pushing this sort of stuff. And you can even see this, the same sentiment in the rise of white nationalism and white supremacy this past decade. And my question is, why are we embracing all this change as Christians? The Bible changed. Did the Bible radically change ten years ago? My King James Bible hasn't changed. The word Winston was translated in 1611. So why in the world is everything changing? It's not from God, that's for sure. You look coming from the working of Satan. Is receiving people thinking all of its normalness. So our challenge as people who are, you know, anti fascists, people who stand against you know, or anti racist push back against this type of anti queer organizing. Our, our, our challenge is to keep the change coming and to push back against these freaks trying to hold on to the 20th century right the the fear of change and the fear of the future is driving their, you know, desire to return to the past. The train of like social progress was moving forward over the course of the past 20 years and they're scared and they're trying to stop it and move it backwards and. It's up to us to make that as hard as possible. But yeah, that is that is my that is my stuff on on steadfast church. I'm now going to open up, open up the floor to anyone. Robert, Chris, what do you guys think of all of the stuff we just heard about the past 30 minutes? Well, one of the keys is you want to use tape that has a good level of adhesion, but isn't going to actually damage your skin. Really. Yeah, yeah. Like Scotch tape. What are we what are we doing here? Yeah, Scotch tape will do. OK you really want to avoid duct tape. But something like painters tape generally isn't going to have the adhesion that you need. It's going to be a little bit unpleasant anytime you're taking tape off of. And I I do recommend actually putting it like more in the taint area or the inner thigh. You're going to have a better, better experience. You might want to shave that inner thigh if you're not somebody who does normally, just so that you have a better time getting your drugs free. But, you know, crotch it. That's always been my motto. Just crotch it. Again, great, great, great, great Texas insight coming, coming out of Robert Evans here. No, I mean like, OK. So seriously the the fact that there's been resistance to these folks in the street and that it's been significant that they've like not just people showing up to yell at them and approach them in the moment, but people, you know, working to get them kicked out of their locations and stuff that's really good. And that's that's honestly more the Texas that I have known than or at least it's as much of the Texas that I've known as like the ******. Things that this says about Texas, yeah, first protest I ever went to was against a church like this who you've probably heard of the Westboro Baptist Church when they showed up to protest at the Holocaust Museum. Of course. And it was like like a hundreds of people showed up to like and there were like six of those ******* so. I mean, the problem with Texas has never been that there aren't a lot of awesome people in Texas. It's that folks like this, these who who really want to use the mechanisms of the state to carry out a genocide, have a lot of friends in high places. And many of those folks spent decades in sharing that it's basically impossible for anybody else to win election. Outside of like you know local elections in cities and stuff which often city governments in Texas. Again if you look at a lot of the the reaction to Abbott's anti trans bills and and where we'll be sort of the the actual resistance is Texas is anti-gay legislation gets more extreme is in cities like Dallas and Austin and Houston and and it's like local laws and local local elected leaders as well as local activists who represent an awful lot of Texas but and. You know, don't have any real power in the levers of the state, but do tend to stand up. And in a lot of cases, like people did for some of these, these events in in Dallas recently put their bodies, you know, in between fascists and the people they're threatening. And, I mean, the new IFB churches are definitely probably more extreme, more explicit than most of your average Christian churches, but it is not uncommon to preach this general strain of homophobia. Maybe. Turned down like 1 notch of the dial from the pulpit in the majority of of of churches, specifically in the South. Yeah, you just, you know, you don't say we should be lining these people against wall and killing them, but you say that, you know, this is not biblical. You know, we're supposed to live in a biblical society and you you say everything but that last, like 10 or 15%. Yeah, it's that it is. It is not like this strain of homophobia is. Has been there this this entire time. And people have feel like they have permission to say things now that they honestly wouldn't probably wouldn't have said as explicitly like five years ago. But there was there's always been people working to keep this thing within the culture as as stuff was progressing socially, there was people working to keep this type of bigotry still alive in large sectors of the American public. And a lot of those sectors are related to evangelical Christianity, and a lot of those sectors are related to like the communities around church building. So that's like a big part in how Christian Fascism has been so effective the past, the, the, you know, like the basically the past decade starting starting with the Tea Party is that they've had people with vested interests like keeping this stuff afloat. I mean, lips of tech talk, it receives her funding from Seth Dillon, the guy who runs the Babylon B, which started as a Christian satire site. Like it's now Elon Musk's favorite place on the Internet. Which is wild. I mean, but. But yeah, like, like, you know, like I I remember reading the Babylon Bee when I was like ******* 12 years old when I was like a Christian kid. Like, I it was just like, like this. It used to be just a small niche Christian site and now it grew into this, you know, big powerful force in modern conservatism. It is directly funding lips of Tik T.O.K, which is basically now just a gun that gets pointed at whatever, you know, targeted event that that they want. So it's now it's like this completely like Astroturf thing with all of this funding. And people choosing what events to target, so like it all goes back to this. It all goes back to these types of churches and this type of this type of rhetoric coming out of, you know, these few misinterpreted biblical passages. It is weird how, like, I mean, when I was, you know, a teenager when you talked about, like, Christian entertainment, Christian comedy, Christian music, Christian media, you mean like, the most boring, milktoast **** on the planet? Like, not that there wasn't toxic and hateful **** within being preached in churches, but like, Christian media was like, was pretty hard to be offended at most of it. And now when you say that, like, you immediately go to like, Oh yeah, somebody's trying to get. Gay people murdered. Yeah. It's something else. Yeah. There's been a large increase in the militancy of Christian propaganda and posing, you know, stuff that used to be just very, like very boring milk, like milk toast and like still very like, you know, patriarchal heteronormative, you know, probably low key white supremacist is now. Yeah. Now lots of the propaganda is way more focused in this type of like militant Christianity and. Focused on, you know, all, all of like the end times stuff's gotten so much more more of a thing. And just how it relates to like physical violence against currently living people? Anyway, yeah, that's the, that's the steadfast Baptist Church and the sodomite deception brought to you by people out of Dallas. So, yeah, those are my, those are my two episodes. I mean, we started first episode this week was part one, last episode this week is Part 2. So they're spread out, but sandwiched, those are those are my 2 two episodes on the city of the homophobia and Christian fascism inside the city of hate. Look. If you want to help out, find the the addresses of one of these churches. Now the next thing you're going to do is you're going to find a good torrent client and you're going to download a DVD rip of Morbius. There's a lot of them out there. Then you're going to burn that. You may need to buy a burner. It's a lot of people aren't going to have this equipment, but you're going to burn that onto a DVD. You can also put it on a flash drive if you really wanted and then you're just going to start mailing those in mass to the church. If we get them enough copies of Morbius, I think we might be able to turn them around. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death 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. 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