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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. So four whole months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Bing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Make sure to check out drink champs, your number one music podcast on the Black Effect podcast network. Host NOREDJEFN sat down with artists and icon yay, which Vulture called one of 2021's most significant interviews. I literally had to go like Thanos, and I don't want to have to be the villain, but when I went and did the donda thing, yay returned, and everybody had to sit back and watch. A real leader? Check out drink champs conversation with yay and many more legendary artists each and every Friday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Raffi is the voice of some of the happiest songs of our generation. 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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. Welcome to it could happen here, a podcast that is on the cycle of being sort of okaley introduced when this episode goes out, it will be Indigenous People's Day and. So to to talk about that more where we're going to talk to Delia Killpack, who is a member of the Northern Cheyenne or has Northern Cheyenne tribal citizenship and has studied and worked in Federal Indian tribal policy. Delia, hello. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you for inviting me here today. Of course, Garrison is also here. Garrison. Hello. Hello. I'm. I'm currently also doing writing about Indigenous stuff, but within the context of Canada, which you'll people should will probably hear. Later this week. So yeah, I guess first thing I wanted to talk about is a little bit is about what indigenous people state is and why it is that and not the other thing. Yeah, so indigenous peoples day, as many people know, is replacing, I'm going to say it, Chris Christopher Columbus Day. That is still like a federal holiday, but so multiple cities and states have opted to use. Indigenous Peoples Day instead, and the reasoning for that is acknowledging the atrocities that were committed by Christopher Columbus, who first of all did not discover America, but continue to not only use slavery, but commit different forms of genocide, rape, etcetera, all of these terrible atrocities. And so rather than celebrating. Somebody like that, it is just people say has been implemented in order to recognize the people who are actually here first. And indigenous peoples across the Americas there. Histories, cultures and contributions. Yeah. Columbus, real ***** ** **** worse, Christopher. Like, yeah. It really cannot be overstated how badge that guy was even even, you know, even people in that era who had committed their own genocides like Isabella and Ferdinand, who, you know, expelled the Jews from Spain, where it's like, you know, if if once you've reached the sentence, expelled the Jews from X, like you're you're already in the, the, the, the, the, the **** **** of the worst people in human history. But even they saw what Columbus was doing. It was like, what on Earth? Bad, bad guy, bad name. Things are going to continue to go badly. And yeah, that there was another thing that that I wanted to talk about, which is? Federal Indian policy and you know, this is an incredibly broad. It's an incredibly broad area, spanning like 300 years. So we're not gonna be able to go into like an enormous amount of depth in it, but I think it's important that people. Have an understanding of. I mean a just what the US did. And how everyone else has spread this sort of deal with it. And then also the fact that this is something that changes overtime and has looked different, it's it's been bad in different ways. Yeah. And so when talking about federal Indian policy, I always like to contextualize it within a larger. Sort of like Euro American, like teleology of colonial conquest and then moving on to settler colonialism and where we are with federal federal Indian policy currently. So how do we connect Christopher Columbus to where we are currently? And this is the history of federal Indian policy and Western legal discourse and how European powers throughout history have defined what it means to be an Indian person in relationship to indigenous peoples rights to their own land and to self governance. So when we're looking at the different periods of federal Indian policy prior to there. Being the United States government, we have the colonial period, which is 1492 to 1776, and this is how federal Indian policy legal scholars divide that, and it's really important to. Kind of give the difference between what is a colonial state versus a settler colonial state when you're talking about not just the United States government, but also the Canadian government and different governments globally. But I want to talk just a little bit about what I mean by the difference between a colonial government and a settler colonial government because they're tied together. So by a settler colonial government, I mean what I mean is that, Umm. It is defined by the deterritorialization of indigenous population populations and so rather than in a colonial government as you had with Christopher Columbus and the Spanish and with the English etcetera, is rather than a state and sovereignty being. Conceived as. All these resources are going back to the metropole, all these resources are going back to England or to Spain, etcetera. And colonial occupation is in is. Conceptualized within this way, in settler colonial governments, the colonists come to these lands and stay, and they're what they define as sovereignty is within this land that they define now as their own so and in order for that process to happen. There needs to be different forms of genocide of the indigenous populations and so that's what we saw with Christopher Columbus and throughout history was just the depletion of a lot of our indigenous populace. And so when I mean about the United States being a settler colonial state, I mean that this is current and ongoing. And so when we talk about federal Indian policy, federal Indian policy is always in this conversation with. What started with Christopher Columbus as the doctrine of discovery? And so that's how we define the colonial period. And feel free to like, stop me and ask me questions also. I'm just going to try to move quickly because there's a lot I think we probably should briefly talk about what the Doctor Discovery is. We get through the Marshall Trilogy and stuff. For sure. What does that actually mean legally, so legally? It's the discovery of a quote UN quote newfound land by European colonial forces, and the reason why it's called the doctrine of discovery was that indigenous peoples on these lands were deemed unable to govern themselves and they did not know how to utilize their land. Up to the definition of what the European powers thought it land use was that. Indigenous peoples didn't have the same concept of property, and same with their relationship with resources and resource extraction. So when Christopher Columbus and all of these other colonizers conkies to go outdoors came to the quote UN quote new land, they saw all of this rich, plentiful resource and thought to themselves, well, obviously these people don't know what they're doing. Because there's just so much they have not done anything with it and we're going to take this back to to ours because obviously they're inferior beings and don't know what property is so legally. The doctrine of discovery conveyed legal title to an ownership of American soil to European nations, a title that devolved to the United States and so this definition is expansive and and expansive. Discovery implies that native nations have a right to land as occupants or possessors, but they are incompetent to manage those lands and need a quote UN quote benevolent guardian such as. The federal government who holds legal title and. So when we're talking about this legal title, it devolves to the United States later on in history, after the American Revolution. And so rather than being colonial states as the United States, like 13 original colonies. Given the American Revolution and its own constitution, and its creation of itself as a nation state, then that turns into a settler colonial government. Yeah, I think we can. Yeah. We can get you what happens next, then, because, yeah, yeah, you you have you have this elaborate legal framework that lets you steal people's land and murder them and then control it. And then the outgrowth of that is this sort of weird event where the colonies go into rebellion and suddenly, yeah, there's there's not a colony. They're not colonies anymore. They just are the state. And so, yeah, but what happens next after the sort of formation of the United States? So after the formation of the United States. So we have this. The American Revolution, that's all not really divided into is 1776 to 1789, and it's called the Confederation. But next we have the trade and intercourse Act era, which is from 1789 to 1835. And so this is defined with the United States Constitution and Congress's exclusive right to regulate trade relations and make land since that land secessions and enter into treaties with tribes. So this is a treaty making era with the tribes that only the United States federal Government is able to. And there's a distinction there because there had been a lot of contestation between States and the federal government as to who is going to now deal with these, these nations that are with our within our own settler colonial borders. So whose job is is that to solve this issue. So within the United States Constitution, there are three clauses that define the United States legal relationship to American Indians. And so these are the Treaty making clause, the Commerce Clause, and the property clause. And so this this movement from just relying on the doctrine of discovery and treaty making processes between different European powers now is between the United States Federal Government. And tribes. And So what this does is now tribes are located within the United States territory, and this places Indians within the boundaries and jurisdiction of the United States and now they're a matter of domestic interest. One of the sort of complicated questions that that changes to this whole era, which is about what does sovereignty mean for these tribes and to what extent do they even continue to possess it? And how does that even sort of, you know, how does that work if you when you have this new state? That's sort of just. Has his clan control here. Right. And also during this. Well, well, later on when we have. Sorry, jumping ahead of myself, when we have the extermination of the Treaty making process and this completely removes seeing tribes as independent sovereign nations. So I think that will kind of get more into that later. But the thing with Federal Indian policy is that it's sort of self prophesizing so as settlers are moving across America, the United States. Government also has to create these policies in order to legalize these land cessations and movements. And a pattern that we do see here throughout history and throughout time is that the United States federal government as a settler state is over the rights of over the rights to land and rights of indigenous peoples themselves. You have a priority of the settler state. In order to acquire land, so that a lot of the reason why later these treaties will be broken, etcetera, is because settlers are moving into these lands and the United States is then breaking these treaties in order to. Have more more land, more land secessions. All sort of just following the violence and it's just becomes a sort of retroactive justification for yes, just taking everything. It's it's a self justifying sort of sovereignty, yeah. So this is the removal. And what a lot of people may have heard of. So it's from 1835 to 1861 and what we have is the extinguishment of Indian title to Eastern lands and the removal of Indian tribes westward. So one of the most notable acts is the Removal Act which was authorized by President Andrew Jackson, which moved Indians from the east to the West of the Mississippi River and to what is was called Indian Territory. And what brought about this Federal federal Act was a series of three foundational statutes within federal Indian policy dictated by Chief Justice John Marshall. So first we have Johnson B McIntosh, Cherokee Nation, B, Georgia, and Worchester, B, Georgia. And I won't go into too much detail, but what this these essentially did and legally defined tribes as being domestic dependent nations. And so it clarified more that again, tribal nations are underneath the federal governments overview, not the states. So yeah, it placed tribes above state jurisdiction. And what this is trying to do was solve some issues that tribes such as the Cherokee Nation had with different states when it came to land and jurisdiction over Southland. But that is kind of the basis of. A lot of federal Indian policy and still remains true today. And what is notable in each one of these statutes, I believe, particularly in Worcester V Georgia, although it seems that it was supporting tribal sovereignty. And then in that they were above state jurisdiction. A lot of these statutes cited racist president and the doctrine of discovery. So what you see? Federal Indian policy is that a lot of the well, all. The Foundation for Federal Indian policy based on president is the doctrine of discovery, which is reliant on the idea that American Indians were savages and needed. Federal benevolence and paternalism in order to regulate their own affairs. Yeah. And I think that's well, OK. We should probably not just immediately get to allotment, but yeah, because there's, there's, there's also. Yeah. This is also the period we used. Yeah, the thing you were talking about earlier, I think you probably know about, which is. OK, it's not true to say this is when this starts, but this is Indian Removal Act Trail of Tears territory. And you know, one thing that, you know, I think one of the sort of running themes of this is that. You know, the, the, the, the law in this context is just sort of, it becomes a sort of retroactive excuse to do whatever like needs to be done from the perspective of quote UN quote of of the sort of of the settler state to just take all of this land. And I think maybe, like what are the keystones of this? Is Andrew Jackson just straight up telling the Supreme Court to **** *** so that he can do so? He can do a Trail of Tears? So the removal act happened after all of these statutes that you already had that supported federal Indian sovereignty. And so the Cherokees in Georgia were one of the tribes that were removed. And so you kind of see what you talked about the. The retrograde kind of justifications for said removal despite the statutes that are there so although that like Marshall and more trust repeat, Georgia determined that the state of Georgia did not have jurisdiction over Cherokee territory. All this although this territory was in the states borders. Later on you see with the Removal Act that although these statutes are still president in federal Indian policy. Those were null in order for there to be more expansion of settlers within these areas. So when it became was decided that, oh, wait, we do need this land and we don't actually want these Indians here, let's put them to the side over past the Mississippi so that they're out of sight, out of mind, right. So we see more of this justification for settler expansion. And so again, we bring back to these themes of like. Settler colonialism in order to. And have gained more of this land and a lot of these statutes are still cited, the doctrine of discovery in them. And rather than supporting tribal policy, the relationship between the United States federal Government and American Indians was not based on the rights of Indians, but more that they can't, they can't govern themselves, right. And so, so and that's the whole issue is like people are like, they don't know what they're doing, so we're going to. Push them and, like, take their land again. So I. I don't know if you want me to go too much into the Trail of Tears, but Umm. You're seeing a lot of patterns here, I think. Different forms of genocide, different forms of taking the land. This was this is all around the same time as the Indian Act in Canada as well, which was did a very similar thing. Especially starting in the 1900, it's starting in the 20th century as well with the, like, expansion of the like, assimilation programs. Yeah. And I think I guess the one thing I want to point out about this is that, you know, so one of the things that happens trails here is that the Supreme Court like tells Jackson that he can't do this. And Jackson just does it anyways. And I think that's a very interesting, important moment, because. You know, this is this is this thing, right, where the federal government can tell the Supreme Court to **** *** right? And there's nothing the Supreme Court could do about it. And if you look at what they did it to do, the thing they did it to do was genocide. And it's I I think it's it's just I think this is very sort of I don't know this incredibly grim like you know encapsulation of like what this state actually is which is to sort of genocide machine and whatever sort of you know this is what sovereignty is right is the ability to break your own rules in order to sort of maintain the system so you know you break your own laws. And you know, as we're gonna get to in a second, like, you break your own treaties continuously. And you do this because, you know, the genocide machine has to keep moving, right? And there's a couple federal Indian policy theorists, Findley Junior, who's one of the most famous ones, and David E Wilkins, who talks about how there is no need for checks and balances within the federal Indian policy system. So you have Congress that is able to pass whatever act they want and and then you also have the Supreme Court and then you also have executive action. But it wasn't really delineated that well within, especially when it comes to this. As to who is going to be dealing with the Indians kind of thing. And so this kind of confusion and not really completely defining what it means to be a domestic dependent. Station I think really just goes to show how much of a fragile edifice like settler colonial policy is, for it is within the system. But again, moving on, it comes back again to land, so the reservation area era in 1861 to 1887. Has you have a lot of westward expansion of non Indians and settlers specifically to California you also have the creation of Indian reservations and resulting Indian wars. So during this era, what you see a lot of are different types of attempts at assimilation. And a lot of warfare. So you have a lot of the plains tribes. My tribe, for instance. That are going through all of these battles fighting forced removal onto reservations. One of the most famous ones was the Battle of Greasy grass or the Little Bighorn, where General Custer was killed by Sue Cheyennes and Arapahos, and different instances of battles such as those, and also where a lot of tribes were forcibly removed to. Era areas that they were, weren't originally from. So like how the sheriff fees were moved to Oklahoma. There was attempts of my tribe, for instance Northern Cheyenne, to be moved down to Oklahoma as well and that's why there's some Southern Cheyennes in Oklahoma. And then my tribe, the Northern Cheyennes and Montana. Another in another thing that is happening during this. Are boarding schools, the boarding school era. So this attempts at assimilation. Through education and assimilation is also within within the settler colonial kind of structure. It's it's defined as a process where indigenous people end up conforming to different constructed notions of settler norms. So if they're not absorbed within the state completely, then they're attempted attempt to be assimilated culturally through education, through languages in terms of economics and how you have a bunch of different sort of bureaucratic structures on these reservations trying to. Make tribal governments. Appear to be. Or constructed as a settler. Colonial governments are, so maybe it's the three branches in ways that aren't just compatible with different tribes culturally. And you also have the attempted eradication of different kind of spiritual and cultural practices and a lot of Christianity being forced on the different people and just kind of terrible things that I think more and more people are becoming aware of due to due to current movements. But we'll we'll get into that more later. Do we want to talk about a lot and briefly, because if I remember correctly, this is in the same. Yes, allotment. And for simulation. So this is like 1871 to 1934. And so this is the end of the Treaty making process. So the whole idea of trying to force tribes onto reservations & these treaties were to again take land and make sure that the United States has more land and all the land, etcetera that they could possibly have. So at this end of treaty making. And federal allotment of Indian lands also happened in the the Dawes Act. And So what this was was an attempt to further. Shrink the the reservation lands that tribes are already guaranteed within treaties. So during this. I think that somewhere like 9,000,000 acres were. Taken from tribal reservations during the alignment process. So the what the allotment process did was it counted each and every individual Indian that was eligible. I think there were adults. Adults that were eligible and each one of them were given a certain parcel of land, a certain number of acreage. And once all of this land was calculated, what you had was an excess of land, quote UN quote, excess of land that the tribes obviously didn't need because they had still two too many people. And So what? The excess of land was utilized for us, for pioneers, and for settlers. Who didn't go to the federal government? It was to incentivize settlers to colonize essentially Cecil on Indian lands. So trying its hardest to not stay true to its tree making practices. I think everything is interesting to me about this. Is that like that? Because one of the other goals of this is to sort of like, OOH, is the civilizing mission is like, yeah, we're going to turn them into. We're gonna turn these people into like, like human farmers, like true American frontiersmen or whatever. And it's just like. It just doesn't work because economically it doesn't make any sense. Like you breaking up all these like lands is like it doesn't you. You can't just give someone like a small patch of like ****** land and have them farm like this. Doesn't like this. It doesn't. It doesn't it like. They certainly tried, yeah, yeah, yeah, like that was one of the main things, one of the main things. In Canada was about getting them to adopt like like European farming practices which which they they they already knew how to like get their own food right. They were trying to change this whole system of of of like of food growth to to this like to to this European way of of farming and it just and they were just forcing them to and there's yeah it's it's yeah, it gets, it gets, it gets super it gets super like dark and horrible once you like look at like the letters that were being written. By like the heads of these programs. Like, you know, instructing, like, these agents were stationed at these like reservations to, like, force people to be doing this horrible farming for like all day every day. And I think you know the the the the sign that this was like like this is. But like, this is so bad that even the US government eventually is like, wait, this this, like this is ****** ** and doesn't work. So I think that's, yeah, you transition to sort of like. The next Phase I guess. Yeah, very short phase. Yeah. So the next phase is the Indian Reorganization Act. And so this only lasted 6 years, from 1934 to 1940. So this is when allotment ended. As you said, the United States government was like, wait, this isn't working. What else can we we do? The Indians aren't dying off, they're not assimilating, they're not acculturating. We don't know what to do with them. So maybe we'll we'll have them adopt. These constitutions, and a lot of them were just templates, so regardless of whether or not they were. I think compatible with tribal different tribes, way of life. They were like, you have these constitutions now, now you're you're a tribe and this is what each tribe has to look like in order for us, the federal government, to recognize you as a legitimate entity. And and and then so you have the establishment of these tribal governments that consist of tribal councils and their business committees, etcetera. However, this. Is fleeting, very fleeting. And next. You have the termination era, so this is the period of time where the federal government. Essentially, even more so wants to just get rid of the quote UN quote Indian problem, which is the existence of indigenous peoples. That are reminders to the government essentially that they are a settler colonial force and they don't know what to do with us because they tried to commit genocide, they tried to remove us, etcetera, etcetera. It's still not working. They decided that our tribal governments aren't aren't legitimate and they just decide, well, it's too much to try to keep up with our treaties and what we promised them when it comes to healthcare, education, housing, etcetera, etcetera. How about we terminate our federal responsibility, our trust responsibility that are delineated in federal Indian policy and in our treaties and give them off to this? The states to decide what to do with and so during this. You see sort of the the Federal district dissolution of some tribes such as the Menominee and other ones. As well, so this is. Another dark time there. The dark times just keep on coming. And what federal Indian policy scholars have. Care characterized Federated policy as a pendulum, so swing swinging from side to side between this terminal. This termination of tribes. So the federal Indian Government as trying to get rid of tribes, especially, as you can see in this era. And then the pendulum of the other side of self-determination. But both of these are held within the context of goals of assimilation. So this is just another phase of terribleness. But I think this this phase also like one thing I think that also like is important people understand is that like? Like, it's not like people aren't fighting this like the whole time. I mean, even going like, even going back to the stuff, the 7th cavalry like, the 7th Cavalry lose like Boris, they lose bells all the time. People are fighting constantly and this is this. Determination. Is also where you see the the the rise of the American Indian movements. Yeah, a lot of these periods can be like. Dove into more and all of these different things and every instance and every instance of federal Indian policy, you have resistance, which we're not covering here right now, but you have instances throughout history where indigenous peoples have fought for their rights to land to, for their community, to being sovereign nations, etcetera. And that's why the federal Indian, the federal government, not federal Indian government, the federal government. Has not been able to eradicate us, much to their dismay. And so now I'm going to switch into the arrow that we are considered to be in, which I had mentioned when I talked about the pendulum of Federal Indian policy. So now we are in the self-determination era, which began in 1962. And we have the right. It's characterized with the revitalization of tribal entities. So I'm going kind of back to when there was the Indian Reorganization Act. So we have our tribal councils. There's restoration of some tribes under federal recognition who were terminated. Again, not all of them. We also have the Indian Civil Rights Act. So this, this kind of guaranteed individual Indians. Some rights, not just characterized by their tribes, also the self-determination policy. So this is when Nixon condemns the termination policy and gave more control to Indians rather than the Bureau of Indian Affairs such as the Federal Bureau and just kind of like other policies that. Given the tribes more rights to determine for themselves and their own their own people to a certain degree underneath the federal government as massive dependent nations. And again I I think that we have seen a lot more movement but within the context of being within a settler colonial state it's always I think a possibility that the. The Federal Indian Government or the federal government, I keep saying Indian the federal government will try to take more and more and I think for instance. When it comes to issues of fishing rights, issues of hunting rights with states, not even just with the federal government, so you have a lot of states throughout, throughout history, but still ongoing, that attempt to encroach on tribal treaties. And again, treaties are the basis of federal Indian policy. Without these treaties, that lands would have never been seceded to the United States. And so there's this this sort of like. Legal. Legal conundrum, I would say, of where all these all treaties in the history of the United States and with Indian tribes have been broken in some way, shape or form. But still. American Indians have to live on their reservations instead of having their their land back. And so nowadays a lot of movement has been towards land back. What this means? What is this process? And I think it means a lot of different things for different people, indigenous people, because again, there's there's 574 federally recognized tribes and so it's not 1 monolith of ideas Monolith. Of beliefs, but by just by saying land back, that's like recognition that this is our this was our land 1st and you're not keeping your side of the deal and never has been. Could you maybe go a bit more into land back as the topic? Because like specifically like the past five years it has really gained a lot more like popularity as like a slogan. But I think for a lot of a lot of people who like, chanted and hear it don't always really know exactly what it means, that there's a lot of, like, mixed opinions on what it means. Of course, I'm like the more like reactionary side. It's like people be like what you're going to like kick white people out of these areas. Like, that's kind of that's what a lot of like the reactionary takes on land back is. And I'm sure most people are listening to this podcast. That's not what they think, but they may not really know exactly what it means either. They may think it sounds like a good idea, but they're not quite sure what it is. Do you mind kind of talking about how land back is like developed as as an idea and what like? But like you mean by it, personally at least. Yeah, I think I could talk about more about like what I mean by it personally and what I've understood it to mean to other people because I think. Land back itself. It means like a lot of different things, and I don't think that there has been a concrete kind of idea of what it means. But I think a lot of the movement I want to like contextualize it within a lot of the. Sort of active activism that we've seen in the recent years. So for instance, no dapple, the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and kind of, I think that's one of the more recent events that have really illustrated on a wide scale like globally about indigenous movements, sovereign movements and especially when it comes to environmental justice. But what you saw there was. Encroachment on tribal treaty land within the we want it had to do with the Dakota Access pipeline. So although it didn't cross some of the current reservation borders, it was in treaty land, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah, same thing with stop line 3, how it encroached on like the hunting land and the farmland that was not technically in the like residential, like, like, like, like not unlike the reservation area where people live, but it's in the surrounding. Area that is for hunting, that is specified in the Treaty. So people trying to use these loopholes to get the pipelines through. Right, right. And so I think what you see is a lot of solidarity across tribes because this is not new, this has never been new and a lot of tribes can relate to that. And what you've seen and what I've hoped that I've highlighted throughout this kind of very brief overview of federal Indian policy is the different ways that. Indigenous rights to land and sovereignty has been attacked in different forms by settler and colonial governments, and I think that the day and age that we live in now has allowed for. Sort of more widespread solidarity, especially over social media. And so when we say land back, for me, how I interpret it as what people mean when they're saying it is recognition of our tribal sovereignty, of our right to this land that has not been respected. And then I also think that it means. Well, if these treaties aren't being respected, then how is this treaty still valid? Right? How come we aren't getting our land back because they're not upholding your end of the deal, while some people also might mean and recognize that this whole United States government is a settler state, right, based on the doctrine of discovery which is based on. Denying. Tribes and American Indians of their rights to this land. So some people might take it to this whole other context of, yeah, well, maybe this is, this is all of our land, etcetera, etcetera. But in practice, what does this look like? And I think in practice a lot of people are seeing it with reparations or people buying land back for tribes and giving it back to tribes and we have seen some of that or also just people. Interrupting the narrative in their own mind of their Euro American identity, so not non American Indians and primarily European settlers and their history of their own families taking part of the settler colonial process. And how has that? What about their lands? There's. Everyone who? Descends, I guess, from these these settlers, and I want to be specific when I'm talking about Euroamerican settlers. And how they currently benefit from these systems. And I think by saying land back, it's we're able to highlight this movement for tribal sovereignty and recognition on a global scale instead of searching for justice within the quote UN quote. Like searching for justice within the courts of the Conqueror. How how do we expect for the Conqueror to be held accountable for all of these atrocities, attempts at genocide, assimilation, etcetera. By taking it more towards a global scale such as node, Apple highlighting these to other people as these are injustices. This is this is ongoing genocide. I think that land back has many like a plethora of meanings. And in that sense, yeah, yeah. I hope that answers your question. I myself might use it in in some some different ways. Because land, as we conceive it to be, property kind grew, that concept grew. In conversation with Euroamerican yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah. Conceptions of property. So I think that. Moving forward, when we talk about decolonization as a process and not like a metaphor. That thinking of land back not within that whole idea of your American property as well, that's that's kind of. Another thing to consider, yeah, I think, I think lend back would just be a whole other thing that will pay someone more qualified than our team to talk about on this show. Because yeah, that's definitely, you know, like all of the things we've we've discussed, they deserve their own deep dives by people that are not me, Robert and Chris. Let's see is is there any kind of resources, either books or stuff online, that you would recommend for people wanting to learn more about this history and then any kind of ways to? I don't know, I guess show support in these in these kind of like efforts that are going on. And for sure so in terms of resources and reading. I have read Lorenzo Veracini's settler book on settler colonialism. That's really helpful when you're trying to understand that framework in terms of getting to know kind of more of the basics of like current issues impacting tribes. The National Congress of American Indians does a lot of work on the federal level. Do you want to talk more about kind of lived, current lived experiences of American Indians? There's illuminative. And getting more involved in those as well. I think that they have some tips, but I would recommend everyone getting more familiar with the land that they are on currently, the tribes within their state, and what they can do on not just on the local level but on the state level to support tribal sovereignty. Because a lot of issues. For instance, I worked on on the on the state policy level in Washington and in Montana, and both of those have. A significant amount of tribes, but you have a lot of legislation that's trying to happen that infringes on tribal treaty rights. And The thing is, is as ugly as it may be to say, but sometimes. Voices of non indigenous peoples are listened to more within those contexts, so you need to get more involved on on those levels what sort of like add. Nonprofit organizations work with your tribes or and what sort of issues are impacting tribes. And again, these are all going to probably be surrounding tribal sovereignty. So maybe it's fishing access, hunting rights, etcetera. I think that's a really good way to make some more power. Tangible change to feel like you're doing something to support tribal sovereignty while you're also educating yourself and making sure that their voices are at the forefront. And that's also applicable to the federal level, especially with, as you already said, like stop line 3IN Minnesota, contacting your legislators, etcetera, etcetera and I think also with when it comes to. One of one of the larger issues besides environmental justice for indigenous peoples such as pipelines, you have right now missing and murdered indigenous women. So looking and looking into that a little bit more and who you can support, who's addressing those issues. Along with there is another movement with boarding schools right now because there's been a lot of. Bodies of young children. That have been uncovered and. This is not an issue that happened a long, long time ago. Like for instance, my grandmother went to a boarding school and there's still schools that although they're not called boarding schools. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. 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I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Right now that we're boarding schools but are still in operation under different names, etcetera. So kind of familiarizing yourself with those histories. And then also there's a national, I think it's called the national. Boarding school healing Coalition based out of Minnesota and looking into them and supporting their efforts with this issue is also a good place to start. Is there anywhere that people can find you online? Yes. I don't. I don't really use. Social media that much? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I try not to. I don't know if I want people to find me. Do not. Yeah, don't worry. Don't do it. It's better not. It's better that people don't find anyone online. It's better we're all just just posting into the void. There's nothing, not just just the void. Well, that that is, I think, going to wrap up what we have today. Chris, you want to close this out with a funny bit? I. Light your local gas station on fire. Wow. Well, she's just Christ killing it here. Oh my God. Geez. Wow. Alright, goodbye everybody. The Gangster Chronicles Podcast is a weekly conversation that revolves around the underworld, criminals and entertainers to victims of crime and law enforcement. We cover all facets of the game. Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promotility activities. We just discussed the ramifications of repercussions of these activities because after all, if you play gangster games, you are ultimately rewarded with gangster prizes. Our heart. Baby was number one for podcast, but don't take our word for it. Find against The Chronicles podcast and the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more productive with the Before Breakfast podcast and each bite size, daily episode time management and productivity expert Laura Vanderkam teaches you how to make the most of your time, both at work and at home. These are the practical suggestions you need to get more done with your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our bodies strong as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to before breakfast wherever you get your podcasts. When PT Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in 1865, what rose from its ashes would change the world. Welcome to grim and mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season, we'll be giving you a backstage tour of the Always complex and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is the American sideshow. So come along as we visit the shadowy corners of the stage and learn about the people who are at the center of it. In a place where spectacle was king, we will soon discover there's always more to the story than meets the eye, so step right up and get in line. Listen to grim and male presents now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at grim and mild.com/presents. What's terrible might me this is it could happen here, a podcast about collapse. And that's appropriate because everyone's faith in me as a colleague has collapsed today as the result of a series of horrific cluster ***** on my part. I'm late to the meeting. I accidentally left the meeting when they started recording just a just a complete ******* **** show. Speaking of **** shows my co-host Garrison. OK, but how are you, Harrison? Thank you. I I'm the one that saved this. I had to send the guest to the zoom call. I know, I know. I'm not even supposed to be on this call. No, you're not. You're not even supposed to be working today. That's not true. Well, yeah, but you're not on this call. Not on this call, but here I am. The pod. This is enough. This is enough witty banter. This is a daily podcast. Yeah, alright. And now let's bring on our guest for today. Monsignor Alex Newhouse, Alex. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for having me. I feel like I was pulled in off the street just like bundled into a van. And then yeah, yeah, we, you know how people used to get like Shanghai, like, like captured by allegedly, allegedly, and and forced to work on, on, on boats in like San Francisco and whatnot. We do that with podcasts. I mean, that is actually most of what I've done to the people who work on your podcast, I think. I think I've had everyone from your show on our show now and it has been very much like. I'm just pulling them on a string. Speaking of which, Alex, you are one of the hosts of the terrorism is bad podcast, a very controversially named podcast, and you work at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey Center of Terrorism, Extremism and Counter Terrorism Center on not, not of that would be a different center. Very important. Very important. Yeah. Middle word there. And we're not, we're not bringing you on to talk about how to make explosively formed penetrators. Not this, no. Not this time. That is someone else. Yeah, you. And you are also a you were also a actual game journalist. Yes. Yeah, I got my start in this weird space. How do you Gamergate? How do you feel about ethics in the game journalism industry, Alex? Always been fine. Like people lost their ****. Yeah, alright. Anyway, that's the end of that. I do want to actually start there, Alex, because you and I both have something in common, which is that we we got our start writing in a field that's wildly different from consulting with, like, governments on terrorism. For me, it was, I wanted to write **** **** jokes on the Internet, and I just, like, stumbled into a bunch of ISIS propaganda that most people weren't aware of. And and that started me, like, lecturing at universities and **** and and for you it was Gamergate. So I'm interested in kind of you telling your story a little bit to start us off. Yeah. So I was during undergrad, I entered every summer at GameSpot Video game website you may have heard of. It's one of the two big ones, along with IGN. And when I was doing that, I was. So this was 2014, 2015, 2016. Right in the at the beginning stages of of Gamergate really popping off and what ended up happening is a lot of the people I worked with, a lot of my colleagues and friends were just in the blast zone. They were just targeted by the absolute onslaught of of harassment. And I just had a curiosity, started looking into some of those people who were who were targeting my friends and colleagues and it ended up being a lot of the people that were still talking about today. You know, it all rolls back up to the Breitbart metropolitan area. If you, yeah. And I don't know what do the thing that made me want to. I mean, obviously I've been aware if you work for the thing that we want to specifically bring you on as you started on a new project to create like a video game that that will hopefully have an ability to help like de radicalize people. And I'm, I'm not entirely certain like if the details of the project, but I think it's a fascinating project because as, as you know all too well, a lot of this stuff started in gaming not as a result of anything specifically about gaming, but the kind of like socialization. That occurs in those spaces and the kind of like different communities. And it's been like we have, going back to the 90s evidence of like different Nazi groups on the early Internet, like, talking about like, these are specific, specific groups and subcultures that, you know, will have an easier time radicalizing and whatnot. But yeah, I'm interested in kind of what actually is going on with this project and and how you think it's going to look at this stage. I understand it's pretty early in development right now, so I'm not expecting, like, you know, an E3 walkthrough. RE3 size live demo. I wish we had that. Yeah, we won a grant from DHS and FEMA their their terrorism prevention grant program this year. We just got awarded it like literally two weeks ago. So we have not even started work on it at all. But the project will be a collaboration between my center and a nonprofit games development company called the I Thrive Foundation. And basically what we are going to do is like build digital scenarios, digital narratives. That can be engaged with within classroom settings. So we're targeting high schools for rolling this out and the idea is that we're going to give students the ability to take on roles that empower them to better understand how extremism and radicalization work as mechanisms which will hopefully the idea is that it will, it will improve resilience and you know, civil integrity and all those fun buzzwords within within high school communities. So we're not necessarily trying to de radicalize already radicalized people, but we're really trying to build. Community Awareness, Community resilience to to radicalization pathways. I mean, this is something I think about constantly because I I get asked this a lot. You know, get, I'll get emailed questions from people sometimes as much detail as, like, hey, I'm like a teacher and here's some things this kid in my class has said or something he put in an essay and like, I'm growing really concerned about him. And like, I, I what do I do? And my usual answer is there's a couple of people who I respect that I'll try to direct them to, but I I don't. I'm pretty good at how people get radicalized. It's something I spent a lot of time studying. I don't know how, how you I have. Trouble figuring out how to break down these pathways because like right the the default for a lot of people and for a long time it's been well you deep platform right you you get them off of whatever. And there's there's I do certainly think there's there's utility in that but there's also you know the toothpaste tube effect. The fact that when you you squash these popular areas where they're able to spread then they they filter off into increasingly isolated communities that develop new terms. They find out ways to hide and that actually increases you know it may it may reduce the number of people who get radicalized but the people who remain. Just get more and more extreme because they're even more isolated from, you know, everyone else. And I don't know how. Do you? How, how do you how do you break that, that radicalization cycle? Like, how do you how do you stop that **** before it gets, you know, to a tipping point? Yeah. I mean, in in general, I'm with you. I'm pretty skeptical of a lot of deradicalization strategies. And it's it's like an incredibly difficult task to to pull someone out who's already going down these pathways. And then, like you said, it's also an incredibly difficult task to make sure that when you are disrupting the radicalization networks that they aren't just disappearing off to some other corner of the Internet. Which we know they're doing. Like one of the reasons why we're we're working with a video game video game company is over the last few years we've noticed a big migration into video game platforms, especially big social based video game platforms like Roblox and Minecraft, which are like not even remotely prepared to deal with, you know, very well developed sophisticated radicalization networks. They have moved over there both for organization and radicalization reasons since mainstream. Companies have started taking more of an interest in deep platforming them. And so we are ending up like pretty wildly unprepared for this sudden onslaught of extremists being right in front of kids as they're playing games or, you know, teenagers or even young adults. So our idea essentially is to use that language, the same language that extremists are trying to adopt via the structures of video games, via the sort of interactivity there to better communicate the the impacts of extremism. What it looks like, how to identify it and hopefully how to avoid getting you know falling into the traps that are laid for for unsuspecting people. One of the issues and I'm curious your thoughts on this because we we we talk a lot about like I think people have become increasingly aware of how bad Facebook in particular is, is a problem with this. It's it's really what we owe a lot of the boogaloo movement too. And now this stuff is coming out about like the data Facebook has had on just and this isn't this isn't this is adjacent to radicalization. Yeah, the mental impact that it's been having on teenagers, right, like the the just how bad it is for people. And I'm wondering, like, how do you scale this stuff? I guess is the question, like, how do you actually, how do you make the social Internet less dangerous? Yeah, I mean that's that's going to be extremely tough and we are even starting very, very small like we're building, we're building on a narrative platform to target 3 high schools right now. But the hope is that ultimately what we can do is build a tool set and and a platform like literally a game platform that can be used by high school teachers and high school classes throughout the country or throughout the world. The idea will be to hopefully make a new sort of package of different methods. An interactive experiences that can be reused into the future. But it is one of the big open questions that we will hopefully come to some sort of answer for throughout the project about how do we actually scale this up. But you know in general it is again like one of the biggest open questions right now. One of the reasons why I'm so skeptical of a lot of Drad and CBE techniques is they try to go for scale of effectiveness when in reality one of the best and only. Radicalization pathways that we know of involves people that you know and I know going out and meeting with these people one-on-one and having intensive frequent communications with them. So there's, as far as we know, there's not a good answer right now. This is a huge place of research right now because we should just straight up do not understand how to scale up. Realization, prevention, and deradicalization. I mean, and you know what you're trying to do in like, reaching kids in high school in something that's meant they're meant to be consuming while they're in school is even such an additional challenge. Because I think you and I are both not young enough to at least remember that. Like. Almost nothing that you put before kids in that context in a school gets through I I can I can think about like anti drug programs and stuff when I was a kid and how ineffective they were there was I had one one effective anti drug like speech by a teacher and it was just a teacher who whose son that was part of this this. There was this one night in Plano where like 6 kids OD on heroin. It was there was big Rolling Stone article about it was very famous moment and her son was one of the kids who nearly died and she was in and she like just explained like physically what happened to him. And begged us not to do heroin and that actually did stick with me. I've never never shot up anything. But you know like the the a lot of it doesn't work and I think part of why it's it's this thing I talked about when I I tried to explain like why ISIS propaganda was so effective. It's the Umm it feels more authentic than the than the counter narrative, right. The counter narrative because it's it's usually focus grouped. It's coming as the result of like some sort of government initiative a bunch of people working to get it feels focused grouped as opposed to. There's something inherently more compelling about something that just, like, feels like somebody who really gave a **** or cares a lot. Put this thing together, even if it's terrible. And I that strikes me as a really, because if you're going to be scaling something and trying to reach a lot of people, it's going to have to be something that is put together at scale by an organization. And how do you. I mean, I I know this must be on your mind as you're trying to figure out how to craft this thing. I'm just interested in your thoughts on that. Really? Yeah. I mean, that exact challenge challenge is what led us to proposing the project, project that we are. So the idea behind it or the the impetus behind what we did, what we proposed is the exact problem of students just don't listen to people in what, whether that's anti drug programs or anything like that. Often my my feeling about it is they are often resistant to it because it's very negative. It's very don't do this, don't do this. I'm setting up boundaries for for kids and adolescents to act within. It's all very declaratory. Become, you know, commanding. There's no, there's no sense of treating kids like people who have control, who have interests, who have motivations. It's all attempting to restrict them. And so the idea is that we're going to attempt to build a game platform that actually empowers students to operate within roles that have control, that that have something to say to give them voices to give them, and that sort of feeling of being an established person within a within a certain scenario. The way that I've been thinking about it is that we're basically merging video games with, like, the structure of a model UN conference or something like that. Hopefully we'll be a little less nerdy than model UN conferences, but that's the idea of giving people power to make decisions and and treat them like actual, you know, operating humans. Yeah. I, uh, I'm wondering, do you have any kind of models that you're looking at when you think of, like something that you see as as kind of worth, I don't know, emulating maybe the wrong word, but like, oh, these people I think, got it right and and this was effective, like, or is this really a situation where you feel like we're kind of in the ******* wilderness here? There's not a lot of great models for what's effective. We are very much in the wilderness. Yeah. We're going to be pulling. Was expecting you to say, like, so much of CED Rad. Work of the last 10 years has been directly towards trying to essentially recreate the, like the the DARE model or the antidrug model just in a different field. And so we're going to be pulling from scenario builders and like model UN and debate and like all of these different models that seem to at least work to get kids engaged with, like operating in that sort of situation. But it is going to be pretty, I mean, at least from what I understand is going to be pretty new. We're going to be out there. Really flying blind for a lot of it, but we will, you know, we have a pilot phase built in to try to beta test this with, with some of the students. We're incorporating students and instructors in the actual creation development stage. So that'll be another hopefully good part of this. We'll, we'll give some students experience with the game development process, which I think will help engage them as well. So that strikes me as a particularly good idea of like giving and also just giving them some. Agency. So it's not like this is a thing that you are forced to consume. Like this is the thing that you can like learn something from. I think that's that's very important. I'm interested in how you see. How you see this? Because like again, we kind of both got in around the same time. Gamergate is when I started paying attention to radicalization too. How do you think it's changed since then? How do you think like the nature of of how particularly younger people are being radicalized has changed? I I guess I'm also interested because I get the feeling that back then it was mostly younger people getting radicalized and that's no longer the case. I'm just as we're talking. I just came across a video on Twitter of a group of anti VAX protesters chasing parents and children away from an elementary school and screaming at them that they're ****** their kids with a vaccine. Clearly the problem is expanded, but yeah, yeah. And honestly, one of the things that keeps me up at night is when we start, if, you know, knock on wood, we are able to roll this out to more schools. We're going to run into some probably very resistant parents who have been radicalized. Yeah, I mean the big one is like what you said, like the the radicalization demographics have vastly expanded to incorporate so many more different types of people, so many more ages and even ethnicities and genders. But what we do know is that the ******** of the of the violent extremists are still targeting adolescents. If we know acceleration is, for instance, hang out and try to essentially blackpill a bunch of teens, especially autistic teens, especially teens with mental health issues, and bring them into a more violent, more accelerationist posture. So I mean, I think that has sort of stayed. Constant throughout all of this, one of the big changes has been platforms. You know, ten years ago it was much easier for a neo-Nazi to operate openly on YouTube or Facebook, but that has thankfully changed. But they have spread out into, like I mentioned earlier, they've spread out into video games, they spread out into other sorts of platforms where the social aspect isn't necessarily the first part of the platform, but rather a secondary aspect to it. And they try to engage adolescents on their own turf on in a Roblox game, Oregon in a video game forum out there. It's not even enough to say it feels like the the task of reducing radicalization or not not even mentioned pulling it back. Just stopping the process feels not just like whack a mole, but like whack a mole when you're surrounded by moles. And I guess that is the thing that keeps me up at night the most too. Is that like? The problem has gotten because of how social media scales, I think in large part has gotten so much. Worse than it ever was. And the I, I see these crowds of adults, you know, assembling in, you know, places like Los Angeles, showing up outside of schools to harass people and like. I don't know what. I don't know what to do about that, like part of me thinks. Umm. Part of me thinks that the only effective long-term answer is to mobilize a larger number of people to. Show up to, you know, not necessarily confront those people, but make them, make them feel outnumbered and maybe they'll stop. And that'll start a process where they, they alter their thinking. Like, I'm thinking kind of back to in some aspects of the civil rights movement here, right where you would have these people show up at schools, just try to stop integration and whatnot, and they would be opposed often by, by larger groups. They would see the size of the marches in the street. And like, I don't know, I don't even know if it works that way anymore, if, like, knowing that, you know, 12:50 people think your stance on vaccines is stupid and they're willing to show up. Like yell at you if that would do anything, but I don't know what. I don't know what's going to do like I'm. I guess I'm asking you like. Have you figured this out? Because I don't know what the **** to do, but it's it's it's not. You can't we can't close our. Obviously you're someone who's trying to confront it directly, but we certainly can't keep ourselves like. Just pretend it's not going to get worse right now. Totally. And, you know, I often feel like it's almost too far gone. And, you know, frequently I worry that we've already passed some sort of, you know, point of no return on radicalization, exploitation of social media. But one of the other things I've also recognized is that when you're in a space that is dedicated to one type of confronting 11 method of confronting extremism. Very often they will forget about or deprioritize or or even ignore the other types, the other methods. And one of the tasks before us, I think before we throw up our hands and give up, is trying to tie together all of the different facets of of resisting extremism. From the the ******** confrontational doxing and showing up in the streets counter protesting, which I think is an essential part of it to working as hard as we can to try to get to companies. To realize what's going on and then also on the educational side, like what we're doing with this, with this project. Some of the things that make me at least a little bit optimistic is that there is obviously inertia, both intentional and unintentional at tech companies. But frankly, they are still extremely far behind in understanding how to even do deep platforming on their platforms, how to even identify who to deep platform like the majority of tech companies are still making content moderation decisions on a piece. By piece basis, specifically looking at content, very few of them are doing actor analysis. Very few of them are doing social network analysis. Very few of them are looking at even the links between like off platform violence and on platform content. Like it's the they are still very much in the stone ages when it comes to content moderation. And that's so, so key. When I think about like what actually would reduce the harm that these platforms are doing at scale, it's focusing on the actors. And and not just like the individual actors, which is part of it, but the patterns that let you tell whether or not someone is like that same actor who's kind of like putting on a different hat, so to speak. Are you aware of like is there any? I I because I I have not seen that happen yet. I I haven't seen Facebook take that seriously and I have. I have spent some time there I haven't seen, certainly haven't seen Twitter take that seriously. I I haven't really seen. I don't believe Tik T.O.K is like they're they're they're they're just. Like you said, they're going after, they're taking it on a piece by piece basis, which is never. There's too many pieces. That's never going to handle the problem. Yeah, I mean, tick tock is crawling right now. They are in their infancy. They don't, they don't have a data sharing. Any sort of data sharing system set up for researchers or anything like that yet I've seen optimistic signals. So I think Facebook's approach to Q, Anon and boogaloo movement over the past year has been probably the best the the most positive development we've seen on the content moderation front because they took an actual network based approach to it. It was hamstrung by a variety of different policy decisions, but it was still from like, I'm from like a mechanic standpoint, the most sophisticated one any of the companies actually talked about openly. And YouTube has followed in their path. They've started taking more network approaches. They they've taken moderation action against Q Anon on a similar basis. But the the thing that I want tech companies to start looking at is applying a lot of the techniques they're using for disinformation and and and for info OPS work to extremism and radicalization. It's very similar, but right now it seems to be just easier politically or just they are further along with doing the. Large scale network analysis approaches on disinfo like Twitter is doing a lot of that, but it's all on information, operations and authentic info. Yeah. As opposed to, you know, people. Yeah. And I, I, I worry too because I'm paying attention to kind of, you know, you have this whistleblower from Facebook and how that's being politicized. Right. How the right is kind of going coming at this from a, they're trying to set like as Ben Shapiro said, they're trying to to to censor alternative media voices and the like. And I, I worry tremendously about the politicization because number one, it means that at best we've got like three years. To get something together before, you know, who knows who's winds up in the White House next. But also if it's just this thing of like veering between who gets who gets paid attention to based on like what is politically viable for Facebook, we're never going to solve the problem. And I, I, I think I agree with you for the most part on the Facebook's response to the boogaloo movement. I mean, I I guess I think the problem was that by the time they developed a functional set of responses to it. It had metastasized. It had grown, it had grown strong enough to exist on its own, and a lot of people had gotten exposed. What do you think is the actual is reasonable to expect in terms of response time from these people? Because with Boogaloo stuff it was about? I wanna say about three months maybe. Well no, it was more like 5. It was about five months that it had from like December of of 2019 was when I started really noticing it. And then like you know may at the when when stuff really kicked off of the George Floyd protest is when you started to see action taken the tail in the May. Yeah. So I I guess that I I'm wondering like what is the half life of this **** like how quickly do you need to to crack down on this stuff before it it it it gets to be impossible to contain? Uh, yeah. I mean, that's the the biggest limiting factor on that effectiveness of of content moderation in general, but also in in particular these new approaches that the tech companies seem to be experimenting with. My understanding is that part of the so I'm not, I'm not defending Facebook by any stretch. I'm not here to be the Facebook Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. 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Visit betterhelp.com/behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better. Elp.com/behind betterhelp.com/behind this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about? I should have asked you if you'd like to add that seems relevant. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Calling crew. But my understanding is that they literally did develop an entirely separate approach to taking down the boogaloo movement. So that explains at least a little bit of the delay, but hopefully, you know, my optimistic side hopes that they'll be able to apply it more quickly in the future. The problem is a lot of the network approaches that have been developed are have like these very high thresholds for attribution. So it has to be like a a dedicated network that has crossed the line into. Criminal activity and is actively calling for you know political violence on like a network level and that like we all know that that is that is like the end goal or the end point in in the terminal at that. Exactly right like that is the terminal point of the development of these extremist networks. So you know we're. One of the one of the things that we're working on is trying to figure out a way to convince tech companies that you can and should take action earlier before it reaches that point. And it's going to be a mosaic of things. It's going to be combining violent extremism with hate speech, with even, like csam Child Exploitation stuff, with all of, you know, criminal, criminal, conspiracy network policies. All of those things need to be sort of thought of as pieces in a single big overarching umbrella that we can use to take down networks earlier on. But, you know, it's a, it's a. That's one of the biggest tasks is just convincing them to think about it much, much earlier, yeah. All right. Well, that's I think most of what I wanted to get into today. Is there anything else you really wanted to like kind of talk about while you're here? Those are the, those are the big ones for sure. We will hopefully have more to talk about very soon and how we're approaching this project. It's going to be a pretty big project and it'll take two years to to implement, but we're pretty excited to see what comes out of it. Yeah, well, people can find you on Twitter at it's just at Alex Newhouse, right, Alex Beehouse, Alex B Newhouse, yeah, at Alex B Newhouse. They can, uh, check out, uh, where you work at, at CTC MIIS. And yeah, I'm, I'm excited to see. Well maybe we'll have you back on when you, uh when you you you actually put out the the game. But I'm really interested in looking at that. Oh yeah, it was last thing you brewed. Oh, I brewed a red IPA and I'm currently brewing 3 gallons of apple cider. Oh nice, we just we juiced 10 gallons of apples and pears that I just kegged after almost four weeks of fermentation that I've been looking at. I've been looking at Apple Mills like Apple presses. Yeah, I should I should just buy one. And we found one to rent, so it was just like, I don't know, 30 bucks for the day and we just gathered up all the apples on property. But it's it was rad. Definitely very soothing. Yeah, we were juicing all of the apples the day that. Tiny, uh, got shot at that protest in Olympia. So it's just like looking at the Twitter saying there's been a shooting at a protest being like, yeah, I'm glad I'm not working today. Yeah, I'm glad I'm not working today. I'm having an idyllic afternoon pressing apples. This is this is a more enjoyable use of my time right now. Alright, well Alex, thank you so much for being on. Thank you for what you're doing and thank you all for listening. Go with you know, whoever whatever, deity's up to you. The art world. It is essentially a money laundering business. The best fakes are still hanging on people's walls. You know, they don't even know or suspect that they're fakes. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is a podcast about deception, greed and forgery in the art world. You knew the painting was fake. Umm. Listen to art fraud starting February 1st on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I call the Union hall, I said. It's a matter of life and death. I think these people are planning to kill Doctor King. On April 4th, 1968, Doctor Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He pled guilty to the crime and spent the rest of his life in prison. Case closed, right, James Earl Ray. Was a pawn for the official story. The authorities would parade all we found a gun that James Earl Ray bought in Birmingham that killed Doctor King. Except it wasn't the gun that killed Doctor King. One of the problems that came out when I got the Ray case was that some of the evidence, as far as I was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is the MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on the iHeartRadio. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Halpern's, host of deep cover. Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago. We controlled the courts. We controlled absolutely everything. He bribed judges and even helped a hit man walk free until one day when he started talking with the FBI and promised that he could take the mob down. I've spent the past year trying to figure out why he flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective, Bob was too good to be true. There's got to be something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy. He looks like a little scumbag liar, stool pigeon. He looked like what? He was a rat. I can say with all certainty I think he's a hero because he didn't have to do what he did, and he did it anyway. The moment I put the wire around the first time my life was over. If it ever got out, they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen to deep cover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It could happen here. Mike is possibly. Anyway, I'm Robert Evans. You know who I am because you're listening to this show. Unless you stumbled upon this having never heard of the Internet before, in which case. Uh, this is a show about how things are kind of falling apart and what we also try to talk every now and then about how to maybe put them back together a little bit. My co-host is Garrison Davis. Garrison, say hello to the people. I'd also like you to say hello to Sean. Hi, Sean. Yeah, there's a Sean somewhere out there. There's probably a few songs. Yeah. 2 Garrison, what are we? What are we? What are we? What, what, what are we? Well, we're we're finally doing something I've been wanting to do for a while. It's branching off into kind of covering different parts of like media and culture that kind of relates to all of these topics. I know both, both me, but both me a little bit and and Robert Morris. So have worked for or have have written for like an online investigative journalism website called Bellingcat that deals in open source. Like research and one of the things that we're big fans of that Bellingcat, I've talked with a few of the other people is a game called her story, which is a video game that has maybe one of the better, better depictions of kind of open source investigations. It's it's a, it's a very, it's a very good game. I I highly recommend it. I played it a few years ago, it was lovely and I recently originally when I bought her. Sorry, I bought both that game and like a spiritual sequel called Telling Lies, which I I did did not play for a while because I was too busy. And then I went to the Earth first gathering this summer and I and I came back and I had some free time. So I played telling lies and because of the content of that game I found it really interesting because I'm not going to spoil tons of things. I think you should play it for yourself and part of it is solving the mystery on your own, but but part of it does take place in like. A green environmentalism activism setting, and it has one of the more. Honest depictions of. Environments like that. So I have we we are graced with bringing on the creator of both her story and telling lies. Sam Barlow. Hello. Hey. Exciting to be here thanks to that lovely intro. Yeah, I'm I'm very excited to talk with you. These games are some of my favorite things. First off, I guess I would just like to kind of talk about your inspiration for this type of detective game, because it is it is unique to every other kind of. Investigative game out there. And it's, you know, very much grounded in open source research and like using computers in the real world. What, what kind of got you on to that kind of storytelling concept? I mean I think there was a whole bunch of things that all kind of sparked off at once. Like when I made her story, this was my first independent video game. So I've been making video games for 10 plus years, working on other people's franchises, more traditional things. Kind of when I started out working on like Nicolas Cage movie Times and Extreme Sports games and all these kind of things. But. At some point I got to work on the Silent Hill franchise, which is there's this very cool psychological horror franchise. And it's one of the certainly at that point in time, it was one of the few kind of established gaming franchises that had a story that was interesting and and took place in the real world and had characters and things. So kind of from that point I was really digging into kind of a lifelong interest in storytelling, especially what we can do with it interactively and continue to be frustrated. Somewhat by working for these bigger publishers, and at one point I worked for three years I was directing and writing this big budget video game that got cancelled. And that kind of gave me a moment to kind of sit and and think like what what do I want to do? I want to get on board another of these big video games. I was very frustrated at the kind of incremental. Change that. You see in the kind of bigger budget video game space, it feels like things happen very slowly, which can be frustrating. So I was kind of looking around this when like iPhones, people gaming on their iPhones and stuff was kind of starting to blow up the fact that you could now distribute a game individually, digitally and reach an audience with sort of changing the landscape. So I kind of felt like I should get into that. And so at its conception, her story was was me going. What are all the things I've wanted to do that I wasn't able to do when I was working with these bigger budgets, with these more established kind of gaming templates? So from the get go it was. I wanted to to deal with the characters that essentially lived in the real world. Yeah, which is a hard pitch, you know? If you're asking for big bucks, every video game has to essentially be about a superhero. It needs to be some kind of wish fulfillment for a a teenage boy is is generally what people are asking for, and the the big thing with her story was subtext. Yeah, someone's interested in storytelling. I was. Always trying to push how important subtext is. And the idea that there is, you know, there are layers to a narrative that you're not spelling out for the audience that they're going to extract through performance or through whatever. And that was always a hard sell when you were kind of dealing with these kind of. And bigger companies that had a very simple idea of what their audience was. So I wanted to prove that the audience was actually smarter than we were giving them credit for. And that if you gave more control to them, if you gave more of the kind of work of piercing these stories together, that would be not just something they could do, but which would actually be more interesting and more personal and. The history I had a kind of lifelong love of like crime fiction and and slightly more kind of Gothic leaning crime fiction. And so I was like, right, I'm gonna. Create a video game which is in that world and which kind of breaks a lot of the established rules of how you might tell a story. And you know, a lot of that I was pulling from. My love of. Some of the more kind of avant-garde literary stuff, interesting pieces of kind of movies and things, but it was it was pulling from a lot of different kind of storytelling traditions and ending up in this interesting place where, like you say, it's kind of a game experience where you're essentially researching the story yourself and kind of putting the pieces together. Yeah, yeah. For people who don't know, it's like you're basically on a virtual desktop and you're sorting through like a hard drive full of footage and the. Versatility of the game and you know people learning how to use like search terms, right? Just like people try to use like in in open source. It's called like using like Google operators. It's the same kind of same thing. But also there's the other side of things. I think Bellingcat wrote an article about your game where they like made like a Python script to scan all of the videos for specific keywords and put them into like different folders and files. So it's like you can do the thing where you just like search it, but you could like take this to a ridiculous level, like you're like breaking the game. Open and doing it like you're actually like investigating this and you need to be very quick. So I think her story is a lovely intro to this type of game concept. And then for telling lies, you kind of changed. You changed some things with it. You made like, I guess, I guess like an expansion would be the way I would describe it for how it like takes the same concept and pushes it further. And I think watching these things now is very different after being like two years on zoom, right? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm sure you've heard this from other people as well. It's like, you know, because because. Because of how telling lies operates, it's like a lot of it is, well, you open the game because you're basically cracking open. And then I say hard drive. So all of it is video from like webcams and stuff. So you know, watching people talk into like their computer camera like this after spending years on zoom definitely hits harder. I guess it was it was one of those things. So when we were. First, working on this and conceiving of it which was I don't know. Maybe on the 2016, something like that, there was a leap, right? And as a storyteller, you allow yourself sometimes to take that one leap that the audience will take with you. And the leap there was like, these people are using video chat a lot. But I mean, and and as I was starting to put it together, I would start noticing people around that time doing video chat in the street on their phones, which was was something I was not used to seeing. And I was like, oh **** maybe this is not too big of a leap. But yeah, I think, I think it was the verge or somebody ran an article that says, like, telling lies is still a great game mid pandemic. It's just real hard to play now that that like this zoom thing is our lives. I mean that was like, yeah, that was that was. A big thing I was interested in at the time was like what what is? This doing to us what is communicating over the Internet, how does that change how conversations and and and things happen and was kind of looking into some of the research there so that yeah, that was wild was. Was kind of living in that world for several years, putting the game out and then spending two years on zoom calls. Yeah. I mean, in a few ways, I think the game is aged very well because of that and because the way people, people are more used to interacting with the computer in that format now. So when there are, you know, trying to search for these like hundreds of video files, I think they can understand it better. So in some ways I think it's not, it's not necessarily a bad thing. But yeah, let's see. So I think, well, I want to talk a bit about kind of. The influences for kind of the surveillance aspect because like, her story is filmed in like a police interrogation room for basically basically the whole thing. Whereas this pulls video footage of people like in private moments essentially. Of course, this was like after like the Snowden stuff and after all of the other kind of after, you know, surveillance became a bigger talking point, but what, what got you to decide you wanted to kind of. Revolve the game around this concept of Internet surveillance and then, you know, different three letter agencies kind of fighting each other a little bit. So I think it was two things. One was in making her story. And making lots of decisions somewhat intuitively, kind of when it was finished and and it was a big success and I looked back on it and then kind of went a little bit of time had passed. I then had this very different relationship where I'd forgotten that I was the person that made it and so could have opinions about it. And I was really interested in how that game established a level of intimacy with the main character that Viva plays that you're seeing being interrogated despite the fact that it's happening through a computer desktop, despite the fact that there's none of what. Traditionally, you know that the agency would traditionally have in a video game which you know, conventional logic would be that's how you would establish the idea that this person is alive and that you're in contact with them. But the acts of like digging into all this video footage of Viva and seeing her on screen talking essentially at you created this interesting amount of intimacy that a lot of people responded to. So I was like, well, that's one of the things that is interesting to me to take further because it's very rare that a video game. Creates this sensation of, of kind of intimacy or of getting close to or understanding people. And then it was Snowden. I think it was one of the early reports. From from all the various things that came out via Snowden, there was a particular. Operation in the UK, which I think was called Optic Nerve or something. And yeah, the idea there was that they were spying on everyone's Internet traffic. And I think it's a little bit easier to do that in the UK than it is elsewhere. And this one particular operation, I remember there was a PowerPoint slide that was leaked that was like their internal presentation, which proved that, like in any leaked government, PowerPoint will be the worst PowerPoint you've ever seen, like the clip art and just. Right. But in this scheme, what they did and this blew my mind was for a period of, I think it was two years, every single video chat that went through Yahoo in the UK was captured and recorded and they had this issue, which I think is if you want to go out surveillance, kind of post 911. The the, the big problem with surveillance and and the extent to which it's now used is, like, what do you do with all this data? Like, it's it's it's just too much. So they they were capturing all this Yahoo video chat and attempting to add the metadata and sort it, which is kind of interesting because that's kind of, to some extent, kind of how something like her story worked. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. And the biggest issue they had and they put up this PowerPoint and it blew my mind, was. Umm. 30 to 40% of all the video chat through Yahoo at this point was sexual in nature. And they were concerned about the feelings of their operatives who were doing the tagging of all this data. So they'd put their best computer minds on it, and they've come up with an algorithm which would detect an excessive amount of skin tone and would then kind of flag and silo those clips. And I just remember reading this and being like, what about the feelings of the people whose skin tone you're capturing? Right, like you. You weren't stopping to think, like, why are we doing this? Should we be doing this? You're, you're you're solving for the problem of like, how do we stop our agents seeing all this nudity? And I think there was, there was a bunch of other anecdotes right in the Snowden stuff of people. Alongside him, like, you know, looking through people's webcam data and stuff and in a in a voyeuristic way and and just this constant invasion of people's rights. So I think that was one of those things where I was like, oh. This is, this is like new like, you know we now have. You know, you, you you worry about certain. Levels of like your privacy being invited and you would certainly worry if someone was letting themselves into your house at night. But we suddenly found ourselves in this position where we have these phones that we put by our bedside at night that have cameras and microphones that are pretty much just running right and capturing. And just the extent to which now technology has transformed surveillance and that that was really interesting to me because I. And a big thing I wanted to do so, you know, made her story. And, like, growing up, I loved cop shows and I particularly loved the good ones, like, like homicide, life on the street, the US. There was a show in the UK called cracker, and these were like, you know, somewhat new unced in how they work with policing. But, you know, you're still bring this position now where we're starting to ask deeper questions about whether we should watch this many cop shows. Yeah. When they're like the main thing on all television all the time. Yeah, exactly. And and that would be like, when I made her story partly, I'd, I'd pitched the bigger publishers like, we should do the equivalent of a COP show. Like we should do crime fictional cop show, video game. And they would always be like, Nah. And I would say, well, look, this is like the Evergreen. If you're a book publisher, you have a crime show, you have a crime book. If you're doing movies, you're going to have some. Movies with this genre, it's it, it works and they would always kind of push against that. So when I made her story that was in fact like the arc of playing her story to some extent mirrors my arc in that. Like at the top of it, I was like, I want to make an interesting detective game and I want to deconstruct how detective stories work. And I then started to do a bunch of research where I was digging into. Well, how do actual criminal investigations work? How does one interrogate a suspect doing all that stuff? And then I started to pull up, what at the time? Like, there was a bit, it was slightly ahead of, like, the true crime explosion. But there was starting to be stuff on YouTube and in various places where footage from real investigations was online, and it was starting to get a bit weird and interesting and that people were kind of vicariously watching these things. And yeah, that raises all sorts of questions they were trying to. Piece together their own kind of conclusions based on these leaked or sometimes officially released interview segments. Yeah, and there was one in particular. I got really into the Jodi Arias case, which was like a. And and the way the media spun that story and and just really dug into like, oh, there's like sex and murder and Mormons and there's this beautiful blonde woman who now when she goes to court it's has gone brunette and and they were endlessly talking about on cable news, like her appearance and and setting her up as this kind of femme fatale kind of ice main. On the flip side of this I think there's like the the thing with them the making the murderer documentary. Which I think I have some issues with how they handle the main guy, but particularly how they showed the totally immoral interrogation tactics used on used on Brandon the kid. And that really cracked that whole thing open. Being like yeah, the way the police are interrogating minors without without lawyers is shocking. And that was that was that was part of this transition for me was was was. Yeah. Going into her story with like the hero of this is the detective, it's Andre Brauer and homicide life on the street. It's the genius Detective that's going to come in there and. Back in this case, and the more I dug into in cases like Jodie's where there were various. Aspects to that case she definitely did murder her lover. But there are lots of questions around whether the relationship itself was particularly healthy. And by the end of it, like all of my sympathy was with Jodie, not with the interrogator who you watch it and you realize that, like, the reason this person is in this situation is because their life has gone. Very badly. Yeah. And the reason for that is everything that's happened in their life prior to this. And they've never spoken to anyone about any of this stuff. And suddenly they're in this room with the homicide detective who's like, hey, you can talk to me. I'm the first person that's gonna sit and listen to you and all these tricks that they use to just get people talking. And it becomes very intimate and becomes kind of like therapy session but by the end of it. So. So for me, like, the hook of her story is, oh, you get to solve a murder. But really, by the end of it, it's. Like a character point, no? Yeah, absolutely should entirely be with her, and is less about. Seeing justice done right, so I even. But even coming away from that, I was like I. Still feel slightly uncomfortable with, with kind of having made this thing that is reveling in how much fun it is to be involved in the police work or whatever. And so I was definitely thinking about the Snowden stuff, thinking about that aspect and the extent to which technology has. Just so empowered. Policing in general to the point where it's there's this great like one of the core themes that I wanted to dig into and telling lies was that when you see people try and defend this stuff and defend policing in general, it's they try and. Set it up so that you basically have, they talk in terms of families and and very close relationships. So they kind of like, well the government is your parent and they're trying to look after you and you understand as a parent you're going to sometimes. Invite the privacy of your children, or sometimes you're going to inhibit their freedoms because you're trying to protect them, and we all understand that. And that's part of being human. And that's all that's happening here with government, right? We're trying to protect you from the big bad. The evil is sort of like there's some tweet from the NYPD the other day that was like, you'll be you'll come running when evil is on your doorstep. Someone was saying something about cops and. Me? Once you take that understanding of how people relate directly to each other, have families work. The second you scale it to the size of government, it breaks like that. You cannot extend that metaphor. And then when you add in tech. You know the extent to which. You know, privacy has been degraded our freedoms. You know, when you start just blanket looking for crime, right, you start creating all the systemic issues that we have just suddenly become amplified. So that to me was kind of interesting. Well, you know, here is like a a means to explore that and I like one of the things that was interesting to me about her story that. In retrospect, was the extent to which it was about watching video, which seems like a dumb thing to say, but like, the choice to use real video kind of inspired by watching all these interrogation pieces of footage from Jodie and people was kind of made, Oh yeah, that makes sense. And I just kind of got on with it. But then looking back, I was like, Oh well, it's interesting because people talk about this game as being an interactive movie, but it's nothing like a movie. No, not at all. And it's not how movies work. It just happens that it. This is a video camera only similarity is that it has live action footage. That's it. Yeah. So I was like, I I really wanna go even further into that texture. And so I was just thinking about and and when I was starting to do my research, like the idea of surveillance and the commonalities between like classic old school surveillance. I, you know, someone sat in a car with some binoculars watching someone and and modern surveillance, the commonalities are that it's quite boring, right? There's just a lot of. Sitting and watching, it's a lot of doing nothing. Yeah, right. And but out of that and when you kind of read the first hand accounts of the people doing the surveillance or some of the depictions of this in media, like there's a level of intimacy that you get with the person you're surveilling, right. Where you know, if you're just sat watching them Anusha of someone's life. If you're listening to a bug in someone's kitchen and just hearing all the just everyday **** in their lives. Or if you are, you know, watching them through some kind of technology. You're just spending all this time with them and that's like a, that's like a very non cinematic thing. It's just like this, that minutiae and the time stretching out of just being present with somebody. And that was kind of interesting to me of just kind of putting you in that headspace and and kind of thinking about what that means. I think that totally gets through because of the way you break up the conversations and telling lies. You have to sit and watch these characters as they're just doing nothing. There sometimes like like over 5 minutes, they're just like sitting there and you do get like very intimate with these characters, but it almost like in a very like creepy way where where you like you feel like. I shouldn't be here, which is kind of the general feeling of telling us really interesting because I like some people would have a very and and this was, you know, completely again, like trying to process how I felt watching that, like the the the videos of all the various police interrogations and stuff was like, this is fascinating because as human beings we're fascinated by the human beings and here is this extremely interesting dramatic stuff where people are just really spilling their lives out. That's why true crime blew up, right. But then you have. All these moral questions around it, and obviously with. Telling lies. It's inspired by lots of real things, but it's fake. Yeah, and you're watching Actors act this stuff. But still, some people would have this real visceral reaction of, like, I shouldn't be watching some of this stuff. And and I'd be like I mean you you can it's like you that was that was where it became really not cinematic to me was like you know if you're watching a, you know a noir film or a you know a thriller and you have you know or even like the the the thing for the domestic stuff for me was you know you could watch another sitcom watching any a normal sitcom and the husband and wife are sat in bed chatting. At no point do you feel like I shouldn't be here because you're in the. Kind of classic Hollywood invisible camera set up. You're this, you know you have permission to be there as the the invisible camera spectator, and it doesn't feel as weird as it would if you were hiding in the closet of this couple's bedroom. So with the setup I'm telling lies, you immediately feel like, oh, I'm in this position that I shouldn't be in so suddenly. All those more domestic moments. Become charged with, like, a very different vibe. Yeah, because you're watching them and you're you're not invited. Like, right. You're, you know, you're sitting looking at this NSA hard drive and you're like, yeah, I'm not supposed to be watching this like, this is this isn't they. They never invited me into this conversation. Telling lie is very much feels like a much more mature game than her story. Not in terms of like has like more mature content, but like in terms of like this concept growing up and like evolving and and gaining more depth. Particularly because you know, not only just because it has way more characters, but because you know, you get to, you know, all of your kind of games deal with some degree of like characters lying to you and like just doing like straight lies to your face. That's kind of, that's my read on a lot of a lot of your games. I mean, the game is called telling lies, so. So you definitely see like elements of of, you know all of these trying to figure out what is true and what is not. I think it is interesting looking at like how easier it is to lie via these technological platforms. It's like you feel like telling the truth is just so much more work and you may as well just get through with this conversation by doing a few white lies which then spiral out of control. When you combine this with, you know, law enforcement infiltration and all this kind of stuff he gets, it gets very complicated very quickly. One thing that I think you guys handled very well in telling lies was kind of the activism side of things. So like when I played this game, like almost immediately after coming back from the Stop Line 3 protests and like and like in our first gathering. You know, everyone there is always very. People try to be aware of surveillance and be like, OK, you know, you don't talk about certain things if there's phones nearby and stuff. So. So that whole side of things was very interesting to like play this game right afterwards because you get to see like the other side of things being like, OK, if the if the FBI's infiltrating this group, here's, you know, one of the ways that they do it and like that from my perspective being, you know, in activism spaces for a while, not just like environmental ones but you know, other ones like here in Portland you had you handled this topic. Very accurately. Where what kind of stuff did you pull from to kind of create these like? These, you know environments and interactions between people because I'm not sure if you have experienced yourself and stuff like this or if you've got people on to talk like you talk to people who are more experienced activists. What was kind of your inspiration for like you know, the opposite side of things, not on like the law enforcement. So that was that was like one of the big initial jumping off points so. Like in terms of the the kind of real life inspirations, like the the seed of this whole thing was. I remember when this was it was, I'm going to say 2009. 2010 could be completely wrong here, but it was the Guardian in the UK. I think broke the story. But it was and and we've recently had some good. Progress in this this area, but broke the story of this UK spy cops operation. Which was a specific unit within the London police whose job was to infiltrate. Groups to surveil them from the inside. And it was horrific. And there were like a couple of things about it that were horrific. One of them was that, like, essentially their modus operandi was to find vulnerable young women on the periphery of groups, target them romantically, and then they would be the collateral to get. You know, to to to have people then more solidly enter into these groups and then they had like a whole, you know? Stepped plan of like once you're in how you kind of would would destabilize steer these groups from within. And right there. The thing that really. Make this even worse. Was the fact that most of the groups, I think maybe all of the groups targeted with this particular unit were green activists. There's this incredible credible, like you couldn't make this stuff up, but there's a famous libel case where McDonald's was suing these these two activists in the UK, right, because they were putting up Flyers exposing some of the practices of McDonald's and. The group that they were members of, which I think at this point was called Greenpeace, but it was different to the the kind of more famous Greenpeace in London. Prior to them doing this big kind of McDonald's thing was losing members, and it got to a point where there were so few people in this group that it would have shut down had it not been for the fact that there were a large number of undercover cops. In this group. So, you know, if you imagine at some point there were actually more undercover cops and private security people undercover in this group, that actual activists, which is enabled the group to continue. And in fact, the original flyer that they put out was written, I forget the guy's name. Now by one of these undercover cops, he wrote the copy for this flyer that went out and then was, you know, saw this, these people dragged up in court and was this huge. You know, McDonald's won the case, but in terms of PR, it was hugely damaging to them. But yeah, that that for me was. The thing that seemed even more appalling because because here you have this story of this state sanctioning the, you know, one of the most terrible abuses, like essentially, you know what was happening was pretty easy to to kind of call it rape, right. There was, yeah absolutely women in sexual relationships with people and thinking it was consensual but not realizing that they this was, you know, they what they were getting into was not what they thought it was. And so this. It was just. So appalling and like from a. Just to kind of base emotional level. Just. It was. It's so hard for me to imagine the pain of, and these women win relationships with these undercover officers for years. Yeah. Yeah. No. Yeah. And and and and part of the modus operandi is when you were done, you had to exit and disappear. And they had this whole plan where the cops would claim that they were being followed and that they were worried and then they would disappear. And then they would call from some European country and say that they're kind of fled the country because they were worried that that that the cops were on to them and then they would slowly kind of disappear. And this you know some of these was kind of pre modern Internet so it was easier for someone to kind of disappear. I mean like this this stuff totally happened in the green scare in the States and you know around this was around this wasn't too this was my big question was was this? You know, some of these cases were kind of the original inspiration and when I started thinking about. Trying to tell a story inspired by this originally. It starts off and and and is you know, still in based in the UK and based on these things and there's a particular. Uh. A particular flavour to it where the cops doing this work, it was part of the Met Police who were, you know, that's the more kind of gangster Rory like there. There's there's a real reputation that that the Met Police have. So these cops that were chosen for this work were the ones that were a bit more kind of macho and edgy. And there was, I mean there was so much stuff to it was horrific, like they would only pick cops that were married. Geez. Because. They felt that that gave them some level of ability to to be sleeping with these activists and not lose themselves in it. But obviously the wives didn't know what was happening and they were just. There's so many layers of this that I just thought was. Was awful. And and coming off of first story, I was like, well, I would love to tell an undercover cop story in which we 100% acknowledge that the undercover cop is banned. Yeah, like they are like, yeah, because because it's such a classic trope is the undercover cop story. Because you get to have your cake and eat it. You get to see someone on both sides. The law you get to. You get all the tension and thrills of it. But usually you know, whatever. Even if the if the movie or the story or whatever. Has a bittersweet ending. The protagonist is always undercover cop, and ultimately, because they're the protagonist, they're the one that your heart goes to, right? And the secondary characters, whether that's like the wife in Donnie Brasco or Goodfellas or something, you know, they they basically serve as a foil to the main character. So I was like, well. Come can we tell a story? Where? We we treat the wife and the activist who's being targeted and the other people on the periphery of this guy. Let's think more about their perspective on this world, and let's acknowledge 100% from our perspective that this is wrong, everything that's happening is wrong, and it's not justified. And then let's just see what the impact is on people. So once we started developing it, and when I was speaking to Anna Purna about doing it, I felt like we should. Move this to the states to make it. Feel suddenly as well because the the larger audience is American to to kind of reiterate and make it feel kind of more identifiable and have it be less quaint and British. So my number one question from day one was like, well, does this **** happen in the states? And and is it? Does it happen in the same way? And so we brought on a researcher who then started pulling stuff up and and the big thing for me was. Replacing the undercover group at the Met with the FBI and and then I that became fascinating to me because then I started digging into the FBI and understanding their history and everything that's wrong there, but yeah, immediately. I start seeing all these great examples of of, yeah, this explicit infiltration of green groups, some pretty horrific cases of entrapment where, you know, people infiltrate these groups and then encourage them to do more extreme and violent things on the record. It's the point you're listening to, like recorded FBI. Stuff and and you can hear the grouping. Like, I'm not sure about that. Like, that doesn't sound like a great idea, dude. And the FBI person is there going like, what? I don't know. I really do think we should blow this bridge up, guys. And and it's so obvious, like when you listen to, which is why a lot of these cases have ultimately been thrown out. But yeah, it was it was I guess for the project. Reassuring to see that all this stuff was happening over here. Yeah, I mean, and the FBI, like the specific FBI agent that we kind of follow definitely feels very American and feels very real. I I really like the actor that you got to play him. He definitely feels like a lot of kind of the law enforcement dudes who kind of handle this side of things. That was that was definitely, that was like an FBI. He became like the FBI Ness of it became very important to it. And it was interesting the way that the FBI they had this brand, which is partly. Reinforced by the media like they had the great idea back in like the 40s or 50s to themselves funded support cop shows. Yeah, so this whole idea we have through The X-Files, through pretty much every serial, killer media, whatever, the idea of the FBI is being like the smartest and the best. Like, that's put out by them. But but yes, really interesting to see. They believe that, like, they are beyond reproach and like they have higher standards for like, you know, if you want to join the FBI, there is in theory this kind of moral, moral check that you have to pass. But let me just look into the agent flipping backwards and shooting somebody when his gun falls out of his pants at a club. Well, then you read about it and you're like, actually the experience, the lived experience. And and we would it was, it was so bizarre because I was like, I really want to understand what it's like to be an FBI wife and let's find, let's reach out. And the research I've done and some of the stuff we pulled up was like, oh. It does sound pretty bad, like there's a requirement. If you're an FBI agent, you have to move every three years or something. OK, so if you're the wife to an FBI agent, you're essentially move every three years. And so you never get a chance to build your own career or to make routes. And so you're generally and the wage is not great, which is why they're very vulnerable to. Corruption, really. So you're generally living. There's usually kind of areas where all the FBI families live. So it's this very insular world and you start to see. Uh, where some of these wives have come out and spoken about it, they're like, it's really ****** because our husbands who believe themselves to be like, you know, macho superheroes. Get to disappear for three days at a time and we can never ask where they are or what they're doing. And there's this kind of internal code which you see in a lot of law enforcement, right, where they will cover for each other and protect each other. And you you suddenly start to see that like, uh, you know, this, this is not like. And in fact, I remember reading. So the, the guy who inspired, like, silence of the lambs, the TV show Mindhunter was based on him in his book was this guy who was one of the early kind of serial killer profiling people within the FBI. You read his book. It's a terrible book. Yeah. When I had that, Fincher was. Adapting those like wow, good luck, but it's incredible the lack of self-awareness he has. This guy is so sexist and so bad. Every time he introduces a woman it starts by from the legs up like he's describing her and. At the very end of the book, he reveals that his wife leaves him, and he kind of writes as if this is a huge surprise. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, calling us from chapter one. And he has a best buddy. So, like, the guy who's his, who's the kind of #2IN mindhunter on TV, there's like a real life version of him. And halfway through the book, his wife hires an assassin to come, a hitman to come in and kill him. And the guy just narrowly avoids it. And and the guy writing the book is like, what an evil woman like. Poor friend. And you're like, well, hang on a minute, what did your what was your friend like? Yeah, what was what was going on? Yeah, there's this. There's probably something going on there. So, yeah, it was. That, that, that sense that which I think. For me. Expanded beautifully to the bigger picture of like, that character kind of believing that he's the good guy. Absolutely. You know, he's the sheriff in the western. He's coming in and he's fixing problems and he's fighting the world. But and then he slowly falls apart. Yeah. And and and his inability, like, it's such a brittle worldview that these. Yeah guys he is, he is very once yeah. Once he's exposed to thinking that the world is maybe different, it just totally breaks them. Yeah, the his specific arch, I think, is extremely interesting. And I don't want to spoil it because I think it's it's too, it's too shocking. Once you get to the final piece of history, you're like, oh, wow, I think that was laid out in a really beautiful way. But it's it's it's it's not like shocking away. Like, oh, this, this, like, doesn't make sense. It's like, Oh no, yeah, I can see. I can see why he's doing this, but it's still, it's like you kind of slowly watch this guy get broken down piece by piece. You know, because he starts, he's very much like the superhero FBI agent. He's like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop these terrorists or whatever. And then he just like, yeah, watching him progress throughout the story, he could see, like, how pathetic he is. Sometimes there's a great one of the UK spy cops. I forget his name. If we are doing this three years ago, I'd have had all these names in my head, but he. So he was assigned and he was he infiltrated this Green group somewhere in the UK for a couple of years, had this relationship with this girl was participating and facilitating the the one detail that I loved and tried to make sure was accurate was all these cops would have a van or they would have like a big truck in the UK because they they realized that like in these smaller groups like being the transportation was like your superpower. It's like if you were someone was like, oh, I'll drive. We wanted the thing. I'll get us all there because I have this big van. That was the easiest way to just kind of make yourself useful. But this guy's doing all that at some point. They decide to pull him and they pull him out. He returns to his wife and his normal life back in London. But he he can't go back to his normal life. And so he starts and he's done all the the stuff of disappearing, but he just starts getting up and driving and maybe he's in the north of England somewhere just just shows back up and he's like, oh, I'm back guys. And they're like, oh **** what happened? I thought you had to like, disappear because people were after you and he's like, no, it's alright. And just goes back to living as an activist and his at some point one of his superiors notices that the mileage on his police paid you know vehicle is huge and they're like why is this guy doing so much mileage in his? Because he's driving all the way back and and continuing to live this life and and inhabit this character that he's set up and at some point I think he gets found out and and it all goes horribly wrong. He no longer has like, the fake ID and stuff that they gave him. Yeah, but yeah, I mean that. And it's like, that stuff's interesting. But then you it was always important to never be overly sympathetic. And when you see them struggling, no, there is life. There is certain points where you see the FBI agents struggling because of how, like, smug he is. You're like, yes, he's struggling. And you're like, get excited when he gets, like, when he gets like, reprimanded or he, you know, people are like mad at him for various reasons. It is very interesting how you like how sympathies get pulled in certain directions because like, by the end of the game you definitely. Have a much fuller perspective on who this guy is and how his kind of psyche works, because he is really in a lot of ways like kind of pathetic as like a person. And he like needs to like hype himself up for himself to like make himself feel like he's special. Then that gets broken down, he just completely collapses. I guess one of the last things I want to talk about is like throughout all of your games you have kind of a a through line of like fairy tales. You kind of you bring in fairy tale concepts into all of these games. And I like how a lot of your games are very open-ended in some ways, I think her story being much more open-ended than than telling lies in some ways. And I I really like that. You kind of. You can't, like, look up like, what is the ending of this game? It's like, no, like, you have to piece it together in your own brain like that. And whatever you think the story is, that's where it is for you. There's no, like, definitive ending, especially, like, especially for her story. And how this combines with fairy tales, I think is really interesting way to, like, include, like, mythology into these more modern stories. What's kind of your thought process behind, you know, kinding kind of including mythology and fairy tales into these more like modern stories of, like, you know, people interacting with, like, government. Law enforcement and then just, you know, breaking down their own psyches under these high, tense situations. Yeah, I mean, I think it, I think it came. Initially with her story of, Yep, thinking about. That the the the kind of meta storytelling madness of these things right of the extent to which their experiments and like how we tell stories and but a lot of times like the myths and the the the kind of classic stories that people go to those right to try and understand the bigger questions or certainly like. I guess partly came out of. The start of her story, I had, like, 2 youngish kids. And you see you're reading them, all the classic stories. And you realize the extent to which these are just encoding our society's values, right? Yeah, totally. I had this incredible book that was that my parents got for me and I tracked down and made sure we still had when I had my kids. That was called it was like folk tales of the peoples of the Soviet Republic from, like, the early 80s. And it was collected like a lot of people think was Ukrainian. Yeah. Yeah. Fight tales. And they were amazing because they were so dark. Like, the message of each of these stories was trust nobody. The rich will always win. You will end up dead and and unhappy, right? And each story would start with the poor person. His brother gets rich. He asks for help. The brother, like, is horrible. Like, this is one story where there's this brother who's like, oh, if you want some grain because you're starving and then gouge out your own eye and I'll give you some grain. And then it comes back for more grain later, and it's like, gouge out your other eye now, chop off your hand and it's like, they're so dark. And I'm like, but this is 100% reflecting what it was like to live in that world and grow up and you're preparing people for the realities so. You know, I think that to me was really interesting and and and her story tells this story that kind of, to some extent grows out of this childhood and then we're telling lies definitely it was part of. This idea of. Of yet how Logan's character, David. Sees the world and relates to his part in it and like his utter inability to realize that he's the bad guy in the story, right? And yeah, he thinks he's the good guy. And and that was like, that was partly the key to breaking his character. It was his daughter. So he has this character who's like the 6-7 year old daughter and that's like, you know, he lets down and does horrible things to a whole bunch of people, but the thing he's not going to be able to get over is knowing that he's let his daughter down, right? Knowing that at some point she will grow up and be an adult woman who, if she learns about what her father has done, well, we'll think less of him and you know, we'll realize that he's the bad guy in the fairy tale, whatever, so. That was like just interesting to me, to to sit him in that moment and and have him reading those stories and see, see his relationship with his daughter. And. Yeah, I think that, yeah, that, yeah. I'm just relating those things back to what are these, these kind of base values. And so much of those folk tales is preparing you for the fact that people are going to lie to you and trick you and all those kind of aspects. Yeah, a lot of them do deal with like. Failures of trusting people and you know, getting getting let down and being misled a lot. A lot of those do kind of follow on these same same kind of rough templates. Let's see, is there anything you're working on now that you want to that you want to plug on? Of course, you know, people should pick up telling lies her story. I have them on steam. I think they are best suited to be playing on PC. But you, you can get them on console, you can get them on iOS. But any anything, anything upcoming? Yeah, we're working on. Currently this project called Immortality, which is very ambitious, it would be out next year. It deals with the story of an actress who only ever made three movies the latter half of the 20th century and then disappeared. And we have recovered footage from these three movies. And it's been interesting because. We're telling lies like I've always been someone that. When I think about the kinds of stories I want to tell, I've always thought that I'm not a capital P politics person, right? I tend to be interested in how people relate to each other and some other kind of smaller politics. And once I got to telling lies, it was like, oh, actually. Like there is some capital P politics absolutely, 100% tied to all this. Yeah, totally. And so dug into that was like, well, so I wanted to do right by this, right. So it did involve speaking to lots of people. It didn't involve bringing in all the research and everything. So coming away from telling lies and. I mean, it was making that game was insane because it was during Trump, right? Trump happens. And I remember going into it being like, we're making this story about the FBI being bad. That's a pretty reasonable endpoint. And then once we hit Trump, you had all that stuff of like, the good FBI agents, in theory, or the FBI might be the people that bring Trump down. And suddenly they it was 100% leaning into the myth of the FBI. And I was like, damn it and just. Everything's getting worse. And it was like, oh, this is. Like so intense to be making something and speaking to some of these issues whilst this is all happening, so finishing that I was like, well OK for the next project. We are definitely going away from talking about real life issues and capital politics and then just accidentally, it's become because we're talking about an actress in the 20th century and what it means to make movies and. Digging into that, suddenly becomes about. A whole other bunch of systemic issues. So, yeah, not, not managed to avoid the politics again, but it's it's been a really, really interesting project, I think. I think once you crack that egg open of realizing that politics are kind of intrinsic to every story we tell, it's hard to have. It's hard to kind of put that back in the box because once you realize you can use politics in a very interesting and complex storytelling way, that still doesn't alienate a lot of audiences, it's like, Oh yeah, this is just using another way to interact with the world, I think. That was, that was one of the things that was slightly disappointing, I guess, with telling lies was like when working on it, I'm like, we want to make sure we get these things right because like, these are very important issues and there are some nuances and so we, you know, we don't want to. Accidentally say something that is incorrect or we don't want to give people the impression that we're. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was expecting some level of scrutiny in terms of discussing the games themes and everything. And I guess like the the video games world is still not quite. Ready for that? Like that? Quite happy to talk about the game mechanics and how this thing works. And yeah, big picture emotional responses, but no one's willing to kind of dig deeper. And we had like, as the game was coming out and continues to be, you have the bigger name developers being like there's no politics in our video games as they're like invading countries. Yeah. Make a game about, you know, you know, being a Black Ops unit, taking down communist countries. We're not talk about politics. We're gonna. Yeah. Constantly. Are constantly just saying it's it's possible. They'll always say we we both sides, right. Well we'll tell both sides and let people make their decision. Yeah. And and something that I was very adamant was very important to me. On on telling lies was like if we're making this game. It is not. The point of the game is not to give you a mush of information and have you decide the moral. Yeah, you know, good or bad or something like, we are going into this 100% with the assumption that we and the audience or most of the audience believe that. People doing these things are wrong and then we just and then I'm interested in what does it do to the people? What what is it like to be in Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month and now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. 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Seriously, you'll make your wallet very happy at mintmobile.com/behind. This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about? I should have asked you if you'd like to add that seems relevant. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people. Isn't that funny? That's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Hey, it's Rick Schwartz, one of your hosts for San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we sit down with Doctor Jane Goodall to hear her inspiring thoughts on how we can create a better future for humans, animals and the environment. If we don't help them find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, we can't save chimps, forests or anything else. And that becomes very clear when you look at poverty around the world. If you're living in poverty, you can't afford to ask as we can. Did this product harm the environment? Was it cruel to animals, like, was it factory farmed? Is it cheap because of unfair wages paid to people? And so alleviating poverty is tremendously important. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. This world, what are the consequences of ramifications? How does one exist and continue to live a life after having been involved in these things? So for me, a political gain. Is it? It can't be our political story in any media it it can't be going back to first principles and pretending we're in debate club because that just I think that's just that's absolutely lies the audience. I think you can say a political story is 1 which embraces and acknowledges the reality of the various power struggles and inequalities that we have and then has something to say about or has a particular angle it wants to interrogate or something it wants to shed light on. But it's very childish and I think we're. Definitely struggling with this in video games to be like, oh, if it's about politics, then it should be a big question and we should assume no answers, right. And it's like, yeah, this is complete ********. And it kind of, it can lead to some problematic ways, which is why you see a lot of game footage in actual, like, terrorist propaganda. Like, with like, like, with like Nazis and white supremacist stuff. They use a lot of game footage in their propaganda videos when especially when you like both sides of these issues. Yeah. It's I have a particular interest in the intersection between like, politics, extremism and gaming because then gaming is very important to our modern kind of extremist ecosystem, particularly around like 4 Chan and like, you know, like mass shootings, all of these things play into game culture. Not saying games cause these events to happen because they don't, but like, the way they interact with these people is actually interesting. You know, this is very different from the way the Senate is like, oh, games are causing mass shooting because they're not. Yeah, I think it's it's it's a completely separate thing. It is, yeah, there is. There is a Fox News kind of hysteria around gaming, but at the same time, like, and clearly, you know, one way I pitched her story when I was telling people why it was interesting. I was like, this is a game about listening. I was like, that's cool because, you know? Whatever you think about the larger politics of it, or or the question of whether video games themselves are inherently harmful or anything like the fact that still 99% of the stories we tell are about someone with a gun in their hand or a sword in their hand. Yeah, and the the the power dynamics and the store, the types of stories and the types of protagonists like, it's screwed up. And I think to the same extent that the fact that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is about a bunch of glorified cops going around saving the world, like. You know you if you continue to reinforce these things, yeah we're obviously all of the art we make are saying certain things about the world and we're reinforcing a certain narrative over and over again and not really thinking critically about it. Yeah that's the problem with making art. I mean I'm, I'm not trying to come off as being anti gamer. I would play a lot of games. I really like gaming. I just think some, some companies need to figure out why, why certain games are used in mass shooting manifestos and certain games aren't. Particularly around like politics, like this is particularly, particularly talking about like white supremacy and how certain games kind of play into certain things. Because even a game like Wolfenstein, which I think handles this topic very well, still will, you know, get brought up in certain, you know, propaganda videos because they do have cool shots of Nazis walking around, right? That's the kind of the problem with some of these things. And, you know, if they weren't killing, if Nazis weren't killing people as much, this wouldn't be as much of a problem. But because that's still a thing. That's still a thing that. Needs to get talked about anyway. This this this took a very sad sad turn towards the end of anyway. Yeah, I will, I will. I will just strongly recommend playing her story playing telling lies. I think these games you know, interrogate our. Our predispositions about about kind of police detective work, and you just get to learn a lot. You get to learn a lot about, like, people on characters because, like, a lot of these games, you know, the setup is like, oh, solve this crime or mystery. But then by the end, you're solving a very different mystery and you're kind of solving what makes a person tick. And it's very you. I really like the art that you have in your games. They've brought me a lot of happiness. So thank you. Thank you for that, and thank you for talking with all of us. About your work. I've enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And yeah, like I say, I was, I was hoping to have. Hundreds more conversations about what telling lies was about and and about these issues when it came out. But it's. You know that it's, I mean, it's hot. Just the general media landscape now, like you put something out there and it comes out and people consume it. Yeah, move on. Like you don't have that. Span of like, discussion that that, I don't know, feels like it used to used to be a thing. Yeah, I think it definitely did used to be a thing. And definitely your games have had an influence on media in certain ways. And I know there's been like a few other projects that like Netflix is doing that is kind of taking your concept but not really doing it correctly. Yeah. No comment. No. Yeah. There's definitely been a lot. Yeah. People always send me them. They're like, oh, this sounds a lot like her story, this thing. And it's like, ohh, but it's it's Bill does not nonlinear. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's like you let people usually, it's like, watch. There are eight episodes. You can watch them in any order, which isn't how her story works. No. Yeah. There's a whole different thing going on. But no, I mean, it's yeah, it's interesting times for that sort of stuff, but. Anyway, play these games on Steam and that that does it for today. You can follow the show on Twitter and Instagram at happening here pod and Cool Zone Media. Do you have do you have social media that you would like to plug or would you people if people are on Twitter? This is where I tend to be, despite its despite its yeah, I know I am. I am Mr Sam Barlow on Twitter. Mrs Sam Barlow. I, I will say I I actually do like your Twitter account. You you do you do. Post some fun stuff every once in a while. That's that's kind of a weird, condescending thing to say anyway. Bye for buddy. Raffi is the voice of some of the happiest songs of our generation. So who is the man behind baby beluga? Every human being wants to feel respected. When we start with young children, all good things can grow from there. I'm Chris Garcia, comedian, new dad, and host of finding Raffi, a new podcast from iHeartRadio and fatherly. Listen every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Robert Sex Reese, host of the Doctor Sex Reese show. And every episode I listen to people. Talk about their sex and intimacy issues. And yes, I despise every minute of it. I mean, she she made mistakes, too. She killed everyone at her wedding. But hell is real. We're all trapped here, and there's nothing any of us can do about it. So join me. Won't you listen to the doctor's sex free show every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts? Here's to the Great American settlers, the millions of you who settled for unsatisfying. Jobs, because they pay the bills and you just kind of fell into it and you know, it's like, totally fine, just another few decades or so and then you can enjoy yourself. Of course, there is something else you could do. If you got something to say, you could, oh, I don't know, start a podcast with spreaker from iheart and unleash your creative freedom and spend all day researching and talking about stuff you love. And maybe even earn enough money to one day tell your irritating boss as you quit and walk off into the sunset. Hey, I'm no settler. I'm an explorer. Spreaker.com that's a SBREAKER hustle on over today. That's that's gonna be way too jarring to open an episode with. Well, we already did it, so just keep moving. Yeah. The episodes actually going to start with Garrison saying that's way too jarring to open an episode with and the listeners won't know. That is a much that is a much easier opening. All right, this so we're doing, I'm going to be, I'm going to be reading a thing today and then we're going to talk about the thing that we're reading and that's that's the show. For you and who is here? Oh yeah, this is again. Who are you? This is it could happen here. I'm. I'm Garrison. I'm our resident Canadian. That's Anderson, that's Anderson the dog. And here we have we have to hire A Canadian for a diversity quota. You tell, you do not. Anyway, we have Chris here, Robert Evans as usual and Sophie. So we're going to talk about, we're going to talk a little bit about about Canada today. So good. In the in like the scripted what if? Scenarios first posited in the original, it could happen here. It detailed what it might be like to live in the United States during a modern civil conflict. And like one of the stories that we kind of tell ourselves as a culture is about, you know, crossing up into the safe haven of Canada whenever stuff breaks out in the states. Whether that be like an escape from just the hell that's US politics or, you know, going up into the cold northern terrain better equipped to deal with climate Change, Canada is kind of just viewed as a bastion of, like, little of liberal democracy in North America. You know, I've, I've made jokes in the past about using my Canadian passport to escape up into the Forest of Alberta when things get too dicey here in the states. But this, like, weird utopian view of Canada is not just wrong about Canada's current political state. But also assumes that a Canada is, like, immune to the political shifts that the states have gone through the past few years. Which is it's it's very obviously not. So, like Canada internationally is, and specifically in the states it's used as like, you know, Canada, it's used as like America's Little Brother. But it's, you know, it's much more, you know, Democratic. It's much more liberal. It's like, it's like this kind of ideal scenario for like, what this states could be. And like, Canadians have a weird view of the states as well, like Canadians, they're both like, like, they're kind of obsessed. Like a lot of Canadians, I think, know more about US politics than they know about Canadian politics. But almost in like a way that we watch sports, it's it's like, it's like this thing that we like watch as entertainment, like, like some kind of like sick reality show. That's how I think a lot of Canadians really view US politics, because it's just so wacky. Compared to the kind of more like civil parliamentary system that we have in Canada, US politics just looks very, very bizarre. And there's always this notion. It's like, no matter how bad things can get in Canada, at least we're not the states, at least, at least. We're not, at least not the US and that is kind of a lot of a lot of how a lot of stuff can get, really get, can just like survive in Canada longer because it's just they they view it like at least at least we're not as bad as the other people. Yeah. So that's how you know it gives some kind of some kind of sense of security. But in terms of like in terms of Canada as a country, you know, we we've said that Canada is a country is basically just you know a few mining companies in a trench coat and the trench coat is healthcare. And that's that's really all they are is as as as a country. But today we're going to be talking about kind of Canada's slide towards farther right wing politics both you know historically and then more recently because a lot of what we've seen in the states has happened kind of in its own weird Canadian way around the same time. But before we really before we like really get started I think would be remiss not to mention how the Canadian government has historically treated indigenous and First Nations. People living on that land, of course, like not only just hundreds of years ago, but a lot more recently as well. Just in the past year there have been thousands and thousands of like hidden graves found across the provinces at the sites of these residential schools. And the process of looking for these unmarked graves has like, just just started. The Canadian Historical Association published a letter this past Canada Day. Canada Day is like Independence Day, but for Canada, saying that it was abundantly clear that Canada is guilty of. Is, is is guilty of genocide? I know there's there's a few episodes behind the ******** and I think even worse year that that talk about residential schools and the genocide of indigenous people in Canada. So you can check those out. And I wrote this episode to be more focused on Canada's political shifts the past five years. But since we're talking to be talking about Canadian fascism, I thought it would be irresponsible to not mention this up front as like a a thing. Very responsible, very responsible. So I'm going to try to take us through aspects of Canadians. All of Canada's politics chronologically, you guys can bud in and kind of ask questions and clarifications about stuff. But the the first thing that we're going to start with is actually going to be on the First Nations side of things. And that's kind of how that's what mostly indigenous people are called in Canada's First Nations. Even, you know, the indigenous people up in Canada, most of them use that term. So that's the term I'll be using for some some of this stuff just because that's the one that's used up there. O. The the residential schools program is where I'm going to briefly mention a few things about it just because of how it kind of relates to some of the stuff that we're gonna be talking with for the rest of the episode. Yeah, I'm, I'm going to, I'm going to read some, I'm going to read some words by by Duncan Campbell Scott, who was the department, who was, who was the deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs. This was like a rank in the Canadian government. He served as the Deputy Superintendent from 1913 to 1932 and he's arguably like the main architect of the residential schools program he was. He was also good friends with the 1st Prime Minister of Canada, John John John McDonald. So here's here is here's how this guy the, the, the the architect of this program, this is this is how he kind of talked talked about this in letters to both his like his underlings and just like openly quote. It is readily acknowledged that Indian children lose their natural resistance to illness by habituating so close in the residential schools and that they die at a much higher rate than in their villages. But this does not justify a change in the policy of this department, which is geared towards a final solution for our Indian problem. It is quite within the market to say that 50% of children who pass through these schools did not live to benefit from the education in which they had received. So that's that's just what he calls it. He, he says the final solution to the Indian problem, it's very, very, very clear. What, what, like that that's just the language he uses. And this was like, before Hitler, though, like, this was this was 1913. Well, I mean, Hitler was paying attention to these. Yeah. Like this this is just like, this is the mindset of all of these same people. This is all of all of this same thing. Another another another quote from this dude is I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think of it as a matter of fact that the country ought to continually protect a class of people who are able to stand alone. That's my whole point. Our objective is to continue until there's not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the into the body politic and there is no Indian question and no Indian department. That is the whole objective of this bill, the bill referring to the residential schools program. So that's that's how he talks about these things. There's other letters that he's sent that's like telling his his like agents because he had like agents stationed at at Canadian, at Canadian reserves to like not let Indians do dancing because both that's, you know, that's doing their cultural practice, but also it'll distract them from learning how to do western farming. Like they weren't allowed to go to fairs or exhibitions or anything that you like that. Anything that has like that is reminiscent of, like any kind of cultural tradition that is not white in European. So he he is, he is a pretty, pretty, pretty bad dude. He probably deserves his own, his own thing, the, this this specific guy. But you can you can kind of see like these like fascist ideas and rhetoric are not foreign to Canada and you know, it's been there since it's infancy now Canadian politics. Is very different in a lot of ways compared to American politics. Canada tries to kind of follow the European model, whereas America is very much like the rebel state that tries to play on the play by its own rules. Kind of. The first main difference is that Canada isn't a two party system. It's it's more like a two party plus system. Because yeah, there still is the main liberals and the main conservatives, but there are, there are other parties that actually can get elected and it's it's not, it's not like a strictly 2 party system the same way the states is. So that makes things more interesting. And another thing that's really interesting about like a cultural politics that's that's different from the states, you know, besides, you know, Canada obviously has like a Parliament and the Prime Minister that's different, but the. Canada view and Canadians view nationalism and patriotism very differently compared to to like you, United States citizens patriotism and in in some ways nationalism have always been kind of more of a liberal, progressive thing, you know, in the opposition to the states where it is not really seen as a liberal progressive thing. Like even under Conservative Leadership, Canada kind of prides itself as a sort of like liberal utopia and that's where a lot of the patriotism and celebration of Canada. Comes from among its, you know, mostly liberal and more socially progressive citizens. They, like, celebrate Canada as like, this great progressive nation. And that's where a lot of the patriotism comes from is like, oh, look, look how progressive we are. Then the nationalism part can be a bit more tricky because you first need to understand like the English and French divide, which it within the country, which I I barely understand that, to be honest. I was, I was, I was, I was born in the prairies. That was, you know, much more like the Protestant English, English, English. Settlement, you know, I'm not from Quebec, but we'll be talking about Quebec a lot here because it is very important to how nationalism works in Canada. So the divide between the French and the English make elections really interesting because the English majority politicians usually need to court some of the French Canadian population and and people in Quebec in order to get enough parliamentary seats to have a majority government. Because Canada works on having a majority within the Parliament, you can have a minority in, in, in in the Parliament like the Liberals currently have. So even if you know someone doesn't win a plurality of votes, that can still be in control of the government in a in a minority or usually a majority capacity, we'll get into this kind of stuff later. But even though they need to get seats from Quebec to have, you know, a decent control of Parliament, Quebec kind of likes to act like its own special country. They even have their own like federal political party, the bloc tequila. And so like that that's that's a federal party that operates in forwarding the interests of Quebec. Sometimes it functions as like a separatist party, but not really anymore. So although the the, the, the block tequila is a lot is, is is is a lot more secular and progressive than basically any any other major party outside of the NDP. But despite them being much more like socially progressive, they're also like one of the biggest nationalist parties in Canada. And you know, the the the far right parties in Canada have had always had their, you know, brand of ethno nationalism. But that was that's that's been much less pronounced than the kind of like keep non French Canadians out of Quebec and keep Americans out of Canada type of nationalism that's common with like liberals and specifically you know, progressives inside Quebec, which you can't blame them for wanting to keep America. Good sense. If I could keep Americans out of America, I would do it. Yeah. But so that kind of sentiment, you can see how that connect, like, you know, be used to foster some not good things though that that, that that specific type of thinking of, of like keeping nationals, like, you know, keeping foreign nationals out of your state. Yeah, it's good to not have Americans there, but, you know, that's going to get extended towards other people. That's unfortunate. Yeah. And and like, so even, though, you know, nationalism can be a lot more progressive. That's not to say ethno nationalism does not come up within these sets, which is going to bring us to. When I briefly talk about something from the 30s called the called the National Unity Party of the National Unity Party of Canada, the National Unity National Unity Party, that is a weird thing to say. Was a was originally called the Canadian National Socialist Unity Party. Oh wait, now that there isn't, remind me. National socialism? That seems like a term with a little bit of baggage, if I remember correctly. Sort of does. So this was a party formed in 1934 by a little Nazi **** **** named Adrian Arkan. Now that is, if you cannot tell that it's me trying to say your French name. So he is from Quebec. This is a lot of Canadian Nazi stuff. Originates inside Quebec because it already has such nationalist tendencies. So our cons introduction into nationalism started at around the turn of the century, amid fears in Quebec that Chinese immigration would threaten the white French Canadian working class. This is still a big thing in Canada. Racism and nationalism against the Chinese is still a big thing. We will talk about this at the very end of this, of this, of of these episodes, because it's still a thing the Conservative Party talks about a lot. Umm. So yeah, his his internationalism was because of fears of Chinese immigration in the early 1900s, the the anti his. So his anti immigrant upbringing plus the fact that he attended the Catholic school that there was no, there was no public schools in Quebec until the 1960s. All of the schools were either Catholic or Protestant. Now this is also part of the cultural divide inside Canada where usually the English speakers are Protestant and they're usually further West and the and the Catholics are usually, you know, French Canadians. A lot of that inside Quebec. So he went to a Catholic school of which were at the time very anti Jewish because what was happening is the Jewish people in Quebec wanted to make their own Jewish schools and the Catholics like in charge didn't want that because then that be less people were inside Catholic schools and they weren't, you know, learning Catholicism. So there's a lot, a lot of stuff going on here that is kind of contributing. So he was, you know, already anti immigrant because of the Chinese and then he got exposed to anti-Semitism inside his Catholic schools and that, you know. Pushed him onto this specific path. So in 1930 our Khan made a deal with the head of the Conservative Party, RB Bennett, that in exchange for $15,000, which is like $250,000 in today's money, our our con would craft a smear campaign trying to assist the Conservatives in basically smearing the Liberals to gain more conservative support inside the province of Quebec, which at the time was majority liberal leaning. So our con got to work and started prepping you like pseudo fascist propaganda for the Conservatives. And by the 1930 federal election it absolutely worked. Bennett and the Conservatives won they gained 24 parliamentary seats in Quebec, which is a a massive success like before they they did not win any seats in Quebec. So gang, 24 seats in for over the course of just one election, massive win. So after getting the, after getting the Conservatives elected, the Conservative Party dropped our con because he was, you know a little #problematic. That's a shame. So after he got dropped by the Conservatives. Short shortly later Arkhan made contact with the growing National Socialist Party in Germany and over the next few years he just he started to gain more fascist contacts around the world. He would exchange letters, people from people like people, people from the German Nazis, would come over and meet with what? And come over to Canada and see what he was doing. He would travel around meeting other other Nazis around the world. So it's kind of just like just gaining a lot, a lot more contacts. So then in 1934 he formed his own fascist party, which is the Canadian National Socialist Unity Party. And within that year, so in, in the, you know, mid 1930s, it merged with other Canadian nationalist parties that were more based in the West, so, you know, in the Prairies like Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC. So emerged a few other kind of nationalist groups and started gaining traction, getting thousands and thousands of members. This actually became an actual thing. You can find footage of, of his rallies and they're just terrifying. Just like, you know, it's the same thing whenever you see like the Nazis, you know, rallying in Britain, you know, it it it feels different than watching a Nazi rally in Germany. You can feel a lot more. You know, it's it's, it's it's the same feeling but come home your own countrymen kind of do the same thing that you associate with old footage of dead people is exactly real ****** **. Yeah. So he was gaining 1000 numbers across Canada, you know, mostly in the provinces of Quebec and Alberta. So the the two main provinces were to talk about are going to be collected and and Alberta because that's where a lot of a lot of the far right stuff gets started out. So in 1930. Right. So that's like four years after you started this, the Canadian National Socialist Unity Party merged again, this time with various nationalist group groups and so-called swastika clubs. In that we're already inside like Ontario and Quebec. So on the eastern side of Canada, so now he he he united both the Quebec stuff, eastern Canada and Western Canada and then he called that the National Unity Party and our Khan appointed himself the Canadian Furer. Gosh, yes, sweet. So and I'm going to quote from a time Time magazine piece from July of 1938, our common scheduled Canada's first National Fascist Convention for Kingston ON. The mayor and City Council did not want a fascist convention held in their city and called the police to prevent it. Defiantly, leader Arkan slipped 45 of his leaders into a room near police headquarters. This is old heavy language held forth unmolested for 5 1/2 hours upon emerging leader arkhan wired thanks to the mayor for his courtesy, extended and announced the formation of the new National Unity Party. A flaming torch will be the new Parties Emblem Canada for Canadians, its slogan and the upraised. Arm of a salute for King, Country and Christianity. Moving on to Ontario leader Arkan, supported by 85 of his blue shirts, he claims there were 80,000 members at the time. Held a meeting in Mancy Hall that there was attended by about 800 sympathizers. More impressive however, there were three anti fascist counter demonstrations held simultaneously. 2 outdoor anti fascist meetings drew 400 persons until broken up by police fearing a clash. But at Maple Leaf Gardens the Canadian League of Peace and Democracy attracted 10,000. So this was the first big fascist rally in Canada in 1938. There was like, you know, 10,000 of these more liberal people rallying elsewhere and 400 like anti fascists ready to, you know, beat up these Nazis, but then the police beat them up because history doesn't change times the flat circle, we're still doing the same thing. Now do you know who won't rally? 800 Canadian Nazis called the Blue Shirts to sell you products. How US promise that? Yeah depending. Depending what? Yeah HelloFresh has recently been sending their why do you always talk HelloFresh? There are so many worse brands that have actually advertised on our show, but we can't ignore the fact that they've been increasingly building their militant capacity for the last seven years. Anyway, here's some ads we have too much to read. And we are back talking about the Canadian blue shirts. Hmm. The HelloFresh. Hello, shirts, please continue. Blue aprons, blue aprons. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Chris, for saving the bit. Yeah, alright, thank you. So next year after his first rally was 1939, World War Two obviously started to ramp up and the Canadian government arrested our Khan for plotting to overthrow the state and his National Unity Party was banned from federal elections. Arcon was released from prison after the war, but he continued his political aspirations. He ran for federal election twice in Quebec, once in 1949 and once in 1953. Both times he he ran under his national unity. Party banner, despite it being banned from elections. I don't know how he did that. Both times laws are fake. Yeah. Both times he placed second with over five and a half. Five and a half thousand votes, which is about like 30% of of of the vote actually. But the the second time he ran as he ran just under a national spanner and he got second as well, but he got like 40% of the vote. So he he did a slight, slightly better just running as a national single back. Not like the national unity thing that was, you know, more overtly Nazi. But he kept holding national Unity Party public rallies until the mid 60s. His last rally, I think, attracted like 1000 supporters. That's way too many. I was hoping you were going to say like 3 and there was really sad footage, but that's sad in a different way. Yeah. So he finally died in 1967. Kim also died. The National Unity Party also. Hooray, I so I bring this one up because it's one, ****** ** and interesting, and two, it's like it's indicative of the weirdness that can come out of Quebec's nationalist political bent. We can see that now with a modern, you know, NEO fascist Canadian political party that's based on Quebec, which we will talk about shortly. But even like the nationalist tendencies within Quebec's more mainstream progressive population, like I, I'm going to read some of the policy. Visions of the block Kabuka party that's that's, that's that's like the Quebec sovereignty, you know, party that is still actually very popular in in elections, specifically in Quebec. And just ahead of this, if you're a French speaker and you're frustrated by Garrison's pronunciations or my pronunciations of Quebecois. Language isn't real, and it's fine, all right. And you're descended from the French. Yeah, and you're responsible for this Nazi. So unlike unlike English speakers who have been responsible for. Is Spanish. That's my take. OK, anyway, saying Spanish here, here, here is the progressive liberal bloc, kibuuka policy positions, Quebec sovereignty, you know, up into independence. But usually it's just, you know, them pushing the interests of Quebec. Environmentalism, abortion rights, you know, pro abortion rights, LGLG, LGBTQ rights, legal legalization of assisted suicide, opposition to Canadian participation in the Iraq war. Abolition of it so far. Abolition of the abolition of the monarchy. OK, right, forcing forcing immigrants to speak French in Quebec. Maybe you'll be there blocking immigration to Quebec. You've also lost me the the Quebec secularism law, which bans public workers in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols primarily targeted at Muslims and Sikhs. Yeah, we're lost. Exemption Quebec's exemption from the requirements of the Multiculturalism Act. Yeah. I mean I don't know the multicultural act, but I'm gonna, it's great. It's, it's, it's good. So yeah. So you could kind of see how like they have, you know, all these like you know, just pretty good stuff, pretty good progressive things and then the great until the races and then they get really anti immigrant. Right. So this is like this is kind of hard to explain to Americans how like you can be very like Pro gay pro you know abolition of the monarchy but then also be like no, but we don't want those brown people in Quebec. Yeah. So yeah, anyway, we're going to move on from Quebec specifically, but don't worry, we will be back because you're still a problem. But there there are, there are other things to other things to discuss. So after our Khans fascist Canadian movement, there was a stint of like Canadian skinheads in the 70s, you know, around the same time as the UK and the US in the 70s, there was an unsuccessful Nazi party called the Nationalist Party of Canada that spawned a Skinhead gang called Heritage Front. Heritage Front disbanded around the mid 2000s. Because the Canadian feds infiltrated it and kind of, you know, cut that down. So critical support to the Canadian Feds, but now we're going to move on to unite the right not, not, not the unite right that you're thinking of the Canadian unite the right movement from the 1990s, early 2000s. But that one probably wasn't problematic, right? There is, it has no lasting problems. That's good. OK. So because of connect, because of Canada's multi multi party system, there's more opportunity for ideologically similar parties to split the vote. You know of people leaning in a certain direction. Throughout most of the later half of the 20th century there were multiple conservative right wing parties that were operating the same time which did split the right of center vote. This is in part what allowed Canada to rise as like a liberal haven because for a while the Conservatives just couldn't get elected because they were splitting the vote too many ways, leaving the main Liberal Party to win the vast majority of elections. Obviously this frustrated right wing politicians and vote and voters. Then in the 1990s there were there were, there were two main right wing. Parties there was the older Progressive Conservative Party. They're like a classically fiscal conservative party with slightly less socially conservative beliefs. So you know, I I would rather take them compared to the alternatives here. The other major party was a right of center party called the Reform Party, which was much more of like a right wing populist and extremely socially conservative party more similar to like the Trump era Republican Party. You know, they're much more right wing populist. They're way more socially conservative. Kind of what we traditionally think of as like, you know, like. A racist Republican that this this this is their party called called the Reform Party. So after, after loss, after loss, throughout the 90s and during the turn of the century, a concerted efforts were being made between these two parties to unite into one. In 1998 there was a unite the Right conference held in Toronto ON trying to bring together politicians and delegates from these two main conservative parties. But they also brought in some much more extreme Christian fascist parties which there was like 4 of at the time. There was a lot of a lot of Christian fascist parties. Around this time, so the the conference garnered a negative news coverage in part due to the inclusion of these far right Christian extremist parties. And then after the conference polls were conducted that suggested that many of the progressive Conservative supporters would rather vote liberal than vote for the new kind of merged more extreme right wing parties. Like a lot of these, a lot of these like fiscal conservatives are like, no, I'm not going to vote for all of this weird racism. I just don't want there to be higher taxes. So like, I'm going to, I'm going to rather vote for the Liberals. Then vote for these ******* weirdos, which I mean, yeah, that's that. That's the conservative I would rather have. Yeah, absolutely. So the the conference didn't sit well with the with the Progressive Conservative Party. It's politicians or or or the political leaders. So the merger plans were were cut off. They're like, Nope, we're not going to do this. You guys are too weird and racist. We're not doing this. Then in 2002, no, I think it's important that this was after 911. I think this is really the reason why this happened. One of the original Reform Party founders that the Reform Party is the more populist one. So one of the original founders named Stephen Harper took control of the Populist Conservative Party and worked to improve the optics of the more extreme sides of his party. I think it's very important that this happened after 911, and this is how the merger actually worked. So in 2003, merger talks started up again and in August of that year. The two parties announced the merger had been completed and there was a new United Conservative Party. In the announcement, Harper is quoted as saying. Our swords will henceforth be pointed at the Liberals, not to each other. And in December, Harper was voted in as the new party leader. The work did pay off. In the 2006 Canadian federal election, the Conservatives gained a controlling minority government among the electorate, with the former cofounder of the extremist, you know, Populist Reform Party, Stephen Harper, becoming the new Prime Minister of Canada. So this is how he got from Reform Party to being the, you know, the Prime Minister. And throughout the 2000s he was the Prime Minister of Canada for most of the time I lived there. That that's who I think of. When I think of the Prime Minister of Canada, I think of Stephen Harper. So Harper remained its Prime Minister until the 2015 election that saw a noted blackface Appreciator Justin Trudeau elected under the Liberal Party. So that's good. What a good system we have that that man like just sheer range of his black face, like there's no he has ravaged. Look, say what you will about the man. Very careful to wear a lot of black. No, you under no circumstances gotta hand it to him. You do not, in fact, have to hand it to him, will you have to hand him the the little, the towel that he uses to get the black face off of his face so he can go into his work running Canada. Cool. So country. So did you find out that, like, five of our governors hall had blackface photos? Yes, we did. It was, it was, it was a big year for blackface. It really, it's incredible because I can't picture like, again, I grew up very right wing and definitely had some said some uncomfortable things in my time. I don't think there was ever a point at which I would have been like, yeah, this seems like a good idea, right? What the **** like? Yeah, it's pretty much what is the joke there? It's pretty it's pretty bad. Justin Trudeau. We're liberal. Yeah, he is incredible. Sure is. He is the the one all of the wine moms thirst over. Yeah, yeah, that scans it, does the wine moms not. Yeah. Anyway, beyond making it easier to vote in right of center candidates, what? What the Canadian unite the right accomplished was pushing the conservative establishment much further to the right than what the previously popular progressive Conservatives had established, while maintaining the respectability and civility the progressive Conservatives had cultivated. We are now going to skip ahead to 2017. In January 2017, soon after U.S. President Donald Trump put into place the travel ban from from, you know, seven Muslim majority countries, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a message via Twitter to those fleeing persecution, terror and war. Canadians will welcome you regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength. Hashtag welcome to Canada. So Trudeau is like, if the US is going to be racist, we're going to, we're going to let them in. And for this for this next part, I'm gonna quote from the New York Times. Just hours after watching the television report suggesting Canada would accept immigrants that were shunned by Trump, the 28 year old political science student packed his Glock handgun and rifle and trudged through the Snow Covered Streets of Quebec to a nearby Islamic Cultural Center. As 53 men were finishing evening prayers, he unloaded 48 rounds. Six people were killed, several of them with shots to the head, and 19 others were injured. One was paralyzed for life. In the month before his rampage, the shooter trawled the Internet. 819 times for posts related to Mr Trump reading his Twitter feed daily and homing in on the American president's travel ban on several Muslim majority countries. He kept a cache of guns underneath his bed, at his parents house, and among his friends was just his twin brother. The shooter told investigators that he wished he had killed more people and he wanted to protect his family from Islamic terrorists. Experts on radicalization say that in Quebec, the French speaking province, surrounded by an English speaking majority, the anti immigrant far right offers fertile fertile. Fertile imperialist ground for psychologically unstable youths seeking a sense of identity and a scapegoat. The head of the Canadian based Center of Prevention of Radicalization leading to violence said that the Quebec mosque shooter was in part of it was part of a growing number of educated middle class white youths in Quebec drawn to far right ideas, fueled by the election of Mr Trump and fanned by fears of immigration that threatens Quebec's identity. When the anti radicalization center was started in 2015, they dealt with 16 cases of youths in the province that were getting radicalized by the far right. Last year, which was like 2016, the center had 100. 54 such cases. So this is this is kind of the the arc of things really Trump's Trump's election did respire did did spur a lot of this growing like oh these political beliefs are acceptable now right like this is something that is like we are, we are, we are allowed to do this and that. That did echo in Canada and across a lot of the a lot of a lot of other countries what one of one of the victims of the of the Quebec massacre his father said that he come to Canada. From Algeria in the 1990s to escape terrorism. And he said that like Quebec did not create the monster the shooter, but the Islamophobia that is inherent inside Quebec gave him like the motive. So this is really does relate to Canada to like the the political situation of Canada and it's very it's it's it's not a coincidence that the majority of these types of attacks are inside either Quebec, Toronto or you know if you're if you're a white, if you're, if you're in Alberta, it's that it's more tied to like. Other other like conservative values, but like a lot of it is around Quebec. For a lot of these like shootings and all these acts of terrorism, there was like the there was the incel guy who ran over tons of people in in Toronto with his car. Same, same kind of thing. Like of getting more, more used to these kind of having these far right ideas be more allowed and then thinking them as more of like a normalized thing. So. That so the the the the Quebec mosque shooting kind of woke up a lot of people in Canada to be like oh we're not immune to this. This is like an actual thing that we are have to deal with too and the the next few months after Trudeau is January announcement border crossings did see an increase in Canada formally accepted more immigrants and refugees. And and not and there was like the term in Canada is like an irregular spike of border crossings. The fact the the way Canadian media reported this I think it's very irresponsible. The way they tried to like frame this is like after this announcement we're getting so many irregular crossings that only fueled this type of like this type of anti immigrant sentiment. It was it was not really great. A lot of the old articles I pulled up for this were like had really had really disgusting framing especially you know viewing it now. So, uh, in March, the Canadian parliament passed a motion that condemns Islamophobia and requested the government recognize the need to quell the public climate of fear and hate, specifically around Muslims and immigrants. The motion was non binding, so it doesn't mean anything. It's just the government saying something nice, but it's still it's it's still sparked tons of outrage. You know, they called on the government to condemn Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism. And discrimination, the margin was passed by like it was passed by a margin of like 200 to 200 / 90. So people a lot of a lot of the conservatives in Parliament didn't like this, but it it's it's it garnered so much online backlash. There were petitions and they nationwide protests condemning this bill as an attack on free speech and the the the person who introduced the bill in in in MP named. Iqra Khalid received death threats on through like their e-mail and like they had like their private, private information leaked and it turned into this very, very big kind of one of the first things we had like these like national protests in Canada that you know similar to how we had like the free speech thing around 2017. This was like the Canadian version of that and how this kind of started. Then in December Trudeau signed in to the United Nations Global Migration Pact. There's another non binding incentive designed to provide understanding among nations. But how to deal with the global immigration crisis? Again? All these things are just people talking, but it made people very, very mad. Because if you're talking about it, that means it actually is real and it's actually going to affect you versus just ignoring that these problems exist. So really after Trump's election, after the fact, after, after the Quebec mosque shooting, then we have all these bills. This kind of ignited a in person rallying possibility and in person protests that Canada hadn't really seen before for this type of like anti immigration sentiments. And we'll talk more about these protests after, after we have a little, little bit of an ad. Like, you know who doesn't get protested except for that one time when they illegally overthrew the government of Ecuador. You have to be the the. That's right, Garrison, our sponsors only one time, did they? And cause mass. Protests As a result of overthrowing a sovereign government. That's pretty good, Garrison. Pretty good. Are you trying to do like a Banana Republic thing? What? What are you what are you doing? I'm just saying most podcasts. Three to four governments overthrown by their sponsors. Alright, it could happen here. Just the one, baby. Hello, welcome to why Canada isn't a liberal utopia and actually has a lot of the same systemic problems that every other Western country does, and it's not immune to fascist infiltration and fascist cooption, so make a note of that. The so as so I know we've talked a lot about Quebec and stuff which is great because yeah it is a problem but this exists in the Western provinces as well as Saskatchewan. Alberta, BC have a lot of these growing kind of things, but they're not French Canadians doing this. They're more like you know what we in America would you know recognize as as like rural conservatives. So around all of this you know increased discussion around immigration in 2017 around the same time people in Western Canada had were facing a bit of an economic recession. They had significant job loss around this time and projects that traditionally brought work to the area like pipelines were, you know, there was discussion of them getting stalled and people, you know, moving more towards renewable energy. This kind of increased a lot of the political tensions between the eastern, you know, Liberal Majority Canada and the Western more rural Canada. Quoting an article from the CBC, Trudeau just keeps giving away all of our money to immigrants, said Samantha who? Boy, that is a that is a French name. I'm not even attempt that one. Color Frenchy, Samantha, Frenchy. Anyway, this mother of five, she attended a January 5th rally with a Webster, her husband and two of their children. It was her first protest for any cause. We're stuck paying for all this money that he wants to give away to everybody but Canadians. My kids are growing up and my grandkids and all of their kids are going to be poor and stuck in a hole that they're never going to get out of. This is, this is, you know, very common type of thing like, oh, we're getting taxed and taking all of our money and giving, giving away to immigrants. This happened after this after the Syrian refugee crisis when Canada sort of accepting a lot of Syrian immigrants. That's that's around the time that I left Canada. But I totally remember people, you know, having very similar sentiments of like why are we, you know, paying for all of these refugees, you know, and and that that's the thing that happens in the states too. So the the economic tensions developing in Western Canada combined with the increase in anti immigration sentiments among conservatives were in part spurred by the Trump presidency led to the Canadian Yellow Vest movement. This is totally separate from the French protest movement. The Canadian version just stole like the working class branding and just used it for their Proto Fascist crusade. So the Canadian yellow vests were a group of connected protest movements over the course of 2018 and 2019. That had a lot of like in person rallies but also a lot of online mobilization. It's kind of since died out, but it was a major force in pushing right wing extremism in Canada and having it be accessible to like regular people, right. It's not, it's not like the proud boys at all where it's like, you know, specific, you know, bad people doing this thing. It was like appealing to like, you know, the oil workers, appealing to like the moms. It was like it was, it was, it was primarily used Facebook as a means of. Passing off this type of information and making it seem you know acceptable. Cleaning yellow vests, quoting an article from Vice Canadian Yellow vests, which had over 100,000 members on their Facebook as of May 2019, carries the greatest potential for radicalization leading to violence in Canada right now, according to the executive director of the Canadian Anti Hate Network. The group description says it says it was created to protest the carbon tax and build that pipeline and stand against the treason of our country's politicians who have the audacity to sell our country's sovereignty over to the globalist UN and their tyrannical policies. But concerns over Canadian oil sector appeared to be a very little factor in the discussion that goes on inside these groups. Instead, Members are obsessing over with the defending, you know, Western civilization from Islam, bashing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and spreading whatever, you know, far right. Conspiracy theory is trending at the time, and I cannot overstate the amount that these people hate Trudeau, but it's it's not for like reasons because he wore blackface. Like they find the most bizarre ways to hate this man. A lot of these people think that, Justin. Urdu is the illegitimate son of Fidel Castro. This is a very, this is kind of look similar. This is a very, a very popular conspiracy theory in Canada. It is like the the way that Trudeau is treated by conservatives is baffling because like, I hate Justin Trudeau, but I think I hate him for like reasonable reasons. Like he made a bunch of promises around, you know, environment stuff that he didn't follow through on the game. He doesn't do, he doesn't do anything. He is. He does a lot of blackface. It's like shocking. And there's a lot of reasons to hate Justin Trudeau, but not because he's the illegitimate son of Fidel Castro leading us to like lead and trying to sneak Canada into the socialist UN. Like, that's not, that's not what he's doing. Like, yeah, I'm like, I think he was the illegitimate son of Fidel Castro. There's a couple of those in the United States. One of his daughters is now like a right wing radio personality and floral like, God, that makes so much sense. You know, he, you know, he's Castro. He did a lot of ******* like who? Yeah, who would care? It's not your. Your fault who your dad is. It's just like, this is it's it's like, it's like a weaker, like funnier version of birtherism. Yeah, yeah, it is. It makes sense. It is like the Canadian version of that, like. It's very weird. He's like, Justin Trudeau is very cringy. He lies about all of his promises. He talks a big game, he does a lot of virtue signaling. He does a lot of blackface. Those are all really good reasons to hate. Really a lot of blackface. Yeah, a lot of black face. But the the way, the the ways that they come up with trying to make him seem like a bad dude are just baffling. Very, very bizarre. So in an interview with somebody from the yellow vests exposed anti fascist research team, which was a very good Twitter account around 2019, it's it's it's. It's inactive now, but this this was a very good count, a very good account that did really, really solid research into the into the yellow S movement. In an interview, they were asked what type of impact they think the US could have in Canada, and this was their response. The image of the threat is no longer the Skinhead blood, blood, blood and honor type. We're dealing with average people who don't understand the impact of the rhetoric. They're calling for the mass death of an entire religion, or they're celebrating them, or they're celebrating the violence against that religion, or they're celebrating violence against government officials. They are just one step away from outright fascism, but they can't see that, and they refuse to see that. Which I think is a very, it's a very good. 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Get premium wireless service from just $15.00 a month, and no one expected plot twists at mintmobile.com/behind. That's mintmobile.com/behind. Seriously, you'll make your wallet. Very happy at Mint Mobilcom behind this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or? Could have asked you like to add that seems relevant. You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people. Isn't that funny? That's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Revisionist history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. Hey, it's Rick Schwartz, one of your hosts for San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we sit down with Doctor Jane Goodall to hear her inspiring thoughts on how we can create a better future for humans, animals and the environment. Anything, particularly young children out into nature so that they can experience it and take time off from this virtual world of being always on your cell phones and so on. And get the feel of nature so that you come to be fascinated, then you come to want to understand it, and then you come to love it, and at that point you want to protect it. And then we'll come to the sort of healthy world that I envision as a good future for us. And the rest of life on this planet. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. The yellow vests, yeah. Were a popular movement specifically on Facebook. And another part of it was the idea of, like, Western separatism. Like, you know, the people in Western Canada feel ignored. They feel, you know, put upon. They feel oppressed not just for feeling not, not just for being westerners, but they honestly feel oppressed because they're white. They they feel like, oh, we're focusing on, you know, only going to give money to the brown people. That's the kind of thing that they they feel like in in the West, they're like, well, you know. They write to free speech was taken away because of the, because of the non binding bill and refugees can just walk across the border and they make more money than I do. So they have, they have all these ideas that are not actually based in reality, but they can believe them and they, you know, find these new sources that are just echo chambers that reinforce this belief to the point where they become radicalized themselves. It's very, it's a very, very common thing, especially around 2019. I was tracking a lot of these Facebook groups around 2019 as well, just in my spare time. It's just interesting to watch them interact. I'm gonna give like, you know, like a a brief recap of like a a typical yellow vest protest around like Edmonton based a bit off of of of of a few CBC articles. So, you know, protesters would gather around in front of like, the legislative building holding signs wearing bright yellow vests and they would do this like basically every, every weekend for, you know, months and months and months on end. Some protesters, we stand at the podium shouting conspiracy theories about how. Powerful the Jewish families controlling the world are as one gets as as one dude did at the Alberta legislature on like January 5th, 2019. Some may come sporting red make Alberta great again hats. This was very, very popular, very popular. Others made proud the sidelines dressed like they belong to a biker gang instead of only instead of Hell's Angels patches, they have patches that say wolves of Odin and Canadian infidels. I'm gonna give you one guess what type of ideology the wolves of Odin have. Yeah, the, the, the, the. They're communists, yeah. No, they're not easy. But most of the protesters voices are not away from, are like are not from the fringes. Most of them just have jobs, you know, you know, in like high rises or they they drive for Uber or their teachers or pipe fitters or real estate agents. And although their message is like muddled by all of these other, like you know, much more overtly extremist kind of talking points, they all have one thing in common that they feel like they're getting ignored and being left behind by the liberals in the east. This is echoed by one of the person that interviewed at these rallies was. Named Lynn Smith, who was a former oil and gas worker who now works in the school system. They were at a yellow vest rally on in January 20, 2019. That was like the 1st, 1st, 4th protest she attended, she said. They're just giving away our country. We have no rights anymore. They're taking them away. No more Lords prayer, but they're putting prayer, prayer rooms in schools for Muslims. Merry Christmas. You're not allowed to say anymore. It's supposed to be happy holidays. They're changing. They're changing our country. We've got to stand up and say something about it. Because because this is our country. I was born here. My parents were born here. It's wrong. So, you know, I'm sure people in the states are familiar with this type of rhetoric, but just the in the increased nature of in Canada was surprising to a lot of Canadians and like surprising to a lot of like liberal Canadians. They're like, but you're, you're in Canada. Why are you doing the states thing? Why, why are you doing the thing they do in the states? Why are you doing it here? But, you know, the same reason you know, people do it in the states is because they feel ignored by politicians. You know, that's why this happens. Saskatchewan and Alberta and BC, way more than it happens in like Ontario, right. It's because you know, the more farther away you are from, you know, the big cities, the less your interests are cared for by a lot of politicians. So the ones that speak to you are these like extremists who are trying to prey on these actual, you know, financial insecurities. So a lot of some of the protesters say that they're not like opposed to immigration, but but most of the focus of the Edmonton Yellow Vest rallies has been, has been about who can come into the country and how they're allowed to get here. One one guy named Brett Webster, the father of five who works in the construction industry, says they're overwhelming our resources. We can't properly vet these people, make sure it's safe for them to come in and make sure that they're skilled and assimilate into our country and know our ways and our values. So most of the extremist stuff in Canada outside of Quebec does come from, does come specifically from Alberta. You know the big, big cities in Alberta are are Calgary and Edmonton. This happens also in a lot of the more rural areas that you know mostly used to run on like oil drilling. After losing an election to the more Social Democratic NDP party in 2015, the two provincial conservative parties in Alberta had their own little Mini you unite the right and merged together in 2017, leading to their success at the polls in 2019. So then the Conservatives have since then done a whole bunch of stuff in Alberta, like cutting down their healthcare to. Actually a lot of the Conservative voters don't like but like they voted for because that was the platform. You just were being scared of brown people. So you voted for the Conservatives, but now, but now your Healthcare is cut. So that's that's how politics works. So that that's kind of a brief summary of the yellow vest movement and how it how it gained a lot of popularity. They would do rallies around like polling centers. They would they would they would, they would attack people. They would have you know violent rallies where a lot of like older, older men who were in the yellow vest movement would be, you know, pretty violent towards, you know, and anyone in their area during a protest. But they, they kind of it kind of around COVID, the yellow vests kind of sputtered out. A lot of the people in these Facebook groups got, you know, moved into other conspiracy theory groups and the LS movement kind of lost its train. So that's where we're kind of going to end for today is with the kind of the yellow vests kind of fizzling out. And in the next part, we'll talk about what's happening from like 2019 and the election that year to like kind of the present fascist rumblings inside different sectors of Canadian. Politics so yeah that is, that's my, that's my very, very brief write up of of right wing populism and extremism in Canada pre 20, pre 2019. Yep, it's fun. It's not fun. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's upsetting and it's, you know, it's a lot of the same problems we have here of, you know, politicians really ignoring people in certain parts of the country which provide provide very fertile recruiting ground for a lot of extremists. I think it's going to all end. Well, well, that is our, that is our, that is our official policy that everything is going to turn out great. Yeah, seems fine. I mean, like, there is actual ways of preventing this from happening, right? It's not, it's it's not a hopeless thing. We can actually do it if we want to. Just people with power to do it. Don't, don't, don't like doing it. Yeah, yeah, I'm good. That is the message of the pod, Sophie. Cool and good. So Yep, that's that's Canadian fascism part one. I I would recommend if people want to learn more about the Canadian yellow vests check out the yellow vest exposed Twitter account. There's also like there's also articles about them they were a very a very good anti fascist research team. Yeah I would recommend if you want to learn more about this specific movement all of their work on it has been great. So yeah, shout out, shout out to yellow vests exposed. That's the pod. Yeah, I'm confused. Alright, well go get your Tim horton's and tomorrow yeah, go get your Tim horton's and your, I don't know, Maple syrup and go find a moose, find a Canadian and just start screaming in their face. Their pod on the tweets and the inst just the three million. Bye bye everybody, bye a goodbye. Adoption of teens from foster care is a topic not enough people know about, and we are here to change that. I'm April Dinwoodie, host of the new podcast navigating adoption presented by adopt US Kids. Each episode brings you compelling real life adoption stories told by the families that live them, with commentary from experts. Visit adoptuskids.org/podcast or subscribe to navigating adoption presented by adopt US kids, brought to you by the US Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families. Candiac Council I'm Tanya Sam, host of the Money Moves podcast. Powered by Greenwood, This Daily Podcast will help give you the keys to the Kingdom of financial stability, wealth and abundance with celebrity guests like Rick Ross, Amanda Seales, Angela Yee, Roland Martin, JB Smooth and Terrell Owens, TuneIn to learn how to turn liabilities into assets and make your money move. Subscribe to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenman on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts and make sure you leave a review. Hello? No, that's not it. No, that's it. Garrison, we've started the episode. No. Yes. We didn't want. Too late has begun. It cannot be undergunned, that's all. Let's let's roll right into it. Let's talk more about fascism in Canada. Garrison, so well welcome. This is it could happen here today, the Today. The here is is, is Canada. That is the. That is where it could happen. This is going to be Part 2 of my little deep dive. Into Canadian fascism and the far right rumblings in general in the great White North and oh God that is a bad bad nickname for Canada. The great White N did not inaccurate. Did not really think that one true. Oopsie doodle maybe they did. Maybe they yeah, there's a good chance to change anyway. And the last episode we left off with the Canadian yellow vests and a, you know, a frightening increase in Islamophobia and anti immigration rhetoric around late 2017 and 2018 after Trump's election. And we started the last episode by talking about one of Canada's first fascist political parties. And we're going to start Part 2, but talking about Canada's new NEO fascist. Political party that also got started inside the province of Quebec, just like the National Unity Party did. This one is called the Peoples Party of Canada. Before we get into the People's Party and 1st to give some background on the founder of the party, Maxine Bernier and that's that's that's, I'm going to say his name, no one at me. I it's good enough. Turner was born in Quebec in 1963 and is the son of a conservative talk radio host turned politician. Isn't that funny? Isn't that funny how that keeps happening? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so Benair entered politics in 2006. He ran as the Conservative Party candidate for the House of Commons, in the same writing district that his father had represented in the 80s and 90s. Stephen Harper, leader of the new United Conservative Party, initially wanted Maxine's father to reenter politics, but Bernier senior was less keen on that idea and instead told Harper that he that perhaps his son should run in his place. Oh, radio and nepotism, radio and nepotism. Yep, and and politicians and, yeah. It is, it is starting great. So at this point, Brenner was more of like a free market libertarian, libertarian type guy, you know, still with some of the same like conservative immigration stuff that's that's common in Quebec, but he was more of just like a libertarian dude. Berner easily won the riding writings are what we call districts here in the states ranking at 67% of the popular vote, which was the largest majority for a Conservative politician outside of the province of Alberta. So he he did, he did very well. Bernard, who had a background in business, quickly rose through the ranks of the Conservative Party. Within the same year he was appointed to be a cabinet minister in the Harper government, and he worked as a as an industry minister from 2006 to 2007 before being promoted to a Foreign Affairs Minister. Then in 2011 he was appointed as he was appointed as Minister of the State. So in in spring of 2016, after the 5th, after the 2015 federal election, Bernard put in his bid to be the new elected Conservative Party leader. So I'm going to briefly explain how Canadian elections work. You you don't vote for a Prime Minister, you vote for a party within your specific district. If you if if your party wins, they get a seat in Parliament. Whoever has the most seats in Parliament, that's whose Prime Minister gets elected. So. Whoever is whoever is the leader of the party, they will be Prime Minister if that party gets the most seats. So in 2016, Bernier put in his bid to be the new Conservative Party leader. He got remarkably close to securing the spot as leader of the Conservatives. In the final round of voting, he received 49.05% of the vote, losing to Saskatchewan Conservative politician Andrew Scheer, who got 50.9% so less less than 2% difference. He was so close to becoming leader of the Conservative Party like ridiculous. So yeah, after his extremely slight loss he continued to work in Shears Conservative party for a few years. If you remember from the last episode around this time was when the Islamophobia and anti immigration talking points were starting to gain a new popularity and Bernier followed. Along with this trend. He would tweet out about the dangers of extreme multiculturalism and he had like an increasingly racist and divisive rhetoric. And that kind of caused some drama within the conservative establishment. So in August of 2018, around the same time the yellow vest movement in Canada was starting up, Bernier resigned from the Conservative Party with the stated intention of forming a new federal populist far right political party. Here, here. Here's a segment from his resignation speech, and he does talk in a very thick French accent. I'm not going to do that. No, no, that's helping here. Yeah, you're you're really helping channel, channel the energy. Bright blue? Wow. That was that was just direct audio. Horrible speech. Yeah, that was instead of leading as a principled conservative and defending the interests of Canada and Canadians, Andrew Scheer is following the Trudeau Liberals. I was told that internal polling is showing that the Liberals response to Trump is popular, and that in six months, if the polls change, the parties stand may change too. The same thing happened in reaction to my tweets on diversity and multiculturalism. This is another crucial debate for the future. Our country. Do we want to emphasize our ethnic and religious differences or exploit them to buy votes, as the Liberals are doing, or emphasize what unites us and the values that can guarantee social cohesion? Just like other Western societies grappling with this issue, a large number of Canadians and certainly the vast majority of conservatives are worried that we are heading in the wrong direction. But it's not the wrong direction to raise such questions. So yeah, I think honestly one of the main reasons why Bernier hasn't been super successful. Is because of his accent like he is. It's harder for Protestant white Canadians to support him because he talks with a French Canadian accent. If if if he talked in like good English, I think he he would have he would have won conservative leadership and his populist party would be way more popular than than than it is now so critical support to other French racism is preventing the racist from. You racist enough. You love you. Love to see you. Certainly see it like we do. We do see it. So Bernier faced some pushback from his Conservative colleagues, including Stephen Harper, of trying to divide the right and split the right of center vote. And some of the less socially conservative members of the main Conservative party decried berner's departure and subsequent new People's Party is just a plain attempt to pander to xenophobia and racist right wingers. But Burner went right to work and ran enough candidates under his new party to secure a spot. In the federal election debates that were like that, you know how we watch presidential debates? Same thing, but they have, you know, multiple candidates because there are multiple parties, same thing. But basically he he he was able to get in the televised debates the PC, which is the People's Party of Canada. I'm just going to say the PC now because it sounds funny. They started going viral on the Internet after pictures of massive billboards with Bernard's face and big text that said say no to mass immigration. This, this, this got very is this got very Mimi around like 2020? Nineteen. These big these big PC billboards. I'm going to read a bit from a write up and it's going down by some local Montreal anti fascists. There have been suggestions that the PC spokesperson and architect of its public relations strategy Martin Mass, has been key to its embrace of the far right, NASA's owner of the publisher of the Quebecois, Libre, which is a an online libertarian news outlet that shut down in 2016, and that PP. But that PC's cozy relationship with racist is primarily due to the influence of this one person is highly doubtful. However, the the PC's positioning itself as the option of choice for those who find the Conservative Party insufficiently right wing racism is clearly just one of the most effective tools for such a strategy. Witnessing PPC billboards and tweets against mass immigration also tweets about being against Antifa. And Bernie's diatribe about radical Islam being the biggest threat to freedom and peace and security in the world today, and how he complains about other parties are are complacent and pandering to Islamists and promising that the PC will make no compromise. The totalitarian ideology a number of media articles have revealed the far right connections to people active in the PC as organizers and members whose signatures were used for the PC to gain official party status. For instance, Derek Horne, the PC volunteer and a security agent who accompanied Bernier at a variety of events and media interviews. He has been revealed to be a founding member of the neofascist, Canadian and Nationalist Party, which we we briefly mentioned in the last episode. John Walker is an American immigrant and organizer with the PC in Saint Catherines, as well as one of the people who signed on for PC to be an official party. He was revealed to be the president of the National Alliance, a US based neo-Nazi organization 27. He was also committed. To the hate crimes at the time for violence against people of color. Following these revelations, Walker was expelled from the PC and Bernard claimed that he had slipped through the party vetting process. However, it was also revealed that burner follows him on Twitter. Others who signed up for the for the PC to be an official party include Janice Balch, a founding member of the Patriotic Europeans against the Islamification of extent, and also Justin L Smith, leader of this of the Sudbury chapter of the Soldiers of Odin. So a whole bunch of whole bunch of fascist people are working working for the party. And unsurprisingly, a number of a number of candidates have made headlines about their as their, you know, social media posts from the past and present have surfaced featuring like racism. Islamophobia and a lot of spreading of far right conspiracy theories, you know, that was just kind of common. There's too many honestly dimension and it's it's not just that the PC has a few bad apples in it. It's like the whole, the whole party is rife with these kind of one of these kind of sentiments. 1 gauge of this and the sign and a sign that like this is intentional is the as looking at the candidates who have left the party or have been kicked out when it became clear that there would be no condemnation of the far right from the upper ranks, there was like. And and just in like 2019 alone, there was like 3 candidates who were who left or were either kicked out because they, you know, had objections to the racism rampant within the party. They were like, complaining about, hey, these guys seem kind of racist. And then they were kicked out of the party or or or or they left. So yeah, that's that's not a good problem to have. So, in finishing up this, this little quote here, indeed, a cursory, a cursory look at the Facebook pages of PC candidates reveals what's been really noteworthy is how selective the news stories about racist tweets or Facebook posts have been. Almost every PC candidate in Quebec has recently and repeatedly shared articles from climate denialist sources, including many with a conspiratorial bent. A candidate for Papineau even produced his own YouTube expose revealing how George Soros is behind an international global. Conspiracy theory to crash economies and make money. Spending panic about climate change secondary to climate denial. There's a lot of fears around free speech and mass immigration, which are both recurring themes in the PC candidates, and roughly one in five have recently shared news articles from what we would deem national populist or far right sources, including lesmanchets.com, which is the website of the French language of the French language translator of the Christchurch Manifesto. That that the guy who runs the website is also involved with organizing the Montreal in the Montreal chapter of the Yellow vests. Yeah, so he he both translated the manifesto, and he's also running the Montreal Yellow Vest movement. So that's fun. It's not fun. It's bad. Andre pitri. Wow. That is. So you remember. So I didn't learn French in Canada because I was in a weird Christian private school. Otherwise I could be a lot better at this job. Yeah. But so anyway, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a there's just like a far right YouTube channel where this guy. Called a studio who a lot of his stuff was shared and there's a more like eccentric and sporadic mix of other news sources including unite the right attendee faith Goldie, who also ran for Mayor of Toronto and got third place Quebec based queuing on figure Alexis Trudell and the Alt right YouTuber black pigeon speaks. Of course the main yellow vest page was shared a lot and also sources from the highly racist the voice of Europe so. Yeah, a lot of, a lot of, a lot of not not great news sources being being shared by the PC. So that is the gist of the People's Party as of 2019. Overall, their performance in the 2019 election was kind of a flop. Berner lost his own seat in Quebec, no TC candidates got into office, and the party only managed to get one, and the party only managed to get 1.6% of the total national popular vote. So that's good. It only got 1.6% of all of the votes in Canada. So we're going to take a break from the People's Party for now and we will circle back towards it at the end. But after after an ad break we will, we will talk about the what the main Conservative party was up to during this time and and a little bit after the 2019 election, so. Yep, and now the cat's just blocking the whole thing, alright. We're back. The cat is in the bathroom. I moved my cat cause they were blocking the camera. Hello, People's Party not doing great in the first election? That's fun. Let's see what the regular conservatives were up to. I'm sure it was things that are just good and cool. If I know anything about conservatives, it's that. They're not. Not #problematic. Yeah. You just let's just go. OK? So just be sad over here in the audience can know that I'm sad the whole time you're talking. I would rather this episode be not such a not such a downer, but it it's it's hard to make these kind of an upper. It's I'll I'll make a bargain with the audience that if they listen, I will. I will do my French accent at least one more time. Hopefully we'll say doing the French accent. This is the happiest I have seen Robert all day. Like well, he does look very tired. You you did say earlier, Garrison, and this was very funny that you'd be better at your job if you could speak French. But yeah, given what we are here at, it cools down media, you would actually be much worse at your job. And in fact, if you if if you were to speak French, I would, I would fire you immediately. It's actually a requirement that you can't pronounce things to our networks, certainly not fringe. There's other languages you're allowed to know how to pronounce, but not French. No. Obla Francais. Perfect raise. He gets a raise. So let's pick up right after Maxine Bernier lost the Conservative leadership to Andrew Scheer in 2016. In 2017, Sheer won the leadership on a on on, like a platform of classical financial conservatism and a slightly more socially moderate platform. When sheer got into office, though, one of the things he faced criticism for even among the Conservative caucus was his association with a little media. With was his association with a little media outlet called Rebel Media. Oh, good. Yeah, no. Most listeners may not know what rebel media is, but you've certainly seen their stuff or felt their effect. Yeah, it's like the rough draft of Breitbart and also Canadian and Canadian. Yes. Yeah, so Canadian, so rebel media is the Canadian far right Neo fascist propaganda outlets started in 2015. That has a lot of a lot of Breitbart vibes. Rebel media hesk yeah, Breitbart esque. Rebel Media hosts and contributors have included a white nationalist and white genocide proponent Lauren Southern and Proud Boys founder Gavin McGuinness. McGuinness produced a quote satirical video for rebel called 10 Things I Hate about the Jews. So yeah, yeah, so. It's worth noting that both Southern and McGuinness are Canadian. They're actually a lot of alt right figures that are Canadian. Of course we have, we have Lauren Southern, Gavin McGinnis. We have Steven Crowder, Stefan Molyneux, and of course Jordan Peterson. All of those people are are Canadian and most of them Balthazar Peterson. Yeah, most of them still live in Canada when they're alive. Yes, he's still alive. He made, he made an insane tweet the other day. God, he made the most unhinged. Very good tweet. No, that tweet made it all worthwhile baby. He got everyone go check his Twitter feed. It is amazing you can you can hear his brain shorting out when you read that tweet like. You need to go fight this. You need to find the tweet. It is, it is just, it is the most beautiful piece of poetry I've ever. It's it's like somebody taught a stroke how to type. It makes no sense. God, it's so good. I I'm going to quote an article by a globalnews.ca on Andrew Scheer and Rebel Media quote despite a string of controversies faced by Canadian right wing media outlet the Rebel, including allegations of downplaying the Holocaust, newly minted Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer has so far continued to make himself available to the company that other prominent Conservative politicians have criticized for its controversial reporting and activism. Shears campaign organization also has a direct connection to the rebel. His campaign manager, Hamish Marshall, is listed as a director of the company's. Federal incorporation records, which show its most recent annual gathering meeting was in February this year. Following the leadership election in Toronto. On Saturday, Sheer granted one-on-one interviews with a handful of major media organizations, including a face to face interview with the Rebels Ottawa correspondent Brian Lilly. Prior to his convention interview, she appeared on the Rebel in February in a studio interview with host Faith Goldie on her show on the Hunt. At the end of the discussion, Goldie asked Sheriff if he would agree to go on a duck hunting trip with her after after he wins the leadership on Canada Day, which he agreed to. We briefly mentioned Faith Goldy earlier in her connection to the Peoples Party and her brief campaign for the Toronto mayor, but here's some more background on her and her coverage and her coverage of the Unite the right rally for Rebel Media, quoting from Winnipeg Free Press. In the course of her dispatches, a Goldie argued the events in the Charlottesville were evidence of a rising white racial consciousness that was going to change the political landscape in America. She also went to great. She's actually not wrong there. That was. Yeah, she's not wrong, but I think she's incorrect. She's on the other side of the aisle and whether this is a good or bad thing, yeah, she went to great lengths to load the 20 point meta political manifesto composed by white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, a document that includes. Calls to organize states along ethnic and racial divides and celebrates the superiority of white America's faith. Goldie describes Spencer's manifesto as robust and well thought out. Goldie was fired by rebel in mid August in 2017, but not due to her participation in Unite the right. She was fired for appearing on a Daily Stormer podcast to discuss Unite the right. Oh good, he's Oh yeah yeah, that's that's fine. Of her interviewing, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer asked for his reaction to unite the right and rebel media after what happened. So that's nice that it took someone dying in Charlottesville to realize that you probably shouldn't talk to the fascist media source. So in the aftermath of unite the right, the mainstream conservatives kind of had to tread carefully around social issues because it's like, Oh yeah, they're they're still Nazis. We probably shouldn't be pandering to them. But as more time and distance let the air cool, some conservatives went back to the same old rhetoric around the 2019 election. For instance, in his 2019 election campaign, Tom Kemick, the parliamentary representative of one of the parliamentary representatives for Calgary AB, wrote out and spread. Flyers with the all claps with the the All Caps header of crisis at the border with text reading dear constituent. The independent Auditor General of Canada has published a scathing report confirming that the Ottawa Liberals have failed to safely and responsibly manage Canada's borders since Justin Trudeau irresponsibly tweeted out that Canada would open its borders to anyone seeking entry. The number of people illegally crossing the border into Canada from the United States has surged past 1000 a month, with almost 20,000 people illegally entering in 2018 alone and while speaking to voters. The connect repeatedly insisted that all the problems that people illegally crossing the Canadian border isn't a symptom of a failure of systems to respond to a growing crisis, but merely a failure for Border Patrol to to assert control over people quotes and flyer courtesy of about this Tom Kemick guy, courtesy of Dan Olson of folding Ideas. He's a great Canadian documentarian who released a magnificent piece on Q Anon and conspiracy theories last year on his YouTube channel of folding ideas overall. I really, really like Dan he he makes very good stuff. No thank thank you to him for sending me those those those Flyers. Anyway. During the 2019 election, sheer led the Conservatives to gain a total of 26 seats in the inside Parliament, going from 95 up to 121. But they did finish 36 seats behind the Liberals, despite beating the Liberals in the popular vote by a 1.3%. So that was a 34.4% for conservatives and 33.1% of the popular vote for liberals. The margin was just. Over like 240,000 votes, the Liberals lost twenty seats in the election and the NDP lost 15 seats. And this was the first time since since 1979 that a party won the most seats without also winning the popular vote. What what pushed the Conservatives over on the popular vote was due to, you know, extremely high conservative turnout in, in, in, in various, in various writings. So basically more conservatives voted in certain writings and they usually do so even if the Liberals still. Within the district, there were still more conservative votes to be counted. And also they basically swept the Prairie provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan where they won 70% of the vote and 65% of the vote respectively. But their victories in those States and their higher turnout did not convert into many seats because the the less population dense areas have fewer federal ridings and fewer available seats. And the the Liberals had to rely heavily for seats in Ontario, the, you know, the most populous province that includes cities like Toronto and you know, other a few other big cities. So, you know Canada doesn't have the most democratic system like so the same way, you know in the states we're familiar with you know people losing popular votes but still getting elected president and stuff, you know, in Canada it's it's it's it's a little bit different because of how you vote for parties in your own little district. But you know, it's still not perfect, right. Because like I it is it, it does feel weird for the leader of the leader of the country to not have his party, to not have also won the popular vote because of how, you know, districts work out and how higher turn out in some areas. Doesn't mean that. It's going to have more seats. No, but the other side of things here is that like Canada also doesn't have ranked choice. So like still the majority of people voted for left of center candidates. If you include, you know, the Green Party, the NDP and the Liberals, so even the Liberals lost the popular vote, there's still like a majority left of center voting. So if they if they had ranked choice, maybe the results would have been different. So Canada's system, it definitely isn't perfect for how they do elections. I would, I would prefer ranked choice as you know, basically basically I would prefer that for like every country if they're going to have elections. So yeah, just kind of explaining why they can lose the popular vote but still, you know, still win a majority controlling government. So after the election, sheer announced he was resigning as head of the Conservatives in December of 2019. This was after it was revealed that he had used party funds for his children's own private schooling. So good for him. A new bid for Conservative leadership went into effect. We're mainly focused on 2 candidates here. There was a Erin O'Toole and Derek stolen. O'Toole fancies himself as another kind of like classic financial conservative and a social moderate. He feels more like the old progressive Conservative candidates from back before the 2003 Unite the right merger. We got some like John McCain vibes here, but Derek stolen is more similar to the farther right parts of the US's current Republican Party like anti abortion, anti LGBT, racist tweets, etcetera and but. As a whole, solons extremism was rejected by Canadian conservatives. He got, he got like, only four. He got 4th place with 15% of the vote during the first round of voting, and ultimately O'Toole one leadership after three rounds of votes. And O'Toole now has the has the new challenge of trying to appeal to the Canadian Conservatives more moderate wing, as well as the more Trumpian wing that's developed in the past few years. He's been relatively successful in crafting like a boring. Polite Canadian version of Trump's nationalism with slogans like Canada 1st and take Canada back. You know, despite supporting trade deals, outsourcing Canadian jobs to cheaper overseas markets because they never actually mean what they say. And the and as the Liberals have grown more aware of Canada's bloody history and have like toned down the red and white Maple Leaf patriotism, the Conservative party under O'Toole has seized on this opportunity to make Canadian patriotism more of a right leaning staple. Just like patriotism is, you know, it's more of like a right wing thing in the states. So basically after we've we're like, Oh yeah, residential schools were bad. Canada's kind of ****** ** liberals are like, OK, we maybe shouldn't be, we shouldn't be waving our Maple Leaf flags everywhere. Maybe we're not a perfect country. Conservatives like, no, you have to be proud to be Canadian. So they've kind of taken patriotism to be their new thing. Well, previously it was much more of like a liberal thing. The Islamophobia and overt religious bigotry under a tool has been slightly trimmed down and climate change has at least been mentioned as existing. But there has also been increased discussion on trying to hack down Canada's healthcare and privatize more aspects of it. Which, yeah, good job guys, take away the only good part of Canada. I, like the province of Alberta under Jason Kenney, has done this to a disastrous effect, raising the cost of medical care for lower class people, many of whom voted conservative. I have family in Alberta and the just the past five years the changes to the healthcare system there has been horrible. It's not. It's not great. So basically what O'Toole wants is he wants. He wants to just privatize more elements of it. He has a specific term he uses like he wants like a. He wants to like split the Fed, like the like the taxpayer healthcare and privatize health care into 2 sections and you can choose which one to join in anyway. It's silly. Basically what O'Toole wants is he wants, he wants to be just privatize more elements of it. He has a specific term he uses like he wants like a. He wants to like split the Fed like the like the taxpayer healthcare and privatized healthcare into 2 sections and you can choose which one to join in anyway. It's silly. O'Toole did take a wee little stance to distance himself from the more extreme wings of his party when he decided to remove MP Derek, stolen from the caucus. O'Toole announced that Solon would not be allowed to run as a candidate for the for the Conservative Party in the next election either, saying racism is a disease of the soul, repugnant to our core values. It has no place in our country and has no place in the Conservative Party of Canada. I won't tolerate it. Also, last year, O'Toole refused to say whether he thinks systemic racism exists. The but the decision to remove Solen was made after it was revealed that he accepted a donation from the Canadian Nazi Paul Fromm during his during silence bid for conservative leadership back in the 90s. From was the figurehead of the Canadian Far Right movement, appearing at Heritage front rallies and also caught on video at a party celebrating Hitler's birthday, which he lost his high school teaching job over. So, well, look, it's just polite to celebrate a guy's birthday, you know, whether or not he's Hitler. Under no circumstances do you got us celebrate his first birthday birthday. This isn't a hot tick. So there has been a bit of the there has been a bit of a rift in the Conservative Party over how much Trumpian rhetoric should be allowed in the Canadian Conservative Party. And this kind of rift has definitely increased after January 6th. The the problem for conservative politicians is that to win elections, they need to appeal to the largest swath of voters, and that includes more socially conservative and increasingly far right rural folks. But if they go too far, they'll lose the moderates to the Liberal Party. So you have to like this delicate balance, but to kind of give you like an overview of what the current state of the conservative like voter ship is, 4 in 10 of the Conservative Party of Canada members. So, you know, people signed up to vote in the party. You know, regular people four and 10 would say that they would have voted for Trump. Four in 10 say that they think Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election and four in 10 say that the Conservative and foreign 10 believe that the January 6th Riot was staged or was done by the Democrats. Then my antiva, so that's kind of the state of the Conservative Party in Canada for like the for the voters. So, you know politicians have to kind of in order to win they need they need to they still need to appeal to those people, but they don't want to do that thing usually like they usually don't like usually they're like a big talking point is like rejecting the divisive politics of the of of the of the United States. Like that's a big thing people say in Canada is that they they they they don't want it to become like you know like. A fighting match, like the other main difference between Canada's elections and American elections is like, America is like, always an election season, right? Like every, you know, even after each election, it's like you feel like campaigns start right up again. Canada's campaigns only run like a few months before the election. Like, like, it does not like always things you guys do objectively better than us and a lot of the world does. It's not just Canada. The idea that, like, oh, elections are terrible. We should spend as little time as possible. It's like two or three months of campaigning. That's it. Like it's not, it's not like a two year, four year thing. No, that is a thing that we should absolutely. The election should be about 11 minutes from the start of the campaign to the votes. Everybody gets a minute to explain their their politics and then we vote and then we throw them into the sea. Yeah. So trying to trying to craft marketing to the divided right wing. It's been interesting to watch. You know, there's like videos about tool walking through you know, downtowns with pride flags in the background and you know, featuring. Disable like minority Canadians intermingling. But then you also have a tool like rightly against cancel culture feeling suggestions that the that the Liberal government's pandemic response is part of a socialist great reset and pulling out the dog whistle on like China and the coronavirus you know as often as he can. Tools in the past also downplayed Canadians residential schools program and described the efforts of activists pushing to removal of statues of the of the residential school architects as stupid. So I I do think O'Toole. Prefers a conservative party resistance to far right branding, but he knows he needs to appeal to those voters in order to win elections. So it's it's it's it's just, it's the thing that's not great, but it's interesting to watch. In August of 2021, Justin Trudeau noted blackface appreciator called a snap election in an effort to gain more parliamentary seats in hopes of getting a majority liberal government. Something a Prime Minister should not be allowed to do, by the way, like a Prime Minister should not be able to decide when to do elections. That is like. Totally not be a thick like what? No, you shouldn't do that. But anyway, as the 2021 snap election ramped up, the Conservative Party under tool made some extremely questionable choices for their marketings and their slogans. What does the phrase secure the future bring to mind? Anything 14 yeah, so that became the new tagline for the entire Conservative party under O'Toole, right? OK, sure. We got, we got, we got, we got, secure the future. Billboards we got, we got, we got websites, conservative.ca/secure the future, we got mailers, magazine covers, all emblazoned with secure the future or secure our future. You know what? I'll secure our future, Garrison. The, the, the Chevron ads that keep popping up. Uh-huh. Yeah. That we keep trying. Securing our future. Yeah. Great. You're welcome. It's a great time. Chevron Appreciators, which is everyone. Ah, we're back in just appreciating Chevron. Just like Justin Trudeau appreciates. Like Justin Trudeau. Yeah. So secure the future. Great slogan. Not a good slogan. Bad. I'm going to read a bit from a Mailer that went out to Conservative party members after O'Toole one leadership quote. I firmly believe Canada has everything it has, everything it takes to recover from COVID-19 and enjoy a prosperous future if we have a government that knows how to secure the future, if the truth. If the Trudeau liberals stay in power, they'll continue spending taxpayer money at pandemic era levels long before long after the virus is behind us. The result? All the things we love about Canada will be in serious jeopardy. Our debt will become out of control, and they'll never be able to get back the Canada you and I grew up in the kind of Canada our children and grandchildren deserve. So later on in the page, O'Toole says we need to stand up to the Chinese Communist Party and hold Beijing accountable for sabotaging our economy and taking jobs from Canadian workers. And on August 16th, the Canadian Conservative Party Twitter account tweeted out. And I quote. Canada's recovery program will secure the future for you, your children and your grand and your grandchildren, so that's fun also. Also, guess how, guess guess how many words is in that last sentence? 14. It's 14 of them. Yeah. Yeah. We're going back to calling Canada Kanada again. Yeah, it's like a dog whistle, but except for, you know, a dog whistle. Only dogs can hear it. Except everyone hears it. Just it's just a whistle. It's just it's just a regular whistle. It's that he just tweeted it tweet yeah. So as anyway, as O'Toole was getting all secure, the future Pilled Canada's actual far right populist party, the People's Party was gaining much more popularity amid the pandemic and the anti mask, anti lockdown, Anti VAX protests. The COVID-19 pandemic was a gift to the far right in general as it allowed the injection and proliferation of conspiracy theories to accelerate at levels almost never before seen and provided fair recruiting ground to gain new followers. The PC latched on to this and was extremely successful. They were, you know, they sponsored protests, they did a whole bunch of campaigns that are around like anti mask stuff, anti vaccine, you know, all, all of it. So the PC was able to be not just a safe harbor for anti immigration, white nationalists and Neo Nazis and other far right groups, but also now more mainstream anti. Lockdown anti VAX and anti government protesters as well as you know gun rights activists and some general rule workers feeling left behind from even the Conservative Party. So the PC has changed from a niche white nationalist party to a full blown far right populist force. What burner and the and the PC have done so effectively since the pandemic is to use the broader concerns around COVID and freedom and the more you know mainstream concerns about economic anxieties, job loss, lots of businesses, immigration and changing culture and then and managed to roll all of these things up into one. Tight package, which is really appealing to a lot of Canadians who are very anxious about the state of their country, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. So the results of the September snap election, which is you know last month were basically the same as the 2019 election, except the PC went from 1.6% of the vote to 5% of the vote, a big a big change. They that means they were ranking above the Green Party and nearly tying the block kabua. So they made like, I know like 1% of 5% doesn't seem like tons, but like this is a really big jump for a brand new party, especially especially if they're ahead of the Green Party. And tying the block party, that is like a notable shift, the University of Gulab professor of of Political Science Tamara Small said. That said this after the results of the last snap election quote, I think the only leader who's a static about last night's results is Bernier. I don't think they're going anywhere. I think it seems that he's taking the populism and attached to foreign politics the idea that Canada was immune to this sort of far right populism, the idea that Canada was going to be free from the populism that we saw in Europe, like what Nigel Farage is in the UK. But I think a lot of people are wondering if Bernier is just going to say I'm not here to form an actual government, I'm just here to challenge the system and use that as a way of gaining massive support. After a CTV News emailed the PC for comment for their post election story, the party spokesperson sent back A1 line e-mail response. I don't respond to requests from leftist activists masquerading as journalists get lost, so that's fun. Also, in late September, Bernier's Twitter account was temporarily suspended for encouraging his supporters to attack journalists. Great. Yeah, just not like, I'm OK with criticizing journalists and stuff because most journalists are like, not great, but when you're. Using your political Twitter account to just like tell people to just go attack the press. Usually it's a bad sign of of like a political party. Usually it's just like, yeah, political parties when they do that usually leads to bad things. We are going to talk about one one kind of wrapping up here. We're talking about 1 Ontario People's Party candidate named Mario Greco who was a another, another high school teacher and self-proclaimed game developer. Of of of a few years ago I I see Chris as winsick because like you know this can't lead to good things, the gamers it can't be good. So a few years ago Greco made a video game called Happy Culture Shootout. Good quoting an article from pressprogress.ca Happy Culture Shootout is a space invader style game that allows players to control spaceship that shoots laser beams at characters of various identity groups. Quote This scheme is about an alien order to invade Earth and transport all humans. Happyland Greco says on his personal website, which includes other games that he authored like Die Mar, which is about a young, misunderstood hero who sees deliberate post war Germany. Oh boy in a in a system in a since deleted video obtained by press progress, the People's Party candidate delivered a presentation to university students several years ago offering his postmortem on the game. Recco expressed surprise that his students and faculty reacted negatively to the game, with one calling it the most racist game I've ever played. Greco says his game is not racist in the slightest, noting that he made fun of his own Italian heritage. He also claimed that some students thought his gay pride parade level was hilarious. My friends and I love people of all cultures and we also love humor of all types. That includes harmless racist jokes, Greco said in the video. The game was intended to make a joke about how ridiculous cultural stereotypes are so we can laugh about it together and move on with our lives. During the presentation, the People's Party candidate offered a interesting side note about the games Israel level according according to Greco, a faculty member at the university strongly recommended that he removed Jewish stereotypes from the game. He was like, no, get rid of it immediately, don't have any religious. Whatsoever, I know that subject is very, very touchy. So yeah, this is just a a game where you mass shoot minority people. Anyway, in 26 and in 2017, Greco posted a photo on Facebook of an illustration of Pepe the Frog, which he said was drawn by one of his students in in in the whiteboard of his York Region High School. Pepe had a little speech bubble that said, free Kekistan. Great, yeah, yeah. So now the gamers are Nazis. So currently, Greco is spending his time tweeting about critical race theory and trying to get into office under the People's Party banner. In his Twitter bio, he calls himself an egalitarian libertarian nationalist, and he still also teaches computer science at Ontario High School different ways people call themselves fascists. It's really great. It's not fun. These people are all, all the worst, most scum. And one one more thing before we sign off. Last month, right before the September election, I was forwarded some pictures. Of some People's Party of Canada posters and Flyers put up linking to their campaign website that someone came across around town. Not not Portland. Like somewhere in Canada. Under the PC logo, there was a, you know, a pictures of people's faces and big black text that said, it's OK to be white. Great, rad. So that's the liberal utopia of Canada, everybody. I would love to basically. Like, the reason I wanted to put the episodes together is because like we lots of, like, you know, we make a lot of jokes about, you know, escaping to Canada as the states gets too fascist. And I just went up like, say, like, I'm not saying Canada is going to celebrate at the same rate, but Canada is not immune to the same thing. Like it's it's, it's it's it's there. Can't run away from you, authoritarianism by moving no yeah to a country with no history of authoritarianism. Like I don't know Germany. Yeah. And I think everything is supported with Canada particularly is that, like, Canada is like affected by American political trends. And you see this absolutely. Like, like one of the things that I remember looking at when I was, when I was looking into sort of, if you look at the history of like anti Asian riots, for example. So there's this huge wave in 1907 that goes like it goes all the way up the West Coast, a lot of them. And it ends in Toronto. Yeah. A lot of you know. Yeah. And you see that like and you see that like today too, where it's like, yeah, the Toronto I think has the highest rate of. Of anti agent attacks like in North America? That's not surprising. Pretty impressive considering like the absolute **** show going on in like New York and LA and Seattle and it's like no Toronto worse. No, it's real bad. I talk a lot about how the far right is getting a lot, a lot more, a lot stronger of an influence in Alberta. And it is spreading into other eastern eastern provinces, not just inside Quebec. You know, there was the Incel attack in Toronto a few years ago that killed like, I think like a dozen people. Of course there was the Quebec mosque shooting. There's been a lot of these kind of things popping off. And, you know, there's there's even more starting in like a British Columbia as well, which is, which has a decent far right kind of influence at least on the eastern side of BC away from like. Victoria and from Vancouver. So yeah, I just wanted to like place together and be like, hey, you know, it's it's worth looking at these countries that we usually view as you know generally doing better and be like, no like it's the same thing is happening there and it's all, it's all part of the same overarching slide rightward that we've seen in both in like the UK we were even seeing it now in Germany we're seeing it, you know, in this obviously the states under Trump and in Canada even though the Liberals have won the past few elections, it's still scooting rightward. So yeah, I just wanted to put this thing together. If you want to keep up to date on Canadian stuff, you can check out the Canadian Anti Hate Network which does work tracking extremism in Canada. And, yeah, that is a that is what I put together. Thanks, Garrison. Yeah. You're welcome, everson. You're welcome. Well, that's the episode that's going to do it for us here. And it could happen here today, come back tomorrow or, you know, whenever. And we'll talk about another part of the world. Maybe, I don't know. Portugal. **** it. I I don't have stuff pulled for portrait mode. You have to give me way more heads up for that by tomorrow. No, that's what we're doing now. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram and it could happen here. Putting calls on media, leave five star reviews, whatever. Goodbye. Goodbye. 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 from Cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. It could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources. Thanks for listening. 4th 1968 Doctor Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. Case closed right, James Earl Ray was a pawn for the official story. 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