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Sports Illustrated Weekly is available every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe now. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome to it happens sometimes. The podcast where it's happened. ****. Garrison. Chris. Somebody, somebody, somebody picked this up. This is on you. Anybody, anybody got help you out of this one? OK, well, you know what podcast this is? You've been listening, presumably for months. Or this is your first time listening. If so, I've probably lost you already with that Bush. League introduction Jesus Christ, I'm. I'm Robert Evans. This is a show about how things fall apart and how to maybe stop him from falling apart as much. And today we're talking to some people who were in kind of the best case scenario situation for having a bunch of authoritarians try to dominate your country. By which I mean we're talking to some Chilean activists who, who, who won. And as much as it's it's possible to win in the world. It's a pretty exciting situation happening there. I'm excited to introduce people to like what's been going on, but first I want to introduce our guests for today. Y'all. Wanna you wanna say hello? Hello? My name is Jeremiah, I'm from the United States, but I've lived in Chile for the last 10 years and I'm Stephanie. Good, I'm Jillian and and I'm I'm live here with with my my husband. Hi, I'm Nicholas. I'm. I'm chillin, and I have been living here for my whole life. Yeah, so we started a small group called Vecinos Unidos to do some activism, to try to get out the vote for the plebiscito and to try to. Last year to get the Constitution approved to be voted on and and it was successful. So we are proud of that, the small bit of work that we did to help that happen. And so today the Constitution is being written and it's a very exciting time. Yeah. And I want to let's pull back a little bit because the last time we we talked about Chile on behind the ******** in 2019 when a protest that started as some, I think it's fair to say, zoomers. Uh, protesting a fare increase by like jumping fares at the, at the the, the underground. The subway was met with police doing police stuff, which was met with people taking to the streets in very significant numbers, which is the thing that by now a lot more people are experienced with. But unlike kind of what happened in my country, you did it, you made them blink. And and that's what the plebiscite is, right? Like the there was an agreement made to give because Julie was still, if I'm not mistaken, governed. Through the same constitution that that Pinochet had had right. Yeah, and Pinochet, famously not a great guy. So I wonder if you might give us kind of an overview of y'all's experience during that time from like the start of the protests to oh **** we might actually get to change things that are pretty fundamental level in our country. Yeah, so it was incredible time about exactly two years ago. So just the 18th of October, I was just the two year anniversary and as you said, it all started with. Literal high schoolers, 16 year olds who are protesting a 30 peso increase, which is, you know, like 20 cent increase in the metro, but we of course have one of the most expensive metros in the world and a very low. Minimum wage here. And so, as you said, they went out there and started to jump the turnstiles, but in massive groups, hundreds of them going to the metro together and all jumping together and. In response, the government ended up closing the metros. And so it was this Friday night and we were having dinner, and suddenly the metros were all closed and everyone had to just walk home from work or dinner or where they were. And that was kind of the beginning of everything. And it was almost like the government brought it on themselves because suddenly there were thousands of people on the streets just because they had no other way to get home. And from there they there were protests, and the protests were met with extreme police oppression and water cannons and tear gas and all of that. And eventually it led to one March which had over 1,000,000 people throughout Chile marching and a series of marches and protests basically every week for months. And finally it came down to. They announced that there would be this plebiscite and there was a vote, yes or no, to create a new constitution because yes, Chile is still there. There were some reforms in the early 2000s to the Constitution, but still we live under the Constitution written by Highway Guzman, kind of Pinochet's right hand man and we happen to live. Nico is our good. Friend and also our next door neighbor and we live about four blocks from the Plaza and formerly Plaza Italia. Now the protesters have deemed it Plaza Dignidad and so we've been just in the middle of it and for for a couple of months our our whole neighborhood was like a war zone and just really crazy protest every single day and and tear gas and and all of that and. It was, it was really intense for a while and it still is. You know, last Friday we, you know, were met with tear gas and water cannons again. So it's it's it's even though the the Constitution is being written again and the plebiscite was a year ago, but the police are still out there being ********. I'm curious what each of you kind of sees as the moment when or if you because maybe I was going too optimistic, right? Like I guess I'm wondering, do you think that a corner has been turned and and if So what was kind of the moment each of you felt that like, Oh my God, we might actually. This isn't just going to be like showing up to get the **** kicked out of us. We we're going to get some at least of what we're fighting for. Yeah, I mean, I think that. Like that particular moment was when we finally went to the. Collections and what you call the referendum for the for this new constitution and we were kind of skeptic about the the percentage of people who will approve this new constitution. Because, uh, a few months ago or a few weeks before this referendum, we have like a question polls. We had the polls and they were kind of 5050. So we were kind of skeptic about are we going to have a new constitution or not? And that the same night, I mean the the process very quick, so after I know the the. This thing closes at 6:00 PM and then you have the results like 3 hours later. So on the same day we are having the the results and it was like 80 against 20. So it was like kind of shocking. I mean we I I think that nobody was expecting to have this kind of 80% of the of the people in Chile were and went to you know throw to the bin the Constitution. So it was kind of like a I know I would say. Like the best moment. Yeah, there's this. There's an American, a deceased American sociologist who who wrote an essay that I find quite influential called the Shock of Victory. And it's about how activists often fail to take advantage of, of their momentum, like, because they're kind of surprised at the success early on. And then they don't properly take advantage of what they have when they have it. And and, you know, progress gets turned back, which I think we've seen happen in the United States. In the wake of of what happened here last summer, why do you think that that hasn't happened in Chile. What do you think it is that that that enabled you y'all to actually keep the pressure on and and take advantage of that that moment in time which which never I I guess that's what I'm impressed with the most is that you all did manage to to make that momentum work for you rather than kind of letting it pull you off balance. And I I guess I'm just trying to get a handle on on how. I guess for me, what I think it's lost a lot in the conversation is the Primera Linea, so the first line of defense. And so you had a bunch of young people, anarchists, you know, just crazy young people who went out there to fight with the cops every single day. And it was really impressive. And a lot of times we, I don't know, I feel like they don't get the credit. They deserve because, you know, they're the delinquents and they, you know, we talk a lot about the big marches when there was a million people in the street and and obviously, like Nico said, winning the vote by 79% showed that it was something that everyone in Chile wanted. But it it never would have happened if it weren't for the this small group of of fighters who are there every single day. Facing tear gas and water cannons and police beating them up with, you know, throwing rocks and stuff like that. So. I think that's the main thing. It wasn't like once a month or even once a week. It was every single day and they were there on the front line and it's none of this would be possible without them. That's fascinating to me because obviously things like that, groups like that existed here, like in Portland when every night for not as long but for not an insignificant amount of time. And it was those same. It was a lot of these kind of young anarchist frontliners who were willing to go toe to toe with the cops every night, but you didn't have. You didn't have that kind of larger, more moderate populace backing them up. And I guess one of the things I'm curious about is what was kind of the you mentioned you don't think they get the credit they deserve. Was there a broad attitude that like these people are the ones going face to face with the cops so that those of us, you know, people who are older people who aren't as good as people who can't physically take as much abuse can still show up? Or was it I I'm kind of curious how how those people represented what they were doing and how it how it was seen by most of kind of the more moderate? People who still supported change around you because that that dynamic exists in any mass protest movement and I'm it it it worked where you are and I'm trying to get a handle on maybe how it was different than than what I saw in Portland. So now a lot of them are in jail and or without one eye. So it's it's really terrible because we have all these new beautiful process, but. We are without really completing democracy, with the liberty, with the for this guy or or democracy for all this. Person that loose eyes or. Tomorrow. Yeah, and everyone that was injured. So yeah, a lot of protests nowadays actually. I think today right now there's a protest going on to free the political prisoners and but. Yeah. I mean I think they're even among, you know obviously with 80% of the country voted for the new constitution. So there's a lot of different points of view there. But but yeah there was division even among the left. A lot of people said, you know this is not the form of this is not the way to protest and we should not be violent and you know burning things and but but there was a lot, I mean you saw a lot of the opposite where people were were saying just as you said. Like those out there on the front line are the reason that the older people and others can come out and feel safer to protest. Because the Primera Linea is kind of taking the brunt of the violence from the police and that allows the the older people and those who are are less confrontational to be out there and protest. So for me some of some of the most inspiring signs I remember seeing are like. Folks that are 80 years old and and they have signs that say, you know, gracias a la Primera Linea, you know, like thank you to the the front liners who who are taking that violence so that they are able the others to to protest in a more peaceful way. That's such a fascinating situation to me that you've got, you've got these these more radical front liners who were as you say critical in allowing this this really groundbreaking change to occur in your society. At the same time, things haven't changed enough that, number one, the cops who beat the **** out of them, I'm guessing, are still largely employed and and a bunch of them are in jail. I'm do you have much hope that at the very least there will be something to like, get these people out? Or is it is that maybe a bridge? I don't know. I I don't know your country, obviously as well, you know, I'm curious, like, do you feel like there's much hope in pushing for that? Because it seems like, you know, those people need to be free. Yeah, I mean most of these guys who are in prison and they have spent like, Oh no, like 12 months in prison without any evidence. So yeah, probably the the world of the cops against them. So after I know like 13 months, 14 months, they will finally get released because they had they had no evidence or they could, they may find that the police, they made-up all the evidence. So they they finally go out. But I mean. You spend like almost a year in prison. That's me. It's clearly like political, familiar, political prisoner. Like they got, they got you in prison with no evidence, without any proper process. They keep you in prison for a year. And who's going to pay for that, I mean? You'll also hear. Yeah. We're talking so far about the sacrifices made here. What do you think with this new constitution, you and your, your your fellow Chileans, what are you going to get? Like how what are the changes that that are seem to be most concrete and the ones that you think are most important? I think already it's been groundbreaking. I believe it's the only Constitution ever to be written by a plurality of of women and and also to have a representation from the indigenous peoples. And so it's already been very inspiring and groundbreaking. The President of the Constitutional Convention is a. Very inspiring Mapuche leader woman. And. The good thing is that. The the right. He represents less than 1/3 of the Constitutional Convention, so they don't have the power to block anything. As far as only by the right, so we will see. But they literally just started writing the Constitution last week. So yeah, yeah, it's still. But that's, I mean that's that's a significant is there a kind of a broad agreement that one of the things that needed to happen here was a redress of grievances between the indigenous people and the and the the state? Because it sounds like that's a significant chunk of what's what's been already agreed upon just by, like, how this is coming together. Yeah, so, well, Nico could probably tell a lot more about this than I could, but there's a big deal with the the United with the indigenous people in the South and the government basically waging war against the indigenous people, actually. Two weeks ago, Pineira, the current right wing President, declared a state of emergency in the South and he just extended it for 15 more days. So we have the military in the South. And they are you know with the tanks and attaching attacking the the Mapuche and other indigenous people there and so yeah a big aspect of of Chile right now is the the. The fight between and and the oppression of the government against the native people and and it's a cultural thing too I mean it's it's really heavy everyone most people here in Chile are are mixed you know between the. The the natives and and the the white men and everything and the you know the Europeans. But the Mapuche and the other indigenous groups have really not received a lot of respect in the last 30 years and. And so yeah, that's a big aspect. For me, it's very inspiring to have, like, the President of this new constitution to be, uh, I'm a future woman. So. Yeah, I mean I guess like the most important thing like the the the thing that the this indigenous people want to claim is their land. I mean land for them is the most important thing and that's what the government, I mean for the last 300 years they have been taken from to them and they are now like trying to claim again they're, they're, they're space. So I mean. Let's go with this new constitution will bring them back their land, their respect that they deserve. Now, there's been a lot of discussion about this, this new Constitution, as I think the term used as an ecological constitution. And it's it's the necessity of it addressing a lot of the climate, not just climate change, but like a lot of the things caused by climate change, like unequal access to water. There's been discussion in the Ezio Costa of of the FIM, a NGO has has is arguing currently that the Constitution needs to enshrine a human right to water and recognize it as a common good. It's obviously again, they're writing it this week, so it's kind of unclear if that's going to happen. But I I'm, I'm wondering kind of what you what you all think it's actually because as you've talked about you know with the protests ongoing with the military being deployed in the South, this is not a finished fight. It's just a fight that a lot of progress has been made on. What do you think is reasonable to expect from this new constitution in terms of of of climate change, in terms of ecological justice? I will say they don't. They're the right of the of water. The water is privatized here. So Chileans here in Santiago, we have to pay a Spanish company too for our water. Sure. Yeah. I will say, like the economy in this country is based on like extractivism. So you have like the most productive thing is mining and then you have like forestry and all these things, like they have a enormous impact on the environment and the people in Chile, I mean the people who live right next to these kind of things, they don't get anything from them. I mean the the poorest places are like right next to the forestry, right next to the mining, so. Uh, it's kind of like we are creating a lot of income from these things, but we're not getting anything from them and all. I mean, also, it's not like a thing like, let's get everything back to the state. I mean to the the state, because it's. It's more than that. It's just like. Like ecological equality, equity? Yeah, yeah, sure. It's not saying we should take all of the private water and give it to the state as much as it's saying everyone who lives here has a has a personal right to enough water to survive. So you have problems where small little towns and they don't have any water to drink because all of their water is to the going to the farm owned by Nestle to make you know to grow avocados to sell to Europe and the United States. So yeah it's it's. It's it's a pretty crazy thing. Things that's most interesting to me about your situation is you, you are in a place where not entirely dissimilar, dissimilar from the United States, you have a police and a military that are heavily dominated by by right wing ideology obviously like the United States is partly responsible for that. In your case we we funded it for a very long time. And and so it's still an ongoing fight, but at the same time clearly the people are unhappy enough with that situation and hold like they were able to make. They were able to force the folks with with guns to UM to recognize that they can't hold on. To everything that they wanted to hold on to, and I I guess I'm. What? How can we do that? I'm. I'm very impressed by, like and you know, watching from the sidelines. I was just so happy to see this not go where I think we were all scared it might go, you know, in either the direction with like Syria where it turns into this horrible bloodbath or where everything gets crushed. You know, it it and and I I'm wondering, like why you think? On a on a broader scale, what do you think was responsible for those people with access to the guns deciding we can't hold on to this? Like, yeah, I'm, I'm just, I'm so. Intensely curious about that because it's it's it's important for a lot of people and a lot of other parts of the world. Yeah, I don't know. I mean I think it was just the the protest and the daily protests and and just getting out there keeping the pressure on and at some point, you know, it's like, hey, this is not good for the economy, you know, like so all of the rich people and you know, the ten families that are in control of, you know, 60 or 70% of the wealth of the country. Any quality? Yeah, and they. At some point had to recognize that this was something that that you know had reached its boiling point and and that they could no longer respond with just force because they tried it and it didn't work for months and and it was just months and months of protests and. And and obviously that caused a hit to the economy and that caused a hit to the wallets of of the ultra rich. And so at some point they they realized that they had no other move to play than to accept it in some way and and that's how we got, you know this new constitution that is being written. One thing I was I'm interested. About is the geography of the protest because I know Chile very urban population and also was it like it's like 1/4 of the population or something lives in Santiago or like in in in that area and so I'm wondering. Yeah, yeah. So, so sorry. I just want to note, if I'm not mistaken, there were only five. You have kind of communes instead of states is what they're called. Like tin voted in favor of the referendum and only five voted against it, if I'm not mistaken. Well, communes are within cities, like different. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. It's like Burrows in New York, but we have different regions instead of States and. And I think they all voted. Yeah, there might be like 7 who voted, but what you might be thinking of? Yeah, Robert, you might be thinking of communes in Santiago, where Santiago is. Very. So it's all on the Rio Mapocho the, the river which goes east to West across the city and basically you have this like very rich part on the east and up into the hills and and then it gets poorer and poorer as you go to the West. And yeah, for the vote for the Constitution, it was everyone voted for the Constitution except for these communes, these ultra rich. In the east. Ohh wow, amazing. OK, this thing is something I was also curious about. This was so when when the protests were going on. So, you know, Chili's had like huge protests before. I mean, even the last decade. What I was interested also with was this time is. Like, well, hey, what do you think is different about this than say like 2011, 1013 and then be in terms of like the geographic breakdown of where people are and where they're going, is it that? You know, so you you have this, you have this classified in the city, but where were the working class districts like? Where were people staying there in those districts? Or were they like moving from those places, like to protest inside of the the richer urban areas? I'll say like, I mean, yeah, we have like many protests in the past, but they were more kind of like, I know like students protests and then you have like, you know, like the university protest. But. When we have like this protest like that, we like, the one we have in 2019 is like something that unites everyone. I mean you don't have to be a student, you don't have to go to university to protest. I mean it's something that it's affecting everyone. I mean the fairs of the metro, they affect everything and they inequality in the country affects everyone. So. I mean, I guess that that's the thing that make this protest of the 2019 unique in this term. Yeah. And I think it was actually a problem when all the protests were happening, a lot of people were saying we can't keep going to the Plaza. You know, the cops are just going to wait for us in the Plaza and, you know, it's going to be a **** show. And we need to, you know, protest all over. And there were protests across Chile and in every single major city. But I will say the majority of the protests have been here in the Plaza and close to La Moneda, where the presidential palace and but some of the most memorable protests. And and the costanera center the the tallest building in Latin America which is a mall and a monument to this idea that Pinera has of the O Eight of Chile being an Oasis in South America. We're not like other countries we're we're like the United States you know where this capitalism capitalist Oasis and exactly but but yeah so some of the most. Memorable protest they they weren't super common but where exactly that where the people said, you know what, we're not going to the Plaza, we're going to costanera center where we're going to vitacura, we're going to where the millionaires live, where they work and that those were really powerful. And so that's when you started to see like all of those banks and malls and just blocks and blocks of what the the rich folk like to call. Manhattan, you know, Santiago, Manhattan, the the skyscraper part of the city and it was just all boarded up, you know, because there there were definitely a couple weeks where the protest went that way. And and and yeah it was inspiring what I keep coming back to when I look about like why it worked. It wasn't because the frontliners just kept the pressure up because the frontliners did it a lot of places here. The Frontliners stayed out well after everyone else stopped coming out. It's that the population kept up the pressure like the the there were like Chile as a as a as a nation. As a as a, people kept up the pressure in a pretty significant way as opposed to kind of fading back after the first couple of weeks and. I mean it it it I think I'm sure the question of why it happened has a lot to do with like you said, inequality, you know, things that have been going on for decades. It's it's it's a complex situation. But it does seem like that's one of the big takeaways that if. You can. You can secure even an even in a a pretty terrifying situation. A lot of concessions, a lot of of what you need. But but people have to. Have to keep. Putting themselves out there, yeah, absolutely. I would say it's a couple things. One is, as you mentioned, I think it's like the culture of protests here, you know, especially in the last 10 years, like with the revolution pinguino and those melons and and 2011, you know, and there and there and the feminist protest, the ocho MA and so. It's it's not something that just happened two years ago, it's the last decade or two has has been the people, especially the young people going out there and protesting and that's that's one thing that's inspiring about borage, the candidates for president. The election is next month and so the left wing candidate gorge, and he came out of that movement. He was a student protester and a leader of the student movement. And so I think it's like. It grew out of that. It grew out of kids in high school saying this is just what we do this is normal. We go out there and and protest when when **** happens and and the other thing is yeah you know we always say here in Chile after the protest started it's not 30 pesos it's 30 years you know 30 years of neoliberalism of this revolving door of center right and center left and and just continuing on with the. Umm, economic oppression. And the other thing I feel like people don't understand is that, you know, people either think Chile is like the United States or they think it's like Peru or something, you know? And it's really neither. In Chile, the the minimum wage is half of what the United States is, which is already terrible. Yeah, but the cost of living here is. Almost the same as you guys in Portland. I mean, not the housing probably, but like, you know, food and stuff. Yeah, yeah. It's like Europe, you know, I could move to Berlin and live cheaper than here, you know? It is hard to. Of three times that you know so so I think it's that's the other thing is people just they they had no other choice you know and they were just born down by by 30 years you know after 20 years of a dictatorship 30 years of of this terrible wages and just neoliberalism and. So, so I I think it's it's partially that and partially just like the culture of protests that grew out of the student movements in in the early 2000s. Yeah, there was one thing I was interested also interested about that I don't remember seeing much of at the time was. What was Chilean organized labor doing during this? Is a good question. Honestly, Labor hasn't been a big part of the protest, at least from my point of view. You know, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it it it it took a pretty strong hit during the Pinochet years, if I'm not mistaken. So there was kind of that like, I guess that doesn't make sense. Sure. Yeah. Honestly, I don't know a whole lot about labor history here in Chile, but but yeah, it definitely is. I mean you would see you know, union groups in the streets here and there, but. But but definitely they weren't a leading voice in the protest, I would say yeah. So I guess that leads into the other. I guess one of the other things that from from my understanding has been happening all across Latin America, but but in in Chile in particular is the the rise of the informal sector and people just sort of. Not having access to, sort of. Stable wages and labor, and I'm wondering about OK, so organized laborers like the classical unions aren't really involved in this. And. I guess I'm. I'm interested in how, if I'm right, that that you're dealing with a lot of people who aren't doing traditional labor stuff. What was the process that was able to get people mobilized is like, especially people who just have no sort of like people who are in the informal sector and people who aren't. Involved in the sort of older classical organizations. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I would just say I it's like that that culture of protest that comes from the the young people in the last 20 years and then of course the older folks who you know. Lived through the dictatorship. And of course there were an incredible protest at that time too. And and so, I don't know. I mean, honestly, I was even after living here for, you know, six years, I was shocked. I I never thought it would come to this. I never thought I would see. You know, over half a million people in the streets of Santiago and and I would never, never thought we'd see a new constitution. So I don't know. I don't. I don't have the answers. It's it's it's surprising to me. But what I will say though is I don't want to paint a rosy portrait of Chile right now because. If, uh, like we mentioned, you know? Aye. Tomorrow night if you guys go to Galleria, Sima, CIA on YouTube or Instagram, they have a live feed of the Plaza four blocks from our house. And every Friday you know you the protests come out and sometimes the cops are there right away and they make a whole perimeter with 200 cops and all of the, you know, tanks and everything. Umm, blocking entrance to the Plaza in every direction. Sometimes they let the people protest but then at 10:00 o'clock, you know after the sun comes down they come out there and you know it's it's the same thing we had a young woman was was killed a couple weeks ago and. Yeah, so and the other thing is that we have this election coming up and this guy cast extreme right winger Pinochet tista, just like they call him the Chilean Bolsonaro, just like a real ***** ** ****. And he has. He has really risen in the polls in the last month or two. The right wing candidate Sichel, who won the right wing primaries and was kind of going to be the successor to Pinera, the current right wing president, because in Chile, you know, you can't run consecutive, you can't have consecutive terms. But Citral just kind of was not a great candidate and kind of blew it and and he went down and and now cast. Is going up and it's really scary to think about cast getting into the the second round where it will probably be him versus borage and and so yeah, you know. Even though the the Constitution was approved by 79% of the country, you know, it's very possible that this election is going to come down to a runoff between a, you know, moderate socialist like borage. Not the most extreme leftist, in fact, known as Amarillo, you know, very yellow bellied here in Chile. That's his nickname. It will probably. Right now it's looking like it's going to come down to him and cast who is like almost a return to the dictatorship. So it's it's pretty scary. It's just this. There's just so much fighting to do. Yeah, yeah. There's so much fighting to do. I mean I I. Yeah do you have is do any of you have anything else you wanna make sure you you say or talk about before we kind of close out for the day. I don't know I will say like 3 days ago I just pay my I I finally pay my whole student loan. It was like like I've been working for more than 10 years of my life since I finished near City and I've been wasting I mean all my savings I just pay this ******* student loan I guess that you guys in the in the United States are. Like the same like, I don't know, except for people don't pay off their student loans. Yeah, we just don't. Space there forever. And I just, I, I just I would like to wish to the other to the the coming people that I mean I don't wish that future for my from I mean for the future people in this country. I don't wish anyone that I mean. University, I mean all students should be studying for free. I mean, it's like unconceivable for me. Yeah. So that was a big part of it. And then also the ifit pay pension system here, which is totally privatized. And so you, you, the government just takes your money for retirement. You get to choose between four or five options, which are private companies. And then if you make money then the the company takes, you know, their chunk of your, your retirement. As the payment for managing your fund. But if you lose money, then it's on you. So literally, you know, Steffie's mom is like, you know, checking on her retirement. How did I do this year? It's like, oh, you lost $2000 this year. That's that's your retirement savings, you know, so you and you have, you know, people here trying to live on, you know, retirements of $100 a month while the military is receiving $10,000. You know so. That was a big part of it, but I think. What I always come back to here in Chile is, like we said, the activist renamed the Plaza Plaza Dignidad, and that's what it all comes down to, is just. We're not asking for, you know, ponies, as Hillary Clinton would say. We're, we're not, we're not asking for the moon. We're just asking for basic dignity that everyone deserves and it's as simple as that. So we just have to cross our fingers and and hope that we've done enough that that, you know, at a minimum, you know, people can live and retire with some dignity. That's all and and that. Enough ecological justice can be gained that people can survive what's coming. Which it's it's nice to see, at the very least, that that's a central topic of discussion. Whereas in the United States, everyone in power seems fine with just ignoring the increasing problems right now. So. I don't know. You know, I, I, I again. I also don't want to be painting too rosy a picture as you as you've made repeatedly clear, there's a lot of of struggle left still, but at least you've you've. You've achieved a lot. And then I I've just heartened by by hearing your story and and and hope that more people pay attention to what's happened there and try to take lessons from it. Because I think we all need to be, we all need to be gearing up as as I'm sure you all will continue to continue to do anything else before we we close out. Uh, no, that's it. I mean, I completely agree. I I think that just like the message is that, like, you know, better things are possible, like real, real, real change can happen, you know? Like this started. Two years ago with high schoolers protesting and now we're going to have a vote on a new constitution and it's going to be an ecological constitution of blurring natural national constitution with respect for the indigenous people. It's it's. 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You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com. Slash behind betterhelp.com/behind my name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with speaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always feel like an ambassador for speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's SPREAK. R.com get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker, from iheart, so in the equal amount of men and women and everything. And and so yeah, just I think for me, it's so easy for us who have grown up. And and you know under the gloom of neoliberalism to to just get really depressed and fatalistic about it. And so for me I feel the same way. Like it's just such an inspiration and the the the Chilean and and especially the Chilean youth. But but yeah it's just an inspiration and and proof that that change can happen but it's not just voting and. You know it. Like, Chileans have elected socialists. You know, the the former president was a socialist, but it was just the same neoliberalism. ********. So I think, you know, voting is great, but like, that's just not enough. And so you have to, you know? I get out in the streets and try to organize and and make real change in other ways as well. All right. Yeah, I agree entirely. Thank you all for coming on. Couldn't appreciate it more and I hope you have a lovely rest of your day and a lovely continuing to. Stick it to the **** ** *******. 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. 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. Hey, lead the listeners. Tig here. Last season on Lethal lit, you might remember I came to hollow. Falls on a mission, clearing my Aunt Beth's name and making sure justice was finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rash of new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put myself and my friends in danger, though it wasn't all bad. I'm going to be real with you, tig. I like you, but now all signs point to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting, you better believe I'm going to win. I'm Tig Torres and this is lethal lit. Catch up on season one of the hit Murder Mystery podcast, Lethal Lit, a tig Torres mystery out now and then TuneIn for all new thrills in Season 2, dropping weekly starting February 9. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. Listen to lethal lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome back to it could happen here, the show that is only introduced competently when either someone besides me is the one hosting the episode, or when I have a guest that I feel embarrassed about being incompetent in front of. And and this is. This is the latter case because today I'm talking with my friend and admired colleague. Molly, conjure Molly, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. I got to do that like a professional. Welcome to the show. That's like an NPR **** right? I know people have been saying on the Twitch stream that I have a very soothing NPR style voice. You would be great. I would love to hear you talking on NPR about how it's it's rad that those those people broke the windows on those police cars or whatever. No, I can't be allowed in respectable spaces. I can't be allowed there. They let me talk on a panel at Harvard. One time I accidentally said **** in front of a bunch of people. I mean, I assume Harvard students know a ******* or two. They know that one. Speaking of **** words, there's a couple of **** words who are under trial right now for inciting mass violence that led to human death and suffering. You want to, you want to give us the overview we're, we're talking today about, you know, the unite the right rally in Charlottesville in 2017 that led to three deaths. One is the result of direct violence, Heather Heyer, who was murdered. Murdered. Of the fascist James Field, currently in prison for forever. Forever that, you know, his trial concluded a while ago, but there has been churning through the legal system, a trial against Richard Spencer, Jason Kessler, who was the main organizer. Cantwell. There's other plaintiffs, right? Oh, goodness gracious. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of fascists about, you know, all of the the things that they did, the fact that they clearly intended this to be a violent. Riot, assault, whatever. Like they they wanted to have it be a ******* lynching, essentially. And there's a lot of evidence, including things they said to each other about building armies to murder people. Anyway, Molly, you want to take it from here? I think I've introduced the situation. There's a trial going on. You have been listening to every day of it and covering it on Twitch very ably, and so I just kind of wanted to catch up with you. You also wrote an article in Slate with our friend Emily Gorczynski about. What's like largely the jury selection of the of the trial. So I was wondering if you could just kind of give us an overview of what's happened so far, if your thoughts on it and yeah that that seems that seems good. Yeah. So this just right at the outset, this is a civil trial, right? This is not a criminal trial. No one's going to the, no one's going to jail at the end of this. Some of them who's going to jail? We call it, what's that? Who's gal? We call it the who's gal on the show. That's the proper term. Some of them were already in jail, obviously. Like you said, James Fields is serving 29 life sentences too. That's a lot of life. That's a lot of life. So he was he was charged in in Virginia State court by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He was convicted at trial of first degree murder and several counts of aggravated malicious wounding. He was. So that trial happened in 2018. He actually went to trial for that. But then he pleaded guilty in federal courts. He was charged in two separate courts for the same underlying events and in federal court. He pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes. He pleaded guilty to hate crimes. So there's no debate about whether these were hate crimes, right? Yeah. And he pleaded guilty to. He pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty because a hate crime, murder is a capital crime. So in this lawsuit, right? This, this civil lawsuit against deep breath, Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, Christopher Cantwell, James Alex Field, Vanguard America, Andrew Anglin, Moonbase Holdings, Robert Asmundur, rate. Nathan Damigo, Elliot Klein, identity rope and Matthew parent Matthew Heimbach. Traditionalist worker party, Michael Hill, Michael Tubbs, League of South Jeff scoop now the National Socialist movement nationalist from Augustus Allen Victus Returnal order of the Alt Knights, Mike Panovich loyal White Knights of the KKK, East Coast Knights of the KKK, East Coast Knights of the Invisible Empire. Several of those parties have been dismissed from the suit. That's a lot. It's a lot of bad guys, right? Several of those parties have been dismissed from the suit. Augustus and Victus defaulted. Penovich got dismissed early on. Does that mean the fact that he defaulted, does that mean he was like, yes, right? He offered no defense. So that's what that means. Yeah. I mean, he's been dealing with a lot with he, and he's had some problems. He's been in and out of jail, right? He he abducted his wife at gunpoint. I think he's out of jail now, but he's had some personal problems. He's had some personal problems. Yeah. So the, the underlying claim of the lawsuit is a section 1985 complaint, a conspiracy to deprive people of civil rights. And this is fundamentally at it's at its core, an anti Klan statute, right. It was designed to disrupt clan organizing and that's kind of what it's being used for here, right? This is, I mean, the party to the suit. Yeah. So the lawsuit was brought by, by 9 plaintiffs who were harmed, people who got hurt at the rally. Most of the plaintiffs were physically injured in the car attack, although not all of them. But these are people who. Are seeking damages, right, like, for all the emotional weight, all the sort of social ramifications, fundamentally, this is a case about damages. So the jury is going to say, OK, these people were harmed. Do we believe they were harmed by a conspiracy to commit acts of violence? Conspiracy to commit racially motivated acts of violence? Right. So all of those elements have to be approved. And there was. OK, guys want to do racial violence when they assaulted people. Yeah. Was there a conspiracy? Yeah. Was it motivated by racial animus and were overt. Acts of violence committed and did those acts of violence harm these people in a way that entitles them to damages? That's all the jury has to decide, right? Should be an open shut case. Not not a lot. Nowhere. But it does seem like kind of an open and shut case. It does, right? So because there are people out there are not familiar with the events of that day, a lot of alt right groups, you know, overt neo-Nazi organizations, the literal clan, the literal American Nazi party, like NEO Confederate secessionist David Duke was there. David Duke was there. David Duke, who Elliott Kline described as an ideological grandfather, when he was asking other organizers if he can invite him. These guys came together, they came to Charlottesville, they brawled in the streets, they beat people, they hit them with Shields, and a literal clan wizard fired his gun at a black man while screaming di N word. Well now, OK, it seems like you're reaching a bit to call that racially motivated. Well, that's something they're trying to litigate now, right? So, so amazing. You're probably familiar with the video of DeAndre Harris being beaten nearly to death by members of several different hate groups, right? So one of the guys that beat him was a TPP member, one of them was a league of the South member, and they worked together to beat this young man nearly to death while he was lying on the ground. And so the Today they were talking about like, well, can we really say that was racially motivated, you know, can we really say, can we really say, yeah, yeah, I think we can. I think we can. You know, his mother has been on podcast since his conviction. Referring to Jacob Goodwin, the TWP member, the man who used a TWP riot shield provided to him by Matthew Heimbach, who beat this young man. His mother goes on Nazi podcast still to describe how he, her son, is a martyr for the white cause. So there's no ambiguity. But where are you getting racially motivated from that moment? Right? Like there's a there's a picture of her with her arm around her son. Her son's like 7 feet tall. He's a giant boy to get her arm around her large adult son, and he's wearing AT shirt with a giant picture of George Lincoln Rockwell on it. Ah, ah, you love the deep cuts. So, you know. And Billy Roper's Christmas party. Yeah. Another another Nazi. Right. So there's not a lot of ambiguity here for the average person. But so, you know, like you were saying, Emily and I wrote about jury selection. Jury selection is. So the court proceedings are, generally speaking, open to the public. Anyone can go to their local courthouse and you can sit through a trial. You can sit through the ward your process. You can see how a jury gets chosen. Yeah, you can go trial hopping, get wasted. You know, like free entertainment. As long as you sit quietly, they can't make you leave. That's right, it's like a library. Very discouraging, because the whole point is to pick jurors who've never encountered reality. You pick people who don't have any opinions, right? Because you want them to be able to be impartial. And the best way to make sure your jury is going to be impartial is to pick people who don't have any opinions. And if you don't have any opinions on whether or not it's good for Nazis to beat people in the streets, I would say that in and of itself as an opinion that you already have, right? Yeah, the ability to not have an opinion about that. So the jury selection took three days because they had to go through this process of speaking to each juror individually. Usually they'll do it in batches where they ask questions of people in batches, but this was so sensitive they didn't want to taint the jury pool, so they did it 1 by 1, so it took three days. And they chose jurors who didn't have opinions about the existence of racism in the United States. OK, that seems unbiased. Again, it's this thing you keep seeing where it's like, well, we can't let people have a bias. So it has to be people who have never heard of white supremacy, which is like, well, then that's a bias in favor of white supremacy. But of course, that's the default of the system. It's like, that's the tear, right? Like, you stick white supremacy on the scale and you tear it, but then you add awareness of white supremacy, and suddenly there's weight. On it, you know, it's sorry. It's very frustrating. It's. I know, you know, it's frustrating. I mean yeah, I shouldn't. Yeah. Frustrating to sit through listening to them to ask people, you know, because they had to fill out a questionnaire ahead of time so they can sort of sift through obvious nose. And one of the questions was, you know, how do you feel about, you know, how concerned are you about these different kinds of prejudice, you know, prejudice against black people, prejudice against Hispanic people, prejudice against Jewish people or prejudice against white people? And a lot of people indicated that they were very concerned about anti white racism. Ohh, great. And a lot of jurors were were asked follow up questions about like, well, why aren't you more concerned about anti white racism? Why did you say you don't care about that? Well because it's not real. Yeah, because I've never seen it in my entire life. But, OK, so, but we seated a jury, we did seed a jury, and there were, you know, there's always concern in a case like this that you just won't be able to get an impartial jury. But we got it could be worse, right? It could be worse. There is a guy on the jury who said that in high school he was the victim of a racially motivated attack by a by a Samoan person. Because they didn't like white people. Hmm. I wonder what that person was doing, slash say. Black people who believe that they have a right to exist without being subjected to racism. Not impartial, can't be on the jury. But a white guy who says he was the victim of a hate crime because someone didn't like hawleys? Jerry, he's on the God. So people talking about, like I don't like it when folks not from my island come here and **** **** up and make it expensive? Yeah, that's anti white racism. He was living in Hawaii. Incredible. Incredible. You know, it could be a worse or it could be a worse story, but it's not ideal. God, where did we go from there? It's been. It's been a little bit of a blur. So Cantwell and Spencer don't have lawyers, right? Well, yeah. OK, so right, because Cantwell can't. Cantwell is for people who aren't aware Cantwell is representing himself and tell correct me if I'm wrong here, but he started by acknowledging the old saying that a person who represents himself has a fool as a lawyer, but then said, but I'm not a fool in this case. Yeah, he said. You may have heard this, but that's not true here. That's not the case here in unbelievable. Just incredible. He said. And I didn't even stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night. Oh my God, really? He's seriously made a Holiday Inn Express joke while he was on. Oh my God. But the follow up, the follow up was but I did stay in the Central Virginia Regional Jail because that is where he's staying. Yeah. I mean, because he's he's in prison for he was sexually or not for for harassing and threatening and blackmailing and other Nazi, right? Yeah, yeah. He was transported here from the federal prison in Marion, IL where he is a guest until next Christmas. So he had filed motions to exclude the fact that he's currently incarcerated, as is his. Right. Right. Like if you are a yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I know you're involved in bad in a in a, you know, in a criminal case or in a in a civil case. It is it is your right to have the jury not see you in a jumpsuit. And I respect that. And I think it's good. It's important. Absolutely. Yeah. So he went to great lengths to make sure that the jury would never see him in cuffs, that the Marshalls wouldn't bring him in and irons that he would change before the jury arrived at the courthouse. All very reasonable and no one was going to get to talk about it, but he brought it up. His own opening statement, he told us he's just, I hear from prison. I'm here from prison, by the way. I'm in prison for the other crimes I committed. But they're not related to these crimes. They're not related to these crimes except to the extent that he's unable to shut the **** **. He's only in prison because he emailed the FBI recording him of him doing the crime that he's in prison for. He's he's really a a very cunning man. But I think, you know, so as much as those crimes aren't relevant to this case, I think it is very relevant to his trial. Strategy, right? That he has this belief that all the things he did that were wrong, they were right, actually. He just needs to explain to us why he did them, and then we'll understand, right? He's in prison because he tried to talk his way out of a thing that he did that was wrong by telling everyone that he did do it. Yes, I did it because I had to. You didn't have to make an extortionate threat to rape another man's wife in front of their children. You didn't actually have to do that. Yeah, that's really. I mean, I would. I might argue, and perhaps I'm an extremist, but there's no situation in which you would ever have to do that. Nobody made you e-mail the FBI about how you did that. Yeah, but you did, so I would have told you that was a bad idea. And there's some snarky stuff in some in some of the affidavits about how, like, he called the Keene Police Department trying to tattletale on other people so often that they were tired of taking his calls. Unbelievable. What an amazing man. Like, he's he's a ***** ** **** but he is legitimately an incredible person. I mean, if you wrote this, no one would believe it, right? This is so heavy-handed. It's so goofy. Like when he was paying Elmer in guns. Yeah, his law. He paid his lawyer and guns, and then he ran out of guns and had to. His lawyer stopped working. For him, yeah. He doesn't have a lawyer anymore because he ran out of guns to pawn. Although I guess he can't anymore because now he's a convicted felon. I gotta say, running out of guns to pawn for your lawyer, it's pretty cucked. He even had to sell the bucket of loose bullets he used to keep as a prop on his desk. I mean, really devastating stuff. So he doesn't have you're. You're down to the brat, you're down to the rails when you're doing that. Really, the bottom of the barrel. So he's proceeding Pro SE, which unfortunately, unfortunately for everyone involved, means he gets to talk a lot. A lot. A lot. A lot. Which means he gets to cross examine his own witnesses, right? So the first two witnesses the plaintiffs put on were two of their plaintiffs, right? Two young people who were injured in these events. The first witness they put on, Natalie, was a UVA student who had her skull fractured in the car attack. She had to learn how to walk again. She had to see a neurologist to retrain. Their eyes to track movement, I mean, she was very badly injured. So she testified at length about the damage that was done to her because, again, this is a case about damages. So the jury needs to learn who is this person? What happened to them? What did it cost them physically, mentally, emotionally, financially. Because what they're going to be asked to do is to put a dollar amount on it. So they had to meet her and hear about her injuries and hear about her motivation for being there. You know, she's a young, queer Latina woman, and she's the first college student in her family, and she's a very impressive young woman, and she was very composed on the stand. As awful as the content was. But then every single one of the defendants gets to cross examine her. Richard Spencer gets to cross examine her. Christopher Cantwell gets to cross examine her, James Kalinich, who took the case. He's Kessler Domigo and identity Europa's lawyer, James Coleman. She's an Ohio based attorney who said on the record that he took this case with the express purpose of opposing Jewish influence and great, great kalinich gets to cross examine her. Matt Heimbach's new lawyer, Josh Smith, used to be the campaign spokesman for Paul Nealon. Last denying was an endorsed by Trump at one point in his run for Congress and has also just a straight up Nazi who's repeatedly threatened to murder you. Yeah. Yeah. One time he spent all day posting pictures of a deer that he said that he named after me. He said I named this deer Molly. You know, he spent all day stalking at, posting pictures of it, posting pictures of his gun. And then he posted a picture of the deer staged like a lynching. And then he spelled my name out in its entrails and posted pictures of that. So you just like a really normal guy, Paul Nealon? Yeah, totally. Completely with it and became his campaign spokesperson when he ran for Congress was the Holocaust denying former Jew Josh Smith. Josh Smith was born Daniel Nussbaum. He changed his name to hide his Jewish past. Oh wow. That is an old story among the Nazis. I mean, we talked about the guy who invented a sea monkeys, but yeah, it's basically the same case. And you know who else hides their? No, OK, this was meant to be an ad plug. Normally Sophie would jump in and stop me from doing that. These advertise. None of these advertisers are plaintiffs in the current case that you're covering. That's a guarantee. That is, that is an absolute promise. David Duke is not about to sell *** **** pills. Well, he could use them. We're back. All right. Molly, sorry. Please continue. God, where were we? I got distracted thinking about David Duke trying to sell *** **** pills. Yeah, I have. That's not good for anybody, right? So everybody gets to cross examine the witness. Josh Smith is Heimbach's new lawyer. Kalinich used to be a lot of these guys lawyers, and then he sort of dropped them overtime as they became uncooperative. There were all these motions to withdraw. Yeah. Clinic slowly dropped clients over the last two years. He dropped Cantwell as a client because Cantwell wouldn't stop posting about hurting. Roberta Kaplan. Right. Who's the lead counsel for the plaintiffs? Roberta Kaplan, famous, famous Jewish lesbian lawyer. You know, she was on the US V Windsor the the losing it, absolutely losing it, the Supreme Court case that gave us gay marriage, right. Roberta Kaplan brought us gay marriage essentially. So she, you know, famous Jewish lesbian that is a well known portion of her identity and can't well kept posting anti-Semitic remarks about her. And finally Kalanick was like, you're making it really hard to be your lawyer and you don't pay me. And Collins dropped Heimbach as a client in 2019 because Heimbach just stopped answering his calls. Great smart people. Yeah. But so Matt Parrott, who's Matt Heimbach's father-in-law, but also the husband of the woman that he was sleeping? This complicated. There's a chart. There's a chart. Matt Heimbach and Matt Parrott, founders of the Traditionalist Worker Party, best friends for a long time. **** each other's wives. Big problems. Big problems for them. Yeah, the the night of wrong wives. The night of the wrong wives. So, yeah. Matt Parrott was technically Matt Heimbach's father-in-law during the time period which Heimbach was ******* Parrott's wife. Very classy people, not a great situation. So they they lost their lawyer parrot very publicly told all traditionalist worker party members to destroy evidence. So we knew that, right? That was on the record from the beginning, that Matt Parrott was like, hey, everyone in TWP. If you did any crimes, delete it, right? Delete your social media, delete your pictures. Like we weren't there, right? Yeah, that's that's a crime. That's a crime. That is a crime. That is a crime right there. But an interesting thing that we learned today that I don't think we did know before. In November 2018, so they played a recording of a conversation between Matt Heimbach and Christopher Cantwell. And this was during examination of Heimbach. So Heimbach was on the stand, and they're talking about, like, you know, you didn't produce discovery. You said you lost your phone. This, that and the other. You know, after you beat your wife, she threw away your phone. So he said I couldn't turn over my social media accounts because my wife deleted them, because we had an argument about me taking out the trash, right? Like we had this domestic dispute about the trash, and she deleted all my accounts so I couldn't turn them over. Well, today we found out that he told Cantwell in 2018, so a year after the lawsuit was filed, when a lawsuit was filed against you, you have a legal obligation. To not do things like this, he told Cantwell. That after a conversation with his lawyer on the advice of his lawyer. He deleted those accounts. Ohh. Oh, great. So there's just a record of him criming. Yeah, that's a crime. Yeah, it looks like a crime for his lawyer to have advised him to do that. Great. Again, that's there's no direct evidence who told him to do that, but we do have a recording of him saying a lawyer told him to. So that's not great. That's not a good situation. Is he going to get charged with anything for that? Great. You know, I'm not a lawyer. Just for everyone listening, I'm not a lawyer. I didn't go to law school. I didn't even finish undergrad. I'm not a lawyer. But I have listened to a lot of lawyers and but I am. I am curious what? With what frequency can perjury charges be sought in a civil case, right? Yeah, it's still Underoath like it is still perjury, but how common is that to be pursued? Because they're perjuring? Yeah, they're for sure perjuring perjury is doing the thing the right always does, which is trust that the law will never actually come after them for their many crimes. And there's, yeah, there's a good chance they'll be right got, you know, like, Heimbach said, you know, when he was asked have you ever provided security for Richard Spencer? And he said no, it's, well, there's like 100 pictures of you doing that at multiple events. You know they're claiming they don't know each other, like, here's all these pictures of you guys hanging out. Umm. God, where else are we? Yeah, I'm curious, you know what one thing. That kind of. Especially because of the Rittenhouse thing, and we're actually, we'll be talking to Jesus through a lawyer tomorrow night about or tomorrow about the Rittenhouse thing. Every cool person shares the same lawyer. Umm. Uh, but yeah, because of that, I'm kind of curious what do what is your, what sense do you get of this judge? There's no good judges. There's no good judges. But it could be. Yeah. I mean, I'm not saying like is. Yeah, but how is it? It could be. It could be a lot worse. You know, Trump appointed a **** load of federal judges pretty recently. Judge Moon is 85 years old. He's a Clinton appointee. He's a Clinton appointee. So it could be worse. Could be worse. She's been on the bench, you know, since I was in elementary school. And he's very old and he doesn't. He he has. He's a little bit hard of hearing, but he's not. Stupid, I know. There's a lot of people I think were really frustrated. With some of the things he's allowing to happen, he's really allowing these pro se defendants to sort of run roughshod over the procedure. But. You know, like I said before we started recording, it's really hard. To apply. I get like the the your sense of how things are supposed to work doesn't really apply in court, right? Those are very rigid, sort of outdated set of rules and procedures and they don't feel right. They don't feel logical or reasonable or fair. But there is a specific way that it works and it is hard to watch, especially if you've never seen it before. And because of the emotionally fraught nature of this, it's particularly frustrating to be to to be listening on this line and saying like, why are they allowed to do this to this witness? Well, legally you can cross examine your witnesses. Even if you are the person who hurt them, it's not a good system, but it is how it works. There's Umm and I also think there is, there's concern about appellate issues, there's concern about mistrial. And so they're really going out of their way not to give anyone any excuse to say, well, this was not fair to me, they're going to say it anyway, but they they're really letting them have a long leash in a way that feels very bad. But at the same time, I can kind of understand it. Yeah, I wish they hadn't done so much. Holocaust denial, like on on the record. Yeah, that would be good. They, they put an expert on today, who's Doctor Deborah Lipstadt, who's an expert in Holocaust denial, to sort of talk about what the Holocaust is, I guess, in case the jury doesn't know. God, that's bleak. Ohh. I mean, that's ******* bleak. Because they chose this jury based on them never having heard of Jews. You know, Mike, they chose, yeah, it's a bunch of like middle-aged people from Green County who have never met a Jewish person. So they had to put on a professor to say, OK, when he says gas, the K words, we're talking about gas chambers, gas chambers from the Holocaust. They didn't start out with gas chambers. They started with mass shootings, but it was too messy. I mean she was literally recounting sort of the evolution from the insurance group and, you know, shootings in the fields to the to the gas chambers. Like we we had to talk. All the way through it. Because it seems. I'm necessary. But again, for the jury, it might be necessary. And so when asthmador Robert don't want to take anything for granted, you know. Yeah. Right. And you really have to sort of lay out these connections, right. Because the idea is you have to prove a conspiracy and you have to prove the conspiracy was racially motivated. And so when Asthmador is the racist wizard name that Robert Ray uses when he writes for the Daily Stormer, when Asthmador keeps saying we're going to gas the K words, everyone knows what I mean when I say that, right? Yes. Yeah. OK. You know, he he keeps saying, you know the the plan is to cast the keywords you know GTK, RWN gas, the K words race, war. Now he keeps saying, he keeps saying keep saying it and the torch March he pepper sprays a bunch of people, which he is currently a fugitive of justice for. He's he's wanted for felonies in Albemarle County. He's missing. So he says he's going to do it, then he does it and then afterwards he's on video saying, yeah, I gassed half a dozen K words so you can see from. A to B to C and then we have this expert saying, OK, what he's saying is a direct reference to the Holocaust. Yeah, right. It like he's like you said, it's pretty open and shut. It's pretty straightforward. A to B to C you know, we have these discord leaks if you want to browse them, they're on Unicorn Riot. And and almost immediately after the Rally, Unicorn Riot had these discord leaks, the entire server, the Charlottesville 2.0 server where they planned this out, where they're in the discord saying, yeah, it's going to be so great, we're gonna do so much violence, we're going to hurt people, we're going to bring Shields, we're going base really explicitly talking about the plan, making jokes about hitting people with cars. Umm. Now the entire discord will be. Admitted it has been authenticated. They received another copy of it via subpoena directly from Discord. It's real. It's evidence as much as Cantwell doesn't like that. But more than that. We have, you know, some first person authentication. We heard deposition testimony from Elliot Klein's ex-girlfriend, the woman that he was living with in 2017. So in the summer of 2017, he was living with this woman that he had just met and entered into a romantic relationship with. She has since left the movement. She has a lot of regret about her involvement in that time period and. You know, there's little people have a lot of mixed feelings about what it means to leave the movement, what it means to atone. Is it possible to redeem yourself for having been a part of something like that? We don't have to litigate that. No, but we do have to place. But yeah, but we do have to recognize that her testimony is damning. I mean, this is not this is not Elliot Klein putting on a show in public. This is not Elliot Klein posturing for his friends. This is Eli at home in bed with his girlfriend, talking about his fantasies of killing all the Jews. And her testimony was pretty harmful. Yeah. You wouldn't think. Yeah, it's not great. You know, really, you have to wonder how the jury is taking this, right. These people who have no concept or context for this, listening to breathing this for years. Yeah. Hours of this woman sort of near tears talking about how her boyfriend said that he was going to put her in a breeding camp once they had the ethno state. Not nice, really, really not nice stuff. And she also tested, you know, we we have the messages from the discord where people are posting memes and jokes about hitting protesters. But Samantha testified that at private parties at Richard Spencer's house in the summer of 2017, these private parties with the organizers of the event at Richard Spencer's apartment. People explicitly discussed the legality of hitting people with their cars. This is not random people in the discord that Richard could say, oh, I don't know him. I never met him. I never posted in discord. This is somebody sitting on your couch, Richard. Yeah. Umm. Yeah, and you know, Samantha said that during that time period Klein was building an army for Richard, and Kessler texted Spencer something similar, right? That we'll build an army mileage. ******* dork *** ****. But so 111 fun surprise from Samantha was that during that time period, Klein was, you know, planning to provide his militia in the form of identity Europa, right? These these St troops he was going to provide to Spencer to build the movement, but that when the time came, he always knew that he would kill Richard to take control. These people are all such *******. It's a shame that what they actually are is. Deniable assets for the the most dangerous folks. You know the ******* the ******* Bannon types, right? Because if if all of the fascists were this dumb, I wouldn't be so worried. And it's hard. It's hard to walk the line between, you know. Really getting a kick out of some of these moments where it is, yeah, genuinely funny, right? But then you remember, like these people are very dangerous. These people are responsible for death, these people. It's this emotional whiplash, right of of the plaintiffs getting on and saying, yes, my life was ruined. I still have nightmares. I I still have to go to physical therapy. And then can't. Well, getting up there and asking heinbach if he's a federal agent. Yeah, right. Like, I think so. We've only seen one of the defendants on the stand so far, but I have a strong feeling Cantwell is going to use every opportunity that he has his frenemies Underoath to ask them if they snitched on him. Yeah, that's that's going to be pretty funny. It's going to be great. You gotta laugh sometimes. Life's too hard. But Cantwell is really using this, I think. You know he has nothing to lose, right? This is a case of damages. He has no money for them to take, he has $30,000 in credit card debt, and his car got repossessed once he went to prison. He has nothing for them to take. The only person he knows who did have anything is Ian Freeman, who's currently facing federal charges for some sort of complicated Bitcoin money laundering scam through a fake church. He doesn't even have any friends to help him. That's an interesting case, but I don't have time for it now. Yeah, but he so he has nothing for them to take. He's already a felon. He can't have a gun anymore. I think he's just using this as an opportunity, as a platform to get his message out there and to harm the people he thinks harmed him. So every chance he gets, he's trying to force witnesses to docs people, right? He asked one of the plaintiffs, Devin Willis, when another young man who was was injured at the Torch March a plaintiff in this case, he asked him. He forced him to name the names. Of the Nonparties, who were also counter demonstrating at the statue. These people's names have not been on the record. They, you know, some judge made him do that, made him do that. That's ****** **. And you know, you could if you were, I don't know, a complete baby brained idiot. You could say, well the you know that maybe there was a legal reason that he needed those names. There's not and we know there's not because he tried to do it again today. There was a non party witness, a young woman who lived in one of the dorm rooms right by the Rotunda. They're called the lawn rooms. The prestigious opportunity only super high. Chevers get to live in those beautiful historic lawn rooms, so she lived right near where the torch March was happening, and she heard it, and she went outside and she looked at it. He's not a party to the suit. She has no knowledge of these people or what happened. She just saw this thing happen and she testified to that. And he tried to, you know, she had made some passing remark that she'd heard from another student that maybe there would be a thing on campus, right, that they knew about the rally the next day. But like, I don't know, maybe these guys will try and come here just, like, be on your toes, right? Not anything specific. She was not, she's not an activist. She's not, she didn't know anything, right. And so he was grilled her. Tell me who told you that? Tell me who told you that? How did you know that? And he said on the record, direct quote, I want to know who infiltrated our communications. So he's trying to use this, this moment where he has someone under oath to extract information about who snitched. He wants to know who infiltrated their secret communications, which is him admitting there were secret communications that weren't turned over in discovery, which wasn't smart of him to do, but he's using this process. To get names of people who he can harass and we know that's what they're doing because while he was getting these names from that other witness, you know, the names of the people at the statue. Jason Kessler, the the lead defendant, right the the defendant, whose name is on the lawsuit, the lead organizer of the rally. Is posting all this time. He's posting through it, posting through it. If you had a good lawyer, he would tell you not to post through your own conspiracy trial. So while Cantwell is extracting these names from this poor young man, Kessler's posting them, he's posting their pictures and their legal names and describing their involvement. These people who are not party to this lawsuit. And there's no way to interpret that other than as a vehicle for harassment. Yeah, yeah, there's. I think there will be, there will be collateral damage of this lawsuit, but I hope that it does. Have the intended deterrent effect right. Sorry, been talking at length for a while but just in summation. In summation I think. Inside the courtroom, this is the case about damages, right? The judge is very clear that, like, stop talking about broader societal impact. You can't tell the jury about that. That's not relevant to this case. This, legally speaking, is a case about did this thing happen where these people hurt by it? What is the dollar amount of their pain, legally speaking? That's it. But outside the courtroom, this is about deterrence, right? This is about setting a precedent that if you do this, if you plan a rally knowing that the people who come to your rally will hurt people because you told them that's the goal, right? Even if you're not the one who swings the stick, even if you're not the one pressing the accelerator, you are responsible and you can be held accountable. And that is an important message. Yeah, we will like your life will be ruined if you participate in this **** that even if you don't have anything for us to take, we will put a garnishment on you that will follow you to the ******* grave. Yep. And I think, yeah that's that's I would agree what I think is important here, Molly, I think that's that's everything for now. We're still how much longer do we have to go through this the the the Court's watching a jig. Well it's scheduled for four weeks. It's been 1 1/2. And there was there was some some anxiety and hand wringing about how maybe four weeks won't cut it. Yeah. Jesus. So, well, I'm, I'm regretting my decision to actively live tweet. So, like, I'm transcribing in real time for 8 hours a day. It happens. Your fingers. Are you using a laptop or are you doing it on a phone? I'm doing it on a laptop, thank God. So because of COVID. Courthouse, because so many parties in this case and there's the plague. And no one can go into the courthouse except for there's there's a press room where 15 people who got pre approved by a federal court can go and sit and look at a monitor. But I'm sitting at home, I'm comfy at home, so I'm using my computer. Thank God. Yeah, that would be. And I was, I was disappointed. You know, I kind of wanted 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. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for. None of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family. And it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any mint. Global plan and keep your same phone number along with all your existing contacts. 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You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey and if the therapist. That you get matched with doesn't wind up working out. You can switch therapists at any time. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit better helcom behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better elp.com behind betterhelp.com/behind. My name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about. Women justices in the world and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always felt like an ambassador for speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with speaker and when I find a new friend. That has an incredible show. I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart to see. I love to see. I love the courtroom ambiance, but I'll be honest. I'm way less worried about getting stabbed here at home. That is true. That is true people. Are less likely to get stabbed at home, or more likely one of the two. I don't know. Uh, tell us in the comments where you think people are most likely to get stabbed and. Molly, thank you so much. Thank you both for what you're doing and for coming on the show. Is there anywhere the listeners can find slash support you? Would you like people to mail you knives? What? Oh, mail me knives. Yeah, but not as a threat. Like as a fun thing. Fun knives for fun. I did get a large machete in the mail the other day, and before I saw the the little gift note, I was confused. Yeah. I'm glad you're getting gift machetes. Yeah, yeah. My, my friend Shep is a sheep farmer in North Carolina. Sent me a large blade. Yeah. Yep. Good. No, but so if you're interested in reading moment by moment live transcription of people screaming Holocaust denial at a federal judge, you can check me out on Twitter. That's at Socialist dogma, Mom. That's what happens when you make a little joke with your friends when you have 5 followers and then you end up using it professionally. That's the social national news, repeatedly. Then people are posting your mug shot, making fun of your using your ******** mug shot. You you look great, but you look fine. ********. Nobody looks good after they get left in a hot van like a dog. Yeah, but that's true. Well, Molly, that's gonna be. The. End of the episode. So why don't we, why don't we sing a song and and and roll out? Hopefully not the song that Heinbach included in his Christmas letter to James Fields in prison. Ohh God, that must have been really special. Ah, jeez. I'll have to look that up. I did come across in my my browsing through fascist telegram the other week, an entire album, dozens of songs that were all Nazi covers of Blink 182's entire discography. Everything. Everything. And they called it, of course they called it Blink 1488. Like, of course they did. Of course they did. It was. I don't. I don't even know. Like, I I don't even know, like, how to talk about that. It was just a thing that I found. Do you know Hampton stall the the guy who studies malicious stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a particular fascination with white power rap. Oh, God. Yeah. It's never any good. Although there was a there was a fun in one of the H bomber guy videos he found finds this Flat Earth Nazi who has a raft. That's amazing. All right, partial. I'm partial to Cantwell's diss tracks. Yeah. God, Chris cantwell. Well, thank you, Molly, and off we go into the wild blue Yonder. I'm going to go smoke some legal weed and fall asleep face down. Hopefully not thinking about this trial. I am not going to smoke some legal weed because that's federally a crime. Molly. Alright. Have a good day, Molly. Thank you all for listening. 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 all. 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Alicia is a college business class mixed with pop culture. Want to learn about the real estate game? Unclear is how the stock market works. We got you interested in starting a trucking company or vending machine business? Not really sure about how taxes or credit work? We got it all covered. The earning Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to earn your leisure on the Black Effect podcast network, iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, welcome back to it could happen here, the podcast that is occasionally introduced competently, as it sort of was today, because our guest today is someone who is very near and dear to me and to like almost every other person that I know and work with. Moira Meltzer, Cohen Moira. You are a lawyer focusing on civil rights and movement kind of cases and you are the lawyer of yeah, like every everybody I respect in the world. No. Yeah, you're the person that I text whenever I need to know, hey, was this a crime or it never is and it never is. I'm law abiding. Very law abiding. And yeah, we wanted to have you on both because you're always a breath of sunshine and because there's some like law stuff happening these days. We just had our mutual friend Molly Khanjar on to talk about the Charlottesville case, which is quite a thing. Today was the day, yeah, today, today had some had some moments, Chris Cantwell and Richard Spencer representing themselves separately, each cross examining each other. I have so many thoughts, but mostly my thoughts involve laughing so. It's very, very funny. It's it's it's the funniest of of an incredibly tragic and infuriating situation. Something fine funny finally happened. So at least there's that. Often very funny in spite of himself. I would love one day to just get you on and do a we can do a reading of some of Chris Cantwell's better legal filings. OHS, these guys quite the legal mind. Robert, I think I maybe didn't ever tell you about the fact that we did a porim spiel, which is a performance of the story of Esther. Traditionally done at Purim, which is a Jewish holiday, and it was based on the complaint that he filed Oh my God. For those of you were Twitter, the third was prominently featured in the role of Hayman. For those of you who don't know, Chris Cantwell, the crying Nazi from the Unite the right rally, has been incarcerated for a year or so now and continues to put out his own legal motions, generally handwritten, alleging all kinds of conspiracies from the people who did not call the FBI and admit to committing several crimes. We should we should absolutely, absolutely do a crossover with Daniel Harper and more to discuss Cantwell's legal genius. But but today? Where we wanted to have you on because there is another case that a lot of folks are rightly concerned about because it has some pretty dire implications depending on how it goes in a number of ways, the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse. For the I mean, everyone knows Kyle Rittenhouse took a gun illegally across state lines to a protest, so he might have the chance to shoot people and then shot people. This is my opinion about what happened. Obviously the legal case is unfolding. There's been a lot of talk online on on Twitter and whatnot about how obviously unfair the judges being. This is what the talk on Twitter is about, and it's because of a couple of things. One is that the judge? And and again, I'm before I I go to you, Moira, I'm. I'm just. Explaining kind of the way the discourse has been, the discourse is shaped like, well, the judge said, uh, you can't call Kyle, you can't call the people that he killed victims, but you can call the people that he killed looters and arsonists. And so people are saying look at this very clear example of how how bad the justice system is. And I wanted to bring you on for a number of reasons, including the fact that, like, there's a lot of stuff that seems ****** ** and in fact is ****** ** you could argue, but is also like, like pretty normal justice system stuff and some stuff. That seems ****** ** but actually isn't. This is not, I'm not necessarily talking about the Rittenhouse case here, just in general when we talk about the law. So I guess I, I wanted to have you on to explain to us what's happening in, in your opinion and how normal, abnormal, good, bad are kind of the things that we're seeing, the decisions we're seeing this judge make in this case so far. Yeah, sure, absolutely. So the trial, I think when you asked me to comment on this, the trial had not started. The trial has now started. It has been characterized by the defense saying the N word, a juror being. 3rd this morning I think was dismissed for making a cruel and nakedly racist joke, and apparently the judge had a fit of peak about the media's response to his evidentiary rulings, which are what you've asked me to come discuss, which is itself actually one of the more unusual things about this how this trial is going. It's always a little bit hard for me to opine on a case that is not my case. I feel tentative about it. This would never be my case because I would not represent a white supremacist and I am not a prosecutor and would never be a prosecutor. And I was not able to look at the briefing because although all of the briefing was ostensibly publicly filed, it is not actually publicly available. I had a very interesting conversation with the Clerk of Court in Kenosha, who told me that if I. Mailed her a request she would fax me. The briefing at $1.25 a page and I said thank you very much. Goodbye. So I'll do my best to speak to these rulings and the sort of larger issues as I see them. As you noted, there have been a lot of kind of salacious headlines about the evidentiary rulings in this case. And I think those headlines are really, they're less about what's actually happening in the case and they're more reflective of the sort of Pearl clutching liberal impulse to to notice the totally self-evident hypocrisy of the legal system and then to conclude that. Because certain groups are shown more leniency. The way to resolve this hypocrisy is to make sure everyone is pleased and prosecuted and punished as viciously as the left is, which is not actually the goal that I have. And just to clarify, when I when I talk about liberals, as I as I will probably do a little bit, I don't mean like it. I mean liberal as opposed to radical people who are more or less OK with the underlying big systems like capitalism and white supremacy and heteropatriarchy and like maybe are more concerned with the iterations of those things that are particularly, gosh, but they don't actually mind the systems themselves. Or the way that those systems are reiterated and enforced by, for example, the American criminal legal system. So, you know, I think the kind of liberal read on these rulings is not only not legally sound, I think it's actually incredibly dangerous and it's. Watching this unfold and watching the liberal commentary on it, I think is one of the things. It's one of the ways that I can really see liberal liberals and liberalism losing credibility. Because, because they're sort of calling out this hypocrisy and at the same time there's a little bit of a double standard that they want to, that they want to propose and enforce. So, OK, so I'll talk about the rulings that you discussed on the first one is that the judge said that the prosecution is not allowed to refer to the people that Rittenhouse killed as victims. It will remind you, as I remind all of my clients continuously, that the law is at best adjacent to common sense understandings of justice and even frankly, common sense understandings of reality. Obviously the people that Kyle Rittenhouse killed were victims, but as my beloved colleague Sandy reminded me. The concept of victimhood the status of victimhood is among the things that needs to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt at this trial, right? And so in in fact, this is a totally straightforward ruling. It is a ruling that I would argue for as a defense attorney and that I would expect to win where I trying a murder case. So you know, yeah. It's one of those things like you have to overcome this this you have to overcome when you're thinking about a trial like the fact that you know he's guilty because the point of a trial is that everyone's like, there's a process, right. We don't just do St Justice because that's what Rittenhouse did like we're we're you you have to like one of the IT is troubling to me the extent that people are like well, he he should be presumed like we should be referring to the people he shot as victims. Before he has been adjudicated as guilty. Because, like, that's that's important. Like, the presumption of innocence matters, and it's it's it's also something that's very unfair. Like there's a a person in Portland, Alexander Dial, who got in trouble for taking a hammer out of a Nazi's hand during a rally and has been charged with several felonies, and because his trial kept getting delayed, spent 2 1/2 years under pretrial conditions. So the presumption of innocence is hardly equal. But it is important. Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, we'll talk about this I think in a little bit, but that's exactly the issue, right, is that? We need to be enforcing the equal application of the presumption of innocence, not being, you know, rapidly going after the right, in the same way that we are used to law enforcement and the judiciary going after the left, the other ruling that the judge made. That you mentioned was that he said that the defense? Is authorized to characterize the people that Rittenhouse killed as looters or rioters if there is evidence presented that they were in fact looting and or rioting? Yeah, I would if I were, you know, in this case, which of course I'm not. I would object to this on the grounds that it is prejudicial and ******** and it's ****** ** and ********. Yeah, yes. That said, I am not super surprised by that ruling. I would say it's likely within the sound discretion of the judge. And if you know and if the prosecution disagrees, it's a matter for appeal. You know, I think. One of the things the judge said about this actually, that I think is really important and correct. Is is that he has a tremendous amount of discretion in making evidentiary rules rulings. One of the rulings he made was that he's admitting the testimony of an expert witness. Which, you know, I think a lot of people are also quite upset about it. But that said, again, this is not that unusual and it's very difficult for him to deny that motion, to have his evidence or his testimony admitted because the prosecution routinely uses use of force experts in similar trials. So now we're they're just on the other side of the table. Yeah, so, you know, first of all, I get that these rulings don't make us feel good. But they aren't that strange. And as I said, the judge has tremendous discretion in these matters. I was thinking about how to illustrate this, and it occurred to me that I think the last time I was on one of your podcasts, you asked me whether cocaine was illegal. What are we landing on? That, by the way? So I think the first time you asked me, I was a total killjoy and was like, of course it's a legal part. But if I'd actually taken your question more seriously, I think a better answer probably would have been nobody knows. For precisely this reason, because the real question is not what the law says. The real question is how or whether or against whom or to what degree, and under what circumstances will that law be enforced. And these are always open questions and arguments, and judges have a ton of power. This case is no exception. So, you know, again, not only are these rulings pretty standard, but they're, I think, within the judges. Expression. Some of them I really dislike, some of them make total sense to me. And I think that what is happening is is not necessarily sound legal analysis, but liberals sort of trying to argue that Rittenhouse should be more harshly prosecuted by saying that these specific rulings are unfair or unusual. It's it's a little bit like the the Liberals crying out now because people are putting like, let's go Brandon on printing it on rifle receivers and saying like, well, the Secret Service should investigate. Well, if they do that, then some, then like 30 people if they do that and like one company. It's a fine 40 people are going to go to prison for having red flags on their body armor. Like, that's the way it would works in this country. The the right thing. Yeah. Any, any anarchist, the 3D printer is going to immediately go to jail. Yeah. Yeah. That's not like that is correct. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess the thing that I want to point out here is that what is actually unusual about this case is not these rulings. It is that Rittenhouse is going to trial at all. And the reason Rittenhouse is going to trial is able to go to trial. Is largely because this prosecution is fundamentally calculated not to be repressive. So I want to kind of zoom out and get away from the weeds of these evidentiary rulings. So in its simplest expression, when we talk about the difference between state and federal jurisdiction, we're saying kind of. Jurisdiction for dummies, overly simplified, is stuff that happens inside or only impacts a given state is typically prosecuted by the state and if it impacts if your offense conduct or alleged offense conduct impacts more than one state. Then it is, or can be prosecuted by the Federal Department of Justice. So Kyle Rittenhouse crusts state lines with a pretty serious firearm, and he shot three people. This puts us immediately into federal jurisdiction land. He did this in the context of an uprising for racial justice that has been characterized by the fact that those rising up on the side of racial justice have been subject to intense repression by the federal government. DOJ has shown themselves to be fire breathing only enthusiastic about the sizing their jurisdiction over heady offenses based on totally tenuous grounds. For people. On the left, or who are perceived to be on the left, DOJ has asserted jurisdiction in order to prosecute people for absolutely trivial but politically motivated offenses that would be left to the state to prosecute absent the politics of the accused. They have asserted federal jurisdiction on really flimsy bases like that a local police building or vehicle belongs to a department that has received federal funding, so property damage against it becomes a federal offense. One thing they're doing that is unusual is the federal government is asserting concurrent jurisdiction to prosecute offenses. So I know there's someone in Portland who is simultaneously being prosecuted by Multnomah and also the federal government for allegedly throwing some accelerant on a police building. Right. So it is very curious that Rittenhouse who quite clearly did something that would. You know, fall under federal jurisdiction is not being federally charged. And it matters a lot for how the case proceeds because the way that federal prosecutions operate is that the feds will typically stack these indictments in a way that really puts tremendous pressure on them to plead guilty, which is not typically the case or doesn't happen in the same way. State prosecution. So you have these stacked indictments with multiple multiple counts ranging, you know, all all kinds of conduct often involving, you know, a conspiracy which can be very, very easy to prove. And a guilty finding on any of those counts could be like a mandatory minimum of five to 10 years. And then if you're looking at, you know, a guilty on more than one or all of those counts you're looking at. Sentence potentially concurrent sentences that are tantamount to dying in prison, right? And so this creates tremendous pressure on federal defendants to negotiate a pretrial disposition to take a guilty plea. So again, Kyle Rittenhouse crosses state lines with this firearm, which gets used in the in the Commission of an act of violence. And I feel extremely confident that any federal prosecutor could come up with a stack of counts against him within about 10 minutes without breaking a sweat. But you know. So, you know, if you think about him being in that position. You think through OK. If I go to trial, what is what are likely outcomes? If Kyle Rittenhouse went to trial federally and even if he prevailed on a self-defense, right, which, which could happen if you were found guilty on one or more of the lesser charges, he would still be looking at really, really serious time, right? But that's not where we are, right? We are in a really weird place where like in a federal context, we wouldn't even be like. Talking about evidentiary rulings, because he would almost certainly not be going to trial. Right, like eating. Yeah. Or, you know, if he had a reasonable lawyer, he would probably be negotiating a plea. I'm curious, what do you think about? Because one argument I've heard, and I'm certainly in no position to evaluate this personally, is that if federal charges had been placed on him, you know, when the crime, you know, in 2020, Trump would have pardoned him. I don't know. Yeah. Like I've heard people argue that that, like, well, at least with the state charges, he can't be pardoned by President Trump. Like, I I'm in no position to really evaluate that, but I'm, I'm curious what you think about that. Hey, honestly can't even speculate about what might have happened. That is very interesting. I I do think that if the DOJ wanted to charge him at this point, I mean, not they don't think they could, but like there I think was an opening for that to happen. After Trump left, I suspect there is a very interesting FOIA request to be made to DOJ to see what kind of memo was circulated about whether or not they were going to pick this one up. They clearly declined to prosecute. I the only thing that I could come up with, to be honest, and I I looked and did not really see any meaningful discussion of this, of their decision not to prosecute. The only thing that occurred to me is that they might have been reluctant to assert jurisdiction over a minor, but they can prosecute anyone over the age of 15 as an adult if they engage in violent crimes or if they are alleged to have engaged in violent crimes. So that's not. It wouldn't entirely undermine their ability to do so. So I, you know, for whatever reason, you know, for whatever reason they didn't, I think it is worth noting. I think it is, as I said, very curious. And it's particularly curious in light of the intense federal repression that has been faced by people perceived to be on the left. OK. You know, so, like, again, I want to be very clear. I don't. I'm not suggesting that I want him to be federally prosecuted. I I don't particularly. I'm not interested in arguing for more prosecutions or for making the state the arbiter of political righteousness or giving the state more enforcement power or more resources. You know, but, you know, and look, no shade to Kenosha, WI all right? But one of the things that the federal prosecutors are really have a lot of experience doing is digital forensic investigations. And. In this case, one of the sort of critical questions is did he have specific intent to go across state lines and engage in violence? And I suspect that if you were to access all of his texts and metadata and social media posts, that you could probably find evidence of that specific intent. And I think that the federal government is probably better positioned to do that than the prosecutors in Kenosha. And they decided not to. Right. So, you know, and and that is exactly the kind of investigation that they mounted against Daniel Baker who just, he's a the yoga teacher in Tallahassee who just got 3 1/2 years for posting vague, sort of incoherent, mutually contradictory, kind of not at all frightening. Yeah, it's not. I wouldn't recognize his threats, but I hesitate to. He said, yeah, that, you know, he posted some stuff on social media and and now he's going to do three years in federal prison. My attitude on the the the nature of what he posts is that like if prior to his prosecution you had brought that post. But to me I said, well, probably not a great idea to post, but also literally every week a right winger in the Portland area posts something significantly more actionable right now. Chandler Pappas currently being charged with assaulting 6 police officers in the state Capitol in Salem. Just announced that he's doing armed training as a convicted felon outside of Portland later this November. Which if he's if he touches a firearm, he should go away to. Like based on the letter of the law, he should go to prison for years. Like that's the way the law is written. Nothing's gonna happen to him. He's going to get to train people with guns and continue to carry guns and it's it's fine for him anyway. I whatever. I'm sorry. It's OK. Yeah. I guess your your listeners can't. See that? I have my head in my hands, yeah. Yeah. I mean I look, what Daniel Baker did was certainly ill advised if yeah ill advised would characterize it. I have clients who have been visited by the Secret Service or have been visited by the FBI for saying stuff that when they call me and they're like, well, I just said this and I'm like, yeah, I know that you're not going to actually do that, but maybe don't you know, it's it's it's not it's, but it's protected by the very First Amendment or less and. You know, I I I've said this before, I don't think the solution to. To. Being surveilled on social media is self censorship. I think it is courage, but I also think that discretion is the better part of valor. So pick your battles and maybe, yeah, understand that it's not fair, you know? And also like, what do you gain by, you know, being bumptious on the Internet? It's one of those things where, yeah, if that guy had had a high dollar lawyer, if he if he'd been a rich person. Yeah, maybe he would have gotten away with it. Knows, but like he it's it's he certainly would have gotten no, I can certainly say he would have gotten away with it if he'd been a right winger, because a bunch of them do every single day. Yeah, I can't make any speculation about that particular case, but I can say that the people who are being surveilled intensely and targeted for that kind of repression are not the people on the right. The people on the right are able to make those kinds of statements and not be particularly taken seriously even when they should be. And people on the left are presumed to be, you know, Antifa super soldiers. So, you know, I I think the decision not to assert federal jurisdiction in the Rittenhouse case is interesting. It is noteworthy, really curious about what was going on there and it has had a sort of cascade of effects. Including I doubt that the forensic digital investigation was. As good as it would have been had it been federal, and I doubt that the, I mean, he's facing multiple charges, but I don't think that he would have been as likely to go to trial had he been federally charged. So again, I don't, you know, this is not an argument for more federal prosecution, of course, but like, I think the breathless outrage that we're seeing in, you know, these headlines where people are correctly identifying the hypocrisy. The criminal legal system, I think it's sort of an exercise in point missing, you know, this prosecution, like many of the prosecutions that we see or the prosecutions that don't happen at all that involve members of the dominant class or people who uphold the. Values of the dominant classes. It's sort of proof of concept that it's possible to effectively allocate the burden of proof to the prosecution. It's possible not to go super hard on people and punish them for exercising their trial right. Right, I mean, it's it's possible. To. Treat. All people accused of offenses in this way, and I would much rather, I mean, obviously my ultimate goal is to dismantle the entire system, you know. But but in the meantime I don't think what we need is more vicious prosecution of the right. I think we need consistent and commensurate prosecution or lack of prosecution. We need a you know. I think that seeing the way that the right is treated should be evidence for and an argument for the possibility of. Treating all people with more leniency rather than, you know, intent, the intense federal repression that that we are facing and have been facing, you know, since the Palmer raids. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, Moira, that is the stuff I wanted to ask about. Is there anything else? That, uh, I mean, sure, I I definitely go off on liberals somewhere. Please. Please. I mean, Garrison is a huge fan of of liberals. He's got actually a full back tattoo of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, but they're they're in the the volleyball scene from Top Gun. It's an incredible tattoo. He did it all freehand on his own back. Amazing. This is like the Garrett I hope I don't receive any stones Nixon tattoo. I hope I don't receive any awful fan art now. Someone someone do it. Come on, come on. Photoshop Garrison's head onto onto Roger Stones Back and Photoshop Nixon's head out and the volleyball scene from Top Gun with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Do it, do it. So what's going to do it? Gary's workplace. Somebody is definitely going to do it. This is you consume me for this and you'd be right to do so. But let's get back to. I might represent you. Try all of the trial of the century. Yeah, that sounds great. I think this is a trend that we see with people who are not necessarily focused on looking at the ways that the law is always going to be used first and worst against the already most vulnerable, right? So we've seen things like. I think there's just this very well documented. Liberal impulse, and I think it's very well-intentioned, but it's very dangerous to do things to like assume that the system somehow works or should work and that it just needs to be like followed more closely. And that if we push for things like if we like, use the law to constrain things that I would agree are the most harmful excesses of bigotry, right? That the law would be a good tool for. For addressing. Violence and bigotry, yeah, and the law does not. But that is not what kind of tool the law is. When we push for things like laws regulating political speech, including so-called hate speech laws regulating. What are referred to as hate crimes laws regulating who can carry a firearm and what they might look like. You know, pushes for limiting the the places or circumstances under which you could protest or demonstrate, right? Which, you know, which was done there, there was a real big. Push to forbid anti choice activists from protesting outside of clinics, right? Which I understand right. But what actually is The upshot of doing that when we see this kind of push to use the law as a tool to enforce a particular political agenda? It is not, you know, it's it's just very ill conceived way to approach this because the law is never going to protect the most vulnerable. Well, these structures of power that uphold remain in place. And so, you know, it's just always going to be leveraged against the people who have the least amount of power. And and so, you know, this, this sort of response to the Rittenhouse stuff, to me it's just essentially a recuperation of of that impulse. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a little like that old, I think the joke is attributed to Gandhi. I don't know if Gandhi actually said it, but like he was asked what do you think of Christian civilization? And he said, I think it would be a wonderful idea. What do you think of the fair and equal rule of law? Sounds nice. Yeah, but it was either Gandhi or Groucho Marx. Yeah, one of the two. Yeah, maybe both. Maybe both. I don't know that we ever saw them together. Umm, alright, so I don't know. I I it's it's obviously it's too early to it's one of those things where all of the complaining about the unfairness of the trial if Rittenhouse winds up getting rammed into a a a legal wall metaphorically it may seem silly and content. Or in in retrospect, or he may, this may be the thing that ignites a new wave of vigilante showing up at protests with guns. Yeah, groups to be untouchable. Like, really. With the big fears that this set of precedent that will allow other people to use quote UN quote self-defense claims you an effort just to kill black activists, to kill activists on the left, to kill people wearing, you know, black hoodies and bandanas, right. Because that's the that's the big fear out of this situation. Because my my expectation is that if Rittenhouse gets off or even just gets very minor, like if it's, if he's, if he's out of jail quickly within about six months, he's going to be a millionaire. Absolutely. Yeah. That's the way they're. Works. I would gently ask you to think about what happens if he doesn't. Because if he's convicted. We are going to see a deepening of the repression that is faced by everyone on the left as well. We lose either way. Yeah, no good choices on the table. There's no winning, I guess, I think. It, I mean, part of it, I guess, depends on on what he's convicted for. UM, because some of the stuff has I I would I. It seems to me some of the things he's charged with, if convicted, there's more potential negative implications across the political aisle than than with others. Like if if it's ruled murder, I don't know, that feels less worrisome. I mean, I have some concerns about the crossing state line stuff. I don't know. I mean, none of it's. None of it's good, I guess. Where I am is I I I remember vividly how much the the situation on the ground changed after Kenosha, just in in in Portland even. I mean, Garrison can can back me up with this. They were there for that too, like it was a. It was a significant shift in the feeling of deadliness. You know, whenever there was a right wing, left wing confrontation. And someone died. Someone died a few days later, someone died a few days later and in a ******* gun fight. And I. I don't know. I don't know, Moira. Uh, I don't know. I I don't. I don't want. Rittenhouse to get off Scott free for shooting three people? You're absolutely right, there's no there's no winning with the legal system. The only way to win is not to play. The only way to win is not to play. So form your own breakaway civilization. Yeah, a skin. And also Gandhi and Gandhi. Yeah, and I'll Ron Hubbard take to the sea. Yes, yeah, always. Look, I don't, I don't think I I'm not looking for him to prevail on the self-defense and not like none of this is going to make me feel good, but I think that whether or not he is punished. Whether or not he is convicted. There will be negative repercussions, and all of those negative consequences will redound to the detriment of the people who are already facing the most intense federal repression. Is, I mean. And in fairness, like this is the case of a child who killed two people and is. Now we are determining whether or not this child will spend the rest of their life in a cell. That should make anyone feel good no matter what happens. It's a thoroughly bleak story. Yeah. Yeah. It's because this kid is never going to have a chance to grow up and be like, oh, I was being like, a horrible. They'll never be able to adjust to anything else. Rather than being this person that, like, culturally has been created right there. They are like a cultural thing. They're an item. They're not a person anymore, and they'll never be able to escape that. Yeah, I was a ***** ** **** when I was 17, and if I had had access to an AR15 and a chance to feel like a hero, I might have done something horrific too, and instead you were just doing sloppy steaks instead. And it's fine. And now it's fine. You watched? I think you should leave, Moira. I'm sorry. Have you watched? I think you should leave Moira. No. Ohh. It's good. It's good. OK. Alright, I'll check it out. I'll, I'll take a look. Yeah, I don't know well. Thank you Moira, this is always appreciated. It's good to. I don't know, like. Were you? We've talked a bit about anarchism. How many of how much, how much of like your belief about the way the world ought to be and is came as a result of getting into the guts of the legal system. You mean, did I become more devoted to anarchism when I went to law school? Umm. I didn't become less devoted to it. Well, I I remember when I was going to law school, people kept saying, oh, you're going to become really conservative. And I was like, I don't think that's true. That seems. Seems fake, and in fact I remember. Being in my criminal procedure class and just thinking how in the world can anyone at any law school read Miranda? Which is a case. 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. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. 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There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world and if you can give a voice to them you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with speaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always felt like an ambassador. First speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle. The hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart this fall on revisionist history. Is there anything that we haven't talked about or or that I should 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? 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. Swear someone is, you know, just. Horrifically abused. By police in order to extract a statement. How could anybody read this case and not come out of law school with a deep contempt for law enforcement? You know, I know that it happens. I don't know how. Always uplifting. Yeah. I mean it. It is it's important to know. You know, I when I was when I was younger and poor and dealing with things like taxes, I would often go like years without paying them. And I would like ignore debts and bills until like like my student loans until it became like a serious problem because I didn't want to look at it. I didn't even want to like look at the the scale of the issue and grapple with it. I just wanted to run away from it. And when I actually like, sat down and. And figured out my situation and and like really came to understand like what what I needed to do in order to deal with those problems. Like it was stressful and it sucked, and it was ******* days of work, but getting understanding the scope of the problem I'd gotten myself into was a necessary step to like fixing the situation, and I think the same is true with like. This kind of **** it's not fun. Nobody who is, I think a reasonable person like, wants to dig into the US justice system and get into the guts of it because it's bleak as hell. But you need to, because it's it's you can't escape it unless you flee the country and live in a place with no extradition treaties. Or international waters? I feel like you're talking about a lot of the people you've profiled. Yeah, your other podcasts. I mean, Ecuador does sound nice. I'm sure it's lovely this time of year. Yeah, I think you're right. We need to be able to have a sort of clear eyed assessment so that we can accurately identify and effectively address. The problems unfortunately, I think the problems are so. All-encompassing that. I I don't know that there's. I would venture to say that there is not a real totalizing solution that doesn't involve total abolition. Agree with you about, but in the meantime, I mean I think there are there are things that we can do to. To advocate for our clients or my clients. As an individual, you can do to protect yourself, and that's why it is important to have some sort of working understanding, because you can keep yourself and the people around you at least somewhat safer. If you do understand the beast, even though your goal is to is to destroy it, and that's of, I think, the only reasonable goal. When you really understand it, it still behooves you to to understand it. I mean, it's the same with like, it's the same with what what Garrison and I do with the ******* Nazis spinning all this time and weird telegram. Channels like reading what they're trying to understand them because you do need to understand them to effectively combat them. Well, it's not for the faint of heart. Yeah, neither is what you do. The message is, is that we're all well adjusted and we're all, we're all great, we're all doing great. We're saving up for that boat. Secondary trauma, no. There's no secondary trauma in international waters, Moira. I have that, that, that, that. My my old friend LRH told me that. Just you and the open sea and a bunch of 20 year olds searching for gold that I buried in a past life, living the dream. Yeah. He is both fascinating and terrifying. Yeah, yeah, just just like her. Just like our legal system and that system. And that wraps up. That brings us around. Do you have anything you want to plug any any place maybe our listeners could could send donations that would help somebody who's. Themselves against the wall at the moment would certainly suggest that people look into whatever bail funds are local to them. There's one I know in New York called COVID bailout NYC that's doing incredible work right now to get people off Rikers Island, which is having a humanitarian crisis of just unbelievable scope. It sounds to me like the conditions on Rikers right now are at least as bad as the conditions. That led to the Attica uprising. Jesus. So I would always, always direct people to give money to local bail funds. I also want to plug the National Lawyers Guild anti federal repression or federal defense hotline which is 21267928112126792811 if you call that number. Or you can call that number if you are having unwanted contact with federal agents and you can be advised. By an attorney. Who is me about your rights and responsibilities with respect to federal agents, and I will try to connect you with appropriate resources in your area. This is not the hotline to call if you've been injured by a police officer. This is the hotline to call if you have been visited by the FBI. Don't talk to cops. If you are contacted by law enforcement, say I am represented by Council. Please leave your name and number and my lawyer will call you. And remember that you cannot talk your way out of an arrest, but you can talk your way into a conviction. All great points. All great things to be aware of. Umm, Speaking of great things to be aware of. Be aware that we'll be back tomorrow. Unless this is a Friday, in which case we'll be back next week from now until the heat death of the universe. Thank you so much, Laura. You're so welcome. 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 and the ad council. Make sure to check out drink champs, your number one music podcast on the Black Effect podcast network. Host NO R&D JEFN sat down with artists and icon yay, which Vulture called one of 2021's most significant interviews. 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Hello and welcome to it could happen here, a podcast about the continual state of bad things happening and how sometimes you can make them less bad or not happen. And today we're going to. I'm Christopher Wong, by the way, and today we're going to be talking about Bosnia, a place where things. Went about as bad as they possibly can. And about how they're heading in very scary directions. Now and with us to talk about this is ernessa kustrin. Ernessa is a genocide survivor and an academic expert on. Genocides in general, and that's, uh, how are you doing? You know, I'm doing OK, I think, all things considered. You know, being sort of bombarded on a daily basis with, you know. Possible threats and talks about, you know, a new conflict. War brewing in the Balkans is the thing. Not an easy thing to contend, to contend with. But yeah, but other than that, I'm doing great. Thanks for asking. Well, I'm glad. I'm glad you could be here with me today because the the Balkans extremely complicated place, which I guess is true of most places, but yeah and so I guess that that's that's where I wanted to go with my first question because. Reading about what's happening now, my first instinct was go back to the date and accords, but I'm actually not sure of it. That's that, that, that's that's even the best place to start. And so I wanted, I wanted to. I guess ask you if so, OK. So if you're coming into looking at the Balkans for the first time and you're trying to understand what's going on now, where do you think is the best place to start on it because? I think, you know the best. God, it's so hard. Yeah. We're talking about so much history, honestly. But The thing is let's, you know, let's start with the death of Tito. That's always a good place, I think, because that's really when things started to kind of shift in the Balkans. And the former, you know, socialist Yugoslavia was really once Tito died and. This place became, you know, empty as this sort of unifying factor of all the various ethnicities and nationalities within Yugoslavia. You know, once he was gone, that sort of left this vacuum that needed to be filled. And unfortunately, instead of being filled by another socialist, you know, Pro Equality, Pro unity leader, it was filled with a nationalist vacuum. Which is kind of where we still are. Unfortunately, you know it started obviously with. With little things, I think with little sort of conversations and and little subtle I guess, you know, ethno, nationalist, rhetorics and it just kind of like grew and spiraled from there. And obviously, you know, that sort of thing led to Milosevic in Kosovo giving his infamous speech which kind of really gave that full-fledged stamp. On, OK, yes this is a. Ultranationalist, you know, ethno nationalist president that we now have, who's threatening war across the other ethnicities? What do we do next? And at that point, you know, that's when you sort of see the other countries start to secede, you know, Slovenia, Croatia, they're attacked by Serbia and then obviously eventually it goes down to Bosnia. And yeah, I mean it starts with the ethno nationalism as it always does in in developing, so I think. You know, I I don't think we're we're anything special in terms of having conflict with our neighbors. Look at France and England or England and Ireland or America and Mexico or anyone really. It's just, you know, I think people make it sound as if we're special or we have these ancient hatreds. But you know that's not really true. It it all comes down to the freaking politics and the leaders and unfortunately you know Milosevic was removed. But. Is. Policy is. Beliefs. Continued to kind of stick around, you know, I I think. You know people. Think of people like Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic who were, you know, genocidal war criminals. As a thing of the past, but really, you look at, you know, the Serbian President would chic or the Republican President, Milorad Dodik. And they're really just the continuation of Karageorge and relationship, which so nothing, you know, has fundamentally changed since Tito died, except, you know, we got some new agreements, we got some new territories, some new ethnic lines drawn up. And not a new pretty buildings too. We have those now as well, but we don't really have that coexistence. At least that on paper. Not in politics, certainly. Go back for a second to. I guess the moment of Chito dying because it's always been a sort of interesting. Think looking at it for me because I remember, I mean you know so from studying Chinese history, right. There's a period where in the 70s where say OK, like everyone's looking for reform in China and you know what you would consider like the sort of the, the, the, I guess you could call them the. I don't know. Left and right is complicated in China. But yeah, you know, there are a lot of sort of what you would call like the sort of left socialist, like democratic reformers who, you know, I mean people, people like, they're looking at Yugoslavia as a model and they're going, oh, we can have like, workers participation and we can have this, we can have these, like, democratic enterprises and then. That. Just implodes and and and yeah. I wonder if we can talk a little bit more about that, because. My, my very limited understanding of it is, is like there's an economic crisis from the oil shocks and then. Once Tito dies, it's just like the wheels come off the whole system. I mean, that's a really good way of like, putting it, you know, like life in Yugoslavia I don't think was like ever perfect. And I definitely don't think it was a perfect system. I think, you know, me being a Bosnian who was born to very, I think, Pro Yugoslav parents. I just like many of my, you know, fellow Yugoslavs or ex Yugoslavs have a tendency to look at Yugoslavia with, like, rose colored lenses, you know? We think about the the coexistence, the unity, the multi ethnic part, the worker owned you know socialist models, the fact that our parents you know, were able to provide for their families and take vacations and travel and you know get together and all these sort of wonderful things. But in the background really in the sort of depths of the you know politics and the economic issues where. Kind of. Always there. Uh, you know, the one thing that Tito did was obviously he relied. Unlike I think other socialist leaders of his time is, you know, he basically worked with anyone, you know, the non aligned movement, but also with the West, with Europe, you know. So he wasn't very picky choosy. I think he was, you know, the betterment of the country by kind of any means necessary. But. I think, you know, he made mistakes just like other leaders do and I think obviously. We had, you know two issues. One, he was sick, he was dying and and two, there was an economic crisis happening and three, then we had like the economic reforms which. Really shifted the entire, I mean they just they very much shifted the the the system that the Yugoslav people were very much used to. It became more and more prior you know privatized after that and and you know Milosevic he was. He was the banker. He was a businessman. He was. He was who he was. And I don't think that he ever really pretended to be a socialist. Yeah. Which is why I get so upset when certain American leftists call him a socialist or call him an anti imperialist, because those aren't even words that, you know, he himself would have really used to describe himself, I think. But but I think, you know, there was just. It was that sort of thing where there's an economic crisis brewing. They have no way to really fix that. People are broke, people are starving. Suddenly the ownership, the worker, you know, owned sort of model is being shifted to a more privatized model and people are just not happy. What's a good way to distract from that? And the nationalism, you know, it's just we see it happen everywhere. It's not unusual. It's not like a new, you know, tactic. It's a tactic that everyone has utilized. Blame it on the other. So you can Slavia didn't really have, you know, immigrants that they could blame it on, but they had Muslims, so and they had the Kosovo, you know, Albanians and Bosnians. And that was, you know, enough. And suddenly the conversation really shifted and obviously I'm simplifying all of this. Much more complicated I think, but you know there there are books out there and and and that obviously go into a great, you know, level of detail. Into the actual sort of breakup, so I can give some recommendations later. But yeah, but I think in in in that sort of very simplistic kind of sense is there was an economic crisis happening, a good way to sort of distract. That was the use of ethno nationalism, and it just kind of spiraled from there. I think, you know, what Milosevic and what people like Milosevic always want is more power for themselves and so his whole thing. Wasn't really ever about keeping Yugoslavia intact as Yugoslavia. It was keeping this vision of a greater Serbia alive. Because The thing is, you know, if we had. Not had a person like Norwich, if we just had somebody who was, you know, the second Tito, maybe more or less worse or better, who cares? I think people would have been fine. I think, you know, I don't see this like war breaking out, but instead we had Milosevic who was like way more concerned about consolidating power, exerting that control, when he realized that he could use ethno nationalism to get to his goals. Of course he was going to use that, of course, like, who wouldn't? You know, we see it today with, like, what Trump did. He utilized, you know, Muslims and immigrants and refugees and black people, always scapegoats to distract from all of the other things that are wrong with him, his leadership and the overall country. And the motion, which did the same. He just did what any other politician did. And, you know, that's the thing I, I think, you know, in thinking about Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia and all these countries that started to secede. I think if. They. Had felt comfortable with, you know, staying in a country that is multi ethnic, at least in the case of Bosnians. I'm not going to speak for the Slovenians or Croatians because they have their own, I think complicated identity, but with Bosnians are. Are saying collectively, I think, while we're not a monolith, not monolith, but collectively was always. Where are united? We are multi ethnic, multi religious, multicultural and it's such a big part of like our entire history and identity. And so if the choice is. Being, you know, under Serb control, being secondary citizens, not having that equality, not having that multi ethnicity. Of course we're not going to take that choice. Of course people are going to want to. You know, when when you have like that, you know that boot on your neck of saying like we're going to control you, we're going to take your land and we're going to basically rule over you. Nobody wants to deal with that. And you know, unlike. A lot of the other countries in in. Former Yugoslavia Bosnia really was the most multiethnic. It had one of the highest rates of, you know, mixed ethnic marriages and multi religious marriages. And that kind of remains true even today. So especially in places like Sarajevo, Mostad panel, Luca, you know, the bigger cities it it has this very proud history of. You know, coexistence and multi ethnic coexistence, so I think. What happened? For so many people was just a huge amount of shock. My own family, so many people in my own family just did not think it could happen there. They grew up with this idea of a united. You know, multi ethnic Yugoslavia. Brotherhood and unity. These are our neighbors, our friends, our teachers, our lovers. You know, whatever they're, they work with us. They live next to us. Of course they're not going to, you know, turn against us. And I think even while all the politicians were fear mongering while, you know, Milosevic and Karadzic were sort of leading their campaigns of, you know, especially Islamophobic propaganda, propaganda, you know, in, in newspapers, on the radio, on TV. Any chance that any speech that they gave, they talked about how the Muslims were coming, we were going to make their daughters wear hijabs, we were going to take over, we were going to kill them, you know, before. That's why. You have to kill us because they don't kill us. We're going to kill them. Just whole, you know, really brilliant propaganda campaign in so many ways that has now been replicated in so many other countries. Can we talk about that specifically for a second? Because I think there's something interesting in. The way that. Like the the the way that you get people to do a genocide always seems to be is like you you you can't it. It's extremely hard to get someone to like. Just murder their neighbor because they don't like them. You have to do this like they're about to exterminate us, and that's why we have to like strike first and that. Yeah, that that that aspect of it I think is, is something that I see a lot when when I do this. And yeah you you have you have done infinitely more genocide studies. So I want to hear. Yeah. Yeah. I mean here's the thing. I it's so funny. I gave like an interview on this specific topic, I don't know, like two years ago. And I remember turning to the guy who was interviewing me because he was just like his look at his face was, I just don't understand. Like I don't. I can't wrap my mind. About how people could do that to their friends, neighbors, students, you know, people they were sworn to like, protect and and people they lived with their entire lives. How could they do that? Well, you know, I turned to him and I said, yeah, I mean, if I told you right now, go kill him. You know, you probably would, but if I came to you day in and day out and I slowly started to kind of whisper in your ear. And I started to tell you, you know, he's been really, really, I don't know. He's been saying a lot of stuff about you. He's been quite negative or, I don't know, you know, do you think he's kind of acting weird? I feel like he might be planning something, might be planning to take over your house. You might be planning to, I don't know, probably attack your sister. I think he's going to kill your sister. I think he might make your sister wear her job. So it's these very, like, slow, subtle things. And that's the thing that people don't understand, you know, violence. Never interrupts. Like, never erupts out of nowhere. You know it. It's always planned. It brews and it brews and it brews and then it explodes, you know? Then there's the thing, but it it comes slowly. And that's how it was anyway. Yeah, it wasn't this sudden, you know. Oh yes, we're brothers and sisters forever. Go, Tito. Go Yugoslavia to you know, oh, I hate you because you're Muslim and I hate you because you're a servant. I hate you because you're a Croat. No, that was not the case. The case was that this was a very slow. Campaign of propaganda that started in the 80s, almost immediately after Titos. That's let's say it started very slow. Started with the, you know, with the sort of, I think, disenfranchisement of the Kosovo Albanians. And kind of the targeting of them. And again, yes there was this economic component on of it, but the way they wanted to kind of sidetrack that was. You know well you're you're hungry because the cost of Albanians. Are not, you know, they're taking your jobs again, similar. You know tactics that we, we see. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not it's not that much different, but yeah, you know, it starts slow and and. The Milosevic and the Karajan, the Miadich kind of campaigning was God, it was brutal. I mean, like I always say, it was kind of brilliantly executed in that it really got to people. So much that then again, you know, they turned Beaver against labor. It was, it was subtle in the beginning. It was that sort of what are the Muslims up to? Can we trust them? Can you trust your neighbor? Can you trust them? Muslims, you know, talking about Islam, says station. Talking about Ali is a bigger, which is book that he wrote when he was like, I don't know, 18 or or whatever like and, you know, talking about World War Two, this was another thing like. Everybody knows that there was a period in World War Two where, you know, a lot of service were killed by Joshua and by the, you know, Nazi collaborationist. And I think obviously that's a real fear for, you know, for a certain group of people who went through that. So there was a lot of that as well. You know, that's going to happen again. That's going to happen again. Meanwhile, there was no grand plan. There was never. Even talks of, you know, committing violence or even, you know, talks of, you know, seceding from Yugoslavia or anything. It was all. It was all set in motion by the Serbian leadership, you know, and I think that's what people don't understand. The Bosnian leadership, while not perfect, we're simply reacting to what the Serbian leadership was in many ways making them do. And and that's kind of what you know. What happens in these situations? You know, they kind of push you and push you and push you until they're able to get, you know, some sort of rise out of you or a response out of you or or get you on that sort of offensive where you have to defend yourself, you have to defend your identity, you have to defend who you are. You have to. Justify it and also in many ways, so yeah. The, you know, the sort of propaganda campaign got there was. You know, obviously the funny things were like things like they're going to make you wear the hijab, but it was also very insidious because they would target. Like these, you know, villages where they were like. Bosnians and Serbs, you know, living together and they're quite small, but they knew that, like in the village obviously, usually have a gun or, you know, shotgun because of the animals or, you know, working or whatever. So they were like, target them specifically with like the, you know, the radio. And instead of like the big cities, like they worked up to the big cities, but they really started in like specific sort of areas like in eastern Bosnia especially because there was like a lot of. I think majority Muslim like villages in that area that would also have like nearby Serb villages. So yeah, I mean there was that there was you know then sort of taking over all the radio stations and. Kind of going full force they think like in the sort of early days. Of the war like we're talking. April May of 1992. They, you know, they would get people like pretending that they were Bosnians, they were actually Serbs, and they would like to talk about how they went to. You know, kill all Serbs or something like that. There was also when they were like having people in concentration camps where they like started kind of putting them in those concentration camps initially. They. They would make the victims in the concentration camps the Muslims. Basically, you know, say that, oh, they're just there. As a refugee and the Serbian army is like protecting them and they're making them feel really welcome and stuff like that. So it was right at the beginning. Between especially 89 to like 92. The propaganda was so visible and it really escalated and it was like suddenly everywhere and you would hear. At our church and middle worship each talk. About, you know, the Muslims and the things that we wanted and and you know, the things that the goals that we had, which after all were not, you know. Nobody was saying that there wasn't like a single person that was saying these things that they were attributing to us, but that didn't matter. What they were just doing was instilling enough fear and enough doubt in the population to eventually get them to take up arms when the time comes. And unfortunately, that's precisely what happened when the time came. You know, a lot of people did take up arms whether or not they wanted to. They had enough of that doubt and fear sewed in their minds over the course of, you know, several years that they ended up. Feeling like I have to protect myself. I'm not saying that's the case for every single person. I think some, a lot of you know, especially in in higher leadership positions, a lot of them were just sociopaths who wanted to kill. And I don't think it mattered why or or how because you're always going to get those kind of people. But I think when we're talking about how. How that shift happens so fast, we have to obviously discuss the, the propaganda, the huge amount of propaganda that went into the, you know, implementing it. So I guess your tangent, Oh my God, no, no, no, that was that was that was really great. Yeah. And I think, you know. Yeah, I mean, I guess like. I I I think it's. Incredibly important for everyone to understand their propaganda works. Like if you just say something over and over and over again like it it does, you know, eventually it pays off and you know the, the, the, the quote UN quote payoff here is the genocide and I guess. Yeah, I'm not sure how far into detail you want to get into this here, but I think. One thing I want to kind of focus on because I think from from reading what you've been saying about this. That the the this wound up being a big deal was like why things are sort of still ****** now, which is. That, like the international response to this, like one of the things I always just like haunted by is there's this quote by Mitterrand, who's the Prime Minister of France. He's like, this must be the socialist. He's like the guy that like they finally put in power after, like all of the stuff in the 60s. And he has this lying about like. I wish, I wish I wish I had pulled up the exact quote, but it it's it's it's basically like. I. I know the quote. Yeah. Do you want us to say I don't remember? I know the quote. It's. What was it up? Peaceful, but necessary. Reconstruction of a Christian Europe. Yeah, and Bosnia does not belong. So I remember that specifically. It's really stayed with me for such a long time because he said that at a time where the Bosnian Muslims were just completely defenseless, they were being dragged away to concentration camps. The massacres were already well underway. We're not talking about students at 95. We're talking about we. Sharad, sorry about Focha garage there. Even surveillance said 92. You know, this is all in 1992. The things that happen in places like Butch coins, warning and all these like places that you that I think the vast majority of people don't really know about and hear about. Like in Michigan, a lot of my family is from there within a span of three months that entire town. The entire town, which was once. Almost entirely Bosniak Muslim. Was ethnically cleansed and that was done through forced deportations, concentration camps, mass rapes and rape camps of women and obviously a lot of murders, you know. So we're talking about one small town that took, you know, 3 three months. And my family, when it comes to that town on both my mother's and my father side, interestingly enough, has like such a long history. My parents found a love there when they were like kids, so, you know. I, you know, my grandmother's house was there, my grandfather's house was there on like both sides and they, you know, so is this beautiful little town where, you know, Bosnians then Bosniaks and Serbs and Croats live and Jews, Roma and. You know, my parents talk about the beauty of it and this wonderful sort of experience that they had when they lived there. My, my mom is from Sarajevo and so am I as well, obviously, but you should. That was like the place that she would go kind of like for the weekend just because of the family that we had there. So very special, I think, in her heart, my grandpas heart as well and. You know, within, it's just like so hard to like fathom that within just a few months, that town was completely ethnically cleansed. And that the international community knew this. And did nothing you know there is. In I believe it's in the Clinton tapes as well, but there is this thing about how they had provided aerial footage of the massacres that were being, that were being enacted in places like Pushkal and Swanick where, Oh my God, the paramilitary served forces. Did some horrible, horrifying acts of like violence and torture against the civilians. Umm. And they had, you know, showed it to the Clintons and they showed it to the French and the English, and they did nothing. You know, they, they knew in 1992 that a genocide was unfolding and the Dayton peace agreement wasn't signed until 1995. So the international community, I think, has just as much of a responsibility. In the you know, the genocide of the Bosniaks as Serbia does because they sat there and they watched when they had all the power to stop it, they always had the power to stop it. They had the power to stop it before it, even before even one person got killed and and two they. It's not even that they just watched. It's that they purposely left the Muslims defenseless because Serbia had all the Yugoslav army, all the weapons, all the, you know, everything, all the tools that they needed to commit genocide. They already had it it all, the arsenal, everything. And you you deal with some money. Was like the most powerful in the region at the time and I think the 4th, 3rd, 3rd or 4th most powerful in like the Europe. Turkey areas, so we, you know, quite a powerful army, and there was Bosnia, which had no weapons, no military. You know, you see these pictures of like. Civilians fighting against, you know, tanks and and mortar shells and snipers and it's like these, you know, youths basically and like converse and jeans and like an army jacket. Playing soldier because that's all we had, you know, we had the homemade weapons, we had, you know, how to make your own bomb books kind of thing and and trying to basically defend ourselves with anything that we could. They specifically. Did not lift the arms embargo knowing that they were leaving us defenseless like they they just knew there was no way. There was no doubt on everything that we have read about the international community response, everything that Clinton, Mccarran, John Mayer, major, major, not mayor major have said you know about it during that. Shows us that they absolutely knew that we were defenseless, you know, and this wasn't, you know, a lot of people say, I didn't know about the Bosnian genocide, but it was discussed. You know, I've looked at the archived footage. It was talked about on television. It was brought up in Parliament and in Senate. There was people at the time who were like, why are we leaving the Bosnians defenseless? Why are we, you know, not helping them? Why are we allowing them to be LED? Into slaughter, this is genocide, blah, blah. So even as early as 9293, there was still people who knew about this stuff, were telling the leaders, but nothing. Yeah, I think I think like that part also, like, it's it's not just like they did nothing, like they they they like they did worse than do nothing, like mitrans actively cheering it on. Like, you know, the the the arms embargo is just like the arms embargo if you're applying an arms embargo. On a conflict where one people, one side has tanks and the other side has like Molotovs like you, you are actively supporting one of the sides and and I think that like that, just like is completely lost in how like almost everyone seems to talk about this now because there's like. You know, because because when you sort of get like interventions later, like. People are like, oh, look, the West was like, planning to intervene here the whole time. And it's like, no, like they were. They were literally cheering like, Mitterrand was cheering like, it's like, it's so frustrating because, you know, we you take what we know about. And here's the thing. I know that Islamophobia escalated after 911, but Islamophobia has existed for a very long time. And I think talked to the black Muslims of America, they will tell you. Or, you know better than than I could ever tell you about the history of Islamophobia in in the United States. So it's a lot of phobia was always an aspect of of life. And in Europe, Islamophobia, just like anti-Semitism, I mean, it is like the staple of European cultural cuisine, so to say. Yeah, it's like there's, there's a, there's a, there's, they have, they have like, they have like the like the the Triforce of Europeans, of European civilization is anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and hating the Roma like those. Just like. Yeah, hard for the force. And so I think this sort of thing about. The explicitness of European leadership, especially at the time in in. You know, effectively ensuring that we were killed off because a Muslim country in Europe could not exist. And that's the thing that they said, literally said a Muslim country in Europe cannot exist. Like? The fact that that was so open and brazen, like, kind of takes me back, but it really, like, tells you how much Islamophobia. Formed, I think, the international community response on this. And it's so interesting to me now. I think I've seen it over the past, I would say especially five years to sort of leftist genocide and yeah, sort of leftist, anti imperialist kind of defense of Milosevic. And they were the, you know, the Serbs were the actual victims, blah, blah, blah, NATO, blah, blah, Western intervention. And I'm just like, Oh my God, read a book, read an article from that time, read their actual quotes. There's no way that you can. Actually convinced me that Europe, Fortress Europe and the United States of America would do anything that would benefit, you know, the Muslims. This was one of the things I think was is really interesting to me about the way that the sort of like left hand sides nihilism works like it always seems to be rooted Islamophobia, like. And I remember sort of seeing this with Bosnia too, where they're like, Oh yeah, well, it's it's it's because, well, it's OK. They have two things. One, it's like, well, the the Bosnians were Nazis, but the second one was that, Oh well, the, the the boss, the Bosnians were like all jihadists. And it's like, it's the exact same thing you see with China. And it's like, oh, it's because all the Uighurs are like Salafi, jihadist, ISIS, CIA. And it's like. No, I mean it's it's. It's honestly laughable at this point. It really is. And it also just, you know, obviously I'm a leftist, you know, I'm, I'm going to cheer the left on to an extent, but that is my red line. The genocide denialism really is my red line. And the reason it's it's, you know, my red line isn't just because I'm a genocide survivor, but because it's like, oh, for God's sake, the, the, the data, the statistics, the research, the forensic, the analysis, the specific quotes, videos, articles. Uh, you know, all of those things exist and are out there and all you have to do is actually do your research and you will find out that actually know you're in the wrong. And the other thing is what you just said about this sort of thing of painting. You know, the Muslims is like the Nazis and the, you know, the extremists. The thing about, like the Bosnian Muslims is, like, we don't hide the fact that there were people of our community that participated in Nazi Ustashe crimes. There isn't this goal of concealing those crimes, of minimizing the crimes or pretending that they were right. There is, I'm sure, a fringe group of people who defend these kinds of people. Like there is a French, but I'm talking about the collective sort of Bosnian, you know, state level. Response, as well as like an an individual response, is that the, you know, the the Nazi division had like 17,000 Bosnian soldiers and there was millions of Bosnians in the country. The vast majority ended up joining the partisans and stood against the Nazis. And The thing is, you can't you when it comes to Yugoslavia and World War Two and the Holocaust, you can't just say the Bosnians were Nazi collaborationists, because The thing is, so are the Serbians, so are the Serbs, so are the Croats. At a time, let's be honest, who the hell wasn't a Nazi collaborationist? Now, this doesn't excuse it. Absolutely not. But what it does sort of show is that that history, that. In Yugoslav history, is really complicated. Because, you know, you had to share and then you had the techniques, and then there was a period where the Chetniks were against you, Sasha. Right. Because, like, you used to show we're killing Serbs and robots and Jews, but then the chutney externed around and they're, you know, these Serb nationalists. They start killing the Jews and the Roma, and then they start working with the, with the shadow down the Jews in the Rolla. And then they start working with them to stand against the, you know, the Tito's partisans. Meanwhile. You know, Tito's partisans had. A multi ethnic coalition? Again, we're talking about Serbs, Bosnians, Roma, Jews, Croat. 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. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. 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To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months. After I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job, it was incredible. I always felt like an ambassador for speaker, but that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with speaker and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break our handle the hosting creation. Distribution and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com get paid to talk about the things you love with spreaker from iheart 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. Banians, you know, all sorts of people who were. Very like you know anti Nazism Pro you know we're we're going to we're going to win we're going to rebuild our our country. We're going to you know make this beautiful sort of you know multi ethnic kind of state which they did which is amazing but yeah but it it is a complicated sort of piece of history. So you can't really say, Oh yes they're the Nazi collaborationist because at some point or not everybody was and at some point or not everybody was also. Yeah, it's like like it's when when when you when you start getting into like. It becomes this like, you know, it becomes a way of just of getting people to. Around describe it like it. You know when, when. When it starts being. Like, this specific ethnic group as a whole is responsible for all of these crimes. It's like, no, they're not like that's that's not, that's not how this works. Like, it's not like. Like, like, like there, there are like there, yeah, there's gonna be people in the ethnic group who did things that were awful. There's also going to be people especially, especially in in in a situation like this, there's there's a lot, but a lot of, but probably more people who fought them and that like, yeah, that's such an interesting statement because I I'm going to compare it to the Bosnian response after the genocide, which has consistently been. No, we don't believe that every single service bag and we are only talking about those that took place, took part in these crimes and those that conceal them. And that has always been the collective and state level response of all Bosnians. Now you have to think about I have a friend who's. Who? Who's 9999? Members of her family were killed in Strawberry Pizza in July of 1995. That's. An absorbent number of people. These were women, children and men and elderly. There was no discrimination when it comes to her. I sat with her as she's read all the names of her, you know, killed family members that woman would all the pain that she survived with being there as a young girl in the midst of genocide, in the midst of these heart her horrifying crimes has never once publicly or privately to me said yes old. I'm sort of saying yes, all of them are war criminals. Yes. All of them hate us. Absolutely not. And The thing is, I think about myself as well, like very happy memories. And I know why. Those things happened, you know, I know why I was being shot at by a sniper, and it was because I was Bosnian and it was because I was misled and because I was seen as the enemy, even though I was, you know, a little kid at, you know, 6-7 years old and absolutely not a threat to anyone. And nobody should have been shooting at me. They did anyway, even though that happened. I never had that feeling of all Serbs are awful, all Serbs are. You know, I'm going to paint them all with a brush. But a lot of them, unfortunately, especially on the, you know, the, the, the ultra nationalist that continue to not just the deny the genocide, but also glorify it and celebrate it. They do paint everyone with the same brush, you know, and and the worst thing, the funniest thing is that they paint themselves with the same brush, you know, they they think that they get to speak for every single service person. And that's the tragic path. Like, I'm not, I'm not, I get accused of, like, constantly talking **** about Serbs, and I'm like, I absolutely am not. I'm talking about the nationalist, and I will call out all the Nationalists, whether they're Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian, American, whatever. But we're talking about, you know, what you're doing to me and your response to my criticism of nationalism is actually the thing that's ruining your reputation. Yeah, it's it's it's. Esther Nationals camp it it's it's you have you have to conflate all of the individual people the ethnic group and the state. They have to be this like you know this must be this like organic totality and it's not true it's just not but that's you know that's that's that's the sort of it's it's the modus operandi behind their entire ideology and it's what they deploy. You know, it's what to deploy when the genocides is what they deploy when they have to, sort of like. You know, sort of promote it. Openly or less openly afterwards, yeah. It's like that justification. It's how they justify it. Yeah, you know and like. We all know about the 10 stages of genocide, but my colleague? Who's brilliant actually has often talked about. That denialism is not really the final stage of genocide. It is, in fact, triumphalism. And that's what we're actually seeing in Bosnia. You know, we're not. I get genocide denialism from American leftists and like British leftists who are honest, certain spectrum and of a certain. I don't get genocide denialism from. Ethno nationalist Serbs. What I get from them actually is very openly celebrating and threatening another genocide. There are not in my mentions saying, oh, there was no genocide. Darren, I mentioned saying no one should establish himself, which is basically a slogan that says knife wire stripping and it's like basically a threat that another surprise that will occur. They're in my mentions, in my emails and in my DM's, sending me threats about how they can't wait. I'm put in a rape camp again. How they can't wait till they kill my family until sorry about gets bombed again. How you know where they're going to finish the job? How would accommodate is a hero? Because he killed all those, you know, people in Serbia and Sarajevo and Michigan. Hero because he did the same location, which is a hero because he believes in a greater Serbia. These people don't hide it. And that's the thing. So it's it's it's very like just today, you know, I first thing in the morning I opened my Twitter and the first thing that I see is a Bosnian activist arrested for protesting the dotcom ladach mural, which the Serbian police were guarding. They were guarding a mural. Get like a mural of a war criminal who committed genocide, who everybody knows committed genocide. A mural glorifying him. They were got the police regarding, you know, the mural and inflicting damage on innocent civilians who were there to, you know, protest against the mural. And so I think that really tells you so much about the issue in the Balkans. This has been it could happen here. Join us tomorrow for Part 2 of this interview, in which we discuss the dangers of what's currently happening in Bosnia. In the meantime, find us on Twitter at happened here pod. And you can find us on Twitter and Instagram for the rest of our shows at Colzium Media. I'm Colleen Witt. Join me, the host of eating While broke podcast while I eat a meal created by self-made entrepreneurs, influencers and celebrities over a meal they once ate when they were broke. Today I have the lovely AJ Crimson, the official Princess of Compton, Asia, Kid Ink and Asia. This is the professor. We're here on Eddie Wall broke and today I'm going to break down my meal that got me through a time when I was broke. Into eating while broke on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What grows in the forest? Trees? Sure, no one else grows in the forest. Our imagination, our sense of wonder and our family bonds grow too, because when we disconnect from this. And connect with this, we reconnect with each other. The forest is closer than you think. Find a forest near you and start exploring and discovertheforest.org brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the ad Council. Well, could it could happen. Here a podcast about bad things happening and how they can continue to happen if you don't stop them. I'm your host Christopher Wong, and today we're doing Part 2 of the interview with genocide expert Annessa Kustra, focusing on the absolutely horrifying things that have been happening in Bosnia recently. There's the if you hope you enjoy, can you give an explanation of what's happened in the last couple of weeks? Because it's. Terrifying. And I don't think enough people are talking about it. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So that's where are we now? You know, I'm just going to talk briefly about the Dayton Agreement because I think the audience needs to understand what the date and agreement is. And I was going to talk about it earlier, but I went off on a tangent. So my apologies. So obviously, you know where the war is happening, the genocide is happening. Trebon said 1995. The worst of the genocide happens. You know, 8000 people are killed in just a matter of a few weeks. Few days really. But the international community does not act at that time off on a tangent, so my apologies. So obviously you know where the war is happening, the genocide is happening. Trebon said 1995. The worst of the genocide happens. You know, 8000 people are killed in just a matter of a few weeks. Few days really. The international community does not act at that time. Towards the end of the year, another attack happens in Sarajevo and Marcala civilians are once again targeted, waiting for bread fruit. I think it was humanitarian aid at the. Market. And that's kind of when the international community starts to open their eyes a bit and negotiations start. And not to bore you with the details. Negotiation process was absolutely ridiculous. And every single time they discussed it, it was about splitting Bosnia down ethnic lines. And that's ultimately what happened with the Dayton Agreement. Yes, peace. Quote UN quote. Peace was achieved, but the Dayton Agreement mandated so that. There would be a 3 Member Presidency, so instead of having one President, we would have a 3 Member Presidency. It's a rotating presidency. There would be a Croat representative, a Bosniak representative and a Serb representative. That also means that there's no representatives for anyone who's in other whether they identify as Yugoslav, Roma, Jewish, Bosnian, but not Bosniak. Like they, you know, it's just. There there's no space for the other in this Constitution, the state and peace agreement, but that's for another day. They also split the country down by ethnic lines, so all of those genocides and ethnic cleansing that the Serbs had just been committing all over eastern Bosnia, up in the north. And you know, basically the international community said. Good job. Here's your own territory that you ethnically cleansed. Yeah, so they split the country down. You know, these ethnic lines and. You know, the war stops and then now we have to sort of contend with this, you know, peace agreement with the new constitution. We we got this called the OHR office of the High Representative. The High Representative is basically a person who holds the highest power in the country. They're not a Bosnian. They're actually kind of, they're put in place there by the. International community. So the OEHR kind of, you know, comes then breaks us up when we're squabbling over issues. And this has been anything from things like the flag, like the new flag of Bosnia. The the flag of Bosnia that was the flag of Bosnia, had to sort of be replaced because the OHR deems that it would be, you know, offensive to the Serbs or the Croats and the same thing with like the national anthem. So they hold a lot of power now. Just recently. We switched away HR representative, so we have a new High Representative. Before it was Valentinian scope and his final kind of part of his, you know, time as the High Representative was to enact a law against genocide denialism, which the Bosnians have really been campaigning for for years because, you know. I think in in your birthplace, in the place where the worst crime ever could, you know, happen to you, happened to you, where, you know, 50,000 women were raped, 100,000 people were killed, 600 plus mass graves were, you know, dug up to hide the crimes and the massacres. People want to be able to, you know, know the truth and and and and be, feel safe with the truth. So the genocide denialism law was good, but this is kind of when things started to, you know, shift a bit because I think Donna came out, Mila Dodik, who is currently the Serb member of the Presidency, who controls their public subscribe, which is the entity where that's considered disturb entity. But Bosniaks also lived there as well. He came out and he said, well, if they pass the genocide denialism law, we're going to secede within 8 days. And obviously that didn't happen months ago. And here's here's the thing, Miller I thought that has been threatening secession for years now. This is not anything new. What is new? Is the fact that this time he seems to. Talk. Not just talk and threaten about seceding, but actually has started to kind of drop the papers. And not a. Not to legally secede which he's not allowed due to the date and agreement but he is he has drawn up the papers to start pulling out of all the national level. So you know Bosnia is the country the public has subscribes an entity the federation is an entity but both of them are accountable to the national sort of state level institutions. These basically at this point you know been saying I'm going to Republican subscribe to serve we're leaving like we're we're going to. Form our own army. We're gonna pull out all all the Bosnian state institutions we're going to have. Serve only, you know, serve only courts. Serve only lawyers. Serve only justices, serve only, I don't know, passport, whatever. Control serve. Basically anything that was at a national level, whether that's like a healthcare institution or like, I don't know, procurement for. Supplies for the office. They're going to have it as like syrup only. Obviously I think the danger is is right there serve only where have we heard that before we heard that that 90 and the biggest sort of red flag has really been this thing about them forming the Republican army and they're not even talking about forming a new army. They he specifically stated the words reforming the Republicans subscribe Army. Now the Republicans of Scott army you know, was led by Karajan Mladic in the 1990s. These are the same people. That put girls as young as 10 and 12 years old and to rape camps that killed babies as old as, you know, a few months. That killed, you know, elderly women as old as 100 years old. You know, these these were the guys that were going village to village, city to city, killing, torturing, bombing the hell out of sorry load. These were the guys that, you know, would throw like 3000 to 4000. Mortar shells on. Sorry, go and snipe it. I don't even know how many times, like 10s of 1000 times per day. It's just. These are the bad guys basically, so I think. There is an alarm right now going in Bosnia and it is the reason why so many of us are quite worried, quite frightened because on one hand. He has threatened. He has made you know dude has made plenty of threats before. But on the other hand, in prior times the international community has somewhat gotten involved. You know, the US has sanctioned him, the UK has scolded him, the EU has said like you got to chill out otherwise, you know, Serbia doesn't get into the EU, you know, there's there's always been. Some sort of, I don't know, influence there the OEHR's influence as well, but in recent years the international community has not stood by its. Responsibility to debate agreement. I mean, here's the thing. They implemented this agreement. They made it so that we, the Bosnians, have to abide by it. But they also have a responsibility to ensure that it is actually being upheld and that they're doing their job in accordance with the international, like with the Dayton Agreement. So, you know the date and agreement was very kind of specific that. It was, one, a temporary solution. And two, the international community was to work on finding a more permanent solution that will bring about, you know, actual sort of reconciliation and justice and all of these things. But they didn't they, you know, they've left sort of Bosnia to kind of live out on its own. And and now they're not really doing much. I mean, the EU is the US they're doing their typical thing of strongly worded open letters. And Dodik seems less afraid than ever before. He seems very brash. I mean, he is a fool and a half and an ultra nationalist, but right now I feel like he has so much confidence. And I think he also knows that, like the US and the EU have so many bigger problems to worry about rather than Bosnia. And so we're just not a priority so he can play around with that. And then we're also, you know, seeing like the Secretary of State. Matthew Palmer, hanging out with him the day after this man openly stated on national television that he is reforming Republican subscribe and they're being very cozy and very friendly and stuff like that. And here's the thing, I've never been really a big believer on the international community because come on, like I have him getting experience speaks for itself. I've already lived. Lived their help and I'm like, no thanks, please stay away, but. I don't live in that world. I live in a world where, you know, I'm from a small country that is unfortunately very dependent on outsiders and on the international community. So while I would love to say, well, **** the EU, **** the US, we don't need them. The reality is that we do need them. We do need them to do their jobs. And because if they don't, I am really worried that the situation is going to continue to escalate further and further and. This appeasement of Dodik, especially in the last several years, has gone on so much that at this point. I think you have to like start to wonder like. Do these, does the international community, you know, even want peace and stability in Bosnia or did they benefit from our constant instability and what is their long term plan? So that's kind of where we're at right now. I think there there's. You know, there's the people in in Bosnian politics and activist circles right now who are calling on US leadership, who are calling on EU leadership. And there's a lot of, Oh no, the EU sucks. the US will help us, the US sucks, the EU will help us. Turkey is going to help us now. Turkey sucks. There's a lot of, like, disagreement. I think the reality is that, Oh my God, does it suck that we are in this position where we have to rely on external sources because once again, we are feeling alone? Once again, we're sort of being backed into a corner and once again we're being threatened with a prospect of, you know, a new war. And I think the reality is the minute, the minute that he gives that green light for that the public could subscribe army to be formed. There will be violence and we've seen what happened before. We cannot afford to even have one act of violence. We cannot afford to have even one person injured, let alone die, because these people in Bosnia, on all sides, have suffered so unbelievably much. They are exhausted. They are still bearing their loved ones. 26 years later, they still haven't, you know, found at peace. They're worried and scared for their future and they deserve so much more. They really, really do so I think. You know, I'm, I'm hoping and praying that, you know, we obviously continue talking about this issue and we try to pressure those people in power to, you know, calm the situation down, but. The reality is that this is going to be our future. For as long as they exist and. Until the Bosnian constitution is completely reformed and dating is completely either thrown out or reformed to actually allow for you know, code, actual multi ethnic united country that's not broken up across ethnic, you know lines and it's not ethnically segregated, we're going to continue being the situation. So yes, for right now I think let's talk about this and let's kind of pressure those powerful people but really long term. It's time to start thinking about ending the date and agreement, and it's time to start thinking about. Actually building that, you know, multi ethnic, multicultural, multi religious country that we fought for. You know, you were saying like OK like what, what, what is you know what is Europe actually wants out of this and. You know, I think it's pretty clear. Like, OK, so you know, the the date and accords are like, OK, we're just gonna give all of the ethno nationalists like their own fiefdom, right? It's like, OK, here's your reward for the genocide you get. You're like. Yeah. And I think, you know like that's, that's, that's that's that's a very classical, you know that that's what Europeans do, right. It's like, yeah, they come in, they sport the nationalists and it's like, you know, they they don't. Want this like they they don't actually want. Like? If, if, if, if a functioning multiethnic, multiracial society. Because. You know. Oh, oh, the horror. Wait, hold on. What if other people look at that and go wait, why? Why do we have like, yeah, I think that. I don't know. I think you see this both, you know, back back in what they were originally doing in the 90s. And, you know, they come in later and are like, oh, hey, look, we're heroes. We. It helps them do the genocide and then kind of, sort of did something maybe later. And I think, like, yeah, I don't know, just the, the the possibility of that happening again, the possibility of it just being, you know, this is it's like, oh, hey, we have Bosnia this. This is where we do press tours for, like, why the American army is good and like, **** anyone else who actually lives there. Is yeah, yeah. I mean, like, come on, they're America. Like, let's be honest here. Like, I'm not saying they're an all powerful entity, but what I am saying is that. If they really wanted to. The people who are in power would not be in power, right. Like, yeah, but these people, people like Dodik, people like Dragon Jovich, who is the Croatian ethno nationalist leader who is also, by the way, directly involved in this mess. And and once again, we're seeing that thing of the 90s of, you know, Croatia and Serbia want to split Bosnia up and, you know, break it for themselves basically that's, you know, it's it's just now instead of flying Tuchman and Milosevic, it's now trovic. And, uh, you know, dudik, I talk about Dodik a lot more because I think he's a more immediate threat, but it's important that we don't forget that Bosnia is also facing the Croatian threat as well. And, you know, but, but I think about it this way, like I know for a fact that if these people did not benefit the system somehow, they would not actually be in power. But they do. They do benefit them. And I think, you know. You know, Madeleine Albright called Muhaddith a breath of fresh air. In, you know, the 90s when he came to to to power and then and now here we are you know that they're threatening war and threatening secession and talking about Serb only, you know spaces and serve only armies. And it's just it's exhausting. But yeah it's it's. It's also funny. It is funny when you think about it, because the reality is that. It doesn't. It never had to be like this, and it doesn't have to be like this in the future either. But unfortunately it will continue to be like this because that's just. You know what the powerful want, like, what those actually who have some power want. And that's the thing that sucks because when you, you know, I feel like I'm starting to sound conspiratorial, but I'm not, you know, when you when you think about like Europe overall and how they. Looked at Bosnia, I think for the last, you know, 100 years. And their policy towards Bosnia, it's really difficult for me to kind of be filled with any sort of confidence about. What their plans are, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's it's Europe and the United States, two countries that historically have never done anything bad, have never done any genocides and have never, yeah, just absolutely annihilated countries. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just, you know, they're the good guys. So like you said, you know, Bosnians there so much is like this press tour for, you know, these politicians to come and talk about why we're such a great example of the peace process. And we're really, we're not, you know. And The thing is that, you know, they'll come on and they'll say, well, while Dayton wasn't perfect, it was the best solution at the time. And it's like, it wasn't like it was not yeah, you know, but but they have convinced that themselves, that this was like a win for intervention and win for the international community. No, don't get me wrong. I, alongside everyone I know, is extremely happy that the war ended and that the genocide. And I think until you're in that position of growing up in the midst of, you know, all these bombs and murders and tortures all around you and. You know, the only sound you ever hear are the sounds of bombs and mortars falling and sniper shooting at you. You won't really know how it feels when that finally stops and when you have some peace and how difficult. It can be to think about obviously any future sort of prospects of war and I think that's that also is is a contributing factor to the overall instability of Bosnia because. For 26 years now, our policy as a people, but as a country as well, has been as long as there's no shooting. Which is not a sound policy, because, you know, settling for the bare minimum is not helping any of us. Our youths are leaving in observed, absurd amounts to Germany, to Austria, to the United States. People are struggling for for jobs. People are struggling to find food. You know, all of these things. On top of the threat of war and violence and conflict. So it's just, it's not a sound policy and I'm just hoping. It will change eventually, somehow. I mean, I'm going to keep doing my part, which is, you know, yelling and yelling at people in in their on Twitter and in person and pressuring them to do the right thing and to obviously talk about this. But yeah, I just feel like we have such a long, long, long, long road ahead of us and. You know, peace is a process. It's a process. So I think. We're just at the beginning of that process, yeah. So much more to do. And I think, I think that's a good place to end on with just. The, the, the, the realization that. Yeah. I mean, if, if, if, if if there's no fundamental change in the structures and the forces in the politics that created a war that created genocide, like it's going to happen again. Yeah. And so you you you have to actually change it. You can't just sort of put this Band-Aid on it and put it in stasis and just leave all the structures intact. You have to, you know, you you have to knock them over before you can build something else. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, unless I think, thank you so much for talking with me. Where can people find you and what books do you want to read? Because as we've said over and over again on this podcast, do not get your information from podcast, actually read books. You just think you need what you need to do. Yeah, well, if you obviously I know our audience can't see it, but here's my little one of my little selections of books on Bosnia. Obviously people can find me on Twitter. You know, type in my name, ARNESA, but my at is at RRRRNEFA. Yeah, Twitter's probably the best place, but also I have a book out so if people want to read it, it is about the Bosnian genocide and it is based on real life experiences of my family and friends. It's called letters from diaspora. It's more so on the emotional side of things, but if you want to learn. About the conflict from a leftist perspective, I always recommend. And I don't know where it's going now, but I always recommend. Bosnia Kosova and Yugoslavia by Mike Kannadigas. It's the Marxist perspective on the breakup of Yugoslavia. Additionally, I have a PDF on my Twitter of tons of books. So if you want to learn more about Yugoslavia, about Islam and the Balkans, about the history of Bosnia, about the war genocide, feel free to shoot me a DM. I have a handy little guide that I hand out constantly to people, and there's also a list of books on like my website and stuff like that. Yeah, I think I can post it. We can put a link to it in the description. I've I've read some stuff on there. It's very good. You should read it. Thanks. I pride myself on, you know, really good reading list. Yeah, depending on topic. Yeah. Well, Yep. And Nessa, thank you again. M Yeah, this this has been it could happen here. I'd find us at it could happen here, pod on Twitter and Instagram and the rest of the shows that we do are confident at the cool zone on the same places. And yeah, oh boy, genocide. Bad hope. 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