It Could Happen Here Weekly 255

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file: Anti-Palestinian Racism How Trump Will Try To Make Voting Restrictions Even Worse The Save Europe Act and the Bad Faith Nazis Who Created It P1 The Save Europe Act and the Bad Faith Nazis Who Created It P2 Executive Disorder: Alberta Separatism, Ukraine's Starlink Predicament, Global Protests Continue You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! Sources/Links: Anti-Palestinian Racism https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61db30d12e169a5c45950345/t/627dcf83fa17ad41ff217964/1652412292220/Anti-Palestinian+Racism-+Naming%2C+Framing+and+Manifestations.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61db30d12e169a5c45950345/t/627dcf83fa17ad41ff217964/1652412292220/Anti-Palestinian+Racism-+Naming,+Framing+and+Manifestations.pdf https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/resources/human-rights/2024-november/recognizing-islamophobia-anti-palestinian-racism-and-antisemitsm/ https://pomeps.org/anti-palestinian-racism-analyzing-the-unnamed-and-suppressed-reality https://ethnicstudies.berkeley.edu/resources/dismantling-anti-palestinian-racism https://afi.mesana.org/ How Trump Will Try To Make Voting Restrictions Even Worse https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7296/text https://www.whitehouse.gov/saveamerica/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/preserving-and-protecting-the-integrity-of-american-elections/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/ensuring-citizenship-verification-and-integrity-in-federal-elections/ https://michigandems.com/michigan-leaders-slam-mike-rogers-for-trying-to-intimidate-and-disenfranchise-detroit-voters/ https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a124_hgci.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.291053/gov.uscourts.dcd.291053.192.0.pdf https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-17238.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a124_hgci.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a305_4g15.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/26a308_pok0.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/save/current-user-agencies/guidance/voter-registration-and-voter-list-maintenance-fact-sheet https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/supreme-court-revives-dhs-use-of-flawed-immigration-database-for-voter-purges/ https://www.sos.state.tx.us/about/newsreleases/2026/091526.shtml https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/09/supreme-court-clears-way-for-trump-administration-to-use-modified-voter-verification-database/ https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/us/politics/nevada-voters-homeland-security-trump.html https://www.propublica.org/article/save-voter-citizenship-tool-mistake https://www.propublica.org/article/save-voter-citizenship-tool-mistakes-confusion https://apnews.com/article/midterm-elections-immigration-officers-ice-voting-e43c1758ccd446eb441957b36f9e281f The Save Europe Act and the Bad Faith Nazis Who Created It P1 + P2 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32019R0788 https://www.save-europe-act.com/#section-form https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_1658 https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/07/23/far-right-activists-to-sue-european-commission-over-remigration-rejection https://www.europesays.com/3147332/ https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32019R0788 https://www.dw.com/en/austrian-far-right-extremist-denied-us-travel-permit-after-christchurch-link/a-48107733 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2011/211/2019-05-30?locale=en https://archive.is/V3Qye https://orf.at/stories/3122404/ https://archive.ph/LClfA https://archive.ph/NL4NF https://register.eci.ec.europa.eu/core/api/register/document/5652679877066501 Executive Disorder: Alberta Separatism, Ukraine's Starlink Predicament, Global Protests Continue https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/16/politics/katie-zacharia-press-secretary https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/16/katie-zacharia-out-as-press-secretary-after-five-days-01123470 https://scholten.house.gov/media/press-releases/congresswoman-scholten-statement-threatening-letter-she-received-grand-rapids https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/hillary-scholten-threatening-letter-grand-rapids-office/ https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/21/politics/heat-ray-weapon-dhs-pentagon https://x.com/PatrickWeaverPA/status/2112880738425065674?s=20 https://youtu.be/yy_QibrY_QQ?si=f7yzrPIN1SGbAqIe&t=380 https://youtu.be/yy_QibrY_QQ?si=f7yzrPIN1SGbAqIe&t=380 https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/myanmar-regimes-sittwe-counteroffensive-hits-the-rocks-on-nga-pyi-island.html https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/53d80bf144804de8a5e5138dd62cf873/view https://www.texastribune.org/2026/10/20/texas-transgender-pamphlets-tent-student-union/ https://x.com/SarahisCensored/status/2112343101708611879?s=20 https://x.com/SarahisCensored/status/2112340434551013382?s=20 https://a856-cityrecord.nyc.gov/RequestDetail/20260929027 https://gothamist.com/news/nyc-moves-to-spend-nearly-9m-of-gender-affirming-care-fund-for-minors https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/102126zr_5i36.pdf https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/10/justices-leave-in-place-lower-court-order-preventing-trump-administration-from-implementing-new-/ https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/bugs/2026/10/php2shell-why-websites-are-going-offline-for-emergency-security-updates https://boereport.com/2025/03/24/albertas-massive-oil-and-gas-reserves-keep-growing-heres-why/ https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-10-20/canada-awaits-alberta-referendum-results-after-carney-urges-voters-to-reject-separation https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c809jg1gj9yo https://macleans.ca/politics/americans-are-meddling-in-the-alberta-referendum/ https://edmontonjournal.com/news/politics/alberta-separatists-united-states-referendum-globe-and-mail https://truthout.org/articles/police-violence-increases-as-800k-protesters-take-to-the-streets-in-france/ https://freedompress.org.uk/2026/10/19/clashes-in-france-as-uprising-swells-to-millions/ https://www.dw.com/en/clashes-erupt-at-argentine-student-protests-against-president-mileis-austerity-policies/a-79676861 https://freedompress.org.uk/2026/10/12/gen-z-on-the-barricades/ https://freedompress.org.uk/2026/10/09/la-revolte-panic-in-the-french-state/ https://apnews.com/article/albania-protests-edi-rama-jared-kushner-9f0ce30c446aa9f273068b98d9f40b14 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/seventh-day-of-violent-clashes-between-albanian-protesters-and-police/ar-AA2fCujr https://euobserver.com/243622/the-forgotten-protests-empty-shelves-and-blocked-roads-in-southern-italy-ignored-by-the-media-reveal-neglect-by-meloni-and-eu/ https://www.arabnews.com/world/indonesias-wildfire-crisis-sparks-nationwide-anti-government-protests-3007510 https://apnews.com/article/albania-kushner-trump-development-protest-tourism-sazan-8d7d0e216c28d23fe1b2e51cbb05b926 https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/our-land-our-albania-supreme-court-burns-as-anger-over-jared-kushner-linked-resort-fuels-revolt/ar-AA2fzHq6 https://x.com/cspan/status/2111608955847802991?s=20 https://x.com/RapidResponse47/status/2112268669312983214?s=20 https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/2110985354740125885?s=20 https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/2112265283318784192?s=20 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2110445577184133456?s=20 https://x.com/FedorovMykhailo/status/2110432031968542721?s=20 https://www.ukmto.org/-/media/ukmto/products/20261016-ukmto_vra_overview_u.pdf https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/24/nx-s1-5376473/hhs-restores-funding-for-womens-health-initiative https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2026/attorney-general-james-leads-lawsuit-protect-title-x-family-planning-services https://www.npr.org/2026/09/24/nx-s1-5931971/trump-nih-science-funding-disruptions-charts https://www.medpagetoday.com/washington-watch/washington-watch/123167 https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/cost-trump-administrations-attacks-research-funding https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2026/04/19/science-research-funding-cuts-trump/ https://irp.nih.gov/catalyst/32/3/president-biden-requests-12b-for-research-on-womens-health https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/executive-order-14120-advancing-womens-health-research-and-innovation https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/memorandum-the-white-house-initiative-womens-health-research https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-biden-and-first-lady-deliver-remarks-at-white-house-womens-health-research-conference https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/trump-flotus-womens-health-executive-order-new-nih-division.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/19/us/politics/melania-trump-women-health.html https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/10/advancing-womens-health-to-improve-outcomes-in-all-phases-of-life/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  I turned off news altogether.

• 0:08Speaker 02

  I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

• 0:12Speaker 03

  It's the rage bait.

• 0:14Speaker 04

  It feels like it's trying to divide people.

• 0:19Speaker 05

  We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.

• 0:24Speaker 06

  NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America.

• 0:34Speaker 07

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload.

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• 1:41Speaker 03

  The biggest game of the season, right here, right now. Starts Saturday strong. It's Big Noon Saturday on Fox. And here we go. It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon Kickoff, live with an epic pregame. The crowd, the atmosphere, this is what makes it special. Then, it's America's number one game. What a hit. The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest games. Down the sideline, touchdown. It's Big Noon Saturday, noon Eastern on Fox.

• 2:11Speaker 04

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• 2:43Speaker 04

  Call Zone Media. 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.

• 3:10Speaker 04

  Hello, everyone. My name is Don Alkurd, and I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today, I want to read remarks I gave at an event about higher education, where I was invited to give the introductory remarks before a panel of experts were going to speak on the subject of higher ed around the world. And I was asked specifically to talk about attacks on academic freedom here in the United States. And I'm a good sport, always happy to be of service, so I did. But then, I was accused, after my remarks, of downplaying antisemitism. So for this episode, I want to read those remarks that I gave at this event. And then I'll explain why that accusation that was leveled against me is so insidious and harmful and outrageous,

• 3:55Speaker 04

  and is part of a broader problem of rampant anti-Palestinian racism in the United States. Okay, here are the remarks I made at that event. "Thank you all for attending this panel. I wanted to briefly situate this next discussion in the current political landscape and give a quick rundown of what has been happening. The news is so overwhelming, some of these details can be lost. First, I think most of us have heard of the Trump administration freezing funding for a number of universities. Many of these universities have entered into negotiations with the administration and agreed to make changes to the curriculum and internal structures in order to drop the investigations against them and release that funding. For example, Columbia University

• 4:37Speaker 04

  agreed to pay the Trump administration $220 million, punish 70 of its students in a variety of ways, including expulsion, and agreed to monitor and report their programs for, quote, 'unlawful DEI goals.' One of the ways Columbia has agreed to monitor their own departments, as The Intercept reported back in April, is by appointing a vice provost in charge of ensuring a 'balanced curriculum', that's in quotes, within the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies Department. So the faculty in that department will no longer run the department. As the Middle East Studies Association, in a statement back in March 2025, noted, 'placing the department under, quote, 'administrative receivership'

• 5:19Speaker 04

  is a fundamental abrogation of the autonomy of university governance.' Like at Columbia, a lot of these investigations and targeting of universities has focused on the presence of DEI programs and allegations of antisemitism. The Trump administration has been aided by recent Supreme Court rulings, particularly the cases of Students for Fair Admissions versus the University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions versus Harvard. These cases overturned the 2003 case of Groder versus Bollinger that had allowed higher education institutions to consider race in admissions. Using this ruling, the Trump administration has gone after universities with programs that assist students of color, as well as initiatives focused on diversity. Allegations of antisemitism,

• 6:04Speaker 04

  especially in the wake of campus protests over the past two years, have also been used to attack universities. The American Association of University Professors, in partnership with the Middle East Studies Association, analyzed the data on the Title VI complaints around antisemitism, which have indeed ballooned over the past two years. In their report, titled "Discriminating Against Dissent", they found that most government investigations of antisemitism, 78%, are prompted by complaints received from outside of university and college campuses, including from people and organizations who have no relationship with the schools under investigation. Of the 102 complaints filed with the Office of Civil Rights that the report analyzes,

• 6:48Speaker 04

  all but one focus on speech critical of Israel. The report documents the surge in investigations since October 7, 2023, with more investigations opened in the last two months of 2023, 25 investigations, than in all previous years combined, 24 investigations. Investigations broke record numbers in 2024, 39 investigations, and are on track to do so again in 2025, with 38 investigations as of September 30. This was back in 2025. So the Trump administration has used both of these things, DEI and antisemitism, to investigate universities. At the same time, they have also attacked the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Institutes of Health,

• 7:33Speaker 04

  all federal funding sources for the majority of research that happens at universities across disciplines, the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. The Trump administration has additionally attacked foreign students and the processes by which they are able to get visas to study in the United States, which is another way to get at a major revenue source for many universities. Finally, and most recently, the Trump administration put together what they called the Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. This compact offers universities that sign preferential treatment for federal research money in exchange for agreeing to a list of conditions. Conditions include freezing tuition, capping international enrollment, requiring the SAT, and limiting faculty speech on political issues.

• 8:17Speaker 04

  Only one university thus far has indicated their willingness to sign, the University of Texas at Austin, with most rejecting and a few expressing reservations. Whatever you personally think of these trends, I think what they make clear is that there is a concerted effort to change the trajectory and scope of higher education in this country. And members of the Trump administration have certainly made this explicitly clear. Vice President J.D. Vance, speaking to the National Conservatism Conference back in 2021, said, quote, "We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country," and that, quote, "universities are the enemy." So this is the reality we are facing, and there is an urgency in understanding how this impacts the quality of education in American universities for students, the quality of faculty research,

• 9:02Speaker 04

  the ability of universities to maintain their independence, and the role of universities in generating social mobility for marginalized people.

• 9:20Speaker 04

  Okay, so that's what I said in my introductory remarks before I turned it over to the speakers. Again, I was accused of downplaying antisemitism, and I was also likened to neo-Nazis. Why? For citing the report by the AAUP. In case people don't know, this is a very insidious trope of anti-Palestinian racism, often leveled at Palestinians. The idea that Palestinians are inherently antisemitic, that they are akin to Nazis, that their identity is not a national one, similar to every other nationality, but that Palestinian is a type of ideology centered on the hatred Jews. That is anti Palestinian racism.

• 10:03Speaker 04

  UC Berkeley's Department of Ethnic Studies has a pretty useful video on the subject, on how anti Palestinian racism is predicated on the assumption that Palestinians are a threat to public order, and that it presupposes Palestinians, quote, "do not enjoy the same rights to safety and flourishing as others." Now, this overlaps with racism against Arabs and white supremacy against people of color generally. It overlaps with Islamophobia, but it is also something distinct. There's a large literature on this. Dina Horowitz and Walter White, writing for the American Bar Association, highlight how, quote, "Anti Palestinian racism may also be Islamophobic,

• 10:44Speaker 04

  but importantly, not all Palestinians or all Arabs are Muslim, just as not all Muslims are Arab. Anti Palestinian racism foments a distinct form of discrimination faced by Palestinians and those advocating for Palestinian rights, including non-Arabs and non-Muslims, for example, Christians and Jews. Palestinians and their advocates encounter anti Palestinian racism and Islamophobia, regardless of whether they identify as secular, Muslim, Christian, Druz, or Jewish," end quote. The Arab Canadian Lawyers Association has a report also on this subject titled "Anti Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing, and Manifestations," and they define it right on the first page. Quote, "Anti Palestinian racism is a form of anti-Arab racism that

• 11:29Speaker 04

  silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames, or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives. Anti Palestinian racism takes various forms, including denying the Nakba and justifying violence against Palestinians, failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging, and rights in relation to occupied Palestine, erasing the human rights and equal dignity and worth of Palestinians, excluding or pressuring others to exclude Palestinian perspectives, Palestinians and their allies, defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander, such as being inherently anti-Semitic, a terrorist threat slash sympathizer, or opposed to democratic values."

• 12:10Speaker 04

  And finally, political scientists Yasmine Abu Laban and Abigail Bacon wrote a helpful essay on the matter for the project on Middle East Political Science, which I will link in the show notes as well. They write, quote, "Anti Palestinian racism is a form of racism which does not say its name. Anti Palestinian racism relies on various forms of coding to hide divisive, undemocratic practices of exclusion in an age where overt racism is considered ideologically distasteful." Now, they are writing a few years ago, so I'm not sure how distasteful it remains. But let me continue, quote, "The complexity is furthered in that the language of anti-Semitism and Jewish suffering, language that addresses systemic racism against the Jewish people,

• 12:51Speaker 04

  is a central means through which to code anti Palestinian racism and thereby suppress claims for redress. I am currently, while recording this podcast for you all, doing this thing where I'm going to great lengths to prove that what I experienced isn't just in my head. It isn't just me being overly sensitive. That it isn't a situation where maybe the person who complained had a good reason. That this was anti Palestinian racism." There is this huge body of work and so much evidence outlining what anti Palestinian racism is. There's even an argument that it animates broader Islamophobia in the United States, and it is a very real problem. But as Toni Morrison said, quote, "The function, the

• 13:32Speaker 04

  very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining over and over again your reason for being." So every time we take the accusation at face value and launch into justifications, into mustering all the evidence that the accusation is false, compiling the research and reports, that is a waste of time. Arguably, even this episode is me wasting my time in the way that racists intended. But I also think there is an important function of discussing anti Palestinian racism, both for this episode and for the broader discourse. The function is to start more immediately identifying it, pointing and calling it out, and distinguishing

• 14:13Speaker 04

  it as a separate thing that Palestinians in this country face. Because for Palestinians in this country, and a number of other countries, but I'm speaking about the United States here, the situation has gotten worse. And for Palestinian academics, which I can specifically speak to, the situation in higher education has gotten worse. The Middle East Studies Association has launched something called the Academic Freedom Initiative, where they collect data on how institutions of higher education are cracking down on their employees and students in a variety of ways around the issue of Palestine. And let's be clear, they weaponize the issue of Palestine to take away faculty governance or any kind of independence, whatever is left of it, on these campuses. So, for example,

• 14:56Speaker 04

  the Academic Freedom Initiative record 139 instances of employment retaliation. So that's the universities retaliating against their employees. With 46% of those who faced retaliation eventually terminated from employment altogether. According to the latest update on their website, August 20, 2026, 62% of Title VI investigations at universities about anti-Semitism were instigated by outside actors outside the university. And out of 116 events that they record universities interfering with, events related to Palestine, 55% were canceled. This is the state of affairs in higher ed. Anti Palestinian racism is rampant, but it's

• 15:40Speaker 04

  also, of course, rampant in other sectors and in our discourse. And last but not least, this country's official policies. But allies can refuse to allow this to go unchecked and can start to insist that this kind of racism is identified and not tolerated. So the racists wanted me to waste my time. But hopefully, this can also be a call to action to stand up against anti Palestinian racism more staunchly than before, because we need it. That's all I have for you today. Thanks for listening.

• 16:19Speaker 07

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover, seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  I turned off news altogether.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  It's the rage bait?

• 16:59Speaker 04

  It feels like it's trying to divide people.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.

• 17:09Speaker 06

  NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. This is Jacob Goldstein from What's Your Problem? Running a business is hard enough. Don't make it harder with a dozen apps that don't talk to each other. One for sales, another for inventory, a separate one for accounting. That's software overload. Odoo is the all-in-one platform that replaces them all. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, HR, fully integrated, easy to use, and built to grow with your business. Thousands have already made the

• 17:46Speaker 04

  switch. Why not you? Try Odoo for free at O D O O dot com. That's Odoo dot com. Having peace of mind for your home, family, and connected life is more important than ever. Introducing Xfinity Shield, a force field for your home and devices with built-in Wi-Fi features that protect from threats at home and online. With the Xfinity Gateway, you can detect movement in your home. No cameras needed. Plus, get always on protection for all your devices the moment you connect, so you can rest easy and stream more of your favorite podcasts on iHeartRadio. Get it now at Xfinity dot com slash shield. Xfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply. Not available in all areas. Xfinity Internet and compatible equipment required.

• 18:26Speaker 07

  The biggest game of the season, right here, right now, starts Saturday strong. It's Big Noon Saturday on Fox.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  And here we go.

• 18:36Speaker 07

  It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon Kickoff, live with an epic pregame. The crowd, the atmosphere, this is what makes it special. Then, it's America's number one game. What a hit. The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest games. Down the sideline, touchdown. It's Big Noon Saturday, noon Eastern on Fox.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  The midterm elections are just two weeks away, with early voting already underway. And this year, more than many others in recent memory, there has been a plethora of attempts to make it harder for you to vote, or making it so your vote may not count the same way it has before. Literally, in cases legislating whether Trump can prevent mail-in ballots from being counted after Election Day, which he cannot, but also through partisan gerrymandering, mid-decade redistricting, and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act, which has resulted in the votes of some Black Americans in the South being diluted across newly drawn

• 19:44Speaker 05

  districts. The president has promised to give each US citizen adult $5,000 if Republicans maintain control of Congress. And this past month, the White House has used taxpayer dollars to broadcast pro-Trump campaign ads. About a week and a half ago, there was widely publicized photos of National Guard troops standing in front of ballot drop boxes in Washington DC. Troops who National Guard officials say were not stationed there to guard the ballot boxes. But voter intimidation through the presence of military, federal

• 20:24Speaker 05

  agents, or police officers at polling sites is a huge concern going into these midterms, especially as ICE is detaining both immigrants and US citizens suspected of being immigrants at levels never before seen. Earlier this year, The Michigan Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who's going up against Abdul El-Sayed, told Kalamazoo County Republicans that he plans to recruit cops as, quote, "poll watchers", according to leaked audio from a GOP meeting, also saying, quote, "Go ahead. Try to intimidate them."

• 21:02Speaker 03

  So we called the RNC early and said, hey, you know, if we're gonna do this again, I don't wanna wake up at 3:00, you know, go to bed at 2:00 a.m. in winter and wake up at 4:00 a.m. and lose. I'm kind of done with that. And so, in a van full of ballots that shows up in the middle of the street, which I wish didn't happen to them. So what we got them to commit to was they're gonna have a healthy voter integrity program. The fact that they've already hired a deputy told you how far ahead of the game. We weren't that far before. And I've been telling them, you know what? Let's put police officers, retired or off-duty police officers as our poll watchers in Detroit.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Because, go ahead, try to intimidate them. Yeah, please, please. Yeah. What's that? We're trying to find them. I mean, they wouldn't be able to wear their uniforms, but they would, you know, you know, all you gotta do is open your jacket and you see the badge on the belt, right?

• 22:00Speaker 05

  Also notable in this leaked audio is how Mike Rogers insinuates his last Senate race, which he lost to Alyssa Slotkin, was stolen from him because of a van full of ballots. It seems almost inevitable that if Republicans lose these midterms, they will invent all sorts of election conspiracy theories and spread false claims of mass voter fraud to both contest these results and limit free and fair elections in the future. But this episode, I want to do an overview of the way the Trump administration is currently trying to make it harder to vote, what they have been able to do before the midterms,

• 22:42Speaker 05

  and finally, what they could do in the future. This is It Could Happen Here. I'm your host, Garrison Davis. The big thing Trump wants, but he'll probably never get, is the passage of the Save America Act, a bill that would require voters provide photo ID and proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, not just a driver's license or even a real ID card. This would disenfranchise over 20 million Americans who do not have citizenship documents like passports or birth certificates readily available. Trump's Save Act would also mandate

• 23:26Speaker 05

  regular voter roll purges and aims to heavily restrict mail-in or absentee voting. To quote the White House, quote, "No mail-in ballots, except for illness, disability, military, or travel." Much of Trump's election ire has been directed at absentee or mail-in voting, despite this being the very method by which Trump himself casts his ballot. I'm not gonna focus on what passing the Save America Act specifically would mean for U.S. elections, because it's just not very likely that this bill will ever pass the Senate. But as Trump grew frustrated

• 24:09Speaker 05

  at the Save Act being indefinitely stalled, he turned to other means for similar ends. On March 31, 2026, President Trump signed Executive Order 14399, or Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections. This order was a test of executive power by attempting to institute federal policies similar to provisions within the Save Act, but through bypassing Congress entirely. In particular, the order focused on two things: having DHS create, quote, "state citizenship lists", a list of individuals confirmed to be U.S. citizens

• 24:54Speaker 05

  who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming federal election and who maintain residence in the subject state. And the order also directed the United States Postal Service to, quote, "initiate a proposed rulemaking on mail-in and absentee ballots", to, quote, "establish uniform standards for mail-in or absentee ballot services." These new standards would include a new requirement that outbound absentee ballots feature a unique barcode to facilitate tracking and a provision specifying that the USPS would not transmit any mail-in or absentee ballots for any individual who does not appear on a federal, state-by-state list

• 25:38Speaker 05

  of pre-verified voters. To create this list, which may or may not be the same as the state citizenship list, the order keeps this kind of vague, but to create this list, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration, and the Postmaster General would coordinate to implement this executive order. According to the order, states would be able to, quote, "suggest modifications to the Postal Service's state-specific mail-in and absentee participation list." So that all sounds bad. And a group of 23 states and the District of Columbia sued, alleging the executive order was unconstitutional

• 26:23Speaker 05

  and violated separation of powers by infringing on the state's authority to administer elections. In June, a district court in Massachusetts agreed and blocked the order. The Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, and in August, the court issued an order on the shadow docket, with the conservative majority ruling 6-3, that the coalition of states and the district court lacked the legal authority to block the order because no harm had yet come from the executive order. So essentially, the Supreme Court lifted the lower court's injunction, allowing Trump's executive order to go into effect, because they thought it was just too soon

• 27:06Speaker 05

  for states to file a challenge because the order hadn't yet gone into effect, and so the plaintiffs had yet to suffer any injury. This was totally crazy and like totally defeats the entire point of the shadow docket. The whole point of the shadow docket, or the emergency interim docket, is that there's potential of serious irreparable harm if the court does not intervene. But in this ruling, the conservative majority wrote that the state's supposed concrete injury was only a, quote, "unduly long chain of inferences." So this ruling in August gave the Trump administration the green light

• 27:51Speaker 05

  to have DHS create and send state citizenship lists to each state 60 days ahead of the upcoming federal elections, cataloging each person in every state who DHS believes is eligible to vote. Now, the Supreme Court wrote, quote, "States are not required to use the lists." But this executive order also requires the Attorney General to, quote, "prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution of state and local officials or any others who issue federal ballots to ineligible voters." So Trump is effectively compelling states to follow these DHS lists

• 28:36Speaker 05

  or else they will face prosecution. In their ruling, the conservative majority wrote that the lower court concluded states did suffer a present injury because the order required them to, quote, "begin planning now on how to comply with it." But, the Supreme Court wrote, "States, quote, 'cannot manufacture standing merely by inflicting harm on themselves based on their fears of hypothetical future harm that is certainly not impending,'" unquote. Though, of course, the conservative majority found that the government is, quote, "likely to suffer irreparable harm without a stay." And so, the stay was granted, lifting the injunction.

• 29:23Speaker 05

  There was something interesting at the end of this Supreme Court ruling. They wrote, quote, "The court's disposition on this application does not mean that any measure taken by the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell. But the order itself does not harm the states, so the district court lacked jurisdiction to bar the government from trying to implement it," unquote. So the Supreme Court at least insinuates there that the Trump administration may not necessarily lawfully implement this executive order, but in order for states to file a

• 30:07Speaker 05

  challenge, the order has to at least partially go into effect. When this ruling was issued, the Postal Service had not yet published their final rule implementing parts of Trump's executive order. And so the court never addressed the part of the executive order requiring the Postal Service to review the eligibility of voters before transmitting their absentee ballots. And again, following this idea that the state's lawsuit was premature, the conservative majority wrote in the order, quote, "If the Postal Service's final rule harms the states, they may challenge that rule."

• 30:49Speaker 05

  And literally two days after the Supreme Court issued this order, the USPS published their new final rule amending the mailing standards regarding the transmission of mail-in or absentee ballots for federal elections. Quote, "The final rule introduces new mail piece preparation requirements and data reporting standards for federal ballot mail that must be satisfied prior to presenting outbound federal ballot mail for acceptance into the mail stream," unquote. As outlined in Trump's executive order, the Postal Service's final rule would require states use new standardized mail-in ballot envelope designs to be compatible with automated

• 31:30Speaker 05

  processing, display a consistent election mail logo, and a unique intelligent mail barcode. But the rule also introduced a new digital, quote, "federal ballot mail portal" that state and local election officials would have to use to administer absentee ballots. Not only would this portal be how state officials certified the design of their standardized envelopes, but election officials would also have to upload the name and address of each absentee or mail-in voter as found on the outbound federal ballot mail envelope, the issuing state, and the intelligent mail barcode.

• 32:13Speaker 05

  This data would have to be submitted to the portal, quote, "prior to presenting in outbound federal ballot mailing for acceptance." Rather than the 60-day deadline in Trump's executive order, the Postal Service's final rule recommends states upload this voter data into the portal at least 30 days before the election. This, quote, "flexible 30-day timeline accommodates variations in state law," unquote. But importantly, this voter data must be submitted to this new digital portal before the Postal Service will accept any mail-in ballots.

• 32:52Speaker 05

  Quote, "There should be minimal to no delay between portal upload and a mailer's ability to present the mailing for acceptance. The Postal Service will generally not accept outbound federal ballot mailings unless compliance with the new rule's standards has been verified," unquote. This new final rule did state that the Postal Service would not play, quote, "any role in determining voter eligibility, maintaining voter rules, or counting ballots." But the rule also states, quote, "Portal data will also be available for verification

• 33:33Speaker 05

  purposes on a nationwide basis," unquote. If some of that just sounds confusing, that's because it is. The implementation of Trump's executive order in this final rule was not very clear at all, did not follow proper protocol, and resulted in whistleblowers from USPS coming forward with concerns about the implementation of this final rule. And though the Supreme Court stayed one injunction blocking the implementation of the executive order, a separate temporary restraining order prevented certain sections of this final rule from immediately going into effect.

• 34:16Speaker 05

  The published final rule says that the Postal Service is ready to immediately implement these new standards in preparation for the 2026 election as soon as all of the lower court injunctions are lifted. But a few days after the rule was published, a coalition of 23 states again filed a lawsuit as instructed by the Supreme Court, and the same district court judge issued a new preliminary injunction. And then on September 13th, a second federal judge also blocked the Postal Service's newly adopted final rule. Trump appointee Judge Carl Nichols found that the Postal Service lacked the authority

• 34:57Speaker 05

  to require states submit a list of eligible voters to this online portal and only transmit ballots to voters verified on the portal. Judge Nichols wrote that if the rule was implemented, there would be a, quote, "increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted in the upcoming elections," unquote. And then just a day later, the Supreme Court issued a shadow docket ruling denying the Trump administration's request to lift the first injunction blocking the implementation of the Postal Service's final rule, finding that, quote, "the government is unlikely

• 35:42Speaker 05

  to succeed on the merits of its challenge." And this appeared to be a 7-2 ruling with Samuel Alito pending a dissent, which was joined by Clarence Thomas. Though Brett Kavanaugh wrote a one-paragraph concurring opinion agreeing to let the injunction against the rule remain, though he suggested that the Postal Service may have the authority to implement the rule in the future, just not in the two months prior to an election, stating, quote, "In my view, based on the briefing the court has received at this interim stage, there is at least a fair prospect that the final rule falls within the Postal

• 36:27Speaker 05

  Service's statutory authority. But applying the rule in the 2026 elections would be arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act because state and local officials do not have sufficient time to reasonably implement the rule before the elections. For that reason, I concur in the denial of the application for stay," unquote. We'll come back to the future implications of this ruling at the end of the episode. But first, here's some ads. Okay, we are back.

• 37:12Speaker 05

  Restricting mail-in voting and this final rule from the Postal Service is only one half of Trump's executive order. The other concerns the creation of state citizenship lists to verify voters. The federal government does not have a centralized registry of citizens. But since last year, DHS has been trying to retrofit something called the SAVE system, not to be confused with the SAVE Act, though both aim to suppress voters. But the DHS has been trying to expand this SAVE system so it can be used to verify large

• 37:53Speaker 05

  batches of voters by integrating data from other agencies like the State Department and the Social Security Administration. SAVE, in this case, stands for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements. It was created in the To verify the citizenship and immigration status of people applying for public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps. In March of 2025, Trump signed a different executive order titled Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections, which instructed DHS to put new systems into place

• 38:34Speaker 05

  to allow state and local authorities to verify the citizenship status of those registered to vote, and directed the Social Security Administration to make their records available to DHS for that purpose. So DHS began modifying the SAVE system by incorporating confidential data from the Social Security Administration and altering the system to allow authorities to conduct bulk searches of multiple individuals at once. To date, 27 states already use the SAVE system to verify voters. And last year, some states began testing the newly modified database.

• 39:17Speaker 05

  After Trump signed this election integrity order last year, voting rights organizations sued and a district court blocked the order, finding that the overhauled SAVE system, quote, "trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote." But the Trump administration went to the Supreme Court, asking them to lift the district court's injunction, alleging that the government faced irreparable harm if they weren't allowed to use the SAVE system to purge voter rolls. Without a full briefing or oral argument, the conservative majority ruled 6-3, granting

• 39:59Speaker 05

  the stay, clearing the way for Trump to implement the new SAVE system and allow DHS to purge voter rolls. I talked about this a little bit in an executive disorder episode a few weeks ago. In the lawsuit that first prevented the government from using this newly modified SAVE system, the plaintiffs alleged that the integration of SSA, Social Security Administration, data violates multiple privacy protections, and that the use of the data to purge voter rolls risks irreparable harm to voters who are mistakenly removed from voter rolls due

• 40:37Speaker 05

  to inaccurate or out-of-date information in the databases that SAVE is using. And this harm is not just hypothetical. When Texas began testing out the newly modified SAVE system last year, it had an error rate of over 20%. And part of why the SAVE system is so inaccurate, especially now that it's pulling from Social Security data, is because Social Security Administration data does not necessarily reflect someone's current immigration or citizenship status. For example, I was given an SSN as a teenager after my family immigrated to the US, but

• 41:22Speaker 05

  because I later acquired US citizenship through one of my parents, my Social Security number does not correspond to my citizenship status, and I often have to verify my citizenship status with a passport. It's also important to keep in mind that Social Security Administration data is not just social security numbers, but also, quote, "names, dates, and places of birth, citizenship indicators, death records, and information obtained while processing requests for social security numbers," per the Supreme Court. So if the SAVE system flags someone or a search comes up inconclusive, voters could

• 42:04Speaker 05

  be required to take additional affirmative steps to prove their citizenship or naturalization, possibly within a very short window, or risk being removed from the voter rolls and unable to exercise their right to vote. In the short, unsigned opinion, the conservative majority writes, quote, "If the modified SAVE program is unable to confirm that an individual is a citizen, the agency is required to contact the individual and request that he provide proof of citizenship to register or remain registered to vote," unquote. In her dissent, Justice Jackson echoed the concerns of the plaintiffs, that the, quote,

• 42:48Speaker 05

  "staleness of Social Security Administration citizenship records risked disenfranchising recently naturalized US citizens." And again, this is not some sort of hypothetical harm. According to a ProPublica report from last February, quote, "DHS has had to correct information provided to at least five states after SAVE misidentified some voters as non-citizens." And per Jackson's dissent, in Texas, one woman had her voter registration revoked without her knowledge, and two more had to provide proof of citizenship to maintain registered voter status.

• 43:32Speaker 05

  I really don't want to gloss over the fact that already in Texas, a US citizen was removed from voter registration because of the SAVE system without her knowledge. She did not know that this happened. Imagine you walk up to the polling site, ready to vote, only to learn that you've been removed from the voter rolls because of DHS's janky verification system. That is actual irreparable harm, but the majority opinion of the Supreme Court just didn't consider this harm posed to lawful voters, but rather focused on the harms the

• 44:12Speaker 05

  government could purportedly suffer if they aren't allowed to use the revamped SAVE system. The bulk of the majority opinion focuses on defending the legality of DHS using what is otherwise protected confidential data from the Social Security Administration. In contrast with the district court, the Supreme Court agreed with the government's argument that a provision of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, Section 1373, actually already granted DHS permission to access confidential SSA data.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  Thus, the use of that data in the SAVE program does not violate the privacy protections within the Social Security Act or the Privacy Act. And I apologize for this getting a little jargony, but I cannot emphasize the magnitude of this enough. Section 1373 has never before been invoked this way and poses massive threats to privacy. I will lightly paraphrase for clarity, 8 U.S.C. 1373, quote, "Notwithstanding any other provision of federal, state, or local law, no person, agency, government entity, or

• 45:35Speaker 05

  official may prohibit or in any way restrict any government entity or official from sending or receiving information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual to DHS," unquote. Now, because of that first bit on, quote, "notwithstanding other laws," the Supreme Court majority found that Section 1373, quote, "likely supersedes restrictions on disclosure elsewhere in the code." And thus DHS is authorized to request, receive, and send otherwise confidential information from the Social Security Administration.

• 46:16Speaker 05

  What the majority is doing here is they're combining that notwithstanding clause with 1373 subsection C, which, quote, "requires DHS to respond to inquiries from state and local agencies seeking to verify or ascertain the citizenship or immigration status of any individual," unquote. But as written, that subsection does not require DHS to respond to requests with confidential data from other agencies. It doesn't entitle them to otherwise protected data. In her dissent, Jackson summarizes what the majority's opinion here is.

• 46:57Speaker 05

  Quote, "As the majority sees things, Congress's prohibiting interference with the disclosure of information regarding citizenship status to DHS necessarily authorizes DHS to request and receive that information from the SSA regardless of whether some other law prohibits disclosure. The majority thus treats Section 1373 as essentially overriding the limits that privacy laws impose on the sharing of citizenship information with DHS," unquote. Now, Jackson calls the majority's interpretation, quote, "implausible," and accuses them of,

• 47:39Speaker 05

  quote, "misreading the statutory text in a few important ways." Mainly, that these provisions don't empower government agencies to take any affirmative action to overrule privacy protections, but rather, they bar government entities, officials, persons, or agencies from unlawfully prohibiting or restricting the exchange of citizenship information with DHS. To quote Jackson, quote, "These provisions do not affirmatively grant any power, nor do they override any explicit statutory limits on information sharing.

• 48:19Speaker 05

  Rather, both provisions bar government entities or employees from interfering with otherwise lawful exchanges of citizenship information, notwithstanding that such interference may be permitted under some other law." When a law imposes an express restriction on disclosure, it is that law, not an entity, official, person, or agency, that is doing the, quote, "prohibiting" or, quote, "restricting." In the majority's opinion, they have a little footnote responding to Jackson's claim here, quote, "The distinction the dissent draws between laws and those tasked with enforcing them is illusory. Prohibitions necessarily include invoking a law."

• 49:06Speaker 05

  To deny a request for or transfer of such information. Unquote. But this snarky little remark ignores that other provisions in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act place, quote, "strict limits on what information SSA can disclose." And Jackson notes that "those limits would be pointless if Section 1373 supersedes any and all privacy protections, as claimed by the government and the Supreme Court majority." To quote Jackson, "There is no reason to believe that Congress meant to repeal laws

• 49:48Speaker 05

  that would otherwise prohibit federal agencies from disclosing citizenship information. Nothing in 1373 authorizes the modified SAVE system or overrides the provisions of the Social Security Act and the Privacy Act." Unquote. To bolster her argument, Jackson also notes that Bill Clinton's Office of Legal Counsel shared this same interpretation of Section 1373 all the way back in 1999, writing that the section does, quote, "not clearly invest government officials or entities with the affirmative authority to disclose information in circumstances where they would otherwise

• 50:30Speaker 05

  be prohibited from doing so by a federal statute." Unquote. And I go over all of these details, not to be confusing or annoying, but because, again, this is a shadow docket ruling, meaning that this case will likely be heard again by the Supreme Court, and some of these justifications may matter in the future. So as bad and frankly bullshit as this ruling is, according to Jackson, it will, quote,

• 51:12Speaker 05

  "likely have minimal short-term impact." And that's because the National Voter Registration Act prohibits states from, quote, "systematically removing the names of ineligible voters from their rolls in the 90 days prior to any primary or general election." But this doesn't mean that it will have no impact on the midterms, because the government is still allowed to use the new SAVE system to conduct, quote, "individualized inquiries per the majority." Jackson writes that states will, quote, "at most conduct individualized voter rule maintenance

• 51:53Speaker 05

  using the modified SAVE system prior to the midterms." But at the end of her dissent, she stresses, quote, "the harm caused by burdening or disenfranchising even a few lawful voters outweighs the nonexistent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take." For 2026, voter intimidation remains the biggest threat to elections, whether that's coming from Mike Rogers' personal goons or some federal force near polling sites, be

• 52:32Speaker 05

  that, be that National Guard or ICE, which DHS officials have said won't patrol the polls, but told the Associated Press, quote, "if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action." With DHS also saying they are, quote, "laser-focused on prosecuting and removing aliens who vote and preventing the dilution of the votes of US citizens." Beyond voter intimidation, the Trump administration and Republicans may also attempt to delegitimize election results based on allegations of fraud.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  And this is yet another way the new SAVE system could be of some use. Given its high error rate, it's quite simple to inflate the number of votes that are under suspicion of being fraudulently cast if the Trump administration gains access to cast ballots or voting machines and tries to audit the results. They don't even need to prove fraud, they just need to create an air of uncertainty to manufacture a political crisis, and the SAVE system can provide that uncertainty. But what really concerns me is what could happen after the midterms, in the two years before the 2028 election.

• 54:00Speaker 05

  There will be enough time for the constitutionality of the Postal Service's final rule with the digital federal ballot mail portal and vague verification requirements to be fully litigated and potentially implemented. Supreme Court Justices Alito and Thomas have already made it clear that they want the rule implemented, and Kavanaugh seems sympathetic. Without the time constraint of an impending election, where the rest of the conservative justices stand on questions of constitutionality, delegating election authority, and separation of powers as they relate to the Postal Service's final rule is not yet clear.

• 54:41Speaker 05

  And whenever they decide, I do want to echo the opinion of Trump appointee Judge Nichols that the USPS final rule poses a, quote, "increased risk that a significant number of otherwise appropriate absentee or mail-in ballots will ultimately not be counted." If the Republicans lose the midterms, which seems likely, Trump's general power may be more limited, but that may also result in his efforts being tailored to a few select issues that he can direct his full executive power towards. And the election issue has been a quite personal issue for President Trump.

• 55:24Speaker 05

  I can't see him doing anything other than doubling down on implementing the full extent of these executive orders, including the, quote, "state citizenship lists." But in terms of something that can immediately happen right after the midterms, literally the day after the election, states can start using DHS's SAVE system to purge voter rolls en masse by, quote unquote, "verifying large batches of voters." The only thing preventing that right now is the 90-day prohibition on the, quote unquote, "systemic removal before an election." On the question of SAVE's legality, the Supreme Court's conservative majority wrote

• 56:07Speaker 05

  that "the challengers are unlikely to prevail on the merits of their claims," even though Jackson points out in her dissent that the majority opinion breaks from previous interpretations of federal law and plainly misreads the statutory text. Reversing their decision may require an entirely new Supreme Court. Retrofitting the SAVE system to conduct bulk searches of potentially ineligible voters is one part of a much larger strategy. Since 2025, the Trump administration has tried to gain access to states' voter rolls,

• 56:47Speaker 05

  with the DOJ suing over 30 states for not complying with federal requests. Over a dozen states, mostly Republican-controlled states, have complied and handed over their voter registration lists. For states that have not complied, the Trump administration has employed multiple tactics to try to gain access to their voting records, including by just seizing them physically, like in Georgia. We don't know if this was done with SAVE specifically, but this past summer, DHS notified the state of Nevada that they had almost 16,000 non-citizens on their voter rolls.

• 57:27Speaker 05

  Then DHS said that they were able to confirm at least 185 individual cases of non-citizens registered to vote. But when state election officials looked into these cases, they found that every one of those 185 voters was actually a US citizen. Meanwhile, in Texas, SAVE falsely flagged over 500 voters as non-citizens. Simply put, having DHS try to determine the eligibility of US citizen voters doesn't seem like a good idea, and it doesn't seem like they are very good at it.

• 58:07Speaker 05

  Except, of course, this is precisely what DHS is setting out to do: remove as many people from the voter rolls as possible, whether or not they are actually eligible to vote. The new SAVE system would not only disenfranchise eligible voters by removing them from voter rolls, potentially even without their knowledge, like in Texas, but also, in the age of ICE mass deportations, the prospect that you, as a voter, could be investigated or scrutinized by DHS based on your name being flagged by some database could absolutely

• 58:47Speaker 05

  dissuade US citizens born or naturalized from registering to vote and exercising their right to vote, especially if they live with or are in proximity to undocumented immigrants. And that fear, that intimidation, that is part of the point. If Stephen Miller can't strip naturalized citizens of their right to vote, this is his compromise.

• 59:22Speaker 07

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  It feels like it's trying to divide people.

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  We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.

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• 1:02:00Speaker 05

  Hi, everyone. This is future Mick, adding some stuff for less future Mick, who you'll be hearing most of during the podcast. This episode took a pretty long while. I'm not sure how long it will be in post-production, but per my own recording, we talked for almost three hours, which is a lot. Therefore, this episode will be cut into multiple pieces. Make sure to start at part one. I'm sorry for any awkward breaks in the post-production, but it was very hard to keep that in mind while we were recording. Hope you enjoy it.

• 1:02:40Speaker 05

  Welcome, everyone. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the podcast of things falling apart and possibly out to put them back a little bit. My name is Mick. As expected, I'm here with James Stouts, because James is always here with me. But I'm also very happy to say hello to Molly Conger, who's also agreed to join. How are you guys doing?

• 1:03:01Speaker 03

  I'm great. I'm excited. I'm pumped to learn about some weird Nazis. It's me and Molly, but it's not an animal. So I guess some people are already sad. I like doing podcasts with both of you, so it's gonna be fun.

• 1:03:13Speaker 05

  I'm looking forward to whatever horrors we're about to learn. Yes, I knew once I dove into this, there's like, okay, I need to light the Molly signal and make sure that I get you to come on as well. Hear about somebody else's Nazis for a change. Yeah, exactly. Like European Nazis with whom you're probably much less familiar, but probably no less horrifying. So what we'll be talking about today is the Save Europe Act. What it is, what kind of European mechanisms it tries to use to push through horrible shit. That sounds xenophobic.

• 1:03:47Speaker 03

  Anytime people are wanting to save a thing, like nine times out of 10, we gotta ask who they're saving it from. And if it's the presence of people who aren't white, that's.

• 1:03:56Speaker 05

  Why do you think it needs to be saved?

• 1:03:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:59Speaker 05

  Are you worried about the dilution of Aryan blood? Oh, you're so on point, Molly. You have no idea. We're also going to look a bit at the people who are orchestrating this, because there are funny instances and also horrifying instances. I've tried to make it a bit of a mix of the two, but I'll be honest, like I've put this project, little project down a few times, because I just got angry about it. I need to make jokes in order to make it palpable. Also, I have, against my better judgment, decided to make a Blue Sky account. So if anyone wants to reach me or if I do stuff incorrectly, you can contact me there. It's at two sober possums.

• 1:04:45Speaker 05

  Stop harassing James if I'm the one you're mad at. Originally, I intended to have a little fun opening, but over the course of this research, I got upset and angry. After reading an in-depth report from the Justice for Prosperity, it became clear that a bunch of Fourth Reich enthusiasts can be funny, where you just look at it like superficially. But the report suggests that more nefarious people are, at the very least, facilitating profoundly racist and anti-democratic movements. At worst, it's the rich and powerful deliberately pushing Europe towards fascism and emboldening wannabe brown shirts to commit more acts of violence for. Again? Again, yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 05

  And it gets better, because it's for like a democratic proposal that was like doomed from the very start. Like red shirt in Star Trek doomed. Like that one teenage couple having sex somewhere in a horror film doomed. It's like, I can't exaggerate how doomed this was. So let's get going. What is the Save Europe Act and who are the ones behind it? According to their own website, the Save Europe Act is the first ever campaign to launch a patriotic European citizens initiative. We demand that the political elite halt their replacement migration, secure our borders, and protect the ethno-cultural identity of European nations.

• 1:06:09Speaker 03

  Oh, dear.

• 1:06:10Speaker 05

  My eyes are getting wider with every clause of that sentence.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, those are some trigger words.

• 1:06:15Speaker 05

  Like those TikToks of like, when you say like a dog's favorite words, you say, you want to go to the park? Do you want to get a treat? And the dog gets like progressively more alarmed. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but then in a bad way. Yeah, that's me, but negative. Oh, okay. Well, it's not getting any better. So at first, we're going to dive into like the Save Europe Act itself. And then we're going to look at the European Citizens Initiative. So is that like a referendum, like a ballot initiative, but for all of Europe? We're sorry, most of the audience is American, so I'm gonna be the token dumb American here. And I need you to explain to me what's that? We'll get there, because I've laid it out. Because Europe is not a country. No, no, no. Europe is a state of mind, Molly.

• 1:07:01Speaker 03

  And a band.

• 1:07:02Speaker 05

  Oh, really? Is it?

• 1:07:04Speaker 03

  The Final Countdown?

• 1:07:05Speaker 05

  Oh, I've heard that at a sports event. Yeah. I've heard those words in the long, long ago, sometime. But okay, to make it a bit more clear for Molly specifically. For the Americans. I'm not American, so I can't banter like that. It's a legislative request that has to be considered by the EU if certain conditions are met. In the grand machine of the EU, Citizens Initiative is a way for Europeans to directly influence laws through the collection of support and signatures. So they've got a big petition going. They got all the races in Europe to sign their petition. Yeah, think of it like a petition on steroids or a protest that, for a change, cannot be simply be ignored

• 1:07:49Speaker 05

  by the powers that be. The Charter itself is barely a three-minute read, but I thought it would still be too lengthy and dull. So I'll skip the preamble and move on to the core claims and demands that they make. Should you have the desire or the masochism to want to read it yourself, you can find it on their website. It will be in the show notes, together with all the other sources I've had the misfortune of reading. So this is part two of the Charter. I quote, acknowledging further that Article 22 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union requires the Union to respect cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity, which must include the protection of the historic cultures and traditions of Europe's nations against erosion through demographic replacement.

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  Oh, there it is. That's very clever. That's so like, oh, we just, we want to respect the diversity of our beautiful, all these different white cultures.

• 1:08:43Speaker 05

  Uh, exactly.

• 1:08:46Speaker 03

  That's cute.

• 1:08:46Speaker 05

  The first time that a fascist has used the word diversity, not in a completely bad faith way.

• 1:08:51Speaker 03

  Right. Well, yeah, that's, that's really cute of them. Just like, there's so much diversity of all the different whites.

• 1:08:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, yes.

• 1:08:59Speaker 03

  We have to protect our cultural heritage.

• 1:09:01Speaker 05

  Nothing but premium whites. So, point three. Testing how replacement migration, both legal and illegal, over recent decades has violated that right by causing significant damage to the social cohesion, public services, security, and ethnic and cultural continuity of the European nations, leading to parallel societies, increased crime, and the marginalization of native populations in their ancestral homelands.

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  Come on. Anytime you hear a fucking European white person using the word native or indigenous to describe themselves, just tell them to fuck off. Just the most pure vile shit. Come on. I've been reading a lot of like 20th century sort of eugenics writing lately, you know, early, early 1900s. And every time they say, you know, he was a Native American, I'm like, he was what? They mean he was a white person whose family came here in the 1700s. He was a Native American. Like, that's not how we use that phrase now. This is still a giant problem in like local journalism in the United States. Like, I remember I was writing for Pointer, which if people aren't familiar, Pointer is like a, like an institute of journalism, I think. It's like a journal about journalism. Meta.

• 1:10:09Speaker 03

  And I remember two reporters, I was writing about how people just can't stop saying that cops overdosed on fentanyl when they didn't, they had a panic attack. This is a problem, and it's a problem that is apparently insurmountable for many local newspapers, including the San Diego Union Tribune. Both reporters there called themselves San Diego natives and like, the Native American Journalist Association style guide suggests that you should generally put tribal affiliation afterwards. So I asked them, and they got very upset. But like, I genuinely, like, if you are a person who makes a living with words and you're just a white person who was born somewhere and you're using native, you're showing that you're incapable of like using words accurately. I think that should be disqualifying in itself if you're a journalist. You're bad at your job. Yeah, I find it really fucking annoying.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  It's so, it's interesting in that clause, right? So they're not just upset about illegal immigration, right? They're not just upset about like refugees and asylum. They're saying legal and illegal. So right from the jump, they're saying, this is just an ethnic thing. We just want everyone to be white. There's not even pretending that's not about everyone being white.

• 1:11:11Speaker 05

  It gets worse.

• 1:11:13Speaker 03

  Oh, good, good. But it started very bad.

• 1:11:15Speaker 05

  It started bad, yeah.

• 1:11:17Speaker 03

  They're not even pretending.

• 1:11:18Speaker 05

  No, no, you're starting like already knee deep in shit and the more you wade through like the sewer.

• 1:11:24Speaker 03

  We started with the Nuremberg laws.

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:11:28Speaker 03

  It's kind of a heated first sentence.

• 1:11:31Speaker 05

  That, that was like genuinely one of my first thoughts, like, should shit go incredibly bad in Europe with shit like this? Then this is something that will be brought up in whatever the new.

• 1:11:43Speaker 03

  In the tribunals?

• 1:11:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:11:44Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, when they're writing the history book. I have that thought often. I have that thought in my fantasies often. Molly has a tribunals folder on her computer, which is, uh, she's got a whole hard drive now. Look, when they come, when they're ready, I have files. Just come get me. You've got their receipts.

• 1:12:02Speaker 05

  Okay. Point four. Underlying the urgency of the matter by acknowledging the imminent reality that the native peoples of Europe risk becoming minority populations in their own homelands if radical changes to the asylum and migration system are not made.

• 1:12:18Speaker 03

  I'm sorry, like this level of just open bitching, like, oh, I'm sorry, you believe in great replacement conspiracy theories? Like, that's embarrassing for you. That's embarrassing. Yeah, and this pathetic concern trolling, like, are we the indigenous people are being colonized by people seeking fucking asylum? Our beautiful, brave, Teutonic ancestors are being, like, grow up.

• 1:12:41Speaker 05

  Like, I, I would accept it if they would just refer back to like the, the original Celts before like the Christendom and the Romans came, like.

• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. It's the people from Italy that they're really mad about.

• 1:12:55Speaker 05

  We, we need to fucking like praise Tuttatus and then Caturix again from like the old Gallic, uh, Gallic days, you know? I would respect that.

• 1:13:04Speaker 03

  These probably are the same like fucking German neo-Nazis who still celebrate like Arminius Day. These are the same people who would also have like done Africa starts at the Pyrenees stuff not so long ago and like absolutely excluded anyone from Iberia from being like European or white, like. So, you know, they've maybe, that's the diversity they're talking about, maybe. I, I do love that, that inter-white racism, like the really niche stuff, like are Macedonians white? Yeah. Yeah, being, uh, being someone who was a historian of Iberia for much of my twenties, like, it's wild. It's wild shit that you will see in like, uh, old timey texts and, uh, from old timey people at history conferences. Oh, I'm talking about stuff I've seen on Instagram, right?

• 1:13:48Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, that's also, could be the same people.

• 1:13:51Speaker 05

  Probably. They'll probably be in contact through like a Telegram group.

• 1:13:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  Sorry, we keep interrupting the. We've ruined.

• 1:14:01Speaker 05

  That, that's, that's fine. So, point five, determining that migration does not solve the aging population crisis, but instead places further strain on European welfare systems and worsens the fundamental problem of low birth rates among the native population.

• 1:14:18Speaker 03

  I was hoping we would get to birth rates. I'm surprised it took all the way to the number five. I mean, you, are, are you even a proper racist if you're not concerned about the fecundity of ethnic women?

• 1:14:31Speaker 05

  Probably. It's, um.

• 1:14:34Speaker 03

  They're very worried about being outbred.

• 1:14:37Speaker 05

  Yes, but for some reason, all the women promoting this are not having like 20 children within, within like their first five years. So funny how they make exceptions for themselves all the time. One thing of note that I found is at point two about like the cultural, religious, and linguistic diversity, which, as I said before, fascists using diversity not entirely in bad faith, but also using it in bad faith.

• 1:15:02Speaker 03

  Right, you know, that they want, all the different romance languages, but God forbid we have too much diversity.

• 1:15:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. But like, that argument is so fucking stupid on its face. Because like, first of all, is your faith in your own culture and language so incredibly weak that like the presence of any other is a threat?

• 1:15:22Speaker 03

  I mean, they do keep a pretty strict hold on French. They're very worried about it. Yeah, yeah, the, uh, the state is leaning on the scale in France. But like, the idea that the wonderful diversity of romance languages is great and should be celebrated and protected, but like, where the fuck do you think, like, all the words that begin with AL in Spanish come from? It's not France.

• 1:15:43Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:15:43Speaker 03

  Like.

• 1:15:44Speaker 05

  Or any word with SK in, in English, there's originally some Scandinavian origins there.

• 1:15:51Speaker 03

  Right, like, this isn't the first time anyone came to Europe. This isn't new. Yeah, yeah, people have been doing this for a minute. It's like, if you are really good at like, probably none of you are really good at throwing, but you can definitely swim to North Africa from the European Union pretty easily.

• 1:16:06Speaker 05

  Well.

• 1:16:07Speaker 03

  Well, not easily, be, be a pretty rough, uh, be a pretty rough trip, but like.

• 1:16:10Speaker 05

  Between Spain and Morocco, it's, I think it's the most doable.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it's, uh, I'm sure a human could do it. People swim to France. No one knows why.

• 1:16:20Speaker 05

  To avoid Spain?

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  And I think if they're going from the United Kingdom, so it would be, uh, like, if people do this, it's like a physical endurance challenge.

• 1:16:27Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 1:16:28Speaker 03

  I thought they stopped letting people do it. Quite possibly. Uh, I've not been, I'm not funny. I just remember when I was a kid, it would be a thing that people would do. They would like. Swim the channel. Grease themselves and then swim the channel, yeah.

• 1:16:39Speaker 05

  Okay, well, I, I do respect, uh, the, the English fleeing away from England to France where there's at least a proper cuisine present.

• 1:16:47Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 1:16:49Speaker 05

  I'm sorry, Javes. I'm sorry.

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, okay. So have they gotten this ballot initiative or whatever you guys call it in Europe? Have they gotten this to be considered? Like, did they get enough support to force someone to consider this seriously?

• 1:17:02Speaker 05

  Yes and no. Uh, but, but we'll, we'll get there, but I, I, I love your thinking ahead with me.

• 1:17:09Speaker 03

  I just don't know how the government works over there, to be so honest.

• 1:17:12Speaker 05

  We don't either.

• 1:17:13Speaker 03

  I barely know how our government works.

• 1:17:15Speaker 05

  Oh, barely, I think is the correct answer to that.

• 1:17:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it doesn't. If.

• 1:17:21Speaker 05

  But I, I also still wanted to point out, like, we've, we've, to back to the initiative, like, what about migrants who speak air quotes our languages or practice our quotes our religions? Large parts of Africa speak English or French or even Portuguese. It's areas, yeah.

• 1:17:38Speaker 03

  Well, a lot of, a lot of those people who, of African descent in those countries are from countries that were colonized by the people who don't want them there.

• 1:17:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  We're like, why do you think there are so many African people in France? And well, they all speak French, don't they? How'd they get there? Consider your actions.

• 1:17:56Speaker 05

  But that, that's exactly the point. Like, if they're in Africa and they already speak the language, do they make the cut?

• 1:18:02Speaker 03

  Well, no, it sounds like, it sounds like under.

• 1:18:03Speaker 05

  This initiative, no. So much of what they're putting forward is bad faith, right? They're like, oh, you know, it's about our, our cultural heritage, our, our linguistic heritage. It's like, okay, well, what about people who grew up in, in a French colony in Africa? Are they not French? No, they're not white. No, but that, that is exactly where, that's exactly where this is leading. And that's why, okay, they speak your language, they can have your religion, is this enough? Which is why this just sounds like the Nuremberg Law to me. Like honestly, we shouldn't even engage with these arguments because it just reduces any form of nuance or complexity No. to the barest fucking minimum. Like they just, they wrote racism by committee. They made, they made a very fancy document to say, we're very racist.

• 1:18:44Speaker 05

  Oh, like I checked the comments on the Save Europe website when I was working on this and would not recommend.

• 1:18:53Speaker 03

  Oh, I bet, yeah.

• 1:18:54Speaker 05

  Not great, but it's, it's essentially just, just this bit. And we're going through like point three again, their demands. It's just grafting the great replacement theory, trying to get it like considered under European law. And if you consider how large Europe is and how few people they would need to, to get this to be considered is absolutely baffling. But we'll, we'll, we'll get there because I'm trying to keep some sort of structure here. Sorry, that's, that's on me. No, I love how engaged you are, Molly, so don't apologize, continue. And also the whole notion of demographic replacement in, in countries that barely exist for 200 years.

• 1:19:38Speaker 05

  Can you call this like your ancestral homeland? There was no Italy 200 years ago, there was no Germany 200 years ago. Like what grand historical narrative are, are you pretending exists here? Yeah, exactly. Like if you're following that lead, then you must join my side with like, we need to be Gaelic again. And just return to like our Celtic forefathers before the Romans dared to show up. And then, then, then at least there would be some historical accuracy to what they're claiming. But ah, I dislike these people. I think they're full of shit. They very much are, yeah. So part three of the charter is about the demands that these people have of Europe, Europe and items they wish to see turned into law and policy.

• 1:20:18Speaker 05

  We therefore demand that the European Commission exercise its right of initiative under the treaties to propose and advance the following legislative and policy measures without delay. Article one, declare a formal moratorium on the new non-Western slash non-European immigration channels, including the suspension of asylum processes for economic migrants and applicants from safe countries of origin, the halting of new study and family reunification visas for non-Europeans, and the strict limitation of legal migration channels until social cohesion and cultural continuity in the member states are restored.

• 1:20:57Speaker 03

  That's fucking mental.

• 1:20:59Speaker 05

  We've done this before. We've done racist immigration quotas before, like.

• 1:21:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, and just like, good luck at your universities, taking those students from outside Europe. Like, let's see how that goes for you. Like, why do you think they're printing money?

• 1:21:11Speaker 05

  Oh, they, that's a problem in Europe too. I know, so in American universities, like they're highly reliant on the tuition dollars of international students. Is that the case in Europe as well? Not to the American extent, but.

• 1:21:23Speaker 03

  Not, yeah, not to the same extent, but uh, work at universities in Europe long enough and you'll be like, I see, uh, some of these folks, like.

• 1:21:30Speaker 05

  European universities have largely also received budget cuts, so I wouldn't be surprised if this is also happening in Europe, but then to a lesser extent.

• 1:21:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the, the move towards the American model of education.

• 1:21:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:21:44Speaker 03

  Sadly, sadly upon all of us.

• 1:21:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, we're just four, four or five years behind on America in, in cultural waves.

• 1:21:52Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know, you're leading, leading the charge here with this shit.

• 1:21:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, like even that haunted mannequin you have in the White House, the bald, the bald one, the bald one, uh, I forgot his name. Steven Miller? Yes, that one.

• 1:22:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:05Speaker 05

  Bald haunted doll, that's gotta be him.

• 1:22:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I think you narrated it right down.

• 1:22:10Speaker 05

  Yeah, but as far as I know, like even Steven Miller hasn't put anything this explicitly great replacement into law. But I'm no expert on America.

• 1:22:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, Miller will certainly say stuff that's very great replacement to you, right? Like on his ex account, but uh, yeah, attempting to get this.

• 1:22:28Speaker 05

  But in terms of like legislative proposals, I mean, this is giving like 1920s immigration law, right? Like.

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Speaker 05

  The sort of quotas that we set to keep essentially Jews out of the United States in the 20s and 30s.

• 1:22:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, or the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was uh, like how our immigration policy began in the United States.

• 1:22:46Speaker 05

  Not great. So yeah, we have done this before and it was one of the, during the, like the nadir of American race relations.

• 1:22:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, Germany wants to chime in as well as of recent, so going on a great path, guys. Yeah, things are going pretty good there, right?

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:04Speaker 05

  Politically, right now. Uh, yes, no notes, absolutely great. So we have four more articles. Sorry. Article two, I'm sorry. Establish a fundamental reform of the existing EU migration and asylum systems during the time of this moratorium, including a total reform of the current migration framework focusing on external border protection, physical and technological barriers at the frontiers, rapid screening, and immediate return mechanisms. Are they gonna build a wall around Europe?

• 1:23:36Speaker 03

  Europe already kills more people with its border than we do. Like Europe's physical border protection is the most murderous on the planet.

• 1:23:45Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:23:45Speaker 03

  They're not even very knowledgeable about the shit that they're racist about.

• 1:23:49Speaker 05

  It's probably worse than you think because what they mean with like the external border protection is also us. I think, James, we, we talked a little bit about this, about uh, when Trump wanted to send migrants to Libya. But there are just sort of European control zones within Africa. Like a few weeks ago, there was the, the migrants storming the gates in Spain and that was in, in, in Suta.

• 1:24:14Speaker 03

  Suta.

• 1:24:14Speaker 05

  Thank you. But that, that's, that's a Spanish territory, a barroco.

• 1:24:19Speaker 03

  What these people want is more Alan Curtis, right? Like more little dead children.

• 1:24:24Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Speaker 03

  That we, we just passed the 11th anniversary of his death, right? It was in uh, September 2015. But like, either we've got far away from that, that you can con people into thinking, talking about hard borders again, and not understanding that hard borders means dead children. Or people remember that and they think that that was a good thing, that it'll stop people coming if, if we just kill a few more little innocent kids like this. Like that, that's what Europe's physical borders do, is that they drown children.

• 1:24:55Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, Fortress Europe, uh, the mortar is exclusively dead children. Because also in, uh, I think it was in Hungary, from the top of my head, where they had just like these chain linked fences with razor wire and uh, there was also the lighthouse reports where they had people in literal dog canals or some shit. Yeah. Okay, let's rush a bit through this bit so we can go to the funny bits. Yeah, so I just, I just like, I just looked this up and I spoiled it for myself and now I know who wrote this.

• 1:25:27Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:25:28Speaker 05

  Come on.

• 1:25:29Speaker 03

  I, I don't worry, guys, you'll get a live react from me, listeners.

• 1:25:32Speaker 05

  Oh, I, I think there's stuff in here that Molly does not yet know, so. Oh no, I just, I got one little peek and I was like, I can't spoil it for myself anymore. Okay, great. Then article three of the act, ensure the systematic and accelerated return, re-migration in quotes.

• 1:25:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:25:48Speaker 05

  Of illegally staying migrants, reject asylum seekers, and persons who have committed criminal offenses or pose a threat to public order with full mutual recognition of return decisions across the Union and enhanced cooperation with third countries for readmission.

• 1:26:04Speaker 03

  Wow, really at the Trump playbook on the last one.

• 1:26:08Speaker 05

  I, I made some comments for myself here and it's mostly like, how do you define this? How do you quote this? How do you force third countries to cooperate? It's like, you, you, you can't, like.

• 1:26:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, this is a Trump fantasy, right? Like we'll use our economic power to lean on you to do our crimes against humanity for us. It's the sort of might makes right approach to uh, international relations. Uh, leaning on other countries hasn't gone so well, right? Like it ain't gonna go better for the EU.

• 1:26:38Speaker 05

  No, because mo- most of the countries that we send them to don't want to engage in this process or don't want them back. So how are you going to, going to force it unless we want to build some islands in the middle of the Mediterranean to put all the stateless people?

• 1:26:53Speaker 03

  Don't give many ideas.

• 1:26:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, making a bunch of people stateless is not a, a really bad sign. No, that's, that, that's a sign of a healthy system.

• 1:27:02Speaker 03

  Let's not precede tragedy. Yeah.

• 1:27:05Speaker 05

  Never, never in the history. Establish a harmonized EU-wide framework for broader remigration, including voluntary and incentivized remigration measures for non-European migrants who are unintegrated or constitute a serious cultural or financial burden to member states.

• 1:27:25Speaker 03

  Unintegrated. Yeah, cultural burden. They just don't look like I think they should look.

• 1:27:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, to support the restoration of demographic balance.

• 1:27:35Speaker 03

  This is obviously someone who's just really worried about Western culture. Definitely not someone who's been a well-known neo-Nazi for more than a decade.

• 1:27:42Speaker 05

  Uh, I don't, now I know which name you read.

• 1:27:45Speaker 03

  Can't wait.

• 1:27:47Speaker 05

  That person is an identitarian, Molly. Learn the difference.

• 1:27:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, his involvement with the Aryan Yugand in Austria, this has nothing to do with this.

• 1:27:56Speaker 05

  Molly, are you really saying that Nazis come from Austria? Please, read a history book.

• 1:28:01Speaker 03

  Name me one example.

• 1:28:02Speaker 05

  Exactly. Nothing bad politically ever came out of Austria.

• 1:28:07Speaker 03

  Maybe we should replace them all. Maybe they're on to something here. Maybe the replacement is gonna be great.

• 1:28:14Speaker 05

  If we replace them with literally anything. So, and the last one, because, Jesus fucking Christ. Remove social welfare incentives and benefits that function as pool factors for migration, including restrictions in accordance with union law on access by non-citizens and recent migrants to selected welfare benefits and support systems, so as to reduce incentives for further migration, lessen the burden on European taxpayers, and encourage remigration.

• 1:28:45Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, people are just coming there for the welfare, because it's like really good. They're risking drowning in the sea because they really want to participate in the social welfare system. It's not because they're fleeing other forms of violence.

• 1:28:58Speaker 05

  No, no, they're paying money to the smugglers so they can get to our welfare.

• 1:29:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they can be on the dole, because it's such a fucking great life. I'm sure there's no ulterior motive here where these people actually want to cut welfare for everyone, because they also probably just hate poor people.

• 1:29:12Speaker 05

  Oh, definitely, definitely. There is some very rich people involved in this as well.

• 1:29:18Speaker 03

  You don't say.

• 1:29:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, I do say.

• 1:29:21Speaker 03

  Shocking.

• 1:29:22Speaker 05

  It's America. Plot twist. So, I think this is a good point to do a very good impromptu ad break, because this took a bit longer than expected and.

• 1:29:33Speaker 03

  That's my fault. Yeah, this is what you get with me and Molly. It's fucking chaos.

• 1:29:37Speaker 05

  This is honestly why I do it. But I think we all need a palate cleanser, so.

• 1:29:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, enjoy these ads. Yeah.

• 1:29:44Speaker 05

  Probably not as horrible as the Save Europe Act.

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  Oh, you don't know some rich people. People don't get rich without selling shit from advertisements.

• 1:29:51Speaker 05

  That's true.

• 1:29:52Speaker 03

  You don't know where that money's going.

• 1:29:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, let it be dick pills.

• 1:29:56Speaker 03

  Fingers crossed.

• 1:30:08Speaker 05

  And we're back, cleansed from horrible shit that will continue onward. So, near the end of May this year, the two co-founders of the Save Europe Act submitted the European Citizens Initiative. Those names are Martin Selner, yeah, Molly's BFF, judging by her reaction, and my favorite country person, Eva Vlardingerbroek.

• 1:30:35Speaker 03

  Okay, I haven't heard of her. I'm looking forward to learning about, say that Dutch name again. Yeah, can we take a second pass at that surname? Take a charge of that.

• 1:30:43Speaker 05

  Vlardingerbroek.

• 1:30:45Speaker 03

  Oh, I'm not saying that. This is a language that we have to fight to preserve.

• 1:30:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:30:51Speaker 03

  The Dutch is such a beautiful, beautiful language. It doesn't sound like a German with a terrible head injury had 17 beers.

• 1:31:00Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 1:31:01Speaker 05

  How did you know the origins of my beautiful language?

• 1:31:06Speaker 03

  This is like their origin base in German.

• 1:31:09Speaker 05

  It's still better than English, because that's just like English, French, and Scandinavian and gay, like all thrown into a blender.

• 1:31:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it's our indigenous language that we. Yeah, we're Native Americans. It's our indigenous language. Indigenous British people, a country that famously was never colonized or received migration from anywhere until about 1998. That was the first time the culture was adulterated. Because of woke.

• 1:31:36Speaker 05

  Famously true.

• 1:31:37Speaker 03

  Because of woke.

• 1:31:38Speaker 05

  It does get me to another point, because like, James, when I texted you about this, you already said, like, people will not be able to pronounce her name. And I jokingly said to you, like, we could just call her Eva Braun.

• 1:31:50Speaker 03

  Eva Braun shirt.

• 1:31:51Speaker 05

  No, Eva Braun, like, the.

• 1:31:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I know. Hitler's girlfriend, I know.

• 1:31:58Speaker 05

  But I will not do that.

• 1:31:59Speaker 03

  So, Vlardingerbroek. Put some more throat into it.

• 1:32:07Speaker 05

  I will not do that, because, well, in part because libel laws exist, but much more importantly, I think it's an unfair comparison. The original Eva Braun was just Hitler's wife, and like she had very little to do with politics, or policy, or governance, or anything else. She was asked or instructed to leave anytime business or politics came up. And Vlardingerbroek is much more involved in the political discourse, and as the Save Europe Act shows in theorizing and crafting policy. So, a much more apt, but far less funny comparison would be to call her Eva Goebbels, or Eva Heidrich. But that's just less funny, so I will just call her Eva. We'll all get to her.

• 1:32:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I'd never heard of Eva. Martin Selner, just for the, well, I was so excited that this is fucking Martin Selner. He was involved with the American alt-right 10 years ago. There was an attempt to sort of create bridges between the American, sort of burgeoning, sort of mainstreaming of neo-Nazis into the sort of political right. There was attempts to merge with the identitarian movements of France, and I guess in Austria, where Martin Selner is from. Identity Europa was modeled after Generation Identity in France, which Martin Selner also modeled his group off of in Austria. And so there were some connections there, like in 2017, when, oh, that horrible bitch from Canada, Lauren Southern, Lauren Southern got detained because she and Martin Selner were on a boat

• 1:33:33Speaker 03

  that was like trying to drown migrants in the sea. God, I'd forgotten about that. So, yeah, no, we know, we know this man. He's trying to drown migrants in the sea. Yeah, well, that answers my question about what they meant by the borders.

• 1:33:47Speaker 05

  But on the bright side, Molly, I do think Martin Selner looks like a looks-maxing Richard Spencer.

• 1:33:53Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know if you've seen Richard Spencer lately. It's not hard to look better than that. Looking like shit, brother.

• 1:33:58Speaker 05

  I missed my weekly Zoom call with him, so I'm not sure what's going on.

• 1:34:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, divorce did not treat him well.

• 1:34:05Speaker 05

  Okay, good. He deserves it. Okay. The European Citizens Initiative. At the time of writing, it obtained about 740,000 signatures.

• 1:34:15Speaker 03

  Oh, that's more than I would have preferred.

• 1:34:16Speaker 05

  Well, there's sort of good news on that front later. The system itself is less known among both Europeans and Americans, and the rejection of the Save Europe Act is incredibly simple and dumb, once you realize how it works. The ECI is pretty much a mechanism for some diluted form of direct democracy within the European Union. ECI proposals that are accepted call directly on the European Council to propose a legal act, usually a directive or legislation, on certain conditions. One of them is that the petition reaches 1 million signatures.

• 1:34:52Speaker 03

  Oh, so they didn't make it. So we don't have to take this seriously at all.

• 1:34:55Speaker 05

  We do, unfortunately.

• 1:34:57Speaker 03

  Oh, we do. I mean, when you've got three-quarters of a million people signing on to something that's openly racist as a shit, I think you do have to. But like, it's not gonna get voted on.

• 1:35:06Speaker 05

  No, we'll get there.

• 1:35:08Speaker 03

  Okay. Explain Europe to me.

• 1:35:11Speaker 05

  Hori bad. So, point two, that those signatures are from at least seven different member states with minimum amounts for each of those seven or more states.

• 1:35:22Speaker 03

  That makes sense. You can't just get like a million racist Croatians to sign it.

• 1:35:25Speaker 05

  No, exactly.

• 1:35:26Speaker 03

  No offense to Croatia, you just do have a lot of neo-Nazis.

• 1:35:29Speaker 05

  Don't look into the history. On top, there's also a minimum amount of signatures that's needed per member state to ensure there's like broad support for an idea across the EU. For example, you cannot have all the votes coming from Germany and only six votes from other member states. The minimums are based on the number of EU Parliament members multiplied by 750. For example, like the Dutch must deliver 20,445 votes of this million, while Luxembourg only needs 4,230. So just like some proportional representation there.

• 1:36:04Speaker 03

  Right, so all the European Union member states have to kind of be on board.

• 1:36:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, or at least enough of them.

• 1:36:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. Right. Like, you can't get something through just because two or three states are being nasty. That makes sense.

• 1:36:17Speaker 05

  Yes. And specifically because it is directed, it doesn't have to go through like your national parliament and to be then like thrown upwards towards the EU. This is directly between the citizens and the European Commission.

• 1:36:33Speaker 03

  I guess I don't really know what the EU can and cannot do. How much power would something passed by at the EU level have to change the immigration laws of a country?

• 1:36:42Speaker 05

  I'm not smart enough to answer that.

• 1:36:44Speaker 03

  In a universe where the EU does say, we're signing on to this, this is real, we're doing it, does that supersede the immigration laws at the national level of the member states? Can this even be something, I guess is my question. I don't know with how the EU works, to be so honest.

• 1:36:59Speaker 05

  In any worst-case scenario, how you see this happening would be that it. It would get passed. I suppose that then some form of like that legislation or directive will be conjured up from the bowels of cockitis or whatever. And then it would have to be voted on within the EU Parliament. And should that for some reason happen, then I think that would be a not insignificant amount of power that the EU holds over individual member states. Because we also do that for trade and for, you know, regulating things across European borders. Like even for us, how the EU functions exactly is shrouded in mystery.

• 1:37:39Speaker 03

  It's a great mystery. Yeah. They cooperate on migration, right? Like you see this with like the way the EU places its borders, the way that the EU kind of takes something of a united front on like how it deals with things. And you saw this like in the beginnings of the Syrian civil war, right? You saw Europe cooperating first to to, in some cases, receive Syrian migrants and in many cases to repel them violently. But like states also still would have sovereignty over like the exact nature of their laws. It's not like the EU can dictate what it takes to be a British, a British bad example. They left. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, and so did I.

• 1:38:22Speaker 03

  But then you can't say to, you can't say to France, like, you can't admit any more immigrants. Yeah, or like, we are obliging you to to remove the citizenship or to like, de-frenchify these people. Outlaw the speaking of other languages. As far as I'm aware, yeah, like, there could be like giving passes through the EU Parliament, then I guess there would be like a set of principles that the states would have to try and adhere to.

• 1:38:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:38:43Speaker 03

  With their own policies, which they're not having trouble doing. Like, they found a lot of racist in Germany recently, apparently, like.

• 1:38:49Speaker 05

  Oh, but we have them in the Netherlands as well. Don't worry.

• 1:38:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, Britain's not immune from that either, or shock people to hear.

• 1:38:55Speaker 05

  But to get back to Molly, I do think that to a certain extent, the EU could put diplomatic or economic pressure on member states to enforce something like this or to nudge them.

• 1:39:07Speaker 03

  Or like obliquely, like, you would have to comply with certain, I don't know, like, language restrictions on things that are involved in trade and that would sort of obliquely enforce restrictions at the, at the national level.

• 1:39:19Speaker 05

  Yes, but also I think this would heavily strain relations between the EU and the member states because it is, like, I don't want to call it authoritarian, but it is a power, like a supernatural power that's sort of going to tell countries what to do. And I can't imagine if it is something as vile as this, that that would go over well.

• 1:39:39Speaker 03

  It's just, it's so funny to me that the nationalists we have today, there's no nationalism there. Like, a true nationalist would find this abhorrent.

• 1:39:47Speaker 05

  I agree with you completely.

• 1:39:49Speaker 03

  Our nationalists can't even do it right.

• 1:39:51Speaker 05

  But it's only nationalism if, if you hate certain people. Otherwise, it's just being a rhino, I think you call them in the United States.

• 1:40:00Speaker 03

  And I know.

• 1:40:02Speaker 05

  So to get back to the ECI, in the original treaty that formalized this mechanism, it states several conditions that the proposed act must adhere to before it passes. An initiative must be within the legal constraints of the EU, obviously, and the initiative must not be, and I quote, manifestly abusive, frivolous, or vexatious.

• 1:40:24Speaker 03

  Okay, is this not manifestly abusive, frivolous, and vexatious?

• 1:40:28Speaker 05

  Yeah. I read those sentences as legal code for no bullshit, please.

• 1:40:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that's, but this is bullshit. Yeah, this is bullshit.

• 1:40:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:40:36Speaker 03

  This is manifestly abusive. Yeah, it's the abusive one. I think they don't want you doing one that's like, so and so is ugly and has a big nose or whatever they want. But this is vexatious and frivolous. Yeah, like it's fucking vexing me, I can tell you. I'm vexed. Yeah.

• 1:40:57Speaker 05

  Well, then it's good that we're slowly getting to the funnier parts of this. One of the more important things that were in this statement from the European Commission, because usually they all have to rule after the one million votes has been met. They already ruled on this, but not on its merits, but on the legality of it. And I'll be quoting directly from the document here. Article 6.3 of the ECI states that the initiative is not manifestly contrary to the values of the Union as set out in Article 2 and the rights and rights in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Essentially, like, whatever people want to pass and sign on to, it can't violate European law.

• 1:41:39Speaker 05

  I think this is important because proponents of the Save Europe Act will say that this petition was denied due to its politics and thus it's an anti-democratic ruling.

• 1:41:49Speaker 03

  Oh, they're, I'm being canceled, I'm being canceled. No, you just didn't read the rules.

• 1:41:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. There is like a Twitter clip somewhere of Eva and Martin discussing this. It's like, oh, this is just anti-democratic and, no, no, it isn't, Eva. You're a legal philosopher. You're smart enough to understand this.

• 1:42:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, you've, you've never read De Tocqueville.

• 1:42:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'll say that, like, she at least has credentials, you know?

• 1:42:14Speaker 03

  Right, because this is disingenuous. They know, but they also know that it is very effective to say, we're being silenced because of how right we are, but these, these mobs of people, the ones we think need to be brought under control, they're stopping us from doing this good thing. Like, that's a very effective form of this particular kind of rhetoric. Doing it wrong and pretending you're being silenced is more effective than actually doing it right.

• 1:42:39Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:42:40Speaker 03

  And easier.

• 1:42:42Speaker 05

  That is the very scary part of like the Save Europe Act. Because in the end, this is much more about influencing the discourse and pushing the overton window than it is about anything else.

• 1:42:55Speaker 03

  Right, it's about, like, if you can get the EU to even look at your petition, you have legitimized that this is something that belongs in the political sphere.

• 1:43:02Speaker 05

  Right, yeah.

• 1:43:03Speaker 03

  You've moved it from storm front to in the middle of the overton window. Like, you're not, you're not just like a little fucking piss boy on, on a ship screaming and crying because you want migrants to drown in the sea. You're being considered by the European Union.

• 1:43:15Speaker 05

  Yes, and for now, they've just tested its legal viability with European law and were like, nope, get out, which like, the fascists immediately claim as some sort of anti-democratic political violence against them.

• 1:43:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. We're being silenced. We're being silenced, probably by the Jews. I mean, knowing Martin, I don't know if he says it out loud anymore. He used to.

• 1:43:38Speaker 05

  Like, even in the statement, like, the Commission does not analyze the policy merits at the stage of the eligibility check. So in, in layman's terms, the proposed act is incompatible with existing legal mumbo jumbo.

• 1:43:53Speaker 03

  Yeah. I can file any lawsuit I want in court. I could file a lawsuit saying that you put a spell on my dog that made him racist, but I could file that in court and the judge is not going to rule on the facts of the case. He's just going to throw it out because this, that's not a real, you know what I mean? Like, the ruling at that early stage is just that, well, this isn't real. This doesn't, there's no, there's no standing, there's no jurisdiction, this is not an actionable matter. So they're not saying whether this is good or bad, they're just saying this can't be here because they didn't meet the legal requirements.

• 1:44:22Speaker 05

  You're so succinct, Molly. I appreciate it.

• 1:44:26Speaker 03

  I read a lot of, I read a lot of lawsuits that are a lot like this petition.

• 1:44:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, given that the Alex Jones lawsuit existed.

• 1:44:34Speaker 03

  No, but when you, when you throw something out at this early stage and you have people say like, oh, I'm being denied access to the system. No, it's, it's that the system looked at what you produced and said, this is fake.

• 1:44:43Speaker 05

  You have to wear a yellow sweater in order to access this bit. You're not wearing a yellow sweater, therefore you cannot come in.

• 1:44:50Speaker 03

  You're not being silenced, you're just not participating in the process properly.

• 1:44:55Speaker 05

  For shits and giggles, if I read between the lines, I think the Commission itself was also a bit shocked at it because in the same press release about this, they state, the initiative must contain a genuine proposal and not be used as a vehicle for offensive or caricatural messages, which I think is pretty sassy insofar as like, legal sassy this goes. That they're essentially saying like, the fuck you're doing? Is how I interpret it. There is, however, another threshold that they fail to meet, which is that anyone can sign an online petition.

• 1:45:28Speaker 03

  Uh-oh, these weren't valid signatures.

• 1:45:31Speaker 05

  Yes, there is no stopping you, the listener, from going to a website right now, sign in and, you know, sign the Save Europe Act.

• 1:45:39Speaker 03

  But I'm not a citizen of the European Union.

• 1:45:41Speaker 05

  But you can still sign it in a show of support.

• 1:45:44Speaker 03

  But that wouldn't count towards the one million signatures that they need.

• 1:45:47Speaker 05

  We're coming close because different states could require different identification. Like, it can't be 10 people in a basement continuously making new email addresses and resigning the petition. That doesn't work.

• 1:46:00Speaker 03

  So how do they go about validating those? That sounds complex.

• 1:46:03Speaker 05

  Not through how they're doing it right now. Because all you need is, is a name that can be checked with an email address that can be checked.

• 1:46:13Speaker 03

  Oh, so they're not validating them?

• 1:46:15Speaker 05

  No, not in a way that would meet the criteria as set by the European Union.

• 1:46:20Speaker 03

  So they knew they weren't doing this properly because that was never the point?

• 1:46:23Speaker 05

  It was never the point.

• 1:46:25Speaker 03

  Because if you were running an actual sort of political campaign to get this thing advanced in a very serious way, you would have been collecting valid signatures that you would be able to validate if, if a legal challenge was brought. And they didn't do that. Yeah.

• 1:46:37Speaker 05

  Yes, and you'd also put in safeguards to prevent like, people from outside the EU from voting on this or signing it.

• 1:46:44Speaker 03

  So this was never sincere?

• 1:46:46Speaker 05

  Absolutely not.

• 1:46:47Speaker 03

  That's shocking.

• 1:46:48Speaker 05

  I am shocked and appalled.

• 1:46:50Speaker 03

  A Nazi playing in my room?

• 1:46:53Speaker 05

  Well, it, it, it gets better, Molly, because now there's a bunch of names that I'm sure you'll recognize.

• 1:46:58Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 1:46:59Speaker 05

  But there's also been American far-right agitators who have promoted this on Twitter.

• 1:47:04Speaker 03

  How many people signed it with the name Rudolph Hess? At least 10, right? Do you have a list of the signatures? I would love to look.

• 1:47:09Speaker 05

  I'll send you the website in a bit, but I'm not sure. But one of the very cool Americans who promoted this was Benny Johnson.

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  No shit.

• 1:47:19Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 1:47:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, he had one of the co-founders on his Bicat Cast and even tweeted a link to the petition. I don't know Benny Johnson, but I'm going to guess that his audience is largely American, so.

• 1:47:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:47:33Speaker 05

  Not really sure how much good signature wise that has done, but we can't rule out that there's a bunch of Americans who have signed it and therefore we don't know how many of those 750,000 are legitimate.

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  I would guess not a lot.

• 1:47:51Speaker 05

  Like genuinely, I don't know. I also don't think there's any way to like to find out.

• 1:47:58Speaker 02

  Exactly, because if they did not collect them in a way that could be validated, they're not going to be. This was a waste of time because it was never the point.

• 1:48:06Speaker 03

  Well, that was a waste of time. It's just, it's not doing what it says on the tin.

• 1:48:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, collecting valid signatures was never actually the goal, or they would have collected them in a way that would have been functional.

• 1:48:17Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:48:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:48:19Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. I can sign it right now. It's right at the top of the page.

• 1:48:23Speaker 02

  Sign now.

• 1:48:23Speaker 05

  Please do not do that.

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  I'm not gonna do that.

• 1:48:26Speaker 05

  Thank you. Besides Benny, there were also others who did that, including like friend of the pod, Jack Posobiec.

• 1:48:34Speaker 03

  Oh, cool.

• 1:48:35Speaker 05

  And Joey Manarino, who tweeted, "Everyone, no matter where they are from, should go and sign this act. The momentum for remigration is so real and it could absolutely be pulled off if there is unity. Sign the act to save Europe," end quote.

• 1:48:52Speaker 03

  I wonder if Greg Bavino signed it. He's been over there doing some remigration chats.

• 1:48:57Speaker 05

  I'm sure he would enthusiastically sign it, but I didn't see him.

• 1:49:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:49:01Speaker 05

  There's also like Lucy White, a Restore Britain candidate who also signed it.

• 1:49:05Speaker 02

  But she knows she doesn't live in the EU.

• 1:49:08Speaker 03

  You won't gonna assume.

• 1:49:09Speaker 05

  Oh, one can assume. And also not to forget the worst thing that came out of apartheid South Africa. Elon Musk, who also shared a save Europe video.

• 1:49:19Speaker 02

  Bold statement.

• 1:49:20Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. Viktor Orban signed it. That's shocking.

• 1:49:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, no surprises there.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  Really surprised there.

• 1:49:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:27Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:49:27Speaker 05

  Like if midlife crisis Addison tweets about this, then we can safely assume that it has reached at least millions of people worldwide. But that still doesn't matter in terms of like the act being passed because again, no way to validate this.

• 1:49:42Speaker 02

  I just don't think there are a lot of Europeans are watching, not a lot of Europeans are watching Benny Johnson.

• 1:49:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  I mean, not a lot of Americans are watching. No, not a lot of people are watching it.

• 1:49:50Speaker 05

  And nobody should watch him. But this is what upsets me because this is so incredibly doomed from the start if you look at it. Like this is seeing Bruce Wayne's parents walk. It's the beginning of a Batman movie or like Spider-Man's Uncle Ben or Kenny from fucking South Park. Like you know, you know, it's going to fail. You know they're going to die and for some reason these people have like taped them over the corpses over mannequins and just parade them around as if they're still a possibility. It's ah.

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  But they are sort of continuing to advance the agenda that this is something that is up for legitimate debate.

• 1:50:32Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:50:33Speaker 02

  That preserving Western culture is a, is a real political topic for debate, right? That like we need to have debates on, on the floor of the parliament about whether or not we should all be speaking one language.

• 1:50:45Speaker 05

  From the top of my head, I didn't check this. I think Europe has like 280 million people, probably more. And you're so nationalistic yet you want to use this shortcut of one million people to bypass like.

• 1:50:58Speaker 02

  Your own national sovereignty. That's what I'm saying. Like this is.

• 1:51:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:01Speaker 02

  What kind of nationalism involves subverting national sovereignty, you fucking cunts?

• 1:51:06Speaker 05

  Ah, this is what gets me because it is working in terms of like public discourse and normalizing remigration.

• 1:51:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, definitely is.

• 1:51:15Speaker 02

  And that's, that's Elon Musk's primary goal right now is just normalizing this level of Hitlerian discourse.

• 1:51:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, which he has successfully done, right?

• 1:51:23Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, he's doing it every day.

• 1:51:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:51:27Speaker 02

  He's doing like race and IQ posting constantly.

• 1:51:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, nothing screams high IQ as much as talking nonstop about IQ. Like everyone who has to tell you that they're so fucking smart is probably not.

• 1:51:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:51:40Speaker 05

  So.

• 1:51:41Speaker 02

  Well, that's why none of his rockets blow up because he's so smart.

• 1:51:44Speaker 05

  Don't look it up.

• 1:51:46Speaker 03

  I'm sure he spent a great deal of time designing those rockets personally as well, not posting 18 hours a day.

• 1:51:52Speaker 05

  Well, I'll respect Jeff Bezos' rocket just because they look more original.

• 1:51:57Speaker 02

  I'll never respect Jeff Bezos and no one can make me.

• 1:52:00Speaker 05

  Ah, fair point.

• 1:52:01Speaker 02

  When I picture Jeff Bezos, the only thing I picture is him on vacation with that like deep fee, like unbuttoned dress shirt.

• 1:52:09Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  With the roast iguana. That's the only thing I think of when I think of Jeff Bezos is him holding a roasted iguana.

• 1:52:15Speaker 05

  Molly, I'm trying to focus on a podcast here. Stop, stop, stop selling me this, this, this graphic erotic picture of Jeff Bezos. That's not why we're here. We could do that on the other podcast.

• 1:52:27Speaker 02

  I think I'm combining two pictures in my mind. The iguana picture, he doesn't have the unbuttoned vacation shirt.

• 1:52:31Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:52:32Speaker 02

  I guess I'm just inventing an image in my mind.

• 1:52:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:52:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, Molly's headcanon.

• 1:52:35Speaker 02

  But the iguana pic is scary.

• 1:52:37Speaker 03

  Well, the good thing is you can now invent it on rock.

• 1:52:40Speaker 05

  Ah, cursed fan art.

• 1:52:42Speaker 02

  No, it'll just make child porn of Jeff Bezos.

• 1:52:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, his alive girl comments or texts.

• 1:52:50Speaker 02

  Forgot about, I forgot about, I love you alive girl.

• 1:52:54Speaker 05

  Yeah. Ah, soulless ghouls, the bunch of them. So.

• 1:52:59Speaker 02

  So the signatures were fake?

• 1:53:01Speaker 05

  Yep, pretty much. Could be 10 people in a basement with like a supercomputer just generating clicks. We don't know, but I don't think it'll even reach the million, but even if it did, then the signatures would come in question. And yeah, just absolutely doomed.

• 1:53:19Speaker 02

  Well, actually I hope, I hope they have to raise a bunch of money from a bunch of fucking rubes to hire someone to validate the signatures, which they won't be able to do. I would love that.

• 1:53:28Speaker 05

  There will be a lawyer out there who will, I mean, if I had a law degree, I would take it on just to get that money.

• 1:53:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:34Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, someone's gonna take, take this on. So yeah, by all means, start a fundraising campaign. Get money out of the pockets of the dumbest racist in the world. Go for it.

• 1:53:44Speaker 05

  I should have gotten for that law degree. But anyway, I think we already discussed soulless ghouls and we're going to be discussing more of them. But first, I think the soulless ghouls that support this podcast. Can I say that?

• 1:53:59Speaker 03

  Nah, I think so.

• 1:54:00Speaker 02

  You don't work here.

• 1:54:01Speaker 05

  Perfect.

• 1:54:13Speaker 05

  And we're back and we're exchanging the soulless ghouls for humanoid husks filled with unending appetite for atrocities. I think we said all the nice things about the act itself, even though I wish I could have said less about it. Unfortunately, just, this is just the Rivendell stop of our quest to destroy the ring. And we have yet to meet the spawns that have emerged from Minos Morgul and Gorgorov.

• 1:54:37Speaker 02

  Deep cut.

• 1:54:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. The three people that understand those references, this one's for you. So first, we have the person you were giggling about, Molly, co-founder and hipster Nazi impersonator, Martin Selder.

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  I haven't thought about Martin Selder in years. I'm so surprised to see him here.

• 1:54:57Speaker 05

  Who could have imagined that the country who produced the most iconic Nazi would once again produce a Nazi?

• 1:55:04Speaker 02

  The original, the original.

• 1:55:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, at least it's from the original sourcing material, you know?

• 1:55:09Speaker 02

  Right. So by under EU laws, he can really be a Nazi, right? Because it, you know, it's like champagne.

• 1:55:14Speaker 03

  Sure. Yeah, I have to come.

• 1:55:15Speaker 02

  He comes from the original source.

• 1:55:17Speaker 05

  Exactly. If, if, if it's a Nazi stemming from anywhere not Austria, then we have to call them identitarians.

• 1:55:23Speaker 03

  Yep, sparkling identitarianism.

• 1:55:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's the, the brand distinction. So Selder seems to be pretty far right all of his life, becoming involved in nationalist politics when he was a teenager. And being part of the Austrian neo-Nazi scene. So before we get into the good stuff, I want to read a small paragraph from an article in Zeit Campus. It was published in 2017 before all the significant shit was released. But I had to read this paragraph, so you'll have to listen to it. Martin Selder, who has a bachelor's degree in philosophy and dropped out of law school, is something like the Justin Bieber and Raynard Langhans of the new right-wing radicalism in one person.

• 1:56:05Speaker 05

  A handsome young man with neatly trimmed hair and a dreamy look and a creative inventor of media effective, perhaps even somewhat dangerous protests.

• 1:56:16Speaker 02

  You know, maybe it's, I don't know if it's discouraging or comforting to know that your press do that too. The European press does that same thing. He's really racist, but in like kind of a sexy way. Like, why do they do that?

• 1:56:27Speaker 05

  What if Hitler was hot?

• 1:56:30Speaker 02

  He washed his hair and he's, I thought he would be dirty.

• 1:56:34Speaker 05

  Like he does look like a hipster. I mean, that, I'll, I'll give them that one.

• 1:56:38Speaker 02

  I mean, it's like that, that, um, that New York Times article, you probably remember this, James. It was in 2017 about Tony Hobader. One of the second in commands, the traditional worker party, and he was like,

• 1:56:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:56:47Speaker 02

  Just going on and on about like, wow, interesting. And just with this interesting working class man, kind of handsome, like, he's a Nazi. That's a Nazi.

• 1:56:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, yeah, this mysterious exotic Nazi. Or like the amount of like, Richard Spencer things, but they were like, but he wears a waistcoat. Did you know he does his own bow tie?

• 1:57:07Speaker 02

  That's a Nazi.

• 1:57:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, that is a type of article that it's just like the fentanyl thing. You just can't stop people doing it.

• 1:57:14Speaker 05

  Well, I would be impressed with any like two year old being able to do his own bow tie.

• 1:57:19Speaker 02

  And you know, I actually, I don't think Richard Spencer can tie a bow tie.

• 1:57:22Speaker 05

  Not anymore. Anyway, back to Martin Selner. At the age of seventeen, he and another person placed stickers on a synagogue in Baden bei Wien. Stickers with the text legalize it with the letters AJ near it. AJ's in this case stands for Arische Jugend, Ararian Youth. And other stickers portrayed a swastika.

• 1:57:45Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:57:45Speaker 02

  That's illegal there.

• 1:57:47Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  Very state to state. So like in Virginia, it actually would be illegal to place a swastika on a synagogue. It's a classics felony. But I think in Austria, Germany, it's like really illegal.

• 1:57:57Speaker 05

  In Germany, any form of Nazi glorification, like.

• 1:58:01Speaker 02

  You're not supposed to be doing that. They're kind of sensitive about it.

• 1:58:04Speaker 05

  You could probably find it on YouTube, but there's clips of people just even for fun, doing like a Roman salute in German public and be arrested for it. So, yeah, unfortunately, he was a minor. Because under European law, like under seventeen years, still a minor. So I think that's why he got off pretty scot-free. He had to do like, I think, a hundred hours of community service.

• 1:58:24Speaker 02

  And he learned his lesson.

• 1:58:26Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:58:27Speaker 02

  Right?

• 1:58:27Speaker 05

  Well, he didn't do anything wrong, because this was a response to the conviction of David Irving, a British Holocaust denier.

• 1:58:35Speaker 03

  Oh, God. There it is.

• 1:58:41Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 1:58:43Speaker 05

  For anyone not to watch, Molly's almost in tears.

• 1:58:47Speaker 02

  There it is.

• 1:58:48Speaker 03

  We're hitting the highlights here, aren't we?

• 1:58:50Speaker 02

  So he doesn't think the Holocaust happened? Because that's what David Irving was in trouble for.

• 1:58:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think, I think Martin has genuine questions about what happened during the Holocaust in the same way that Alex Jones had questions about Sandy Book.

• 1:59:06Speaker 02

  He's just asking questions.

• 1:59:07Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:59:08Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, he can't read, because those questions have been answered.

• 1:59:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, you only need to open your eyes to see the answers.

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  He lived in Austria. You could go to one of the camps.

• 1:59:17Speaker 05

  Well, he actually did, Molly, because.

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 1:59:22Speaker 05

  At the tender age.

• 1:59:23Speaker 03

  I bet that went well.

• 1:59:24Speaker 02

  And he behaved very normal there, right?

• 1:59:26Speaker 05

  Well, it wasn't a camp, but at the age of nineteen, he did help organize ways to hinder liberal demonstrations and pilgrimages to Wehrmacht soldiers, grave sites, and hold memorial services for them.

• 1:59:40Speaker 02

  Awesome.

• 1:59:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:59:44Speaker 05

  He self-professes that he was a neo-Nazi until 2011, around, he should have been twenty-two around that time. As of 2017, he's also banned from carrying weapons. After an incident where he pepper sprayed an alleged far-left activist during a fight in Vienna. Which is funny, because generally, carrying weapons is already illegal here.

• 2:00:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I was gonna say, like, yeah.

• 2:00:09Speaker 05

  So, like, he double gets to not wear weapons, I suppose.

• 2:00:13Speaker 02

  Who'd get punished twice?

• 2:00:15Speaker 05

  Oh, that would be good. Okay, Molly, brace yourself. In early 2018, Martin Selner received around seventeen hundred dollars, fifteen hundred euros, roughly from Brenton Tarrant.

• 2:00:31Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 2:00:32Speaker 05

  Brenton Tarrant.

• 2:00:34Speaker 02

  Received from?

• 2:00:35Speaker 05

  Yes, received from.

• 2:00:37Speaker 02

  What year?

• 2:00:38Speaker 05

  Early 2018.

• 2:00:39Speaker 02

  So before the Christchurch mosque shooting?

• 2:00:42Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:00:42Speaker 02

  That's very good.

• 2:00:45Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah.

• 2:00:46Speaker 02

  So his ideas about immigration and presumably Islam were pretty similar, I guess. And he was just showing his support for a guy whose ideas were very similar to his own. And Martin is carrying out these same ideas by writing this stupid little petition. And but what Brenton Tarrant did was he murdered more than fifty people in two mosques.

• 2:01:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's.

• 2:01:09Speaker 02

  Very good. That's a cool friend to have.

• 2:01:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's always a good sign.

• 2:01:15Speaker 05

  It gets worse, because.

• 2:01:16Speaker 02

  It's worse.

• 2:01:17Speaker 05

  I looked it up, but apparently, Tarrant was like planning this attack for at least two years. Self-proclaimed, by the way, so take that however you will. But that means.

• 2:01:29Speaker 02

  So in the planning phases of this mass murder, he thought, part of my plan is gonna be giving Martin Selner fifteen hundred dollars.

• 2:01:36Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:01:38Speaker 02

  He should be banned from New Zealand.

• 2:01:40Speaker 05

  We should exile him to the sun.

• 2:01:41Speaker 02

  Because New Zealand is pretty sincere about their, about like, sort of quarantining the existence of Brenton Tarrant. Like, it's illegal to possess this manifesto there. Like, they should ban Martin Selner from the country.

• 2:01:51Speaker 03

  Tarrant doesn't strike me as a very wealthy person, like, no.

• 2:01:54Speaker 02

  That's a significant amount of money for him.

• 2:01:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, highly committed to Selner.

• 2:01:58Speaker 05

  It was. And it was also like a significant amount of money for Selner, because most donations were on the high end, like a hundred, two hundred euros.

• 2:02:08Speaker 02

  That should have been a career ender.

• 2:02:09Speaker 05

  Like, anyone is free to send me money, but if someone like this would send me money, and I was very committed to not being called a Nazi, this would be a good time for some, like, some introspection.

• 2:02:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, if somebody who really thinks you're doing a great job, and you have all the same ideas, but what he does with those ideas is one of the largest mass murders in recent years.

• 2:02:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's.

• 2:02:34Speaker 02

  I don't know. I think you gotta think about that. I think you gotta think about that.

• 2:02:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it should be give you pause for thought.

• 2:02:40Speaker 05

  Luckily, Molly, Selner did nothing else to further incriminate himself.

• 2:02:45Speaker 02

  And then he was normal after that, right?

• 2:02:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, because it's not just this donation. There is a connection between the two of them. I'm quoting from a piece by the Austrian outlet ORF. Selner and Tarrant had exchanged praise via email. "If you ever come to Vienna, we have to go for a coffee or a beer," says Selner. "The same goes for you if you ever come to Australia or New Zealand. "We have people in both countries who would like to host you in their home," the Australian replied.

• 2:03:12Speaker 02

  We?

• 2:03:13Speaker 05

  According to ZIB2, the last email exchange took place in July 2018. One day later, Tarrant booked the vehicles and accommodation in Austria. Whether the two actually met each other is, was, according to that article, being investigated at the time. I haven't been able to find confirmation, because Tarrant is silent on the issue.

• 2:03:37Speaker 02

  And that was a few months before the Christchurch shooting.

• 2:03:40Speaker 05

  A year.

• 2:03:41Speaker 02

  You said it was late 2018?

• 2:03:42Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:03:43Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, like nine months, yeah.

• 2:03:45Speaker 05

  But anyway, there is a non-zero chance that the two have actually shook hands and met. There's no way to confirm it unless one of them confirms it, which I don't think will happen either way.

• 2:03:56Speaker 02

  But still, anything, anything short of a vigorous public disavowal is very incriminating.

• 2:04:03Speaker 05

  I don't even think that would be enough.

• 2:04:05Speaker 02

  No, it wouldn't. It wouldn't be very convincing to me, but he hasn't even done it.

• 2:04:08Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:04:08Speaker 02

  So this is just further evidence that this petition of his is, is violence.

• 2:04:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:04:14Speaker 02

  It is, this is, this is a, on the sort of spectrum of the same kind of violence, and it is in furtherance of advancing the normalization of that kind of violence.

• 2:04:24Speaker 05

  Yes, and also like different kinds of violence, because even though they mentioned like giving people incentives to remigrate, not everyone is going to do that.

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  There is no peaceful way to create an ethno-state. If your goal is an ethno-state, you understand from the outset that there will be mass bloodshed, because there's no peaceful ethno-state. It's never happened, and it never will, and they know that. And I think it was Heimbach or Spencer who admitted to that under oath.

• 2:04:53Speaker 02

  During the, during the United Right Civil Trial, they were talking, they're like, so when you say, you know, we're gonna have a peaceful ethno, I think it must have been Heimbach, because I think it was from the TWP Charter, you know, about creating an ethno-state through peaceful means. And like, he's like, yeah, I know that's not real.

• 2:05:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, that's not the thing. I mean, like, at least Selner is pretty open about this, right? Like, Selner was one of the major hosts of the the remigration conference that happened in May of this year. That was still this year, right? Yeah.

• 2:05:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, the Portugal one.

• 2:05:26Speaker 03

  In Portugal, yeah, like, where they explicitly like talked with Greg Bavino about like how they wanted to do this kind of shit in Europe. I've wrote about this at a time, but like, you can, you can see, they made the regular media stand outside and then harass them with a drone while they're in the car park. But Bavino did do some interviews with some right-wing blogs. I think it seems like he did one interview and multiple people translated it. Because I don't think he was talking to like Bret on nationalists specifically. But like, you can see them openly discussing this, like, and this is May of twenty-six, right? This is Rennie Good and Alex Pretty have been killed a few months before, like, like, this is when ICE and CBP were doing their violence most openly.

• 2:06:11Speaker 03

  And you can see these people, including Selner personally, like, literally clapping for this and saying, yeah, this is what we need. We need more shit like this.

• 2:06:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's just disgusting. The file doesn't begin to cut it.

• 2:06:25Speaker 02

  Really? We know what mass deportation looks like. There's no way to do it peacefully or bloodlessly.

• 2:06:29Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:06:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:06:30Speaker 05

  But that is like, there is an attempt to make some sort of veneer possible where that could be, if you look at like how they phrased everything in the act.

• 2:06:40Speaker 02

  Or economic incentives, right? Like, fuck you.

• 2:06:43Speaker 05

  Yep. I looked at this like, like, like an anthropologist, because that is one part of my background. And even if you're going to say, okay, everyone's going to accept those incentives, then we're still talking about people having to move, families broken apart, communities broken apart, people having to upend their entire lives, including the lives of their children.

• 2:07:04Speaker 02

  And why did they come here in the first place? What were they fleeing that they risked their lives to come here in the first place? They're just ignoring like, just an avalanche of different pieces of structural violence.

• 2:07:17Speaker 05

  Yep, but, but that, that's exactly where I'm getting at. Like, even if you could like delude yourself into thinking that these people will leave voluntarily, then think of the violence it is in and of itself of having to uproot so many lives and start all over again from square one at another place. Even if no one resisted and everyone accepted that with stoicism, it's still an inherently violent act.

• 2:07:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, it tears communities apart, it tears families apart, right? There is no way to do this, which is not deliberately hurting people for the crime, in that case of not being white.

• 2:07:55Speaker 02

  And, right, and they're not just talking about. Immigrants, they're talking about everyone who isn't white because they said legal and illegal immigration, you know, culturally threatening, just, you know, culturally disruptive. They're just talking about people they don't think belong. And some of those people they don't think belong have been here for a very long time.

• 2:08:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they don't belong because of their skin color.

• 2:08:15Speaker 02

  So you can't, there's nowhere to send them, there's nowhere to send them back to, even if they would agree to your terms.

• 2:08:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, like you can see it in the language of like, uh, when we were looking at that, the tour that they did around Europe, right? Like the open use of the reconquista language, that similar words in other Iberian languages, right? Like, like the idea that like, we will violently expel these people, crusader style. Like the idea that like, uh, Spain without Islam is not something fundamentally different to what it is today, right? Like that, that exchange has not happened for as long as there has been Spain and before.

• 2:08:55Speaker 02

  Right, there's no, there's no authentic Spain to return to. The thing you're imagining was never real.

• 2:09:02Speaker 03

  Exactly. Yeah, it's laughable to suggest that like you're gonna have some kind of, uh, like, like Spain was pure Christendom and, and, you know, like, it's silly. It really bums me out to see the fucking, I mean, I know that the Catalan right has become particularly relevant and Catalan identitarianism is a big fucking problem. Uh, but like, it wasn't always that way. And, uh, it's sad to see like, I mean, those people have always existed, but they, like, they're everywhere else are gaining more of a foothold now.

• 2:09:29Speaker 05

  Great stuff. Yeah. Let's go to some funny stuff.

• 2:09:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, give us the good stuff.

• 2:09:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, we, we need that. Yeah. To catch up real quick, like, I think it's safe to say that Tarrant wasn't radicalized further during his last known contact with Selner and the day he committed his atrocities.

• 2:09:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:09:49Speaker 05

  Like, if you're European and there's someone in your orbit who thinks positively of the Save Europe Act, highlight this part because two weeks after the shooting of the Christchurch, the Austrian police raided Martin Selner's house due to his connections with Tarrant.

• 2:10:05Speaker 02

  Good.

• 2:10:06Speaker 05

  However, the police waited 12 minutes before Selner opened the door. They, they were knocking at his door for 12 minutes. There is suspicion that he was warned beforehand about the impending raid as during those 12 minutes, he was deleting emails, screenshots, and other proofs of his connection with Tarrant.

• 2:10:25Speaker 02

  And they don't have subpoena power to get those emails from somewhere else? Like, deleting an email doesn't make it gone?

• 2:10:31Speaker 03

  It doesn't disappear. Yeah.

• 2:10:33Speaker 02

  And honestly, at that point, deleting the email, you should have been charged with destruction of evidence.

• 2:10:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, if the cops are literally knocking on your door and you're deleting emails, A, those emails aren't disappearing.

• 2:10:42Speaker 02

  In America, they charge you with that.

• 2:10:44Speaker 03

  Well, in America, they wouldn't wait 12 minutes.

• 2:10:46Speaker 02

  No, they wouldn't knock.

• 2:10:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, your, your door wouldn't be a door anymore.

• 2:10:50Speaker 02

  You would wake up at 3:45 AM and then they would already be having your computer in their hands.

• 2:10:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:10:56Speaker 03

  Are you, are you sure? Because he is white.

• 2:10:58Speaker 02

  I don't know. A warrant like this, I think they would do a 4:00 AM no knock.

• 2:11:02Speaker 03

  Ah, the cops, uh,

• 2:11:05Speaker 02

  They love the 4:00 AM no knock.

• 2:11:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:07Speaker 02

  I guess they probably don't do that in Europe because not everyone has guns. That's why they do it in America, because everyone has guns.

• 2:11:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, they do it because they enjoy doing it.

• 2:11:17Speaker 02

  But they say it's because we all have guns.

• 2:11:19Speaker 03

  Guns provide them with a justification. Yeah.

• 2:11:22Speaker 05

  Uh, I'm sure it's part of the reason, but, uh, there was an investigation within like the Austrian Justice Department to see if they could find out who it was that tipped him off because it can be a coincidence that the very same day he was deleting all that shit.

• 2:11:37Speaker 02

  And did they not subpoena the emails from the provider? Because you could just, you can get those. They're not gone.

• 2:11:42Speaker 05

  I haven't read about that. It didn't come up in, in what I saw. I'm, I'm not sure. Around the same time, though, his travel permit to the US was canceled and therefore he could not meet with his fiancee, Brittany Patsybone.

• 2:11:56Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:11:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:11:58Speaker 02

  They're married.

• 2:11:58Speaker 05

  They're married. They have a child.

• 2:12:00Speaker 02

  He's married to, he's married to an American far-right conspiracy theorist.

• 2:12:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:12:03Speaker 03

  I didn't know that.

• 2:12:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, white nationalist and conspiracy theorist. Also does some trap wife content because of course.

• 2:12:11Speaker 02

  Well, what else would she do now?

• 2:12:13Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 2:12:14Speaker 02

  All their avenues are closed.

• 2:12:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. And, uh, I forgot this bit. I think this might also help you understand, Molly. Later in 2019, then Austrian police expanded the searches of Selner's property. However, Selner did file several complaints and a judge ruled that multiple actions taken by Austrian authorities were deemed to be unlawful.

• 2:12:34Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right. You guys have like civil rights and stuff.

• 2:12:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:38Speaker 05

  Yeah. Ah, yeah. And look what it got us. Yeah. Maybe this Save Europe Act isn't so bad after all. Maybe we need to get a little less civil rights.

• 2:12:47Speaker 02

  I'm not signing on to that.

• 2:12:49Speaker 05

  I can't help but be cynical. Well, to sum up everything about Martin Selner, uncool person, would not have a beer with him.

• 2:12:57Speaker 02

  I know. And this is like if, if Richard Spencer was trying to get a constitutional amendment passed, like,

• 2:13:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:13:03Speaker 02

  You don't have to look further into it. You're like, oh, that's some like dumb Nazi stuff. This is like a washed up Nazi from 10 years ago, trying to get back in the news by doing some more dumb Nazi stuff. Like, you don't need to take it seriously. I mean, I need to take it seriously on a broader scale. I should mean, you don't need to engage seriously in the text of the petition because it is not sincere. But like, as soon as I saw, as soon as I saw his name, I was like, oh, that's a washed up Nazi from 10 years ago.

• 2:13:27Speaker 05

  Uh, he's not washed up anymore.

• 2:13:29Speaker 03

  He's been trying very hard with this remigration stuff to like, to like glom on to this sort of Trumpist.

• 2:13:37Speaker 02

  But like, this is a known quantity. This isn't a mystery.

• 2:13:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, we're not like, oh, this guy has some real concerns about his community and neighborhood. No.

• 2:13:45Speaker 02

  And it's, this man is engaging with the political process in a sincere and earnest way. No, it's a Nazi.

• 2:13:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. Even though he says like, he might have not been a neo-Nazi if the identitarian movement had existed when he was younger. I, I don't believe that.

• 2:13:59Speaker 02

  The identitarians are white supremacist fascist movement.

• 2:14:03Speaker 03

  I love that. If we'd had another thing to call my Nazism, I wouldn't have done the Nazi shit because that's explicitly illegal.

• 2:14:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:14:10Speaker 03

  Versus.

• 2:14:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, that swastika stuff I used to be into, I still believe all the same stuff, but I wouldn't have used the embarrassing branding if I'd been smarter.

• 2:14:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:14:18Speaker 02

  Fuck off.

• 2:14:19Speaker 05

  Yep. And after this, we're going to speak of the fascist counterpart, the fascist barbeetle, Eva Ladingopruk.

• 2:14:28Speaker 03

  Oh, great.

• 2:14:28Speaker 05

  Or Eva Hydri, if that's easier on the tongue.

• 2:14:40Speaker 05

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• 2:15:14Speaker 02

  I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

• 2:15:19Speaker 03

  It's the rage bait.

• 2:15:21Speaker 04

  It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts. Maybe we can calm down a little.

• 2:15:31Speaker 06

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• 2:16:50Speaker 03

  Right here, right now. Starts Saturday strong. It's Big Noon Saturday on Fox. And here we go. It all starts at 10 Eastern with Big Noon Kickoff, live with an epic pregame. The crowd, the atmosphere, this is what makes it special. Then it's America's number one game. What a hit. The best pregame, the best announcers, the biggest games. Down the sideline touchdown. It's Big Noon Saturday, noon Eastern on Fox.

• 2:17:21Speaker 05

  Hi, everyone. This is Future Mick. Adding some stuff for less Future Mick, who you'll be hearing most of during the podcast. This episode took a pretty long while. I'm not sure how long it will be in post-production, but per my own recording, we talked for almost three hours, which is a lot. Therefore, this episode will be cut into multiple pieces. Make sure to start at part one. I'm sorry for any awkward breaks in the post-production, but it was very hard to keep that in mind while we were recording. Hope you enjoy it.

• 2:18:01Speaker 05

  And we're back and we're going to speak of the fascist Barbie doll that Molly knows nothing about, so.

• 2:18:07Speaker 02

  Say the name again.

• 2:18:08Speaker 05

  Eva Vlaardingerbroek.

• 2:18:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, the American mouth simply can't make those sounds.

• 2:18:13Speaker 05

  Eva Heidrich, you can do that. Because, you know, we already compared it to the Nuremberg Clause, so we might as well like drag the Heidrich and the Wannsee Conference in it as well. So I wouldn't be surprised if this was written at a lake house somewhere. So Eva Vlaardingerbroek is the self-proclaimed shield maiden of the far right. That's an actual title she uses in her Twitter bio.

• 2:18:38Speaker 03

  Great.

• 2:18:39Speaker 02

  That sucks.

• 2:18:40Speaker 05

  It was used as an insult by a columnist and she cleverly adopted it into her brand.

• 2:18:46Speaker 02

  That's not a very good insult. Like, of course she likes that.

• 2:18:50Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. You're giving her what she wants.

• 2:18:52Speaker 05

  I'm not going to defend our columnist, ever. I should note that she is significantly more like clean than our boy Martin Sellner.

• 2:19:03Speaker 02

  No swastika-related arrests?

• 2:19:04Speaker 05

  Exactly, exactly. Or like any ties to the Nazis or with figures as unsavory as the Christchurch shooter.

• 2:19:13Speaker 02

  That we know about.

• 2:19:14Speaker 05

  That we know about. She does have a masters in encyclopedia and philosophy of law. During her studies, she became more active with the Dutch Conspiracy/Fascist Party Forum for Democracy. With them, she also partook in an internship at their faction in Brussels. After that, she worked as a lecturer, which she later gave up to join the Dutch Parliament as a member of that fascist party. She would later quit this after a political fallout with party leader Cherry Baudet and the leak of group chats of their youth party, which were distasteful to, to say the least, to women, to minorities. Like, I don't need to explain how this group chat looked like.

• 2:19:57Speaker 05

  You can make an educated guess and be correct.

• 2:20:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, anytime the the the group chats are right party youth group get leaked, it's not going to be wholesome shit, is it?

• 2:20:07Speaker 02

  No, that happens here every now and again. We know what those are like.

• 2:20:09Speaker 03

  It happens everywhere, like.

• 2:20:11Speaker 05

  Don't be in chats at all. Like, don't do it. I will, like a small detour, like a few months ago, there was like on the subreddit, a discussion on which Dutch bastard should be covered? And everyone said it should be Heert Wilders.

• 2:20:25Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:20:26Speaker 02

  So that was what name?

• 2:20:27Speaker 05

  Heert Wilders.

• 2:20:29Speaker 02

  That's how you say that?

• 2:20:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:20:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Give it a cry, Molly. Get see where you where were you at with it?

• 2:20:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:20:36Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 2:20:37Speaker 03

  We've lost Molly.

• 2:20:38Speaker 05

  But anyway, like, I strongly disagree with that because Wilders is also like an overt fascist, but he's not funny. Like, there's no funny behind the bastards to do about it.

• 2:20:49Speaker 02

  Sometimes there's no jokes you could make about the fascist.

• 2:20:51Speaker 05

  No.

• 2:20:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, the comedy about him lends itself to a visual medium.

• 2:20:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:20:57Speaker 03

  That's what I will say. He looks like Sonic the fucking Hedgehog.

• 2:21:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, but Cherry Baudet is really funny. Like, he's also a fascist, but he was assaulted in public multiple times. He was hit in the face with an umbrella, which.

• 2:21:12Speaker 03

  That's a that's a European way of going about it. I respect that.

• 2:21:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was, I think it was a Ukrainian national.

• 2:21:17Speaker 02

  They don't have guns. They have to be creative.

• 2:21:19Speaker 05

  It is. It was caught on tape, so that's really funny. You can make a more funny episode about him. Like, he had a motion in our parliament for the humane treatment of Andrew Tate when he was arrested in Romania.

• 2:21:34Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:21:35Speaker 02

  Because he's always been, I'm sure, a passionate defender of prisoner civil rights, right? That's something he's always been interested in.

• 2:21:41Speaker 03

  Loves to advocate.

• 2:21:42Speaker 05

  He was also very passionate about consent, saying that when women say no, they actually want you to go on.

• 2:21:48Speaker 03

  Oh, dear.

• 2:21:48Speaker 05

  Also on camera, so great figure. Anyway, details aside, during the waves, this fallout between Eva and Baudet was caused. He would retaliate by repeatedly mentioning their relationship publicly, which forced her hand to denounce it as being just a few dates, after which their fling ended. Eva would later tell Das Telegraph, Cherry knew how scared I was of this coming out. If it gets out, you don't owe anything you've achieved to yourself. What I feared happened, I was the resentful ex and even more blatant sexist remarks poured in.

• 2:22:24Speaker 02

  Oh, no. Does she not know sexism could happen to her? This happens to far-right influencers all the time. Like, it happened to Lauren Southern and maybe Brittany Pettibone, too. But like, these women in this movement, they're like, I didn't know they were going to be sexist to me. Girl, you're at a Nazi party.

• 2:22:40Speaker 05

  Maybe I'm giving her too much sympathy, but.

• 2:22:44Speaker 02

  You are.

• 2:22:45Speaker 05

  Probably, but like, this entire piece is heavily colored by my own opinion, but I'm also trying to sometimes be a bit more distant with it. But clearly, she she received some pretty harsh comments that were dripping with sexism during the fallout.

• 2:22:58Speaker 02

  I no doubt that she did. I'm not saying that's good or that it's acceptable, but like, what did you think would happen when you laid down with dogs?

• 2:23:06Speaker 05

  So that that is very fair, but I also would say like, her womanhood was like.

• 2:23:11Speaker 02

  I just want to exterminate people I don't like. I didn't know anyone would be mean to me. I guess I'm just mean.

• 2:23:17Speaker 05

  Your words, not mine. Like, I'm still trying to like have a, for this specific instance, have like some sort of sympathy for her because her relationship and her womanhood were essentially like weaponized against her in a way to incite that sexism.

• 2:23:35Speaker 02

  And she would know nothing about weaponizing people's identities against them to to produce any kind of violent result?

• 2:23:40Speaker 05

  No, like, like, she's a horrible person with horrible politics. Like, I'm not denying any of that, but.

• 2:23:44Speaker 02

  No, I'm not saying it's good or acceptable that these things happen to these women. It's just like, what? Do you not see that that's what you're doing to others?

• 2:23:53Speaker 05

  I think I think there isn't enough introspection for that, but.

• 2:23:56Speaker 02

  No, there's not, no.

• 2:23:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, no.

• 2:23:59Speaker 02

  Well, no, because they they think that that things should not happen to them because they're fully human and the people they're doing it to aren't.

• 2:24:06Speaker 03

  Right, like, if you're going to draw lines around humanity, then find yourself surprised when the line is drawn and you're on the other side of it.

• 2:24:13Speaker 02

  And like the the underpinning, the underpinning of so many of these ideas heavily relies on misogyny, too. Like, you know, you're not just going to do fascism and white supremacy and xenophobia and immigration restriction without, those guys are misogynists too, babe.

• 2:24:27Speaker 05

  That's very, that's very true. I think I was mostly just trying to find my own moral line in there because like two horrible people, but still I would somewhere, nah.

• 2:24:39Speaker 02

  I'm just always surprised they're surprised.

• 2:24:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's the like, I couldn't believe the leopards eating my face happened after voting for the leopards eating faces party. Yeah. Of course, the way I still think it's fucked up that it happens that way to her. And maybe sympathy is going too far, but I think that's for each to their own to like decide upon. But to go back more to funnier stuff. Her first breakthrough in political activism was in December of 2019, when the Dutch newspaper Het Parool published that opinion piece that we mentioned earlier, criticizing her anti-feminist speech at the Forum for Democracy Party Congress. Her disdain for modern feminism could also be seen in her master thesis,

• 2:25:24Speaker 05

  The Contractualization of Sex in the Meteor Era.

• 2:25:27Speaker 02

  You think feminism is damaging to society? Why do you think you deserve the benefits of feminism, you know?

• 2:25:35Speaker 05

  Because.

• 2:25:36Speaker 02

  Because?

• 2:25:37Speaker 05

  Probably. So, and this is where she gets funny again a bit. Because unfortunately, I couldn't find her full thesis because I had looked for it. I was curious. Because she completed it with honors. So I was like, okay, I want to know how, what this looks like.

• 2:25:52Speaker 02

  Maybe it's good. Change my, change my mind, Eva.

• 2:25:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, yes, share it on Twitter. She did, however, post an essay in English on her Twitter account, which drew heavily on her thesis. And to be a bit fair and balanced, it's not horrible.

• 2:26:08Speaker 02

  I'll be the judge of that. Let me see it.

• 2:26:11Speaker 05

  Well, for the most part, it's just like concerns about like a social structure such as consent being codified into law.

• 2:26:19Speaker 02

  So she's saying rape should be legal.

• 2:26:21Speaker 05

  That that's not what she is explicitly saying, but she does seem to see consent as exclusively like a contract between two people rather than like an agreement.

• 2:26:30Speaker 02

  I mean, their petition is explicitly saying something very different than what it actually means. I don't think we have to take these people at their word.

• 2:26:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:26:38Speaker 02

  I'm not going to take a fascist at her word. That's not what I'm in the business of doing.

• 2:26:43Speaker 05

  Now, now I'm feeling like I'm very uncritical.

• 2:26:48Speaker 02

  No, you're just, you're just much nicer than I am.

• 2:26:50Speaker 05

  Again, your words, but.

• 2:26:52Speaker 02

  And you live in a country with much stricter libel laws.

• 2:26:55Speaker 05

  That's also true, but, okay. I think there should be room for like good-faith debate on this codification into law and possible side effects.

• 2:27:05Speaker 02

  Sure, but she doesn't.

• 2:27:06Speaker 05

  No, no, she absolutely doesn't.

• 2:27:08Speaker 02

  Like, the existence of good-faith debate, sure, I'll concede to that. We can have a good-faith debate on the legal structure of consent. I wouldn't say there should be no legal structure for it because that just means rape is legal. But the thing is, is I'm not going to engage in a good-faith debate with. With her because she isn't, because she isn't and she knows it.

• 2:27:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:27:28Speaker 02

  And so by allowing room for good faith debate with people like Eva for blah, blah, blah. You are opening the door for this, right? You are, you are making room for

• 2:27:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 2:27:41Speaker 02

  Bad faith argument that is essentially just rape should be legal, but it shouldn't happen to nice girls like me.

• 2:27:47Speaker 05

  Okay, well, yeah, like it, it's not bad faith. It, it ends in bad shit.

• 2:27:52Speaker 02

  No, it's bad faith. It is. It is explicitly in bad faith.

• 2:27:55Speaker 05

  Molly, hold, hold your horses because I, I, I've got here like the last one and a half paragraphs of that piece. As kind as I was for like the, the preceding paragraphs, I'm going to be as blunt about the last one. It's absolute bonkers.

• 2:28:11Speaker 02

  I'm looking forward to it.

• 2:28:13Speaker 05

  This is not like even going from zero to a hundred. This is zero to a thousand in the span of a couple of sentences. Quoting this from her essay, uh, which was posted on Twitter, uh, on April 29th, 2026. For those who want to see it for themselves. To compensate for the legal uncertainty this law will create, people will seek refuge in contracts. Which can now simply be downloaded via mobile apps such as Legal Fling and have a direct legal effect. Although the desire to create a consent culture may stem from good intentions. This consent culture has unforeseen consequences that pose a danger to romance and freedom.

• 2:28:50Speaker 02

  Oh, fuck off.

• 2:28:51Speaker 03

  Okay, always interesting to see what the libertarians, uh, what want, like, I'm using libertarian in the American sense here, right? Uh, like want, want the states to not take an interest in and what, what they, uh, like the, the same person who wants the state to take an interest in. Like tearing people's lives apart, doesn't think the state belongs in determining what is and is not consent because we have an app for that. Fuck off.

• 2:29:15Speaker 05

  James, I'll heavily disagree with you here. Nothing is more romantic than when I want to engage in some adult fun with a, with a partner. Than having an app to sign a literal contract on what is and isn't acceptable.

• 2:29:29Speaker 03

  You know, AI drafts a contract. You know, chat GPT is getting up in there and some weird shit in your contract.

• 2:29:35Speaker 02

  And this is such a tired thing, like I, you know, showing my age here, but when I was in college 20 years ago and we had these, you know, mandatory trainings on like, what is consent? Like, don't get raped at a party. And guys would say, like, these 18 year old guys would say shit like, oh, I'm gonna have her sign a contract. This is like tired, dumb shit that guys who rape people say.

• 2:29:58Speaker 05

  But I, I wasn't even done, but I'm, I'm glad for your passion, Molly.

• 2:30:01Speaker 02

  Okay, carry on.

• 2:30:02Speaker 05

  Suppose such a contract is signed. How do we know for certain that it was not signed under coercion? Or for example, under the influence of alcohol and or drugs. And what if a woman signs at eleven?

• 2:30:13Speaker 02

  Right, those are the same questions about consent we already have. Coercion, alcohol.

• 2:30:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, but now we have an app.

• 2:30:19Speaker 02

  But now there's an app.

• 2:30:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yes, yeah. So that should solve all of those questions, right?

• 2:30:23Speaker 05

  Now it's about the legality of such a contract instead of the legality of.

• 2:30:28Speaker 02

  And so like legality of rape.

• 2:30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, you've made it, you've made a get out of jail free card app. That's what she seems to think.

• 2:30:35Speaker 05

  That's literally the phrase she uses. What if a woman signs at 11:00 PM but changes her mind at 11:10 PM? And her partner acts in bad faith, then he rapes her and he has a get out of jail free card. After all, she signed a contract, so no one will believe her anymore, right?

• 2:30:52Speaker 03

  Oh wait, so she's not proposing the app contract?

• 2:30:55Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 2:30:56Speaker 02

  She's saying it wouldn't work.

• 2:30:57Speaker 03

  Oh, my apologies.

• 2:30:59Speaker 02

  So she's saying there just should be no legal concept of consent at all.

• 2:31:02Speaker 03

  She's just against the concept of consent. I think consent can be withdrawn. It's, it's like, it's not the fucking like end game argument that a 12 year old Reddit user might think it is like.

• 2:31:14Speaker 05

  I was still not done with this.

• 2:31:15Speaker 02

  This is an essay a moron would write.

• 2:31:16Speaker 05

  Oh, oh, Molly, Molly.

• 2:31:18Speaker 03

  This is, this is the sort of shit that like, I, I have graded some essays of like undergraduate and, and even like postgraduate students and like, this is the kind of pure rile shit that like, any, anyone who's going through like a serious attempt to be a serious writer should be fucking like, I know, like, like whack a mold.

• 2:31:40Speaker 02

  All of the points in this essay came up in my mandatory don't rape people training in college in 2007.

• 2:31:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, like this is like, uh, the logic of like a frat guy trying to be funny.

• 2:31:53Speaker 05

  First, she sees consent as like exclusively contractual and I think that's where she goes.

• 2:31:59Speaker 02

  That's very romantic.

• 2:31:59Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:32:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:32:01Speaker 05

  But I, I also, I wasn't done because that was not the bonkers part.

• 2:32:05Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 2:32:05Speaker 02

  Oh, the last sentence is phenomenal. You're gonna love this, James.

• 2:32:08Speaker 03

  Okay, great. I'm, yeah, hit me.

• 2:32:11Speaker 05

  Okay, after all, she signed a contract, so no one will believe her anymore, right? Solutions to this kind of problem will not be found in anything other than even more rules and even more government interference. What is the next step? Cameras in the bedroom or a civil servant standing beside your bed? This new sexual offense law creates more problems than it solves. All of this legal uncertainty, the erosion of the presumption of innocence, the extinguishing of romance. In the case that we should not even want to crack the door open to this Orwellian nightmare.

• 2:32:43Speaker 03

  No, every time, no, no, no, every time. I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming and I'm still angry.

• 2:32:51Speaker 02

  What is it, 1984?

• 2:32:54Speaker 05

  It may still sound abstract to you, but ask yourself the following question in all seriousness.

• 2:33:00Speaker 02

  Serious, I'm serious.

• 2:33:01Speaker 05

  How many totalitarian regimes in history can you name that went so far as the right rules and laws? Dictating how people must behave in the bedroom. The question answers itself.

• 2:33:13Speaker 02

  Making rape illegal basically makes you Hitler.

• 2:33:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is insane. The same person who wants the state to fucking kick people out for not being white. It's like, it's a little too far if they're policing rape though, isn't it? We, that should be something we settle amongst ourselves. Like they, they, they always do this and I find it so fucking annoying. Like obviously the most annoying thing here is not being wrong about George Orwell, who had some fucking issues with consent himself. But god, it pisses, the whole thing, it's just like, you know, it's so pure rile.

• 2:33:45Speaker 02

  This would be better if she did let chat GPT write it.

• 2:33:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Now, now I'm wondering how this person, like, if this is a topic she explored for her master's degree.

• 2:33:54Speaker 02

  We do need to find the thesis.

• 2:33:56Speaker 03

  Let chat GPT grade it, is what I'm wondering. Cause like, like, like Molly said, like if you worked in education. Like I've been in higher education for 20 years. And yeah, you've heard the, this shit from an 18 year old guy whose shirt doesn't have sleeves for the most part, right? And like, I wear a sleeve of shirts myself, like, that's fine. But, uh, there's a type of dude who's been saying this shit to you every September since you started talking about this shit, right? And like, just because a lady wrote it in a fucking thesis doesn't make it any less dumb.

• 2:34:30Speaker 02

  Well, this is actually a Twitter post.

• 2:34:33Speaker 03

  But yeah, well, that makes more sense. That makes a lot more sense.

• 2:34:35Speaker 02

  If this is drawn from her thesis.

• 2:34:37Speaker 03

  If that's a line of argumentation she went with.

• 2:34:39Speaker 02

  If this is the quality of thinking in her master's thesis, I actually do really want to see it now. We have to find it.

• 2:34:44Speaker 03

  Where did she do her master's thesis?

• 2:34:46Speaker 05

  Uh, Leyden University.

• 2:34:48Speaker 03

  Okay. Did she make a significant donation at any point to Leyden University?

• 2:34:54Speaker 05

  Well, like if we're detouring already, there is like a prominent supporter of the fascist party who teaches at Leyden Law School. So.

• 2:35:03Speaker 03

  Great.

• 2:35:04Speaker 05

  And that's also where Chadi Badat, who we mentioned earlier, who did his promotion research, which was also incredibly bad.

• 2:35:11Speaker 03

  Great.

• 2:35:11Speaker 05

  To the point that one of the people graded it said, you should not get a PhD. This is like, for anyone who doesn't know.

• 2:35:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it doesn't happen very often.

• 2:35:21Speaker 05

  You defending your PhD is mostly a formality.

• 2:35:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, like you might get some difficult questions.

• 2:35:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:35:28Speaker 03

  But, uh, the people who go into their defense normally expect to leave with a PhD, right? Like, if your shit's so bad, and like, if they don't tell you about it before you get to the exam. It's because they really don't like you very much, right? Like, if, if you've got to that point where you're having your, you're defending with your committee and they haven't been like, hey, this is really bad. You need to rewrite this. Uh, you, you have made an enemy.

• 2:35:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:35:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess done is good enough in most cases.

• 2:36:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:36:01Speaker 02

  Cause I, I don't have occasion to read very many theses or dissertations, but every time I do, I'm surprised that it worked. You know what I mean? I did, I did a close reading of, um, the hall, there was a Holocaust denier who died in a murder suicide. He killed his wife. Uh, and his history thesis was one of the worst things I've ever read and I was so surprised. And a bunch of listeners wrote in to my, my show email to say, oh no, that's, it's pretty normal for a thesis to be just absolute dog shit.

• 2:36:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't wanna, I don't wanna take that one as a representative sample. Uh, but they, they do say your thesis should be the first draft of your book or dissertation if you're in the US. And, uh, I, I, it's really easy if you're in grad school to get way too wrapped up in making it perfect. But also some people still manage to, uh, do some Nazi shit and I'm glad that someone held the line.

• 2:36:49Speaker 02

  Like all of his citations were to David Irving books and like they still gave him the degree on.

• 2:36:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a couple of info also.

• 2:36:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:36:57Speaker 02

  It was citation, um, author's email with David Irving.

• 2:37:01Speaker 03

  Maybe David Icke gets in there for some like real old school credibility.

• 2:37:05Speaker 05

  I had a professor during my masters and at some point he said, like, all of your master theses will probably be shit. And that's fine because the master thesis is for you to learn. I was like.

• 2:37:17Speaker 03

  There's value to having a piece of writing that doesn't have to be perfect. And like, I'm sure if I looked at lots of academics who I deeply respect and read their masters. Uh, thesis or the PhD dissertation, I would be able to witness a. Growth, and that would give me hope as an academic that we can all get better.

• 2:37:33Speaker 02

  But it sounds like she didn't learn much because this essay is is something a moron would write. I'm sorry.

• 2:37:38Speaker 05

  Oh, no, the Orwell mention because like.

• 2:37:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, anyone mentioning Orwell in a piece of academic writing needs to.

• 2:37:44Speaker 02

  Are you a teenager?

• 2:37:45Speaker 05

  Well, no, but like Orwell did have some pretty good opinions on how to deal with fascists, you know? So I find it ironic that a fascist is quoting it.

• 2:37:53Speaker 02

  Because she hasn't read it.

• 2:37:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, many such cases, Rachel. Yeah, exactly. She's she's engaged with 1984 through cultural memes in the same way fucking Elon Musk has. Like Orwell, I read Dorian Linksey's book about Orwell writing in 1984 recently. And the amount of his life that he spent after Animal Farm. Being like, no, you guys don't fucking understand it. That's not what I meant. Please stop it. Specifically with Americans, but on a much broader scale. The amount of time he spent like trying to refuse interviews, being like, no, I'm a like, I'm a man of the left and that is a group. And like that, I remain or something was one that he wrote in a letter refusing an interview. But the poor guy spent his dying days being like, you motherfuckers haven't understood my book, you stupid pricks.

• 2:38:40Speaker 03

  And every year they dig him up and do the same shit.

• 2:38:44Speaker 02

  That must be absolute torture for him.

• 2:38:46Speaker 05

  Like the red pill from The Matrix.

• 2:38:48Speaker 02

  I'm gonna use a Ouija board to tell George Orwell about Alex Jones.

• 2:38:52Speaker 05

  The guy, the guy has suffered enough, Molly.

• 2:38:55Speaker 02

  The answer to 1984 is 1776. It's one of Alex's favorite lines.

• 2:39:01Speaker 03

  Ah, I know that. God.

• 2:39:03Speaker 05

  Just as an inside joke, I love that Molly goes on a rant, her camera like automatically zooms in a little bit and it just gets extra ominous.

• 2:39:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, you get like, she's doing a dead set. That's an old Alex Jones trick, actually. Get them forehead veins to pop.

• 2:39:28Speaker 05

  To try to get us back on track again.

• 2:39:30Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 2:39:31Speaker 05

  Like, she's very much into the same like female nationalism that we discussed with also your Molly there during the Quentin D'Aranc episode.

• 2:39:40Speaker 02

  But without any feminism or proper nationalism.

• 2:39:43Speaker 05

  No, it's again, all feminism is, we need to stop being raped by migrants and then everything is solved. Which is not the case.

• 2:39:51Speaker 02

  We just should be raped by our husbands, I guess is her argument. I don't want to be raped by an immigrant. I want to be raped by a husband.

• 2:39:57Speaker 03

  As is tradition.

• 2:39:58Speaker 05

  She would probably agree that that would be fine or deny that that such a thing is possible.

• 2:40:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:40:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, more likely.

• 2:40:05Speaker 03

  But this is contract.

• 2:40:06Speaker 05

  Yeah. Anyway, some of the listeners may also have had the misfortune of seeing Eva on the Tucker Carlson show.

• 2:40:13Speaker 02

  He knows how to pick them.

• 2:40:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. At the moment, she is married to Francesco Gargallo di Castellantini. A Roman-based lawyer who is descended from a long line of Italian noblemen.

• 2:40:25Speaker 02

  Gross.

• 2:40:26Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 2:40:26Speaker 05

  He's a constitutional lawyer who practices in a number of countries. And recently defended a woman who in 2021 refused to take a PCR test when she traveled from Spain to Norway.

• 2:40:39Speaker 02

  God, the the Venn diagram.

• 2:40:42Speaker 05

  Ah, yeah, it's.

• 2:40:44Speaker 02

  I want the government to be powerful enough to rip apart families and then sink boats full of children in the sea. But I don't want the government to be able to make me put a swab in my nose to prove I don't have a deadly disease.

• 2:40:57Speaker 05

  Cool and normal stuff. I don't want to be surprised and I'm not, but also I am. Further, like she spoke at multiple United Kingdom rallies in the UK, including in the September of 2025 one. Where she encouraged attendees to stand up to their governments. Protest ended in violence. 26 police officers injured and 24 people arrested, according to the Daily Mail. It does, however, not mention if the police were there in their professional capacity or not, which I think is a meaningful distinction to make there. This incident also led her from being barred from the UK as her presence was not considered conducive to the public good. After this, she labeled Keir Starmer a tyrant.

• 2:41:43Speaker 05

  If anyone has ever seen an interview with Keir Starmer, you know this is untrue because Keir Starmer is the dark crevice where charisma goes to die.

• 2:41:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, he lacks the charisma for fascism.

• 2:41:54Speaker 05

  For any for anything. He is the most bland, flavorless politician you've ever seen. I don't want to slander Keir Starmer because I would like to visit the UK at some point again, but not that the man.

• 2:42:07Speaker 02

  Calling a British politician a little bit bland is not slander.

• 2:42:11Speaker 03

  Well, we got Andy Burnham now, who played the Smiths to a group of soldiers in Ukraine on a guitar recently.

• 2:42:19Speaker 02

  Why?

• 2:42:22Speaker 03

  It's the most British thing that anyone's ever done. He was visiting Ukrainian soldiers, one of the men, handed a guitar. That's what I can't, that's what I can't understand. Like doing a morale threat and being like, here's a sad song written by a really annoying guy. I like the Smiths, but Morris is a prick. I think we can all acknowledge that.

• 2:42:41Speaker 05

  Maybe that's proof he's on Russia's side, trying to incite like mass suicide.

• 2:42:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's trying to moralize the troops.

• 2:42:50Speaker 03

  It's a song about suicide.

• 2:42:51Speaker 02

  I heard you were having a hard day. Why don't you enjoy some Morrissey?

• 2:42:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, his heifer nose is miserable.

• 2:42:59Speaker 05

  You have to be as miserable as I am, so I'm playing this song. Okay, that was all the fun stuff I had on the fascist shield maiden, to be honest. Still some funny stuff in there, but also Jesus fucking Christ.

• 2:43:13Speaker 02

  But like unsurprising on all fronts, like these people are exactly who you would expect them to be.

• 2:43:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, like I'm not even surprised that she married a nobleman.

• 2:43:21Speaker 02

  No, that's classic fascism stuff. Love that for her.

• 2:43:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, all of this, like.

• 2:43:26Speaker 05

  Like Italian nobles, famously unproblematic.

• 2:43:29Speaker 02

  It's like Colin Jordan marrying the Dior heiress. Like, okay, I got it. I got it.

• 2:43:33Speaker 05

  There is one more composed Golan that we have to talk about, and this one takes great effort in remaining more behind the scenes. I'm curious if you guys heard of him. That applies to both his role in pulling Europe even further to the right, but also his personal life. It is the chairman of the World Congress for the Family, hailing from the United States, Mr. Brian Stephen Brown.

• 2:43:57Speaker 02

  I've never heard of Brian. He sounds very boring.

• 2:44:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:44:01Speaker 02

  Just like a garden variety, like weird pervert. Brian Stephen Brown.

• 2:44:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, he has a Wikipedia page.

• 2:44:08Speaker 02

  Okay, I recognize the symbol on the podium where he is here. Now, oh, he's the National Organization for Marriage guy.

• 2:44:15Speaker 05

  Yes, I think I wrote it down wrong in my script then.

• 2:44:18Speaker 02

  No, he's both. It's a World Congress of Families I've never heard of, but National Organization for Marriage. That's a classic.

• 2:44:23Speaker 05

  Now, I'll consider this feedback on my script writing.

• 2:44:27Speaker 02

  Oh, no, it's just that's that's the hate group I'm familiar with, of the hate groups he's affiliated with.

• 2:44:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, there is more hate groups that he's affiliated with than we could name. It's a lot.

• 2:44:37Speaker 02

  But yeah, America's full of these like vague sounding foundations for the focus on the family, the family congress, world wives and babies or whatever. Like, it's just like this word salad, basically about weird white natalism and hating gay people and immigration. It's just sort of a grab bag, like whatever part of that you're into.

• 2:44:56Speaker 05

  So the Justice for Prosperity report that I used earlier states that the World Congress for Families is an ultra-conservative and transnational anti-rights network that opposes all the things you imagine it opposes. Abortion, same-sex marriage. It was labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Brown is also on the board of Citizen Go, a Spanish anti-abortion and anti-LGBT advocacy group. In fact, if you needed just a little bit more evidence of the type of bastard he is. He physically stood in the Russian Duma as it passed like the anti-gay bill legislation.

• 2:45:34Speaker 03

  Great.

• 2:45:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've seen that picture as well.

• 2:45:38Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 2:45:39Speaker 02

  Like, he looks exactly like you think he's gonna look.

• 2:45:41Speaker 05

  It's like a hairy thumb.

• 2:45:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, this isn't a surprise to me. Like an otter or something, like a bald otter.

• 2:45:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:45:49Speaker 03

  Mole rat is what I'm thinking of.

• 2:45:51Speaker 02

  Wait, so what's our American homophobe got to do with this? I got distracted looking at how weird he looks.

• 2:45:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:45:57Speaker 05

  That's understandable. We'll get there first because he was not only like just at the Duma for that legislation to pass. After that, he was present at that legislation passing. He was also repeatedly returned to Russia to chat with his buddies, Konstantin Malofiev and his right-hand man, Alexei Komon. Allies of Putin. Well, what did they chat about? Probably how about how great it is not to have polonium in your underwear or how dangerous falling out of a basement window is. I'm guessing. I don't know. And I don't want to know because I don't want either of those things to happen to me.

• 2:46:37Speaker 05

  But Malofiev has been on the both EU and US sanctions list since 2014 for arming pro-Russian separatists.

• 2:46:46Speaker 03

  Oh, cool.

• 2:46:47Speaker 02

  So not a guy you should really.

• 2:46:48Speaker 03

  Be hanging out with.

• 2:46:49Speaker 05

  I feel like this is the through line, but it gets worse.

• 2:46:54Speaker 05

  He also helped finance regular conferences that merge multiple pro-family groups. Read pro-family as anti-abortion and the L G B T.

• 2:47:02Speaker 03

  Pro-family is a bold. Pro exactly what kind of family?

• 2:47:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, anti-self-determination. And through this process, allegedly, they also extend the influence of Russian geopolitical policy into other countries. Other investigations from Justice for Prosperity also identified him as the primary coordinator and fundraiser behind the systemic deportations and relocation of Ukrainian children through his Saint Basil, the Great Foundation.

• 2:47:30Speaker 03

  Jesus.

• 2:47:31Speaker 05

  Under the aptly chosen name Happy Childhood.

• 2:47:35Speaker 03

  Fuck me.

• 2:47:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, and like, I also want to mention, because, James, we also had a chat about this. Yeah, forcefully displacing or relocating children constitutes genocide.

• 2:47:48Speaker 03

  That's a genocide.

• 2:47:50Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 2:47:50Speaker 03

  That's in the U N definition of a genocide.

• 2:47:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. It has to specifically be children. So like the quasi Nuremberg laws that we read earlier are technically not genocidal because it's not explicitly children. But one could imagine what it would be to, if you followed their policies to their logical conclusion.

• 2:48:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:48:14Speaker 05

  But Brown is also involved with the Safe Europe Act. He was present at the first demonstration in Brussels, but his true involvement is much more behind the scenes. He co-owns a digital infrastructure company called Alteran Cloud. Self-described as infrastructure as a service. Donations and other forms of digital infrastructure are moving through this, which originate either in the Safe Europe Act, the donations, I mean them, or people that like the initiative. And Alteran Cloud itself is also not shy about showcasing their political leanings. I'm quoting from their website. "We are excited to report we are now the digital backbone of businesses, organizations, websites, and apps across America and Europe.

• 2:48:57Speaker 05

  Current clients include conservative organizations like No Next Row, Never Newsom Pack, conservative and Catholic news organizations such as Infocatho, La Salon Berge, and Les Vos Verités, family advocacy nonprofits like International Organization for the Family, and tech companies such as Titanium Secure, Tech I G, and AdHoc Capital."

• 2:49:23Speaker 03

  I love that they can just call it family advocacy, when what it is is like violent homophobia and transphobia and anti-women's rights, anti-abortion, like. Yeah, we're just a hate group. Family advocacy for a very particular kind of family and everyone else can fuck off and die.

• 2:49:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'll say this much, at least he lives to his values because allegedly he has nine children.

• 2:49:44Speaker 03

  His poor wife.

• 2:49:45Speaker 05

  Oh, yes, a hundred percent.

• 2:49:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, those poor children.

• 2:49:49Speaker 05

  So the names mentioned earlier, we can already safely assume just what kind of clientele Alteran Cloud likes to engage with. But what I find most disturbing is that he's clearly a very influential person of which, of who we know very little. Say what you will about Musk or Zuckerberg or Bezos, like, at least we know what kind of crepuscular crotch goblins they are.

• 2:50:10Speaker 03

  No, but the more effective guys are not making so much fucking noise.

• 2:50:15Speaker 05

  That is what scares me about him, like, that and the picture you shared.

• 2:50:20Speaker 03

  Not a handsome man.

• 2:50:21Speaker 05

  No, would not want to wake up to that.

• 2:50:24Speaker 03

  Would not want to make nine children with that.

• 2:50:26Speaker 05

  Ah, ah, well, we don't know if his wife had any say.

• 2:50:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:50:30Speaker 05

  So.

• 2:50:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I guess if he's signing on to do business with a woman who thinks rape should be legal.

• 2:50:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, or like Russian genocide enjoyers.

• 2:50:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's not huge on women's rights.

• 2:50:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, like, he's just sort of a connection, a connection point or a nexus for like Kremlin affiliates, European identitarian groups, the American Christian right, and like similar anti-rights groups with like these conferences that his contacts also finance. That's all I have on him because there's just not much to find.

• 2:51:02Speaker 03

  Well, now I'm curious. I'm gonna keep looking.

• 2:51:04Speaker 05

  Ah, let me know if you find something.

• 2:51:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is always interesting to find these guys who are pulling the strings and funding these, uh, these giant hate campaigns, right? Like, they, like, they very successfully astroturf these as like like a ground level, uh, especially like, we see this all over the world with anti-migrant shit, right? Like, oh, the people are rising up. There's 750,000 signatures on this petition, right? Slash names, like, there are 750,000 marks on my piece of paper. Yeah. But like, the British far-right does this all the time, right? They're like, oh, Britain desperately wants to have an Independence Day, uh, which is largely overlooking the fact that people who have Independence Days generally do so because Britain colonized them. Because they're independent from Britain now. From Britain, yeah, who is Britain gonna be independent from? Like Brussels, come on, fuck off.

• 2:51:52Speaker 03

  Like, yeah, the famously belligerent colonization of the Belgians. Like, they want their own Fourth of July? That's so cute. Yeah, right. That's cute. Just do the king, just do the king's birthday or whatever the fuck you guys are into. We have a day, we have a day on the 5th of November when we let off fireworks because, uh, in a very British way, it is a day that uh, people like to burn a Catholic in effigy. Oh, I don't like that. Yeah, no, no, it's actually not great, but like, they have very successfully astroturfed their hate as like a popular uprising and that is why they have been able to get some electoral support for it, right? Like, I was literally, uh, skeeting, I believe is the correct verb.

• 2:52:37Speaker 03

  I don't think we're saying that. Are we not saying it? Okay, uh, posting, I was posting, let's use a generic term. I was posting today a poll of British people who think London has, oh, a poll of people, I should say, who think London has no-go areas. It's fucking ludicrous, like, of big cities, London is like, super safe. You're, I, I have gone all over London, like, walking or on my bicycle. And so that's that thing where white people think that there are some neighborhoods that like, they'll be murdered by immigrants if they go there? Yeah, I mean, the construct that exists in the right-wing mind is that like, there are areas that are like, under Sharia law, in so much as that is a thing. The whole neighborhoods of London, under Sharia law. Yeah. Going by the Ayatollah even, probably.

• 2:53:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. The I R G C in the form of the Kudz Force is patrolling. They're fucking babies, they're such babies. Yeah, like, this is being scared of anything that is in. Like, a woman at her job looked at you and you thought you were gonna get beheaded by ISIS. Like, grow up. Yeah, like, also, if you're really worried about ISIS, you know, you could have gone to fight with the Yippe Gave more than a decade, but you didn't.

• 2:53:41Speaker 05

  I, I've been to London and I've had a very pleasant cigarette smoke with a hopeless person and never felt threatened.

• 2:53:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, London's like, I've walked all around London. I've, uh, literally just wandered into mosques in London because like, I come from a very small village, right? I mean, have a mosque in my tiny village and, uh, I've been to some mosques and I like them, so I want to check out other ones, like, not a fucking problem, people will be nice to you. I mean, I think it's, it's projection, right? Like, they want to hurt these people, so they assume that those people want to hurt them. Yeah, yes, I think that's probably a fair. It's that, what is that Thomas Jefferson thing, you know, we have the wolf by the ear, we can't let him go. If we let the immigrants have rights, they'll do to us what we've done to them. Yeah, well, yeah, like. Jefferson was saying that about the slaves, but the principle holds. If you live your whole life by like, the clash of civilizations narrative, then like, it's impossible to understand the world in any other way, right?

• 2:54:34Speaker 03

  Because you see yourself as fundamentally opposed to people who are different from you. But not everyone sucks as bad as you do. Yeah, in fact, like, most people are not pieces of shit. Maybe if we're looking to kick some people out, we could start with the fucking names on the petition.

• 2:54:48Speaker 05

  That would be a good start.

• 2:54:49Speaker 03

  The real, the ones of them who are even real. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't think the state should be tearing anyone from their family, to be clear. I don't think it's funny when someone gets deported. I don't care if they're a bad person. I find the laughing about people who you don't like being deported deeply frustrating, actually, because we should abolish ICE and D H S and the whole deportation machine. Awesome.

• 2:55:09Speaker 05

  And Europe, while we're at it.

• 2:55:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, sure, why not? I mean, in the grand scheme of history, most of those countries are just a blip on the radar, just abolish Germany.

• 2:55:19Speaker 05

  I, I, I could support that, but I do want to piggyback a little bit, uh, on what you just said about the astroturfing, James, because yeah, the last bit of my script regards like, the discourse and violence that has happened in, in the Netherlands in the past few months, like downright terrorist attacks.

• 2:55:37Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 2:55:38Speaker 05

  But a lot of these local anti-immigrant protests, at least in the Netherlands, a core part is the defense groups that, you know, the three of us spoke about. They just go to small municipalities, stir shit up, and make this whole anti-immigration sentiment seem so much bigger than it actually is. It's people taking a day off of work to go protest in some municipality that they don't live in and do violence and then claim like, oh, look at all these violent immigrants. Don't look at me throwing heavy fireworks at people, which is a thing. I, I've had fireworks thrown at me by those people. It's not fun. Yeah. It's preferable to being shot, I suppose, but, yeah.

• 2:56:23Speaker 03

  It's a low bar. Yeah, it's still deeply unenjoyable.

• 2:56:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 2:56:28Speaker 03

  Also, like, our communities are so intertwined, even more so than the U S, right? Like, we don't have, in much of Europe, this long history of redlining and using capitalism to do racial segregation. To an extent, we, we still have like neighborhoods, uh, where people will want to live around services that they like to access, right? If you like to go to the mosque, it makes sense to live relatively near to the mosque. If you want to go to the good world, the same thing, right? But like, the idea that you could tear these communities apart is just so fucking like, it's complete pie-in-the-sky shit from people whose like, entire politics is informed by the internet and, and watching what's happening in America.

• 2:57:11Speaker 03

  You could no more like, tear immigrants from European cities and have them function than you could be like, all right, we're doing away with, uh, everyone who was born on an even numbered day. Our fucking society doesn't function without each other. And again, you just, you fall into this trap of, how are we defining this? Who are you talking about exactly? How far back are you going? Who counts? Yeah, I mean, it seems like what they want is like the apartheid thing. Right, like which even apartheid got into its own questions of how do we define people's race?

• 2:57:42Speaker 02

  It became very messy and the government was deciding people's race with, you know, without their input. And it was, it was not a great situation.

• 2:57:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, but like the, uh, the idea that our society could function without people who aren't white or even people who have arrived one or two generations ago. It's just pure and ridiculous. Like these people fucking suck. I don't know. Like, like unserious people.

• 2:58:07Speaker 05

  Well, in my previous job of mine, I met this woman from Afghanistan and she was allowed to move to the Netherlands because she worked, I think for like NATO or an NGO. And because we all, we were also involved in Afghanistan, of course. And she was so incredibly pleasant to work with. All Dutch people speak English. It pretty much is a rule. So if someone doesn't speak Dutch very well, we tend to like immediately turn to English. And she was very much like, please talk Dutch to me. I, I want to work here in a different job, but I need.

• 2:58:37Speaker 02

  That's so brave of her to want to learn Dutch.

• 2:58:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, yes. Yeah. I, I tried to discourage her. It did not work. It's garbage language. I, I'd rather have a hundred of her than whatever pathetic defense groups or whatever racist shit, because she's actually contributing and trying her very best. And these people are just out there, you know, stirring shit up, the fascists. But much respect to that particular woman. She won't hear this, but beside the point.

• 2:59:11Speaker 02

  No, but there are hundreds of thousands of people just like her, right? Contributing to their communities.

• 2:59:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:59:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was, it was very valuable work at the time, uh, what we, what we did. Like it was necess, it was necessary.

• 2:59:23Speaker 02

  Even if the work that she was doing was not valuable to humanity on a broader scale, like there are hundreds of thousands of people like that woman who've gone to a place where they were not born and contributed to a community. And that's just not part of the conversation for these people because they don't care, because they don't see people like her as human beings.

• 2:59:41Speaker 03

  Yeah. And also because they're not part of their communities, right? Because they're odious pieces of shit. Like all their friends are on Stormfront or what have you, because no one wants to be around hateful bigots like this.

• 2:59:52Speaker 02

  No, they're on, they're in a Twitter space going yes, exactly to each other.

• 2:59:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:59:56Speaker 02

  But they don't have real world community.

• 2:59:59Speaker 03

  This perspective doesn't survive contact with the outside world.

• 3:00:02Speaker 02

  No, but they're trying to force it on all of us through bullshit like this by, like shoehorning this discourse into respectable places and hoping some of that respectability rubs off on it.

• 3:00:13Speaker 05

  You're so sexy, Molly. I'm, I'm jealous.

• 3:00:26Speaker 05

  To get back to the last bit, because ultimately the entirety of the Save Europe Act is exactly what you just said. It's shoehorning it in, making it normal to have seemingly civil conversations around something that is, no matter which way you, you turn or phrase it, inherently violent in multiple ways to people who don't, who don't deserve it and have done nothing but trying to exist in a different place.

• 3:00:55Speaker 02

  No, but if they can make us all have this conversation in, you know, in our respectable avenues of civil discourse, then it becomes a normal thing that we have to talk about. And if we have to talk about it, maybe more people will be convinced by it. Whereas if you relegate this shit to Stormfront where it belongs, normal people aren't coming into contact with it and becoming convinced by it or tricked into it or mainstreaming it.

• 3:01:18Speaker 05

  Yeah. On October 7th, 25th, 34th, Eva tweeted the following. So cool. This timeline of the main accounts pushing the remigration debate on X this year. Proud to be on the list with Alternative for Deutschland, Martin Selner, Elon Musk, René Camus and Donald Trump. Together, we're pushing the Overton window in real time.

• 3:01:40Speaker 02

  So she knows what she's doing.

• 3:01:41Speaker 05

  A hundred percent.

• 3:01:42Speaker 02

  Not only does she know, she said it.

• 3:01:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:01:45Speaker 02

  She knows what she's doing, but she's not smart enough to know she shouldn't tell you she knows.

• 3:01:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:01:50Speaker 02

  You're not supposed to say, I know all I'm doing is pushing the Overton window. I'm here to throw a brick through the Overton fucking window. Girl, shut up.

• 3:01:59Speaker 03

  My job is to push you all to the right.

• 3:02:02Speaker 02

  My job is to defenestrate you through the Overton window.

• 3:02:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:02:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. I think I would say that like, talking about the Overton window, right? Talking about this being a list on Twitter is a perfect illustration of how like the alienation that people feel under capitalism has made them so vulnerable to this shit. Because I understand that like it is fucking hard for people in Europe as it is here, right? Like existing as a working person is fucking hard. Paying your bills is hard. It's not getting any easier, especially now that petrol slash gas is even more expensive. But like, because people are increasingly alienated, it's easier and easier to do this scapegoating bullshit. It just happens that we've found someone who's stupid enough to basically say that. But like, that is the basis of the entire right around the world right now.

• 3:02:50Speaker 03

  Is like blaming the things that capitalism has done to us on people who have suffered more under capitalism than anyone.

• 3:02:56Speaker 02

  And Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter has made spreading that message so much easier than it would have been otherwise.

• 3:03:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:03:04Speaker 02

  But he's like, he's algorithmically boosting and disseminating this at a scale that is previously unheard of.

• 3:03:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:03:11Speaker 02

  For these kinds of ideas.

• 3:03:13Speaker 03

  Especially when you've got so many journalists on Twitter so much. Like that's where they get a sense of the debate.

• 3:03:19Speaker 02

  Get over there.

• 3:03:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:03:20Speaker 02

  And because these journalists are so used to pulling their stories from just like shit they saw on Twitter.

• 3:03:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:03:26Speaker 02

  That they think these ideas must be very popular. We must engage with them. We must write a million fucking stories about these posts we saw on Twitter, because they obviously represent a very important discourse for society right now. And they don't, they don't. Stop doing it.

• 3:03:41Speaker 05

  Yeah. Speaking of journalists, uh, please follow me on Blue Sky at Two Sober Possums. If you want to.

• 3:03:48Speaker 02

  I just did.

• 3:03:48Speaker 05

  Criticize.

• 3:03:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:03:50Speaker 05

  My, my poor attempt at journalism. But yeah, I wanted to take this last bit to highlight some instances of like political violence in the Netherlands. All of these incidents happens, happened between late April and now this year.

• 3:04:04Speaker 02

  Oh my God.

• 3:04:05Speaker 05

  I'm not attributing it to the Save Europe Act because the discourse has been toxic for a while now. But I also can't say that it has a non-zero effect because maybe I've had my head in the sand for, for years. But this level of violence is pretty unheard of here.

• 3:04:24Speaker 02

  And it's all part of the same sort of ambient raising of the temperature on this topic. And they know they're contributing to that. So of course you can't say they're directly responsible for these attacks. They're not directing them, but they're raising the temperature and they know this contributes to that. Especially, I don't know, a guy who received a large sum of money from Brenton Tarrant shortly before he murdered 51 people in two mosques in New Zealand. I don't know. Maybe they know what they're doing. Anyway.

• 3:04:49Speaker 05

  Okay. Uh, I'm not going too deeply into these instances because then we'd had, like, we'll add another hour or two to this already long recording session.

• 3:04:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:05:00Speaker 05

  I'm also sorry for all the Dutch words because our towns are not named in English words.

• 3:05:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:05:06Speaker 05

  So, uh, the town of Loestrecht, there was going to be a migrant center there. Severe destruction at the old municipal building, which was used to house them. Doors and windows destroyed, uh, near the end of April. In early May, also in Loestrecht, same building caught on fire due to torches and heavy fireworks being thrown at it.

• 3:05:28Speaker 03

  Jesus.

• 3:05:29Speaker 05

  Migrants were inside this building when it caught on fire.

• 3:05:33Speaker 03

  Fuck.

• 3:05:34Speaker 05

  To my knowledge, the harm to people was minimal or nonexistent, but still they threw fireworks and torches to the, to the point that this building caught on fire.

• 3:05:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. The psychological damage is still very real.

• 3:05:47Speaker 05

  Yeah. Okay. This, this, this is my personal little tangent, but our prime minister has not called these things terrorism. Well, by any definition of the word, this is fucking terrorism.

• 3:06:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:06:00Speaker 05

  Like this is political violence used to either scare people away or scare people into submission and bypassing the democratic process in the meantime. So also in early May, in the town of Angelen, uh, an explosion caused by heavy fireworks destroyed mainly glass windows at a center for underage migrants. Further, houses and cars of either pro-migration citizens, note, not activists, just citizens with an opinion, were vandalized with slurs and threats. One of the cars was stolen and driven into a body of water. Again, this, this was minor vandalism, not minor, this was vandalism, according to our PM.

• 3:06:43Speaker 05

  Among the targets were people who were not even explicitly in favor of, of having this center, but simply stated that they had the desire to have like a good faith debate and conversation around it, which is reasonable. May 13th, Loestrecht again, again, torches and fireworks. The fire department had to come in at that time. Uh, also May 13th, in another town called Appeldorn, riots for five consecutive days, including abusive police and security. Later in May, fireworks were thrown through the windows of the municipal building and theater in the town of Eiselstein. The town of Aitheest at roughly the same time, a explosive constructed out of fireworks

• 3:07:25Speaker 05

  was thrown through the window during a municipal meeting. And this was part of a larger set of violent incidents, again, mainly involving like torches and fireworks. June 18th, a pipe bomb was found at a migration center in Nuenen. The explosive ordinance unit had to, had to be called in in order to clean it up. Windows were broken and a small fire broke out. This was the third instance of destruction at this particular building. Not great. I've witnessed some of these people protesting, and I'm using the heaviest air quotes possible there.

• 3:08:01Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:08:02Speaker 05

  It's just fucking ruggens wanting to riot, racist fucking ruggens as well. The, the Save Europe Act is not explicitly calling for, for this.

• 3:08:12Speaker 02

  It doesn't have to.

• 3:08:13Speaker 05

  It doesn't have to.

• 3:08:14Speaker 02

  It doesn't have to, and they know that.

• 3:08:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it's, it's laying the groundwork.

• 3:08:18Speaker 02

  They know it's more effective, it's more effective for them to just raise the temperature and put the implication out there.

• 3:08:24Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then, then wave their hands in the air and say, oh, I don't know how this happened when someone.

• 3:08:29Speaker 02

  I didn't say that. I never said they should do that, but you know.

• 3:08:33Speaker 05

  No, you didn't give these people a baby kicking class.

• 3:08:36Speaker 02

  There's no proof Hitler called for the industrialized mass murder of the Jews.

• 3:08:40Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 3:08:40Speaker 02

  There's no proof. That Hitler explicitly directed for the Holocaust to happen is there, but he's still responsible for it.

• 3:08:45Speaker 03

  That's what they're going for, right? They're going for like a structuralist approach to mass violence against migrants, like creating a structure where it takes care of itself.

• 3:08:56Speaker 02

  You create the conditions where it becomes inevitable.

• 3:09:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, and then you deny responsibility.

• 3:09:02Speaker 05

  You're not giving them the baby kicking class, but you're giving them a bunch of babies and pointing them towards the building where they teach the baby kicking class.

• 3:09:11Speaker 02

  Again, there's a reason it matters so much that he was emailing back and forth with Brenton Tarrant because they have the exact same ideas about what the problem is. They are just personally going about different versions of the solution.

• 3:09:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was most horrifying thing about it. And also, I'm so disappointed in so much media here in the Netherlands that anytime they even mention Martin Selnar, the best they can do is that he received that donation. But nothing about, oh, he destroyed evidence of his contact with him. He possibly would have met him. They agreed on stuff while Tarrant was radical enough to plan in it like a fucking massacre. It's lazy journalism.

• 3:09:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:09:54Speaker 05

  Like, I'm sure I make plenty mistakes, but I'm also not making my living out of it or claiming that I'm super great at it. But you could at least pretend you're going beyond something at surface level as, oh, he made a donation. Okay, fair. That's it. It's like, no, these guys were ideologically aligned enough to possibly meet.

• 3:10:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:10:15Speaker 02

  And like, that is a very explicit and obvious connection, right? But it's all these other attacks and these people being burned in buildings. That's the same, that's the same relationship, just without the exchange of money.

• 3:10:27Speaker 05

  You can only tell people that some people will violently come to kill them unless they come into action, which is not a legal, not provable in the court of law, inciting people to do violence.

• 3:10:41Speaker 02

  And I'm not arguing legal liability. I'm not arguing legal liability. I'm just saying there is a moral and ideological culpability here, that there is a, there is a visible relationship between these things that exists outside the framework of legal culpability, illegal liability here. But there is a relationship between these events and they know that and we need to be honest about it.

• 3:11:02Speaker 05

  It's a moral culpability.

• 3:11:05Speaker 05

  I hate the facade that they put up like, oh, this is all anti-democratic that they canceled it and they're just out for us.

• 3:11:13Speaker 05

  I hate that I even have to sort of engage on their terms.

• 3:11:17Speaker 02

  You don't. That's the beauty of it is you don't.

• 3:11:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, you don't. You don't, yeah, you don't have to debate these people in their like debate where they don't acknowledge facts like.

• 3:11:27Speaker 05

  No, but also look also broader because they have a platform, they can say things and you can ignore it, but other people who enjoy it will read it.

• 3:11:36Speaker 02

  Right, and I'm not saying ignore it and it will go away. I'm just saying engaging with the existence of these ideas does not mean you have to engage with what they are saying in the way that they want you to. You don't have to engage in a good faith debate with them, with their ideas, with their stated purpose. You can engage with the idea that you know is underneath of that.

• 3:11:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, but I mean more in the sense of like engaging with it on a, in the discourse. Because other people will pick up on the ideas. And if you want to have, trying to have a civil conversation with people who've been influenced by the ideas, then like indirectly, you still have to engage with them. And even that is becoming difficult because they become these two like different realities.

• 3:12:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:12:23Speaker 02

  Because they're not interested in having a debate with you. So at the risk, at the risk of reading another long quote, this reminds me of something that I come back to a lot in this, in this particular debate, in this debate of do we have to engage with them? Do we have to debate them? The answer is no, and the question has been answered. So Sartre wrote an essay in 1946, so in post-war France, like Nazis, you know, Nazis had occupied France and there are a lot of Nazi sympathizers. The essay was called The Anti-Semite and Jew. And this is a passage that I come back to a lot for this particular question. Never believe that antisemites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies.

• 3:13:04Speaker 02

  They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge, but they are amusing themselves for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly since he believes in words. The antisemites have the right to play. They even like to play with their discourse for by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith since they seek not to persuade by sound argument, but to intimidate and disconcert.

• 3:13:34Speaker 02

  They don't want to debate you. They want to change the terms of what that debate looks like. So don't do it.

• 3:13:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:13:40Speaker 02

  Don't do it. The question is, question asked and answered.

• 3:13:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, like we don't have to engage them on terms of their choosing where they get to define the very like outlines of reality, which as you said, make root results in something which is completely distinct from actual reality and it's not worth arguing with someone. I think the Sartre quote would be a good place to finish up because I think that's probably the most pertinent thing people could take from this. I hope you all are not having to debate this with your families.

• 3:14:09Speaker 02

  So engage with, engage with the idea, take the threat seriously, but you don't have to engage with the guy trying to engage with you on a debate. Don't let him set the terms.

• 3:14:19Speaker 05

  No, I fear I've come off a bit wrong there, but.

• 3:14:22Speaker 02

  I'm not, I'm not arguing with you. I'm, this is again, like for the listener, because I think this is a place a lot of people find themselves like, well, this guy is wrong. He's saying these things that are incorrect. I should have a factual debate with him and that's what he wants. It's very tempting and it may feel like the right thing to do, but you can't win.

• 3:14:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:14:41Speaker 02

  No matter how right you are, no matter how wrong he is, you will not win this debate because that's not the point.

• 3:14:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think like it is always worth reinforcing this, like especially with this show, right? We have so many people who are so new to this and like they haven't been doing this for 10, 15, 20 years. And it can seem, oh, it's going X.com and I'll tell them they're wrong and it'll be fine. But like, yeah, you're playing in the Nazi sandbox and they get to choose like how big the box is and what the sand looks like. It's not going to go well for you.

• 3:15:10Speaker 02

  And they want to have that argument with you because the louder the argument is, the more people will hear it and the more people will be exposed to the unserious shit that they are saying.

• 3:15:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, it dignifies them with a response.

• 3:15:22Speaker 02

  It makes it look like something worth arguing about.

• 3:15:24Speaker 05

  It's playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good I am at chess, the pigeon will strut around on the board, knock over the pieces.

• 3:15:32Speaker 02

  And then don't you look stupid.

• 3:15:32Speaker 05

  Take a big shit all on the board and strut around like it's victorious.

• 3:15:37Speaker 02

  And then, and now the headline is pigeon plays chess. Isn't that impressive? The pigeon, even if he didn't win, isn't it amazing that he played?

• 3:15:45Speaker 05

  Ah, I'm going to find a nice void to scream in for a good minute.

• 3:15:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:15:52Speaker 05

  Okay, Dr. James Stout, anything you want to plug?

• 3:15:56Speaker 02

  Dr. Stout?

• 3:15:56Speaker 05

  Dr. Stout, yes.

• 3:15:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, having chat on dissertations. Molly, you have a show where we could learn more about Nazis and the stupid shit they go after, wouldn't you?

• 3:16:06Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh. Actually, so the reason I'm so passionate about not arguing with these people on their terms is because I've been writing a lot about race science and eugenics lately. And so this, this sort of Trojan horsing this argument into the discourse in bad faith is something I'm very mad about this week because I just read a bunch of books about race science. So if you want to hear about that, if you want to hear the fruit of that frustration, you can listen to Weird Little Guys wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:16:30Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I have a podcast called Natural Causes where unfortunately I have made four episodes and I have already had to confront the scope of the fucking neo-Rodishans.

• 3:16:41Speaker 02

  They're everywhere.

• 3:16:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, but well, the Washington State National Guard responding to the Little Giant Fire specifically, I guess.

• 3:16:48Speaker 02

  For a country that never existed, wasn't very big and only pretended to exist for a couple of years.

• 3:16:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:16:54Speaker 02

  If you're looking at Nazi shit, they just keep coming back.

• 3:16:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, also, if you're responding to a large fire and you're thinking which white nationalist flag should I take? That is probably the least appropriate, right? Like if we consider how Rhodesia.

• 3:17:09Speaker 02

  What would you say would be the most appropriate white nationalist flag?

• 3:17:11Speaker 03

  Oh, one of the, surely one of the repurposed Viking ones because they love to fire, right? Like if I was going that route.

• 3:17:17Speaker 02

  Good answer, good answer.

• 3:17:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, thank you. I think about this a lot. Yeah, if you work for the Seattle Times, you can listen to my podcast, deal my story and not attribute it. If you're anyone else, yeah, you can listen to my podcast and hear about how going outside is political.

• 3:17:31Speaker 05

  I don't have any other podcasts. I try to keep my mental health somewhat intact.

• 3:17:38Speaker 03

  What a way to live. I'm so happy for you.

• 3:17:39Speaker 05

  Insofar as that's possible.

• 3:17:42Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 3:17:44Speaker 02

  Sick burn on us, James.

• 3:17:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, owned again.

• 3:17:47Speaker 05

  No, I just have a much less tolerance for this than, than you guys. You're much better at it.

• 3:17:51Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. It's broken us.

• 3:17:53Speaker 05

  So if you want to contact me for some reason, it's now on Blue Sky at Two Sober Possums. For the love of God, don't ask me for feed pics. I will not send them. And confront fascists in a peaceful way when they gather, I suppose.

• 3:18:09Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:18:18Speaker 05

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• 3:18:50Speaker 02

  I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

• 3:18:55Speaker 03

  It's the rage bait.

• 3:18:57Speaker 04

  It feels like it's trying to divide people.

• 3:19:02Speaker 04

  We got clear facts.

• 3:19:03Speaker 06

  Maybe we can calm down a little.

• 3:19:07Speaker 06

  NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America.

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• 3:20:24Speaker 03

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• 3:20:58Speaker 02

  This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Robert Evans.

• 3:21:11Speaker 03

  Woo woo.

• 3:21:11Speaker 02

  This episode, we are covering the week of October 14th to October 21st. Diva Down, I am sad to report.

• 3:21:21Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:21:22Speaker 02

  The new White House Press Secretary, Katie Zachariah, was fired after just five days on the job.

• 3:21:28Speaker 03

  R I P. You guys can't see it, but I'm pouring a 40 out for her right now. It is all over my floor. This is gonna cause damage to the wood.

• 3:21:36Speaker 02

  This is half a Scaramucci.

• 3:21:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, is it half? I thought it was, it was 70% of a Scaramucci.

• 3:21:41Speaker 02

  Half a Scaramucci. Scaramucci was 10 days. She was five days.

• 3:21:44Speaker 03

  She was only for five. All right, I thought, I heard seven for some reason. Good to know.

• 3:21:49Speaker 02

  Maybe it's that Scaramucci did more press conferences? Cause she only did one press conference.

• 3:21:54Speaker 03

  All right. Yeah, that's all it took.

• 3:21:55Speaker 02

  Before being fired, so.

• 3:21:57Speaker 03

  That's all it took. To give a sense, I was camping without signal for the entire duration of her career and didn't know who she was.

• 3:22:06Speaker 02

  You missed an entire press secretary?

• 3:22:08Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, I am a journalist who covers this shit and I completely missed her.

• 3:22:13Speaker 02

  Her firing came after poor reception to her first performance and reporting scrutinizing her claims about being a lawyer despite not passing the bar exam. Trump told her, quote, "Honestly, if I were you, I'd reconsider. Is this for you, Katie? Because honestly, you don't need this." Unquote.

• 3:22:36Speaker 03

  She sure doesn't.

• 3:22:37Speaker 02

  One of the funniest, one of the funniest Trump exchanges I've ever read.

• 3:22:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, wow, really coming in with empathy.

• 3:22:44Speaker 02

  Is this for you, Katie? You don't need this.

• 3:22:48Speaker 03

  Trump channeling HR manager.

• 3:22:50Speaker 02

  It's incredible. Yeah, no, very, he's handling this very delicately by, by most accounts. Politico reported that Trump told White House officials Katie had, quote, "No talent and shouldn't be on TV." But the White House disputes this. And the White House says that she is, quote, "Transitioning to a new role." Though Katie said on Twitter, "It was, quote, 'in honor to work for Trump' in the past tense." So who knows what she's gonna be up to in the future.

• 3:23:18Speaker 03

  True. Incredible.

• 3:23:19Speaker 02

  But yeah, no, we have lost out on a lot of potential content in the future. So pour one out for all the, all the podcasters out there who has relied on years of press conferences to mine content.

• 3:23:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, Saturday Night Live's gotta be really fucking scrambling after that.

• 3:23:34Speaker 02

  Oh my God, yeah, damn.

• 3:23:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, you know, sometimes a beautiful thing comes into your life and it's just there for a little while and all we can do is enjoy the time we had together with what's her name.

• 3:23:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's her name?

• 3:23:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know her name. And like I said, I was camping the whole time. Luckily for us, we have so many things to cover, so we'll be fine. Everyone else in danger. Us, delusional. Yeah.

• 3:24:01Speaker 02

  Speaking of other things to cover, threatening letters containing a mysterious white powder have been sent to the offices of over three dozen congressional representatives and election offices across at least 32 states. At least one of these letters, sent to Democratic Congresswoman Hillary Schulten of Michigan, made a, quote, "direct and specific reference to an impending civil war beginning after the election," according to the Congresswoman. And interestingly, according to Schulten, the letter claimed to be from the Democratic Socialists of America. So I guess, I guess they're kind of moving beyond labor organizing and electoral reform towards a much more, much more interesting tactics.

• 3:24:46Speaker 02

  This, of course, is not true. The DSA did not send letters containing mysterious white powder, the implication being it could be anthrax. It has not been found to be anthrax or dangerous. Usually when letters are received containing white powder, that is the, this sort of like implicit threat. The return address on several of these envelopes mailed to various addresses across the country was for an old DSA office in New York City, an office that DSA hasn't used in over a decade.

• 3:25:16Speaker 03

  Nice.

• 3:25:17Speaker 02

  Congresswoman Schulten released a statement which reads in part, quote, "This is another instance where the DSA has excused or ignored extremism. DSA has allowed extremists in its movement, which not only allow, but justify violence as a viable means to achieve political ends." Unquote.

• 3:25:38Speaker 03

  Man, they, they sort of kicked out all my friends who were doing, who were being street medics. Like, come on, they don't got the juice for, I mean, it's not even the juice, like, no one of the DSA is doing anthrax letters. Come on. Right, yeah.

• 3:25:52Speaker 02

  DSA told CBS, quote, "Needless to say, we are not involved with these letters and we are glad to learn that no one was harmed." Unquote.

• 3:26:00Speaker 03

  What are we doing here? Yeah, if a bunch of amateurs with no, like, chemical and biological weapons experience were attempting to distribute anthrax around the country, you would hear about it first when they infected themselves with anthrax. Yeah.

• 3:26:16Speaker 03

  That would be the story. Yeah. And like, it's worth mentioning, like, yeah, like, this is a fairly common right wing tactic. This is not a thing where even you're sort of like, I don't know, you're like 1970s, like Red Brigades guys who are like kidnapping people off the streets. Like, even they didn't do this. No, cause it's really hard and dangerous. It's really hard and dangerous. It's very much giving, like, learned about terrorism in the 1990s, hasn't paid much attention since and, and decided to do a hoax. Early 2000s, but yeah. Yeah, sure, early 2000s. Come on. I know, it's such a weird, uh, option to go with anthrax. I guess it's, I guess there are other white powders, so it's kind of a easy, uh, easy one to go with.

• 3:26:57Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, they're just mailing a white powder. They're not mailing anthrax. It's just flour or something.

• 3:27:03Speaker 03

  It's a low effort hoax, sure, yeah.

• 3:27:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:27:06Speaker 03

  There's all sorts of white powders out there.

• 3:27:08Speaker 02

  There sure are.

• 3:27:10Speaker 03

  Powder trigger. The Germans have this fake cocaine that's not intoxicating, that comes in this little, little glass thing. If you just wanna snort something, it's cute. Oh, wow. Snuff. No, it's not snuff. There's no drug in it at all. It's just basically like mint. Just like talcum powder. Yeah, it's kind of, it's just like something you can snort if you really need to snort. If you just, your nose needs that stimulation. Germany is quite the place. Yeah. Thank you, Germans. So I heard from somebody in Northern California this week, and it's a pretty credible source, that ICE agents have been seen outside the Sutter County Veterans Hall in Yuba City, which is a polling place. I didn't see any evidence that they were making detentions there or of people there, or whether they were just using that, like, as a, as a staging area, I don't know.

• 3:27:55Speaker 03

  But this is something I'm, I'm like really hyper focused on in, in the weeks coming up to this midterm election. Secondly, DHS is leaving TPS recipients from Ukraine, Sudan, and Limbo. It's not renewing their TPS, but it's not canceling it either. So TPS generally is already a status which has to be renewed on a very fixed, short timeline, right? So it doesn't give people much permanence to begin with, but at this point, they have even less permanence, right? It makes it very hard for them to, to know what to do next. Like, we, we saw what happened to Haitian communities after the removal of that TPS, right? Yeah. Part of me wonders is if, if this is just like a, um, like a rate limiting thing

• 3:28:38Speaker 03

  for DHS, like, they're still going hard on, on the TPSs they've already canceled and like, maybe they wanna sort of divide and conquer with their, with their surges in different communities? Or if it's a pre-midterm thing, because, uh, it is still somewhat unpopular to go after Ukraine. Next, I have CNN reporting that the Department of Defense is loaning an active denial system to CBP. Uh, this thing is often called a heat ray. The idea, of course, is that CBP might use it at the border for areas of high migrant traffic. They have experimented with this before. And what's interesting is that the Pentagon seems to have refused to have their people run the system or develop training tactics and procedures to use with the system. This is in line with how the Pentagon has previously approached this.

• 3:29:23Speaker 03

  They had these for like almost two decades and they took them to Afghanistan, but they never used them. And I'm guessing they never used them because some jag somewhere was like, yeah, that's looking, that's giving war crimes. It's not a new technology, right? It's, they've never really been able to find a place where they felt, and, uh, for, for younger folks, they did some shit during the War on Terror, which is generally considered to be, uh, a flagrant violation of international law. But they, they didn't do this. CBP has evaluated it before too in the El Centro Sector, when Rodney Scott, who's now CBP Commissioner, was there. El Centro Sector, of course, is, is ground zero for this shit, right? Greg Bavino, that was chief patrol agent there.

• 3:30:06Speaker 03

  Obviously, this comes with massive human rights concerns as well as international law concerns. If you're using some kind of heat ray to attack people who are not in the United States, the obvious other issue here is that we have fires all the fucking time at the border and turning on a heat ray is probably a great way to have more of them. I guess an interesting development, and this is right before we recorded, HECSE's, one of his deputy chiefs of staff, Patrick Weaver, uh, he used to be an advisor to HEC there, he's bumped around a bunch of like executive branch appointments. He posted, quote, "The border is now a military installation and a battle lab for testing new systems to include directed energy weapons. The border is locked down." And then he posted a picture of the story. Just wanna point out that, like, again, it's not Department of Defense staff using this.

• 3:30:51Speaker 03

  It would be CBP and CBP would have to develop a whole set of training tactics and procedures to do it before they used it. Last time they did it, they, they decided basically the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, right? And especially in the El Centro Sector at that time, people were coming through a lot of irrigation canals and the chances of somebody drowning, large number of people drowning because you use this on them in a place where they're already in danger, uh, obviously. They decided not to use it, so we'll keep an eye on that, I guess. This has also a very interesting, like, imperial boomerang. Yes. Effect of military technology then being used to the border. And then, as we've seen across the country, that also increases the possibility of Border Patrol using this technology against American citizens. Yeah.

• 3:31:34Speaker 03

  Doing like crowd control, like in Portland in 2020, where they used a very specific LRAD that induced, you know, piercing headaches. The idea of this technology getting, you know, closer and closer to being used within our national borders. I mean, as bad as it is that it exists, as bad as it is that CBP could use it at the border itself, which is the whole issue. Yeah. This also kind of shows the tendency of this sort of development to get closer and closer to the imperial core. To the metropole, yeah. Like, and I think that that's towards ever the earth, right? Like Miller's book, Empire Borders, I don't know when that came out, but like, he talks about the US Palestine border, the direct pathway, testing systems on Palestinian people to selling them to Border Patrol. And then, as you say, to them finding their way into the metropole, right?

• 3:32:19Speaker 03

  Like, the whole country is experiencing now what we have experienced at the border, which is the state is either hostile or completely absent. And talking of that, like, in Pensacola, right, where people are working to repair from storm damage, I saw that ICE had come to arrest two roofers who were working to repair that storm damage, right? Like, what you expect from the federal government is FEMA. FEMA is pretty much on its knees right now, but ICE has swallowed up all that funding, gobbled it up, and it is there. I think it resulted in like a, we're not coming down from the roof, and eventually ICE leaving, which has happened in several cases, specifically with roofers, right? Good for them. Glad they didn't get caught. Yeah, talking of weird DHS shit, the United States Coast Guard has released a bizarre

• 3:33:02Speaker 03

  promo video detailing their work in San Diego, which features, I think I would describe it as an emo cover of Pink Pony Club by Chapel Rohn. What? It's real weird, yeah. We can listen to it, but we don't have to. No, no, so I'm good, I'm good. Yeah. Continuing in their trend of like trolling intellectual property, right? Finally, the Hunter in Myanmar is continuing to flounder in its assault on Rakhine or Arakha State. It's sort of continuing with its major tactical philosophy, which seems to be doing World War II shit in 2026. This time, they've gone with an imposed amphibious assault. They're trying to stop the Arakha Army's offensive on Sitwe, and the way they've done

• 3:33:45Speaker 03

  that is like, big landing crafts full of conscripts, which has resulted in massive casualties, right? There's been a bunch of reporting over the last few months on how these big Hunter offensive work, and it seems to be like straight up human wave attacks, at which the officers, at least the higher ranking officers, the officers who would plan such an operation are not present. And then, any of the NCOs or officers who are present, like, their role is not to, to like, think tactically and adapt, it's to enforce discipline and continue enforcing the plan even as everybody's dying. So, yeah, it's a pretty brutal scene for conscripts in Myanmar right now.

• 3:34:27Speaker 03

  Early voting has begun in Texas, and this past week, in the lead up to the election, pamphlets have been mailed to households across Texas from a group identified as the, quote, "Texas Transgender Student Union." These pamphlets were addressed to students in the household and contained resources for LGBTQ youth and a guide on how trans teens can emancipate themselves. These mailers have sparked outrage among conservatives, and that appears to have been the point. This, quote, "Texas Transgender Student Union" doesn't actually exist, or at least didn't

• 3:35:08Speaker 03

  exist until last month, when a group by that name registered as an LLC in Wyoming, according to business records. Wait, that's an LLC in Wyoming? Okay. Oh, yeah. Great stuff happening here. This is not a real. No, no. Like, student advocacy group in Texas. Yeah. This is an op. This pamphlet does include some resources from TENT, that's Transgender Education Network of Texas, which is a real advocacy group, but they were not involved in the making of this mailer, nor do they have emancipation resources. TENT has since faced a huge wave of harassment and threats following the mailing out of this pamphlet.

• 3:35:49Speaker 03

  The Texas Tribune traced the mailer ID of two pamphlets to a mail tracking company called Snailworks, who, the National Republican Congressional Committee, has paid almost $60,000 over the past two years for mailing services, according to a federal election commission search of campaign finance records. Steven Monacelli is currently kind of running this lead down and trying to figure out exactly where this mailer has, like, come from. He's been like live tweeting his investigation. We don't know tons yet, but if you want an update on it, check out our correspondent, Steven Monacelli, on social media. He'll probably have some more info about where exactly this letter came from and who might be behind it.

• 3:36:32Speaker 03

  Texas Smith County Republican Precinct Chair Sarah Fields posted a picture of one of these mailers that she received and wrote, "People are getting pissed. Let this be a reminder to take your anger to the voting booth." Though a later follow-up post noted the suspicious origin of these pamphlets. Quote, "I just checked my messages. No less than 100 parents have messaged me, enraged over the mailers. Is this an op? If it is, it's not okay. It even gives tips on how to get emancipated," unquote. So it appears that this mailer was sent out specifically just to make. Make people mad. Some Texans upset enough to go to the polls, trying to mobilize anti-trans sentiment to get them to vote for the Republicans.

• 3:37:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. It's an extension of a theme, I guess. In some other, I guess, transgender-related news, earlier this month, the New York City Health Department announced a plan to spend $9 million to provide gender-affirming care to minors after two hospitals in the city, NYU Langone and Mount Sinai, caved to pressure from the Trump administration and cut services to trans youth. This funding is set to go into effect early next year, likely partnering with Callan Lord, which is a local LGBTQ hospital system in the city. And as of the day of recording this, Wednesday, October 21st, the Supreme Court, at least temporarily, blocked the Trump administration from denying gender-affirming care to trans prisoners.

• 3:38:01Speaker 03

  This was just a two-sentence unsigned order, which leaves in place a previous court order from a US District Judge in DC, which originally blocked the Bureau of Prisons' new policy going into effect, which would have taken away trans prisoners' gender-affirming care, including their health care. The second sentence of this two-sentence order from the Supreme Court reads, quote, "Justice Thomas and Justice Alito would grant the application for stay," meaning that these two justices would have let the new anti-trans policy from the Bureau of Prisons go into effect. So the fact that those two are singled out is interesting.

• 3:38:42Speaker 03

  You could interpret this possibly as like a 7-2 ruling, but there's really no legal justification given. It is just two sentences. It's the shortest, like, shadow docket ruling I've seen. We'll see what happens going forward. Yeah, glad we got a good one. Yeah, we got another small thing that literally broke while we were doing this. Great. So San Diego City Council Committee voted on Wednesday to rescind the ALPR use policy. That doesn't take ALPRs, like, completely out in San Diego. It means that any future contract would have to go through the whole process again, right? Including this, like, privacy review board. That is automated license plate readers?

• 3:39:23Speaker 03

  Readers, yeah, flock cameras, in the colloquial, but in this case, and other analogues, right? A lot of places said, oh, yeah, we're counseling flock, and then gone to Axon or another provider. Switched to Axon. Yeah, that's the move. Yeah. Bravely, Mayor Todd Gloria has immediately stepped in to put himself between the flock cameras and the people of San Diego, like the hero he is. Todd Gloria has cloned himself and is personally standing in front of every license plate reader. Most useful thing he's ever done. Todd Gloria is watching. Wait, would that work? Are clones people? Could we just do that with the flock cameras? I don't know, somebody get to work on that. A flock of tods. Give everyone, instead of a digital twin, everybody just has a clone twin that stands in front of the flock cameras?

• 3:40:09Speaker 03

  Just constantly flipping them off. Oh, yeah, Todd said, "Automated license plate readers are helping San Diego police solve serious crimes, cover stolen vehicles and property, and locate missing people. Taking this proven tool away from our offices will be a serious mistake and step backwards for public safety. Shut the fuck up, Todd Gloria."

• 3:40:26Speaker 03

  A number of people in San Diego have been wrongly arrested and detained because of flock cameras, right? People will remember that San Diego police had the vehicle description and number plate for the people who shot up the Islamic Center of San Diego, the mosque, right? Four hours and they did fuck all. Not one of the cops engaged those people, right? The only person who stepped up, who kept that community safe were people who were already at that mosque, two of whom died in the act of stopping the shooter killing more people. Surveillance is not safety. That is not the same thing. And it is particularly pathetic for our mayor, right? Who was shouted down at a press conference that night at the ICSD to attempt to lie about

• 3:41:11Speaker 03

  this when he has failed our city so badly. Fuck this guy. Like I, there is very little nice I have to say about Todd Clorier. Let's move on, I guess, to other contract shit. ICE has issued a no bid extension to the contract that I'm pretty sure it's Amentum Services has to keep running East Montana. I know what the company is called. I'm just, I'm guessing that's how they pronounce it. It could be Almentum, but I don't really care. In the justification, they say, quote, "Amentum owns and controls key facility infrastructure and operational assets at Camp East Montana. These assets include temporary housing units, security systems, generators, food service equipment, and other infrastructure necessary to operate this facility. Because of this ownership and operational control, Amentum uniquely possesses the

• 3:41:55Speaker 03

  ability to continue services without a break in performance. No other vendor can assume responsibility for the facility and provide the required services without substantial transition time, duplicative cost, operational disruption, and unacceptable risk to detainee welfare and mission continuity." They then go on to mention the Office of the Inspector General report on the horrific conditions there, including three deaths and the destruction of evidence in one of those cases. They say, quote, "Recent oversight by the ICE Office of Detention Oversight yielded a preliminary report identifying more findings. These circumstances created and contributed to a need for immediate contractual action to protect any detainees and staff and ensure performance under ICE standards." So they are renewing and extending this contract, right?

• 3:42:39Speaker 03

  For this agency, which is remarkably bad among ICE contractors, among immigration detention, right? This contract is vast. It has a base period of seven months, followed by a 12 months option and then two six months options. The payout for these, and then there's, there's quite a lot of redactions in this. A redacted item on the budget, combined with all these extensions, would together be $2.8 billion. Jesus. Yeah, this is for a tent camp, right? On a military base. So like these people are not having to build buildings, no, they have to maintain their tent camp, right? But they also don't own the land. Like they're doing this as a contractor on a, on a military base.

• 3:43:22Speaker 02

  That's crazy. I mean, you're left to wonder how much of this whole thing is like state subsidies for like allies for the Republican Party or like it's, it's just, it seems.

• 3:43:33Speaker 03

  I mean, that's a lot of stuff right now.

• 3:43:35Speaker 02

  Beyond the morality of like what's going on, it seems like a wildly inefficient use of funds.

• 3:43:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, what's particularly remarkable, I don't think Amentum had ever, we've reported on this before, but I'm pretty sure at the time we reported that they, they, this isn't what they do or they hadn't done this before. This is going to be the biggest contract by orders of magnitude they've ever had. Also, the monthly rate escalates from 68 million a month to 97 million a month.

• 3:43:59Speaker 02

  Whoa.

• 3:44:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, maybe Trump's just gonna go after it a bit more with inflation, you know, maybe he's gonna invade some more places that make oil and everything's gonna get more expensive. Maybe that's what they're predicting, but like, it could also be that they plan to scale up this facility, right?

• 3:44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:44:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is remarkable. Like this one hasn't had as much reporting, I don't think, as some of the Geo Group and Core Civic Facilities because it's harder to, right? Because it, yeah, like it's hard for people to protest outside. Often we find out about things by like either migrants shouting them out over the walls or like writing notes and tossing them out. So we haven't heard as much about this, but like the conditions we have heard in that report were horrific. And nonetheless, these guys are about to net a massive bounty. Talking of bounties, is it time for us to make some money with an advertising break?

• 3:44:52Speaker 02

  I'm afraid of this.

• 3:44:53Speaker 03

  Yes. Nice.

• 3:45:06Speaker 03

  And we're back. So first, kind of a quick story, and this is actually a huge story. It might wind up being one of the biggest ones we've covered in the last few months, but at the moment, there's just not a ton out in terms of like knowing what the consequences are going to be. But there was a massive vulnerability revealed in PHP this week. PHP, which stands for Personal Homepage, is a scripting language used to develop websites, like most of the websites in one way or another. I think like 70% of the internet these days relies on PHP in some way, you know, the aspects of the website or whatever, like I still use it. WordPress uses it heavily, so do platforms like Drupal and Magneto. It wouldn't be too far off to view PHP as a foundation level of the modern internet.

• 3:45:50Speaker 03

  Late Tuesday, a massive vulnerability was discovered in PHP by AI systems. Two vulnerabilities actually were found and without getting technical, these could provide bad actors with a way to run whatever code they want on an affected server without even logging in. One thing a bad actor could do with this is create a backdoor or edit the content of a website to embed malicious code. This is a tremendously like broad reaching and severe vulnerability. Yeah. Now, when stuff like this gets found, the ideal thing to do is to inform, you know, the people who maintain PHP or whatever, or whatever thing a vulnerability has been found in, so they can patch it before it becomes known to everybody that there's this massive vulnerability, but that's not what happened. The vulnerability was leaked hours before the patch came out.

• 3:46:32Speaker 03

  The patch was set for Wednesday and on Tuesday, like late afternoon, early evening, everyone knew that there was a vulnerability. And so every major website on the planet scrambled, taking themselves down or disabling PHP related parts of the website and applying emergency fixes. Like the Netherlands, like a bunch of government websites went down, 4chan was down, a bunch of like very large and influential websites were down, including a lot of government sites. You've probably noticed this to some extent. I want to quote now from an article by Malwarebyte Labs. "The longer term concern is forgotten infrastructure, abandoned websites, unsupported applications, and connected devices with PHP-based management interfaces. Vulnerable installations may remain exposed if nobody maintains them or a vendor no longer supplies updates."

• 3:47:14Speaker 03

  So it's too, way too early to know what the long-term impacts of all the, this vulnerabilities and of like the hacks that are going to be carried out as a result of these vulnerabilities will be, but this is a big story. You should expect to hear a lot more in the near future. This is an example of how, you know, one of the things these AI tools have done is that hacking has always involved a lot of automated stuff, like running scripts and whatnot to search for vulnerabilities and AI has allowed us to supercharge the speed at which vulnerabilities are found and exploited. And so shit like this is going to become much more common. This is all part of like the decreasing reliability with which we'll all be able to access and utilize the internet safely. And yeah, it's just kind of worth keeping an eye on this, even though it's not clear what the fallout entirely is going to be at this point.

• 3:47:59Speaker 02

  Scary.

• 3:48:01Speaker 03

  But everybody you know in digital security says this is a very big deal. So yeah, it's real bad. Heads on a swivel. Family. So moving outside of the internet and over to a place that has no internet, let's talk about Canada. Garrison, is that accurate? Does Canada not have the internet?

• 3:48:17Speaker 02

  I don't know, man.

• 3:48:19Speaker 03

  You don't know? Okay, that's good. Good to know. That's our Canadian correspondent, Garrison Davis.

• 3:48:22Speaker 02

  Thanks. Yeah. Sorry. I'll be up there to report in person in a few months, so.

• 3:48:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. If you can text me, we'll know there's internet. Well, actually, that's not the internet.

• 3:48:31Speaker 02

  That's good. That's good.

• 3:48:32Speaker 03

  Those of you who pay attention to the most important goings on of our neighbors to the north, and I mean Canadians, not Yankees for our southern listeners, know that the province of Alberta just held a referendum on whether or not to hold a binding referendum on separating from Canada. And the separatists failed, just like in Star Wars. Also, like in Star Wars, the roots of the Alberta secession movement have a lot to do with complex issues of trade, particularly the oil and gas trade. In 1969, only about 5% of Albertans expressed interest in discussing separation from Canada during a provincial poll. But then came the 1970s and the 1973 oil crisis, which was sparked by the Yom Kipper War and then OPEC getting big mad. That OPEC got really mad a couple of times in the seventies and there were a bunch of fuel shocks.

• 3:49:14Speaker 03

  If you grew up in like the time most of the people in this podcast did, and you went to like an elementary or a middle school or any kind of public school that had no windows, that's because it was probably built around this period and they were like desperate to find ways to reduce heating and cooling costs.

• 3:49:30Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 3:49:30Speaker 03

  And another impact that those, those fuel shocks had was that it caused a lot of North America to go like, well, I guess we have to exploit our own oil reserves much more because we cannot rely on the stuff we had been relying on. This helps spur massive and rapid growth in the North American oil sector, obviously across the United States, but in Canada as well. This was a big deal in Canada because Alberta happens to be one of the most oil-rich places on planet Earth. The province alone has the fourth highest proven reserves of oil on planet Earth, according to a 2025 report by a consulting firm, McDaniel and Associates. And we actually didn't, like, this is actually a change in terms of what we knew about Alberta's oil reserves. They keep going up as we like figure out how to get better at, you know, it's a mix

• 3:50:12Speaker 03

  of hydraulic fracking and like better science and whatnot, but they're, they're getting better at finding out and exploiting like how much oil there is in Alberta. About 2 million more barrels of oil were recently discovered in Alberta, thanks to a mix of hydraulic fracturing and new technology for drilling wells. For a write-up by the Bo Report, "Oil sands production has grown substantially in the past decade, up 70% from 2 million to 3.4 million barrels per day. The growth of several projects has increased confidence in the commercial viability of developing additional lands." Now, this is significant for a couple of reasons, but one thing that has grown over the past few decades alongside Alberta's proven oil reserves is secessionist or separatist sentiment. There are different opinions among those people about what should be done when

• 3:50:55Speaker 03

  and if Alberta separates, but a decent chunk of them do support joining the United States. And I don't think it takes a lot of imagining to wonder why some people in the charge of the United States government right now might support that. To continue with that Bo Report analysis, since the shale revolution in 2008, there's been a massive growth from North America and the rest of the world hasn't grown oil production. We're now seeing that the tight plays in the US aren't infinite and are showing signs of plateauing. Specifically, when we look at the United States' largest oil play, the Permian, it has essentially been flat at 5.5 million barrels per day since December of 2023. Flat production from the Permian is contrary to the previous decade, where we saw tight oil production grow by half a million barrels per day per year. Oil demand has gone up by about a million barrels

• 3:51:40Speaker 03

  a day per year for the last several decades, and at this point, we do expect that to continue, at least in the very near term. Given the growing demand for oil and stagnation in supply growth since the shale revolution, it's expected that Alberta's oil sands reserves will become increasingly critical. As global oil demand continues to rise and with limited growth and production from other sources, oil sands reserves will be relied upon more heavily. So Alberta is one of the places in North America that we keep finding more oil, and as we start to plateau in the United States, people in the US government, particularly in a Trump administration, are looking at Alberta as a potential crucial resource for the future. So while there's a lot of wackiness around the Alberta secession movement, as there is with any secession movement in the US or in Canada, there's also major geopolitical

• 3:52:25Speaker 03

  implications behind the mere discussion of Alberton independence, and the prize of Alberton oil was considered well worth some scheming by people in the Trump administration. The movement had gotten supercharged first during a conflict in the early 1980s between then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the Alberton Premier Peter Lahey, who disagreed about how fair Canada's revenue-sharing energy policy was. Trudeau argued that the federal government needed to control Canada's natural resources and sought to impose further taxes on oil and gas revenues. Lahey threatened to cut production in response to new taxes. Forty-nine percent of respondents in a 1981 poll by the Canada West Foundation agreed that Western Canadians benefited so little from membership in the Canadian state that independence made sense. And in the decades since, the issue has remained bubbling in

• 3:53:09Speaker 03

  the background, like crude. It was ignited in the modern era in 2015, when Pierre Trudeau's son, Justin, became the Prime Minister. And to make a long story short, over the last several years, things have really come to a head. Separatist parties, who had attracted like 1% or 2% of the vote previously, were supercharged by COVID-19 restrictions. And then the fact that Trump's been launching a trade war and talking about making Canada the 51st state, that's also helped kind of clamp down on some of the separatist sentiment. It's a big part of what Prime Minister Carney has used to sort of like argue that Canadians need to stand together in this time. And he's right, that the separatist movement is being like deliberately pushed by a whole bunch of people in the United States. Now, obviously, the most direct reason why this referendum came about is because in May, Alberton Premier

• 3:53:54Speaker 03

  Danielle Smith announced that the independence question would come to a vote. She supported a unified Canada, but was willing to have a referendum vote because over 300,000 Albertans had signed a petition asking for a referendum. The petition's signatures had been gathered after a mass town hall campaign by pro-separation citizens. It was blocked by a court for reasons to do with Indigenous rights initially, but was allowed to go through. Voters in this referendum had a number of choices to make, not just as to whether or not to do a binding referendum, although first, they did have to choose, do we remain with Canada or do we start the process of holding a binding separation referendum. But per the BBC, quote, "There are nine other questions that have been put to voters, though they have been overshadowed by the one on independence. They deal with two main topics, immigration

• 3:54:36Speaker 03

  and constitutional matters. For the most part, all of them seek to ask Albertons about options to gain autonomy from Ottawa. Voters were also asked, for example, if they wanted more control on immigration and whether people should have to provide proof of citizenship to vote. US interests repeatedly attempted to influence the election in a number of ways. A write-up in McLean's documents how US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant held an interview with Jack Posobiec, where he said, 'I think we should let them come down into the US. Alberta is a natural partner for the US,' rumor that they may have a referendum on whether they want to stay in the US or not. This was taken very seriously by Canadians as a statement of US support for intervention in Canadian politics, consistent with the 2025 national security strategy our regime released, which revealed what's known as the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine."

• 3:55:20Speaker 02

  The Don Ro doctrine?

• 3:55:21Speaker 03

  Yeah. This, per the White House, put Canada in the US sphere of influence. As McLean's wrote, quote, "The document was read with dread in Ottawa. The strategy has, of course, played out in rhetoric and policy. The administration wants a say on Canada's trade agreements. It wants specialized access to resources, and it has zero regard for notions of sovereignty, except, it seems, when it comes to Alberta." Now, the most direct US influence in this whole process so far has been online. Tons of MAGA-affiliated accounts pushed Alberton's secession. Benny Johnson suggested taking Alberta militarily, Stephen Crowder supported Alberton's statehood, all sorts of stupid shit. A McGill study found pro-independence accounts on social media outperformed anti-independence

• 3:56:02Speaker 03

  accounts by an 8 to 1 ratio, which is pretty clear evidence of interference by social media companies, I would say. Right before the referendum, public interest Alberta called for an inquiry into foreign interference in Alberta's secession referendum after it was found that Alberton's separatist leaders held a meeting with US Republican political strategists in the province about how to push the referendum. This is all very fucked up, and Canadians should be pissed at us. The good news is that, for now, things did not go MAGA's way, did not go the Trump administration's way. Albertons voted overwhelmingly to stay part of Canada. Nearly 2 million people cast their ballots, and so far, about 75% of them look to have supported remaining Canadian. I think we'll be continuing to

• 3:56:45Speaker 03

  cover aspects of this in the future, but that's what you need to know right now.

• 3:56:48Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 3:56:49Speaker 03

  Anything to add, Gare?

• 3:56:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm glad that Alberta voted to not have a vote on whether to leave Canada.

• 3:56:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:56:57Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, though, some of the more confusingly worded referendum questions on stuff like immigration were not as unanimous. The early count on a bunch of those immigration questions leans yes in favor of pursuing more restrictions, but the margins on those are pretty small, and votes from cities like Edmonton and Calgary are still coming in and could theoretically switch those over, but they'd have to go up a couple percent. Some of the other questions on like changes to the constitution have already flipped from yes to no, as we've been getting in more results from the cities. But these other

• 3:57:40Speaker 02

  questions are pretty close. We don't have full results quite yet. So although US interference did not produce the result on separation that MAGA may have wanted, the type of immigration rhetoric that spreads on social media is not, you know, unique to the United States. There aren't really any kind of quote-unquote "Western" country right now. There's pretty ugly stuff everywhere. But yeah, in terms of the separation referendums, that all lines up with what I've been reading in the old CBC and what I've been talking with my family about. Because, uh, yeah, they've been voting.

• 3:58:18Speaker 03

  They're voting. I don't know, Canada, I'm gonna give you the same advice I give every country these days. Invest in long-range missile defenses.

• 3:58:25Speaker 02

  Well, I don't, I don't know if that's the best use of, uh, of Canadian state money.

• 3:58:33Speaker 03

  It might be.

• 3:58:34Speaker 02

  There are some countries that really do like this. But, but no, I mean, Alberta really is the heart of, of the, of the kind of conservative, conservative movement in Canada right now. This is where like, you know, like the, the trucker convoy was, was organized, all of those, all those many years ago.

• 3:58:53Speaker 03

  It is one of three provinces I've heard described as Canada's Texas.

• 3:58:57Speaker 02

  It is, that's the only one that's accurate, right? People could say like, maybe like Manitoba or Saskatchewan. They're lying. Those are obviously like Midwest states.

• 3:59:06Speaker 03

  Nova Scotia's got a little bit of Texas in it, but, but only a little.

• 3:59:09Speaker 02

  Interesting. No, it's, it's, it's definitely Alberta. I mean, my family lives surrounded by oil derricks. It is, it's quite incredible. Should we stick to non-US countries and pivot to Mia Wong? So, speaking of places where people are pissed off at the Trump administration, we are moving to our dispatches from a world in revolt, and we're moving first to Albania, which has seen staggeringly large protests over the last roughly a week. It's very difficult to get good numbers on how big the Albanian protests are. I will say, just off the top, as a indication-

• 3:59:53Speaker 03

  Of how successful they've been, they lit the Supreme Court on fire. They lit part of the Albanian Central Bank on fire. So the protests that have rocked Albania over the last week are a massive escalation of ongoing protests over a basically city-sized seaside real estate development tied to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, whose firm, Affinity Partners. Okay, so this is where it gets murky because they've been granted special investment status by the government. They also talked about this development project. Like, there's like a video of, I think on Instagram of them talking about it and how they like discovered this place when they went on vacation. It's kind of unclear exactly the extent to which they are involved in it. I don't know.

• 4:00:38Speaker 03

  No one seems to exactly know how closely tied they're in. I've seen some reports, like the rumor is that they're just straight up selling it to Kushner's, like, firm, right? This development is going to be built on a wildlife reserve that is home to a whole bunch of animals like sea turtles and importantly, a bunch of flamingos, which has led to this, you know, these protests, the original version of these protests being dubbed the Flamingo Revolution. Nice. But the protests kicked into a higher gear in the last week. As I mentioned before, they've, the protesters have been extremely successful in combating security forces. Again, they lit the Supreme Court on fire. They have spread rapidly across the country. Albania's nominally Socialist Party president has blamed conservatives and also Iran for

• 4:01:22Speaker 03

  fomenting the protests. But this rings somewhat hollow, given that a very prominent young member of his own party, who he had handpicked to run at like age 25, also joined the protest during the original phase of it. And the intensification of these protests and their expansion from being sort of solely about this real estate development to being about the things that all of the rest of the uprisings are about, which is to say unemployment, you know, terrible education, like bad economic prospects are very directly linked to the other uprisings in France, Spain, India, and other places. People, yeah, people are directly inspired when, you know, when you read interviews of them in the streets, they're directly inspired by what, I don't know if I like

• 4:02:07Speaker 03

  the name, the Gen Z revolt, but that's kind of what it's being called. Yeah, and there is this massive, like, generational, like, conflict element of these protests. Yeah. Yeah, although again, like, it's worth noting that, like, a lot of the people involved in this are a lot older than that. Like, I think, I think part of what's happening is like, it's like the students who are the first people to take the street and then everyone else goes with them. And that tends to be the case, like, generally, right? Like, it's generally young people who are just a bit less risk averse and Yep. who tend to do those things. They have less stake in the, in ways continuing exactly how they are. Yeah, and more to gain, right? Like, they have the rest of their lives to deal with this shit. Yeah. Yep.

• 4:02:51Speaker 03

  And, you know, I think this is actually very encouraging that you're seeing very, very deliberate sort of tying of these protests to the protests going on in other countries in, in a way that wasn't really true of like the 2018, 2019, 2020 wave of protests. And it hearkens back to the sort of internationalism of 2011, where you would have things like protesters who were occupying, uh, Tahrir Square would be like ordering pizzas for striking teachers in Wisconsin, like that kind of, this is, this is closer, not fully there, but closer to that kind of arrow of solidarity between these movements. And a lot of that is because, you know, the people taking the streets are seeing the same economic conditions everywhere and are seeing people, like, go fight to break, and

• 4:03:33Speaker 03

  that helps to break the passivity of, you know, the passivity of the hour and get people into the streets. Speaking of getting people into the streets, we're going to turn from Albania to France, where the question in France for the last few weeks had been fairly simple. The question was, will the rest of French society join the French students in the streets or would they let the student movement be crushed alone? And this weekend, to its credit, French society issued a fairly resounding answer. Yes, we are going to go into the streets. And the result of that was, over the weekend, France saw the largest protest the country has, has seen since at minimum the peak of the Gilets Jaunes, like, yellow vest uprising,

• 4:04:16Speaker 03

  possibly larger, and it's been defined by a level of militancy that even in a nation defined by the riot is almost more characteristic of a small revolution than a large protest. The Gilets Jaunes, like, they've set up a whole website to convene people to protest, and they have another one coming up on the 24th. Yeah, yeah, and that, that's part of what's been happening here is that, you know, the, the student protests survived long enough for the dates that the yellow vest had set up. And, and what, what this has caused is a huge swath of both the French left and the French working class out there. You're seeing everyone from, like, Prouls and, like, like, you know, French territories and Réunion in Guadalupe, where, like, in Guadalupe, people seem to be, like, shooting

• 4:05:01Speaker 03

  at police stations and stuff, to, you know, you have the remains of the yellow vests. And in something that is genuinely sort of remarkable for French society, you're seeing both the white and non-white French working classes go out at the same time, which is something that very, very rarely happens. Usually when one segment goes out, the other one doesn't. So if you look at, like, the 20, you know, the riots in 2023 against, like, police killings, were probably the most, like, militant, like, street movement you've seen in France in ages, but it was just the non-white workers going out. And this time, it's been both, partially because the student movement was born in a bunch of working-class suburbs of Paris, but then spread to the rest of Paris and the rest of the country.

• 4:05:43Speaker 03

  You've been seeing a sort of alliance here in a way that you haven't in a long time. And the consequence of this is that when enough of the French working class goes out together, you know, you can start doing the thing that they're doing right now, which is burying down city halls. And, you know, you can see this, when you read accounts from people on the ground, it doesn't read like an account of, you know, even a pretty militant French protest. Like, it reads like something out of, like, 1848. You're, you're reading things like, quote, "Thousands of people are in the Elise district setting up barricades." These are, these are the largest mobilizations we've seen this decade. It's probably, it's hard to get good numbers of, like, the peak of the Gilets Jaunes. The government is estimating 500,000.

• 4:06:26Speaker 03

  The unions estimate 800,000, which I think is much closer. I've seen estimates up into the millions. But this was also a massive shock to the government. The government had been projecting that about 100,000 people would come out. They were projecting the movement was about to die. And then suddenly, you know, eight to 10 times as many people as the government thought was going to be out came out. Yeah, and this is also surprising to some extent in that this uprising differs a lot from the last half decade of anti-austerity protests and general strikes, right? There have been a lot of, you know, of, of general strikes in the last, like, half a decade, but the call for this didn't come out from the unions. You know, it came out from a whole bunch of decentralized networks, including the sort of yellow vest things, including the student movement networks.

• 4:07:08Speaker 03

  And because of that, it was able to put into the streets almost in order of magnitude more people than anyone else has been able to call out. And it puts the French state in a somewhat difficult position because there isn't really a force that can just rein the protests in, in a way that you had with the French, with the general strikes, where you can negotiate with the unions. There's just an unbelievable number of extremely angry people in the streets, and we're going to see how the protest continues to escalate this weekend. I'm going to move to a couple of kind of small ones. So in Tunisia, we had Tunisia's largest union calling a pretty large anti-government protest, which is pretty notable because, so Tunisia's been under the rule of, like,

• 4:07:53Speaker 03

  effectively a dictator who came in promising to sort of, like, end the rampant corruption and unemployment of the sort of post-revolutionary in Tunisia. That hasn't happened, but Tite has been, like, incredibly effective at repressing protests and repressing opposition. And this is the largest group, like, group of people anyone's been able to put in the streets in, basically, since he came to power. So we're going to be monitoring what's happening there. It's also worth mentioning what's going on in Italy, where there have been some small protests in the north. I say small, very effective, but small protests in the north that, like, managed to sack a whole bunch of Milan shopping district, which pissed off the government enormously. So there's a troop deployment going on in Milan.

• 4:08:36Speaker 03

  But I think more interestingly are the protests happening in the south at the same time, where there's a set of roadblocks that are being maintained as part of a truckers protest over sort of rising diesel. Diesel prices are skyrocketing, just, there just isn't diesel to buy as well, which is, which means that a bunch of the trucking sector that, you know, fuels the sort of export economy of the agricultural parts of southern Italy are collapsing because the truckers who are independent contractors can't afford diesel. And that's been, you know, crushing their industry. And so we're starting to see blockades of the roads leading up to ports. And that's something that I think can escalate because there just has not really been a government solution to these problems.

• 4:09:17Speaker 03

  Finally, I want to talk about Indonesia, where on Tuesday, the 19th, or yesterday as we're recording this, the protest sort of begun in earnest against the country's increasingly embattled right-wing president, Prabowo Subianto, who is a former general and a former minister of defense and who came in on a very sort of, like, right-wing, very fascist platform. Subianto has come under fire, and I use that term quite literally here, for his failure to even vaguely contain a massive series of wildfires in Sumatra and Borneo that have been going on since July. So this is not a situation where people are mad at the government for not being able to control the weather.

• 4:09:58Speaker 03

  This is, these fires have been going on for four months, and they have covered not just Indonesia, but a broad swath of the entire region, like, in, in these clouds of toxic smoke. And I mean, like, these clouds of toxic smoke are reaching Vietnam, right? And this has been going on for four months now, and the government has not been able to put them out. People are extremely pissed. I'm going to quote here from Arab News, quote, "The Ministry of Health, this is just, just in Indonesia, the Ministry of Health has recorded at least 277,000 cases of acute respiratory infection related to the fires so far, of which 60,000 are children under five." So this has pushed people into the streets in the last couple of days. Again, this is, this is a set of protests that begun with students, like, hearkening

• 4:10:43Speaker 03

  to the student protests across the world. The government has said it will deploy 9,000 police officers to crush the protests. It's unclear exactly how this is going to go because we're in effectively day two of them as we're recording. Yeah, and we will keep you informed as that situation unfolds. Let's go on one more ad break and then return for two more important stories.

• 4:11:15Speaker 03

  So talking of like a world in World on Fire. Yeah. Let's talk about Iran and Ukraine, right? So the UK MTO's report, Maritime Trade Office, I believe, indicated that the Maritime Reporting Agency have struggled to, well, I'm just going to quote from it, "struggling to accurately report true numbers of attacks, with majority of vessels refusing to report to UK MTO." And then in that bullet point, "UK MTO is aware, via other sources, of incidents, but constrained on reporting through lack of verification." Despite this, they recorded more than a dozen attacks last week. And they, they recorded that transits are straight with 70% lower, Strait of Hormuz, obviously, than pre-conflict levels. While a lot of oil is moving through that east-west Saudi pipeline

• 4:12:00Speaker 03

  that bypasses Strait of Hormuz, it seems the move in Hormuz right now is to use smaller craft to offload to larger vessels. This, of course, is all happening at the same time that Ukraine has continued to use long-range drone attacks to batter Russian fuel infrastructure. Launched a bunch of larger-scale operations over the weekend. And it appears that the world's most divorced man is not happy about this. That's Elon Musk, if you're not familiar. Elon Musk has been gating the speed at which Ukraine can remain connected to the internet through his Starshield system. Started doing this about the 14th of October, which was last Wednesday for you listening on Friday.

• 4:12:45Speaker 03

  This has serious impacts for Ukrainian drone offensives. According to posts by Ukrainian officials on Telegram, they weren't warned about this. They already can't use the Starshield itself in Russian territory, but for other operations, it seems that they've been limited to connecting at speeds below 100 miles an hour, 160 kph. Like this 100 mile an hour limit seems to be something that they've now arrived at. But when this was first happening, people were experiencing connectivity issues even slower than that. So it's not uncommon for drones to be equipped with a terminal, right? Like a Starshield or Starlink terminal to either function as a relay or in some cases, like the actual drone that engages, the Russians will have a terminal on it.

• 4:13:30Speaker 03

  They also use them on interceptor drones. I'm not entirely clear how. Like, I can guess, but I'm not going to guess in public. If someone knows, I'd love to hear. Coolzone tips at proton.me. If you're not familiar with Starshield, Starshield is a gov/military version of Starlink. Sometimes it has access to faster speeds, certain specific satellites. They're not entirely interchangeable, but Starshield can use that Starlink network kind of plus, I guess. Ukraine has a couple of things. It has Starshield, and then it has a registry of Ukraine Ministry of Defense Starlink terminals, which seems to be a separate thing, right? But like, when, it took a long time, but eventually Starlink turned off support

• 4:14:14Speaker 03

  for the Starlink terminals the Russians were using, right? And it seems that they have this registry, which is oftentimes, units in Ukraine will either fundraise to purchase or have donated to them a Starlink terminal. And then they can go to Ministry of Defense and be like, "Hey, can you add this to your list?" And then it's treated differently by the company as, as opposed to like, and I guess the deal there is to avoid Russians buying it. And they don't want to be supportive of Russia invading Ukraine, at least in that way. On X.com, the everything website, Elon Musk claimed that, "Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military, and ultimately POTUS." Starlink, of course, is a commercial service owned by SpaceX.

• 4:14:59Speaker 03

  And this is, I'm continuing quote from Musk here. "Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defense activities cannot be used for offensive military action as doing so will be inappropriate for a commercial company." On the 17th of October, Marco Rubio then went on to claim that Ukraine does not have Starshield. On Starshield, what's going on? Because Elon Musk said it's up to the president. Well, Starshield or Starlink? Well, just both. Well, yeah, I know, it's confusing. So Starlink is a commercial product, okay? And, and so it's regulated and handled as a commercial product. Starshield is a defense product, a military product. And as I said, I mean, that, that is something that, that we have, the military, United States military uses.

• 4:15:42Speaker 03

  It's not at this moment available to Ukraine, and that's under conversation. It's under discussion right now of how they would want to use it. No, but did the US, did the US have anything to do with it not working in Ukraine at the moment? Zelensky said it was deliberate. Well, I don't know what Zelensky said. I'm not sure Zelensky knows what he's talking about, but it wasn't deliberate. We had nothing to do with it. I don't, I don't, the United States, nobody ordered that Starlink speed to be slowed down. So subsequently, The Wall Street Journal reported that, "A person familiar with the situation said Musk talked to multiple senior administration officials, including with Trump, before imposing the new speed cap, which Ukrainian officials said had allowed Russian missiles to evade their defenses." Tensions between the United States and Ukraine are really growing right now. Zelensky has claimed that Trump administration has cut intelligence support,

• 4:16:27Speaker 03

  which has resulted in failing to track missile strikes into Ukraine. Trump has claimed the US still shares intelligence, but he went on to say, "We've given a lot to Ukraine. You know what? We've given a lot to Ukraine. They've given nothing to us. Remember that. We've given hundreds of billions of dollars. I gave the javelins to Ukraine when he knocked out. That was me. Obama gave them pillows. You know the expression? Obama gave them sheets and pillows. Trump gave them the javelins. So don't tell me about Ukraine. We've given a lot to Ukraine. They've given us nothing." So Trump being pretty combative there. This seems to obviously be ignoring the minerals deal. People will remember the, like, very infamous

• 4:17:11Speaker 03

  Trump-Vance-Zelensky meeting at the White House, right? Which resulted in this minerals deal. Trump has also repeatedly tried to blame Zelensky for diesel prices. I want Zelensky to stop, and I want Putin. Now, if you tell me that Zelensky is again shooting at refineries, all he's doing is making the world oil price higher. And he is doing that. Well, I think that's a disgrace. There's plenty of other targets. They don't have to hit, there are a lot of targets that you can hit. But when you shoot at diesel refineries, where you make, you know, diesel oil, and we need that, and the world needs that, then he's not doing a good service for the world. Failure of the convention in the English language to use one's voice going up to indicate a question, which is great.

• 4:17:56Speaker 03

  Of course, the far bigger issue is that Trump has started war with Iran, right? Which is the major issue. Enough fuel is more. Yeah, that's the actual reason, is the diesel shortage. I want to play this clip, though, because he really went in on Zelensky on Monday. I think it's time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine. Because what's happened? Very little land has moved, but a million people, a tremendous number of people are dead. They're losing their male population. Ukraine could have had this thing settled a long time ago. If he would have listened to me, and you remember the Oval Office, he would have had this settled a long time ago. Maybe it's time for Zelensky to get somebody else to negotiate.

• 4:18:39Speaker 03

  So it seems that like this is Trump's move going into the midterm, right? Is that, among other things that he's tried to, to do to draw attention from what's happening to fuel prices because of his war in Iran, he's now trying to blame Zelensky. Just to wrap up on Starlink, Starlink is a reality of war everywhere today. It's used in Myanmar and in Ukraine and all over the world. And this has the really unfortunate effect of making so many people directly reliant on Elon Musk specifically. Like, it's a massive structural problem in conflict everywhere today. But Elon Musk, especially in cases where there's not Starshield, right? Where it's just Starlink, the commercial product.

• 4:19:25Speaker 03

  Elon Musk has the ability to turn off the connection to the outside world of so many places and movements. I'd be naive if I said I expected this to be the last time we saw that. So yep, that's what I got on conflict today. Before our last story, let's return to this show's namesake and discuss a new executive order. On Monday, First Lady Melania Trump made a rare public appearance with her husband to announce the creation of a new Women's Health Division within the NIH, the National Institutes of Health. According to Health and Human Services, "The division will advance research into conditions that uniquely or disproportionately affect women, strengthen accountability in federally funded research,

• 4:20:10Speaker 03

  and accelerate the translation of scientific discoveries into prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and clinical care." Trump created this new division via executive order. And this order also established a, "White House Women's Health Task Force", which, according to Trump, "will mobilize the entire federal government to coordinate action focused on improving women's health." Here is the president announcing who will run the Women's Health Task Force. And this task force will be led by Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy. That's a big one. And he's been fantastic, I have to tell you. He's a little different. We understand that, don't we?

• 4:20:55Speaker 03

  Cheryl, do we understand he is a little different? But that's what makes him good, I think. I'll let you know about it. That's what makes him good. I think. I'll let you know about it. Yeah. Very reassuring, very reassuring stuff. Ringing endorsement for the dude in charge of the Women's Health program. Now, this task force will also be co-chaired by Chief of Staff Suzy Willis. And the task force will also include Pete Hegseth, among other cabinet members, though. Hegseth is the first one mentioned in the order. So real star-studded cast there in charge of women's health. Jesus.

• 4:21:36Speaker 02

  Great stuff.

• 4:21:38Speaker 03

  I'll read from the executive order. "My administration is committed to ensuring that American women are receiving the best scientifically-supported medical advice in the world." Unquote. Now, the NIH already has an Office of Research on Women's Health, and has since the 90s. So it's unclear how the work of this division will differ from the Office. To quote the New York Times, "Alina Salganikov, the co-chairwoman of the committee that produced the 2024 National Academy of Medicine report on, 'Ending unequal..." ...treatment questioned how the new division would set research priorities and wondered whether it would end up focusing on the interests of the Make America Healthy

• 4:22:23Speaker 03

  Again movement, like non-hormonal approaches to contraception and fertility awareness, for example. Quote, "If you have a fixed amount of money and you're going to invest in new research, what are the trade-offs? What are you not funding in order to fund these new studies?" said Ms. Solganikoff, who now directs the Women's Health Policy Program at the nonprofit health research organization KFF. Unquote. The questionable priorities of this division is not the only issue. Trump's new order does not secure or promise any research funding. And just last month, Trump cut $810 million from HHS.

• 4:23:05Speaker 03

  This was funding that was already pre-approved by Congress. During the wave of Doge cuts last year, HHS slashed funding for the Women's Health Initiative, a decades-long, ongoing study focused on women's health, aging, menopause, and the effects of hormone therapy. After public pushback, funds for the initiative were reinstated, but the massive cuts to the NIH still have negatively impacted research into women's health. Trump has cut or froze over $3 billion in previously approved research grants, 2.3 billion of which from the NIH. And Trump's 2026 budget proposal sought to slash the NIH budget by 41%, a cut of almost

• 4:23:48Speaker 03

  $20 billion. Since Trump took office, NIH has been rewarding grants much, much more slowly, with HHS, the Office of Management and Budget, or the White House, flagging certain awards as, quote, "not acceptable," according to former NIH director Jennifer Toya in an interview with NPR. Toya explained how this interference from the White House has continued even after Doge, quote, "went away, but the other systems had been put in place to do the same function." Unquote. I think this is something that doesn't get reported on enough, even though Doge doesn't

• 4:24:28Speaker 03

  exist in name the same way it did in like the early months of the Trump administration. A lot of those same sorts of policies are being done by other institutions, other departments, other agencies, especially the Office of Management and Budget.

• 4:24:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:24:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. They've learned this, right? Like, it's the same with, like, we don't have Greg Bavino anymore, but we still have massive ICE detentions. Like, they've learned you can't do it quite as loud and proud. Yeah, they can shut down the most sort of obviously obstructive and disagreeable parts while still doing the same stuff, just quieter. Yeah. According to The Washington Post, in fiscal year 2025, there was a 31% drop in the number of NIH-funded projects that included the word "woman." Oof. An analysis by NPR found that between fiscal year '24 and '25, research areas that lost NIH funding included women's health, which was down almost $300 million. Jesus.

• 4:25:29Speaker 03

  Cervical cancer vaccine research, down $6 million. Stem cell research on umbilical cord, blood, and the placenta, down $6 million. And, quote, "violence against women" research, which was down $2 million. Not to mention the other sort of health disparity cuts in regards to minority populations. Last July, HHS imposed new conditions on Title X funding to align the program with conservative values. Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated specifically to family planning, providing birth control, STI testing, and related preventative health services. According to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led a coalition of 22 other states

• 4:26:13Speaker 03

  in suing to block the changes, to qualify for Title X funding under Trump, applicants would be required to align their programs, quote, "with a sweeping set of political priorities as a condition of receiving or keeping federal funds. The priorities include eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, excluding and stigmatizing transgender people, discouraging the use of contraception in favor of natural family planning, and requiring clinics to counsel all patients toward marriage and parenthood." Unquote. Jesus Christ. Insane stuff. Yeah. Yeah, this is like, we've spoken on this show before about Romania, you know, and

• 4:26:54Speaker 03

  their natalist policies, like, I don't know, that shit scares me a lot.

• 4:26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:27:00Speaker 03

  So, the idea of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and friends being put in charge of a new Women's Health Initiative and Task Force, not very reassuring, to say the least.

• 4:27:13Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:27:14Speaker 03

  Trump's executive order also revokes a Biden memorandum and an executive order from 2024 to, quote, "advance women's health research and innovation." The memo established the first-ever White House initiative on women's health research. And following Biden's executive order, the NIH dedicated $200 million to close the women's research gap. Biden then requested $12 billion from Congress, and ultimately, the administration invested about $1 billion into women's health research in just 10 months. So, the sort of novel aspects of this announcement from Trump is just cribbing something Biden already tried to do and actually provided funding for, while Trump's version has no

• 4:27:54Speaker 03

  funding, is in the wake of hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to funding for women's research, and is in control of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So, not great, to say the least.

• 4:28:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, really, really bad. It's... Yeah. Yeah.

• 4:28:12Speaker 03

  Other reporting from The Times has noted how this announcement is, you know, just weeks away from the midterms, and Trump is polling at like 30% among women. And this could be some sort of ploy to, like, get some more support for the administration going into the midterms. I don't know if that's part of the intent, but the timing has been highlighted.

• 4:28:33Speaker 02

  Great stuff.

• 4:28:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, it seems such a weird one to go for before the midterms, because you're like giving a massive middle finger to half the population. Slightly more than half. But who am I? Previously, this had been a successful tactic for them.

• 4:28:47Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 4:28:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, that doesn't, for us, I believe. Here, it could happen here. Sweet. Would you like to email us? You can do so. It's [email protected]. Still, occasionally, a marketing company email will sneak through and earn a ban for its entire domain name. Oh, I did, I did actually specifically request marketing companies to send emails to that address last week when you were out, James. Fantastic. So, that might be my bad. I tried to stop. Fantastic. I tried to stop. Great. Yeah, thank you. I look forward to hearing more about how your fucking book about investing is going to make you a great fucking guest on our podcast, and that you haven't sent this to everyone else here at Has a Podcast. Great.

• 4:29:32Speaker 03

  Let's just, let's just clip out James saying, "I look forward to hearing more," and then throw that in every future episode, along with a, a link to the email.

• 4:29:40Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 4:29:41Speaker 03

  Put a trans girl on your couch. We reported the news. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

• 4:30:01Speaker 04

  It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow.

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• 4:32:28Speaker 03

  Welcome to IKEA.

• 4:32:31Speaker 04

  What's with the wind?

• 4:32:32Speaker 03

  Everyone's just been blown away by all the new products.

• 4:32:36Speaker 04

  Wow, is that?

• 4:32:37Speaker 03

  Yep, the Rascall card in the new red brown color.

• 4:32:40Speaker 04

  The price is amazing. And is that the Billy bookcase?

• 4:32:44Speaker 03

  A classic, and it comes in a new beautiful blue.

• 4:32:47Speaker 04

  Is my hair okay?

• 4:32:48Speaker 03

  Ah! Explore hundreds of new products this season when you shop in-store or online at ikea.us/discovernew. IKEA: Dream the Possibilities.

• 4:32:59Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.