It Could Happen Here Weekly 255

0:01 Call zone media. Hey, everybody.

0:04 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.

0:29 Hello, everyone.

0:29 My name is Danal Kurd, 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.

0:54 So I did.

0:55 But then I was accused after my remarks of downplaying anti-Semitism. 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 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

1:41 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 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

2:23 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 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 anti-Semitism. The Trump administration has been aided by recent Supreme Court rulings, particularly the cases of Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v.

3:02 Harvard.

3:03 These cases overturned the 2003 case of Greta v. 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 anti-Semitism, 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 anti-Semitism, which have indeed ballooned over the past two years. In their report titled, Discriminating Against Dissent, they found that most

3:47 government investigations of anti-Semitism, 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, all but one focus on speech critical of Israel. The report documents the surge in investigations since October 7th, 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 30th.

4:29 This was back in 2025. So the Trump administration has used both of these things, DEI and anti-Semitism, 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, 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

5:15 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.

5:36 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

6:13 an urgency in understanding how this impacts the quality of education in American universities for students, the quality of faculty research, the ability of universities to maintain their independence, and the role of universities in generating social mobility for marginalized people. 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 anti-Semitism, and I was also likened to neo-Nazis.

6:52 Why?

6:52 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 anti-Semitic 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 of Jews. That is anti-Palestinian racism. 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

7:42 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 Hurwitz and Walter White, writing for the American Bar Association, highlight how, quote, anti-Palestinian racism may also be Islamophobic, 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

8:25 whether they identify as secular, Muslim, Christian, Druze, or Jewish.

8:30 End quote.

8:32 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 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,

9:18 defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander, such as being inherently anti-Semitic, a terrorist threat-slash-sympathizer, or opposed to democratic values. And finally, political scientists Yasmin Aboulaban and Abigail Bakan 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.

9:44 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 were 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, 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

10:25 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 very serious function of racism, is distraction.

10:54 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.

11:26 The function is to start more immediately identifying it, pointing and calling it out, and distinguishing 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.

11:50 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, the Academic Freedom Initiative record 139 instances of employment retaliation.

12:20 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 20th, 2026, 62% of Title VI investigations at universities about antisemitism 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 cancelled. This is the state of affairs in higher ed.

12:56 Anti-Palestinian racism is rampant. But it's 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.

13:41 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...

14:10 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 districts. The president has promised to give each U.S. 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, D.C. Troops who National Guard officials say were not stationed there to guard the ballot boxes.

15:02 But voter intimidation through the presence of military, federal agents, or police officers at polling sites is a huge concern going into these midterms, especially as ICE is detaining both immigrants and U.S. 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.

15:39 also saying, quote, go ahead, try to intimidate them.

15:43 So we called the RNC early and said, hey, you know, if we're going to do this again, I don't want to wake up at 3, you know, go to bed at 2 a.m.

15:52 A winter and wake up at 4 a.m.

15:54 A loose, I'm kind of done with that.

15:57 And so in a van full of.

15:59 Ballots that shows up in the middle of the year, which I wish didn't happen. So what we got them to commit to was they're going to have a healthy voter integrity program. The fact that they've already hired a deputy told you how far ahead of the game.

16:16 We weren't that far before. And I've been telling them, you know what?

16:19 Let's put retired or off-duty police officers as our poll walkers in Detroit. Because go ahead, try to intimidate them. Please.

16:33 What's that? We're trying to find them.

16:35 I mean, they wouldn't be able to wear their uniforms, but they would, you know, all you got to do is open your jacket and you see the badge on the belt, right?

16:42 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.

17:13 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, 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.

17:58 who do not have citizenship documents like passports or birth certificates readily available. Trump's SAVE Act would also mandate 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 going to 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 at the Save Act being indefinitely stalled, he turned to other

18:54 means for similar ends. On March 31st, 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.

19:35 citizens 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 reform tracking, and 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 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,

20:35 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 and 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.

21:16 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 for states to file a challenge because the order hadn't yet gone into effect, and so the plaintiffs hadn't yet to suffer any injury. This was totally crazy and like totally defeats the entire point of the shadow docket. The whole point

22:05 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 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,

23:02 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 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

23:56 to suffer irreparable harm without a stay. And so the stay was granted, lifting the injunction. But 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.

24:25 But the order itself does not harm the states, so the district court lacked jurisdiction to bar the government from trying to implement it. 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 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.

25:15 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. 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.

26:02 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 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

26:51 issuing state, and the intelligent mail barcode. 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.

27:32 Any mail-in ballots.

27:34 Quote, there should be minimal to no delay between a 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 rules 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.

28:07 But the rule also states, quote, portal data will also be available, for verification 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. The published final rule says that the Postal Service is ready

29:01 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 to require states submit a list of eligible voters to this online portal and only transmit ballots to voters verified on the portal.

29:50 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 to succeed on the merits of its challenge. And this appeared to be a 7-2 ruling, with Samuel Alito penning a dissent, which was joined by Clarence Thomas. Though Brett Kavanaugh wrote a one-paragraph concurring opinion agreeing to let the injunction against the

30:44 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 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.

31:26 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. 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.

32:08 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 into 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 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 80s to verify the citizenship and immigration status of people applying for public benefits like Medicaid and food stamps.

33:02 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 to allow state and local authorities to 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.

33:29 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. 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

34:22 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 the stay. clearing the way for Trump to implement the new safe 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 safe 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

35:15 who are mistakenly removed from voter rolls due 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 SAFE 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 U.S., but because I later acquired U.S. citizenship through one of my parents, my Social Security number was does not correspond to my

36:12 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 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 rules and unable to exercise their right to vote. In the short,

37:03 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, 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

37:58 per Jackson's dissent, in Texas, one woman had her voter registration revoked completely without her knowledge, and two more had to provide proof of citizenship to maintain registered voter status. I really don't want to gloss over the fact that already in Texas, a U.S. 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 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

38:52 on the harms the 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. 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

39:46 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 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. 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,

40:48 DHS is authorized to request, receive, and send otherwise confidential information from the Social Security Administration. 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. 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. Quote, as the majority sees things, Congress's prohibiting interference with the disclosure of information regarding citizenship

41:46 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, quote, misreading the statutory text in a few important ways. Mainly, that these provisions don't empower citizens government agencies to take any affirmative action to overrule privacy protections, but rather they bar government entities, officials, persons, or agencies from unlawfully prohibiting

42:43 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. 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

43:37 distinction the dissent draws between laws and those tasked with enforcing them is illusory. Prohibitions necessarily include invoking a law 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 that would otherwise prohibit federal agencies from disclosing citizenship information.

44:35 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 said, 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 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

45:33 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, 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.

46:13 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 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 non-existent harm that the government experiences when it is prevented from taking an action that it likely lacks the authority to take.

46:59 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 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 U.S.

47:45 Citizens.

47:47 Beyond voter intimidation, the Trump administration and Republicans may also attempt to delegitimize election results based on allegations of fraud. 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 to 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

48:38 years before the 2028 election. 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. And whenever they decide, I do want to echo the opinion of Trump appointee

49:27 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 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. 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

50:22 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 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

51:14 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, 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. Then DHS said that

52:10 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 U.S.

52:26 Citizen.

52:28 Meanwhile, in Texas... save falsely flagged over 500 voters as non-citizens. Simply put, having DHS try to determine the eligibility of U.S. citizen voters doesn't seem like a good idea, and it doesn't seem like they are very good at it. 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.

53:00 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 dissuade U.S. 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.

54:07 Hi, everyone.

54:08 This is future Mick adding some stuff for less future Mick. we'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 for 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.

54:41 In mind while we were recording. Hope you enjoy it. Welcome, everyone.

54:47 Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the podcast of things falling apart and possibly how to put them back a little bit.

54:55 My name is Mick.

54:56 As expected, I'm here with James Stout because James is.

55:00 Always here with me.

55:02 But I'm also very happy to say hello to Molly Conger, who's also agreed to join.

55:07 How are you guys doing? 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 going to be fun.

55:19 I'm looking forward to whatever horrors we're about to learn.

55:23 Ah, yes.

55:24 I knew once I dove into this, I was like, okay, I need to light the Molly signal and make sure that I get you to come on as well.

55:30 You're about somebody else's Nazis for a change.

55:33 Yeah, exactly.

55:33 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.

55:50 Push through horrible shit.

55:51 That sounds xenophobic.

55:54 Anytime people are wanting to save a thing, like nine times out of ten, we've got to ask who they're saving it from. And if it's the presence of people who aren't white, that's... Why.

56:03 Do you think it needs to be saved?

56:04 Yeah.

56:05 Are you worried about the dilution of Aryan blood?

56:07 Oh, you're so on point, Molly.

56:12 Oh, God.

56:13 You have no idea.

56:15 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. I've put this 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.

56:42 So if anyone wants to reach me or If I do stuff incorrectly, you can contact me there. It's at two sober possums. 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 forthright enthusiasts can be funny when you just look at it 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

57:30 commit more acts of violence for.

57:32 Again? Again, yeah.

57:35 And it gets better because it's for a democratic proposal that was 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 and secure our borders, and protect the ethnocultural identity of European nations.

58:16 Oh dear.

58:17 My eyes are getting wider with every clause of that sentence.

58:20 Yeah, those are some trigger words.

58:22 Like those TikToks of like, you know, when you say like a dog's favorite words, you say, you want to go to the park? You want to get a treat? And the dog gets like progressively more alarmed.

58:30 Yeah, but then in a bad way. Yeah, that's me, but negative. Okay, well, it's not getting any better.

58:37 So at first, we're going to dive into the Save Europe Act itself, and then we're going to look at the European Citizens Initiative.

58:45 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 going to be the token dumb American here. I need you to explain to me what's that.

58:58 We'll get there because I've laid it out.

59:01 Because Europe is not a country.

59:03 No, no, no.

59:04 Europe is a state of mind, Molly.

59:06 Right.

59:08 And a band. Oh, really? is it the final countdown oh.

59:12 I've heard that at a sports event yeah i've.

59:16 Heard those words in the long long ago sometime but okay to make it a bit more clear for molly.

59:22 Specifically for the americans.

59:25 I'm not american so i can't i can't like banter like that It's a legislative request that has to be considered by the EU if certain conditions are met.

59:34 In the grander.

59:35 Machine of the EU, a citizens' initiative is a way for Europeans to directly influence laws through the collection of support and signatures.

59:44 So they've got a big petition going. They've got all the races in Europe to sign their petition.

59:48 Yeah, think of it like a petition on steroids or a protest that, for a change, cannot simply be ignored 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.

1:00:08 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.

1:00:21 I quote.

1:00:23 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.

1:00:41 Oh, there it is.

1:00:42 That's very clever. We want to respect the diversity of our beautiful, all these different white cultures.

1:00:51 Exactly.

1:00:52 That's cute.

1:00:53 The first time that a fascist has used the word diversity, not in a completely bad faith way.

1:00:57 Right.

1:00:59 Yeah, that's really cute of them. Just like there's so much diversity of all the different whites.

1:01:05 Yeah, yes.

1:01:06 We have to protect our cultural heritage.

1:01:07 Nothing but premium whites.

1:01:09 So at 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. 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.

1:01:43 Just the most puerile shit.

1:01:45 Come on.

1:01:46 I've been reading a lot of 20th century eugenics writing lately, 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. That's not how we use that phrase now.

1:02:02 This is still a giant problem in local journalism in the United States. I remember I was writing for Pointer, which if people aren't familiar, Pointer is like an institute of journalism, I think. It's like a journal about journalism. Meta. And I remember two reporters, I was writing about how people just can't stop saying that cops overdosed on fentanyl.

1:02:22 When they didn't, they had a panic attack. This is a problem. And it's a problem that it's 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 Journalists Association style guide suggests that you should generally put tribal affiliation afterwards. So I asked them and they got very upset. But I genuinely, if you're 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 using words accurately.

1:02:55 I think that should be disqualifying in itself if you're a journalist.

1:02:58 You're bad at your job.

1:02:59 Yeah, I find it really fucking annoying.

1:03:01 So it's interesting in that clause, right? So they're not just upset about illegal immigration, right? They're not just upset about refugees and asylum. They're saying legal and illegal. So right from the jump, they're saying illegal. 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.

1:03:18 It gets worse. Oh, good.

1:03:20 Good.

1:03:20 But it started very bad.

1:03:22 It started bad. Yeah.

1:03:24 They're not even pretending.

1:03:25 No, no.

1:03:25 You're starting like already knee deep in shit. And the more you wade through like the sewer.

1:03:30 We started with the Nuremberg laws.

1:03:34 Yes.

1:03:34 It's kind of a heated first sentence.

1:03:38 That was like genuinely one of my first thoughts.

1:03:40 Like.

1:03:41 Should shit go incredibly bad in Europe with shit like this, then this is something that will be brought up in whatever the new.

1:03:49 In the tribunals. Yeah.

1:03:51 Oh, yeah.

1:03:52 Yeah, when they're writing the history book.

1:03:53 I have that thought often.

1:03:54 Yeah.

1:03:55 I have that thought in my fantasies often.

1:03:57 Molly has a tribunals folder on her computer, which is... She's got a whole hard drive now.

1:04:03 Look, when they come, when they're ready, I have files. Just come get me.

1:04:07 You've got the receipts. Okay. Point four.

1:04:10 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.

1:04:25 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.

1:04:34 Yeah, and this pathetic concern trolling, like, oh, we the indigenous people are being colonized by people seeking fucking asylum.

1:04:43 Our beautiful, brave Teutonic ancestors are being replaced.

1:04:47 Grow up!

1:04:48 Like, I would accept it if they would just refer it back to, like, the original Celts before, like, the Christendom and the Romans came.

1:04:56 Like, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah. It's the people from Italy that they're really mad about.

1:05:01 We need to fucking, like, praise Tutatis and Katurix again from, like, the old Gallic days.

1:05:09 You know, I would respect that.

1:05:11 These probably are the same, like, fucking German neo-Nazis who still celebrate, like, Arminius Day.

1:05:16 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, maybe that's the diversity they're talking about, maybe.

1:05:31 I do love that inter-white racism. Like, the really niche stuff, like, are Macedonians white?

1:05:38 Yeah. Yeah, being someone who was a historian of Iberia for much of my 20s, it's wild. It's wild shit that you will see in, like, old-timey texts and from old-timey people at history conferences.

1:05:52 Oh, I'm talking about stuff I've seen on Stonefront.

1:05:55 Oh, yeah, that's also... Could be the same people. Probably.

1:05:58 They'll probably be in contact through a telegram group.

1:06:04 Sorry, we keep interrupting the document. Yeah, we've ruined it. That's fine.

1:06:11 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.

1:06:25 I was hoping we would get to birth rates.

1:06:27 Good, good.

1:06:27 I'm surprised it took all the way to number five. I mean, are you even a proper racist if you're not concerned about the fecundity of ethnic women?

1:06:37 Probably.

1:06:38 They're very worried about being outbred.

1:06:43 Yes, but for some reason, all the women promoting this are not having like 20 children 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 it points to 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.

1:07:08 Right.

1:07:09 You know, all the different romance languages, but God forbid we have too much diversity.

1:07:14 Yeah, exactly.

1:07:16 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?

1:07:29 I mean, they do keep a pretty strict hold on French. They're very worried about it. Yeah, yeah.

1:07:36 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. No.

1:07:50 Like, Or any word with SK in English is originally some Scandinavian origins there.

1:07:58 Like this isn't the first time anyone came to Europe. This isn't new.

1:08:02 Yeah.

1:08:02 Yeah.

1:08:02 People have been doing this for a minute. It's like if you are really good at like, probably not if you're really good at throwing, but you can definitely swim to North Africa from the European Union pretty easily. Well, yeah. Well, not easily. It'd be a pretty rough trip.

1:08:16 Between Spain and Morocco, I think it's the most doable.

1:08:20 Yeah, yeah. I'm sure a human could do it. People swim to France. No one knows why. To avoid Spain? I think if they're going from the United Kingdom, so it would be... People do this as a physical insurance challenge. Okay.

1:08:35 I thought they stopped letting people do it.

1:08:37 Quite possibly. I've not been following. I just remember when I was a kid, it would be a thing.

1:08:41 Oh, yeah.

1:08:42 They would like grease themselves and then swim the channel.

1:08:45 Yeah.

1:08:45 Okay.

1:08:46 Well, I do respect the English fleeing away from England to France where there's at least a proper cuisine present.

1:08:54 Damn. I'm sorry, James. I'm sorry.

1:08:57 Yeah. Yeah.

1:08:59 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?

1:09:09 Yes and no. But we'll get there. But I love that you're thinking ahead with me.

1:09:15 I just don't know how the government works over there, to be so honest.

1:09:19 We don't either.

1:09:20 Barely know how our.

1:09:21 Government works oh barely i think is the correct answer to that.

1:09:25 Yeah yeah yeah it doesn't if but i also still wanted to point out like with with the 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 some areas yeah Well, a lot of.

1:09:46 Those people of African descent in those countries are from countries that were colonized by the people who don't want them there.

1:09:54 Yeah.

1:09:55 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.

1:10:03 But that's exactly the point. Like if they're in Africa and they already speak the language, do they make the cut?

1:10:08 Well, no, it sounds like under 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 cultural heritage, our linguistic heritage. It's like, okay, well, what about people who grew up in a French colony in Africa? Are they not French? No, they're not white.

1:10:25 No, but that is exactly where it's leading.

1:10:29 And that's why, okay, they speak your language. They can have your religion. Is this enough?

1:10:33 Which is why this just sounds like the Nuremberg loss to me.

1:10:36 Like, honestly, we shouldn't even engage with these arguments because it just reduces any form of nuance or complexity to the barest fucking minimum.

1:10:45 They wrote racism by committee. They made a very fancy document to say we're very racist.

1:10:51 Oh.

1:10:52 Like, I checked the comments on the Save Europe website when I was working on this and would not recommend.

1:10:58 Oh, I bet.

1:11:00 Yeah.

1:11:01 Not great. But it's essentially just this bit. And we're going through it.

1:11:06 Like point three again, their demands, it's just grafting the great replacement theory, trying to get it considered under European law. And if you consider how large Europe is and how few people they would need to get this to be considered is absolutely baffling. But we'll get there because I'm trying to keep some sort of structure here.

1:11:30 Sorry, that's on me.

1:11:32 Now, I love how engaged you are, Molly.

1:11:34 So don't apologize. continue and also the whole notion of demographic replacement in in countries that barely exist for 200 years can you call this like your ancestral homeland.

1:11:47 There was no italy 200 years ago there was no germany 200 years ago like what grand historical narrative are you pretending exists here yeah 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.

1:12:07 And then at least there would be some historical accuracy to what they're claiming. But I dislike these people.

1:12:14 I think they're full of shit.

1:12:16 They very much are. So part three of the charter is about the demands that these people have of Europe and items they wish to see turned into law and policy. 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 1.

1:12:37 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. That's fucking mental.

1:13:05 We've done this before. We've done racist immigration quotas before.

1:13:08 Yeah.

1:13:09 And just like good luck at your universities taking those students from outside Europe. Let's see how that goes for you. Why do you think they're printing money?

1:13:18 Oh, that's a problem in Europe, too.

1:13:20 I know.

1:13:20 So in American universities, like they're highly reliant on the tuition dollars of international students.

1:13:25 Is that the case.

1:13:26 In Europe as well?

1:13:27 Not to the American extent, but... Yeah, not to the same extent. But work at universities in Europe long enough and you'll be like, I see some of these folks.

1:13:37 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.

1:13:47 Yeah, I think the move towards the American model of education. Yeah. Sadly, sadly upon all of us. Yeah, we're just four or five years behind on America. In cultural waves. Well, I don't know. You're leading the charge here with this. Yeah, like even that haunted mannequin you have in the White House.

1:14:06 The bald one. The bald one. I forgot his name.

1:14:09 Stephen Miller?

1:14:10 Yes, that one.

1:14:12 Bald haunted doll. That's got to be him.

1:14:14 Yeah, you narrowed it right down.

1:14:17 Yeah, but as far as I know, even Stephen Miller hasn't put anything this explicitly great replacement into law. But I'm no expert on America.

1:14:27 Yeah, Miller will certainly say stuff that's very great replacement-y, right? Like on his ex-account. But yeah, attempting to get this.

1:14:35 But in terms of legislative proposals, I mean, this is giving 1920s immigration law, right?

1:14:41 Yeah.

1:14:42 The sort of quotas that we set to keep essentially Jews out of the United States in the 20s and 30s.

1:14:47 Yeah, the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was like how our immigration policy began in the United States. Not great.

1:14:54 So, yeah, we have done this before. It was during the nadir of American race relations.

1:15:01 Yeah, Germany wants to chime in as well as of recent. So going on a great path, guys.

1:15:07 Yeah, things are going pretty good there, right?

1:15:09 Yeah.

1:15:10 Politically right now.

1:15:12 Yes. No, no, it's absolutely great. So we have four more articles. Sorry.

1:15:17 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.

1:15:39 Are they going to build a wall around Europe?

1:15:42 Europe already kills more people with its border than we do. Like, Europe's physical border protection is the most murderous on the planet.

1:15:52 Oh, yeah.

1:15:52 They're not even very knowledgeable about the shit that they're racist about.

1:15:56 It's probably worse than you think, because what they mean with, like, the external border protection is also us. I think, James, we talked a little bit about this, about when Trump wanted to send migrants to Libya.

1:16:08 But there are just.

1:16:09 sort of European control zones within Africa. Like, a few weeks ago, there was the migrants storming the gates in Spain, and that was in Ceuta.

1:16:20 Ceuta. Thank you.

1:16:22 But that's the Spanish territory of Morocco.

1:16:25 What these people want is more Alan Curtis, right? Like, more little dead children. Yeah. We just passed the 11th anniversary of his death, right? It was in September 2015. But, like, Either we've got far away from that, that you can con people into 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 they'll stop people coming if we just kill a few more little innocent kids like this. Because that's what Europe's physical borders do, is that they drown children. Oh yeah, Fortress Europe, the mortar is exclusively dead children.

1:17:06 Because also, 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 there was also the lighthouse reports where they had people in literal dog kennels or some shit.

1:17:21 Yeah. Okay.

1:17:23 Let's rush a bit through this bit so we can go to the funny bits.

1:17:26 Yeah. So I just looked this up and I spoiled it for myself. And now I know who wrote this.

1:17:31 Okay.

1:17:31 Come on. Don't worry, guys, you'll get a live react from me, listeners. Oh, I think there's stuff in here that Molly does not yet know, so.

1:17:42 Oh, no, I just got one little peek and I was like, I can't spoil it for myself anymore.

1:17:46 Okay, great.

1:17:47 Then Article 3 of the Act ensured a systematic and accelerated return, re-migration in quotes, 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.

1:18:11 Wow. Really at the Trump playbook on the last one.

1:18:15 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 can't like.

1:18:27 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 our leaning on other countries hasn't gone so well right like it ain't gonna go better for the eu.

1:18:45 No because 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 force it unless we want to build some island in the middle of the Mediterranean to put all the stateless people?

1:19:00 Don't give them any ideas.

1:19:02 Making a bunch of people stateless is not a really bad sign.

1:19:06 No, that's a sign of a healthy system.

1:19:09 Let's proceed.

1:19:11 Tragedy?

1:19:11 Yeah.

1:19:12 Never.

1:19:13 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.

1:19:31 Unintegrated.

1:19:33 Cultural burden.

1:19:34 They just don't look like I think they should look.

1:19:37 Yeah. To support the restoration of demographic balance.

1:19:41 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.

1:19:49 Ah, now I know which name you read. That person is an identitarian, Molly. Learn the difference.

1:19:57 Yeah, his involvement with the Aryan Jugend in Austria, there's nothing to do with this.

1:20:03 Molly, are you really saying that Nazis come from Austria?

1:20:06 Please, read a history book.

1:20:07 Name me one example.

1:20:09 Exactly. Nothing bad politically ever came out of Austria. Maybe we should replace them all. Maybe they're onto something here.

1:20:17 Maybe the replacement is going to be great.

1:20:21 If we replace them with literally anything. 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 re-migration.

1:20:52 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. And it's not because they're fleeing other forms of violence.

1:21:04 No, no, they're paying money to the smugglers so they can get to our welfare. Yeah, so they can be on the dole because it's such a fucking great life.

1:21:13 And 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.

1:21:19 Oh, definitely. Definitely. There is some very rich people involved in this as well.

1:21:25 You don't say.

1:21:25 Yeah.

1:21:27 I do say. Shocking. It's an American plot twist.

1:21:31 So I think this is a good point to do a very good impromptu ad break. Because this took a bit longer than expected.

1:21:39 That's my fault.

1:21:41 This is what you get with me and Molly. This is fucking chaos.

1:21:44 This is honestly why I do it. But I think we all need a palate cleanser.

1:21:48 Yeah, enjoy these ads.

1:21:50 Probably not as horrible as the Save Europe Act. Oh, you don't know some rich people. People don't get rich without selling shit from advertisements. Yeah, that's true. You don't know where that money's going. Yeah, let it be dick pills. Fingers crossed. And we're back.

1:22:16 Cleansed from horrible shit that we'll continue onward with. 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.

1:22:31 Yeah. Yeah.

1:22:33 Molly's BFF, judging by her reaction. And my favorite country person, Eva Vlaardingerbroek.

1:22:42 Okay.

1:22:42 I haven't heard of her. I'm looking forward to learning about... Say that Dutch name again.

1:22:46 Yeah.

1:22:46 Can we take a second pass at that surname?

1:22:49 Take a charge of that.

1:22:50 Vlaardingerbroek.

1:22:52 I'm not saying that.

1:22:53 This is a language he has said we have to fight to preserve.

1:22:56 Yeah.

1:22:56 Yeah.

1:22:57 Dutch is such a beautiful, beautiful language. It doesn't sound like a German with a terrible head injury had 17 beers.

1:23:07 Sorry.

1:23:08 How did you know the origins of my beautiful language? It's like their origin.

1:23:16 It's still better than English because that's just like English, French and Scandinavian and gay, like all thrown into a blunder.

1:23:24 Yeah, no, it's our indigenous language that we... Yeah, we're Native Americans.

1:23:29 It's our indigenous language.

1:23:31 Indigenous British people, a country that famously was never colonized or received migration from anywhere until about 1998.

1:23:39 That was the first time the culture was adulterated.

1:23:42 Because of woke. Famously true. Because of woke.

1:23:44 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, could just call her Ava Brown.

1:23:57 Ava Brown shirt.

1:23:58 No, no, Ava Brown. Like, uh, the. Yeah, yeah, I know. Hitler's girlfriend. I know. But I will not do that.

1:24:06 So if Vlardinger broke.

1:24:08 Put some more throat into it.

1:24:14 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 Brau was just Hitler's wife, and she had very little to do with politics or policy or governance or anything else. She was asked or instructed to leave any time business or politics came up.

1:24:34 And Vlaardingerbroek 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 Heydrich. But that's just less funny. So I will just call her Eva. We'll get to her.

1:24:56 So I've 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 Sellner is from. Identity Europa was modeled after Generation Identity in France, which Martin Sellner 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

1:25:37 because she and Martin Sellner were on a boat that was like trying to drown migrants in the sea.

1:25:42 God, I'd forgotten about that.

1:25:44 Okay.

1:25:44 So yeah, we know this man. He's trying to drown migrants.

1:25:48 In the sea. Yeah, well, that answers my question about what they meant by the borders.

1:25:53 But on the bright side, Molly, I do think Martin Selner looks like a looks-maxing Richard Spencer.

1:26:00 Well, I don't know if you've seen Richard Spencer lately. It's not hard to look better than that.

1:26:04 Looking like shit, brother. I missed my weekly Zoom call with him, so I'm not sure what's going on.

1:26:09 Yeah, divorce did not treat him well.

1:26:11 Okay, good. He deserves it. Okay.

1:26:14 The European Citizens Initiative. At the time of writing, it obtained about 740,000 signatures.

1:26:21 Oh, that's more than I would have preferred.

1:26:22 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 Safe 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.

1:26:54 One of them is that the petition reaches one million signatures.

1:26:59 Oh, so they didn't make it. So we don't have to take this seriously at all.

1:27:02 We do, unfortunately.

1:27:03 Oh, we do.

1:27:05 When you've got three quarters of a million people signing on to something as openly racist as this shit, I think you do have to.

1:27:11 But like, it's not going to get voted on.

1:27:12 No, we'll get there. Okay.

1:27:16 Explain Europe to me.

1:27:18 Horribad.

1:27:19 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.

1:27:28 That makes sense.

1:27:29 You can't just get like a million racist Croatians design it.

1:27:32 No, exactly.

1:27:33 No offense to Croatia. You just do have a lot of neo-Nazis.

1:27:35 Don't look into their streets. On top, there's also a minimum amount of signatures that's needed per member state to ensure there's 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, the Dutch must deliver 20,445 votes of this million, while Luxembourg only needs 4,230. So just like some proportional representation there.

1:28:11 Right.

1:28:11 So all the European Union member states have to kind of be on board.

1:28:15 Yeah. Or at least enough of them. Yeah.

1:28:18 Right.

1:28:19 Like you can't get something through just because two or three states are being nasty. That makes sense.

1:28:24 Yes.

1:28:25 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.

1:28:39 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?

1:28:49 I'm not smart enough to answer that.

1:28:51 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.

1:29:06 In any worst case scenario, how we see this happening would be that it would get passed. I suppose that then some form of like that legislation or directive will be conjured up from the bowels of coccitis or whatever.

1:29:20 And.

1:29:22 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.

1:29:46 It's a great mystery.

1:29:47 Yeah.

1:29:47 They cooperate on migration, right? You see this with the way the EU places its borders, the way that the EU kind of takes something of a united front on how it deals with things. And you saw this in the beginnings of the Syrian civil war, right? You saw Europe cooperating first to, in some cases, receive Syrian migrants and in many cases to repel them violently. But states also still would have sovereign to you, but like the exact nature of their laws. It's not like the EU can dictate what it takes to be a British, well, a British bad example. Because they left. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, and so did I. But the EU.

1:30:29 Can't say to France like, you can't admit any more immigrants.

1:30:33 Yeah or like we are obliging you to to remove the citizenship or to like de-frenchify these people.

1:30:39 To outlaw the speaking of other languages as far.

1:30:41 As i'm aware yeah like that could be like giving passes for the eu parliament then i guess there would be like a set of principles that the states would have to try and adhere to yes with their own policies which they're not having trouble doing like they found a lot of racists in germany recently apparently like uh Oh, but we have them in the Netherlands as well. Don't worry.

1:30:58 Yeah.

1:30:59 Britain's not immune from that either. It will shock people to hear.

1:31:02 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.

1:31:13 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 national level.

1:31:25 Yes, but also I think this would heavily strain relations between the EU and the member states because it is, 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.

1:31:46 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.

1:31:54 I agree with you completely.

1:31:56 Our nationalists can't even do it right.

1:31:57 But it's only nationalism if you hate certain people. Otherwise, it's just being a rhino. I think you call them in the United States.

1:32:07 A nino.

1:32:09 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.

1:32:18 Before it passes.

1:32:20 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.

1:32:31 Okay, is this not manifestly abusive, frivolous, and vexatious?

1:32:34 Yeah.

1:32:35 I read those sentences as legal code for no bullshit, please. Yeah, but this is bullshit. Yeah, this is bullshit.

1:32:42 Yeah.

1:32:43 This is manifestly abusive.

1:32:45 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.

1:32:54 But this is vexatious and frivolous.

1:32:57 Yeah, it's fucking vexing me, I can tell you. I'm vexed.

1:33:03 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 1 million votes has been met. They already ruled on this, but not on its merits, but on the legality of it.

1:33:23 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 2.1. And the rights and strides 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. I think this is important because proponents of.

1:33:48 The Safe Europe Act will say that this petition was denied due to its politics and thus it's an anti-democratic ruling.

1:33:55 Oh, I'm being canceled. I'm being canceled. No, you just didn't read the rules.

1:33:59 Yeah, exactly.

1:34:00 There is like a Twitter clip somewhere of Eva and Martin saying, discussing this it's like oh this is just anti-democratic and no no it isn't ava you're a legal philosopher you're smart enough to understand this yeah you've you've never read the talkville yeah i'll say that like she at least has credentials you know.

1:34:21 Right because this is disingenuous they know they 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.

1:34:46 Yeah.

1:34:47 And easier.

1:34:48 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 overtime window. Then it is about anything else.

1:35:01 Right. 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.

1:35:09 Right.

1:35:09 Yeah.

1:35:10 You've moved it from storm front to in the middle of the Overton window.

1:35:14 Like you're not just like a little fucking piss boy on a ship screaming and crying because you want migrants to drown in the sea. You're being considered by the European Union.

1:35:22 Yes.

1:35:22 And for now, they've just tested its legal viability with European law.

1:35:27 And we're like, nope, get out. which like the fascists.

1:35:31 Immediately claim as some sort of anti-democratic political violence against them.

1:35:37 Yeah.

1:35:37 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.

1:35:45 Like even in the statement, like the commission does not analyze the policy merits at the stage of the eligibility check.

1:35:53 So.

1:35:54 In layman's terms, the proposed act is incompatible with existing legal mumbo-jumbo.

1:36:00 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 that's not a real... You know what I mean? The ruling at that early stage is just that, well, this isn't real. There's no standing.

1:36:20 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.

1:36:29 You're so succinct, Molly. I appreciate it.

1:36:33 I read a lot of lawsuits that are a lot like this petition.

1:36:36 Yeah.

1:36:37 Well, given that the Alex Jones lawsuit existed.

1:36:40 No, but 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 that the system looked at what you produced and said, this is fake.

1:36:49 Yeah.

1:36:50 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.

1:36:57 You're not being silenced. You're just not participating in the process properly.

1:37:02 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 just goes. They're essentially saying, like, the fuck you 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.

1:37:34 Uh-oh, these weren't valid signatures.

1:37:37 Yes, there is no stopping you, the listener, from going to a website right now, sign in, and, you know, sign the Safe Europe Act.

1:37:45 But I'm not a citizen of the European Union.

1:37:48 But you can still sign it in a show of support.

1:37:50 But that wouldn't count towards the 1 million signatures that they need.

1:37:54 We're coming close because different states could require different identification. It can't be 10 people in a basement continuously making new email addresses and re-signing the petition.

1:38:05 That doesn't work.

1:38:06 So how do they go about validating those? That sounds complex.

1:38:10 Not through how they're doing it right now. Because.

1:38:15 All you need is a name that can be checked with an email address that can be checked.

1:38:19 Oh, so they're not validating them.

1:38:22 No, not in a way that would meet the criteria set by the European Union.

1:38:27 So they knew they weren't doing this properly because that was nevertheless.

1:38:30 Point. It was never the point.

1:38:32 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 a legal challenge was brought. And they didn't do that.

1:38:43 Yeah.

1:38:44 Yeah.

1:38:44 Yes, and you'd also put in safeguards to prevent people from outside the EU from voting on this or signing it.

1:38:51 So this was never sincere?

1:38:53 Absolutely not.

1:38:54 That's shocking.

1:38:55 I am shocked and appalled.

1:38:57 A Nazi playing in my face?

1:38:59 Well, it gets better, Molly, because now there's a bunch of names that I'm sure you'll recognize.

1:39:05 Oh, yes.

1:39:05 But there's also been American far-right agitators who have promoted this on Twitter.

1:39:10 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 at them.

1:39:16 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.

1:39:24 No shit.

1:39:25 Oh, wow.

1:39:26 Yeah.

1:39:26 He had one of the co-founders on his bigot 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, yeah, not really sure. How much goods, signature-wise, that has done. But we can't rule out that there's a bunch of Americans who have signed it.

1:39:49 And therefore, we don't know how many of those 750,000 are legitimate.

1:39:56 I would guess not a lot.

1:39:59 Genuinely, I don't know. I also don't think there's any way to find out.

1:40:05 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.

1:40:12 Well, it wasn't a waste of time. It's just it's not doing what it says on the tin.

1:40:18 Collecting valid signatures was never actually the goal or they would have collected them in a way that would have been functional.

1:40:24 Yes.

1:40:24 Yeah.

1:40:25 Well, I can sign it right now. It's right at the top of the page. Sign now.

1:40:30 Please do not do that.

1:40:32 I'm not going to do that.

1:40:33 Thank you.

1:40:34 Besides Benny, there were also others who did that, including like friend of the pod, Jack Posobiec.

1:40:41 Oh, cool.

1:40:42 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.

1:40:58 End quote. I wonder if Greg Bovino signed it. He's been over there doing some remigration chats.

1:41:03 I'm sure he would enthusiastically sign it, but I didn't see him.

1:41:07 Yeah. There's also like Lucy White, a Restore Britain candidate who also signed it.

1:41:12 But she knows she doesn't live in the EU.

1:41:15 One can assume. One can assume.

1:41:18 And also, not to forget the worst thing that came out of apartheid South Africa, Elon Musk, who also shared a Save Europe video.

1:41:26 Bold statement.

1:41:26 Yes, bold.

1:41:27 Oh, wow, Victor Orban signed it. That was shocking.

1:41:30 Yeah, no surprises there.

1:41:31 Really surprised there.

1:41:32 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:41:33 Wow.

1:41:34 Like, if Midlife Crisis Edison tweets about this, then we can safely assume that it has.

1:41:38 Reached at least millions of people worldwide.

1:41:41 But that still doesn't matter in terms of, like, the act being passed, because, again... No way to validate this.

1:41:48 I just don't think there are a lot of Europeans are watching. Not a lot of Europeans are watching Benny Johnson.

1:41:53 Yeah.

1:41:53 I mean, not a lot of Americans are watching it. Not a lot of people are watching it.

1:41:57 Nobody should watch him.

1:41:58 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 at the beginning of a Batman movie or like. Spider-Man's Uncle Ben or Kenny from fucking South Park. You know it's going to fail. You know they're going to die. For some reason, these people have taped the corpses over mannequins and just paraded them around as if there's still a possibility.

1:42:31 But they are sort of continuing to advance the agenda that this is something that is up for legitimate debate right that 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.

1:42:52 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.

1:43:04 Your own national sovereignty. That's what I'm saying. Like this is.

1:43:07 Yeah.

1:43:08 What kind of nationalism involves subverting national sovereignty, you fucking cucks?

1:43:13 This is what gets me because it is working in terms of like public discourse and normalizing remigration.

1:43:20 Yeah, it definitely is.

1:43:21 And that's Elon Musk's primary goal right now is just normalizing this level of... of hitlerian discourse.

1:43:28 Yeah which he has successfully done right like.

1:43:30 Yeah he's doing it every day yeah he's doing like race and iq posting constantly.

1:43:36 Yeah nothing screams high iq as much as talking non-stop about iq like everyone who has to tell you that they're so fucking smart it's probably not yeah so.

1:43:47 Well that's why none of his rockets blow up because he's so smart.

1:43:51 Don't look it up i'm sure he spent a great deal of time designing those rockets personally as well not posting 18 hours a day.

1:43:59 Well, I'll respect Jeff Bezos' rocket just because they look more original.

1:44:04 I'll never respect Jeff Bezos, and no one can make me.

1:44:08 Fair point.

1:44:08 When I picture Jeff Bezos, the only thing I picture is him on vacation with that, like, deep-V, like, unbuttoned dress shirt with the roast iguana. That's the only thing I think of when I think of Jeff Bezos. It's him holding a roasted iguana.

1:44:21 Molly, I'm trying to focus on a podcast here. Stop selling me this... graphic, erotic picture of Jeff Bezos. That's not why we're here. We can do that on the other podcast.

1:44:33 I think I'm combining two pictures in my mind. The iguana picture, he doesn't have the unbuttoned vacation shirt.

1:44:38 Wow.

1:44:38 I guess I'm just inventing an image in my mind.

1:44:40 Yeah, Molly's headcanon.

1:44:42 But the iguana pic is scary.

1:44:44 Well, the good thing is you can now invent it on Grog. Cursed fan art.

1:44:48 No, it'll just make child porn of Jeff Bezos.

1:44:51 Yeah, his alive girl comments or texts.

1:44:57 I forgot about I Love You Alive, girl.

1:45:01 Oh, yeah. Soul is ghouls, the bunch of them.

1:45:05 So the signatures were fake?

1:45:08 Yeah, pretty much.

1:45:09 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.

1:45:25 Well, actually, 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.

1:45:35 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.

1:45:39 Yeah.

1:45:41 Oh, yeah.

1:45:41 Someone's going to take this on. So, yeah, by all means, start a fundraising campaign. Get money out of the pockets of the dumbest racists in the world.

1:45:49 Go for it.

1:45:50 I should have gone for that law degree. But anyway, I think.

1:45:55 We already discussed solar schools and we're going to be discussing more of them. But first, I think the solar schools that support this podcast.

1:46:05 Can I say that? Yeah, I think so.

1:46:06 You don't work here.

1:46:07 Perfect.

1:46:19 And we're back and we're exchanging the soulless ghouls for the 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.

1:46:31 Said less about it.

1:46:33 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.

1:46:43 Deep cut.

1:46:44 Yeah.

1:46:45 Yeah.

1:46:46 The three people that understand those references, uh, This one's for you.

1:46:50 So first, we have the person you were giggling about, Bollie, co-founder and hipster Nazi impersonator Martin Selner.

1:46:58 I haven't thought about Martin Selner in years. I'm so surprised to see him here.

1:47:03 Who could have imagined that the country who produced the most iconic Nazi would once again produce a Nazi?

1:47:10 The original.

1:47:10 The original. The original.

1:47:13 At least it's from the original sourcing material, you know?

1:47:15 Right, so by under EU laws, he can really be a Nazi, right? Because, you know, it's like champagne.

1:47:21 Sure, yeah, it has to come from.

1:47:22 It comes from the original source.

1:47:24 Exactly.

1:47:24 If it's a Nazi stemming from anywhere in North Austria, then we have to call them identitarians. Yep, sparkling identitarianism. Yeah, that's the brand distinction. So, Selder seems to have been 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 Sellner, 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

1:48:10 radicalism in one person. A handsome young man with neatly trimmed hair and a dreamy look, and a creative inventor of media effective perhaps even somewhat dangerous protests.

1:48:22 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? What if Hitler was hot? He washed his hair and I thought he would be dirty.

1:48:40 Like, he does look like a hipster. I mean, I'll give them that one.

1:48:44 I mean, it's like that New York Times article. You probably remember this, James. It was in 2017 about Tony Hobater, one of the second in command of the traditional worker party.

1:48:53 And it was like, yeah.

1:48:54 Just going on and on about like how interesting and just what this interesting working class man kind of handsome like he's a nazi.

1:49:01 That's a nazi yeah that's yeah this mysterious exotic nazi or like the amount of like uh richard spent the things but they were like but he wears a waistcoat did you know he does his own bow tie that's a nazi uh yeah that is a type of article that uh It's just like the fentanyl thing. You just can't stop people doing it.

1:49:21 Well, I would be impressed with any two-year-old being able to do his own bow tie.

1:49:26 Actually, I don't think Richard Spencer can tie a bow tie.

1:49:29 Not anymore.

1:49:30 Anyway, back to Martin Sellner. At the age of 17, he and another person placed stickers on a synagogue in Baden-by-Wien. Stickers with the text LEGALIZE IT with the letters AJ near it.

1:49:44 AJ in this case stands for Arische Jugend. Aryan youth. And other stickers portrayed as swastika. Wow. That's illegal there. Yes.

1:49:55 Very state to state. So like in Virginia, it actually would be illegal to place a swastika on a synagogue. It's a class six felony. But I think in Austria and Germany, it's like really illegal.

1:50:04 In Germany, any form of Nazi glorification.

1:50:08 You're not supposed to be doing that. They're kind of sensitive about it.

1:50:10 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.

1:50:17 Arrested for it.

1:50:19 So, yeah, unfortunately, he was a minor because under European law, like 17 years, still a minor. So I think that's why he got off pretty scot-free. He had to do like, I think, 100 hours of community service.

1:50:31 And he learned his lesson.

1:50:32 Yes.

1:50:33 Right?

1:50:34 Well, he didn't do anything wrong because this was a response to the conviction of David Irving, a British Holocaust denier.

1:50:41 Yeah.

1:50:42 Oh, God. There it is.

1:50:47 There it is.

1:50:48 For anyone not watching, Molly's almost in tears.

1:50:53 There it is.

1:50:54 We're hitting the highlights here, aren't we?

1:50:56 So he doesn't think the Holocaust happened. Because that's what David Irving was in trouble for.

1:51:00 Yeah, I think Martin has genuine questions about... what happened during the Holocaust in the same way that Alex Jones had questions about Sandy Hook.

1:51:12 He's just asking questions.

1:51:14 Yes.

1:51:14 Unfortunately, he can't read because those questions have been answered.

1:51:17 You only need to open your eyes to see the answers.

1:51:21 He lived in Austria. You could go to one of the camps.

1:51:24 Well, he actually did, Molly, because... Oh, no. At the tender age... Yeah, I bet that went well.

1:51:31 And he behaved very normal there, right?

1:51:33 Well, it wasn't a camp, but at the age of 19, he did help organize ways to hinder liberal demonstrations and pilgrimages to Wehrmacht soldiers, brave sites, and hold memorial services for them.

1:51:49 Yes.

1:51:51 He self-professes that he was a neo-Nazi until 2011. He should have been 22 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.

1:52:08 Fight in Vienna. Which is funny because generally carrying weapons is already illegal here. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. So he double gets to not wear weapons, I suppose.

1:52:20 He would get punished twice.

1:52:22 Oh, that would be good. Okay, Molly, brace yourself.

1:52:26 In early 2018, Martin Sellner received around $ 1, 700, € 1, 500, roughly from Brenton Tarrant. Brenton Tarrant.

1:52:41 Received from?

1:52:42 Yes, received from.

1:52:44 What year?

1:52:45 Early 2018.

1:52:46 So before the Christchurch mosque shooting.

1:52:49 Yes.

1:52:49 That's very good.

1:52:52 Yes, yeah.

1:52:53 So his ideas about immigration... And presumably Islam were pretty similar, I guess. And he was just showing 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 what Britton Tarrant did was he murdered more than 50 people in two mosques. Yeah, it's...

1:53:15 Very good. That's a cool friend to have.

1:53:20 Yeah, it's always a good sign. It gets worse because... It gets worse.

1:53:24 I looked it up, but Apparently, Tarrant was like planning this attack for at least two years.

1:53:31 Self-proclaimed, by the way. So take that however you will. But that means.

1:53:35 So in the planning phases of this mass murder, he thought, part of my plan is going to be giving Martin Sellner $ 1, 500.

1:53:43 Yes.

1:53:44 He should be banned from New Zealand.

1:53:46 We should exile him to the sun.

1:53:48 Because New Zealand is pretty sincere about their, about like sort of quarantining... the existence of Brenton Tarrant. Like, it's illegal to possess his manifesto there. Like, they should ban Martin Sellner from the country.

1:53:58 Tarrant doesn't strike me as a very wealthy person.

1:54:00 That's a significant amount of money for him.

1:54:02 Yeah, highly committed to Sellner. It was.

1:54:05 And it was also, like, a significant amount of money for Sellner because most donations were, like, on the high end, like, 100 to 100 euros.

1:54:14 That should have been a career ender.

1:54:16 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 introspection.

1:54:27 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.

1:54:40 Yeah, it's... I don't know.

1:54:41 I think you got to think about that. I think you got to think about that.

1:54:43 Yeah, yeah. Give you pause for thought. Luckily, Molly, Selner did nothing else to further incriminate himself.

1:54:51 And then he was normal after that, right?

1:54:53 Yeah, because it's not just this donation that 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.

1:55:19 We?

1:55:19 According to ZIB2, the last email exchange took place in July 2018. One day later, Tarrant booked vehicles and accommodation in Austria. Whether the two actually met each other was, according to that article, being investigated at the time. I haven't been able to find confirmation because Tarrant is silent.

1:55:42 On the issue.

1:55:43 And that was a few months before the Christchurch shooting.

1:55:47 A year.

1:55:48 You said it was late 2018?

1:55:49 Yeah.

1:55:49 Okay, yeah, like nine months, yeah.

1:55:51 But anyway, there's 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.

1:56:02 But still, anything short of a vigorous public disavowal is very incriminating.

1:56:08 I don't even think that would be enough. No, it wouldn't.

1:56:12 It wouldn't be very convincing to me. but he hasn't even done it.

1:56:14 No.

1:56:15 So this is just further evidence that this petition of his is violence.

1:56:20 Yeah.

1:56:22 This is 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.

1:56:31 Yes.

1:56:31 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.

1:56:41 There is no peaceful way to create an ethnostate. If your goal is an ethnostate, you understand from the outset that there will be mass bloodshed because there's no peaceful ethnostate. 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. During the United Right civil trial, they were talking. They're like, so when you say, you know, we're going to have a peaceful ethnostate, it must have been Heimbach. So I think it was from the TWP charter.

1:57:11 you know, about creating an ethnostate through peaceful means. And he's like, yeah, I know that's not real.

1:57:16 Yeah, that's not a 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 yeah the portugal one in portugal yeah like where they explicitly like talked with greg bovino about like how they wanted to do this kind of shit in europe i i've wrote about this at a time but like you can you can see they made the regular media stand outside uh and then harass them with a drone while they're in the car park ah but bovino did do some interviews with some right-wing blogs.

1:57:55 I think it seems like he did one interview and multiple people translated it, because I don't think he was talking to Breton nationalists specifically. But you can see them openly discussing this. And this is May of 26, right? This is renee 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 and you can see these people including selma personally like literally clapping for this and saying yeah this is what we need we need more shit like this it's just disgusting vile doesn't begin to cut it really.

1:58:31 We know what mass deportation looks like there's no way to do it peacefully or bloodlessly no yeah.

1:58:37 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.

1:58:45 The act economic incentives right like fuck you 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, OK, 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. 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.

1:59:23 Yeah.

1:59:24 But that's exactly where I'm getting at. Even if you could 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.

1:59:50 Yeah.

1:59:51 It tears communities apart. It tears families apart. There's no way to do this, which is not deliberately hurting people for the crime, in that case, of not being white. Right.

2:00:02 And they're not just talking about immigrants. They're talking about everyone who isn't white because they said legal and illegal immigration. They're culturally threatening, 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.

2:00:19 Yeah, and they don't belong because of their skin color.

2:00:22 So there's nowhere to send them back to, even if they would agree to your terms.

2:00:28 Yeah, you can see it in the language of, when we were looking at the tour that they did around Europe, the open use of the Reconquista language, similar words in other Iberian languages, the idea that we will violently expel these people crusader style like the 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.

2:01:01 Right there's no there's no authentic spain to return to the thing you're imagining was never.

2:01:07 Real exactly yeah it's laughable to suggest that like you can have some kind of uh like like spain was pure christendom and you know 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. But like, it wasn't always that way. And it's sad to see, like, I think those people have already existed, but they look like everywhere else. They're gaining more of a foothold now. Great stuff.

2:01:37 Yeah.

2:01:37 Let's go to some funny stuff.

2:01:39 Yeah.

2:01:40 Give us the good stuff.

2:01:41 Yeah.

2:01:42 We need that.

2:01:43 Yeah.

2:01:44 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 Sellner and the day he committed his atrocities.

2:01:55 Yeah.

2:01:56 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 Sellner's house due to his connections with Tarrant.

2:02:12 Good.

2:02:12 However.

2:02:13 The police waited 12 minutes before Selner opened the door. 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.

2:02:32 And they don't have subpoena power to get those emails from somewhere else? Like deleting an email doesn't make it gone.

2:02:38 It doesn't disappear, yeah.

2:02:39 And honestly, at that point, deleting the email, you should have been charged with destruction of evidence.

2:02:44 Yeah, if the cops are literally knocking on your door and you're deleting emails, A, those emails aren't disappearing.

2:02:49 In America, they charge you with that.

2:02:51 Well, in America, they wouldn't wait 12 minutes.

2:02:53 No, they wouldn't knock.

2:02:54 Yeah, your door wouldn't be a door anymore.

2:02:57 You would wake up at 3.45 a.m. and they would already be having your computer in their hands.

2:03:03 Are you sure? Because he is white.

2:03:05 I don't know.

2:03:06 A warrant like this, I think they would do a 4 a.m.

2:03:08 No-knock.

2:03:09 Ah.

2:03:10 Cops... They love the 4 a.m.

2:03:12 No-knock.

2:03:13 Okay. Yeah.

2:03:14 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.

2:03:20 Yeah.

2:03:21 Well, they do it because they enjoy doing it.

2:03:24 But they say it's because we all have guns.

2:03:26 Guns provide them with a justification, yeah. I'm sure it's part of the reason.

2:03:31 But there was an investigation within 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.

2:03:44 And did they not subpoena the emails from the provider? Because you can get those.

2:03:48 They're not gone.

2:03:49 I haven't read about that. It didn't come up in what I saw. I'm not sure. Around the same time, though, his travel permit to the U.S.

2:03:58 Was canceled.

2:04:00 And therefore he could not meet with his fiancée, Brittany Pettibone.

2:04:03 That's right.

2:04:04 Yeah. They're married. They're married. They have a child.

2:04:06 He's married to an American far-right conspiracy theorist.

2:04:09 Yeah.

2:04:10 I didn't know that.

2:04:11 Yeah, white nationalist and conspiracy theorist.

2:04:14 Also does some Treadwife content, because, of course... Well, what else would she do now? Of course, yeah.

2:04:20 All their avenues are closed.

2:04:22 Yeah.

2:04:23 And, oh, 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.

2:04:41 Oh, that's right. You guys have like civil rights and stuff.

2:04:43 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And look what it got us. Maybe the Safe Europe Act isn't so bad after all. Maybe we need to get less civil rights.

2:04:54 I'm not signing on to that.

2:04:55 I can't help but be cynical. Well, to sum up everything about Martin Sellner, uncool person, would not have a beer with him.

2:05:04 I know. And this is like if Richard Spencer was trying to get a constitutional amendment passed.

2:05:09 Yeah.

2:05:09 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 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 his name, I was like, oh, that's a washed up Nazi from 10 years ago.

2:05:34 He's not washed up anymore. He's been trying very hard with this re-migration stuff to like, to like glom on to this sort of Trumpist.

2:05:44 Like this is a known quantity. This isn't a mystery.

2:05:46 Yeah.

2:05:47 Yeah.

2:05:47 I mean, yeah, we're not like, oh, this guy has some real concerns about his community and neighborhood.

2:05:51 No.

2:05:52 And this man is engaging with the political process in a sincere and earnest way. No, it's a Nazi.

2:05:56 Yeah.

2:05:57 Yeah.

2:05:58 Even though he says, like, he might have not been a neo-Nazi if the identitarian movement had existed when he was younger. I don't believe that.

2:06:05 The identitarians are white supremacist fascist movement.

2:06:09 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. Yeah.

2:06:17 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.

2:06:24 Yeah.

2:06:25 Fuck off. Yeah.

2:06:27 And after this, we're going to speak of the fascist counterpart, the fascist Barbie doll, Eva Laerdingerbroek.

2:06:34 Oh, great. Or Eva Heidrich, if that's easier on the tongue. Hi, everyone. This is future Mick.

2:06:55 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 for 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.

2:07:24 In mind while we were recording. Hope you enjoy it.

2:07:30 And we're back. And we're going to speak of the fascist Barbie doll that Molly.

2:07:34 Knows nothing about.

2:07:36 Say the name again.

2:07:37 Eva Vlaardingerbroek.

2:07:40 Yeah, the American mouth simply can't make those sounds.

2:07:42 Eva Heidrich. You can do that.

2:07:45 Because, you know, we already compared it to the Nuremberg Law. So we might as well 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 Vlaringenbroek is this. shield maiden of the far right. That's an actual title she uses in her Twitter bio.

2:08:07 Great.

2:08:08 That sucks.

2:08:09 It was used as an insult by a columnist and she cleverly adopted it into her brand.

2:08:16 That's not a very good insult. Like, of course she liked that.

2:08:20 Yeah, yeah, you're giving her what she wants.

2:08:22 I'm not going to defend our columnist, ever. I should note that she is significantly more, like, clean than our boy Martin Sellner.

2:08:31 No swastika-related arrests?

2:08:34 Exactly. Exactly.

2:08:36 Or, like, any ties to neo-Nazis or figures as unsavory as.

2:08:40 The Christchurch shooter.

2:08:42 That we know about.

2:08:43 That we know about.

2:08:44 She does have a master's in encyclopedia and philosophy of law. During her studies, she became more.

2:08:50 Active with the Dutch conspiracy slash 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 said fascist party. She would later quit this after a political fallout with party leader Thierry Baudet and the League of Group Chats of their youth party, which were distasteful, to say the least.

2:09:20 To women, to minorities. I don't need to explain how this group chat looked like. You can make an educated guess and be correct.

2:09:29 I mean, any time the group chat to a right party youth group get leaked, it's not going to be wholesome shit.

2:09:36 Is it?

2:09:36 No, that happens here every now and again. We know what those look like.

2:09:39 It happens everywhere. Don't be in chats at all.

2:09:43 Don't do it.

2:09:45 A small detour.

2:09:46 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 Geert Wilders.

2:09:54 Okay.

2:09:55 That was what name?

2:09:56 Geert Wilders.

2:09:58 That's how you say that?

2:09:59 Yes. Yeah. Go give it a cry, Molly. Go see where you, where were you at with it?

2:10:05 No.

2:10:05 Okay. We've lost Molly.

2:10:07 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.

2:10:18 Sometimes there's no jokes you could make about the fascist.

2:10:21 No.

2:10:21 Yeah. I mean, the comedy about him lends itself to a visual medium.

2:10:26 Yeah.

2:10:26 That's what I will say. He looks like Sonic the fucking hedgehog.

2:10:30 Yeah.

2:10:30 But Cherry Mother 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.

2:10:38 Yeah.

2:10:39 That's a European way of going about it. I respect that. Yeah, I think it was a Ukrainian national.

2:10:46 They don't have guns. They have to be creative.

2:10:47 It was caught on tape. So that's really funny. You can make a more funny episode about him. He had a motion in our parliament for the humane treatment of Andrew Tate when he was arrested in Romania.

2:11:02 Yeah. Okay.

2:11:04 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.

2:11:11 Loves to advocate. He was also very passionate about consent, saying that when women say no, they actually want you to go on.

2:11:17 Oh, dear.

2:11:18 Also on camera. So, great figure.

2:11:21 Anyway, details aside, during the waves, this fallout between Ava 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 Telegraf, 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.

2:11:53 Oh no. Did 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.

2:12:10 Maybe I'm giving her too much sympathy, but.

2:12:13 You are. Probably.

2:12:15 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 received some pretty harsh comments that were dripping with sexism during the fallout.

2:12:27 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?

2:12:35 That is very fair, but I also want to say her womanhood was very.

2:12:40 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.

2:12:46 Your words, not mine.

2:12:49 I'm still trying to have a... For this specific instance, have 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.

2:13:04 And she would know nothing about weaponizing people's identities against them to produce any kind of violent result?

2:13:09 No, like, she's a horrible person with horrible politics. Like, I'm not denying any of that, but.

2:13:14 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?

2:13:22 I think there isn't enough introspection for that, but.

2:13:26 No, there's not, no.

2:13:27 Yeah, no.

2:13:28 Well, no, because they think that bad things should not happen to them because they're fully human and the people they're doing it to aren't.

2:13:35 Right. Like, if you're going to draw lines around humanity, don't find yourself surprised when the line is drawn and you're on the other side of it.

2:13:42 And, like, 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.

2:13:56 That's very true.

2:13:58 I think I was mostly just trying to find my own moral line in there. Like, two horrible people, but still, I would.

2:14:06 Somewhere... Nah.

2:14:08 I'm just always surprised they're surprised.

2:14:11 It's the line, I couldn't believe the leopards eating my face happened after voting for the leopards eating faces party. For instance, the way I still think it's fucked up that it happened that way to her. And maybe sympathy is going too far, but I think that's for each to their own to decide upon. But to go back more to funnier stuff, my 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.

2:14:49 Her disdain for modern feminism could also be seen in her master thesis titled The contractualization of sex in the Me Too era.

2:14:56 If you think feminism is damaging to society, why do you think you deserve the benefits of feminism?

2:15:04 Because.

2:15:05 Because.

2:15:06 Probably.

2:15:07 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 what this looks like.

2:15:22 Maybe it's good.

2:15:23 Change my mind, Eva.

2:15:24 Yeah, 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.

2:15:37 I'll be the judge of that. Let me see it.

2:15:40 Well, for the most part, it's just concerns about a social.

2:15:45 structure such as consent being codified into.

2:15:48 Law so she's saying rape should be legal.

2:15:50 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.

2:15:59 Agreement 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 oh yeah i'm not gonna take a fascist at her word that's not what i'm in the business of doing.

2:16:13 Now I'm feeling like I'm very uncritical.

2:16:16 No, you're just much nicer than I am.

2:16:19 Again, your words.

2:16:22 And you live in a country with much stricter libel laws.

2:16:24 That's also true.

2:16:27 I think there should be room for good faith debate on this codification into law and possible side effects.

2:16:34 Sure, but she doesn't.

2:16:35 No, no, she absolutely doesn't.

2:16:38 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 her because she isn't.

2:16:55 Because she isn't and she knows it. And so by allowing room for good faith debate with people like Eva for blah, blah, blah, blah, You are opening the door for this, right? You are making room for her bad faith argument that is essentially just rape should be legal, but it shouldn't happen to nice girls like me.

2:17:17 Okay.

2:17:17 Well, yeah. It's not bad faith. It ends in bad shit.

2:17:21 No, it's bad faith.

2:17:22 It is. It is explicitly in bad faith.

2:17:25 Molly, hold your horses because I've got here like the last one and a half paragraphs of that piece. As kind as I was for like the preceding paragraphs, I'm going to be as blunt about the last one.

2:17:38 It's absolute bonkers.

2:17:41 I'm looking forward to it.

2:17:42 This is not like even going from zero to a hundred. This is.

2:17:45 zero to a thousand in the span of a couple sentences. Quoting this from her essay, which was posted on Twitter 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 LegalFling 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.

2:18:19 Oh, fuck off. Okay. Always interesting to see what the libertarians want. I'm using libertarian in the American sense here, right? Want the states to not take an interest in. This same person who wants the state to take an interest in 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. James, I'll heavily disagree with you here.

2:18:47 Nothing is more romantic than when I want to engage in some adult fun with a partner than having an app to sign a literal contract on what is and isn't acceptable.

2:18:59 You know AI drafts a contract. You know chat GPT is getting up in there and putting some weird shit in your contract.

2:19:05 And this is such a tired thing.

2:19:06 Like, I.

2:19:07 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 going to have her sign a contract. This is like tired, dumb shit that guys who rape people say.

2:19:27 I wasn't even done, but I'm glad for your passion, Molly.

2:19:30 Okay, carry on.

2:19:32 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 that.

2:19:42 Right, those are the same questions about consent we already have. Coercion, alcohol.

2:19:47 Yeah, but now we have an app. But now there's an app. Yeah, so then to solve all of those questions, right?

2:19:52 Yeah, now it's about the legality of such a contract instead of the legality of.

2:19:57 Instead of the legality of rape.

2:19:59 Yeah, you've made a get out of jail free card app. That's what she seems to think. That's literally the phrase she uses. What if a woman signs at 11 p.m. but changes her mind at 11.10 p.m. 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? Oh, wait, so she's not proposing the app contract. No, no, no.

2:20:25 She's saying it wouldn't work.

2:20:27 Oh, my apologies.

2:20:28 So she's saying there just should be no legal concept of consent at all.

2:20:31 She's just against the concept of consent. I mean, one consent can be withdrawn. It's like it's not the fucking like end game argument that. a 12-year-old Reddit user might think it is. Like, I was still not done with this.

2:20:44 This is an essay a moron would write.

2:20:46 Oh, oh, Molly, Molly. This is the sort of shit that, like, I have graded some essays of, like, undergraduate and even, like, postgraduate students, and, like, this is the kind of puerile shit that, like, anyone who's going through, like, a serious attempt to be a serious writer should be fucking, like, I know, like, whack-a-mole.

2:21:08 Like, All of the points in this essay came up in my mandatory don't rate people training in college in 2007.

2:21:15 Yeah, like this is like the logic of like a frat guy trying to be funny.

2:21:22 First, she sees consent as like exclusively contractual. And I think that's where she goes.

2:21:28 That's very romantic.

2:21:29 Yes. Also, I wasn't done because that was not the bonkers part.

2:21:34 Oh, OK.

2:21:34 Oh, the last sentence is phenomenal. You're going to love this, James.

2:21:38 Okay, great. Yeah, hit me.

2:21:41 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...

2:22:08 indicates that we should not even want to crack the door open to this Orwellian nightmare.

2:22:13 No!

2:22:14 Every time!

2:22:15 No!

2:22:15 No door! Every time! I knew it was coming. I knew it was coming and I'm still angry.

2:22:20 What is it, 1984?

2:22:23 It may still sound abstract to you, but ask yourself the following question in all seriousness.

2:22:29 I'm serious.

2:22:30 How many totalitarian regimes in history can you name that went so far as to write rules and laws?

2:22:37 Dictating how people must behave in the bedroom. The question answers itself.

2:22:42 Making rape illegal basically makes you Hitler.

2:22:46 This is insane. The same person who wants the state to fucking kick people out for not being white. It's a little too far if they're policing rape, though, isn't it? That should be something we settle amongst ourselves. They always do this, and I find it so fucking annoying. Obviously, the most annoying thing here is not being wrong about George Orwell, who had some fucking issues with consent himself.

2:23:10 But God, it pisses... The whole thing, it's just... It's so puerile.

2:23:15 This would be better if she did let ChatGPT write it.

2:23:18 Yeah. Now I'm wondering how this person... If this is a topic she explored for her master's degree... We do need to find the thesis. If they also let ChatGPT grade it, is what I'm wondering. Because, like Molly said, if you worked in education... Like, I've been in higher education for 20 years. And yeah, you've heard this shit from an 18-year-old guy whose shirt doesn't have sleeves for the most part, right? And like, I wear a lot of sleeveless shirts myself. Like, that's fine. But there's a type of dude who's been saying this shit to you every September since you started talking about this shit, right?

2:23:54 And like, just because a lady wrote it in a fucking thesis doesn't make it any less dumb.

2:23:59 Well, this is actually a Twitter post.

2:24:00 Yeah.

2:24:02 Yeah, well, that makes more sense. That makes a lot more sense.

2:24:05 If this is drawn from her thesis.

2:24:06 If that's a line of argumentation she went with.

2:24:08 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.

2:24:13 Where did she do her master's thesis? Leiden University. Okay. Did she make a significant donation at any point to Leiden University?

2:24:23 Well, like, if we're detouring already, there is, like, a prominent supporter of the fascist party who teaches at Leiden Law School.

2:24:32 So.

2:24:32 Great.

2:24:33 And that's also where Chetty Baudet, who we mentioned earlier, did his promotion research, which was also incredibly bad to the point that one of the people graded it said, you should not get a PhD.

2:24:45 This is like... For anyone who doesn't know... Yeah, that doesn't happen very often. You defending your PhD is mostly a formality? Yeah, like, you might get some difficult questions.

2:24:56 Yeah.

2:24:57 But 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 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. You have made an enemy.

2:25:26 Yeah, I guess done is good enough in most cases.

2:25:29 Yeah, yeah.

2:25:30 Because 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 a close reading of... There was a Holocaust denier who died in a murder-suicide. He killed his wife.

2:25:45 And his.

2:25:46 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.

2:25:57 Yeah i don't want to i don't want to take that one as a representative sample uh but they do say your thesis should be the first draft of your book or your dissertation if you're in the u.s and uh 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.

2:26:18 Like all of his citations were to David Irving books and like they still gave him the degree.

2:26:23 Yeah, there's a couple of info citations.

2:26:27 Citation, author's email with David Irving.

2:26:31 Maybe David Icke gets in there for some like real old school credibility.

2:26:34 I had a professor during my master's 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.

2:26:47 There's value to having a piece of writing that doesn't have to be perfect. And I'm sure if I looked at lots of academics who I deeply respect and read their master's thesis or their PhD dissertation, I would be able to witness their growth. And that would give me hope as an academic that we can all get better.

2:27:02 But it sounds like she didn't learn much because this essay is something a moron would write.

2:27:06 I'm sorry. Oh, no. The Orwell mention because like... Anyone mentioning Orwell in a piece of academic writing needs to.

2:27:13 Are you a teenager?

2:27:14 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.

2:27:22 Because she hasn't read it.

2:27:23 Yeah, many such cases, right? Yeah, exactly. She's engaged with 1984 through cultural memes in the same way fucking Elon Musk has. 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

2:28:06 understood my book, you stupid pricks. And every year they dig him up and do the same shit.

2:28:13 That must be absolute torture for him.

2:28:15 Like the rat's pill from the Matrix.

2:28:17 I'm going to use a Ouija board to tell George Orwell about Alex Jones.

2:28:21 The guy has suffered enough, Molly.

2:28:24 The answer to 1984 is 1776. one of alex's favorite lines ah.

2:28:31 I know that god just there's an inside joke i love that her body goes on a rant her camera like automatically zooms in a little bit and it just gets extra ominous yeah you get like she's doing it that's it that's an old alex jones trick actually get them forehead veins to pop To try to get us back on track again. Sorry.

2:29:00 Like, she's very much into the same, like, female nationalism that we discussed with also you, Molly, during the Quentin Derank episodes.

2:29:09 But without any feminism or proper nationalism.

2:29:12 No, it's, again, all feminism is we need to stop being raped by migrants and then everything is solved.

2:29:19 Which is not the case.

2:29:20 No, 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.

2:29:25 Yeah, that's... As is tradition.

2:29:27 She would probably agree that that would be fine or deny that that such a thing is possible.

2:29:32 Yeah, I think.

2:29:33 Yeah, more likely.

2:29:34 But it's a contract.

2:29:35 Yeah.

2:29:36 Anyway, some of the listeners may also have had the misfortune of seeing Eva on the Tucker Carlson show.

2:29:42 He knows how to pick them.

2:29:43 Yeah.

2:29:44 At the moment, she is.

2:29:45 Married to Francesco Gargalo di Castellantini. a Roman-based lawyer who is descended from a long line of Italian noblemen. 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.

2:30:09 God, the Venn diagram. I want the government to be powerful enough to rip apart families and 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.

2:30:26 Cool and normal stuff. I don't want to be surprised, and I'm not, but also I am. Further, she spoke at multiple Unite the Kingdom rallies in the UK, including in the September of 2025 one, where she encouraged attendees to stand up to their governments. Protests 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 to from being barred from the UK as her presence was not considered conductive to the public good. After this, she labeled Keir Starmer a tyrant.

2:31:12 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.

2:31:20 Yeah, he lacks a charisma for fascism.

2:31:23 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.

2:31:34 But not that. The demand.

2:31:36 Calling a British politician a little bit bland is not slander.

2:31:40 Well, we got Andy Burnham now who... played the Smiths to a group of soldiers in Ukraine on a guitar recently.

2:31:48 Why?

2:31:52 It's the most British thing that anyone's ever done. He was visiting Ukrainian soldiers. Was he trying to cheer them up? That's what I can't understand. Doing a morale trip 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.

2:32:11 Maybe that's proof he's on Russia's side trying to incite mass suicide.

2:32:15 Yeah, trying to.

2:32:15 Demoralize the troops.

2:32:19 It's a song about suicide.

2:32:20 Yeah, I heard you were having a hard day. Why don't you enjoy some Morrissey?

2:32:24 Yeah, his heaven knows I'm miserable. You have to be as miserable as I am, so I'm playing this song. Okay.

2:32:33 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.

2:32:42 But unsurprising on all fronts. These people are exactly what he would expect them to be.

2:32:47 Yeah. I'm not even surprised that she married a nobleman.

2:32:50 No, that's classic fascism stuff. Love that for her.

2:32:53 Yeah, yeah. All of this. Italian nobles, famously unproblematic.

2:32:58 It's like Colin Jordan marrying the Dior heiress. Like, okay, I got it.

2:33:02 I got it.

2:33:03 There is one more composed golem 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.

2:33:26 I've never heard of Brian. He sounds very boring. Just like a garden variety, like a weird pervert. Brian Stephen Brown.

2:33:35 Yeah, he has a Wikipedia page. Oh, okay.

2:33:38 I recognize the symbol on the podium where he is here. Now, oh, he's the National Organization for Marriage guy.

2:33:44 Yes. I think I wrote it down wrong in my script then. No, he's both.

2:33:48 It's the World Congress of Families I've never heard of. The National Organization for Marriage. That's a classic.

2:33:53 Now, I'll consider this feedback on my script writing.

2:33:56 Oh, no, it's just that's that's the hate group I'm familiar with of the hate groups he's affiliated with.

2:34:00 Yeah, there is more hate groups that he's affiliated with than we could name.

2:34:05 It's a lot.

2:34:06 But yeah, America is 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.

2:34:25 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 the anti-gay bill legislation.

2:35:03 Great.

2:35:04 Yeah, I've seen that picture as well.

2:35:07 Oh, wow.

2:35:08 He looks exactly like you think he's going to look.

2:35:10 It's like a hairy thumb. Yeah, this isn't a surprise to me. Like an otter or something? Like a bald otter? Yeah. Mole rat is what I'm thinking of.

2:35:20 Wait, so what's our American homophobe got to do with this? I got distracted looking at how weird he looks.

2:35:25 Yeah, that's understandable.

2:35:28 We'll get there first, because he was not only just at the Duma for that legislation to pass. After he was present at that legislation passing, he was also repeatedly returned to Russia to chat with his buddies, Konstantin Maloviev and his right-hand man, Alexei Komov, allies of Putin.

2:35:49 Well, What do they chat about? Probably 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.

2:36:02 And I don't want to know because I don't want either of those things to happen to me. But Malaviv has been on both the EU and US sanctions list since 2014 for arming pro-Russian separatists.

2:36:15 Oh, cool.

2:36:16 So not a guy you should really be hanging out with.

2:36:19 I feel like this is the through line, but it gets worse. It gets worse.

2:36:23 He also helped finance regular conferences that merge multiple pro-family groups. Read pro-family as anti-abortion, anti-LGBT. Yeah, pro-family is a bold.

2:36:33 Pro exactly what kind of family?

2:36:35 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 St. Basil the Great Foundation.

2:36:59 Jesus. Under the aptly chosen name, Happy Childhood.

2:37:04 Fuck me.

2:37:06 Yeah.

2:37:06 And, like, I also want to mention, because, James, we also had a chat about this.

2:37:12 Yeah.

2:37:13 Forcefully displacing or relocating children... That's one of the things that's a genocide.

2:37:19 Yes.

2:37:19 That's in the UN definition of a genocide.

2:37:22 Yeah.

2:37:22 But it has to specifically be children.

2:37:26 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 if you followed their policies to their logical conclusion.

2:37:41 Yeah.

2:37:43 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.

2:37:51 Behind the scenes.

2:37:52 He co-owns a digital infrastructure company called AlternCloud, self-described as infrastructure as a service. Donations and other forms of digital infrastructure are moving through this, which originate either in the Save Europe Act, the donations I mean then, or people that like the initiative. And AlternCloud itself is also not shy about showcasing their political leanings.

2:38:16 I'm quoting from their website.

2:38:18 We are excited to report we are now the digital backbone of businesses, organizations, websites, and apps across America and Europe. Current clients include conservative organizations like No Next Row, Never News Impact, conservative and Catholic news organizations such as InfoCatho, La Salon Beige, and Les Forts Vérités, family advocacy nonprofits like International Organization for the Family, And tech companies such as Titanium Secure, Tech IG, and Ad Hoc Capital.

2:38:52 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.

2:39:01 Yeah, we're just a hate group.

2:39:02 Family advocacy for a very particular kind of family and everyone else can fuck off and die.

2:39:08 Yeah. I'll say this much. At least he lives to his values because allegedly he has nine children.

2:39:13 His poor wife.

2:39:14 Oh, yes, 100%. Yeah, those poor children.

2:39:17 So, the names mentioned earlier, we can already safely assume just what kind of clientele our alternate cloud likes to engage with. But what I find most disturbing is that he's clearly a very influential person of who we know very little. Say what you will about Musk or Zuckerberg or Bezos. At least we know what kind of crepuscular crotch goblins they are.

2:39:39 No, but the more effective guys are not making so much fucking noise.

2:39:44 That is what scares me about him. Like, at that end, the picture you shared.

2:39:49 Not a handsome man.

2:39:50 No.

2:39:51 Would not want to wake up to that.

2:39:53 Would not want to make nine children with that.

2:39:56 Well, we don't know if his wife had any say.

2:39:59 Yeah.

2:40:00 Yeah, I mean, I guess if he's signing on to do business with a woman who thinks rape should be legal.

2:40:03 Yeah. Or, like, Russian genocide enjoyers.

2:40:07 Yeah.

2:40:07 He's not huge on women's rights.

2:40:09 Yeah.

2:40:09 Like, he's just.

2:40:11 Sort of a connection point or a nexus for like Kremlin affiliates, European identitarian groups, the American Christian rights, and like similar anti-rights groups with like these conferences that his contacts also finance.

2:40:28 That's all I have on him because there's just not much to find.

2:40:31 Well, now I'm curious. I'm going to keep looking.

2:40:34 Let me know if you find something. Okay. It is always interesting to find these guys who are pulling the strings and funding these giant hate campaigns, right? They very successfully astroturf these as like ground level, especially like we see this all over the world with anti-migrant shit, right? Like, oh, the people are rising up.

2:40:56 There's 750,000 signatures on this petition.

2:40:57 Yeah.

2:40:58 Right?

2:40:58 Slash names.

2:40:58 Like there are 750,000 marks on my piece of paper.

2:41:00 Yeah.

2:41:05 But like the British far right does this all the time, right? They're like, oh, Britain desperately wants to have an independence day, which is largely overlooking the fact that people who have independence days generally do so because Britain colonized them.

2:41:15 Because they're independent from Britain now.

2:41:17 From Britain, yeah. Who is Britain going to be independent from? Like Brussels? Come on, fuck off. Like, yeah, the famously belligerent colonization of the Belgians.

2:41:26 Oh, like they want their own 4th of July? That's so cute.

2:41:28 Yeah, right.

2:41:29 That's cute.

2:41:30 Just do the king's birthday or whatever the fuck you guys are into.

2:41:33 We have a day. We have a day on the 5th of November when we let off fireworks because, in a very British way, it is a day that people like to burn a Catholic in effigy.

2:41:42 I don't like that.

2:41:45 Yeah, 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.

2:42:01 Right.

2:42:02 Like I was literally skeeting, I believe is the correct verb.

2:42:07 I don't think we're saying that.

2:42:08 Are we not saying it?

2:42:09 Okay.

2:42:09 Okay. Posting. I was posting. Let's use a generic term. I was posting today a poll of British people who think London has 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. I have gone all over London, like walking or on my bicycle.

2:42:30 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.

2:42:35 Yeah.

2:42:36 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.

2:42:44 The whole neighborhoods of London under Sharia law.

2:42:46 Yeah.

2:42:46 Going by the Ayatollah even probably.

2:42:48 Yeah, exactly. The IRGC in the form of the Quds Force is patrolling. They're such babies.

2:42:53 They're such babies.

2:42:55 Yeah, like this is being scared of anything that isn't.

2:42:57 Like a woman in a hijab looked at you and you thought you were going to get beheaded by ISIS. Like grow up.

2:43:03 Yeah like also if you're really worried about isis you know you could have gone to fight with the yep it gave more than a decade but you.

2:43:10 Didn't i've been to london and i've had a very pleasant cigarette smoke with a homeless person and never felt threatened.

2:43:18 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.

2:43:36 I mean i think it's projection right like they want to hurt these people so they assume that those people want to hurt them.

2:43:41 Yeah yes i think that's probably a fair it's that it's that what is.

2:43:44 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 yes the principle.

2:43:55 Holds If you live your whole life by the clash of civilizations narrative, then it's impossible to understand the world in any other way, right? Because you see yourself as fundamentally opposed to people who are different from you.

2:44:08 But not everyone sucks as bad as you do.