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- [00:00]
James
This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.
- [00:08]
Robert Evans
Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.
- [00:30]
James
Hey everyone, it's me, James. I wanted to flag, before you start listening to this, that if you're listening with the advertisements, which you probably are about six minutes in, there is a mistake. I'm sure it's just like a misspeaking. But a unionist, of course, in the Irish context is someone who wants the union of what is today Northern Ireland with the United Kingdom to continue. It is not someone who wants the union of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland in an independent Irish Republic, void of any British rule. I wanted to flag that we could maybe draw a difference between loyalness and unionists. But the important thing here is that a unionist in the Irish context is not a Republican. Hi everyone, and welcome to the show. It's me, James Today, and I'm very lucky to be joined by Leah Ayoub, who's a UK based researcher and journalist with an academic background in memory studies and in particular focus at the moment on the far right. Also the host of the Fire in these Times podcast, which is an excellent podcast. I've been a guest on that one before. Elia, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us.
- [01:34]
Leah Ayoub
Thank you for having me.
- [01:35]
James
Nice to be talking. And we are talking today about, I guess the kind of explosion. Explosion's the wrong word, I think, actually, because it's more like with the iceberg when you only see the tip of it, you know, the more visible acts of bigotry that we saw in Belfast a couple of weeks back and the response throughout the UK and I guess also the discourse around it online, which, you know, a lot of online discourse is generated by Americans in America. It ends up being divorced from context because of that.
- [02:09]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [02:09]
James
So I guess to begin with, right, like I know I'm personally intimately familiar with the English far right, but let's maybe distinguish a little bit between the far right in Northern Ireland and the far right in England. And I'm saying England consciously here, not the uk. I'm wondering if I should pause here to define terms for people. Do you think most people have an operating analysis?
- [02:33]
Leah Ayoub
I guess we can at least say the four. The whole Four nations in one nation kind of thing.
- [02:37]
James
Yeah, exactly. So I'll just break it down like Britishness is a national identity. If we talk about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, we're talking about England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are four nations within that. Right. If you want to know what a nation is, you can read Ben Anderson. But I like Linda Colley's analysis of Britishness which suggests that it is Englishness exported. Like the Britishness is essentially an English colonial project that co ops elites in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and bites people within those countries against each other. So given that, and I've already recommended two academic books which we're fine five minutes in, perhaps you could explain this distinction between Northern Ireland and England as it pertains to the far right.
- [03:26]
Leah Ayoub
So there are similarities in the sense that a lot of this is transnational these days anyway. A lot of it is online based. There are also a lot of reports of England based far right agitators like most notoriously Tommy Robinson and whatnot, kind of almost visiting Northern Ireland and leaving overnight. They're just kind of dipping their toes in a sense. So there are similarities there. And the dominance of England cannot be overlooked because it's still kind of like the powerhouse or the capital of the UK is and just has this oversized influence. Right. But also pretty important differences. Northern Ireland, I don't know how much we're going to get into the entire history of it, but has had a different trajectory in terms of the far right than. Than than England. There is the added sectarian element. There is the added. Whether you poor Ireland as in Rep of Ireland, whether you poor United Kingdom in, in UK and Ireland terms this means a loyalist is someone who wants to remain in the UK and a unionist is someone who wants to what for Ireland to be reunified basically can be confusing because union and United Kingdom and whatever. Yeah, so there is that sectarian element. Historically the UK has one of the UK as in British government. One of the ways it has faced what it sees as this nationalist threat. By nationalist here I mean like Irish nationalist threat, which of course has ground as well in Northern Ireland particularly, but not exclusively among Catholic communities. It has essentially armed and de facto armed these paramilitary groups that are today kind of a de facto mafia. Like for me as a Lebanese, the pretty similarities with how sectarian elites operate in Lebanon. They have carved out parts of the, what is essentially the state there in parts of. In different areas. They even to some extent even provide services, you know, stuff like that. Again, not that dissimilar, I would say, I would argue from how one might picture like a mafia. And so a lot of the violence that we're seeing today enacted against, like, people of color is same sort of rationale that was enacted against just like Catholic working classes not that long ago. And in many ways that same kind of supremacist ideology has just been kind of transferred from one community against another one to another one. But it doesn't mean that it's completely gone from the sort of like anti Irish and anti Catholic sentiments either.
- [05:50]
James
No, it's definitely not those things you
- [05:52]
Leah Ayoub
don't see in England. You know, I mean, not. It's just not as prominent. There are like different dynamics here, I
- [05:57]
James
guess, like, especially if you're watching from the outside. Right. It can be easy to miss that because, like, yes, in England, every year in November, we symbolically burn a Catholic in effigy. Right. I say we the English as a tradition, but like the. The anti Catholic sentiment is not as present as. As it is in North. It's a completely different fish. Like you talked about Lego. We want to get into history. And I do, because I think that that's really important. Right. Especially if we understand Britain as the beginning of the English colonial project and especially Ireland, I guess if we understand, just to stick with conceptual clarity, the British Isles and especially the beginning of that colonial project in Ireland and to an extent in Scotland, then I think it helps with an analysis of this. And I think something you'd mentioned, which I really like the idea of, is when we talk about sectarianism as like a fixed point, we ignore how we got to sectarianization. Right. And I think, yeah, you're obviously very familiar with the British and the Lebanese context. Something I used to talk about with my grandmother, actually, who spent a good amount of time in Lebanon that overlaps with these things. But perhaps you could explain that to people, because I think it's very easy to come at especially the history of Ireland, Qua Ire island with an S as like a preset sectarian kind of situation. And that's not really the case. Like a process occurred to get us to where we are.
- [07:20]
Leah Ayoub
Oh, yeah. I mean, kind of a simple way of explaining it. At least that's how I do when I speak to like relatives, you know, is that no one is born. Like, sure, they could be born into a Catholic or a Protestant family, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they therefore feel a certain way towards a member of that other community. Yeah, that is a process. And so Sectarianization is something that is crucially active. It is ongoing. Like, it never stops. It cannot stop because it can otherwise. Like, again, using that simple analysis, simple example of like, you have a baby that's a. That's born into a Catholic family and a baby that's born into a protest family. If you don't put them in a certain context that includes this thing that you call sectarianism, they won't necessarily develop, like, hostile feelings towards the other baby. You see what I mean when they grow up?
- [08:08]
James
Yeah.
- [08:08]
Leah Ayoub
Kind of like a simplified way of putting it. But sectarianization, whether in Lebanon, whether in Northern Ireland, whether in Bosnia, and then it gets complicated and you have added nuances whenever you add a different context, of course, but is something that is active, as in there are ruling elites that have a certain specific interest in maintaining the status quo in a certain way or in some cases, worsening the status quo and so on. It is directly intersected with things like capitalism. The other types of supremacy you cannot have in a sectarian society if you have a very strong, let's say, welfare state where everyone is given the basics, where everyone has access to everything and you don't have these inequalities. And there are lots of case studies and studies of the worse inequality gets, the more likely you are to get these sectarian tensions. So it doesn't come out of nowhere. People aren't just born like that. It's not just something that people are born with. They are raised in a certain society, they are sectarianized to view members of a different community in a certain way. And also, most importantly, resources are allocated before one is born, often based on where you live. So there's a regionalism to it as well. But also like in the case of Northern Ireland and in case of Lebanon, for that matter, based on sex and so on.
- [09:31]
James
Yeah. Your understanding of Lebanon perhaps gives you an interesting perspective to, like, analyze this. Right. Because there's some somewhat more formalized to an extent. It's not that it's not formalized in Ireland very much is like division of resources, allocation of state, power, even that that is sectarian. So, like, do you think that helps you analyze Northern Ireland?
- [09:54]
Leah Ayoub
It does, because it's one of the things I always bring up because it takes everyone by surprise when I talk about sectarianism in Lebanon, which is that the average person isn't necessarily sectarian. And the sense that the average person doesn't necessarily think in sectarian terms, certain, like their primary identity. In fact, it's a poll I keep on mentioning I can send it to
- [10:13]
Mark Wayne Mullen
you if you want.
- [10:13]
Leah Ayoub
But whenever you've had these pan Arab polls like across the region of the question would be something along the lines of like do you primarily see yourself as being let's say Muslim, Christian, Druze, etc or as, as your nation, as your national identity.
- [10:27]
James
Yeah.
- [10:28]
Leah Ayoub
And the Lebanese and the Palestinians are often the ones that say. They're more likely to say like first Lebanese or Palestinian and then Christian, Muslim, etc. Yeah. And with Palestinians can maybe more well known story like there's a cause and so that cause has become the primary identity before even one is a Muslim, one is a Christian or so on.
- [10:45]
James
Yeah.
- [10:45]
Leah Ayoub
In Lebanon it takes people by surprise because Lebanon, those who know anything about it is like well that's a dissectarian place. That's where you have the, the president has to be Christian, the Maronite, the Prime Minister has to be Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament has to be a Shia Muslim. Which is true. But it doesn't necessarily mean that they like the individual who's the president wakes up today and says I'm going to act behalf of Maronites.
- [11:07]
James
Yeah.
- [11:08]
Leah Ayoub
It doesn't work. It's much messier than that. And most importantly my personal beliefs in Lebanon, like I was raised in a Christian Maronite family, but if I was an atheist or whatever, it just does not matter as far as the state is concerned because my legal status as a citizen is one that is a Maronite.
- [11:26]
James
Yeah.
- [11:27]
Leah Ayoub
And so it affects how I vote, it affects how I do certain things, whether certain services I have access to in certain that. And then it's like region specific. And in Northern Ireland that's kind of the thing that you see. Like of course there is a process by which certain communities are already separated in the sense of like you grew up in a majority Catholic area and you grew up in a Protestant majority area. And in some cases you may, depending where you live, for example parts of Belfast, you may not know a Protestant and or a Catholic. I mean either up until a certain age, right before you're 16, you go to college or whatever it might be.
- [11:58]
James
Yeah.
- [11:58]
Leah Ayoub
And those of course reinforce certain, certain tendency. But most importantly you might be a, you know, you grew up in a Protestant family, maybe middle class and whatnot. But you don't share the politics of your neighborhoods. It doesn't necessarily then translate into that affecting the politics of the whole because there's something that's already in build there that's difficult because it's entrenched Now.
- [12:18]
James
Yeah.
- [12:19]
Leah Ayoub
And so it's about something that's entrenched, something that's difficult to change, and also something that can't stop at the same time. It has to be both.
- [12:27]
James
Yeah, I think that's a very good analysis. I guess another example people cite for. I guess, the way these things can so rapidly become entrenched and they can disappear, they can become less important if we look at the example of Rwanda, which is obviously a long way away from both those places. But being Hu, Tutu, Tutsi or TWA frustrates me a lot. The analysis of the Rwandan genocide overlooks the TWA people, but that's another topic. But they suffered some of the worst ravages of the genocide. That. That was such a fixed identity that became the salient identity. Right. And even if individuals were not buying into that increasingly opposed identities, those identities were what would affect the outcomes of their lives very clearly in 1994. Right.
- [13:13]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [13:13]
James
And that is now less the case because in part, the key to maintaining state power became decreasing those tensions or exporting those tensions in the case of Rwanda to the Congo. Right. And we can talk about how we got there, because it wasn't a great process. It isn't a great process. But. But it's. It's. It's a good analysis point for people. I guess. We've spoken about how these identities are so enshrined and how they're codified now, because it's not the case, like you said, that everyone believes in this. And what we've seen since what happened in Belfast is that the vast majority of people in the UK reject this shit. Right? The vast majority of people. That's the other thing I do want to harp on, like when people say, oh, this is Northern Irish groups in Belfast or whatever, it's a relatively small portion, even a relatively small portion of Protestants, even a relatively small portion of people who have strong loyalist feelings. Not all of those people are bigots. You know, it is a small, relatively small group, as you say, that is now somewhat linked transnational hate networks. But the bulk of people think that that is absolutely repugnant. Right. So should we talk a little bit about the backlash? Because I know you attended a massive protest. Right. Win. And also, like, half a dozen. A dozen fascists showed up to be, like, escorted out of town again.
- [14:45]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [14:46]
Leah Ayoub
So the backlash to the Belfast ones. What happened in Belfast. May I can give some context?
- [14:51]
James
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:52]
Leah Ayoub
So there was an attack by this Sudanese person against this white person.
- [14:56]
James
Yeah.
- [14:57]
Leah Ayoub
And the reason I'm Framing it in those terms is because that's how it was portrayed in the media, in the sense that the attacker's ethnicity and national origins and whatnot has been front and center of that coverage. And that's not. It's not like a small detail in the story. It's why it's been linked to the Southampton murder that happened in December and the case, like the person, the attacker was sentenced a few weeks ago, not long before the Belfast program happened.
- [15:21]
James
Yeah.
- [15:22]
Leah Ayoub
The reason these two are linked is media framing. One was in Southampton, was the one in Belfast. There's no connection between those two other than the attacker had a specific skin color and the victim had a specific skin color.
- [15:35]
James
That's basically it. Yeah.
- [15:37]
Leah Ayoub
Attacks have happened in between. Between December and in June that don't fit that framing. Don't fit that description and have been kind of left out of the discourse of that. Of that framing.
- [15:46]
James
Yeah.
- [15:46]
Leah Ayoub
And so it's contributed to this perception that is now, again, I wouldn't say it's a majority of the population, but like it's this higher percentage of the population that now at least think that there's some problem with immigration and criminality. And that is something that doesn't. Is not borne out by the facts whatsoever. But it's still a dominant perception. It is. You tune in to BBC Question time on a weekly basis. It's almost certainly going to be front and center of the conversation. And I put conversation maybe in quotation here. It's more like rage baiting and whatever.
- [16:18]
James
Yeah.
- [16:19]
Leah Ayoub
So what happened in Belfast is, as I said, this Sudanese person attacked this white person. Initially, the media was reporting that a Somali person attacked a white person. So again, it tells you how these framings is inherently racial. They immediately went what they thought was the most likely demographic.
- [16:36]
James
Yeah.
- [16:37]
Leah Ayoub
In response to that attack, despite the fact that the family of the victim explicitly asked people not to politicize this and that they rejected the politics of hate.
- [16:45]
James
Yeah.
- [16:45]
Leah Ayoub
The same after the Southampton one, for that matter. It made no difference to these far right. Well, fascists and agitators and so on. And they basically went on a pogrom throughout parts of Belfast. And Some, I think 20 plus people were rendered homeless, including, like, kids and so on. Anyone who's a person in color in Belfast, including a bunch of people who have written about it since, reported feeling unsafe that day. And, you know, and arguably probably to this day as well. It hasn't been that long.
- [17:12]
James
Yeah.
- [17:13]
Leah Ayoub
Some people didn't go to work. Some people went back home early. Some people asked their white colleagues to either, you know, take their kids to school or, you know, walk with them home. You know, stuff like that.
- [17:21]
James
Yeah.
- [17:22]
Leah Ayoub
All of that because they felt unsafe. And the reason why they felt unsafe that was very obvious that those people who were engaging in these, in these programs were looking for people of color. The response to that is you had this kind of a pretty big reaction from a good chunk of the. Of the population in a bunch of different cities, including where I live, which is in Brighton in the south of England. Belfast itself also had like a pretty huge mobilization. We saw one in, I believe Sheffield and I believe one in Liverpool as well.
- [17:50]
James
Yeah.
- [17:50]
Leah Ayoub
And Glasgow as well, where usually it would be a fairly small number of. Of fascists and far right activist agitators. In. In Brighton, I think it was like 200 of them versus some 4 or 5,000 of on the other side.
- [18:05]
James
Yeah.
- [18:05]
Leah Ayoub
I'm fairly certain. I can't say this 100% certain, but I'm fairly certain there were more police officers than there were like even far right people there.
- [18:13]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [18:13]
Leah Ayoub
And Belfast as well, there was a huge reaction. There was even like a pretty huge fundraiser by this collective of women, people of color in that are based in Belfast called the Anaka Women's Collective, that as of now, they were aiming to raise a thousand pounds and they've raised £253,000 as of. As of today.
- [18:31]
James
Oh, wow. Nice.
- [18:33]
Leah Ayoub
To help those who were displaced and those who lost their homes and so on.
- [18:36]
James
Yeah.
- [18:37]
Leah Ayoub
And it was even condemned like at the national level. Like Belfast. The dominant party is actually not like it's Sinn Fein, which is not a loyalist party. So they're. The people who did this act are very much in. In the minority in terms of even like popular sentiment in Northern Ireland. But even specifically in Belfast.
- [18:54]
James
Yeah.
- [18:54]
Leah Ayoub
This didn't stop the ongoing kind of tensions between. Maybe we can get into that on the far right in the UK and Northern included, especially the UK mo, broadly between reform, which as of now is the dominant party on the far right.
- [19:08]
James
Yeah.
- [19:08]
Leah Ayoub
And this new party that came out of reform called RESTORE uk.
- [19:11]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Yeah.
- [19:12]
Leah Ayoub
That are fighting with one another now. Elon Musk has backed the Rupert Low, the RESTORE UK guy.
- [19:17]
James
Yeah.
- [19:18]
Leah Ayoub
Because he thinks that. That Farage is too woke. You know, a lot of different things are happening.
- [19:23]
James
It's fucking insane.
- [19:25]
Leah Ayoub
It is quite insane. Yeah.
- [19:26]
James
Yeah. Nigel Farage, if people are familiar, like long time bloviating shithead fixture of the UK far right.
- [19:32]
Leah Ayoub
Yeah.
- [19:33]
James
Many funny clips of Nigel Farage being made to look like a tool. Let's Talk about this, this tension. Right. Because we do have this, like. And this has been a constant on the. On the UK far right for a long time. Like, I remember the BNP, which was getting on for 20 years ago. Yeah. But, like, essentially you will have a electoral party that stakes out a position on the right and then a movement slash party that seeks electoral legitimacy will outflank them to the right and they will stake that position and have electoral success and then someone will outflank them to the right. That is the process through which British politics has moved to the right for my entire life. But let's talk about restore and reform and maybe explain the two categories for people that are not familiar.
- [20:21]
Leah Ayoub
Reform is led by Nigel Farage, who's maybe the better known one. He's the one that was a close Trump associate for a while, then he was even friends with Elon Musk until they had a falling out. He used to head this party called ukip, the UK Independence Party, which was very pivotal in the Brexit vote. Nigel Farage is definitely an interesting figure for all the wrong reasons in British politics, because he started off being pretty small, like a small fish. Not a lot of support in the polls, not a lot of people knew him. But he had one thing he did have was like a disproportionate media appearance. He would be featured constantly on various shows. BBC Question Time is the one I just mentioned.
- [21:02]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [21:03]
Leah Ayoub
Even when he was not, like, now he's a Member of Parliament, but he, for the longest time, he was a member of the European Parliament. He wasn't a member of Parliament in the uk.
- [21:10]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Yeah.
- [21:10]
Leah Ayoub
And his entire thing was UK independence, as in what they call independence, as in leaving the eu, because the UK obviously was already independent.
- [21:18]
James
Yeah.
- [21:18]
Leah Ayoub
And the way they frame this is anti immigration and racism, essentially. At one point, even they weren't even focusing on like, as they currently are on like, you know, people from Africa or people from. From Afghanistan or whatever. Their hatred was focused on Romanians and Poles and. And other members from Eastern Europe or Central Europe.
- [21:38]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Yeah.
- [21:39]
Leah Ayoub
I'm saying this because when Henry Novak was killed and Henry. Henry Novak was Polish British.
- [21:44]
James
Yeah.
- [21:45]
Leah Ayoub
They all pretended to suddenly include Polish people in the white category. But that's a very much a recent convenient thing because just a few years ago, they were absolutely not doing that.
- [21:54]
James
Yeah.
- [21:54]
Leah Ayoub
Out of Reform UK, a lot of Reform MPs and councillors are ex Tories, ex Conservatives. So reform has been taking a lot of the Conservative votes and even Conservative personalities, including most of their high ranking Members out of that came out this new relative new party called restore, which some people would say is further to the right than reform. The way I would describe it is that they're both vying for the far right position in the uk and Reform is trying to position itself as the more professional, the more kind of like, you know, with the new Tories kind of thing. And the Tories fail, but we will be better than them.
- [22:33]
James
Yeah.
- [22:33]
Leah Ayoub
Whereas RESTORE is just like directly like, we will just deport millions of brown people and black people back to where they came from and whatever. Like, they're just straight to the closest thing to the bnp, really, historically speaking.
- [22:44]
James
Yeah.
- [22:45]
Leah Ayoub
They don't have a huge percentage from. Last I checked was like 3%. Restore UK.
- [22:51]
Mark Wayne Mullen
But.
- [22:52]
Leah Ayoub
And this is where it gets back to the. To the. To the media problem in this country again. The BBC started one of their coverages of the Belfast programs with a quote by Rupert Lowe, who is like, again, maybe in terms of parties, the sixth or the seventh or the eighth in the UK currently.
- [23:10]
James
Yeah.
- [23:10]
Leah Ayoub
But they have this disproportionate media presence because their position keeps on being framed as like the. The default position, as if everyone has some concerns about. And put some concerns in quotations about foreigners or immigrants or what have you, you know.
- [23:27]
James
Yeah. And they like anchor the debate on the right there. Like the BBC or anyone else is running, like, let's have a debate about the humanity of people who weren't born in the United Kingdom or people who aren't white in the United Kingdom. They anchor that debate on their terms. They get to define the terms.
- [23:44]
Leah Ayoub
Exactly.
- [23:45]
James
Yeah. I think Nick Griffin, like, would be a place where I could like, see this, this particular tendency starting.
- [23:53]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [23:53]
James
Like the. The sort of new. I guess Nick Griffin comes out the National Front. So it's really a continuous. Just for people who aren't familiar. Like, yeah, hate groups from the 80s to hate groups in the 2000s. Is Nick Griffin too. Yes, yes. To hear. I think you're right. They are the new analog for that. Like, there's a reason the BNP sounds a British National Party, but like British Nazi Party isn't a. A accident there. If you look at how these guys like to dress up. But, like, that's how we get here. I guess it is a real problem in the British media. Right. Like, I know Americans are very familiar with the Charlie Kirk stick and the debate Me stick. But like, Britain has been doing that perhaps for even longer.
- [24:31]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Yeah.
- [24:31]
James
I remember Nick Griffin attending the Oxford Union in 2007. 2008. And I remember big protests at that time. Like Britain has been doing this for a while and like most people when. When it's this hate is so evident. If it wasn't Belfast in it, as it has been in many other places. Right. Reject it.
- [24:52]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [24:53]
James
It's not. It's not the mainstream British stance.
- [24:56]
Leah Ayoub
No.
- [24:56]
James
The hate is somewhat different in the uk. That's the other thing that we should mention, I guess. Like, you know, like you say that it's not entirely racialized in the Polish people are othered from Britishness, othered from whiteness. Unless it is useful for them.
- [25:09]
Leah Ayoub
Yes.
- [25:10]
James
So like, I guess, what did you see when you participated in this Brighton march? Because what we don't have in the UK as much. Right. Like Labour is pretty shit at this. We haven't had the similar thing on the left. So let's say, explain how people are going about rejecting this, which is largely an extra parliamentary process.
- [25:30]
Leah Ayoub
It is. It is largely an extra parliamentary process. Brighton historically has had a different trajectory than other parts of the uk.
- [25:38]
James
Yeah, Brighton's quite unique.
- [25:39]
Leah Ayoub
It was the only. A Green mp, for example, was from Brighton. Now it's changed with the Green MP kind of taking a lot of the votes from the left because of Labour's right word shift in the past few years. I mean, labor has always been arguably a right wing project anyway.
- [25:54]
James
Yeah.
- [25:54]
Leah Ayoub
But in the past few years, especially on the Starmer, has been the past couple of years as today is when he officially resigned. So this was also like a momentous day.
- [26:02]
James
Yeah.
- [26:02]
Leah Ayoub
Brighton has had this kind of long history of anti fascism. A lot of it has been cultural and it came out of its music scene and all of that.
- [26:10]
James
Yeah.
- [26:11]
Leah Ayoub
And it has meant like, as someone who's like, I am a migrant, I am also a person of color and I live in the uk. It was pretty nice to see a. Mostly because Brighton is mostly white. Yeah, Like a mostly white city really come out in force against these people who. A lot of them, I should say, were not even from Brighton because that's not unusual these days. They were busting quite literally in some cases.
- [26:33]
James
Yeah. But they want to come to where they feel like the migrants are or the Liberals are.
- [26:38]
Leah Ayoub
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And people like. There were different groups that marched. The Green Party was among them. But large, largely. It was just like a bunch of unions a month of like student groups, local anti fascist collectives, even some religious groups, like multi faith alliance stuff and all of these things, which Greta is pretty good at, I would say, overall.
- [26:59]
James
Yeah.
- [27:00]
Leah Ayoub
And there were These different marches that end up ended up kind of joining as is. You know, typical in these types of marches.
- [27:06]
Vicky Osterweil
They had like the.
- [27:07]
Leah Ayoub
The Palestine one, the feminist one, the, you know, the LGBTQ one, and they were kind of joined in the next to the station, the writing station, where the fascists were, were meeting up. Essentially, as I said, there were more cops than. Than. I'm fairly certain of this, there were more cops than. Than like fascists that were there in Belfast. It was different because it was the most direct reaction to what happened just a few days prior.
- [27:30]
James
Yeah.
- [27:31]
Leah Ayoub
And this was like largely organic in the sense that the Brighton one was like, we were planning for this for some time because the fascists had announced it long before even the Belfast program. It just happen. Occur after the Belfast program. But it was already announced before. Yeah, all that really happened was that they made the announcement, people were already organizing, and then a bunch of ashes did a program in Belfast and that motivated even more people in Brighton to come out. In Brighton, if that makes sense.
- [27:56]
James
Yeah.
- [27:56]
Leah Ayoub
And we saw similar dynamics in Glasgow and similar dynamics. And I believe, as I said, Sheffield and Liverpool and other places, like, in smaller numbers.
- [28:02]
James
Yeah.
- [28:03]
Leah Ayoub
It's important to say that, like, with the exception of when they did the whole Unite the Kingdom rally, like last year, which was the biggest of its kind, and it was the biggest of its kind for, like, different reasons. There was even like a very mediatized attack, like a few days prior. There was, of course, the Charlie Kirk murder just like a few days prior. So it's kind of like it was a perfect storm that brought them all out at the same time. Yeah, that's very, very uncommon. The average protest that they managed to pull is in the lower hundreds. Usually at most is like in the lower thousands.
- [28:36]
James
Yeah.
- [28:36]
Leah Ayoub
Whereas, like, you know, on a. Every other month or whatnot, you have a massive pro Palestine protest in London that has like 200, 300, 400,000 people.
- [28:44]
James
Yeah.
- [28:44]
Leah Ayoub
And that's putting aside pride and that's putting aside all of those other things that happen.
- [28:48]
James
Yeah.
- [28:48]
Leah Ayoub
So they never managed to have enough people on the streets, at least not yet. The danger, in some sense is that the response to those far right marches and in some cases the pogroms shows how rightward what you might think of as centrist politics has gotten in the uk. Like, the default is very right wing. Yeah.
- [29:09]
James
Like the Overton Window has moved way to the right in the uk.
- [29:13]
Leah Ayoub
Exactly. Even though it doesn't necessarily make sense in the sense that, like, when you poll people, you have a difference between when you ask them what are like, what are the top five problems, whatever, of what the UK is going through? And then immigration is usually in the top five. But then what are the top five things, the top 10 things that you are personally struggling with? And immigration is usually never in those top 10. And so there is a disconnect there. That's why I emphasize so much on the media framing and the centrality of the types of framing that we are seeing, have been seeing for some time in the run up to the Brexit vote and since Brexit, which is going to be 10 years now.
- [30:02]
James
Yeah, yeah.
- [30:02]
Leah Ayoub
Literally, I think in a few days
- [30:03]
James
it's going to be 10 years.
- [30:04]
Andrew Sage
Sincere.
- [30:04]
James
Brexit. Yeah, yeah.
- [30:06]
Leah Ayoub
The tabloidization, I don't know how you call it, of the media in the uk, where basically everything is tabloid, has not helped, to put it mildly. I started one of my. The article I wrote recently, I just randomly took a newspaper on the bus, the Mirror, which is not even particularly right wing compared to the Daily Mail, for example, or whatever. But there was a short story, a very short story, and it was about a drunken asylum seeker vandalizes memorial or something like that. And the headline was Asylum seeker vandalizes memorial, whatever it is.
- [30:42]
James
Yeah.
- [30:42]
Leah Ayoub
And then the first sentence was a drunk or caps, all capital letters asylum. And the story was just a drunk guy who damaged some property.
- [30:49]
James
Yeah.
- [30:50]
Leah Ayoub
His. His legal status and origins was. Is literally irrelevant to the story.
- [30:54]
James
Right.
- [30:54]
Leah Ayoub
He's a guy who's drunk who did something which is not that uncommon in the uk, unfortunately.
- [30:58]
James
Yeah, yeah. That's one of our national pastimes.
- [31:01]
Leah Ayoub
Exactly. If any, I, I joke, like, if anything, it just shows that the guy was. Is well integrated into British culture.
- [31:05]
James
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, he'. British.
- [31:08]
Leah Ayoub
But they. The editor of that paper on that specific day decided that adding asylum seeker made this a more sexy story for readers and so on. And that's a very common thing.
- [31:18]
James
Oh, yeah.
- [31:19]
Leah Ayoub
As soon as you add asylum seeker or migrant or refugee or whatever to these headlines, it can drive engagement up on social media. It can attract eyeballs more because it's rage baiting. And it's become such a big problem.
- [31:31]
James
Yeah. It is like a. Largely a media problem. And I think, like, that's a really important place to talk about because there's this idea again, that like, this came from Elon Musk.
- [31:41]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [31:42]
James
And that like, undoubtedly Elon Musk has amplified the very far right in the uk, Undoubtedly. The fact that so many journalists spend so much time on his website.
- [31:53]
Leah Ayoub
Oh, yeah.
- [31:54]
James
Changes their perspective of where the debate is at, especially when, like, you know, not, not to be too, too much a dick about it, but like a lot of journalists don't go outside and talk to normal people very much.
- [32:05]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [32:06]
James
My folks are both in agriculture.
- [32:07]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Right.
- [32:08]
James
Like, when I'm home, I'm talking to people who work in that world too. And like, it's just not a you. Sometimes people say, I saw X on the tv, I saw Y on the tv. But like, you're just not running into many people who are seeking asylum, causing problems, nor is it a major issue in their life. And when there are migrants in their lives, they're people who they cherish. Right. They're members of their community.
- [32:29]
Leah Ayoub
Yeah.
- [32:30]
James
That doesn't get reflected in the media debate. But like, this is a longer issue than Elon Musk buying Twitter in the uk.
- [32:36]
Leah Ayoub
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
- [32:37]
James
It's a big problem and it's one I think we can't fix. Like, trying to diversify people's media diet is a challenge. Like, as you say in the uk, like, just the way we consume media is different.
- [32:50]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [32:51]
James
Like you think about, like when my dad's driving and he's listening to Radio 2 all the time. Right. Like, they will have, they will have these debates there. Like, like it's different media consumption, media diet than people in the US And I wonder like, yeah, even if there were just like, if there were good outlets that you prefer to read, like, especially for people who are not from the UK to understand the debate in just more rational, anchored in reality terms. Like, it doesn't even have to be a, like a, A left source. Like, it's just if they're not distorting most people's lived experience, that's relatively unusual in the uk.
- [33:23]
Leah Ayoub
It is, yeah. There's a fascinating program on the BBC that weirdly enough, given that I do media studies, I actually did not know about until relatively recently, but it's called News News Watch. I sent you a clip.
- [33:35]
James
Yeah.
- [33:35]
Leah Ayoub
A few days ago. And it just. It is what it is. It, it, it is. It's kind of this program within the BBC, but clearly editorially independent of the BBC that does critical media coverage. And they pointed out.
- [33:46]
James
Yeah.
- [33:47]
Leah Ayoub
That after the Belfast program, a lot of. They got a lot of comments from people who were concerned by how the BBC was covering the. The Belfast riot slash program. Whatever.
- [33:58]
James
Yeah.
- [33:59]
Leah Ayoub
And including the fact that again, again, initially people thought they were saying this is Somali person when it wasn't even the case.
- [34:05]
James
Yeah.
- [34:05]
Leah Ayoub
But immediately racializing these terms and so on and one of the people that came on said that like, you know, there was an attack in Bolton the day, which is out of Manchester just the day after the Belfast program against an imam's house. Like a, a guy just firebombed his house, his kids were inside. Luckily they were unharmed. But they could have easily died.
- [34:23]
James
Yeah.
- [34:24]
Leah Ayoub
Then made the news. But it's not. And if there was even an attack in Peace Haven, which is not far from where I live in October 2025 against a mosque there, there were two worshipers inside that could have also died. Luckily they were okay. And again, it's not that it doesn't make the news, it gets reported on. But like it. That's it. It doesn't then get debated ad nauseam. It doesn't get. It doesn't become this huge sensational thing that like politicians are asked to, to opine about or whatever. It's just a thing happened. That's sad. Let's move on. Whereas if it's a one in just all you need is a single story of a non white person attacking a white person. And it's like in a particularly good times, in terms of, I don't know, whatever's happening on Twitter or whatever. But again not just that, it's only that, but it's become this huge amplifier. Then you're more likely to see what we've been seeing really. That's why I insist on the media framing. It's not the only thing. I mean you cannot talk about even if the media was bad. But if like everyone was comfortable and didn't struggle with these income inequalities and precarity and whatnot, then the media wouldn't be as big of a. It's salience wouldn't be as relevant. But it's those two things at the same time that there's kind of this perfect storm right now.
- [35:34]
James
Yeah. Like people. Like it's hard times for people.
- [35:36]
Leah Ayoub
Exactly.
- [35:37]
James
And like the hard times are breeding ground for hate. Yes. And I think like, yeah, that's something we all have to work against, especially in the British context. But also like that's coming here. It's hard times here too.
- [35:48]
Leah Ayoub
Yeah.
- [35:48]
James
The hatred is always going to find like fertile terrain in those difficult times. Even that framing. Right. Like I was thinking about this the other day, like talking to a colleague in the uk like all the time. The quote unquote migrant crisis is used as a framing in, in European politics. And that's something the U.S. right learned from and they created a crisis here.
- [36:10]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [36:10]
James
That it's not a fucking crisis. There is plenty of space in the UK for more people and like these people are like members of our communities and a benefit to all of us. The UK should be talking about the bigotry crisis, the racism crisis. We have a pogrom Belfast. We have someone attacking an imam's house. We have constant, constant macro and microaggressions for people. Yeah, like including on our state funded media.
- [36:37]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [36:38]
James
And like that. That is the framing I'd like to see. It's not a framing you're going to see from the people who are perpetuating it because it's a profitable strategy to whip up hate like this.
- [36:48]
Leah Ayoub
Yeah, I mentioned this if like I had a post on this guy a few days ago of like this country also has an aging population crisis, it has a job crisis, a lot of those jobs, because it's structured, the economy is structured in a way that certain jobs are very difficult for locals to do, like nursing, nursing homes and stuff like that, largely because pay is so bad. And you have at the same time the media kind of and lots of politicians focusing on this very made up migration like migrant crisis, as you said, whereas this country is actually struggling with an aging population. In addition to that, the increase in migration since 2004, there's been an increase in migrants. I mean I'm one of them. Has not actually brought more crime to the uk. The data is pretty clear on that. The crimes has actually been steadily declining in the past couple of decades in this country. Including in London, the most diverse city in the UK by far. Yeah, there's just no, there's no core. And I know I'm saying this and you know, obviously for the like listeners of this, I'm kind of like preaching to the choir here.
- [37:48]
James
Yeah.
- [37:48]
Leah Ayoub
But just, it just bears repeating that like this is generally entirely made up. Like there is absolutely no correlation between these two, between like just an increase of people from a certain skin color or whatever and then the prevalence of crime. And so there's no correlation between those two. And when we talk about one of the big things of the far right here, as in the US and as in a good chunk of the world, it's all about, you know, save our women and girls essentially is how they frame it constantly. Pretty huge percentage of the far right people have. For example, two years ago you also had riots in Belfast. Something like a ridiculously high amount of those who were arrested were and were later released were since re arrested due to like domestic abuse allegations and sexual harassments and stuff. Like that, you know.
- [38:32]
James
Yeah.
- [38:33]
Leah Ayoub
Many such cases, they're not framed as like a civilizational crisis for women and girls because they are the default, they are the white guys. They are, you know, they, they don't get spoken of in the same way as the, the rest of the population in this country. So it's a, in that sense maybe it's a more familiar problem for American listeners in that sense. You have these similarities there.
- [38:52]
James
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good, that's a good analogy to draw. I wonder then as we wrap up like you wrote an excellent article on this which we will link in the show notes, do you have anything else you want to share with people? Or you'd suggest like it's a little less easy to feel so isolated in the uk, Right. We're just like a smaller polity. Like it's, it's. You can normally find people but just people who are. If people are willing to support. If people are looking to find like minded folks.
- [39:22]
Leah Ayoub
Yeah. In the uk I would say, I mean I guess this is a bit, bit everywhere the same thing. But it's going to depend on like where you live.
- [39:29]
James
Yeah.
- [39:29]
Leah Ayoub
Like you know, I have other people listening if they happen to be in great an a. Feel free to reach out to me. I like meeting people but like you have these different collectives that are like usually very locally based. I mentioned the Anaka Collective, the women's collective in Belfast for example. If folks want to support them, they can still do so. Maybe I could put it this way. I mean I moved here 10 years ago and then I left for to do my PhD in Switzerland and then me and my partner and kid, we moved back here a couple of years ago. There are lots of reasons not to be here. There are lots of good reasons not to want to be and want to be elsewhere. But there are also pretty good reasons to be here for me personally which is that there are lots of different networks. Communities that are. Have been kind of built for decades now in some cases that one can, can join, one can help again it's going to be very much like depending on where you live. London is not going to be the same as Manchester, as Belfast, as Glasgow and so on and so forth.
- [40:24]
James
Yeah.
- [40:24]
Leah Ayoub
But like that's one of the good things about it. The other thing you mentioned in terms of reading and I write for this, the one that you're going to link Shadow Mag without the W in the end.
- [40:33]
James
Yeah.
- [40:33]
Leah Ayoub
And at the end of every article they have recommendations usually of like what people can do and usually it has to do with either, like, you read further. But it could also be like, support this collective or like, you know, follow this person or whatever. Like just very, very small things. Like. Yeah, by no means are we. Are we claiming to fix everything through that, but like, that's just small things that people can actually.
- [40:51]
James
Yeah.
- [40:51]
Leah Ayoub
Feel more connected maybe if they. If they actually live here and that they don't feel connected to different communities or if they're abroad and they want to support, this could also be like an easy way to do so.
- [41:01]
James
Yeah, I think that's a great piece of advice I get. It's very local, which is good. Like, the response to austerity has been people taking care of their community. And then, like, that is how we get through this. Yeah, Same as though. Yeah. The poverty the government is deciding that everyone has to live in. Like, it's the same and it's the same response.
- [41:16]
Leah Ayoub
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.
- [41:18]
James
Well, thank you very much for your time today. That was really good, I think. Insightful. I hope it helped people. Where can people find you if they'd like to follow you and your work In Brighton, obviously.
- [41:27]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [41:27]
Leah Ayoub
If you're on Brighton, reach out. I. I do post on. On Blue sky from time to time. It's just a. You'll find me there. And other than that, I have the podcast, the Friday's Times. It's been inactive for the past month, but I'm gonna start again soon. And I have a newsletter called Hauntologies that I try and keep active as well, in which I talk about some of the stuff we talked about here.
- [41:46]
James
Yeah.
- [41:46]
Leah Ayoub
With sometimes more Lebanon stuff and Palestine stuff where I'm from and. But also a lot of Western, like, UK and US stuff and so on.
- [41:52]
James
Yeah, yeah. And I think it's great to have those conversations connected. Like, the struggle's not as distinct as people think.
- [41:58]
Leah Ayoub
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks.
- [41:59]
James
Well, thank you so much. That was great.
- [42:00]
Leah Ayoub
Thank you. Thank you.
- [42:11]
James
This is the story of the one.
- [42:14]
Vicky Osterweil
The one who keeps multiple buildings running
- [42:16]
James
smoothly day after day. Plumbing that flows, H VAC that, homes, cleaning supplies that keep surfaces sparkling. That's why she counts on Grainger. With easy reordering online and 24. 7 support, Grainger helps her keep the products she needs on hand. So shelves stay stocked and buildings stay ready.
- [42:32]
Vicky Osterweil
Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop
- [42:36]
James
by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [42:44]
Garrison Davis
Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast coming to you from what they are calling the fakest economy of all time. I am Your host, Mia Wong. And with me to discuss really, truly a stock market that is like a microcosm of all of the unhinged things that are going on in. In the economy is friend of the show, Vicky Osterweil, who has done many, many, many, many things. Writer as an organizer, Recent author. Current author.
- [43:14]
Vicky Osterweil
I'm just an author now. I think I have two books. I'm just an author. Yeah, two.
- [43:18]
Garrison Davis
Two books makes you an author.
- [43:19]
Vicky Osterweil
That's right. Hi. How's it going? How's it going, man? How are you doing today this beautiful June day?
- [43:23]
Garrison Davis
Awful. Absolutely terrible. The whole world is on fire, both metaphorically and literally.
- [43:30]
Vicky Osterweil
You tried to learn about the economy again, didn't you? This is what happens. You should never look. Don't turn over that rock. Don't turn over that rock.
- [43:36]
Garrison Davis
Huge mistake.
- [43:38]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [43:38]
Garrison Davis
I am learning about financial instruments that are so deranged. They make like. They make the stuff the 2008 financial collapse is based on look normal and stable. Yeah, we're doing great here. Having promised a story about the economy is fake, I want to do first what I am calling a bonus horror.
- [43:55]
Andrew Sage
Oh.
- [43:56]
Vicky Osterweil
Because so I love a bonus.
- [43:58]
Garrison Davis
This bonus horror.
- [43:59]
James
Now, I think you are one of
- [44:01]
Garrison Davis
the people who is most uniquely qualified to address this bonus horror as someone who has recently written a book called the Extended How Disney Killed the Movies and Took over the World that is about the evils of intellectual property. Human. And Hassel has written about riots and also has written about the transgender. I want to hear your thoughts on. Oh, boy, oh, boy. A DMCA takedown notice filed by the Stonewall Inn, LLC against a T shirt shop that was being run by the Canadian trans comics writer Sophie LaBelle for shirts that said Stonewall was a riot. And so, Nikki, what do you think about the phenomenon of trademarking a riot?
- [44:46]
Vicky Osterweil
Happy pride. First of all, I think I think it's really important that we celebrate June this year in all the right ways. Yeah, I mean, you know, trademarking a riot, that seems good. Like trademarking a historical event, copywriting a historical era, patenting human genome. These are all good things. Frankly, I think it's outrageous that anything should be the common property of. Of a community, history, and humanity. So I just think it's great when people draw fences around the word Stonewall, for example, which, you know, sure, it functions, you know, as a. You know, as a stand in for an entire historical era for a crucial moment and indeed for a riot. But what about the people who own the Stonewall Inn? Did you ever think about Them and their interests.
- [45:39]
James
I don't think you did.
- [45:40]
Garrison Davis
It's like one of those, like, things where it's like, well, you couldn't have had Stonewall without the police. And it's like,
- [45:47]
Vicky Osterweil
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the, that's the Pontius pie. That is the good guy in the Jesus story theory, right?
- [45:54]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [45:54]
Vicky Osterweil
You know, like, well, if it weren't for the Roman centurions, you know, who would have, who would have sacrificed Jesus? Yeah, no, it's bad. I mean, I would love to have a hot take, but I feel like. Or even a lukewarm one. But that one's really just, just, that's just, just a happy, happy pride. Love a business gay. You know, I just love a business gay.
- [46:12]
Garrison Davis
The, the, the feeling I saw, seeing that the only feeling I've had like that recently was discovering that the nc, the ncaa, was like selling the biometrics data of their athletes to, to sports gambling companies so the sports gambling companies could set lines.
- [46:25]
Vicky Osterweil
Seems right.
- [46:26]
Garrison Davis
Which is like, I, I cannot emphasize this enough. This is a thing that like scouts for professional teams have a hard time getting access to like the actual like heights and weights and stuff of, of like. I don't know. This is, this is maybe the worst, maybe the worst economy.
- [46:42]
Vicky Osterweil
Well.
- [46:42]
Garrison Davis
That they've. That we've had.
- [46:44]
Vicky Osterweil
If you're talking about like sort of some sort of high tech surveillance apparatus that's largely used to prop up a casino. I mean, you might be talking about the ncaa, but you might also be talking about the stock market.
- [46:56]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. And oh boy. Today, today we are going on what I am, I am colloquially referring to as the Coast B roller coaster.
- [47:04]
Vicky Osterweil
Yay. Let's go.
- [47:06]
Garrison Davis
Oh boy. So cospi, for people who don't know, is like the main Korean stock index in the way that like, I mean, we kind of have multiple, I don't
- [47:14]
Vicky Osterweil
know, the NASDAQ or the s and P500.
- [47:16]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, it's. It's like, it's like that basically.
- [47:19]
Vicky Osterweil
So it's an index. It's the main major index of major Korean stocks.
- [47:23]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. And, and people, longtime listeners of the show, may remember that we have talked a bit about what's called the Magnificent Seven, which are these seven American tech stocks that make up an absolutely unhinged, like, percentage of these, like, stock listings. Right. So the reason I want to talk about coast, be the South Korean one is because in a lot of ways it's like the entire economy in a microcosm because, you know, whereas the US has like seven Tech stocks that are like a huge percentage of the market. Kosbe. Over half of the fucking index is two companies.
- [47:58]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [47:59]
Garrison Davis
Samsung and SK Hyex, which are.
- [48:01]
Vicky Osterweil
That's that good. That's that good economy.
- [48:03]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Yeah.
- [48:04]
Garrison Davis
And, yeah, that's how you know your economy is good and normal when it's two fucking companies. Both of which is like, valuations have been spiking massively specifically because of chip production. And specifically because of chip production for. I guess I have to say the words AI instead of just doing a long and elaborate bit where I simply just call it matrix multiplication over and over again. Yeah.
- [48:25]
Vicky Osterweil
Graphics cards, they're doing it. It's because graphics cards are so valuable. That's what. That's what this is all about.
- [48:31]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. This is now like half of the main index of like, one of the most advanced industrial economies in, like, in human history. Right. Is fucking making graphics cards for chatbots.
- [48:44]
Vicky Osterweil
South Korea is what this. The 13th, the 12th or 13th largest in the entire world, these two companies, right? Yeah, yeah, it's good.
- [48:51]
Garrison Davis
And, you know, there was a while back at Executive Disorder where I was like, spending a decent amount of time tracking Kospi going up and down because it has lost 10% of its value multiple times this year. That's unhinged. That does not happen. Right. Like, outside of, like the Great Recession.
- [49:11]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Right.
- [49:12]
Garrison Davis
It's like that kind of shit. That's a really rare thing to happen. This.
- [49:16]
Vicky Osterweil
This used to happen in the 19th century all the time, right. So, like, what we're. What we're looking at in Korea and indeed in the US is like, like stock markets that, like, what used to be before the Great Depression, before Black Friday and the invention of the SEC to make sure that this wouldn't happen every day. And I think, like, one of the things that, I mean, maybe you're gonna get to this. I don't wanna jump on, on top of your thing, but I think the thing that is really wild about what's going on with the Cosby is also, I think, again, to connect it to sort of the gambling thing is that in the last month, two months, I don't remember exactly when this happened, Korean stocks got added to, like, Robinhood.
- [49:50]
James
Right.
- [49:50]
Vicky Osterweil
It got added to, like, US Retail trading. Now, like, retail trading, like, used to technically be possible before these, like, apps and before we read it, you know, our. Our Wall street bets or whatever. But it was hard. You had to have a. You had to have an agent. You had to, like, do a thing. And then day trading in the 90s made it a little easier for like middle class people to do, but now like, you can do it instantly, anywhere. And you know, if you remember, I mean, I know you remember Mia, but if the folks at home remember, like the gamestalk stuff like that weird cult during the N era, you know, the Meme stock. The meme. It was called Meme Stocks and how like sort of, you know, this one Reddit subreddit could like make a stock, you know, quadruple its price overnight or go 10 times overnight.
- [50:32]
Andrew Sage
Right.
- [50:32]
Vicky Osterweil
The thing is, what's happening is that the Korean retail market has also exploded. So not only are you getting US Investors, right. Like day traders just like going on really weird tips and like pouring millions and millions of US Dollars.
- [50:48]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Right?
- [50:48]
Vicky Osterweil
Because like, yeah, you know, if. If it used to be hard to trade on the US Stock Exchange, trading in a foreign st. Basically impossible.
- [50:54]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [50:55]
Vicky Osterweil
You just couldn't do it again. You technically could, but you had to have a lot of money and a lot of connections.
- [50:59]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. You had to actually be someone who worked in finance.
- [51:02]
Vicky Osterweil
Yes.
- [51:03]
Garrison Davis
Like, you know, like you had to be effectively a professional.
- [51:06]
Vicky Osterweil
Exactly.
- [51:07]
Garrison Davis
Or it's like, you know, to like return to the gambling analogy, which is increasingly less and less of an analogy. It's like the equivalent of like, it. It was technically possible to be one of those guys who like, played online poker. Right, right, it was equivalent to that. Where it's like, okay, you can dedicate your entire life to this one incredibly niche thing.
- [51:27]
Vicky Osterweil
Exactly. But so the, the opening up and the deregulation of this trade has. This is sort of, maybe, can be a little hard to grasp. But like, so the Korean economy is massive, but compared to the US economy, it's nothing. Right. So when all of the money from, when, when a ton of retail money from the US in coordinated fashion, you know, coordinate online on Reddit or whatever, in discord, servers can flood into the markets. It can make a huge change. Imagine an even smaller. Imagine a smaller market, right? Like, imagine something that's not worth very much and you get. You add the exchange rate in there and you're not getting hit on exchange rate fees. You can really swing the market. Foreigners could swing the market really easily.
- [52:06]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [52:06]
Vicky Osterweil
By speculating, which again, used to be a thing that finance operatives did, but it was really risky and it was like a really dodgy thing to do.
- [52:13]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [52:14]
Vicky Osterweil
But these retail investors don't really care because it's gambling. It's just a gambling app.
- [52:18]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Right.
- [52:18]
Vicky Osterweil
They're gambling on stocks.
- [52:20]
Garrison Davis
Yep.
- [52:20]
Vicky Osterweil
But now there's. It has become a Huge thing in Korea as well. There was just a documentary, I think it was released like yesterday on like Bloomberg about how intense retail buying. So everyone in Korea has like sort of stock mania, right? Like in the documentary, there's like, you know, like a woman at a grocery checkout. Like she's working and she's like checking her stock prices as she's like scanning stuff, you know. And like, it's not about lower class people shouldn't have access. It's about this means that all the money is being funneled. The reason Korea is important, as most of you probably know, is because it's where all of the chips are made. It is where processors have to be made. It's the only place on earth where they can really. They're in Taiwan where they can be made. And because of the huge AI boom, right? The huge amount of money circulating between three different companies, right? Back and forth forever, that every piece AI supply chain, right? So like the, the, you know, each mineral that goes into it, the people who make a particular like plastic clip that's really hard to make that like fits into the data center. Like all of these companies get identified by, you know, deranged gamblers, you know, and they say like this company. And in the Korean stock market, so in the US Stock market, there's like tickers, you know, like three letters. In the Korean summer, it's just like a number, right? So in the CO speak, so they're like guys, 4201 is this company, I'm telling you, it makes, you know, the, it makes the sort of fiber cables that go in a data center, right? And if that takes off on finance, Twitter or in, you know, Wall street bets or whatever, they can just swing these companies. And of course, so. So you've got these US and European investors throwing all their money in. So then Korean people are like, we got to get in on this because it's all booming. And all of these are just. Are just really random companies that make really obscure. They're basically what would have been penny stocks back in the day. Yeah, right. And they're getting treat at wild volumes. And it's, it's good, it's good because it's real money that really reflects the value of the Korean economy. And it's not just a bunch of people losing their shirts in a series of complex scams.
- [54:28]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. There's obviously this sort of like groundswell mania of this sort of like, it's just a gambling boom, right. But on the institutional level, they are also doing things that are. I was saying this to Vicky before. Before I started this. So, like, these might be the most deranged financial instruments I have ever seen. And, like, I have spent a significant amount of my Life studying the 2008 financial collapse. And these make those instruments look normal.
- [54:57]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, you described one to me and I literally was stunned in silence because I didn't believe that the thing you had just described was real.
- [55:04]
Garrison Davis
It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. When we come back from these ads. Okay, we are back. I have been promising you the worst financial idea I have ever seen, right? So, like, what we've been talking about thus far has been, you know, like, our. The entire economy now is someone who thinks they got. They got a tip on the horses and is putting their life savings in on, like. Like, I don't know. What. What's a horse name? Like, secretary. I don't know.
- [55:43]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, Sweet Mondays.
- [55:44]
Garrison Davis
That one in the third.
- [55:45]
Robert Evans
I don't know.
- [55:46]
Garrison Davis
She's great in the rain.
- [55:47]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [55:49]
Garrison Davis
So, but like, here's the thing, right? That is comparatively not that risky in the sense that when you put the money on the horses, right, there's kind of a limit to how much you can lose.
- [56:05]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, yeah, totally.
- [56:06]
Garrison Davis
You're putting the money in. You can only lose that much money. Now if the stuff that the regular people doing are again, like, putting it all on red or just like, fucking, I got a tip on the horses. What the institutional people are doing. I could only describe this shit as like. And some of this is also designed to be bought by retail investors, which is just unbelievably insane. Like, I can only describe this as the equivalent of. It's the market equivalent of Russian roulette. Okay? So on June 22, Cospeed did a thing that it does semi normally, which was again, lose 10% and trigger the circuit breakers. They trigger the circuit breakers. Like, again, like today we were recording this on June 26, a thing that, again, is not supposed to happen in normal markets. Like, that's panic shit. But on Monday, it triggered because Korea's like, national, like, financial watchdog. Like, the guy who ran it. It was like, okay, maybe, maybe it was a mistake for regulators to have approved this thing called leveraged ETFs on. On a single stock. Okay? So, so to understand how bonkers this is, like that.
- [57:15]
Robert Evans
That.
- [57:15]
Garrison Davis
That's all gibberish, right? And for once, this isn't even a case where the financial people are packaging something simple with a gibberish.
- [57:23]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Name.
- [57:23]
Garrison Davis
This is ridiculous. So ETFs are exchange traded funds and it's supposed to be a mechanism where like, okay, there's just one thing you can buy, but that one, like security. This is like the physical thing you're buying has like a bunch of stocks in it. Right?
- [57:39]
Vicky Osterweil
So you could say like, I want to buy all the peanut farmers in America. Right? Okay. There's five publicly listed peanut companies. They make an etf. It's the peanut etf. You buy it, no problem, you know, and then you just buy that and you ride the whole, all five of them together instead of just one.
- [57:52]
James
Yeah.
- [57:53]
Garrison Davis
The place you might have heard of this is there were a bunch of like, supposedly like green ETFs that were supposed to be like this. These are the things you can invest in to save the environment. And obviously a lot of that was scams. But also it's one of those things that was bad while it was happening. And I, and you, you miss it when it's gone because it was replaced by what I can only describe as what if we did an ETF on destroying the economy. But again, so the, the purpose of these things, right, is that they're supposed to allow you to have one instrument to hold positions on multiple companies.
- [58:25]
Andrew Sage
Right?
- [58:25]
Vicky Osterweil
It's a basket of companies.
- [58:27]
Garrison Davis
Yes. Now, now it'll last about seven years. Right. This is a relatively recent phenomenon. I'm sure people like maybe had like done something like this before that, but this is a relatively recent phenomenon. Somebody had the absolutely horrible idea of what if you had an ETF that was just one stock.
- [58:47]
Vicky Osterweil
Well, but Mia, that doesn't make any sense. They're all the same thing.
- [58:50]
Robert Evans
Yeah, right.
- [58:51]
Garrison Davis
And I looked at this, I was like, what the fuck are you talking about? That, like, what, what, what, what the fuck is it? What the fuck is a single stock etf? Like that's, that's like, that's, that's literally, it's nonsensical.
- [59:00]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Right?
- [59:01]
Vicky Osterweil
By the stock.
- [59:02]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, right. You buy the stock or you buy a future on like, on the stock, right. If you're betting the stocks and go up and down, you buy like futures, right? This the only way. I, I, I don't know. I think Vicky kind of came up with the best way to describe this that I've heard, which is like, it's, it's like getting a stock.
- [59:18]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [59:19]
Garrison Davis
So one of the very formative moments of Mia childhood, right, was reading this book by Cory Doctorow, friend of the show called for the Win, which is about a bunch of gold Miners in a video game, unionizing. There's like a plot, right? But then in between the plot, there will just be a chapter that is Cory Doctorow explaining to you how the 2008 financial collapse happens. And one of the things that he knows that has stuck with me my entire life and I think is genuinely a really important lesson is that if someone comes up to you and the thing that they say is, hey, you can buy this thing, right? You know, or you can. You can place a bet. You can buy a financial instrument. And the way that it works is if multiple things happen, you know, like. Like several things that are different happen, right? So, for example, it's like if LeBron scores 32 and WEMBY has three blocks
- [60:14]
Vicky Osterweil
and I beat the point spread by five, right?
- [60:16]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, right. Then you get paid out $100 billion, whatever. Right? That's. And that's sort of extreme example.
- [60:21]
Vicky Osterweil
But that's a parlay. That's a sports parlay.
- [60:23]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, that's a. That's a sports parlay. Every single time someone is doing that, it is a scam. 100%, it is a scam. If you put your money into this, you are lighting it the fuck on fire.
- [60:34]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [60:34]
Garrison Davis
Now, this is effectively what's going on with. With these. With these leverage ETFs, right? They're taking like a shit ton of positions at the same time. It's a thing that allows you to, like, have a bunch of different positions at one time on the same stock. This is an asset so dangerous that, like, if you look up any definition of these things, literally all of the sites will tell you, do not hold this thing for longer than one day.
- [61:02]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [61:02]
Garrison Davis
Because if you hold this asset for longer than one day, you will lose all of your money. Like Investopedia, for example. Like, it just explains this, right? Where they're like, like, hey, this fucking asset. You can be betting on a stock to go up, right? But because of the way it happened, you can lose money on the stock. You are betting to go up, going up. Because it's this like fucking unhinged set of parlays.
- [61:25]
Vicky Osterweil
It's not all these conditionals on it. So, like, it has to go up within this certain time window or it has to bounce, right? It has to go down then up or something like that, Right? Just a bunch of weird conditions.
- [61:33]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. And you can lose more money on this than you put in.
- [61:36]
Vicky Osterweil
How does that.
- [61:37]
Garrison Davis
Which is insane because you have to pay out all of the options that you.
- [61:42]
Vicky Osterweil
Right, of course.
- [61:42]
Garrison Davis
So you can lose more money than you put in this is.
- [61:46]
James
They.
- [61:47]
Garrison Davis
They found a form of gambling that is actually worse than putting all of your life savings on red. Because at least if you put all your life savings on red, you can only lose all of your life savings.
- [61:57]
James
You.
- [61:57]
Garrison Davis
You could lose your family's life savings on this. Like, they could.
- [62:01]
Vicky Osterweil
Like, famously, it's always good to go into debt to your booking. This is famously. It's famously good to get credit from your. From your sports gambler. That's a. That's a famous. Is a famous narrative thing that's good to do.
- [62:12]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. And again, to get a sense of how unhinged this market is right now, the regulator saying, we probably shouldn't have approved people making these for a bunch of the biggest Korean tech stocks caused the market to tank by 10%.
- [62:26]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [62:27]
Vicky Osterweil
Just saying, like, exactly. There's a lot of different angles on this that we could. We could go into. Sorry. So I'm. Is it okay if I switch to, like, some US Stuff as an example for a second?
- [62:35]
Robert Evans
Amazing.
- [62:36]
Vicky Osterweil
So folks were pretty. It became pretty clear that Trump was playing the price of oil, right? Mondays, he'd be like, we're retaliating against Iran. Fridays, you'd be like, pieces here. Right. There's just a really open trade that he was just making. And it worked because it worked.
- [62:52]
Andrew Sage
Right.
- [62:53]
Vicky Osterweil
It was a classic. Like. Like, well, the investors do it, so it works. The price goes up and down. You can play it. That was how war policy has been dictated for most of 2026, which is great and awesome and really good. But. So the thing about the AI stuff is that, like, financial people insist that AI is relatively safe because there's actual capital spending.
- [63:13]
James
Right.
- [63:13]
Vicky Osterweil
Money is being spent, they say, on data centers. And, you know, Ed Zitron, who I know is part of the network, has done a lot of reporting on. The money's not actually being spent. It doesn't actually. But so. Yes, exactly. So it's all bullshit. These are these bullshit companies. Like, but, like, one of the things that we're starting to see happen and that Trump really innovated, but that everyone's favorite Nazi, the trillionaire, Elon Musk, although he's not a trillionaire anymore unless he moved out of his space expositions, I
- [63:42]
Garrison Davis
think he managed to do a pump and dump with his own company, Elon
- [63:47]
Vicky Osterweil
Musk did a crypto rug pull at the scale of the world economy. Okay. Which, like, you know, in a way, like, like, you know.
- [63:57]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [63:57]
Vicky Osterweil
I'm not going to hand it to you. You don't have to hand it to him. But it's truly one of the craziest scams that like in. In plain sight that's ever happened. And part of the way this worked. I want to talk about this because it's not just about him being a creepy scammer. It's about the way that this is all being supported by the finance industry. Like, which is what you're talking about with these instruments.
- [64:14]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [64:14]
Vicky Osterweil
So you've got these like really nasty instruments that they're developing to rinse Korean grocers of their, you know, their. Of their money, whatever. But you've also got. Got like what. What happened with the SpaceX IPO is that when something gets listed on the NASDAQ and the S and P, when it gets added to these indexes, everyone holding an index fund has to buy those stocks. So it means that like really safe stuff, like you know, a 401k and you're just like, I just put the 401k in the S&P.500. Right. It's just the stock market. I'm buying the whole stock market.
- [64:48]
Garrison Davis
Yep.
- [64:48]
Vicky Osterweil
Line goes up, no problem.
- [64:49]
James
Problem.
- [64:50]
Vicky Osterweil
So when the SpaceX IPO happened, it listed at 160, something like that. 160, was it 169.69?
- [64:57]
Garrison Davis
I don't remember the exact number.
- [64:59]
Vicky Osterweil
I think there was. Did it have a meme price? I don't even remember. Whatever. When it listed. That was 10 days ago. 15 days ago that the IPO happened?
- [65:06]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, something like that.
- [65:07]
Vicky Osterweil
When that went public, all of the institutional funds had to buy a proportional amount of SpaceX. Right. So they had to buy it because that's just how it works. And that's, that's reasonable. That is actually like regulated. It's a reasonable thing. So what happened was this. The price retailers drove it way up. Right. Elon still has, you know, with it, using Twitter, managed to get a bunch of retail investors. This is going to go straight to the moon. Whatever, whatever. So for five days it goes up to like 190. 200, I think it crosses 200 at one point. Right. And now it is down to 150. So it is 10% down from where it was 10 days ago ago. Why is it 10% down? Because SpaceX is a valueless company compared to what they're valuing it at.
- [65:47]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [65:47]
Vicky Osterweil
SpaceX is 15 government contracts in a trench coat. Like, it's just not, it's not a company that like has any path to profitability. It also doesn't have a path to Mars. But what that means is that institutional investors created and regulators created a situation where Elon and his buddies pump and dumped. As you said, they got the price way up, up, they moved out of their position and now those Funds lost their 10% invest stake in SpaceX and there's no reason to anticipate that stock going back up.
- [66:16]
Garrison Davis
Yep.
- [66:17]
Vicky Osterweil
It's just like, there's just no reason for it. It's overvalued as it is. Right, so this is how, like people who aren't doing retail investing, people who are not, you know, people who are like, I don't trust the stock market.
- [66:28]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. So this is, this is the California pension fund.
- [66:31]
Vicky Osterweil
Exactly, exactly.
- [66:32]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [66:32]
Vicky Osterweil
So, yeah. And like, obviously like Trump did that with the Trump coin. Like we're like, basically like, like what the lesson learned from the crypto and the NFT explosion. And by the way, bitcoin is down almost 100% on the year. It's been under 60,000 for months. Bitcoin is collapsing as a safe, the safe haven asset. If you were heavily invested in bitcoin, you're ruined right now if you, if you held for a year. Anyway, they learned from cryptos and NFTs is, oh, we can just do that in the stock market too, right? Yeah, we can just do it. We can just, we can just play the entire stock market like this, you know, and we can blame it on, you know, I started by talking about the retail investors and that's real, that is driving the volatility and that's. If you're a professional or you're in an industry force, you can just skim the cash off. Now the reason that they need to skim the cash as fast as possible right now is because two years ago, I think I came on here to talk about the commercial. Did we talk about commercial real estate? Like the commercial real estate bubble on the show?
- [67:27]
Garrison Davis
Oh, I don't remember.
- [67:29]
Vicky Osterweil
Whatever. I don't remember if we actually talked about on the show or just, just, you know, we just texted about it, whatever, cackled about it privately. So basically the private banking sector, or, sorry, the shadow banking, which is now called private capital, private financing, like that sector was facing a collapse two years ago in 2023 as all of their office buildings came to you. Basically there was this massive expansion in commercial real estate and the pandemic combined with a cooling economy, like they was in trouble. All of that money has now gone into the AI boom. So they staved off this collapse that was supposed to happen in 2023. 2024. There was even a word for it which was like the MA wall. Right. Like all these things were going to hit this maturity wall. Like everyone was ready for it. So now those companies are starting to go down. Right.
- [68:14]
Mark Wayne Mullen
The.
- [68:15]
Vicky Osterweil
The private equity. And the thing about private equity is that it's. What if a bank had no regulation?
- [68:19]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [68:20]
Vicky Osterweil
So private equity has burned all of their money into the AI Boom. But it's not just them. If we look at like the huge layoffs in video game companies are going on right now.
- [68:28]
James
Right.
- [68:29]
Vicky Osterweil
Like all tech investors are taking all of their money out of everything and putting it in AI.
- [68:35]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [68:35]
Vicky Osterweil
Right. They're going all in on AI. That's why there so insistent on doing it. Movies can't get made. Like I talked to, you know, for my book that I wrote, I've talked to a bunch of movie producers. I have relationships with them. They just can't get funding. These are people with huge movies. Right. Big small producers. There's nothing is getting green lit. There is just no capital for anything except AI. The entire economy has put all of its resources.
- [69:01]
Garrison Davis
Yep.
- [69:01]
Vicky Osterweil
Into LLMs.
- [69:03]
Garrison Davis
Yep.
- [69:04]
Vicky Osterweil
Nothing else is getting made. The data centers aren't being built. And then they developed elaborate ways to ruin Korea by gambling on it.
- [69:14]
Garrison Davis
Yeah.
- [69:14]
Vicky Osterweil
Incredible economy.
- [69:15]
Garrison Davis
It's astounding.
- [69:17]
Mark Wayne Mullen
It's like.
- [69:17]
Vicky Osterweil
It's like the, the entire.
- [69:18]
Garrison Davis
It's like every rich person on earth has collectively taken all of humanity's chips and put it on tulip bulbs.
- [69:26]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [69:26]
Vicky Osterweil
You know, I compared this to the 19th century because this is before the SEC. What used to happen. Joint stock companies used to. Guys just used to go around a town. Right.
- [69:37]
James
You know, before.
- [69:38]
Vicky Osterweil
During the era of the telegram.
- [69:39]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [69:39]
Vicky Osterweil
This is. The railroads were the most famous example of this for the 1860s and the 1870s. Post Civil War, there were like five or six railroad stock crashes. People would just sell you listen, we're going to make this rail line. It's going to be awesome. Okay. Rails are the future. It's so high tech. You know, get. Get it on the ground floor. And then there would be massive economic collapses. And you know, that wild insecurity was driven by a lot of what we would call now retail investment. Right. A lot of what the 20th century did. What the SEC did was try to make sure that didn't happen. Because when everyone puts all of their money into a sort of speculative asset like say AI data centers. Because shrimp. Jesus. When everyone was like, wait a second, these aren't very valuable. The money just is gone.
- [70:36]
Garrison Davis
Part of the reason why Everything feels so weird. Is that, like, in order for the entire economic system to function, there's two giant collective delusions that everyone has to maintain at the same time, or everything collapses. One is that the AI boom is inevitable and it's going to make money.
- [70:52]
James
Yeah.
- [70:53]
Garrison Davis
And the second one, and this is also directly tied to South Korea, is that the war in Iran is going to end and it's going to end soon.
- [70:59]
Vicky Osterweil
Yep.
- [71:00]
Garrison Davis
Because if both of these things are
- [71:02]
Vicky Osterweil
not true, and they're not true, neither is.
- [71:05]
James
They're not true.
- [71:06]
Garrison Davis
Like, there's no fucking.
- [71:07]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
No.
- [71:08]
Garrison Davis
They're both complete lies. But everything falls apart immediately. And South Korea, you know, the other reason why South Korea was. Was having these, like, just 10, like 10% of the market get, like, gets annihilated in a few minutes credits is that this would happen every time it became clear that, no, the war isn't ending. Like, every time Trump's fake peace deal fell, like, latest fake peace deal fell apart, the market would collapse. But the problem is, in order for all these people to keep making money, everyone has to continue to collectively believe that, no, it's going to end. And so you're just in this perpetual cycle, right, where, like, South Korea is one of the countries in the world that is the most exposed to the effects of this war. That's not like, actively being bombed. Like, this is like, like in terms of massive industrial economies. Right. Like, obviously, like East Asia. Yeah. Like, like the rest of, like eastern South Asia particularly, is getting by all of this, as we talked about elsewhere on this show, but South Korea is the core industrial center.
- [72:02]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [72:03]
Garrison Davis
That's the most fucked by this, specifically because they. Because they rely so much on natural gas and just regular, like, regular fossil fuels that come through, that come through the Strait of Hormuz, which is not open, has never been open, will not be reopened.
- [72:17]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah, I heard there was a great deal. I heard that actually it's going to be open. Don't worry. It's going to be fine. Listen, Netanyahu is a reasonable man. You know, Trump is a reason. These are reasonable people. It's going to go fine. It's all going to reopen soon.
- [72:29]
Garrison Davis
Yeah. Ben GVIR only. Only holds a minor post in the Israeli government. Hold on. I am Googling this live.
- [72:37]
Vicky Osterweil
God damn it. God damn it.
- [72:39]
Garrison Davis
Oh, wow. Checks notes. He is the Minister of National Security. Oh, no. Oh, no.
- [72:47]
Vicky Osterweil
So, of course, you know, we talk about the economy and obviously the horror in Lebanon and Palestine is the real, like, you know, is the. Is the most horrible and Iran is the most horrible thing going on right now. But these cascading effects are also horrible. If we've learned one thing from the last 10 years, it's, it's that it can always get worse for everyone.
- [73:06]
Garrison Davis
Oh yeah.
- [73:07]
Vicky Osterweil
So we have this moment where like everyone is gambling on South Korean chip manufacturers, right. And sub manufacturers on the basis that they will be totally necessary to the production of chips that are being sold to companies that can't use them, that are a depreciating asset, that get become valueless. These extremely expensive chips lose all their value within five years. They are going to install those chips into buildings that don't exist yet that are, and they're going to put billions of dollars worth of these chips again. The chips have been made. The chips do exist, largely, although there's still a lot of speculation. The chips exist, they're sitting in a warehouse. At some point someone is going to put them into a warehouse. That itself is being speculated on by the same companies who are buying future compute on it as a different financial instrument and they're going to build it. And then when they do build it, it, there's going to be so much demand for AI because people love to use it and it's really made the economy so efficient. It is like truly.
- [74:14]
Garrison Davis
And also, and also one final point about this, right?
- [74:16]
Vicky Osterweil
Yeah.
- [74:17]
Garrison Davis
And also that the people who use it and who become power users of it aren't going to request more tokens than actually make the money because more people using it is actually bad for them because if those people use tokens, they're selling the token tokens below cost.
- [74:32]
Vicky Osterweil
Right? Yeah, it's good. So basically this is a really strong thing for the economy and it's obviously, it's obscene and it's funny and it's, it's truly terrifying. But I think the thing that I think I really want to like underline and me, I know, you know, you know, you would say the same, is that this is our money. Yeah. This is money that we produce by working our whole lives. We have worked so hard for so long and we produce, produced so much surplus value and we, you know, that's, that's the nature of the situation. And that money is being lit on fire sometimes quite literally, right. Like in coal fire plants and gas plants. It is destroying the planet. It is doing so in the name of keeping this bubble alive long enough for all of the big people who are being rinsed, who got rinsed by investing in office building things to get out with their cash and leave with the bag so that as we face the total political and economic collapse as well as ecological disaster, there are people with enough money that they stole. This is one, it's, it's like one last job at the level of like global delusion.
- [75:44]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [75:45]
Vicky Osterweil
And it's all built on this like myth making about AI but it's also built on all of these structures and it's also built on, on like the collapse of the global economic system through war and stuff. In short, it's good. But this is our money. This is our money. We made this money. They're lighting it on fire so that they can get an, invest a bad investment they made 10 years ago back all the bad investments they've made since 2009. They're trying to cash out on that as fast as possible right now. And as long as they can keep pumping the stock market, they can then keep taking that money out and they have a chance to make it. And some of them will be ruined. But this isn't going to be like the 30s. I don't think we're going to see a lot of them jumping out of skyscrapers tragically, like, because I think, I think honestly most of them are going to get out and we're going to be the ones holding the bag and we are the ones who produce that money that they're lighting on fire. And this is what they want to do with us and with the world and the world that we live in. And I'm so glad that we have no way to stop them. I think that's good, personally.
- [76:48]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, you know, the, the, the, the optimistic view on this. And again, I've been saying this already. Trump's approval rating is 30% and the bomb hasn't even got off yet. Right. Like the economy hasn't blown up and
- [76:58]
Vicky Osterweil
low key, the demand destruction for natural gas and oil is so intense that the economy, the global energy market is greening faster. It's greening finally, for the first time since we started doing this, is greening at a pace fast enough to potentially stop some of the worst effects of climate change.
- [77:18]
Garrison Davis
So unfortunately the problem is at the same time we're also all, all of our new economic growth is entirely like gas turbines.
- [77:29]
Vicky Osterweil
It's like, it's, you know, it's fine. Yeah, those are never going to run well.
- [77:32]
Garrison Davis
No, they've, they have definitely poisoned a ton of people.
- [77:35]
Vicky Osterweil
Oh, absolutely. Oh yes, absolutely. No, no, no. Yeah, no doubt.
- [77:38]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, yeah. But, but I also think that like, you know, like, to some extent, like part of the strategy Here, right. If, if, if you look at sort of like what venture capital is doing, this, their plan is like, okay, yeah, we can, we can navigate the complete destruction of the global economy and the subsequent political, like, calamities and the subsequent political fallout and the collapse of, like, nation states by, you know, create. Creating our own sort of fascist corporate autocracies.
- [78:04]
Vicky Osterweil
Totally.
- [78:05]
Garrison Davis
But they don't have to be right about that. Like, they just don't.
- [78:09]
Vicky Osterweil
They're not right. Have you seen how bad these guys are? Elon Musk can't even make a friend. You think this guy can run a corporate state? City, state. Like, come on. When that money stops having its value, they're not ready for the whirlwind they're reaping. I said there's nothing we can do about that. There's nothing that we can do about it with the levers of power that exist right now formally, but there's actually a lot we can do about it. And they're going to learn a lot of reasons why. Why previous capitalists built the sec, built the welfare state.
- [78:38]
James
Yeah.
- [78:38]
Vicky Osterweil
Why they did things. And that's going to be one of the last things they learn. Inshallah.
- [78:43]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [78:44]
Garrison Davis
Last time they did something like this, that was frankly less stupid because. I cannot believe I'm saying this. At least there were houses. I. I can't believe I'm saying this right, but, like, the, the last time they did this, this, they. They set off a wave of world revolutions. They barely survived and, like, revived the international left in a way that had been basically moribund.
- [79:10]
Vicky Osterweil
Yep.
- [79:10]
Garrison Davis
For extremely long periods of time outside of, like, very small regions. And now this. You know, this. The sort of like the, the sort of sleeping giant that they unleashed has been awake for like a decade and a half. And they're like, what if we did this it again? Yeah, but worse.
- [79:30]
Vicky Osterweil
I mean, I don't see what could go wrong for them. I think I'm gonna say it again. Happy pride. Let's make this one the last birthday America ever has. 250 is more than enough, don't you think?
- [79:43]
Garrison Davis
They had their time. Our time is coming soon.
- [79:46]
Vicky Osterweil
It could happen here.
- [80:01]
Andrew Sage
Imagine over a hundred thousand strikers shutting down the city of London for an entire month. The makings of not only a general strike, but also a social revolution. Such was the case in 1889 when the dock workers in the port of London made their voices heard and shook the city to its core. Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew sage Andrewism on YouTube, and I'm joined once again by James.
- [80:31]
James
Glad to be back with you Andrew.
- [80:33]
Andrew Sage
Likewise, likewise. And have you heard of the great London dock strike of 1889?
- [80:39]
James
Have I went to school in a time when like they still taught a little bit of labour history.
- [80:44]
Garrison Davis
History.
- [80:44]
Andrew Sage
Ah, ah, okay. So I guess we'll be able to have a bit of an exchange about it then.
- [80:50]
James
Yeah, but I'm interested to know more.
- [80:52]
Andrew Sage
Yeah, I first learned about it through Erica Malatesta. He wrote briefly about it in one of his pamphlets. One of his many pamphlets.
- [81:01]
James
Yeah.
- [81:01]
Andrew Sage
But I found further information and cross verification through a bunch of different articles that I'll link in the show notes and reference through. Now before we get to the strike itself we have to look to the conditions that brought it about. The Port of London, like ports around the world in that time, had terrible working conditions and terrible pay alongside it. But despite being the fulcrum of London economy, the so called unskilled workforce that made it run was left destitute in part due to the inconsistent nature of the work itself. According to Libcom's article, a lot of trade was seasonal. You had sugar coming in from the Caribbean, timber from the north and tea and spices from the east. This was in a time when, you know, the sun never set on the British Empire.
- [81:53]
James
Yeah.
- [81:54]
Andrew Sage
And back then trade was also a lot more vulnerable to weather conditions. So the flow of commerce wasn't the most predictable. And since ports were not very mechanised either, it took a lot of labour to load and unload ships. But there wasn't a consistent demand for that labour week to week. Some weeks you would have hundreds of ships to load and unload and other weeks you would have mere dozens. So dock companies could get away with having a casual call on and contract system. Basically they'd have a large pool of men hanging around waiting for labour. People, most of them would only get taken on for a day or just a few hours. And whether you even got work that day or not was based on luck and favour. You know, you could spend all day outside the dark waiting to get called on and end up being sent home with no pay. So it created a very desperate competitive environment as men would basically have to push and shove each other to get a chance at being picked for work for the day. These are conditions where the workers are clearly poised against each other, as is often the case under capitalism. But around that time, about a year before the strike we're talking about, according to an article by Beverly Cook for London Museum, the so called unskilled and impoverished Young woman working at a match factory in the Bow quarter of London went on strike and won better working conditions and pay, which may have even inspired the dock workers boldness. However, what really kicked off the great strike was a dispute over the bonuses workers would normally get for working faster and more efficiently. One of the big dock companies, the east and West India Dock Company, decided to cut their bonus. And led by a man named Ben Tillet, on 14 August 1889, the Dock Workers began walking out and convincing their fellow workers through the sky SCENE this
- [83:51]
James
era of labour history is always super fascinating to me. Like there's so much at stake, right, for labour in this time period. People's lives were genuinely miserable, right? Like working class existence in this time period. Like you can read, I think Engels was writing about slightly earlier than this. But like Engels has some stuff about the conditions for working class people in Manchester. But also like your, your bosses and the cops can just kill you, you're on strike. You know, like there's this, the stakes are so high. Not that the cops can't and don't kill people now I guess, but the desire to unionize was so natural, right. Like it wasn't coming from people like knowing of generations of, like we do now, right. Like when we, when we form our unions now even if we, we know we unionize, let's say Starbucks is a place that's unionizing, not we. We can think of the generations of union workers who have come before us and the struggles and the, they've had, but these folks, I mean they had to an extent the people's charter and these other things, right? Like I know we've spoken about Luddites before and the idea of understanding Luddism as collective bargaining through riot, but like still these people who really like built the modern labor movement in the 19th century, they paved the way with their blood for all of us to an extent.
- [85:09]
Garrison Davis
Right.
- [85:09]
James
And I think that's always like really impressive to me that people were prepared to like step into that fight.
- [85:15]
Andrew Sage
Yeah, yeah. I mean we take it for granted that we have a legacy to draw upon today. But you know, somebody had to be the first. Some group of workers had to be the first to you know, come together and stand up in those industrial conditions, in those urban conditions. I'm sure there's a history of workers standing up prior to the Industrial Revolution. You know, you would have collective bargaining and even back in antiquity, but the miserableness of the conditions really pushed them to take a stand. And even though the work itself was made so competitive they still recognize their common cause. I'm sure that before that strike they might have had some petty rivalries, some petty grudges amongst each other. Like, oh, that guy keeps taking my job like it's like three days straight now I haven't gotten any work because he keeps on shoving me aside. But they put all that aside for this strike. Their union was unofficial at the time, but that union would go on to form a strike committee to put forward their demands, which were an increase in wages, an overtime wage, worktime minimums, an end to the contract system and a limit on the call ons which would be fixed to specific times of day and the recognition of their uncle union. Their strike would soon be joined by the Amalgamated Stevedores union, which were basically a higher status kind of dock worker and even more critical to the functioning of the docks. So their support lended legitimacy to the strike. The stevedores would issue a request to other workers in London, particularly connected to ship work, to stand in solidarity with the dock workers and their demands and to donate contributions to support the strikers, which is of course critical to any long term strike act. So across workshops and factories, other workers joined in the causeropemakers, Carmen lightermen among them. And by 27 August, an estimated 130,000 men were on strike. To quote one newspaper article from the time, dockmen, lightermen, bargemen, cement workers, Carmen ironworkers and even factory girls are coming out. If it goes on a few days long, all London will be on holiday. The great machine by which five millions of people are fed and clothed will come to a dead stop. And what is to be the end of it all, the proverbial small spark has kindled a great fire which threatens to envelop the whole metropolis. And according to Beverly Cook, after two weeks of the Dockers striking, 10,000 tailors in East London also went on strike. Strike. These were mostly Jewish immigrants working in the clothing industry's sweatshop conditions. Scattered across around 500 cramped workshops of mostly 10 workers or less apiece Across Whitechapel, the tailors demanded fixed 12 hour working days, a mandatory one hour break outside of the workshop, increased wages and a ban on forcing workers to take home the work. They mostly spread the word of their strike through informational posters. They weren't necessarily too connected to the dark workers strike. At first they had their own demands and it seems to have been a coincidence of fate that they both rose up around the same time, perhaps one encouraged by the other. Now, during the strike, as malachi Tester put it, they strove to feed a population, women and children included, of upwards of half a million people. To raise subscriptions and collections across the city, to keep up with fast correspondence by letter and telegram, to organise meetings, demonstrations and talks, to keep an eye out, put pen to people and stay alert lest the bosses successfully trick English or foreign poor into blacklegging. To monitor all the docks entrances to see if there were people going to work and how many. All of this stunningly well done by unsolicited volunteers. There was one noteworthy incident. A shipload of ice arrived and a rumour was rife that this ice was meant for the hospitals. The strikers raced in such numbers to help unload it without a care for whether they would be paid for the job or not. The sick and especially the patients in the hospitals were not to suffer on account of the strike. End quote.
- [89:50]
James
I hadn't heard that before. That's, it's quite touching. Like, this is especially part of the discourse in the UK at the moment, right? Like when, when medical workers go on strike, like this always gets trotted out, like by the right wing press that like, oh, well, they've just chosen to make their patients suffer or whatever, when in fact, like the procedures and planning that medical workers go through before they go on strike to ensure that like, people don't die because they went on strike. Strike are many and complex. Right. But like, it's interesting to see that even back then people were like, as they were working out the best ways to, to take collective action, they were trying to also not harm other working people.
- [90:33]
Andrew Sage
Yeah, I mean, also the extent of the strike and the extent of the suffering is really determined by the extent to which the bosses are holding out.
- [90:42]
James
Right, right, yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [90:44]
Andrew Sage
So if you want to blame anybody, you have to blame the bosses, not the workers.
- [90:47]
James
Yeah, absolutely. It's within the power of employers to not have their employees have to go on strike in order to be treated with dignity and respect, however, they consistently choose not to.
- [90:59]
Andrew Sage
Yeah, exactly. And I think what the workers demonstrate in strikes like that, and strikes in this, in this time period as well, is just their capacity to analyze a situation, to organize themselves, to respond effectively to problems that arise. You know, Maltessa described mass meetings and pickets, daily processions to rally support. They even worked on persuading scabs to join them. Or according to some news reports, they were intimidating those scabs. Yeah, but there was another quote from that libcom article I wanted to read. He said, sir, during this week I have Witnessed the most open intimidation practiced by the men on strike. Howling crowds going from dock to dock and warehouse to warehouse, stopping businesses and threatening vengeance and all who do not comply with their demands. Until now. There are thousands who are out who had no desire to strike but were compelled to do so. So those who dare to work for their wages are being brutally maltreated and threatened with worse if they dare attempt to work in defiance the striker's wishes. I saw several men severely injured today on Tower Hill. The blood being made to fly in all directions by gangs of strikers. One of the authorities forth not to protect peaceable citizens in earning an honest living, signed a lover of freedom. This was sent into the Times on the 24th of August, 1889. And to me it kind of sounds like a doc boss writing in.
- [92:32]
Garrison Davis
Yeah, right.
- [92:33]
Andrew Sage
Trying to sound like, oh, an innocent bystander.
- [92:36]
James
Yeah. Violence is not a thing that is absent in the labor movement. But again, like to your point earlier, often the discourse does not talk about the violence which is done by forcing people to live in poverty and labor in inhumane conditions.
- [92:49]
Andrew Sage
Exactly, exactly. That's where the real violence lies. To be fair, there were a couple instances of charges of assault and intimidation, but the strikes were mostly peaceful. Yeah, you know, they exercised a lot of courage and discipline and restraint. Yeah, they really showed that these working class people were not impossible to organize or absurdly dangerous. They had a capacity for order and collective organization that could just as easily prefigure a free society as it merely is directed towards negotiation with the powers that be. Another aspect of their resistance that I took note of was the fact that a rent strike also took place. You know, you often hear nowadays when you try and talk to people about, you know, organizing a strike, organizing a general strike, whatever, or just like a strike in the industry from people I've spoken to, you often hear that, oh, well, I have bills to pay, I have rent to make. I have, you know, this and that. To you, in these violent and poor conditions, at risk of their lives, the families of strikers just chose not to pay rent for the duration of the strike.
- [94:04]
James
That's right, yeah.
- [94:06]
Andrew Sage
All of them collectively.
- [94:08]
James
Yeah, a rent strike.
- [94:10]
Andrew Sage
And they also would have been gathering donations and such in all of this time as the strike is going on to sustain, you know, their, their keep in other ways, their other basic needs. Yeah, but unfortunately the donations do not look like they would be enough to stave off starvation. You know, despite food tickets being distributed to cover food needs after the direct food distribution couldn't keep up, there still wasn't enough to cover for the swelling mass of strikers and their families. And yet the strikers still held on and rationed what they had, even as the bosses waited and waited for them to give up. You know, the bosses were literally counting on the starvation of the workers to break the strike so they wouldn't have to give in to the demands.
- [94:56]
James
Yep.
- [94:57]
Andrew Sage
And it really got to a point in the beginning of September where it looked like the strike might not be able to go on. And then a miracle of international solidarity came through. The Brisbane Wharf Laborers Union in Australia sent money from citizens of all classes across Australia earlier to support the strikers. The strikers got a first installment of 150 pounds, which I found out is worth 17,000 pounds today.
- [95:25]
James
Geez.
- [95:26]
Andrew Sage
And the dark workers received over 30,000 pounds in total, or over 3.4 million pounds today to sustain their strike long term and secure their victory. Obviously, with a windfall like that, they'll be able to sustain the efforts. And even though the Taylor's strike was mostly separated, separate from what the dock strikers were doing, the DOC strikers made sure that the tailors got funds to support themselves, amounting to about £100 or £11,000 today.
- [95:58]
James
Nice.
- [95:59]
Andrew Sage
I mean, can you imagine that kind of solidarity today, where that swell of resources can be poured in to support fellow workers in their efforts?
- [96:09]
James
Yeah, Fellow workers who you had so much less. Less communication with than we do today. Right. Like, it's not like they could. It's not. They logged on to. Yeah, like Twitter and we're like, oh, yeah, well these people are on strike and let's talk to them and okay, we should support them. Like, yeah. At a time when people had less communication, they still managed to have more solidarity. And we see, like, people have raised millions of dollars, for instance, to feed people in Palestine. Right. Like, like, yeah, the solidarity still exists, for sure.
- [96:40]
Andrew Sage
Sure.
- [96:40]
James
But specifically in the labor movement, it is hard to come by often.
- [96:46]
Andrew Sage
And even when you do see solidarity in the labor movement, it tends to be restricted to the borders of the nation. You might see the occasional solidarity strike within the country. But how often do you see strikes crossing those borders?
- [97:03]
James
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah.
- [97:04]
Andrew Sage
Like if dock workers in London were to strike today, oh, you know, what are the chances the dock workers in Australia or dock workers in the US would support them?
- [97:16]
James
Yeah. Like even living as I do, like at an international border, like, issues of international solidarity will come up in union discussions. Like there might be times where we might take a collection or something for union to the south of what is the border now, and between the US And Mexico, right. Between that, the idea that you could raise that much money and that your solidarity could be so profound, that that is the thing that let these people get through. I think that's very hard to imagine that happening now, which is a shame. It's just so fascinating to me how, like, we have this period of the Industrial Revolution, right. Where labor becomes even more exploitative.
- [97:57]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [97:57]
James
More surplus value accrues to the people who own the means of production. To, like, be crudely Marxist about it, I guess. And the working class, which is the people creating the value but not receiving the benefits from it, has to decide how to respond to that. And around the world, they're like, fuck this. Like, we're not having that. And like, the whole genesis of labor organizing, international solidarity, like it existed before, as you say, said, of course it did. But, like, the sort of formal structures that we have today arrives pretty quickly alongside that increased level of labor exploitation. There's a moment from then till maybe the 19 teens, I mean, maybe till the Great Depression, where it really seems like that the clash between capital and labor is like a really an equal and fierce fight, you know, now, like, it almost seems like by comparison with sort of. Sort of labor organizing tends to ask more nicely and be a bit less. Like, bit less radical and a bit less international compared to how it was back then. Yeah, I guess not all of it. There is still very radical labor organizing. Of course. I don't want to overlook that, but it's just this is a particularly remarkable time.
- [99:12]
Andrew Sage
Yeah. It's not as prominent.
- [99:14]
James
Yeah.
- [99:15]
Andrew Sage
Or perhaps it's just less apparent, less recognizable, less amplified. If it does exist, it could stand to be amplified more.
- [99:24]
James
Right. This was a time when bosses were really worried. Like it as influenced by the lover of freedom writing into the newspaper. They were very concerned with this. Right. Like, they. They weren't sure how long, I guess they could pull this shit off. Like, how long they can make it last where they could exploit people this much.
- [99:42]
Andrew Sage
Exactly. And you kind of see them biden their time today. Right. Because these battles were fought, but the war wasn't won. You know, the class war is yet to be won.
- [99:56]
James
Right.
- [99:57]
Andrew Sage
Or I suppose if you want to be particularly cynical about it, you could say that it has been won and the capitalists are the one inside. But you'll notice that where we have won concessions, where workers have won concessions in the past, the capitalists merely buy their tax and wait for an opportunity to roll back those concessions.
- [100:18]
James
Yeah, without a doubt.
- [100:19]
Andrew Sage
And so we could continue to exist in this kind of cycle of fighting and stopping short of total victory by accepting concessions just for the fight after restart again years down the line. Or we could, you know, reach the finish line, as it were.
- [100:39]
James
Yeah. The, the kindler, gentler capitalism that we were supposed to build through collective action hasn't really delivered. And all it's done is resulted in capitalism moving to places where it can more readily exploit labor. I was having this discussion with a colleague, an older colleague. They had been industrial union person their whole lives, and they were saying that in this era of neoliberal globalization, the greatest failure of United States unions was to fail to internationalize when. When borders dropped to capital, but not people. Right. In the late 20th century and money and jobs started moving from the United States to, in a lot of cases, to Mexico. Right. And unions could have responded by saying, we will go to Mexico and we will organize our siblings in the working class in Mexico. Not that Mexican people can't organize themselves and don't have a very long and proud tradition of a working class organizing. They do. But like those unions that had the resources from years of struggle in the U.S. u.S. By and large, didn't go to south and Central America and say, we are here with you. Like, we are not going to allow them to exploit you in the way that they once exploited us. And they didn't do that. Right. They kind of doubled down on protectionism. You see it now with unions under Trump a lot as well. You know, talking about tariffs and things. If they will protect jobs. Like they're sort of choosing the nation state over the working class when they do that, that. And that's bitten them in the ass before, but they still continue to keep doing it.
- [102:05]
Andrew Sage
Yeah. The nation state is one of the greatest psyops.
- [102:09]
James
Yeah, yeah.
- [102:10]
Andrew Sage
Of all time.
- [102:12]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Yeah.
- [102:23]
Andrew Sage
So just getting back to 1889 for a moment.
- [102:28]
James
Yeah, yeah.
- [102:29]
Andrew Sage
The workers, after receiving that dead windfall, managed to hold on for just a bit longer and entered negotiations with their bosses through a committee initiated by the Lord Mayor of London, whose city was obviously quite paralysed over the past month. The strikers also received the support of the Irish Catholic Archbishop Bishop Cardinal Manning, who shared that Irish Catholic background with a lot of the workers, a lot of the dock workers. And what I found, I guess, interesting reading that, was that according to the Catholic Encyclopedia's entry on Cardinal Henry Edward Manning, his involvement in the dock workers negotiations kind of foreshadowed an encyclical that was issued by the Pope at the time. Time. Two years later. Which directly addressed the conditions of the workers and set out a church policy that supported the right of labor to form unions, while of course rejecting socialism and affirming private property rights. So one step forward, two steps back. Yeah, and I found it interesting that that encyclical was issued around the time that, you know, as many would have heard, the Pope of today has issued a new encyclical on the subject of AI in part in relation to labour.
- [103:52]
James
Yeah.
- [103:54]
Andrew Sage
So by the end of the committee negotiations the dark workers had all their demands met and the strike was agreed to be over on 16th September 1889. The Taylors also secured their victory. And after the strike the dock workers formed an official new General Labourers Union Union. And the strike inspired thousands of unskilled workers to also organize themselves. According to LibCom, union membership overall grew from 750,000 in 1888 to 1.5 million in 1892 to over 2 million in 1899. And this growth would be a swell of numbers for the existing unions as well as the establishment of new unions. Now if we look at this strike through Malatesta's eyes, I think he provides a very useful analysis in about a strike written in 1889, likely right after the strike itself, when Malatesta was in London. While he recognized that DOC workers had won the battle, he, like I, is questioning why they didn't go ahead and win the war. You know, he questioned why a movement powerful enough to bring one of the world's largest ports to a standstill didn't go any further. The docks had been running because workers by the thousands collectively made them run. And when those workers withdrew their labour, an entire section of the economy ground to a halt. So for Malatesta, the first lesson of a strike and their value for revolution was that they reveal where the power actually comes from. Everyday life under capitalism and the state tends to hide that fact. You know, they make it seem like societies organized by governments, investors, managers, owners. But a strike makes it very clear that the people who do the work are the people who make society function. People who may have felt isolated would begin acting together, holding meetings, organising relief, feeding hundreds of thousands, managing communications in the process, gaining practical experience and self organization, demonstrating their potential to organize the city itself by themselves, for themselves. In other words, they're developing new powers which would shape their new drives and establish a new consciousness. So strikes are schools of struggle, but as Malatesta points out, they're limited. They reveal workers power but they don't use that power to transform Society. The dock strike won higher wages and better conditions, but the basic structure of society was untouched. The dock bosses were still bosses and the workers were still workers, and the state was still the state, protecting property and maintaining the existing owners. And this was Maltester's critique of the labour movement. They got stuck on winning concessions instead of shaking up the system. And we see through history that employers regroup and economic conditions change and the previous gains would come under pressure. So one battle being won does not mean the class war has been won. Literally, a few decades later, another strike took place in the Port of London by dock workers in 1926. As recounted in Callum Kant and Matthew Lee's article on the making of London's general strike for Yacobin, dock workers, transport workers and other labourers joined coal miners in a nationwide strike after mine owners sought wage cuts and longer hours. In that strike, dock workers once again effectively shut down key parts of the city's economy. But during this strike, state repression was especially severe. Air the government deployed police, volunteers and emergency powers to keep services running and break picket lines. Violent clashes occurred around the docks where workers tried to prevent strikebreakers and the movement of goods. Also, the leadership of the trade union's congress was quite conservative in response to this worker action. While rank and file workers demonstrated strong solidarity and willingness to continue the struggle, union leaders ultimately called off the strike after nine days without securing major guarantees for the strikers. It was a major betrayal of the movement and demonstrated the weakness of traditional unionism structurally and ideologically. You see the signs of unions basically being part of the system in the end, as we see today, and you see the potential of workers, as always, to act autonomous. So strikes like these leave me with questions. Can a strike develop beyond a negotiation over wages and conditions into a broader challenge to who controls society? Can the solidarity built during the strike survive after the immediate dispute ends? Can workers begin to see themselves not just as employees with demands, but as people capable of managing social life themselves? Can we assail the legal order and the property protection that stand in the way of our survival? And in all of these questions, what I'm getting at is how do you turn a general strike into a social revolution? There are still gaps to be bridged between labour struggles and the grander ambitions of such a revolution. And labour conditions have certainly changed for many. You know, I don't want to put forward the position that we just need to recreate the. The rugged industrial unionism of the past. Yeah, but we still have power in our refusal to work. That hasn't changed. And if we leverage that alongside organization within and outside of the workplace to support our struggles, to build and fight, to propose and oppose and push for the vision of a world beyond workers and bosses, not merely pushing demands to bosses, maybe we can accomplish the social revolution that Malatesta sought more than a century bigger strikes, stronger unions are not the answer. They may be steps toward workers using solidarity, confidence and organizational capacity to take direct control of all aspects of social life. As always, all power to all the people. Peace.
- [110:06]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
This is it could happen here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. This is the Supreme Court edition. That's right, this episode we're covering supreme court rulings from June 24 to July 1 and a few other news items that happened in that duration. And let's start with some of those smaller miscellaneous news items before getting to the long series of Supreme Court rulings which this episode will focus on.
- [110:40]
James
Yeah, so starting with court stuff, I guess. It appears the Department of Defense is planning to involuntarily activate reserve lawyers to serve as immigration judges according to article and Bloomberg law, or for some context to voluntary activation. You can still opt for that. It's to do with the nature of their contracts as reservists, like how those how that time adds up to their military retirement stuff. But in this case, it seems that it is also planning on activating people who have not indicated that they are interested in doing this. Secondly, a horrific pair of shallow earthquakes rated at 7.2 and 7.5 on the Richters trail struck Venezuela last week destroying whole high rise buildings. La Guaira and Caracas were particularly hard in hit. I actually saw a video of the street where I used to live with people who are very clearly dead lying in the road, which sucks. Days later, people are still trapped under the rubble. The death toll is already in the thousands. With over 5,000 missing. It will be very hard for us to get like an accurate death toll out of the Venezuelan government. Among the missing are more than 100 recently deported Venezuelans who were sent by the USA back to Venezuela.
- [111:48]
Robert Evans
Sailor.
- [111:49]
James
They were staying in a hotel and that hotel collapsed. This week the Iraqi military also raided politicians inside the Green Zone, seized a bunch of cash and cited an ongoing anti corruption effort. And the Department of Justice Antitrust division together with 17 state attorney generals has filed a civil suit against a number of egg producers for their alleged unlawful manipulation of egg prices.
- [112:12]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
This was really interesting. I read through some of the court docs here and this is definitely worth, worth a closer look at some point.
- [112:21]
James
This is something I'd like to cover in the future, actually. Like, people are like, you know, the cost of eggs has become a meme or whatever. But like this is, this is, this is just straight up like oligopoly behavior.
- [112:33]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Yeah, yeah.
- [112:34]
James
They are colluding to increase the price of something and like this became a political issue.
- [112:40]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
This was one of Trump's main campaign items.
- [112:43]
James
Yeah, yeah. They knew that as they continued to collude to do this. Right. I think it does bear discussing within the context of the way that we obtain our food in this country and the people who have control over the things that a lot of people feel like they need to get through every day. Right. Like, I think this isn't the sort of silly throwaway thing that some people think it is.
- [113:06]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Definitely. According to an ethics disclosure released last Tuesday, President Trump has made more than $1.4 billion from his crypto businesses last year making over 600 million from Trump branded meme coins and 500 million in income from his crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, which also partnered with the UFC Freedom250 event to pay the fighters in crypto on the World Liberty financial platform. The peanut farm comes comes to mind. Considering $1.4 billion in Trump branded meme
- [113:49]
James
coins, it's kind of hard to write these corruption stories. I was looking into one recently about some federal contracting and like something that would have destroyed a presidency 10 years ago is like a 12 hour news story now.
- [114:02]
Robert Evans
Not even.
- [114:03]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Sometimes this is something that like J.D. vance was just like talking about, just like openly like last week Vance joked about this. Yeah, it was that quote. I think Nixon's historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance and deservedly so. I joked that if Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hour news story.
- [114:23]
Mark Wayne Mullen
There you go.
- [114:23]
James
Yeah.
- [114:24]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
The idea that it took down a presidency is crazy. Unquote.
- [114:28]
Andrew Sage
Quote.
- [114:28]
James
Yeah.
- [114:28]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Yeah.
- [114:29]
James
I mean, what a.
- [114:31]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Just laying it, laying it all.
- [114:32]
Leah Ayoub
Yeah.
- [114:33]
James
What a thing to say on the record.
- [114:35]
Andrew Sage
Yeah.
- [114:35]
James
Jesus.
- [114:36]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
The Colorado Supreme Court has blocked three redistricting ballot measures that would help Democrats pick up House seats in the state. Also In Colorado, the DSA has continued its winning streak with 29 year old Democratic Socialist Malat Kiros who won the primary in the first congressional district district, beating the 30 year long incumbent by 10 points. This incumbent has been serving as the House Rep longer than this Democratic socialist challenger has been alive the first district
- [115:09]
James
in Colorado as well. Like they will go Democrat.
- [115:12]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Oh yeah.
- [115:12]
James
Barring like centrist Dems running a spoiler, which is always a thing they could do. This person will go to Congress joining
- [115:20]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
the next now growing kind of informal democratic socialist caucus there.
- [115:25]
James
Yeah.
- [115:26]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Mayor Zoran Mamdani has announced more details about the $15 million allocated to help trans youth access gender affirming care. The city is launching a text slash call line to help connect people with care and services and a direct care access fund for providers of youth gender affirming care to quote help ensure New Yorkers can continue to access medically necessary care. Unquote. That's from the mayor's office office. Currently New York City clinics like Callen Lord, Planned Parenthood and the HNH City Municipal Hospital system all provide care to trans youth. But the fight continues to restore youth care services at nyu, Langoon and Mount Sinai. Also speaking of Mamdani, the mayor's newly appointed rent guidelines board approved a first ever two year rent freeze for rent stabilized units in the city. City let's now get to the Supreme Court starting with two shorter summaries and not shorter because they're less important just because we have a lot to cover and we'll probably cover these stories more in depth in the Future. In a 6 to 3 ruling, the Conservative Supreme Court justices struck down a law limiting how much money political parties can spend on campaigns in coordination with candidates. Citing the First Amendment, this order overruled the court's 54 decision back in 2001 which upheld campaign finance limits. Essentially this will allow political parties to spend vastly more money while utilizing candidates low advertising rates that are not awarded to Super PACs. This will also make it harder to do campaign finance reform or super PAC reform based on this interpretation of the First Amendment, meaning that court reform might be what is necessary to change something like this in the Future. In another 6:3 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld state bans on trans girls participating in girls school sports. Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion finding that the constitution and Title 9 allows for school sports to be separated by sex and that the quote unquote, sex in title nine, quote quote cannot possibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex, unquote because that was the quote unquote ordinary meaning of the word when Title 9 passed in the 70s and quote unquote, biological sex is related to sex assigned at birth.
- [117:51]
James
In this ruling, do they actually say
- [117:54]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
that they do tie biological sex to sex assigned at birth?
- [117:57]
James
Yeah. So they're not proposing like a Chromosonality definition.
- [118:00]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Not in my reading of the ruling that I see chromosome.
- [118:04]
James
Because they also cited the IOC definition. Right. Which is a distinct thing from sex aside at birth. The IOC definition considers chromosomality and then also androgen sensitivity. So, like, we're, I guess, approaching a situation where someone could be eligible for the Olympics but not eligible for high school sports. I haven't read the entirety of this decision. I need to, but I have. I've read three other ones yesterday.
- [118:28]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
In the second paragraph, it. It states that biological cells, sex is, quote, sex assigned at birth.
- [118:34]
James
Okay. So, yeah, we are approaching, like, a disparate situation with IOC understandings of sex, which is not, I guess, a particularly new thing. Like, we had Maria Jose Martinez Patino was. Was disqualified from. She would have been Olympic athlete in the. In the. In the 80s based on like, a. A misunderstanding of how chromosonality works. I guess you'd have to have the person who would. Who would split that difference. Right. For like a national organizing body to then decide how they would deal with that person. Compet. Nonetheless, this sucks for.
- [119:04]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Yeah.
- [119:05]
James
For lots of young people.
- [119:06]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Yeah. I mean, and biological sex, even as a category, is itself, like, constructed. This has actually no concrete basis in biology yet. Justice Sotomer, Kagan and Jackson agreed that the state bans don't violate Title 9, though on a narrower basis than the conservative majority. But the three liberal judges dissented under the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. Cause now, like importantly, the ruling itself does not mandate a ban. Right. The court's not saying that schools must ban trans athletes, but rather that Title 9 claims cannot be used to oppose bans on trans athletes from participating in school sports. This is a narrow, limited ruling. It's kind of like the least bad out of all of the potential bad outcomes. The court declined to rule on whether states that had. Have trans inclusive rules for school sports are themselves in violation of Title 9, and declines to rule on the degree to which trans people in general have protections under the equal protection clause. Clarence Thomas's concurrence. Very, very ugly. Just like flatly, like, transphobic. Way more so than Kavanaugh's majority opinion. I could read it, but it's just like. It's just ugly stuff.
- [120:21]
Robert Evans
Like, it's.
- [120:21]
Garrison Davis
It's.
- [120:21]
James
He's just a bigot and it doesn't add anything to, like, the legal opinion.
- [120:25]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Agree.
- [120:25]
James
Just like, took the chance to show he was a bigot. Yeah.
- [120:29]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Like I said, we will definitely cover this in more detail in the near future, but that requires some like careful focus and reporting.
- [120:36]
James
Yeah. So I want to start I guess with temporary protected status tps. Right. So the case in front of the Supreme Court concerned the Trump administration's attempt to remove the TPS of Syrian and Haitian national. I think we need to begin by addressing a lot of the misinformation and misunderstanding here. TPS is a renewable non permanent status with no pathway to permanency. It can last between six and 18 months and it's renewed currently by the DHS secretary. Right. That power passed to them when DHS began overseeing immigration. It was created in 1990 and at its core it's supposed to be a way of protecting people who are in the United States when a disaster befalls their country of citizenship. If you are in the U.S. when they declare a TPS, you can apply, get granted a work permit. The longest that will last is 18 months and two months before it runs out. DHS has to determine if they will reauthorize it or not. So some folks, for instance from El Salvador have been in the US for decades on tps that they have no permanency, they have no sense of stability. It is very hard for them to let like make progress in many areas that would be easy for citizens or even permanent residents or visa holders.
- [121:51]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [121:51]
James
Because of that lack of the ability to plan to become citizens. So they wanted to pass to permanency. Like there are a couple of ways to do that. But they might have to risk leaving and coming back on another status, which many of them are not willing to do. I wrote about the Venezuelan TTPS in my first Daring Gap series. So people want to hear an immigration law lawyer. Actually immigration lawyer from one of the cases we're going to talk about next, explaining that than it can. The TPS as ruled by Sanchez vs Mayorkas is not the same as lawful admission to the country.
- [122:25]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Right.
- [122:26]
James
People have frequently been claiming I've seen that the Haitian TPS pertain to the 2010 earthquake. This is not correct. This was in the courts in the first Trump administration would be the simplest way of saying. Saying it. The current TBS pertains to a 2021 killing of juvenile Moise and the subsequent violence thereafter. Right. So it came about under the Biden administration. If people want more context. At the time I was writing op EDS for NBC and I will include one that I wrote in the show notes at the time of the announcement in 2021. They were exceptionally clear that they did not want more Haitian people coming to the US like genuinely, some of the most repugnant Language I've seen from the executive branch outside of this administration. In one instance, Mayorkas said, those who attempt to travel to the United States after this announcement will not be eligible for TPS and may be repatriated. There were some more explicit and in my mind, uglier statements. Again, I've catalogued those in previous writings so you can read it. This case pertained to whether an administration could terminate a TPS without going through interagency review, something court records show they didn't do in case of the Haitian tps. The court heard that argument and effectively said that the courts could not challenge the failure of DHS to do that. They didn't say that Noam followed the law or followed the procedures that she should have followed to cancel this dps. They said that whether she did or did not do that cannot be challenged in court. One of the other challenges here was that the Haiti decision was motivated by race. The court addressed this, and I'm just going to quote from the opinion here. Political discourse by prominent public figures is increasingly couching terms that would have scandalized the public just a short time ago ago, and the statement cited by the Mayotte respondents, especially those concerning Haiti and Haitian immigrants to this country, exemplify this development. But whatever one may think of the cited statements, they are insufficient to show that the termination of Haiti's TPS designation was based on the race of the Haitian people. Ironically, both Doe and Myott respondents identify a strong race neutral explanation of these official statements, the present administration general stance on immigration and its obvious antipathy towards past administration CPS policies. So what they're saying there is like this wasn't based on race. They hate all immigrants, right? Or they hate everyone on tps. I do want to point out that it was not so very long ago that the President spoke about Haitian people eating dogs and cats. Here is Mark Wayne Mullen answering a question about this.
- [124:57]
Mark Wayne Mullen
The temporary protective status is over. They have to go home now. They don't have to go to the country that they came from. If they're not feeling safe, they can go someplace else, but they cannot stay here. Your TPS temporary protective status is over. So we will help assist you in leaving. If you would like, we'll buy you an airline ticket. We'll give you $2,600 to reestablish yourself someplace else if you don't want to go back to the country you came from. But you have to leave and we're going to assist you in doing so. And if you choose not to, then we'll pick you up and force you to leave.
- [125:27]
James
That was yesterday. Here's him answering a question about DPS today. So today's Wednesday. For those listening later.
- [125:34]
Garrison Davis
Are you going to be going after Haitians living in the country, Syrians living in the country?
- [125:38]
James
What's the path forward?
- [125:38]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Well, I hate when you when it's phrased going after individuals. The fact is TPS for certain individuals under the court ruling they no longer have status. TPS was temporary. It was never meant to be permanent status. You had an opportunity, why you were here to possibly be try to change your status. Now that the court ruling has went out, you no longer have that option. You have to go back to a country that either take you or back to your to the country you came from. And if you deport yourself, which we will give you $2,600 plus a plane ticket to go home, you have the opportunity at that point to fill out it legally for a visa or another way to come back in this country. But you have to enter. You have to come in through our immigration systems and follow our laws, not illegally. But if we have to arrest you and deport you, that option of coming back in this country is off the table. So we would encourage everybody that that felony TPS that is no longer temporary protected status for you, your time has expired.
- [126:39]
James
So previously this self deportation had barred people from coming back. I need to check exactly what program he's talking about there. Maybe it's something that I haven't come across. Right. But what he's suggesting there is that people could leave to a third country. They would have to find a third country that would accept them. That that is less and less likely to happen in this global climate. This is very bad, especially the people like we know in Syria. There has been intercommunal violence ever since the end of the civil war. Right. And then the installation of a Syrian Transitional Government government. It is still not a safe place. Haiti remains a place where people, especially people who are going back with a bunch of cash from the United States are likely to be targeted. This is really bad. TPS is an important program. It did not give people permanency. It could have been much better, but not having it is much worse. Talking of things that are much worse, I want to move on to Mullen versus Alotrola. People will be familiar with AOL if they've listened to my previous work. I've interviewed a lot of people from AOL over the years. This case pertains to asylum and United States law regarding asylum the law says anyone who is in or arrives in the USA may apply for asylum. Of course, CBP can inspect people seeking admission to the usa. In practice, what this means is that asylum seekers have metered. That this process, this of physically preventing people entering the USA so that they cannot then arrive in the USA and apply for asylum is called metering. Right? There have been various types of metering over the years. The 9th Circuit had previously held that when someone encounters US border officials they may apply for asylum in practice. The difference here is between entering a port of entry entry versus having to have passed through a port of entry or around a port of entry Port of entry is the thing with the like. I'm thinking of the San Ysidro one, but like the big revolving doors right where the CBP people stand, where the blue cbp, blue shirt CBP stand. CBP has previously said that they did this for capacity reasons. But those capacity claims have been contradicted by reports of their own officer, the Inspector General General. Effectively the Supreme Court has blessed the practice of metering asylum applications by saying that people have to have arrived in the USA versus arriving at the border. This is being portrayed as a very, very straightforward decision. Let me read from the opinion here. An alien standing in Mexico does not arrive in the United States by attempting and failing to set foot in the country. An alien, quote, arrives in the United States only when he crosses the border border. The ina, it's the Immigration Naturalization act, thus neither entitles an alien standing in Mexico to apply for asylum nor requires an immigration officer to inspect him. They later said metering does not permanently bar any alien from arriving and applying for asylum, despite the fact that many migrants have died and will die or suffer tremendous harm due to the practice. They go on to say last respondents argument that the government might someday prevent all potential arriving asylum applicants from reaching the point where they could find an application addresses a hypothetical future policy, not the rescinded metering policy at issue which merely delayed entry to improve conditions at certain points of entry. Let's listen now to this clip of Stephen Miller.
- [130:11]
Garrison Davis
So America's doors are closed fully to asylum signals.
- [130:15]
James
That's not a hypothetical future policy. That's Stephen Miller is saying it. Right?
- [130:20]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Yeah, that's absolutely heard.
- [130:21]
James
That's very clearly what was going to happen. You're being deliberately naive. It's obscene to say that that's a hypothetical.
- [130:28]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
It's not like you're just like flatly laying out the mechanism in which all asylum seekers can be denied the chance to even ask for asylum by just magically saying, no, you're actually not talking to us when you're talking to us at the border.
- [130:42]
James
Yeah. And, like, I want to address this, like, standing in Mexico claim, right? Because. Because they're standing at the port of entry. So this building, quote, unquote, in Mexico is paid for by the United States. It contains armed United States personnel. Right. Are we therefore invading Mexico? Have we therefore seized Mexican territory? Like, just because you have not definitionally crossed the border, it is misleading to say that you're standing in Mexico. Right. The port of entry is clearly a liminal space. It is, it is. It's not like you're in fucking Chiapas shouting on a megaphone, hey, can I have asylum? Like. Like this framing is oversimplifying, to put it mildly. What this means is that we have created a de facto incentive to enter the United States between ports of entry. People who do so will have arrived in the United States. This is what happened under the Biden administration, right, with CBP1, where they. They effectively use CBP1 as a metering. Metering tool. The metering tool, because they and the Trump administration have both defended Title 42, was completely insufficient to keep up with the backlog of asylum applications. And so people entered between ports of entry. Right. Thousands of them. I reported on this a very great deal at the time. There have been many other forms of metering. The Obama administration did metering. That's when this case began. CBP1, the Migrant Protection protocols, many others from right. In every single incidence where there has been metering, we have seen that people enter between ports, entry. We have seen escalations in border deaths. With war construction continuing, many of the places where people previously entered are now closed. We will see more people entering along more risky routes, and that will lead to more deaths. There is no doubt in my mind that this decision will kill people. People. Also, the people who do remain in Mexico will, in many cases, not be safe there. The amount of migrants I know personally, like, people who I talk to once a week, once a month, who came through the Darien Gap when I was there, who. We traveled together, and then they attempted to apply for CBP1 and were robbed and were sexually assaulted, kidnapped, killed while they were in Mexico. Mexico is more than I can count off the top of my head. This will have disastrous human rights consequences. All right, we're back. And we are back to talk about birthright citizenship. Trump versus Barbara. In this decision, the court held that, quote, children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily Present are, quote, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and are citizens at birth under the 14amendment citizenship clause. The court was a bit split on how they got here, with a 6, 3 majority holding that Trump's attempt to remove citizenship by executive order was illegal and a 5, 4 majority agreeing that it was unconstitutional. Actually, I spoke about this just before we get onto this with Robert and Sophie in November of 2024, talking about, like, things that Trump administration might do. Here we are. Here is the relevant part of the 14th Amendment for people who aren't familiar, quote, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. The majority opinion somewhat based in ju. Soli. I think that's how you say it. I haven't done Jussoli. I did Latin.
- [134:21]
Robert Evans
I mean, the good news is with Latin is nobody really knows how it was said.
- [134:23]
James
Yeah, sure. The bad news is that people still have strongly held opinions.
- [134:28]
Robert Evans
Well, there's ecclesiastical Latin and whatnot, but like, when you, if you take classical Latin, there's not a pronunciation test. School. Yeah, but juice solely is. Is fine.
- [134:37]
James
When I did my GCSE exams, I didn't do Latin oral like I did for French. The idea here is anyone born here is citizen unless they are not subject to jurisdiction of the usa. That qualifier has generally applied to diplomats and their children. That is the main group. Because someone is here in an undocumented fashion, they are still subject to jurisdiction of the US Say, as can be fairly obviously understood from like a plain text understanding of that phrase, I think. Let's hear Mike Johnson. I guess Mike Johnson was in oppressor when this decision came down. And someone got to tell him, oh,
- [135:10]
Robert Evans
dear, what they rule.
- [135:10]
Vicky Osterweil
Here we go.
- [135:12]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Children born in the United States, parents unlawfully or temporarily present, are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and
- [135:17]
Vicky Osterweil
our citizens at birth under the 14th Amendment citizenship clause.
- [135:22]
Garrison Davis
What's your reaction to that?
- [135:25]
James
Well, this is real time.
- [135:27]
Robert Evans
I need to read the opinion.
- [135:29]
Mark Wayne Mullen
Okay.
- [135:29]
Robert Evans
But obviously that's. I mean, you could say that's a textualist, originalist view. However, I do think that this has been grossly abused in recent years. He's so pissed. He's so pissed.
- [135:44]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
His little growl.
- [135:46]
James
Yeah, he's so mad.
- [135:48]
Robert Evans
And the joy in that reporter's voice as he realizes he's getting. Number one, I get to be the person to read. Read the opinion out to the. To fucking Mike Johnson. And number two, I get to ask Mike Johnson for a response, which is beautiful. I'm so happy for them.
- [136:05]
James
Yeah. And as he said.
- [136:06]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [136:06]
James
Like a plain text understanding of this is all you really need.
- [136:09]
Robert Evans
A textual misunderstanding for sure.
- [136:11]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Very clear.
- [136:12]
James
Yeah. Like. So there was discussion of the Wong Kim art case, which ruled that, quoting here, a child born in the United States of parents of Chinese descent who at the time of his birth are subjects of the Emperor of China, China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and are there carrying on business and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China, becomes at the time of his birth a citizen of the United States with virtue of the first clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. It's the first clause of the 14th amendment that I read earlier. Right. It is important to understand the context of this case. This Won Kim Ark case happened in the context of an assault, assault on birthright citizenship and especially on Asian migrants. Right. This is the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act. For example, the decision in the one case was that the 14th Amendment was declaratory of the common law understanding of citizenship. Decision holds that, quote, aliens who travel to the United States for, quote, business or pleasure receive no, quote, exemption from the jurisdiction of the country. The case has some very narrow exceptions for, quote, children of foreign sovereigns or their ministers or born on foreign public ships or of enemies within and during a hostile occupation of part of our territory, and children, members of Indian tribes. It's not until 1924 that we get the Indian Citizenship Act. Right. I thought they might have gone harder on that than they did, but they did not. Much of the dissent focused on that use of the word domicile and whether that was in the usa. But as the majority argued, citing precedent and English common law, which is the basis for the law we have now in the United States. States.
- [137:48]
Andrew Sage
Right.
- [137:49]
James
Quote. There is scant evidence for this dramatically revisionist view. Sources from 1766 to 1868 defined, quote, allegiance by birth, just as the British did, as the tie or duty owed by one who is born within the dominions and under the protection of a particular sovereign. And quote, sources after the ratification of the 14th Amendment. Do not put in doubt the understanding of the citizenship clause at the time of and after its ratification. Certainly the US has not used this domicile test for other things. Right. Like it doesn't. It doesn't use a domicile test, for instance, when it taxes its citizens extraterritorial. Really. It is not the basis, by the way, for children of citizens becoming a citizen. That is based on A law passed by Congress that's not based in this constitutional amendment.
- [138:30]
Robert Evans
Right.
- [138:31]
James
It is worth noting that the way Trump's executive order, which was what was struck down here, was written, it would have included people who are domiciled here based on any understanding of the term domicile that I think is genuine. His was written not even in this sort of more focused way, focusing on what they perceive to be a weakness in that. In that one decision. So who was a floater from the 63 to the 5 4. The floater was Kavanagh. He opined that, quote, Congress could, consistent with the 14th amendment, amend the law or otherwise. I'm saying the law here. He gives a citation for the law. Right. Otherwise, enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship for children born to foreign citizens unlawfully or temporarily in the country. Country. But Congress has not yet done so. The law in question is the Nationality act of 1940. It says, quote, the following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth. A person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. And then another clause further down. A person unknown, of unknown parentage, founder of the United States, were under the age of 5 years until shown prior to his attaining the age of 21 years not to have been born in the United States. He. He argues that Congress clearly did not want to make more exceptions than existed in the 1k mark case, and that they would have done if they did. But he says it is possible to re examine the Constitution in modern context and look at the jurisdiction part again and have additional exemptions that would pass constitutional muster if Congress chose to change the law.
- [140:01]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
It seems like what he's doing here is, like, by disagreeing with the sort of Constitution must interpretation, he is, like, giving the Trump administration a sort of framework to pursue this in the future if they want to.
- [140:14]
James
He's signposting it. Yeah.
- [140:15]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Yeah. And like, whether or not that will succeed is another question.
- [140:18]
James
Yeah, he's.
- [140:19]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
He's kind of showing them a sort of path.
- [140:21]
James
Yes, he is. Yeah. He's saying, if you want to do this, you could do it like this, in my opinion.
- [140:24]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Yeah.
- [140:25]
James
They are currently having some issues with getting all their representatives in the House on the same page on shit and midterms account coming up. A lot of the opposition to this was focused on the speeches that, like, pertain to the authors of the 14th Amendment and the process surpassing the 4th Amendment. It's quite remarkable how, like, what a fundamental lack of understanding about how the Constitution works. It shows right when the Constitution is Amended. We do not incorporate all of the vibes of the guy who wrote the text. We incorporate the words. It is those words that are ratified by the state states, not the person who wrote them. We do not endorse that this person's opinions are now constitutional. The United States has a codified constitution. It is the words that are codified in that document that matter. That's the end of James explaining constitutions. Gorsuch, however, to your point, Garrison, about like Kavanaugh pointing in a direction. Gorsuch seems to be of the other opinion here. He says that undocumented people living in the United States are incontrovertibly citizens. Or the children. Children born to undocumented people living in the United States. Quote, what matters isn't whether a child's parents are citizens. What matters whether they and by law their child at birth have made this place their home and are thus domiciled within the United States. Thus he's saying that non residents, children could in his mind, be excluded, but that anyone who is residing in the United States cannot be excluded. So he's kind of. Kind of halfway in between on that. But it seems like his. His take would not align with Kavanaugh's kind of signposted way there.
- [141:58]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
I mean, yeah, it's on one hand, not great. Well, it's, you know, good, but not great that in some interpretations this is like a 54 ruling. Even though the Constitution is, you know, in a plaintext reading, very clear. This is also a very weird ruling because it's five, four, but also in some ways, six, three. And also with Gorsuch, it's kind of like 71 1.
- [142:19]
James
Seven and a half.
- [142:20]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Yeah.
- [142:21]
James
Yeah. Like, I think once they get to a point where they're writing a dissent or a concurrence and they know where they're at. I think that's how it works. Right? They write the dissent after they've decided. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Then Gorsuch can fucking go on a sitcom.
- [142:39]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
He can go have his fun.
- [142:40]
James
Yeah, exactly. Like, he can nerd out on this shit.
- [142:43]
Robert Evans
Well, that's why he's my favorite Supreme Court justice. Not in terms of. I don't agree with him the most. I don't think he's the best person. I don't think he's right. The most often. Often. But he's always the most entertaining. Like, he's always the most interesting guy to see. Like, how did you arrive there, Neil? How is this your stance on things? It's. Every time it's fun as hell.
- [143:05]
James
Yeah, he is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get with Neil Gorsuch. But yeah, that is where we're at, I guess, with three major cases pertaining to citizenship and immigration. Yeah, a mixed bag, I guess.
- [143:20]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
This ruling is certainly a blow to the Trump administration. Another blow to the Trump administration is the ruling on mail in voting, where The Supreme Court ruled 5:4 in favor of counting valid mail in votes that arrive after election Day.
- [143:38]
Robert Evans
Glad we got a 54 in favor of counting people's votes on the election day. Glad that that's at least still a 5 4.
- [143:47]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
This case focused on a Mississippi law that allows mail in ballots to be counted as long as they are postmarked honor before election Day and arrive within five days after Election Day. A district court previously ruled in favor of the law, but the Fifth Circuit reversed the ruling, finding that votes must be received by Election Day. But for the Supreme Court, Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the majority opinion finding that, quote, the election day statutes require the electorate's choice to be made on Election Day. That occurs so long as Election Day is the deadline for individuals to vote, as it is in Mississippi. But the Election day statutes do not set a deadline for ballad receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward, unquote. Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch dissented, with Kavanaugh joining their dissent in parliament. Part Much of this case rested on what, quote unquote election day means in federal law. The Republican Party, who is the plaintiffs in this case among a few other like the the Mississippi Republicans, the Republican Party nationally, and also in part the Libertarian Party, but mostly the Republican Party, tried to argue that because federal statutes use the term quote, unquote election to mean that ballots are both cast and received received, and by setting a day for an election, then that also sets a deadline for votes to be received. But as already stated, the majority found that, quote, nothing in the federal election day statutes requires ballots to be received by election Day, unquote. Amy Coney Barrett notes that, quote, although the election day statutes refer to a particular day for the election, plaintiffs do not contend that everything must occur on that day day. For instance, they do not object to early voting or dispute that officials may count votes and certify a winner after election day, unquote. Now, in this case, the Republicans aren't even directly challenging absentee voting as a general practice, but their argument to restrict the counting of some absentee ballots, quote, unquote relies heavily on historical practice, precedent and policy from the mid-1800s, because that's around when the first two federal election statutes were enacted. Basically during the Civil War. States that authorized absentee voting did impose strict election day deadlines for ballot receipt, the opinion notes, quote. But plaintiffs admit they cannot precisely tie this historical practice practice to the text of the election day statutes, unquote. So to quote Barrett, the Republicans theory here is, quote, because we are governed by 19th century election day laws, we are also governed by 19th century voting practices. Carried to its logical conclusion, this theory would call into question the way modern elections work, unquote. She goes on to note how this would jeopardize everything from, from voter qualification to early voting to how we count votes. Despite the Republicans focus On this like 19th century election day practices, because that's around when the first two election statutes were enacted on a federal level. The Republicans also ignore that right after the third federal statute was passed in 1914, mail in voting rose in popularity because of the First World War War, and some states started counting absentee ballots that were received after election day. So their argument both doesn't actually refer to real federal statutes, but also is not consistent. Ultimately, Barrett writes that the quote, unquote defining element of a quote unquote election is the electorate's act of choosing a candidate and that an election day just sets the deadline for making that choice. Choice, quote, the electorate's choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received, unquote. Per federal statute, the deadline to vote is election day, but the deadline for when ballots must be received is up to state law. Like what this case focuses on is the Mississippi state law on when ballots can be received. That's a state issue. Finally, the Republican plaintiffs tried to argue that requiring ballots be received on election day or by election day helps protect election integrity and increases voter confidence in election results. However, Barrett notes, quote, policy arguments are properly directed to legislatures, not courts. The question today is not whether requiring ballots to be received by election day is a good or bad idea. The question is whether the idea has made its way into the US Code, unquote. So regardless of whether Republicans think this is a good idea or not, as as Barrett says, that would be a question for the legislature and not one that can be decided on in federal court because it has no basis in federal law. So the birthright citizenship and the mail in voting ruling are the two that hamper the executive's power or go against the agenda of the Trump administration. But there was a few other rulings that also relate to executive power, which Mia Wong will cover in this special segment.
- [149:19]
Garrison Davis
So let's talk the executive branch, federal agencies and presidential power. Now, in addition to the other rulings that we're talking about here, we also got an absolutely wild pairing of rulings in Trump vs. Slaughter and Trump vs. Cook, which were both written by Chief Justice John Roberts. Roberts and which establish together the rather astounding legal principle that the President has complete power over the jobs of the heads of independent executive branch agencies except the ones that Chief Justice John Roberts likes personally. Now, I understand that that is a provocative statement and I'm going to ask you to withhold judgment until we get to the end of the second ruling because oh boy, it's a doozy. And I am fairly confident you will agree with this opinion by the end.
- [150:07]
Vicky Osterweil
End.
- [150:08]
Garrison Davis
So let's talk Trump versus Slaughter. So Trump versus Slaughter is a case in which the supreme court slaughtered a 91 year old president that was set in a case called Humphrey's Executor v. United States in order to allow President Trump to fire the heads of a broad swath of independent agencies, irrespective of Congress's specific instructions regarding how those heads heads could be fired. So Trump versus Slaughter began after Trump fired Federal Trade Commissioner. This is the FTC Rebecca Kelly Slaughter without cause. I'm going to quote from NPR here. As they point out, quote, since its creation of the Federal Trade Commission FTC in 1914, Congress has held that commissioners can only be fired for, quote, inefficiency, negligence of due duty or malfeasance in office, end quote. Slaughter was presented with no such reason for her removal, only told her, quote, continued service on the FTC was inconsistent with the Trump administration's priorities. Now there is an obvious legal precedent here, precedent that I described earlier because FDR tried to do literally this exact same thing in the 1930s. He tried to fire an FTC commissioner for political reasons. And the 1930 Supreme Court ruled in Humphrey's Executor versus the United States that in again, this exact same scenario, the President trying to fire an FTC commissioner for political reasons, that this was in fact illegal because the FTC is an independent agency whose functions are, you know, outside of the executive and thus the President does not have the power to simply remove their heads at once. Will. Now this 1930s decision, right, is a decision from the notoriously right wing Hughes Court facing a center left president. So in the 1930s it was important that the state be able to operate independently of FDR to prevent FDR from giving too many concessions to workers. Now, in 2026, the also fanatically right wing Roberts court saw a fascist in power and decided, no, actually the FTC is an agency that does executive functions and thus is under the control of the President because of the unitary executive theory, which is, you know, a theory that the president should have complete control over everything in the executive branch, even agencies that were explicitly designed by Congress to be independent. And that this theory is good now because a right wing president is using it. This ruling allows Trump to wield unprecedented power over the American state. Many of these bodies, you know, specifically, we should talk about the FTC here, right? The FTC has a cap of the number of members of the commission that can be from one party. Trump can now simply ignore this congressional mandate by just firing all the Democrats and leaving only Republicans, as NPR reported. Here's Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent. Quote, the court gives the President a power unknown even to the English crown against which the founders revolted, halted elevating him above his once co equal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the lobby faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws. Now, notably, the court also ruled that this unitary executive doctrine, right, this doctrine of the President has the right to fire the heads of independent executive agencies and independent federal agencies, that this power does not apply to the Federal Reserve. And thus Trump cannot fire Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook because of some extremely nebulous logic about the Federal Reserve being the successor to the first and Second national bank of the US which establishes, and I quote, our nation's tradition of central banking protected from political interference. Now, in what way, quote, our nation's tradition of central banking protected from political interference due differs even conceivably from our long standing tradition of protecting the FTC from political interference. Other than that, you know, John Roberts likes banks and the first and Second national bank are older than the ftc. And by the way, never mind here that Roberts himself admits that Andrew Jackson literally vetoed the Second national bank out of existence. Which reads making his arguments about the history of protecting central banking from political interference read like a bad joke. I genuinely cannot understand how the FTC is supposed to be different as an independent federal agency than the Federal Reserve. It's also worth noting that the first and Second national bank, we're not modern central banks. They don't do the modern central bank stuff. Oh God. Here, here is from a source that would know know what the Federal Reserve does because it's the Federal Reserve. It's part of a thing that they wrote in their 100th anniversary history project quote. And again, I can't emphasize this enough. This is the Federal Reserve itself from their 100 year anniversary history project quote. Unlike modern banks, the bank of America did not set monetary policy as we know it today. It did not regulate or act as a lender of last resort for other financial institutions and it did not hold their reserves. What the fuck are we doing here? It is also incredibly jarring to read Roberts go from talking about how the President has total authority that chooses subordinates in Trump versus Slaughter to him going, well, we can't let Trump have at will employment of like the heads of the people who work for him technically of the Federal Reserve. It's absolute legal gibberish that only makes sense when you take into account what is actually going on wrong here. Trump versus Cook was a 54 decision with Roberts and Kavanaugh joining the liberals in going Jesus fucking Christ almighty. We cannot give control of the single most important financial institution on earth directly to Donald Trump. Now Mia, why are you saying this as if it's fact and not speculation? And to be clear, this is technically speculation, but I'm going to read this from Kavanaugh's concurrence that serves as an explanation of why he joined coins Roberts and the liberals in agreeing that the President does not have the power to remove a Federal Reserve Board member without cause when he, and this is notable, also did also agree with Roberts when Roberts in the other case said that he can remove an FTC board member without cause. Now here's here's Kavanaugh quote, I agree with the court, moreover, that we should not leave open the question whether the Federal Reserve can remain an independent agency in the wake of slaughter, slaughter after slaughter. There is a clear choice. Either the Federal Reserve may remain independent with the governors removable for cause not at will, or it may not. Leaving that question open would create significant uncertainty about whether the court might soon eliminate the Federal Reserve's independence and thereby expose the Federal Reserve to political influence and jeopardize the efficiency of US Monetary policy. Even temporary uncertainty about the status of the Federal Reserve could spark political upheaval, including confusion about whether the President could immediately remove multiple governors at once, as well as turmoil in the US and world economies. I would not go down that road. I would not risk destabilizing the US Economy just so that we can further mull over an issue that in various permutations we have been thinking about for many years as the course opinion explains and the government agrees. The Federal Reserve occupies a unique role in the US Government and maintain critical responsibility for the stability and success of the US and world economies. So there you have it folks. As long as the President does not fuck with the money, this court holds that the President can wield executive power to fire the heads of independent federal regulatory agencies.
- [158:05]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
We will be right back to cover a few more rulings after this ad break.
- [158:20]
James
And we're back.
- [158:22]
Robert Evans
So it's time for, I guess, the less, certainly the least like upsetting portion of the Supreme Court rulings this go around, which is two different rulings that involve gun rights. And particularly at least in one case, I think a very common sense ruling. One is a lot more controversial, although I do think broadly speaking, it's still a better ruling than not so. On June 25, the Supreme Court struck down a Hawaii law that required people carrying firearms legally to get permission before bringing their gun into any private property open to the public. This law had passed in 2023 in the wake of the Supreme Court's 202263 Bruin decision. Now, if you don't remember, Bruen ruled that firearm regulations must be consistent with the historic tradition of gun regulation regulation in order to have any kind of constitutional standing. Because Bruin sliced the heart out of a lot of prior gun control legislation around the country, particularly state level legislation and particularly like bans on concealed carry. Right? One of the big things Bruen did is that it was basically impossible to get a concealed carry license in a number of states prior to Bruen. And after Bruen, states could no longer kind of arbitrarily make it basically impossible to get a concealed carry license license. Which is why you saw a bunch of states, including Hawaii, rush to pass a bunch of new laws. And these are generally referred to as vampire rules because if you remember your lore, vampires aren't allowed to like enter your domicile unless you give them permission. So basically you're treating like legally carried concealed firearms as a, a vampire. That's kind of like why it got the term. As Hawaii's legislature said when they passed this 2023 law, the legislature enacted this default rule in light of ample evidence that property owners in Haw do not want people to carry guns onto their property without express consent. Now, in their coverage, USA Today noted that the legislature argued their law was rooted in older Hawaiian legal precedent. Quote, In 1883, for example, Hawaii's king prohibited anyone from having a knife, sword, cane or their dangerous weapon. Hawaii's attorney general told the court unfortunately, the lawyers defending this Hawaiian law to the Supreme Court also cited less pleasant precedent bringing up the black codes and other laws meant to stop black citizens from carrying guns to argue that the US has an established tradition of restrictive firearm laws. Neil Gorsuch in particular took exception to this. This law and similar laws passed in California, New York, Maryland and New Jersey have all presumably been declared unconstitutional as a result of this ruling.
- [160:54]
James
They were already stayed here in California, so I'm guessing they just weren't. Yes, they stayed it pending this, I think. So it just will die now.
- [161:02]
Robert Evans
Yeah, exactly. Gun rights advocates like the Firearms Policy Coalition cheered the response.
- [161:06]
Garrison Davis
Result.
- [161:07]
Robert Evans
The court explained that these laws did not merely regulate where licensed people could carry. Instead, they severely burdened the ordinary exercise of the right to bear arms by forcing peaceful people to seek permission before entering the stores, restaurants, gas stations, pharmacies, and other businesses they visit every day. That burden, the court held, is incompatible with the Second Amendment's protection of the right to carry firearms for self defense as Americans go about their daily lives. So yeah, you could feel about that one however you want. I think that's kind of like broad, oddly reasonable, honestly, in my opinion. Arguably, a much bigger deal was the Supreme Court ruling last Thursday to change the way the federal government regulates casual drug use and firearms ownership. For a very long time, it's been illegal to buy and own guns while doing illegal narcotics, even marijuana with a medical prescription. This came out of the Gun control Act of 1968, which itself was passed after Martin Luther King Jr. And Robert Kennedy Jr. Were assassinated. It banned any person who is, quote, an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance from owning a gun. So when you buy a firearm, the normal way up until right about now, you would fill out a form called A4473, and on it you have to state that you are not a marijuana user or the user of any other illegal drug. And that you acknowledge, even if marijuana is legal in your state and you have a prescription, you're still not allowed to buy or own a gun if you use it, right? That like, you have to acknowledge on the form. I know that my state's laws don't matter here and it's always been, you know, even outside of this, very unclear just how far this prescription goes, right? Like if you're a gun owner who doesn't do drugs regularly, but one night someone offers you a hit from a joint while you're already drunk or like a bump and you take it, have you then broken the law? If you go to buy a gun the next month or the next year. Is that still illegal? Legal? And this has always been a gray area, more often than not, because the whole law restricting gun owners from using drugs has always been unconstitutional bullshit. And the ATF preferred not to talk about it in too much detail. Now that era seems to be coming to an end. In a rare unanimous ruling, the court sided with a Texas man, Ali Hamani, who had his home raided by the feds in August of 2022 due to Iran paranoia. I think a lot of people know this is how this case got started, but they, like, just because his name is Ali Hamani, thought he and his fan, they're Muslim, thought he and his family were like, involved with the Iranian government or spies of some sort. And so they searched his home for the New York Times. When agents searched the home, Mr. Hamani told them that he had a handgun locked in a safe inside the house. He also told them that he used marijuana about every other day, pointing them to about 60 grams of marijuana in the house. In addition, agents also found cocaine in his parents clothes closet. Quite a house. Six months later, Mr. Hamani was charged with one count of possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of a controlled substance based on his marijuana use. Now, all of this made for a decidedly weird Supreme Court case. Hamani's lawyers pointed out that there had never been any evidence that his family was connected to Iran or terrorism, but that the prosecution brought up the word terrorism repeatedly when talking about Hamani and his family.
- [164:10]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Oh, yeah, I'm sure, yeah.
- [164:12]
James
Shocking to hear.
- [164:14]
Robert Evans
When Hamani appealed and the case wound up at the Supreme Court, the Trump administration actually had its lawyers defend the law because law enforcement relies heavily on this to be able to tack on extra charges to people they dislike.
- [164:25]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Hunter Biden.
- [164:26]
Robert Evans
Yeah, Hunter Biden. Meanwhile, the ACLU and the NRA wound up submitting briefs on the other side of the issue. The ruling was narrow. The court declared that the government's use of the law was overbroad and that recreational drug users should not be assumed to be addicts who pose a danger to the public. Public. So the law wasn't declared unconstitutional, but its application was. And the precedent that this sets would seem to necessitate changes to 4473 and to the way law enforcement works. I do want to quote, before we end here, the last bit of the ruling from Neil Gorsuch, quote, because he possessed a gun, despite this prohibition, the government insists it may imprison him for up to 15 years to disarm him for life. According to the government, none of this turns on how much marijuana Mr. Hermani uses or what effect it has to on him. It makes no difference either if he keeps a firearm only in his home for self defense, never misuses a gun while intoxicated, never poses a danger to himself or others as a result of his marijuana use. The only thing the government must show, it says, is that an individual like Mr. Hamani regularly uses any amount of a controlled substance. To square that expansive theory with the Second Amendment, the government invites us to draw an analogy between its present regulation and historical laws addressing habitual drunkards. Those laws, the government contends, demonstrate a tradition of firearm regulation consistent with its effort to disarm any regular use user of any controlled substance. Without any further showing, the government's analogy fails under every measure. It asks us to consider the historical laws on which it relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways. And faced with all these shortcomings in the government's submission, we cannot say it has carried its conceited burden of showing its prosecution. If Mr. Hamani complies with the Second Amendment. Yeah. Pretty good ruling.
- [166:05]
James
Yeah. Like you say, like, this is one of those things that is like. Exists in large part to allow cops
- [166:11]
Robert Evans
to fuck with people.
- [166:12]
James
Yeah. And prosecutors to put people in prison for longer when they. When they've been convicted or charged with something else. Right. Or to put a massive potential. Yeah. Sentence on them so they plead guilty.
- [166:23]
Robert Evans
Like it doesn't make you safer. And I have always argued, you know, whatever you think about it, the Second Amendment is a civil right. And if the government could take away your access to a civil right and imprison you, if you ever put the wrong thing in your body, then you just don't have civil rights.
- [166:40]
James
The same is true, I think, of this vampire rule to an extent. Like, if the government can speak on your behalf and say that's not okay about guns, can they do it about other things too?
- [166:48]
Robert Evans
Right, exactly.
- [166:49]
James
I know there was a First Amendment challenge briefly in California. I guess that didn't succeed. Or that's not what they went with in the Supreme Court. They went with the Second Amendment challenge, but I thought that was interesting.
- [166:58]
Robert Evans
Yeah.
- [166:59]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
Let's close with one more case, one more Supreme Court ruling that could have some really, really big impacts on digital privacy and surveillance going forward.
- [167:09]
James
Forward.
- [167:10]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
In a 6, 3 ruling, Supreme Court found that police gaining access to location data through what's called a geofence does constitute a quote, unquote search under the Fourth Amendment. A geofence is when investigators ask a tech company for location data on all cell phones or cell phone users in a certain geographical range, usually during a certain time frame. The goal is to identify what phones and by extension who was present when a crime was committed. To quote Justice Kagan writing for the majority, quote, an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in records about his cell phone location and police intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information, even though for only a limited time time and from a third party tech company, unquote. The fact that this qualifies as a search is important because that means that it's subject to certain restrictions as laid out in the Constitution. This case in particular, the one that Supreme Court was ruling on, revolves around a bank robbery in 2019 where the suspect was seen on his phone. Before the robbery, police asked Google to hand over location data for all cell phones or other devices, devices in a 150 meter radius around the bank. Within an hour of the robbery. This location data would show users coordinates. Every 2 minutes, 19 anonymous users were first identified. Police then narrowed that down to nine users whose movements in and out of the geofence were tracked within a longer two hour period. That was before police then requested personally identifying information on three users which they then used to arrest the suspension suspect. The suspect asked that the evidence obtained be thrown out on a fourth Amendment violation, arguing that the warrant authorizing the location data search was invalid. He eventually pled guilty to the whole bank robbery thing, but the fourth Amendment claim made its way through the district court appeals courts and up to the Supreme Court. The district court did agree that this search violated the fourth Amendment, but it didn't block the location data from being permitted as evidence evidence because they found the officers acted in, quote, unquote, good faith. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals initially ruled 2:1, that the geofence did not qualify as a search, so a warrant wasn't even needed. One judge dissented from this, arguing that the warrant issued was quote, so lacking in particularity and probable cause that it was invalid. And this could be important later. But the full 4th Circuit panel reheard the case again and came out evenly divided seven, seven half ruling that the geofence warrant violated the fourth Amendment. But most justices still found that the exclusionary rules good faith exemption applied in this case, which leads us to the Supreme Court. Monday's ruling only covers the fourth Amendment aspect of the case, not the good faith exemption. And the fourth Amendment question itself is split into two issues. Issues did the police conduct a search under the Fourth Amendment by acquiring location data from Google? And second, did the multi step geofence warrant that was issued in that case, did that make the search reasonable? The Supreme Court found that it was a search, quote, because an individual has a legitimate expectation of privacy in his cell phone location data, unquote. But the Court did not answer that second question, whether this was reason reasonable, whether this search was reasonable because of the warrant. Justice Kagan wrote, quote, we leave it to the Court of Appeals. The further question whether given the warrant issued, the search here was reasonable, meaning that each of its steps was properly described with particularity and found to be supported by probable cause, unquote. For reference, the Fourth Amendment protects against the quote, unquote unreasonable search and seizures of of persons, houses, papers and effects and requires that warrants may only be issued upon probable cause and must particularly describe, quote, the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized, unquote. So to issue a search warrant, a judge must determine there's a, quote, unquote fair probability. This is, according to the Supreme Court, that evidence of the crime would be found and that the search is of an appropriate source scope to quote the opinion that it is carefully tailored to its justifications and will not take on the character of the wide ranging exploratory searches the Framers intended to prohibit. That wide ranging aspect is the exact issue with geofence warrants. They cast a dragnet on everyone in a certain area at a certain time. So while in the bank robbery case a judge did issue a geofence war warrant, it was an uncommon multi step warrant that was co developed with Google that gave officers a large degree of discretion on how to narrow down suspects from a wide pool while obtaining additional and increasingly personal information throughout the execution of that warrant. This new ruling by the Supreme Court is largely Based on this 2018 case, Carpenter v. United States, which found that accessing cell phone location history based on cell site towers qualifies as a fourth Amendment search, quote, unquote, given individuals reasonable expectations of privacy. Kagan wrote that this case is very similar to the Carpenter case, except that the location data as collected by Google is actually far more detailed and more fine tuned than what you can get from a cell phone location record records. But the government tried to argue that geofencing does not count as a search because of the short time window the location data is pulled from. The Court struck this down, ruling that the fourth Amendment doesn't kick in only once an intrusion, quote, unquote goes too far and applies regardless of the quote, unquote, quality or quantity of the information the government obtains. The other argument the government puts put up was that because the suspect, quote, unquote, voluntarily gave this location data to Google, he, quote, lost the legitimate expectation of privacy, unquote. You see stuff like this argued very, very often, right? This is something that comes up a lot, is that we're giving these tech companies all of this data anyway, so how can we reasonably expect it to be private? This is the third party document doctrine, which was originally for bank records and cell phone numbers. But the third party doctrine was not applied to Carpenter v. United States. So Justice Kagan wrote that for the very same reasons, it should not be applied here to location history collected by tech companies. And I'm going to read a kind of long quote to close this out because I think what, what Kagan writes here could have some really big impacts on how we understand digital privacy going forward. Forward, quote, cell phone location information is not truly quote, unquote shared as one normally understands the term. Because cell phones and the services they provide are such pervasive and insistent part of daily life, indispensable to participation in modern society, that a person can hardly help but generate a trail of location data. In no meaningful sense does that mean a person voluntarily exposes to any third party party a comprehensive dossier of his movements. The government's app by app, feature by feature method of granting fourth Amendment protections misapprehends the very nature of modern cell phone use. Pretty much everything a person does on a smartphone requires some kind of opt in. The point of carrying smartphones is to use what is on them, as Carpenter said, to use the apps and services they provide. That is what has become a pervasive and insistent, even quote, unquote indispensable part of daily life. And so that is what Carpenter insulated from the third party doctrine. Kagan adds police officers invade a cell phone user's reasonable expectation of privacy when they access location history, unquote. And this paragraph by Kagan also frequently quotes from the Carpenter ruling, combining her own analysis with the analysis in that case case, just to be clear. So the actual question of both reasonableness and if there's a good faith exemption for this specific warrant in the bank robbery case will be determined by the appeals court going forward. That is something that we will absolutely keep an eye on. And I'll be talking to someone from the EFF about this case next week for a regular it could happen here episode as well. I believe that is all for us. Yep. For our special Supreme Court edition of Executive Disorder.
- [176:16]
Robert Evans
That's right.
- [176:17]
James
You can email coolzonetipsoton me if you have any story tips for us.
- [176:24]
Host (possibly Mia Wong)
We reported the news.
- [176:25]
Robert Evans
Go away now. We're done.
- [176:28]
Leah Ayoub
We reported the news.
- [176:35]
Robert Evans
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.
- [176:41]
Garrison Davis
It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,
- [176:46]
James
Visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us
- [176:49]
Garrison Davis
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly in Episode Descriptions.
- [176:58]
James
Thanks for listening.
- [177:03]
Vicky Osterweil
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [177:05]
James
Guaranteed Human.