294: ICE Resistance

Summary

Conspirituality Podcast

Episode 294: ICE Resistance

Release Date: February 5, 2026
Hosts: Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker

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Episode Overview

This episode of Conspirituality tackles the escalation of violence and resistance around U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities, particularly following the high-profile killings of Renee Goode and Alex Pretty during protests. The hosts examine how MAGA-aligned narratives reshape public perception, how religious leaders and influencers respond from all sides of the spectrum, and spotlight front-line community organizers in Portland. The conversation is rooted in both present-day events and historical contexts of resistance, religious revival, and state-sanctioned violence.

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Main Segments & Key Discussion Points

1. The Tragedy in Minneapolis and National Reactions (02:02–12:56)

Recent Deaths and Escalating Violence

• Julian recounts the recent killings of Renee Goode, Alex Pretty, and Geraldo Campos by ICE or CBP, all ruled homicides, with no charges filed.
• The episode examines how these deaths represent a new tipping point in the American political landscape, questioning whether chaos, mass protest, or even civil conflict may be imminent.

Julian Walker (@03:23):
"On the street and online, the intensity keeps escalating. It makes me wonder if we're approaching a tipping point... Might the country descend into chaos and outright street warfare as the stormtroopers shoot to kill and more protesters show up with guns?"

Media and Political Reactions

• Derek notes the challenge of coordinating national protests due to America’s vastness and geographic variance in public awareness of ICE operations (04:04).
• Julian & Matthew critique right-wing media, especially Fox News and MAGA influencers, for spinning the deaths as justified—with narratives full of dog whistles and identity-based smears targeted at Renee Goode.

Julian Walker (@08:27):
"Let’s talk about her in completely dehumanizing ways with all these dog whistles. Right. She was divorced, she has a kid, she's a lesbian, she calls herself a poet, she has pronouns in her bio. It's so gross."

• MAGA media allege protesters are “paid agitators,” and suggest links to shadowy conspiracies involving daycare fraud.

Divided Public Opinion

• Polling indicates stark partisan contrast over who is "to blame" for protest violence, though a majority of Americans still approve of peaceful protest and filming ICE operations.
• The episode touches on the Orwellian dynamics—“the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears”—as right-wing commentary willfully disregards contrary video evidence.

2. Manipulation & Moral Narratives in Right-Wing and Religious Circles (12:56–20:11)

Anti-Empathy Rhetoric

• Notable MAGA women and Christian influencers—such as Riley Gaines and Allie Beth Stuckey—urge audiences to suppress empathy for those targeted by ICE, warning against “toxic empathy.”

Julian Walker (@13:05):
"Do not let what you believe to be compassion cloud you or suspend you from thinking critically. It’s like the next step in the 1984 narrative..."

• Stuckey frames progressive compassion as fundamentally manipulative, marketing her book Toxic Empathy.

Wellness/Spiritual Culture Reactions

• Some yoga leaders openly call for solidarity with protesters, though Julian is critical of appropriating Indian religious texts (e.g., Bhagavad Gita) to justify contemporary politics.
• Hosts discuss the limits—and dangers—of retrofitting ancient scriptures for modern progressive causes, especially as those same texts have authoritarian and oppressive histories.

Derek Barris (@17:57):
"There's a difference between... religion having a reformation every generation because times have changed and saying that these yogis at the time the Gita was written would imply that they're anti-ICE. When the instruction of duty... is Krishna telling Arjuna to go kill your cousins."

• They agree that honest engagement with texts’ historical flaws creates more authentic, updated progressive religious outlooks.

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3. Religious Responses Across the Spectrum (21:52–44:17)

The Emergence of Religious Revivalism

• Matthew surveys contemporary religious responses, noting familiar parallels with historical moments of crisis in American religion.
• He plays a clip from Reformation Red Pill podcast, where Joshua Hames demands immigration moratorium, open denaturalizations, and asserts the nation’s Christian identity.

Joshua Hames (@22:51):
"By the grace of God, we will have our country back. Christ is king."

• Christian nationalist influencers invoke Romans 13 (“let every one be subject to the governing authorities… for there is no authority except that which God has established”) to justify state violence.

Matthew Remski (@24:31):
"So Paul says… whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted..."

Dissenting and Progressive Faith Voices

• Contrastingly, some Christian and multifaith leaders condemn ICE actions—bishops publicly encourage resistance, and recall histories of religious martyrdom and liberation theology:
  • Bishop Hirschfeld at the Renee Goode vigil instructed priests to make wills, referencing the “time of martyrdom.”
  • Catholic bishops issue statements suggesting moral permission to disobey unjust orders.

Historical Perspective

• Matthew contextualizes these struggles within waves of American religious revival—tracing radical religious flanks from abolition, to civil rights, to present resistance.
• He discusses the spectrum of religious response: from fascist-aligned to radical liberationist, referencing figures like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Camilo Torres Restrepo.

Matthew Remski (@34:56):
"Now, the crisis is fascism. And historically, religious culture, en masse responds to fascism… from pro fascist to conservative to liberal to radical."

• The conversation explores how attempts to base progressive politics on religious texts are met, often by the same texts and with sometimes stronger arguments, by conservatives.

Nonviolent vs. Armed Resistance

• Matthew introduces the historical example of the Deacons for Defense and Justice, a WWII vet–led Black group that provided armed protection for nonviolent clergy in the civil rights era—a strategy that sometimes increased nonviolent participation, not diminished it.
• Julian counters with concern that armed resistance in today’s context could hasten repression or backfire strategically, referencing scholarship by Omar Waso and others.

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4. Portland: The Front Line of ICE Resistance (44:17–62:46)

ICE Escalation and Local Protest

• Derek reports on Portland’s continued nightly protests outside federal ICE facilities, now facing increased violence—tear gas, rubber bullets, and flashbangs—by agents. City government has sued to restrict chemical agents on protesters (44:50–46:58).
• The group PDX ICE Watch—largely run by immigrants and people of color—tracks ICE agents' movements, publicly sharing locations and footage as a means of community defense and accountability.

PDX ICE Watch Tactics

• The hosts play and analyze encounters recorded by PDX ICE Watch—highlighting civil but tense stand-offs with local police, who often seem uncomfortable or complicit.
• PDX ICE Watch follows and films ICE and CBP agents beyond the workplace, exposing license plates, hotels, and, in some cases, confronting them off duty.

PDX ICE Watch Member (@51:16):
"It's not that I disagree with him. It's that I know he's part of an agency that is doing massive harm here in this state... The work that he does is destroying our communities."

• Host discussion weighs the morality, legality, and strategic consequences of these tactics—whether they’re justifiable activism or could be perceived as harassment, and how actions might affect broader public sympathy.

Moral & Strategic Debates on Harassment and Escalation

• Julian worries about the optics and potential of turning ICE agents into sympathetic figures if tactics become too aggressive.
• Matthew responds that “the time for [manners and private citizenship] is over,” but stresses that violence or adventurism would be strategically disastrous, not addressing the moral logic as “the fascists do not understand morality.”

Matthew Remski (@56:16):
"...we really are in the 'I was only following orders' territory of moral character. The time for that is over."

• They highlight the prevalence of social-media-driven resistance, the risks facing high-profile agitprop organizers (legal repression, criminalization), and debate the strategic effectiveness of “spectacular” protest in the age of networked activism.

Portland’s Unique Resistance Culture

• Derek concludes that resistance in Portland has deep roots, and ongoing city and state government pressure against ICE is dramatically shaping the city’s politics and confrontations.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final and most essential command.” — Referencing 1984, on MAGA narrative tactics (06:45)
• “She was a disruptor, but considered herself a legal observer, though there’s no evidence she had a law degree.” — Jesse Waters, as quoted by Julian (07:42)
• “Ironically, these lies come from the free speech champions who also argue that the over 1300 child deaths from gun violence each year is just the price we have to pay for the right to bear arms...” — Julian (09:57)
• “Do not let what you believe to be compassion cloud you or suspend you from thinking critically.” — Riley Gaines, via Julian (13:05)
• “There's nothing more normie than [Bishop Hirschfeld]. And it was moving... because it was so straightforward.” — Matthew (30:02)
• “It sounds like a fascinating book. I can see in these situations how that made a lot of sense. I'm not just going on intuition here, though...” — Julian, on the Deacons for Defense debate (42:16)
• “Giving those guys a sense of what it’s like to be watched.” — Derek, on PDX ICE Watch (55:55)
• “They have a robust link tree if you feel compelled to donate to them to help pay for things like gas or... local organizations they work with and support who are on the ground here trying to put a stop to this nightmare.” — Derek (61:52)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Intro/background: 01:12–02:02
• Historical context & new tipping point: 02:02–04:58
• Media spin, public opinion, and dehumanization: 04:58–12:56
• Right-wing and religious manipulation, wellness world: 12:56–20:11
• Religious responses (Christian nationalism to progressive clergy): 21:52–44:17
• Armed vs. nonviolent resistance history: 41:07–44:17
• Portland frontline organizing & PDX ICE Watch: 44:17–62:46
• Conclusions on strategic activism and Portland’s future: 60:27–62:46

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Tone/Style Notes

The episode is urgent, deeply analytical, and often caustically critical of mainstream/right-wing media, religious apologia for violence, and strategic failures on the left. Hosts interweave historical context, pop culture, current events, and academic research with sharp wit and nuanced debate.

The language is frank, well-informed, and emotionally charged, with the hosts repeatedly circling back to questions of strategy, history, moral clarity, and the real dangers facing activists today.

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Final Thoughts

"ICE Resistance" offers an in-depth look at America’s spiraling conflict over immigration enforcement, state violence, and resistance, situating local stories like those in Portland within a much larger battle over narrative, morality, and political legitimacy. With acute attention to both the perils and traditions of resistance—from spiritual and religious roots to frontline organizing—the episode provides urgent context for all listeners concerned about the future of democracy and dissent.

Transcript

[Julian Walker]

Reggie, I just sold my car online.

[Matthew Remsky]

Let's go, Grandpa. Wait, you did? Yep.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

On Carvana.

[Julian Walker]

Just put in the license plate, answered.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

A few questions, got an offer in minutes.

[Julian Walker]

Easier than setting up that new digital picture frame.

[Matthew Remsky]

You don't say.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, they're even picking it up tomorrow. Talk about fast.

[Matthew Remsky]

Wow. Way to go. So, about that picture frame.

[Julian Walker]

Ah, forget about it. Until Carvana makes one, I'm not interested.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Julian Walker]

On June 11, 1998, a deputy from.

[Matthew Remsky]

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing.

[Julian Walker]

Hey, if don't kill a cop and bury him, what are they gonna do to me?

[Narrator/Advertiser]

What really happened to the missing deputy?

[Julian Walker]

Valley of Shadows, a new series from.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert.

[Matthew Remsky]

Listen to Valley of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts.

[Julian Walker]

Hey, everyone.

[Derek Barris]

Welcome to Conspirituality, where we investigate the intersections of conspiracy theories and spiritual influence to uncover cults, pseudoscience and authoritarian extremism. And maybe even the Epstein files, which we have plenty to discuss in the coming weeks. I'm Derek Barris.

[Matthew Remsky]

I'm Matthew Remsky.

[Julian Walker]

I'm Julian Walker.

[Derek Barris]

You can find us on Instagram and threads at Conspirituality Pod, as well as individually over on Blue Sky. You can access all of our episodes ad free, plus our Monday bonus episodes on [e-mail] conspirituality. You can also grab our Monday bonus episodes via Apple subscriptions. As independent media creators, we really appreciate your support.

[Julian Walker]

Conspirituality 294. Ice resistance. Prior to last month's killings of Renee Goode and Alex Perti, many white American citizens felt obligated to use their privilege to actively disrupt unjust ICE activities in their cities. But the stakes just got higher for everyone. What does it mean to our shared political psyche when civilian protesters are gunned down by government agents in the street? Today, in the wake of these tragic deaths, we look at how the MAGA propaganda machine dehumanizes opposition and demands loyalists not trust the evidence of their own lion eyes and ears. In segment two, Matthew will look at how renegade religious leaders are responding. And then in segment three, Derek discusses brave community organizers in Portland currently resisting ICE and the authoritarianism it advances. Two people died in ICE custody in 2025, and an additional eight were shot and killed by ICE and or CPB. So far this year, deaths involving ICE are already at eight, including the high profile broad daylight murders of Renee Goode and Alex Pretty and a 55 year old father of two named Geraldo Campos who died in detention in El Paso, Texas due to neck and torso compression by guards. The medical examiner has now ruled all three of these deaths as homicides, though no one has charged in any of these cases. On the street and online, the intensity keeps escalating. It makes me wonder if we're approaching a tipping point. Like might a growing number of Republican civilians, police, military and elected officials begin to defect over this issue and join a pro democracy coalition? Might the country descend into chaos and outright street warfare as the stormtroopers shoot to kill and more protesters show up with guns? Will we even have midterm elections?

[Derek Barris]

That second question is asked often and I think about how difficult it would be nationwide because we're such a big nation. You know, often in other countries it's usually in the capital city when you see actual revolution like that. But in America it's just, it's kind of bonkers in terms of there, there are cities who can just not believe what's happening with ICE is actually believing because they don't see it at all. Whereas as I'll get to in my third segment, Minneapolis is sucking up all the oxygen for good reason in our media. But Portland has never not protested since Trump took office. Like it has been going on every single night since. And it just amazes me how the media, you know, will look at certain cities and not others. And so creating some sort of national protest in terms of chaos would be very, very difficult. I couldn't imagine it.

[Julian Walker]

So as you just mentioned, Goode and Pretty were both killed in Minneapol while protesting ICE actions. And this has in turn led to tens of thousands taking to the streets there and around the country. But the Trump administration and right wing media have been swift and definitive in their pre investigation public statements that Renee Goode was weaponizing her vehicle to try to run over ICE agents and was shot in self defense. While they say Alex Pretty had come armed with a semi automatic handgun and extra ammunition intending to enact a massacre.

[Matthew Remsky]

They're fucking liars who lie. And you know, folks have identified the Sig Sauer from the video, but we don't know actually where the clips were. I don't think we've seen any concrete information about that except for the picture that they released of the weapons lying on some car seat. And yeah, these just, these guys lie about everything. I think it's going to be difficult to figure out, you know, what exactly happened there.

[Julian Walker]

Sig Sauer is the type of gun, eh?

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, yeah, that's the role, that's the Semi automatic, that's the 9 millimeter he was using.

[Julian Walker]

Aha. Now, despite video footage that is clearly at odds with their descriptions, public opinion divides predictably along party lines. So a YouGov poll from January 28 found that 85% of Democrats and just 9% of Republicans thought that ICE was mostly to blame for violence at protests. Nonetheless, 82% of Americans approved of peaceful protests against ICE and 67% approved of filming them during operations. And then those numbers go down into the 30s. In relation to escalating and more direct confrontations against ICE. Around 55%, including 19% of Republicans, believe that agents were not justified in killing alex Pretty. But 41% of Republicans still say those agents were justified in their actions. So now, in addition to seeing multi angle videos, and I know everyone has of these sickening street executions, we are confronted with the fact that fellow Americans are able to be convinced that they're seeing something else, something legitimate, justified. They're seeing dangerous criminals getting what they deserve. Many left of center people on social media have been posting this quote from George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final and most essential command. The MAGA cult spin playing into this has leaned heavily on identity politics and moral smearing about mother of three Renee Goode. Jesse Waters of Fox News said the woman who lost her life was a self proclaimed poet from Colorado with pronouns in her bio. He continued, she leaves behind a lesbian partner and a child from a previous marriage. She was a disruptor, but considered herself a legal observer, though there's no evidence she had a law degree.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, that's not what legal observer means. It means you can observe and it's legal to observe. It's amazing how his description of her just sort of transfers over from the sort of the rhetoric of libs of TikTok describing somebody who's just doing something distasteful. But he's talking about somebody who was just murdered in the street. Right. It's like he took the libs of TikTok description of Renee Goode and thought that that was a good way of framing a state murder.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, the person who lost their life. Let's talk about her in completely dehumanizing ways with all of these dog whistles. Right. She was divorced, she has a kid, she's a lesbian, she calls herself a poet, she has pronouns in her bio. It's so gross. Conservative pundit Megyn Kelly described Goode's death as her own doing because she failed to comply. And she said the local and state government were actually putting ICE in danger by condemning the shooting. MAGA podcasters and influencers with millions of followers spread misinformation about Alex Peretti in the days after the shooting, claiming he was actually an illegal alien or a soldier for the communist revolution, and that he tried to pull his gun during the altercation or that he was already brandishing it, expecting a firefight from afar. This is sort of the narrative that he's gonna, you know, do some kind of maximum damage. As everyone's favorite Nazi styled CBP commander Greg Bevino said, it was clear that Pretty wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement. And here he's echoing the outrageous party line from Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller. Ironically, these lies come from the free speech champions who also argue that the over 1300 child deaths from gun violence each year is just the price we have to pay for the right to bear arms at all times and in all places. It's the same argument Charlie Kirk made. No little irony there. It's just not. When you're protesting the actual form of tyranny that their founding fathers warned us about, then having a gun on you is absolutely not okay. They also reiterate Donald Trump's claims that ICE protesters were highly paid professional agitators and anarchists, as well as these sort of indirect implications that there's some conspiratorial link between the Somali daycare fraud cases, which is the pretext for the current ICE invasion, and that money supposedly funding protests. He never says this directly, but he'll flip back and forth between the two topics when he's talking to the media. And then there.

[Derek Barris]

There's J.D.

[Julian Walker]

Vance, who asked rhetorically at a White House press briefing, when someone throws a brick at an ICE agent or tries to run an ICE agent over, who pays for that brick?

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, because nobody can actually be resourceful, right? Nobody can find their own materials. Nobody. Like, they're doing the same thing with the water and the groceries. Totally. It's like, how can they possibly have put together this pallet of water bottles for protesters? Where is that coming from?

[Julian Walker]

It's very serious.

[Matthew Remsky]

Who gave them that $17 to go to Costco? Whose Costco card was that on? They did the same thing with the tents in the encampments too, right? Oh, look at all these tents. Look at where they. Where. I wonder where they came from? Who paid for them? It's incredible. Nobody can do anything, right? Everybody's completely helpless.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, helpless and obviously corrupted by outside forces who are injecting huge amounts of Destroy America.

[Matthew Remsky]

Huge amounts of money. You can tell that's why people are making like, shields out of old rain barrels and duct tape. Right.

[Julian Walker]

On the influencer side, prominent anti trans activist Riley Gaines joined a chorus of MAGA women urging followers not to be swayed by the sin of empathy. She commented on her podcast that she thanked ICE agents for taking a five year old child named Liam Ramos from his driveway instead of abandoning him as his father had done. But eyewitnesses say that Liam's father was arrested by ice and then they tried to use the child to lure other family members out of the house.

[Derek Barris]

And the same detention center they got sent to now has a measles outbreak.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

So they had to lock it down earlier this week.

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, what. And when they lock it down, they don't want people coming in and out. But, I mean, I assume they're providing some kind of treatment or.

[Derek Barris]

You would assume so.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah.

[Matthew Remsky]

I mean, RFK Jr. Is down there and he's handing out COD oil, milk or whatever. Cod liver oil.

[Police Officer]

Cod liver oil.

[Derek Barris]

And.

[Julian Walker]

And we shouldn't like organic raw chicken broth.

[Matthew Remsky]

Kids are. Kids are going to die in that facility.

[Derek Barris]

Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

And actually it turns out that the sizable number of deaths in ICE detention come from lack of medical care.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah. Well, people get separated from their medications or they can't make an appointment. Yeah. Or they miss dialysis. Yeah. Yep.

[Julian Walker]

Speaking of pretty and good, Riley Gaines told her listeners, do not let what you believe to be compassion cloud you or suspend you from thinking critically. It's like the next step in the. In the 1984 narrative, hugely influential podcaster Ellie Beth Stuckey told Megan Kelly that Christian women are being completely duped by anti ICE propaganda that relies on emotionally evocative images and messaging. Don't let yourself feel compassion for people who are being completely brutalized. She's the author of a 2024 book called Toxic Empathy, How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. And this was written in response to the 2020 killing of George Floyd. It's. It's just hard not to laugh. Other womanosphere figures like self described Christian mother Haley Williams shared posts with her 50, 000 Instagram followers about the simple ways I reduce my risk of being shot by ice. And these essentially list stay at home tradwife who cuddled her baby and hung out at home with her husband. It's a good way not to get shot by ice. Now, Matthew, I know you're going to get more into Christian responses on both sides in a minute. But let me just add here first in terms of our beat, that it's been good to see calls for solidarity with protests from some prominent American yoga leaders. And I totally support that. But perhaps due to me being a curmudgeonly stickler, I have felt a little bit critical of their using Indian religious texts to imply that being a true yogi means being anti ice. And don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're anti ice. And I think it's fine to draw political inspiration from spiritual traditions. But I, I can't help but feel it rings a bit hollow when texts that were not only never critical of monarchical power or the grotesque oppressions of the metaphysically based caste system and actually argued in some cases that believers had a duty to perpetuate those power struct, are cited today as a basis in America for progressive social justice politics.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, I've seen some of those posts too, and I have mixed feelings about them. Like I think that anybody in yoga culture who takes any steps towards, you know, joining some sort of anti fascist activism or discourse, that's like a huge win. That's a huge win. And I mean it kind of, it counteracts the entire reason that we had to start this project. So that's really good. The thing that I had that come up was that if somebody uses, for example, the Bhagavad Gita to say, well actually this is a really good text for getting people to understand courage and selflessness and duty, obviously there's all kinds of difficulties with that. There are going to be contradictions. There's going to be the whole history of that text being used by fascists, you know, like Himmler carrying it around in his trench coat, his, his Bovino style trench coat. And yeah, and so, so there's going to be historical problems with that and there's going to be tensions. And then at a certain point though, like sometimes people take things from older, very sort of contradictory traditions and they make something new out of them. And I'm just sort of like sensitive to, to. It's like if anybody had told, for instance, you know, Gustavo GUTIERREZ in the 1960s that oh, you know what, if you start reading Marxism, your Christianity is going to be totally fucked. He would never have said, well, maybe he would have anyway because I think he was pretty stubborn, but he would have been discouraged from going ahead and saying, oh, there can actually be a type of Catholicism that I develop into liberation theology along with my comrades and At a certain point, the contradictions between conservative Christianity or orthodoxy and then, you know, and Marxism become resolved for a certain number of people who go on to make something new. And so I'm kind of. I like, I. I'm kind of wondrous at that process.

[Derek Barris]

That seems a bit contradictory to what Julian was saying, though, because I agree with everything you said. And I think Joseph Campbell argued that religion should have reformation every generation because the times have changed. But there's a difference between that and saying that the te are saying that these yogis at the time the Gita was written would imply that they're anti ice. When the instruction of duty that you just referenced.

[Julian Walker]

Yes.

[Derek Barris]

Is Krishna telling Arjuna to go kill your cousins.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

Because you have a duty to me. So those that. I think that's important to disentangle those. Because progressive progression. Good. But romanticizing something you have no idea about of the cultural conditions, I.

[Julian Walker]

That's.

[Derek Barris]

That's also where I take issue.

[Matthew Remsky]

That's exactly it. Because if you do too much of that, you kind of wind back in the sort of. In maybe a sort of fascist vulnerable state, because you're concentrating on the problem of authenticity and authority rather than the actual challenge of development. Right. And those are two very different projects. Like, we don't have to locate excellence in the past.

[Julian Walker]

That's right.

[Matthew Remsky]

We can locate yearnings and poetry and wisdom. And then we also have to just own that we're making stuff. Right?

[Julian Walker]

That's right.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. So you risk falling into a different kind of lost golden age romanticism. And I think, to your point, and again, this is just because of my own nerdy preoccupations, I would be impressed by yoga leaders who were saying, hey, these texts that are kind of central to what we share in our teacher trainings are flawed in the following ways. From a social justice perspective, we're actually wanting to update and repurpose them and think about how we apply them to today with this social justice emphasis that they didn't have back in that time because nobody was really talking that way.

[Matthew Remsky]

In those times to reclaim and reconstitute the kind of juice that we felt when we first heard the Gita. And it spoke to us somehow, but somehow then we realized through the history that it. It didn't really, you know, it didn't really speak to our times. But yeah, you're right. And I think included in that would be yoga people saying, hey, let's also not forget that the Gita is central to the soft power of Hindu nationalism today. And that's not necessarily something that we want to, you know, encourage or be on board with.

[Julian Walker]

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[Matthew Remsky]

So there are a lot of religious responses to fascism at the moment, and I'm going to get to a kind of larger picture that I'm working on on why I think that's happening. But I want to run down first some news bullets. And you know, the takeaway is that I'm thinking this is one of those religious revival times in the American Story. Now in the full on Nazi White Christian Nationalism zone, we have Pete Hegseth's former pastor and podcaster Joshua Hames, and he's out there on his Reformation Red Pill podcast, which is about all you need to know about him. Like Reformation Red Pill saying stuff like this. I don't know if you guys have seen him, but he kind of sets himself up like a kind of young William F. Buckley smoking a pipe. But he also has this sort of Gavin McGinnis vibe going on with the facial hair grooming, but also the just. It looks like he's about to get in a hockey fight.

[Joshua Hames]

We need an immigration moratorium. We need some breathing room so that we can actually establish our national identity, so we can actually assimilate people into that. And right at the core of our national identity is Christianity. We were founded as a Christian nation, and the left is actively seeking to flood our nation with God haters. They are doing this on purpose. So, no, we're done with the immigration. We are in favor of ice. We are in favor of deportations and denaturalizations and repatriation. By the grace of God, we will have our country back. Christ is king.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, I mean, 1933 called and they want their asshole back. Like there's even a reference to Lebensraum in there. Or a breathing room, living space. Hames doesn't have a huge account, but he does have Hegseth on there quite a bit. And I think, you know, that influence is going to percolate up into the cabinet. Now then there's this argument floating around the evangelosphere that tries to answer the old what would Jesus do? Question in relation to Minneapolis. So there's a number of white Christian nationalist influencers who are reading Romans 13. Okay. And this is where Paul is in peak Roman bootlicking mode as he tries to discipline the radical flank of his new budding Christian movement and then move it into the empire with some kind of respectability. So Paul says, let every one be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted. And those who do so will bring judgments on themselves.

[Julian Walker]

Now, that actually is not too far from what Krishna is saying to Archana in the Gita.

[Matthew Remsky]

Interesting. So we have this response on thread that shows up. Well, it's on a number of platforms, but I found this one from an account called byfaith Elizabeth where she says, I keep seeing people argue that Jesus would not support ice. Jesus abided by laws. Not only that, but he fulfilled the law of the Lord. May he pour his spirit out on this country. So, yeah, Jesus was a good boy. He was a rule follower. That's why he was executed by the state.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah. Which is crazy. But I just. Sorry to interrupt you, Matthew, but the back and forth, the sort of category error around authority and law and basically saying law and authority is ordained by God, because otherwise the people who are making the laws and who have the authority wouldn't have it. So you have to obey them. It's like the opposite of Christ's message.

[Matthew Remsky]

Also, I don't know if this happens in evangelicalism. I'm not familiar with it, but this notion that he fulfilled the law is odd to me because what I grew up with is that he fulfilled prophec that was obviously cherry picked out of the Old Testament. Right. So, you know, Isaiah speaks in certain ways with certain metaphors, and then, you know, Jesus makes them come true. But he did he. I think she's saying he fulfilled the law of the Lord. And I think it's additionally ironic because maybe the subtext there is that his law was that he should be executed. Right.

[Julian Walker]

So much of it seems. Seems rooted to this fetish for patriarchal authority. Right. Which is then projected onto God.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of patriarchal authority, Bishop Barron of Minneapolis is worth a deep dive at some point. He's the founder of. He's a podcasting bishop, like Bishop Strickland. So he's the founder of the Word on Fire tradcath Media network. He has 421,000 followers on X. He's a popular, popular guest on the Peterson, Friedman, Shapiro circuit. So he's bishop of Winona, Rochester. This is South Minnesota, and he took that seat in 2022. Politically, he's staying just on the left ish side of Bishop Strickland, from what I've seen, who was demoted by Francis for basically fomenting Catholic QAnon BS during the pandemic. Barron pretends that he's above politics all the time, but then he's on Trump's Religious Liberty Commission. He shows up to be the black and red robe at the White House events. He's had little to say about the murders of his fellow Minnesotans, including Alex Preddy, who was a Catholic exception. Except, you know, he's given a simpering both sides statement, pleading for ICE to be more moderate and for people to stop yelling at the good agents who are just trying to do their jobs. But about priorities, Barron was, you know, doesn't have much to say about what's happening in his home state, but he was a lot more forthcoming when Mamdani used the word collectivism in his inauguration address in New York. And he also pulled out the old black book of communism quote. Collectivism in its various forms is responsible for the deaths of at least 100 million people in the last century. For God's sake, spare me the warmth of collectivism, activism, Catholic social teaching has consistently condemned socialism and has embraced the market economy, which people like Mamdani caricature is rugged individualism. I think he should have a conversation with Leo because I think that's a little bit different these days. But a lot of outrage from the progressives in the comments are really pushing back on it. And it's kind of surprising to see like, there's a real divide emerging, I think, in Catholic discourse. He drew even more fire by responding to the inside the Church protest of Pastor Dave Dave Easterwood in Minneapolis, who parishioners and community members outed as an ICE field commander in Minneapolis. So Barron tweeted out, I don't care what is animating or annoying you. I don't care what your political persuasion might be. Invading a church is unacceptable and is a violation of religious liberty. So yes, people are being very animated and annoyed by state executions, but then there is a lot of pushback. So there's a cohort of Catholic bishops that signed a detailed condemnation of ice. We have Bishop Broglio, who's the head Catholic chaplain for the United States Armed Forces, telling the BBC that Catholic soldiers, quote, within the realm of their own conscience, it would be morally acceptable to disobey orders to invade Greenland. And as we've mentioned in previous episodes, women and men, clerics from a long list of other denominations and religions are still in the front lines of protest. And I'm seeing some organizational links back to the advocacy of the rabbis, imams and priests at the anti genocide encampments 18 months ago. So there's also a cultural history here that's developing. Spiritual leaders are presiding over memorials and vigils for those gunned down. And you might remember from that Renee Goode vigil in Concord, New Hampshire, that the Episcopalian Bishop Hirschfeld said that he was instructing his priests to make up their wills. He said that the time of martyrdom is nigh. And he pointed back to Bishop Romero and other liberation theologian religious assassinated by right wing ghouls in Latin America in the 1980s.

[Julian Walker]

That was an incredible speech. Yeah.

[Matthew Remsky]

And you know what I loved about it so much, and I'm really interested in this, I want to know what you guys think is that when a dude like that, that makes a statement like that, he doesn't rely on the typical affects of politics or spiritual influencing that we're familiar with. Right. There is nothing more normie than that guy. There is nothing more sort of mundane, straightforward, you know, uncharismatic about, you know, Bishop Hirschfield is Just a guy. And he was probably just a good student in school. I don't know anything about him, but he strikes me as this kind of person who just attained a position of administrative power within this organization because it's an institution, because it has these sort of stages of verification and vetting and review and so on. He advances, and then it's just part of his sort of. Of office daily work to go and make this statement that, oh, you know, we're maybe at this state of martyrdom and we should probably get our affairs in order. It wasn't, like, overly emotional. It wasn't. I don't know, I think people were impressed who was moving to people because it was so straightforward. But there's something about the Christian cleric not needing charisma in these moments that I find super interesting, and it says something to me about all of the other religious influencers that we followed over the years, is that they. They have. They have to sort of create something in order to, I don't know, substitute for a lack of institutional support maybe, or validity. So a recurrent theme, you know, around here on this podcast, centers on the American pastime of political crisis that provokes religious revivalism. So we have, you know, early Great Awakenings that were grappling with the fallout from the Revolutionary War. And then we have, you know, the industrial explosion. And then when we get to the Civil War and Reconstruction, we have Union and Confederate armies that experience revival waves as well, going in different directions. Black churches become sites of politicized community protection. White evangelicals laid the groundwork for a white Christian nationalism to carry the lost cause forward. And in the Depression era, the emergent social gospel visibly challenged, intensifying exploitation. And then we have Catholic paranoia adding jet fuel to the Red Scare a generation later. And then again with the Reagan era, Satanic panic. So now the crisis is fascism. And historically, religious culture, en masse responds to fascism, I think along a familiar political spectrum from pro fascist to conservative to liberal to radical. So in the 1930s, some religious folks blessed the fascists as messianic saviors from the disorder of the modern world. In 1936, there's this gaggle of Irish bishops who stood on the dock at Galway and blessed with holy water. Irish volunteers sailing off to fight for Franco in Spain under a swastika flag. But then in some other port at the same time, I can't remember the story, like, I can't remember where it was, but Irish volunteers for the brigades included Catholic monks and Protestant vicars. Then there's another faction of religious who I think usually try to preserve the status quo, at least within those church walls, by just continuing on, doing what they do, bypassing what they can, as if nothing new was happening, or because their objective, and this is true of the Vatican in World War II, is basically to preserve influence and assets through neutral neutrality. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who I've done a couple of episodes on, identified this kind of moral and political disengagement in the liberal German Lutheran church of the 1930s. And this made him start wondering whether Christians, through apathy or inaction or just self interest, would they wind up running cover for the Nazis. And so then he goes on his journey and he figures out how he doesn't want to do that. And then I think there's always maybe, I don't know, often at least a minority radical flank that sees the political moment as a call to champion whatever revolutionary themes it finds in its heritage and liturgy, or as we were saying before, what it can pull out and develop from those histories. So in the 1960s, there was a guy named Camille Torres Restrepo who was a classic classmate of Gustavo Gutierrez, the founder of liberation theology. And Restrepo leaned into his Marxism so hard that he gave up his collar and he joined guerrilla forces battling the US backed government. And he would say things like, if Jesus were alive today, he would be a guerrilla fighter. And the Catholic who is not a revolutionary is living in mortal sin. Which, if I had heard that when I was like 12 years old, I don't know what I would have done. I guess I'm grateful I didn't because I might have just gone totally off the rails. But I've got three last thoughts. For me, what this moment clarifies is the coherence of religious and political cultures. And I think it seems to me that any denomination you can look for, that you look at, you will probably find within it a radical flank. And my strategic speculation is that finding, understanding and standing with that flank will pull it into more prominence in the denomination. And that's of potential benefit to those in more conservative streams. Like, there's a lot of literature and influencers out there talking about leaving religion altogether. Like, that's the exvangelical story. But I also know there's another group, I don't know how large, and that group upgrades their religion by moving churches or considering new views generally in response to political conditions.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, I like how you're referencing this whole spectrum of possible religious responses and historical religious responses that have been cataloged, Matthew, because I often think that one of the big problems for someone who tries to base their progressive politics on religious texts is that the other side frequently does the same using the same texts. And I think that they often, or at least sometimes have a stronger argument, given that these are ancient texts that, that predate democratic values as as many other things as they may have to recommend.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, now you do mean like modern liberal democratic values, like not the direct democracy of communal sects who might break away and want a different life at various points in history, right?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, modern democratic values, one person, one vote, you know, human rights, just the. That whole sort of trend towards open societies and structures of power that are more democratic. I think there's also this, this implied supernatural authority. And this goes back to our conversation from earlier about the. The yoga folks. So it's. It's like the implication is that if you're a real Christian or a real Muslim or a real yogi, then you have the same political interpretation that I do of those texts. And I, I think I can see the value of giving believers progressive options as, as you just mentioned, Matthew. But I also think. Think that for a lot of people who've made this link between politics and religious faith, it cements an exponentially more unchangeable stance.

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, I don't think anybody's giving anyone options, because the way I see it, radical flanks emerge in response to their own conditions, often rebelling against their own clergy, and then they become believers in ways that are just new. But what do you mean by unchangeable stance?

[Julian Walker]

Well, when I say options, you had said. Let me scroll back a little bit here. You talked about upgrading the religion or moving churches by considering new views. Right. So that's what I mean by options that, like, oh, there actually are political. There are alternative ways of thinking about the relationship between politics and faith. By unchangeable stance, I just mean, you know, if you have a very strong political commitment, that's a hard thing to change. If you have a very deeply held religious faith, that's a hard thing to change. When you combine those two, put them together, I think. I think it just. You get into a situation where it's very, very hard to talk someone out of what they believe.

[Matthew Remsky]

I'd love to know if there's research on that, whether that combination of rigidities really does double things or whether when one cracks, the other one has to crack too. You know what I mean?

[Derek Barris]

Yes.

[Matthew Remsky]

I don't know.

[Julian Walker]

Yes, it would be good to find research on it. I think the faith of evangelicals in maga, regardless of anything that Donald Trump does, is a pretty strong case study.

[Matthew Remsky]

I also think we should pay attention to how fascism may for some faithful people and liberal Christian traditions to get very honest about their politics and maybe investigate the toothlessness of what they've been doing. So as I reference, that's what happened with Bonhoeffer, who felt empty and bored after filling himself up on two theology degrees. And then he wondered whether his Lutheranism had anything to offer against the rise of fascism. So he goes to Union Theological Seminary in New York. He spends most of his time in Harlem. He gets radicalized at Abyssinian Baptist Church, and then he takes that fire back to Germany to run a Christian underground resistance. And then he's executed for his involvement in an assassination plot against Hitler. Which brings me to my last point, which is I haven't heard of any priests plotting assassinations. I haven't seen any Restrepo types walking around in collars carrying ars. So far, the religious resistance to fascism is adhering to the Berrigan era and ethos of nonviolent direct action while avoiding the use of force or violence. And so their ride or die belief is that faith itself is a veil of protection, protection against the ice bullet. But religious radicals I'm learning more about haven't always acted that way. And I'm just into an incredible book now by historian James Cobb called this Nonviolent Stuff Will get yout Killed, in which he argues that the non violent direct action of civil rights leaders, including the clergy, throughout that time and for which that clergy is best known today, was made possible because groups like the Deacons for Defense and justice, which were led by super disciplined World War II vets, provided armed protection for clergy. They fortified homes. They provided armed escorts. They coordinated with nonviolent leaders to just push back white supremacist terrorism by signaling that they were willing to defend themselves. Now, they never killed anyone, but they did exchange fire. Usually they would keep their aim low or in the air, and then the Klan gangs would usually scatter. And that was just a strategy that was deployed for years.

[Julian Walker]

It's an amazing story. I mean, these people sound incredibly brave and they sound like they were. They were, you know, disciplined and noble and really, really doing it the right way. I'm just not convinced that adding guns to today's resistance would do anything but hasten martial law and create more dead protesters. And then, you know, there's a significant body of research that suggests that it keeps away huge numbers who might otherwise participate peacefully. And then I would be Concerned about. About, you know, the protest movement willingly stepping into the manipulative frame that MAGA has been crafting for a long time. That the protesters are just violent domestic terrorists.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, so the Deacons are amazing. They mainly showed up, as I said, as armed protection for the nonviolent actors. And then, you know, Klan and police violence went down. And, you know, Cobb refers to tons of interview data and personal experience as a SNCC organizer. That shows, contrary to what you're saying, I think intuitively, Julian, that the presence of armed support actually made nonviolent participation rise. And so this is built on his history of black folks consistently taking up arms for community defense, you know, going all the way back to the Civil War.

[Julian Walker]

It sounds like a fascinating book. I can see in these situations how that made a lot of sense. I'm not just going on intuition here, though. I think you and I have a difference, a well established established difference of opinion here that would take hours to unpack with lots of citations. For now, I'll just say I'll direct anyone interested to links in the show notes about the research of Omar Waso and then also Charles Tilly. And they've examined what types of protest tactics are more likely to sway public opinion. You know, speaking more contemporaneously as well as William Gamson's book, the Strategy of Social Protest.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, it's more than intuition. We are totally coming from different backgrounds and paradigms. I haven't read the those books. We have unpacked it a bit. So I'll link to my interviews with Ben Case on various roles and intensities of protest and how they inspire or scare off participants. And then you have a bonus where you criticize Case's scholarship. But I'm bringing all of this up because it's not well known in the history of resistance movements. I think it's pretty important in an era in which there's street executions, because this kind of exact discussion between us on our center left to left spectrum with regard to how you fight and why it was met head on by the communities that Cobb is studying, specifically in relation to how religious people committed to nonviolence, how they could be safely given their freedom to do their thing. So with a lot of history and study, they were able to parse out the various roles they needed to act and then to enact them with discipline. I also learned From Cobb that MLK Jr. S parsonage in Montgomery was like chock full of weapons and arsenal people described, and the local Klan and the police knew it. And so, as the religious response to fascism matures today, you know, I'm just wondering whether that memory of full spectrum resistance, with all of its discipline and rigor, will somehow resurface in the streets.

[Derek Barris]

Last week, NBC News broke the story that Trump planned to send ICE to Oregon to ramp up operations. The Reporter spoke with 15 people and an ex White House official said that my state, my now adopted state was next in line, which inevitably means Portland. The unnamed official told NBC, the reality.

[Julian Walker]

Is you can't stop what you're doing. This is the whole point of ICE existing in these cities. And Minnesota is not going to be the last state that ICE goes to. Oregon was next. We're not done. We need to keep going.

[Derek Barris]

Now that the news is out, it's unsure if the administration will turn their focus back to us. But protests have certainly ramped up since the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretty here at the ICE facilities. As I mentioned earlier, the reality is they've never stopped. People have been out there every single night since Trump took office. In fact, the media only swings by when things get really heated, which is what has been happening lately. And this past weekend, they really heated up because ICE agents were firing tear gas, pepper balls, rubber bullets, bullets and flashbang grenades at protesters on both Saturday and Sunday evening. Marchers reported being affected by gas blocks away before they even made it to the facility. With local social media blowing up with videos of those grenades from in front of the ICE building, there have been zero reports of any protesters being armed, which, to your point, Julian, if they were, it'd be a lot uglier here at this point. And the city government has now sued the federal government as of Monday because they're trying to force them to stop using chemical agents on the protesters. A person of color immigrant run collective called PDX ICE Watch has taken things into their own hands by tracking ICE the way that ICE tracks anyone who is non white. I first became aware of them through a share on my feed that ICE was in my neighborhood. So I live in a largely Asian and Mexican neighborhood. There's a number of Asian malls and shopping centers on Southeast 87 Second Avenue and apparently they were trolling around at the one mall that we shop at regularly, though I have not heard word of any incidents. Members of PDX ICE Watch surveil ICE agents when they're leaving the ICE facilities. Then they follow them and film them. I think it's a brilliant and completely ballsy move because sometimes there are confrontations. And members of PDX ICE Watch are also not white. Which puts them in even more dangerously.

[Matthew Remsky]

Some.

[Derek Barris]

Some of them. Most of the videos just feature music like Led Zeppelin, Pearl Jam, Black Star, and Los Lobos, which makes me think they're Gen X. But sometimes they do record agents. In this case, in the first video, they are recording a Portland police officer.

[Police Officer]

Police station.

[Julian Walker]

Are you okay?

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

Yes, I am okay.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Thank you.

[Police Officer]

Okay.

[Matthew Remsky]

What.

[Police Officer]

What can I help you with?

[Matthew Remsky]

Nothing.

[Police Officer]

You just hear filming people?

[Julian Walker]

Yep.

[Derek Barris]

Okay. You mind?

[Police Officer]

Give me your name so I can see you can talk about what they concern you with.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

I do mind.

[Julian Walker]

Okay.

[Police Officer]

Are you planning on staying here at the Boys and Girls Club? It's five minute parking.

[Matthew Remsky]

Got it.

[Police Officer]

You see it?

[Matthew Remsky]

Got it.

[Police Officer]

Five minute driver. Remain at the wheel.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

All right. Got it.

[Police Officer]

Okay.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

Got it.

[Matthew Remsky]

All right.

[Police Officer]

So you have to remain at your wheel.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

Got it.

[Derek Barris]

All right. So not so bad. You can hear the officer trying to hustle him along long. Nothing got too heated. But the officer was chatting with a couple of unidentified agents who the filmer then confronts as he walks to his car after the chat that you just heard.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

So you're a polite domestic terrorist, huh?

[Julian Walker]

Yeah.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

You're one of those polite. Huh? You're one of those polite fascist piece of. Huh.

[Julian Walker]

Huh?

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

You're one of those polite ones, huh?

[Police Officer]

I just want to let you know they're not. They're not. They're not ICE.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

They're not ICE.

[Derek Barris]

What are they?

[Police Officer]

They'll know they're not ICE.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

What's that?

[Police Officer]

Okay, they're not ICE.

[Julian Walker]

How do you know that?

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

What's that? U.S. customs and Border Patrol.

[Police Officer]

I'm just telling you they're not ICE.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

U.S. customs and Border Patrol.

[Police Officer]

So if you want to keep filming them, you can. That is a violation.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

This is a violation, too. Are you gonna apply the law equally right here?

[Matthew Remsky]

Yep.

[Derek Barris]

That's a not.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

That's a no parking area right there, and they're parked right there.

[Police Officer]

They're feeling that you're threatening. So, you know, if it can help you that they are. They're not immigration.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

Thank you.

[Derek Barris]

Wow. Yeah. So you're calling me out for parking in a five minute spot, but they're in a no parking zone and you ain't giving them.

[Julian Walker]

And it's not. It's not because they're agents. They're just regular people like me. Right.

[Derek Barris]

They're not ice. What are they?

[Julian Walker]

I don't know exactly.

[Derek Barris]

So it's. You know. And I have to say, I mean, on one level, I feel for local police having to navigate the terrain because they're in over their heads in so many ways. But when you're. When you're trying to tamp down, you know, the tension like this, the contradictions are going to come out. There's no way that they can't. And you can hear it now. The PDX Watch guys, they are providing severe discomfort, which I personally think is one of the best applications of their constitutional rights. They're not only at the facilities where ICE agents expect to meet resistance, or even when the agents are doing sweeps and raids and citizens jump in filming them, they're actually going after them on their off time.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, that's. That's hard, man. Yeah, that's dangerous. Yeah. Yeah.

[Derek Barris]

I've seen videos where communities will identify hotels where ICE agents are staying. And they play instruments all night long so the agents can't sleep. That's another great use of that. But PDX Ice Watch also finds hotels. They recently identified the AC Hotel in Lake Caswego, which is about 15 minutes east of Portland. Then they post photos of the cars and license plates driven by agents so that other people can identify them. I want to play one more video of one of the members after getting pulled over in Vancouver, Washington, which is just across the bridge from Portland. It's literally 12 minutes from where I live here. An officer tries to explain why they should leave these guys alone. And I really value his response to that idea.

[Vancouver Police Officer]

You think point where if someone's on their off time, okay. And we continue to follow them after we've had this discussion about, okay, this is not someone that's out actively doing public work. Like, so. So different example.

[Julian Walker]

Okay.

[Vancouver Police Officer]

If you disagreed with a state employee, say, an elected official, and at some point they're out trying to go home, trying to go grocery shopping, trying to whatever. Right. Just because they're an elected official, do you think that's the appropriate time and a place to try and follow him?

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

Again, you're trying to make an equation between me disagreeing with somebody. It's not that I disagree with him. It's that I know he's part of an agency that is doing massive harm here in this state, in Oregon and across the country, massive harm to our communities. It's not a matter of disagree or agree. So this is not like a public official. I have a different opinion about. I don't give a crap what his opinion is. He works. The work that he does is destroying our communities.

[Julian Walker]

That.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

Can I give you an example that I think is also not equivalent? It's not the same, but it's also, you know, to prove my point.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yes.

[PDX ICE Watch Member]

Do you think that Hitler during World War II should have been able to go around and just drive around this car, not be noticed and, you know, go to the grocery store without people calling out for being a Nazi? Do you think he should have had that anonymity when, on his off time, when he wasn't doing his official duties? That I'm going to guess that your hesitancy is.

[Julian Walker]

No, yeah, it's. It's a tough one. I mean, the going to the Hitler comparison, I think, you know, it makes a point, but I think you probably could have. Could have stopped short of that and made the point even more strongly in a way that the guy could have actually kept going along with. It's interesting too, this. While I support the outrage and the desire to hold these massed anonymous US people accountable by, by sort of following them and then in a way exposing them and meeting them as real human beings and saying, look at what you're doing, you do get into interesting or tricky issues around harassment and you know, what it means to, to engage with someone in their, in their capacity as a, as a private citizen. So, yeah, it's. It's very murky territory.

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, I think it's the territory of, of liberal manners. Like they're not talking about the law there, right? The cop hasn't pulled. The cop hasn't said to the PDX ICE guy, you're violating a law by following these agents who are off duty. They're not talking about the law. They're going back and forth with their moral reasoning with regard to is this an appropriate action or not an appropriate action. And I think what the guy is saying is the time for that is passed. We're not in the time of manners and private citizenship and anything like that. This guy is an invisible invading force. We're living in a fascist occupation, and the time for that discussion is over.

[Julian Walker]

In a way, though, the thing that gives me pause is it's the kind of argument that Magas would make about the guy who broke into Nancy Pelosi's house.

[Matthew Remsky]

You know, Julian, I think you bring this up very regularly, that we don't want to make the arguments that MAGA makes. We don't want to make the same rhetorical mistakes. I personally don't give a flying fuck any anymore because it's not like there's any power of persuasion that is sort of institutionally recognized or there's no. They're already doing all of the things that we're afraid of them doing. The notion that we could be hypocritical or something like that does not bother me at all.

[Julian Walker]

Yeah, no, this is not an argument of like, you know, style and grammar. It's more an argument that says what if it backfires in terms of, instead of providing more dislike of these kinds of agents, it turns them into more sympathetic characters in the face of people who are harassing them or you know, you know, engaging with them in ways that we wouldn't appreciate for people from our side. Yeah, I just, it's, I just think it's tricky territory. I'm not, I'm not, not saying it shouldn't be done, but to whom, like.

[Matthew Remsky]

Who, who are you concerned about that this is going to play badly for whom? Because you're talking about the mass population.

[Julian Walker]

Who we want on our side. The people who are not political junkies. The people who just can see something and go, well, that doesn't, that, I don't know if I go along with that.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah, I don't think that the PDX ICE people can care about the fence sitter when they're defending their city.

[Derek Barris]

I also, I appreciate, appreciate Julian, your, you know, your nuance here for civil liberties in general. If these PDX guy ICE guys were pulling them out of their cars or harming them or throwing things or shooting pepper balls, I would be more sympathetic to that. I think in this particular situation, acting as a mirror where all they are doing is trailing them in the car, that is it. They do not engage with them. They don't do anything. They just follow them. Giving those guys a sense of what it's like. Like to be watched.

[Julian Walker]

Yep.

[Derek Barris]

So maybe they can understand what they're doing. I, in this one, I, I really appreciate what they're doing and, and the filming and, and identifying these guys as well because I do have a serious problem with a gestapo that's wearing masks and you can't even identify them.

[Julian Walker]

Agreed, Agreed. Emotionally, I'm all in. Like I, I, I get it, I get it.

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, there's, there's also the, the issue of when we get into, is it okay, is it appropriate behavior to harass this person in their off duty hours because they're a private citizen. We really are in the I was only following orders territory of sort of moral character. We're only in, well, you know, he's not responsible for what he's doing outside of following whatever Greg Bevino sent him in the field to do that day. He's just trying to get a snack and I just, yeah, that doesn't wash with me. The time for that is over.

[Julian Walker]

So what if there's an activist from outside who decides to track down Jonathan Ross and shoot him?

[Matthew Remsky]

Well, it might happen. And I think that adventurism and dilettantism and sort of wild west cowboy stuff doesn't really help anybody's movements. So what I was saying about the hit on Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione way back in the day is that it does not serve a strategic purpose. But, but what I'm very careful about, what I'm very careful about is that I'm not making a moral argument there because, because the fascists do not understand morality. That's not, that's not the territory we're in.

[Julian Walker]

We 100% are on the same page then. Because I'm not really making a moral argument either. I'm, I'm imagining, I'm imagining strategically how it comes across to, to people who, we, we want to be part of a, of a, a mass movement against this stuff. That's all.

[Matthew Remsky]

Yeah. And so anybody who puts a hit out on, on Jonathan, Jonathan Ross is going to be in a situation in which if they are alone, if it's not planned, if there's no sort of strategic follow through on what happens after that, then yeah, pretty disastrous. And anarchists and most Marxists forever have said that for the last hundred years. But Derek, I love these guys and I really hope they keep safe. I think it's extremely dangerous. I'm really worried that they'll get shot because what we've seen so far is that it doesn't take anything. You know, they're just following them. They're giving them a sense of what it's like to be filmed or what it's like to be followed. And you know, it's like Ross just shot Renee Good in the face for just that. For just that. And so it's like, I mean, and one thing that I am thinking about too is that there are many protesters who are doing this really great agitprop stuff that ends up winding. They're doing it for social media and a lot of them are also getting indicted. So the vice is tightening on them. I don't know if you saw that troupe of New York comedians. One of them is Dave Boswell, one of them is Walter Masterson. And they disrupted a town hall recently in New York. Given one of the Democratic congressmen who voted to increase ICE funding, Boswell stood up and he said, I've got a gift for you, Congressman. It's an adult diaper. Because I think that you really need this when you Shit yourself in front of the fascists. Just fantastic stuff. And they are being indicted now the feds are throwing the book at them under that freedom of religion law because it was in a synagogue, even though it wasn't a religious meeting. So with all these things, there's always a link where you can send money to a legal fund or a bail fund, if you have money. But what I wonder is, again, from a strategic and kind of like coalition point of view, is whether the social media focus of these actions is able to build enough money, networked support, or if it becomes spectacular. And I'm thinking about the book if We Burn by Vincent Bevins, where he argues pretty convincingly, in my opinion, that the relative failures of mass protest and what he calls the lost decade of 2010 to 2020 were in part caused by the ephemerality of social media and how as quickly as it can grab attention, it can also disperse attention into kind of like entertainment almost. And so on one hand people got their message out, but on the side, other, other hand, a tidal wave of messages doesn't necessarily lead to coordinated action. So that's some of the stuff I'm thinking about.

[Derek Barris]

Well, it'll be interesting to see how it unfolds because Portland is a protest city and it will be different. And the cops are used to protesters here. I'm not going to give them a pass. I've only lived here four years, but I've been to. I've been to and driven by and engaged in a few protests. And the cops are there acting, actually just directing things along. So what will happen if Trump actually does increase the pressure here? There is going to be tension because right now the entire city council is trying everything possible to get our mayor to get ICE out of the city, period, because they are renting the facilities. And so there's going to be this tension here. It will get heated if it continues, because this city protests every single weekend on something. My dog park that I go to every afternoon. There is a group of seniors out there with signs all the time. It is just baked into the city. So people don't take shit here.

[Matthew Remsky]

But the flashpoint you're talking about, Derek, is what is the police chief gonna do? Yes, what's the police chief gonna do when ICE is doing something illegal in the streets? And that is the sort of structural question and sort of barometer I think everybody has to look at is like, if the police step in to beat back the protest protesters for their own safety, then you kind of know, you kind of know what kind of world you're living in, right?

[Derek Barris]

As I said earlier, the city government took the feds to court this week to stop them from getting chemical agents, from using chemical agents against protesters. So, you know, hopefully they'll continue along those lines. They have pushed back against ICE quite a bit. The governor as well, Right. So I'll link to PDX ICE Watch feed in the show notes. They have a robust link tree if you feel compelled to donate to them to help pay for things like gas or they link thank many local organizations they work with and support who are on the ground here trying to put a stop to this nightmare. So you can find all that in the show notes.

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