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Big Beautiful Social War: Six Months Into Trump 2.0
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On this episode of The Beautiful Idea, we speak with several authors and organizers, marking six months into the second Trump administration coming to power. During our multiple discussions, we look at the recent deployment of the military into Los Angeles, CA, the ramping up of ICE raids and arrests across the US, and the passing of the Republican so-called "Big Beautiful Bill," which ear-marks billions for war and the deportation machine, while cutting taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations, and slashing social services, health-care, and food assistance for the poor. Already, which has lead to rural hospitals being threatened with closure as food banks struggle to keep up with demand.
In this episode you will hear from:
- Silky Shaw, the executive director of the Detention Watch Network, and author of Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition, from Haymarket Books. Shaw talks about the rapid acceleration of deportations under Trump and the construction of new detention facilities, such as the newly built concentration camp, Alligator Alcatraz.
- Jessica Pishko, author of The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, breaks down the interplay between police and ICE, as well as the brutal violence deployed by law enforcement during recent demonstrations in Los Angeles.
- Kristian Williams, author of Our Enemies and Blue: Police and Power in America, takes on the role of counter-insurgency in the Trump administration, the weaponization of fascist spectacle, and the growth of conspiracy theories within protest movements.
- Vicky Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting and a member of Collective of Anarchist Writers (CAW), breaks down the recently passed Republican budget bill, and talks about its potential impact in our communities and ways in which we can push back.
As anger continues to build in the streets, we hope this discussion shines a light on the contours and context of the building social war being waged against poor and working people across the US.
MUSIC:
Intro music by Breakaway and Seaside Tryst
Filastine & Nova - Requiem 432
Neurosis - The Doorway
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Beautiful Idea
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello. You're listening to The Beautiful Idea, a podcast from a collective of several anarchist and autonomous media producers scattered around the world. We're bringing you interviews and stories from the front lines of autonomous social movements and struggles, as well as original commentary and analysis.
00:00:25
Speaker
Follow us on Mastodon and at thebeautifulidea.show. Thanks for listening.
Analyzing the Second Trump Administration
00:00:43
Speaker
Welcome back to The Beautiful Idea. On this episode, we speak with several authors and organizers marking six months into the second Trump administration coming into power. During our multiple discussions, we look at the recent deployment of the military in into Los Angeles, California, the ramping up of ICE raids and arrests across the U.S., and the passing of the Republican so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which here marks billions for war and the deportation machine, while cutting taxes on the ultra-wealthy incorporations and while slashing social services, healthcare, and food assistance for the poor.
00:01:16
Speaker
Already this has led to some rural hospitals being threatened with closure as food banks struggle to keep up with demand. In this episode, you will hear from Silky Shaw, the executive director of the Detention Watch Network and author of Unbilled Walls, Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition from Haymarket Books. Shaw talks about the rapid acceleration of deportations under Trump and the construction of new detention facilities,
00:01:41
Speaker
such as the newly built concentration camp Alligator Alcatraz. Next we hear from Jessica Pischko, author of The Highest Law on the Land, How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.
00:01:52
Speaker
Pischko breaks down the interplay between police and ICE, as well as the brutal violence deployed by but law enforcement during recent demonstrations in Los Angeles. Next we hear from Christian Williams, author of Our Enemies in Blue, Police and Power in America, as Christian takes on the role of counterinsurgency in the Trump administration,
00:02:10
Speaker
the weaponization of fascist spectacle, and the growth of conspiracy theories within protest movements. Lastly, we speak with Vicki Osterweil, author of In Defense of Looting and a member of the Collective of Anarchist Writers, or CAW.
00:02:22
Speaker
Vicki breaks down the recently passed Republican budget bill and talks about its potential impact in our communities and ways that we can mobilize to push back. As anger continues to build on the streets, we hope these discussions shine a light on the contours and context of the building social war being waged against poor and working people across the U.S. Thanks for listening. Let's dive right into it.
00:02:46
Speaker
Hi, yeah. i'm My name is Silky Shaw. I'm the executive director of Detention Watch Network. I also wrote a book called Unbilled Walls that came out last year from Haymarket Books.
00:02:59
Speaker
And you know a lot of the work we do at Detention Watch Network is trying to limit the expansion of immigration detention in the United States.
ICE and Immigration Policies
00:03:08
Speaker
you know We don't believe anybody should be detained for their immigration status. And We do that through grassroots organizing and advocacy and a lot of work around narrative. And so that's kind of the approach we're taking.
00:03:21
Speaker
Thanks for having me. Hi, I'm Jessica Pishko. I'm a the author of a book called The Highest Law in the Land, How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy. um I'm also a lawyer.
00:03:33
Speaker
so in the past, I've done some um criminal system style reform work. Right now, I'm mostly a journalist, do a lot of reporting on local law enforcement and some reporting on the intersection with the far right.
00:03:48
Speaker
Great. And we want to talk about all that. And the reason we wanted to talk to both of you in a group setting is because so much of the current moment seems to be defined by the interplay between ah ICE, DHS, and then also other segments of law enforcement through things like 287G agreements to everything that's happening. And also there's a lot of misinformation out. you know People are A lot of people are convinced that a lot of ICE agents are undercover Proud Boys. So we kind of want to unpack all that.
00:04:16
Speaker
But I just want to start by asking, because I've listened to and seen stuff that both of y'all put out. And Silky, I remember you did a great interview with ah No Borders Media.
00:04:27
Speaker
about before Trump came into office. I just want to ask both of you, like what squares up with kind of your original thoughts about the administration to where we are now? Just big picture stuff. Like what are you seeing?
00:04:40
Speaker
What's different than you thought it might look like? And just any thoughts you have in general. I guess I could start. I mean, i think that the, though I mean, and in some ways there was a lot of scenario planning that happened last year to sort of like imagine, okay, what is this going to look like? And I think some of the things are definitely happening that we imagine, which in includes the expansion of detention and the sort of more, I guess, quote unquote, traditional forms of detention for lack of a better framing, which includes expansion of the private prison industry,
00:05:16
Speaker
ah The use of more and more county jails, the use of what they've deemed, quote unquote, soft sided facilities and just expansion at sort of every level and doing everything they can to kind of detain more people. We are now officially at 56,000 people in detention, which is the highest it's ever been. the last time we were close to this was in 2019 with 55,000 people in detention.
00:05:43
Speaker
And then trying to kind of go after sanctuary cities and and expanding on raids. Like all of that stuff is stuff we expected. I think the things that are... a sort of jumping of scale or you know, departure are the the sort of, you know, the connection between detention and ah like suppression of dissent and specifically the targeting of students who had protested in solidarity with Palestine or expressed solidarity with Palestine in some form.
00:06:16
Speaker
being detained. And so seeing this kind of move towards using detention as a weapon their authoritarianism and their fascism. And so seeing how that played out, particularly with Mahmoud Khalil, who, you know, amazingly was released recently, which which is really good news. But I think that how that started to play out was one of the departures and concerns and sort of, the web you know, having this system build up over 40 plus years now being used in this way.
00:06:51
Speaker
and similarly, I think, you know, the the other really alarming thing is the the sort of offshoring of detention that we've seen, particularly in El Salvador and the use of CICOT, the federal prison there. But I think the, you know, from, from my perspective, like so much of the narrative has been about how people are being denied due process over and over again. But the reality is, is that like immigrants have been denied due process for, for many, many years now in the U S and, and so that,
00:07:24
Speaker
like what we're seeing now is sort of an extension of that. It's building on that. And similarly, immigrants have been transferred to detention centers far away, making it harder for them to fight their cases, making it more, them more isolated, making it more likely that they're going to kind of give up and say, I'm fine being deported. And, and similarly, I think this sort of offshoring of detention, which is new in the context of the U S in terms of people who currently live here being shipped away, but is something we've seen in countries in other parts of the world, including Australia and Israel and Denmark and other places. And so I think the, you know, there's there's both, there are things that are changing and shifting in ways that we're trying to understand. And is it a shift that's going to be permanent is the real question.
00:08:11
Speaker
But sort of understanding that in a global context, I think is important in terms of how we approach fighting back. Yeah. I mean, I think that Like Silky, I was not thinking as much about this offshoring of people that were going to get sent away. So, you know, Seacott, I admit, was not necessarily on my radar at the time I was thinking about what might happen, you know, once Donald Trump became president.
00:08:40
Speaker
I think, you know, i was pretty aware that Tom Homan, who was a person i have tracked and Stephen Miller for some time that, they had been spending the last four years sort of building up a network that included a lot of local law enforcement.
00:08:56
Speaker
And so I, you know, what I did expect to see was like a great deal of mobilization of local law enforcement, including, as we've seen, not just sheriffs, but also local police, state police.
00:09:09
Speaker
And i think, at least in Florida, we've seen a number of even university police getting involved. co-opted into doing forms of immigration, arrest, and detention. So that I expected. i did have, you know, before, was going to say, since October 7th, law enforcement has been extremely concerned about, and you know, people who are involved in the Palestinian solidarity movement.
00:09:36
Speaker
I do think that this, you know, whatever we want to call it with Iran, war I guess war with Iran has definitely amped that up, right? Because we're starting to see the national security narrative coming back that like we need to be concerned about immigration for national security reasons.
00:09:54
Speaker
I will confess that the thing that happened faster than I thought was the implementation of 287G task force agreements, which we can get more into, but... You know, these task force agreements, which basically allow local law enforcement to act like ICE agents.
00:10:11
Speaker
Most importantly, it means that they can arrest people that they think might be deportable using only detainers and sometimes without any kind of warrant. I did not think that this would happen as quickly.
00:10:25
Speaker
it did not happen under Trump one. And ah do think like that happened very quickly in places like Florida, It's really like the primary mode of policing at the moment. And so i do, you know, that was something that I thought might happen, but really, have really got cranked up very fast.
00:10:45
Speaker
The next question I wanted to ask is just in terms of like logistics, because I think a big question before all this kicked off was just like, what would they be able to do logistically? And now we've seen that.
00:10:56
Speaker
And Silky, you were talking about just the the amount of people in detention now. And we'll talk a little more about sort of like the big projects they have planned, like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz in Florida.
00:11:08
Speaker
I guess my question is like, When you see the ramping up, like when Stephen Miller is saying like we want 3000 people per day, we want to go after people at Home Depot's. Like, do you think can they basically continue this level of action? And also, how does that play into like the money question?
00:11:27
Speaker
you know there's been some reporting about like they're they're racking up all this. all these debts? Is that tied into whether or not the budget bill gets passed? Like in terms of like the logistical capacity, what are you all seeing?
00:11:41
Speaker
i mean, I'm curious what Jess has to say about this, but I mean, I'll just say like, you know, they're coming like, so but everything Jess was saying, like they, the way that ice operates. And I think that one of the challenges of this kind of like squarely being focused on ice versus sort of like the broader,
00:11:59
Speaker
infrastructure of law enforcement is that like, they are able to do this because they work really closely with law enforcement across the country and local law enforcement, including sheriffs and local police departments and state police and, you know, in places like Texas state troopers and just beyond there's, there's just a lot of, you know, collaboration across the board. And I think,
00:12:22
Speaker
Because there are particular states that have really strong sanctuary law, it's been harder for them to funnel people into the system as quickly because they're not necessarily working as closely with law enforcement like in California and Oregon California.
00:12:39
Speaker
Illinois or elsewhere. And so then this sort of spectacle of moving towards these really public like raids that kind of instill fear in community is their strategy. So I think in terms of the strategy of trying to both put people in fear and and round up people sort of indiscriminately it's working like they're i mean in that sense like they are succeeding and kind of like get you know putting people into the shadows and that kind of thing but in terms of their actually ability to bring in those numbers into the detention and detention system and deportation pipeline it's still quite limited because you know when this has worked really successfully it's been when there's been a lot of
00:13:23
Speaker
people being funneled through the criminal legal system and all of these programs that sort of like ramp up racial profiling and et cetera. And I think it remains to be seen. And I do think that that's like they're responding to so many years of wins on sanctuary policy. And, and the thing to remind everybody is that like a lot of those wins, a lot of that push on sanctuary policy was grew and was like sort of flourished under the Obama era. And like when, you know, like it was kind of possible to do that stuff because people were responding to both mass deportations under Obama and really understanding the criminal legal system specifically.
00:14:02
Speaker
legal system better because of the Black Lives Matter movement. And so now this is just a response to that, like we've gotten wins. And now they're sort of responding to that in this way. But I do think what Jess was saying about this you know, the 287G like task force model being implemented. I think before it wasn't necessarily true that most people came into the system because of 287G, like it was implemented and it was used and a lot of people were coming in. But at the same time, it was really like having ICE agents at
00:14:33
Speaker
county jails and having that collaboration there that actually funneled a lot of people into the system and and having the like data strategies like secure communities. And so now when there's just so much more incentive from this administration to kind of let these agents and let these, you know, law enforcement officers, police sort of like, like focus on this. I think there is a real question of how far it could go on
Trump's Deportation Tactics
00:15:04
Speaker
the money piece. a lot The quick thing I would just say is that, you know, this is what we saw during the Trump Trump's first
00:15:11
Speaker
you know, four years in office was that ICE would do this thing where they would like overspend their money and then they make the case to Congress that they needed more money because, oh now our detention system is at 45,000. And oh, we have to like, they both like bailed them out. And then they would like sort of ratchet and say, hey, actually, look, we're using detention even more. We need even more money. And so that's the way they brought up the numbers on detention every year for a few years, I think that this budget bill is really kind of like a blank check in so many ways. I mean, 45 billion dollars for detention over the next four years, like it's so much more money. It's like 13 times the amount of money that ICE gets for detention annually. And I think the
00:15:55
Speaker
You know, the potential for that is really scary to think about. but i But I do think logistically, there are real questions on like how quickly they could ramp this stuff up. The harm that's going to happen, staffing questions, I think, are there as well. So I think all of that stuff will will be in the mix.
00:16:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think, you know, the limit in general to any kind of policing and jailing is going to be capacity. And as Silky pointed out, right, they are that, you know, kind of record numbers. And it's plain that, you know, capacity, like where to hold people is an issue, which is one reason why i think they started to do this, these rapid track deportations, right? So they're dismissing, and know you've, you know, you know about this bill, right? They're dismissing ongoing court cases and then re-arresting them to sort of fast track their deportations because they have, I mean, the
00:16:48
Speaker
Root of the problem, honestly, is if you're policing and jailing, you run out of jail space at some point everywhere. No matter, even if you spend money or put up soft-sided, you know, whatever, you put up tents or whatever, you're just going to run out of space.
00:17:02
Speaker
And so I do think, like, what one of the things we see is, like, them going through a variety of legal strategies that appear designed to, like, one, deport people as fast as they can without, with kind of like people not wanting people to notice. Like one thing seems to be this, like they don't want people to know or see how many people there are or where they're going. Like there's sort of this issue of like disapp disappearing people. Like we sort of don't know where they are.
00:17:30
Speaker
And they're using like kind of tricky legal techniques, like dismissing cases to rearrest people. in san Diego, they arrested people, when they arrested I forgot the name of the restaurant, but they arrested a group of people at restaurant. what they One of the tricks they've been doing is using search warrants for criminal cases.
00:17:48
Speaker
So they'll come and say, we have a search warrant for a criminal case that might be money laundering or drugs or like producing false IDs or something. And they use that search warrant as a pretext to enter a space and then arrest anyone they think is an immigrant.
00:18:04
Speaker
Right. So they're like going in They're like kind of because they're pretextually entering on a criminal investigation and then they're going to arrest like 100 people. And so but we see these sort of like legal tricks. The other legal trick, of course, is like what I would call like they're basically creating criminals. So like canceling people's status.
00:18:23
Speaker
I mean, you know, prior to when Trump took office, most deportations in the interior, so not talking about at the border, they happened when people were arrested and charged or tried with crimes, mostly what people would call describe as like, quote unquote, violent crimes, right? So the thing is, folks who were accused or convicted of things like, you know, homicides or serious assaults,
00:18:50
Speaker
et cetera, those people are like routinely, have routinely been turned over to ICE and deported. Like that's the thing i think people need to see is like that has always happened. Now it usually happens in the back end at jails and prisons. So people don't see it, right? Like the people are just turned over to ICE and nobody really pays that much attention.
00:19:07
Speaker
And we even know that most people deported that way are usually folks who've been convicted of like multiple instances of driving while intoxicated.
00:19:18
Speaker
which I bring up to say that like, there just are not people walking around have been charged with like, quote unquote, serious, like, we don't have them.
00:19:28
Speaker
And so because they don't, they're saying these are the people they're arresting, but it's just not true. And so they're producing new criminals, right? And so you see the rhetoric changing, like now they're like, oh, well, just being here is in some way breaking the law. Or if you get a job, you're breaking the law.
00:19:45
Speaker
they do You know, they'll sort of talk about like, well, everybody's just breaking the law all the time. So like, it doesn't really matter. Whereas in previous, know, regimes, right? Like the focus was always on folks that were accused of, ah you know, some sort of crime that was deemed to be violent.
00:20:02
Speaker
And that's why I think like it's sort of connected, right? Because that was allowed to go on kind of unremarked upon for a very long time. it was, like I said, it was not happening in the light of day.
00:20:12
Speaker
And now we have these really alarming raids that are happening in the light of day that do look, I mean, they are plainly being used to punish places with like sanctuary policies, which Silky points out was a big win, right? It was in response to the sort of, can you know, connectedness of local law enforcement and ICE and people implemented these policies to try to prevent that. And of course, they were never perfect.
00:20:41
Speaker
And so I think like what we see is like the strain of sanctuary policies, you know not just the desire to destroy sanctuary policies completely, which I think is like the ultimate goal that Stephen Miller has, but also to strain them. right So we have like the LAPD blocking roads so ICE can drive or something like that, right which you know, feels like, well, they're assisting, you know, this is all assisting ICE. But I think it also just goes to show that, like, the systems are kind of inextricably intertwined, you know, both in terms of, like, where people are detained and held, and then also how people, like, get arrested. bys It's sort of, like, one big system.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, I want to ask you, Jessica, about Los Angeles here in a second. But Silky, I have one more question I want to put to you, sort of like specifically looking at immigration. When you see Trump sort of like doing this one step forward, one step back thing around getting pressure from like agricultural production heads and stuff saying that they're not going to go after people working in the fields or at hotels. like What do you make of that?
00:21:50
Speaker
Either what Trump is saying or in terms of policy, like what are you seeing? like Are they sort of acquiescing to those demands or are they just trying to make people that support them feel better or what are they actually doing?
00:22:04
Speaker
I mean, that's a good question. i i mean, I... I think that they are, I mean, this is kind of like the daily news with Trump, right? It's kind of like, whatever's whatever is happening, what's the way to stay in the news? What's the way to kind of like advance this agenda, but then also understand the like, they are having to respond to the fact that actually like the lie they're telling everyone, which is what Jessica was just talking about, which is like,
00:22:32
Speaker
immigration is a public safety issue. It's a national security issue. We're dealing with, that you know, like this, this is a huge problem and this is what immigration is. And that's a, that's like a lie that's been sort of exacerbated for years. And a lot of the reason why we are at this point, but then the the truth is that immigration is like the the kind of central thing is, is that immigration is about labor and and of course about seeking refuge and family and all the other things. But I, I, I think this like this tension is that, you know, there's like a number of stories and this is like the media kind of like is so excited to find these stories, right. Of like, Oh, this person voted for Trump and they didn't realize they were going lose their coworker or this family member or this other person just like realizing sort of the impact that these policies
Supreme Court and Immigration Law Shifts
00:23:15
Speaker
have. So I think my, my sense is like,
00:23:18
Speaker
what the Trump administration is trying to do is appease and say, oh, we're not going to go after people at these work sites, which is so public, but still they're going to continue to be doing the like targeting on the streets or in homes or at airports or at ports of entry, like all the other places that actually, or, ah you know, Greyhound and Amtrak, like wherever, all the other different places where actually like ICE has like jurisdiction to kind of like engage. And obviously, they've been targeting people at courthouses and hospitals and other places. So I don't know. I think at some level, it's just a lot of like rhetoric and just to try to seem like they're... And it's sort of wild because it was like,
00:24:00
Speaker
oh, we're not going to go after farm workers. We're not going to go after you know hotel workers or like restaurant workers. or It just seemed like ah actually a very ridiculously large category of people. And you're just like, no, that's actually just not true. but That's not really what's going to happen. and And it was a way to keep you know business community on their side, I guess. But again, like I think all these things are still happening. It's just happening in maybe...
00:24:27
Speaker
a different way. And that's not even necessarily true. I mean, the raids are still continuing, they'll have like another round of raids. So I, I think for all that stuff, I mean, usually it's just kind of a blip in a moment of like Trump saying something, and then we'll sort of see how these things evolve. I do think that the escalations recently are, are kind of, you know, probably giving them pause to some degree, but, you know, at the same time, they're moving forward with So much else in the Supreme Court just ruled that it's fine to deport people or basically traffic people to other countries where they've never been to.
00:25:00
Speaker
So, you know, they're also like they have more room to do the things that they want to do. But, you know, to to Jessica's point, like, I think so much of this is about the fact that for years, this sort of good immigrant versus bad immigrant frame lent itself to that sort of perception that there were people who, as Jessica pointed out, on the streets who were, you know, a public safety threat, quote unquote. And therefore, that's what what the role of immigration was, was to target those people, immigration enforcement.
00:25:34
Speaker
But the reality is, is that sort of, you know, capitulation from President Obama, from Clinton before him, from the Biden administration, just gave more fodder to the Republicans. And they were able to kind of expand this lie around public safety and national security.
00:25:50
Speaker
And we got to the point where it was not just the good immigrant versus bad immigrant, but like basically all immigrants are bad now. Yeah. and And now they're having to kind of negotiate that because of the contradiction of the U.S., which is a country that has forever been about migration, whether it was forced migration or what we see now in different ways in terms of root causes. But I think the it like functions on that and it ultimately is trying to kind of really commit to the idea of whiteness. And so there's there's this like constant contradiction that they're negotiating. And so I think that's part of the reason why
00:26:26
Speaker
we're seeing those statements from Trump. Yeah. And to kind of add on, I do think this reflects like a fissure on the right, just as like a general philosophical matter. So like, just from what I see, so like Stephen Miller, a lot of scholars at some right-wing think tanks, like the Claremont Institute, I mean, genuinely, they want like no immigrants ever, none.
00:26:51
Speaker
Like, Doesn't matter how, I guess it doesn't matter when they came. Like, they don't want anyone who you know, it's like pure just white nationalism. Like an ethnostate is what they envision.
00:27:03
Speaker
And so this is, you know, they sort of, i think as a result, like the policies push towards that, right? Like you see Stephen Miller pushing to attempt to ah arrest and expel as many people as he can sort of like...
00:27:18
Speaker
quasi-legally justify, right? It's sort of like, I have to have sort of a plausible legal argument. They're sort of pushing it, and then people push back because i also think like a large segment of the right and the left have, as Silky calls it, the good immigrant model, which is like people who are going to work, you know, like the ones where people are like, you know, I guess the stories of the folks, like I didn't think it would be me, right?
00:27:44
Speaker
The people that we sort of say, oh, they came and they're working and they're honest and their kids are in the military and this sort of thing, right? The sort of like American dream. But I do think like a segment of people who helped get Trump elected are genuinely like they don't care about that.
00:28:01
Speaker
And so what I think we see is them sort of fighting a little bit about like how exactly do they want to define it. Now the net result is like bad for everybody, right? And it doesn't matter.
00:28:16
Speaker
may or may not matter. Like the net result is extremely bad, but I also think that's why we'll get like not farm workers, even though the day of they, I think went and arrested farm workers in like Nebraska.
00:28:29
Speaker
i mean, there's a bunch of stuff also happening in places where people just simply aren't and There's not as much media, right? So like farms or a yeah agricultural workers, like places in the Midwest where there just aren't as many reporters.
00:28:44
Speaker
And so they're just not reported as widely. But as far as I can tell, they are happening, whatever that thing meant, whatever this new farmer workers or hotel workers means.
00:28:56
Speaker
Yeah, and Trump seems to have gone back and forth on that as well. But Jessica, i wanted to ask you, like when you've seen things play out in Los Angeles, i mean, we even saw one instance of the police and the sheriffs ended up shooting each other in some like sort of crossfire and all this. When we saw the military and ice on the streets, like what are you seeing play out? like Using Los Angeles sort of as this test subject,
00:29:22
Speaker
if that is something that Trump wants to replicate in other big cities, what have you seen in terms of law enforcement in their interactions with the National Guard, the Marines, and ICE?
00:29:34
Speaker
Because it seems like one of the most scary possibilities is regular law enforcement, even in sanctuary cities and states, being used to essentially subdue and attack protesters and communities to basically aid ICE and DHS enforcement. Same thing with the National Guard, I guess.
00:29:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think that... So Los Angeles is kind of an interesting place because one... They are, they are, have a lot of people who are immigrants, right? They have a very like robust immigrant community. That's a lot of people who live here.
00:30:09
Speaker
They also had a very robust, like Black Lives Matter movement, a lot of movements for police accountability, right? So it's like a place where people are like very active in these movements and I think that that's a reason why we saw a lot of protests and a lot different kinds of protests, right? Because it was you could activate people more quickly.
00:30:30
Speaker
The other thing about Los Angeles, though, is like, honestly, they just have a lot of police. Like part of it is just if you have so many police that they're shooting each other, then you just have too many police around.
00:30:40
Speaker
And I think it's an interesting place because the other thing about Los Angeles, right, is that it is in California and it is a place where they have sanctuary laws. And in short, the sanctuary laws there mean that local law enforcement are not supposed to, quote, like cooperate with ICE.
00:30:57
Speaker
But that usually means is they won't enter into agreements with ICE. so no 287G agreements. But it's also supposed to mean that they don't, for example, like turn people over to ICE. Now, the truth is they do sometimes, right? And Because, and again, a lot of it happens sort of behind the jail wall where people can't see, right? But we know that in Los Angeles, like people do get turned over to ICE sometimes, usually because like a jailer calls and says, you know, this person is probably deportable.
00:31:31
Speaker
So we know it kind of happens. But I think that that what happened was, you know, in some ways, not I'm not much of a like police apologist, but in some ways, like they are being pressured, like, it you know, the many groups and organizations like police associations and sheriff associations are telling their law enforcement members, if you don't sign up for you like Donald Trump will send ICE to your city and do what he did to LA.
00:31:58
Speaker
And I will say like, it is, you know, if you are the LA police chief, like I actually believe that the LA police chief does not want to be helping ICE. It's, you know, it's bad for his image. He doesn't like it.
00:32:10
Speaker
It's honestly like time and money and just like a pain. Now, the other thing police don't like is they don't like protests, right? We learned this from 2020, right? They don't like protests. Protests or annoying and upsetting, in particular protests that are against the police, right?
00:32:25
Speaker
Any protest that is sort of like anti, you know, opposed to police presence or opposed to police violence, police take very personally. And so they are called in to do what I, you know, kind of basically like crowd control.
00:32:40
Speaker
And even if the police chief isn't excited about cooperating with ICE, right? He ends up inadvertently doing it because the truth is it's pretty hard for him to pull back and do nothing.
00:32:52
Speaker
I also think that's not what his rank and file want to do. So I do think we also have to think about like the politics of rank and file police vis-a-vis the politics of like a police chief, which is to say like what I have seen is like the politics of rank and file law enforcement are very, very pro-Trump.
00:33:09
Speaker
And for a lot of law enforcement, border patrol, ICE, like one, they see themselves united in a sort of like policely brotherhood, right?
00:33:20
Speaker
Like they see themselves all as allies and they are pretty pro-MAGA. And so the idea of arresting people who are protesting ICE, vis-a-vis arresting you know immigrants, it's like, it all kind of, I think, jives with their ideology. i mean,
00:33:41
Speaker
I will say that like there's no police association out there. They have talked many a time about not liking protesters. They have not said anything about the fact that this is ICE or DHS or FBI agents who are causing the chaos. right like ah The chaos had erupts spontaneously. It occurred because ICE and federal agents came to Los Angeles to conduct, you know, kind of basically...
00:34:10
Speaker
you know, massively alarming and unnecessary raids. So i think it's like, like I said, you have not seen police saying like, hey, could you stop these raids? Maybe they are behind closed doors, but instead like they're, but they feel instead, which I sort of attribute to like, said, their sort of feelings about 2020 and the, you know, Black Lives Matter movement, like they have residual irritation at protesters.
00:34:36
Speaker
And so they don't really, you know, it is just a thing that they got very, ah that I mean, i it's hard to imagine, but I mean, literally, I just think it's like their feelings about protesters are just really negative.
00:34:48
Speaker
When they see protesters, they get very, very upset. I just wanted to ask you know one hopefully positive question. i mean, there is a lot of activation right now. People are doing everything from mutual aid programs of like going out picking up groceries for people that are afraid to go outside. There's rapid response networks. We've had Homan make several statements about how much these things are impacting ICE's logistical abilities.
00:35:17
Speaker
I know I'm just curious from you all, like, what are you seeing as some bright spots or things that could be expanded or just thoughts in general about how grassroots campaigns and organizing is having an impact?
00:35:31
Speaker
Anything that you want to talk about on that? I mean, know I think, you know, it's it's always a confusing time because things changing.
00:35:42
Speaker
no question getting worse in terms of the expansion of detention and what we're seeing and and sort of how it is, like I said earlier, a testing ground for authoritarianism, essentially, like detention being used in this particular way.
00:35:55
Speaker
And then also just doing what it's done for many years now and expanding that. I think especially it's really hard to see how much worse the conditions in detention are getting. It's quite severe in terms of treatment and also like getting food, getting like, you know, people people are just in really dire conditions. People are being held in field offices for long periods of time.
00:36:17
Speaker
Like it's wild, but there's a lot of attention and we're seeing, you know, we at Detention Watch Network, we have a campaign called Communities Not Cages where we basically work with people across the country who are trying to either call attention to a local detention center and try to shut it down, which obviously is sort of harder in these conditions, but but we have been successful. I mean, I think that was the thing, like there, you know, as Jessica brought up 2020, like the culmination of that actually opened up a lot of space for us. And we, I can't tell you for years, i have been working on against immigration detention for more than 20 years now.
00:36:56
Speaker
And I would just spend years just losing campaigns. We would lose constantly. And then, you know, but we were building up and we were still trying and we were building that base. And then once 2020 came along, we were actually really, really ready to go. And more than 20 detention centers are no longer in use because of a lot of those campaigns in those years leading up to 2020 and after, including from like local and state level and also federal level officials. And so I think that's something to hold on to now, which is You know, there's, you know, 15, 20 places that we're working with organizers on the ground from, you know, Florida to Kansas to New Jersey and to Louisiana, like across the country where people are really
00:37:41
Speaker
fighting back against detention expansion or trying to call attention to a facility. You see more elected officials like Mayor Ras Baraka in New Jersey and Newark. You see more members of Congress doing unannounced sort of like oversight visits to detention centers and, and you know Those are all opportunities for to get more people to engage. like Detention is a in the daily news again. And I think that you know when I think about doing this work over many years, it was something that was so hidden. People didn't know it. People didn't understand it.
00:38:16
Speaker
so Thought about it as this like thing in the shadows, as like an aside. But actually, now it's sort of like become this this sort of bigger thing that people are paying attention to, which gives us opportunity to make the case, I think,
00:38:30
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's, you know, for from my perspective, like, we have to hold on to that and bring people into the fight. Because at some point, we're going to have another opportunity, like 2020, we're going to have open openings to make the case and have bold action be taken to actually shut down facilities to move away from mass
Local Resistance and Organizing
00:38:48
Speaker
detention. And, and this is the time to sort of prepare for that. So yeah, that's, that's kind of what I would offer. I do. I, I hold on to that. I hold on to the fact that...
00:38:57
Speaker
Mahmoud Khalil was finally released that, you know, these things are starting to shift and we can kind of build from there. Yeah. I mean, I think, like, so I think Silky's probably being a little modest about her accomplishments.
00:39:11
Speaker
I feel feel like it must be mentioned. But I do, you know, i am... One of the things that concerns me is that a lot of this is happening. This is happening like, yeah, it's sort of one rising authoritarianism, you know, but also this sort of like issue of kind of like AI slop, which is just not a thing I pay that much attention to before. But now it's sort of in your face, right? Bad information, AI slop.
00:39:36
Speaker
And also, I think, like, an erosion of local sovereignty, like, one of the things I think is not going remarked upon as much as maybe it could be, and my view, is that one of the Trump administration's goals is to erode local sovereignty, right? Like, the arresting of Monica McIvers, attempted the arresting of the Newark mayor, right? These are places where, in essence, like, there has been success, right? Like, the truth is,
00:40:03
Speaker
You know, maybe it's not as much success as maybe I might wish for, but like there have been successes in people trying to have successful campaigns, you know, and electing officials that don't want to cooperate with ICE. And like, so that success in and of itself has become, I think, an issue kind of of the like local democracy.
00:40:26
Speaker
So, I mean, that said, I do think like that is where I see one of the spaces, you know, very similar to what Silky said is that people can participate in local democracy. They can get involved. They can, you know, at least for your local law enforcement, if we know local law enforcement is participating, we know that people might have to build detention centers, but those are things people can oppose locally.
00:40:50
Speaker
I also encourage, you know, another space I think is to look at the use of surveillance systems like FLOC, which I think are going to increasingly get used for all sorts of things, right? So it's sort of like a general policy of reducing the size and scope of the police, which is something everyone can do, right, at their local level. Like people, ah you know, you see, i think, what happens in Los Angeles and it feels very, feels like there isn't anything you can do.
00:41:19
Speaker
like People feel kind of helpless. But you can do stuff like where you live, which is where i would encourage people to focus. Like, how can you try to, like, reduce the size and scope of your law enforcement where you live?
00:41:32
Speaker
And I also think that sometimes, like wins might not look as i The wins are there, but they may not look as like winny as we would wish. you know So the release of Mahmoud Khalil is one that I would also point to to say like that's a win. you know We wish it was more people, but it is a win in Where I live in North Carolina,
00:41:55
Speaker
You know, they have delayed, they you know, advocates here not only delayed bills that would require law enforcement cooperation with ICE, but the governor did veto a bill that would make it worse.
00:42:06
Speaker
So like, you know, delay is a win. Like if you can get people not to vote on a bill, that's good. If you can get the governor to veto a bill, that's a win too. So like, I think so maybe we have to think about those wins as like cumulative things.
00:42:23
Speaker
even though I mean admit it's really hard when you see like videos from Los Angeles. And so I appreciate like why people see it and feel, i think, very upset and angry and also kind of helpless.
00:42:35
Speaker
Yeah, one thing to add on to what Jessica was saying and thinking about, like, like from my perspective, so much so much incredible organizing is happening, especially in the South, where actually there isn't, you know you know, this sort of perception that your elected officials are, like, elected officials aren't supportive of the strategy or sanctuary policy or other things, but people are figuring out different ways to organize. And I think North Carolina is a really good example. There's an organization there called Siembra NC that has this defend and recruit tool that is, you know, like helping communities sort of figure out how they interrupt the process of somebody being put into ICE custody and making sure to like build up that support locally. And I just think that, you know, there's like, I just 100% agree with what Jessica is saying. Like, this is oh the time to go local. We do have a lot of power at the local level and also like building up community support and thinking about how to support immigrants.
00:43:35
Speaker
helps like so many other people. It's not just immigrants that are being criminalized. It's not, you know, it's people who are seeking abortions. It's trans people. It goes beyond that. And I think really understanding the role that both ICE, but also law enforcement generally is playing in like Trump's agenda, I think is so key. and And that happens at the local level. So I would recommend that tool is something to check out.
00:43:57
Speaker
Well, before we sign off again, I just want to plug ah both your books. encourage people to check out Silky's book, Unbuild Walls While emig Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition, and Jessica's book, The Highest Law in the Land, How Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.
00:44:11
Speaker
Check them both out at a local bookstore near you or online. Just in closing, I wanted to ask you all, like what are some things that you are are looking at? like What should organizers on the ground and people watching these things...
00:44:25
Speaker
the intersections of law enforcement and the deportation machine, what should we be all be looking out for? i mean, there's so much we didn't get a chance to cover. we need a couple more hours, but what are some things that are on your radar that you would also encourage people to be looking at?
00:44:41
Speaker
I think that one of the things, I think that what what we see happening a lot is like I said, in addition to sort of eroding this local democracy is what I would call like legalish tactics.
00:44:56
Speaker
Like one of the things that that the anti-immigrant moving movement has done and is doing is moving on multiple levels. So like doing these ICE raids, pulling people's tax returns, you know, using flock or other data management,
00:45:14
Speaker
generating like search warrants to could enter places, right? this is This is something I could see proliferating is like basically generating a search warrant to search someone's home or a facility for something and using that as like a pretext to arrest people.
00:45:30
Speaker
I also think they're going to start doing like legal-ish arguments to destroy sanctuary city laws. So like I guess the thing I would say is like there's like sort of multiple fronts that they're working on, and a lot of it is it's like not, it's like not totally legal.
00:45:45
Speaker
Like it's plain that the goal is to like push, you know, this discretion in the law as much as, is you know, the immigration system has always been really discretionary. There's wide discretion for people.
00:45:57
Speaker
And we now see that the problem with that wide discretion is that in the hands of a bad actor or an authoritarian actor, that discretion can be used for like immense damage. So I, you know, I also think, hope people think about that. Like,
00:46:11
Speaker
when it becomes time to kind of like consider rebuilding. Yeah, I would, I mean, I would just kind of adding on to that. I hundred percent agree. And i also think sometimes there is this kind of way that our,
00:46:28
Speaker
our way of kind of like taking in this information is to look at how SCOTA is like Supreme Court's responding or this litigation or these legal strategies and like what is able to be done on those fronts. But I think there is a sort of,
00:46:44
Speaker
you know, not really fully understanding the infrastructure questions, because like the way they do this is by having the infrastructure, they can have like all the surveillance in the world, they can have all the like, laws in the books and whatever. But if they, you know, like if they have the money and the infrastructure, then they can carry these things out. And I think Looking locally, you know, I mean, Florida is expanding detention in all these really, really disturbing ways, both at county jails and also, as you mentioned earlier, the you know, sort of makeshift facility in the Everglades called out Alligator Alcatraz, which did they dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, which is wild.
00:47:24
Speaker
It's totally like, because Trump mentioned Alcatraz. Right. like This is a cool idea. But like, that's, but that's the thing. I think there's this way that, you know, we get really caught up in these like very specific cases. But like, again, it's about the infrastructure. It's about having these county jails have these intergovernmental service agreements. It's about having more private prison contracts. It's about the expansion of these facilities.
Budget Implications on ICE and Border Patrol
00:47:49
Speaker
It's about having more money for Border Patrol agents and ICE agents.
00:47:53
Speaker
And that all, you know, like this bill bill that could potentially pass as soon as next week It's just going to give them so much more money for all of that. But there's still, again, they don't, like those things don't have to move. It's not a done deal then. Like there's still ways to stop the infrastructure locally. I know there's like already people who are trying to intervene around environmental protections in California.
00:48:15
Speaker
the alligator Alcatraz case. And, and yeah, so I think there's, it's important for us to kind of just recognize that, like, it's both how these like things are shifting legally and how it impacts an individual, but also how the infrastructure is just going to impact more and more people. And what, what we've seen time and time again, is that when you have de detention capacity in a certain area, there's just more likely a chance that people in that area are going to be targeted for deportation.
00:48:44
Speaker
ah Real quick, where can people follow your work at and find out more? We're at detentionwatchnetwork.org. And I'm on Blue Sky and Instagram at silkys13 and also at detentionwatch to find more information.
00:48:59
Speaker
And I'm on Blue Sky, Jess Pish, J-E-S-S-P-I-S-H. And I have a substack that's sheriffs.substack.com. where I irregularly post.
00:49:10
Speaker
And I do think I'm going to make a plug for Silky's organization. Like if you are in an area where people are talking about building new jails, like I know states are setting aside money for this. Like I do really encourage you to check out the resources on their site because that is the thing that like people can get, you know, that is a thing you can cite locally.
00:49:34
Speaker
Oh
00:50:10
Speaker
Christian Williams name Christian Williams. I'm writer living in Portland, Oregon, probably best known for my book, Our Enemies in Blue, Police in Power in America, which is a history of the municipal police in the United States.
00:50:23
Speaker
Well, thank you so much for joining us. And we've talked in the past about counterinsurgency, about the police. And I think a lot of people recently listened to your interview on the Outlaw podcast, and it was ah ah a welcome dose of reality and hit a lot of points that we've been talking about as well, just about in terms of counterinsurgency and the weaponization of spectacle in a lot of ways.
00:50:48
Speaker
ah But I kind of wanted to just use that as a starting point today. But i don't know. You know, we're going to ask some of the other guests this later that we're talking to, but how does sort of like your assumptions of what's going on with the Trump administration and everything with DHS, the police, how does that vibe with what we see now? Like, are there things that stand out that maybe you thought like are running differently or worse or I don't know?
00:51:18
Speaker
There are a number of things that are distinctive about this particular moment. And but i mean, the one of the things that stands out and also makes the discussion hard is just separating the signal from the noise, right? Like there's so much happening all the time.
00:51:36
Speaker
And there's also this Trump person like is very good at creating this like aura of uncertainty around everything that is happening because it's never exactly clear what his policy is or what his plans are right and it's and some of that is his tendency to try to kind of like govern through the internet that he will post something on social media that says like we're definitely going to do something and then like
00:52:08
Speaker
Maybe that's policy or maybe it's not. Maybe it's just an idea that he had. Maybe nothing comes of it. It's hard to know. I mean, we we we saw this similarly in the recent attacks on Iran where, you know, different representatives of different parts of the administration were giving diametrically opposed answers to like very straightforward questions like,
00:52:29
Speaker
is the US going to attack Iran? ah We've seen similar kind of chaos around tariffs. like It's hard to know, especially from just sort of like a news consumer point of view, which tariffs are in effect, how much they are, what what their aims are, any of that.
00:52:47
Speaker
And we see something similar with... immigration enforcement and policing and that sort of thing. So one thing that I think is distinctive of this moment is just the sense of chaos around all of that.
Military Deployment in LA: Intentions and Reactions
00:53:00
Speaker
That said, they there are definitely some things that do stand out to me. I mean, the i the the thing that got everybody's attention, of course, was sending was Trump taking control of the California National Guard, sending it into LA, and then also sending attachment or Marines.
00:53:17
Speaker
It's hard to say how much of that was intended as like an actual enforcement operation and how much of that was just him positioning himself in this way of like showing that he could do it, right? Like that he wanted the the image of mobilizing the military against demonstrations in a Democrat-controlled city in a Democrat-controlled state.
00:53:44
Speaker
It seems that, you know, in In reality, the heavy lifting of attacking the demonstrations was still mostly being done by the LAPD and the LA County you Sheriff.
00:53:58
Speaker
And... In a way, we see a a repeat of some of the dynamics that occurred in Portland in 2020 around the George Floyd uprising, where the the local cops had been attacking demonstrations for weeks.
00:54:13
Speaker
As soon as the federal authorities got involved, it became a national story. And then we saw local politicians who were perfectly happy when it was the local cops doing it, expressing outrage and you know being shocked, shocked that...
00:54:27
Speaker
the The feds would be intervening in this way. So we see some of that same hustle over who is responsible for policing playing out in in a similar kind of way where like the the there's a bipartisan agreement among mayors and the president that the demonstrations need to be attacked.
00:54:46
Speaker
it's But they have kind of a turf war over who's responsible for it. Yeah, i mean, that in itself is is' really interesting. And i think that's a question for social movements.
00:54:57
Speaker
Like, how do we break out of that bubble? Like you said, it it almost seems like the the sort of like 2020 timeline happened over the course of like two weeks, where it's it's just like you said, like all of a sudden we're โ the the media story, which I don't think is, mean, I think that's essentially by design or or maybe better put, like, those are the limits imposed by the pundits and, like, the media class. but But suddenly this becomes a discussion on who has the legitimacy to carry out
00:55:30
Speaker
you know potentially deadly force against people that are literally responding to their family members being taken by federal troops and like put in this dungeon, essentially. right and and and you know the it just like it the you know Karen bass and Newsom are presented on one side and then Trump is on the other.
00:55:50
Speaker
and you know There's this attempt to kind of like paint the Democrats as sort of like these like more caring paternalistic types. But in reality, they're like you said, they're the ones bringing in the police that are shooting people night after night, attacking journalists, helping you know the state carry out these operations. I don't know. It just seems yeah you know obviously ah very small window into what's actually going on, of course. Yeah.
00:56:15
Speaker
Yeah. and the i mean And some of this is the tendency of the media to view things not only ah in kind of binaries, but in specifically partisan binaries, right?
00:56:27
Speaker
And so it's an easier story to tell that Gavin Newsom is bravely standing up to Trump, because that's the kind of binary opposition that media storytelling is comfortable working with.
00:56:41
Speaker
It's much harder two present a story where, on the one hand, it's people in the community, and on the other hand, it's โ and they're opposed to government at sort of all levels.
00:56:54
Speaker
But there's an internal division within the state ah about where exactly the authority lies, right? And ah all of that is to say that it seems important that Trump wanted to make this gesture of, you know,
00:57:11
Speaker
Basically, having having a military occupation of an American city in response to some militants, but not especially widespread protests. But it I don't know that it did very much to change the way policing was actually happening at at the site, right? At the site of the resistance.
00:57:30
Speaker
I think the other side of that is that what's interesting is that coming out of Los Angeles, I mean, if if we like posit polling data as this, you know, real important thing, which I don't know. I mean, I guess that's up for debate. But I mean, it does seem like coming out of that, there are more people opposed to sending the military against demonstrations and โ like the draconian, masked-up people rounding up folks at Home Depots and like just working-class people, that seems to be souring on a lot of people, including a lot of Latino folks, yeah maybe people voted for Trump because he thought that he was going to bring down grocery prices or something.
00:58:11
Speaker
That seems to really be putting people off. So I think there's a question of like, Will this, as in the case of Portland, where you had federal troops coming in, i mean, that turned like basically a whole section of the city against what was happening.
00:58:27
Speaker
Is that having the same effect? and and And I guess, will in doing so, will that basically be more of a problem for the state than sort of kind of what they wanted, which is just to you know spread fear and like, ooh, the government's bringing like the National Guard in as if that hasn't happened all the time already.
00:58:45
Speaker
This is a more complicated question than it probably should be. Under a normal administration, that kind of overreach, which then has that kind of blowback, which is like, you know allows the the Democratic Party to seize a kind of like a moral mantle that they really don't deserve and leads to...
00:59:08
Speaker
increased attention and increased opposition to the underlying policies, those being having to do with the deportations that people were reacting to, like all of that would just be viewed as like a political blunder, right? And it's the kind of thing that, you know, would in other, in normal times, result in backpedaling and an attempt to sort of regain some some legitimacy and public support.
00:59:33
Speaker
Under Trump, it's not clear that a will. And there's a... There's this paradox about the man personally that i makes it very hard to predict what he's going to do, which is on the one side, he seems very devoted to demonstrating that he can do anything he wants, no matter who opposes it.
00:59:56
Speaker
And on the other side, he has a a pathological need to be adored. And how those things fit together in a single personality, I do not understand.
01:00:09
Speaker
But it makes it very hard to know what he how he's going to react to to opposition. And it especially makes it hard to know how he's going to react to opposition within you know his his fan base, right?
01:00:23
Speaker
So as people who were originally sort of part of the MAGA coalition become disenchanted with various of his policies, it's hard to predict whether the result of that is going to be that he reversed his course on the policy and probably just pretends like that was like the new policy was his policy all along.
01:00:44
Speaker
We've always been in war with Oceania. Or whether the He just doubles down and pretends like he's doing something to help the very people who he's attacking. right So it's it's it's hard to tell whether there is some underlying strategy because the the tactics and the even and even the policies are so erratic and change are so prone to change sort of moment to moment.
01:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think that's probably the strategy right there. It's just like, you know, the chaos is the strategy and it just... You know, people have used this metaphor like raptors testing the fences type thing.
01:01:25
Speaker
And it seems like sort of like what shakes out through that, you know, whatever sort of gets them more power, you know, pushes their narrative forward. You know, the wounds they can inflict on people. I mean, like their goal right now is to just deport thousands and thousands of people per day.
01:01:41
Speaker
right And I don't know if they're hitting those numbers, but they're certainly, you know, doing things they weren't before. And so in terms of things that are new about this moment, the โ so the deportations themselves aren't really new. The nabbing people a home, the people parking lot, that's not really new.
01:02:01
Speaker
The โ like the a lot of that is just like how ICE has โ ah Immigration and Customs Enforcement, how they behave ordinarily just happening more visibly at the moment and kind of everywhere at once.
01:02:15
Speaker
But one thing that is new is that... is the way that they are basically rendering people illegal and then enforcing the law, right?
01:02:27
Speaker
So it's not just that they're they're going... Like that what they said and was that they were going to go after the worst of the worst. They were going to go after... You know, criminal aliens. And then they, you know, would tacitly admit that really they they meant, you know, all undocumented and people and then push on that.
01:02:47
Speaker
You know, like, I mean, really, if you paid attention to the things that J.D. Vance was saying before the election, we should have known this was coming because he would consistently refer to asylum seekers as illegal immigrants.
01:02:58
Speaker
Yeah. And if it was pointed out that seeking asylum is, in fact, the legal process, he would say, well I don't think it should be. So because I think it should be illegal, they're illegal immigrants, which was just openly signaling that the move was going to be to strip people of their status and then treat them as though they were here illegally.
01:03:23
Speaker
and so that And so we're seeing you know people who have green cards being deported, people who were seeking asylum, people who were under protective orders being having their their legal status removed for the sake of rendering them illegal so that they could be deported.
01:03:42
Speaker
And the and you know steve Stephen Miller has said recently that, of course, that was the plan all along. He's like, well, I mean... You know, you can start with the worst of the worst, but when they're gone, then there's everybody else.
01:03:55
Speaker
So that that attack on lawful immigration and that attack on the status of people who who had previously been here legally or um under a protective classification, that is that is novel. That is new.
01:04:12
Speaker
It's also very concerning because it seems to be an assault on the idea that anyone it has a inherent right to be in the country. right i mean we we we see some it It dovetails uncomfortably with the move to eliminate birthright citizenship, which...
01:04:31
Speaker
is in a way and and an attack not only on the immigrant communities or on the idea of immigration, but further an attack on the idea of citizenship, right?
01:04:42
Speaker
And the notion that anyone has just โ really, it's an attack on the concept of rights, right? That there are limits to the way the government can behave โ toward really anyone, right? Like people who moved here, people born here, that it leaves in the and the and the control of the authorities to determine who has rights and where those rights extend, rather than the rights being inherent into the person or built into the circumstances.
01:05:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think another big overarching question a lot of people have, and and this kind of relates to like how you've talked about over the decades the police have responded to protests and crowds in different ways, is it it really does seem like this is a return โ to more aggressive, you know come you know, combativeness to demonstrators. I mean, it was interesting to see sort of the the more hands-off approach to the No Kings protest, which, of course, a lot of those organizers, you know, worked โ
01:05:47
Speaker
ah closely with police. i don't know. I'm just curious your thoughts on, on seeing those dynamics play out. It seems like we are seeing law enforcement very giddy at the thought that they are sort of off the leash, you know, even more so than they were before.
01:06:02
Speaker
Right. Well, there's โ so for about the last 20 years, the dominant strategy for crowd control in the United States has been what scholars refer to as strategic incapacitation.
01:06:14
Speaker
And this relies on an approach that that draws distinctions between demonstrators who are, as ah the scholarship puts it, contain, meaning they operate within some very well-understood boundaries, and demonstrators that are transgressive.
01:06:32
Speaker
And so the contained demonstrators tend to be more mainstream. They tend to be older. They tend to like be attached to established political organizations. They tend to engage in lawful demonstrations, often working with but permit process or negotiating with police ahead of time.
01:06:49
Speaker
And or if they are violating the law, they tend to do it in symbolic ways that are clearly unparalleled. matters of civil disobedience that often, again, are negotiated with police ahead of time.
01:07:01
Speaker
um Disruptive protesters tend to be younger. They tend to be less attached to political institutions. They tend to have more radical demands if they're articulating demands at all.
01:07:12
Speaker
And they tend to behave in ways that are more disruptive. And so the the task for the police becomes... one of distinguishing between the contained, quote unquote, good protesters or the disruptive protesters quote-unquote, bad protesters.
01:07:29
Speaker
And the the strategy then is to facilitate and coordinate and channel the good protesters into symbolic, lawful, peaceful expression that has very little like disruptive force or impact on the overall life of the community.
01:07:47
Speaker
And to respond to the disruptive, quote-unquote, bad protesters with just overwhelming force to prevent those from even getting off the ground. Now, I think one of the things that we're seeing at present is that the the distinction there, i mean, so there was always a tendency to view people of color and working class or poor people and their political action as sort of like inherently disruptive, and inherently violent, inherently threatening, right? There's always been that tendency in policing.
01:08:20
Speaker
But I think we're seeing a ah distinction along racial and class lines that's a lot more pronounced than where it's not even necessarily anything that the demonstrators are doing that brings the ah coercive reaction.
01:08:40
Speaker
It's simply who they are and what they're demonstrating about, right? And in a way, that that very much goes, you know, that does cast us back into sort of the bad old days of how police responded to civil rights demonstrators in the fifty s and 60s.
01:08:58
Speaker
Now, the thing that, and I'm sure that there's some like something cathartic about that for authoritarians, but the thing that they may be forgetting is that the cops moved away from that model for some very good reasons, which is that the harder they came down on the civil rights movement, the more popular the movement became.
01:09:16
Speaker
And that while they could militarily break up as many demonstrations as they wanted, politically, it meant that they were constantly losing support.
01:09:27
Speaker
And that you know that that translated into growing support for the nonviolent wing and civil rights movement. It also translated into the development and then growing support for sort of the militant armed wing and civil rights movement.
01:09:42
Speaker
And it meant that so the policing lost credibility. nationally in a way that it it has never quite recovered from. So there's some short-term tactical advantage to just like using overwhelming force, but there are some long-term and even just medium-term political consequences that make it ultimately self-defeating.
01:10:05
Speaker
I'm curious, what do you think right now about the growth? And this seems to have been building since 2020, and this largely comes from liberals and progressives and a lot of you know online boomers, I guess to put it nicely, of viral conspiracy theories that largely are on the left, you know definitely amplified amplified by the right and sort of like feeding off of old right-wing tropes of outside agitators and stuff like that.
01:10:31
Speaker
you know We saw with the No Kings protest, there were just a lot of people that were convinced that there were going to be ah Proud Boys that would, i don't know, dress up in pussy hats or something and like trick people into making Trump bring down martial law.
01:10:47
Speaker
What do you think about that? Because a lot of that seems to be like internalized fears, but also just sort of internalized ideas about the way that protests should work, that you know you've got to follow the rules this way or else they're going to do this. And we've got to like show people that we're good and that we follow the rules or else โ you know there're they're going to bring all hell down upon us? like how How do we sort of maneuver with so many people that are new to protesting, which is good.
01:11:15
Speaker
We want to bring new people in, but how do we deal with those just virally? Okay, so you you articulated something that the we can think of as the agent provocateur thesis. So the idea is that um police will hire agents to infiltrate political movements and move them in Move them toward violence with the idea of discrediting those movements.
01:11:38
Speaker
And this is not a crazy thing to think because this has happened. And this happened in you know the the relatively recent past in some demonstrable ways. It's not, however, a like like a standard response to demonstrations, right? like it has tended to be hamped It has tended to happen in...
01:11:59
Speaker
you know fairly marginal ways and the and is never really the driving force behind militancy in a demonstration.
01:12:10
Speaker
It's also, ah in the cases that we we know about, has generally been used for the sake of like setting up particular people on criminal charges rather than the idea of like creating you know, widespread disorder for the sake of declaring martial law or anything like that.
01:12:28
Speaker
There's just not evidence of it happening at that scale. Yeah, just to interject, I can literally think of no example of somebody in like a protest situation that was somehow, you know, either like a confidential informant or somebody that was like some sort of law enforcement agent in any capacity, like doing something illegal for the, you know, a specific purpose of like escalating a situation.
01:12:55
Speaker
And in fact, i mean, this is where I think like the example with Eric McDavid and in the you know The person that was working for the FBI in that entrapment case is very instructive because the way that they basically ah graduated up to entrapping McDavid and several other people was that they started off as somebody that met an FBI agent in a college class because they went undercover to write a story about a protest.
01:13:22
Speaker
then they became basically somebody that continued to do that and then reported back to the FBI. But what they were doing was that they were alerting them to the movements of protesters at various demonstrations. And then then law enforcement would then use that information to then stop them doing like things like street blockades and stuff like that.
01:13:40
Speaker
So was actually โ they were having me the opposite effect of what sort of this agitator conspiracy is based around. They were actually using information in real time from informants to stop the ability of protesters to be disruptive as opposed to amplifying that in order to then justify state repression.
01:14:00
Speaker
The repression was actually stopping people from protesting essentially. And even, you know, cases that have more of a superficial similarity to the the conspiracy theory, like, for example, when Brandon Darby convinced a couple of kids to make Molotov cocktails ahead of the Republican National Convention, the point was still that the police intervened before those things got used, right?
01:14:25
Speaker
So that set them up for the situation where... They could be you know arrested and convicted of making the bombs. And then that could be a headline of like, you know, brave police save the city from anarchist arsonists.
01:14:40
Speaker
But the point was never for them to the point. It was actually seemingly from anybody's side was never to use the things. Right. And so, again, if the idea was that it was going to create this this narrative of brave police and versus dangerous anarchists, but not that but for the sake of chilling the demonstrations, not for the sake of escalating them.
01:15:03
Speaker
So, you know, I think underneath all that, like the the reason that this narrative takes hold, you're absolutely right, is because people have a particular kind of idea of how demonstrations are supposed to be.
01:15:16
Speaker
And they have a particular kind of idea of like the, the um don't know, the values, the morals that animate a social movement. And the That idea is is largely based on a misremembering of the civil rights movement. And then they see anything that varies from that, and they immediately think that it is, know, like, well, those people are doing it wrong.
01:15:41
Speaker
And furthermore, they don't think that they could just have a difference of opinion about, like, what acceptable tactics are or how social change happens or anything like that. There's a tendency to sort of naturalize one's own perspective and assume that that is the the obvious, agreed-upon understanding of how politics work, and therefore to assign nefarious motives to anyone who breaks from that kind of orthodoxy.
01:16:12
Speaker
You know, one other thing I wanted to ask you about is just how โ mean, we kind of already talked about this, but it seems like so much of the plays that Trump has made โ this is kind of what's taken me back is just how much these moments are sort of produced for like Fox News consumption or โ viral moments and stuff like that. I'm thinking like maybe one of the best examples is when they were loading people onto planes and they, they put shackles on people and they called it ASMR and like different posts and stuff like that. Like very much like, you know, we're trying to trigger people essentially by like showing how,
01:16:49
Speaker
you know, look at us, we're run by Nick Fuente's trolls. Like we're just so horrible, despicable. And again, I think there's a question of just like, isn't that turning some people off? I mean, does that signal sort of like where they're at in the fact that they don't seem to give a shit? Or is that like a miscalculation on their part that they actually are, you know, failing to sort of manufacture consent in a certain way?
01:17:13
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, that is, i don't know, the postmodernist one. And this is what we're left with. Like the Trump personally, and a lot of the people in his orbit seem...
01:17:27
Speaker
weirdly indifferent to consequences, right? They seem really not to care what the effect of their actions is. It's like, it's all purely expressive, right? And so, which is which is one of the things that fuels the kind of the chaos that we were talking about before, right? Where it's like, the they don't need an immigration policy that's going to, you know, actually control immigration or regulate in some way or you know balance competing interests in a real way.
01:17:59
Speaker
They just need to be seen doing something that presents the kind of image that they're looking for. And a similar sort of thing with the tariffs, right? It's like but part of why they could not articulate a coherent objective that the tariffs were trying to achieve is because really just the objective was to be seen enacting tariffs, to be seen doing something that seemed decisive and like unthinkable a year earlier, right?
01:18:26
Speaker
And so it's it's all a matter of oh creating this sort of a particular kind of persona and a a particular kind of like self-presentation Now, the question of โ mean, I think fundamentally the question is is who is who are those displays of cruelty supposed to appeal to, right?
01:18:50
Speaker
And whether they're turning people off or not, I think remains to be seen. But they're certainly not attracting new people, right? Like people who were like like kind of ambivalent โ about, like, it's like, well, who had, like, anxieties about, like, the economic effect of immigration and whether it depressed wages or took jobs or anything like that, but who also were like, you know, but on the other hand, like, people need to make a living and, like,
01:19:21
Speaker
lot of people have been here a long time, whatever. They're not going to be won over bye by the display of cruelty, right? Whether people who were like who are expressly xenophobic, expressly nationalistic, anti-immigrant, or those kinds of reasons will be turned off when they see the cruelty that they're that their worldview implies, right?
01:19:44
Speaker
That's a different question. Right now, I think it's too early to tell. but the But the question of like who who it is meant to appeal to is, I think, an interesting one. Because ah again, it's like so so much of it is Trump trying to maintain the adoration of his base, but seemingly indifferent to the actual consequences, sometimes even for himself.
01:20:10
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I mean, I think a huge cornerstone of, you know, what makes MAGA MAGA is being able to sort of like take working class anxieties about the economy and work and capitalism and try to shove them into, know, culture war, white supremacist talking points and try to sell those things. Yeah.
01:20:37
Speaker
ah Definitely, like the the the way that they've been able to weaponize fear of people, whether it's trans people, the left, Antifa, whatever, you know especially immigrants and crime, i mean dave've they've done spectacular job on that.
01:20:53
Speaker
And I think what's interesting, though, is that that's... you know, they've kind of run out of political capital. Like you said, they're now they're just going after everyday working class people, which is interesting too, because it shows that, you know, a lot of people want policies that just aren't on offer from either of the corporate parties. You know, people, people want actually like left wing position, which is that people that are here that have been here a long time that are part of our community should, you know,
01:21:24
Speaker
be given full citizenship, been able to form unions, better wages, bring them out of the shadows of the second-class citizenships that allows them to be hyper-exploited. And of course, you know, both parties aren't
Immigration and Labor Force Dynamics
01:21:37
Speaker
interested.
01:21:37
Speaker
The shared goal of both parties is basically to maintain that sense of stratification so that there is a like, hyper-exploitable labor force, right? And then the where they differ is how they intend to to so enact that.
01:21:54
Speaker
And the one of the divisions within the Trump administration is between people who are on that sort of standard bipartisan consensus versus people who like are expressly white nationalists, right?
01:22:13
Speaker
Who for them, the purpose isn't to like, like maintain an overexploited labor force. It's just to push people of color out of society altogether.
01:22:25
Speaker
And we're seeing the those the the contradiction there play itself out as you know with astonishing speed, they moved from you know targeting people who are undocumented and also had like an arrest or a criminal conviction to just people who are undocumented to people who are documented, right?
01:22:46
Speaker
and And then, you know, with their additional aim of undoing birthright citizenship, right? So the that's happening. And then, you know, one of the places where Trump is maybe walking that back is because people in Those industries that depend those workers are like, wait, wait, wait a minute. We we now don't have anybody to like bring in the crops or clean hotels. And, you know, those those two those two aims within the MAGA movement are importantly at odds.
01:23:21
Speaker
And trying to keep both of those factions happy is going to prove to be very difficult, I think. you know, one one last kind of big overarching question, like in this moment where all these political institutions are being ah debased and people, and people's eyes, legitimacy is running low.
01:23:40
Speaker
You know, I'm curious, you know, what does that mean for those of us that want, you know, a radically different set of social, economic and political arrangements, you know, especially you you know, things get so scary. I mean, I think, you know, you brought up the bringing of the National Guard. I'm thinking also of like sending hundreds of people to CECOT, I think was another big turning point.
01:24:02
Speaker
ah You know, just a couple days ago, the United States attacked Iran. And again, like the way that the media and the Democrats frame this is this is all, you know, illegal. Instead, it becomes this, you know, they didn't go through the right channels, not as opposed like this is an authoritarian, you know,
01:24:20
Speaker
hugely draconian, horrible set of policies that is enriching and strengthening you like a horrible group of people. I don't know. I mean, like as more people sort of recoil, I think the question is, it's like, what does that mean for those of us that you do want to actually see these and so institutions abolished or gotten rid of something else?
01:24:40
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a funny, it's a funny place to be because it's like, yeah, I also want to destroy the state, but not like this. It's, I mean, I think from necessity, we are going to need to step up our game in terms of building counter institutions, right? Like, as our already anemic welfare state is just completely bled dry, we're going to need to find other ways of making sure that people have their needs met.
01:25:11
Speaker
And that is a tall order, especially because we're going to have to do that at the same time that we're you know resisting the coercive force of the state in the form of, you know at present, mass deportation, and but trying to stop yet yet another forever war, and trying to force some sort of action to slow the deterioration of the natural environment. like There's there there' a lot on the agenda fairly urgently right now.
01:25:44
Speaker
And one of those things is going to have to be building different kinds of organizations creating new institutions that are going to help people survive in the meantime. Of course, that's always been part of any like really serious radical political movement that at some point...
01:26:01
Speaker
The legitimacy shifts away from the state and toward the political movement, and people stop looking to the government to you know provide for their needs and start looking to the but movement.
01:26:14
Speaker
And the the movements that are prepared for that shift tend to do better in the long term than movements that are caught to caught off guard when that happens. A thing that's weird about our present moment is that that seems to be being just thrust upon us rather than coming as a development of the the movement gaining strength, right? It's like the the government is just abdicating responsibility, which is going to result in and enormous human suffering, but also is likely to be self-defeating because
01:26:45
Speaker
you know the The reason that states took on welfare functions was mostly not humanitarian. It was mostly that it provided them legitimacy. And when they give up those functions, then they lose โ they're just giving up a major source of their legitimacy.
01:27:04
Speaker
In the long term, I i don't think that's a plan that really works out. Yeah, it just seems like they're hoping to kind of like, you know, plug in the gaps with more oppression and more propaganda.
01:27:16
Speaker
You know, like you said, I mean, like the the creation of welfare programs was ah way to ensure social peace. You know, if people aren't being fed or housed or there's not basic standards, then they're going riot.
01:27:29
Speaker
You know, they're going to get bred by other means. Yeah. yeah So, I mean, that's ah that's a good way of at leastur and at least having like a conduit in which people can, in theory, address certain concerns, you know even if still sort of this you know class domination essentially remains in place, that there is some democratic veneer. There's a way for people to redress and go about trying to implement changes, at least on the edges or aesthetically.
01:27:58
Speaker
And that seems to be just being thrown out the window. And yeah, where that leaves leaves us in the end is is anybody's guess. But obviously, it's not popular. I mean, like, I think the big, beautiful bill I saw was like at like 27% support. I mean, that's even underwater with Trump supporters, it seems like.
01:28:15
Speaker
Uh-huh. Right. ah Well, what what are you working on ah these days? Do you want to plug anything or... I am just about done with a my next book, which will be a history of policing in Portland, um starting with settlement and ending just after the 2020 uprising.
01:28:35
Speaker
Interesting. That sounds really cool. I hope so. Where will that be put out at? AK Press is publishing it. Awesome. Does that have a release date? It should be out early next year.
01:28:46
Speaker
i think February is what they're looking at at present. Do you have any ah big reveals you want to tease us with? or ah but not Not a question I had considered previously. One of the... Well, in a way, this isn't surprising, but it still kind of shocked me that how regularly the same...
01:29:06
Speaker
Like, group of characters will recur over and over again across decades. And it's like, you can be you can leave office completely disgraced as the mayor, and then be the mayor's chief of staff, like, five years later,
Surprising Allies and Conference Insights
01:29:22
Speaker
right?
01:29:22
Speaker
it's And it's like, what once you reach a certain status in society, you just you you can only fail up. You don't actually lose that status. And so that that's a theme that comes across in the book that I was that surprised me as I saw it play out like, you know over a couple centuries.
01:29:39
Speaker
Awesome. We'll definitely look forward to the book. That sounds great. and Thanks for taking the time. Yeah. Good talking to you.
01:30:22
Speaker
Okay, once again, we are graced with the presence of Vicki Osterweil, author of Defense of Looting, and also a recent presenter at Socialism Conference, which I'm surprised about. I can i just see a back room somewhere where one of the organizers is like, we're bringing the looting lady here? Like, what's going on?
01:30:43
Speaker
Yeah, i I did think probably it would be like the biggest collection of my enemies and haters that I had ever been around. But like, it was all right, actually. There were lots of cool, nice people there. Awesome. Yeah, hello.
01:30:54
Speaker
Thanks for having me. So we're going to be talking today. This episode has a couple interviews with people talking about logistics of policing, counterinsurgency, ICE, and everything. Those were recorded before the bill,
01:31:08
Speaker
so-called Big Beautiful Bill was passed. Now it has been passed. We're going to be talking about sort of your reactions to that, thoughts, but also talking about Vicky's essay that came out in April, published on a Collective of Anarchist Writers or CAW, which is a new project we encourage people to check out.
01:31:25
Speaker
Talking about your thoughts on the Trump administration 2.0 and sort of the logistical shortfalls of their project and how social movements and people opposed to the current order can push back against that. And just sort of wanted to talk to you, like, how do you feel that that holds up to today?
01:31:47
Speaker
you feel like the arguments that you are making then still hold weight?
Budget as a Statement of Intent
01:31:51
Speaker
But ah let let's start off in talking about the bill. What are what are people's thoughts? Yeah. I mean, we were when we were talking about the bill, there was always this question of of what was actually going to be in it, that there was sort of a ah distortion of what the normal budget reconciliation process was.
01:32:08
Speaker
And there were a lot of things that were going into the bill that ended up not being in the final version. Now that we can see the final version, i think that there's a couple of things that we have to sort of keep in mind.
01:32:19
Speaker
The first is... What are budgets, right? Budgets are, you know, in in political science talk, we'll we'll talk about them as statements of intent, essentially, right? It tells us what an administration wants to do, not what they're going to do necessarily, but what they want to do.
01:32:36
Speaker
Now, traditionally, that is supposed to be what they're going to do. But as we know, with this administration, things like congressional oversight of of funding is not necessarily a high priority. And so it gives us a statement of intent.
01:32:49
Speaker
And what does that tell us? Well, it tells us that what their intent is, is exactly what we've been saying, I think, on this show. And I think what people like Vicky have been saying for a long time, which is that the goal here is about creating a state which is capable of engaging in domestic repression, right? that To create a state that is capable of consolidating power in in an executive branch, to create a state that is capable of having centralized authority.
01:33:19
Speaker
in an American political system in which power traditionally is very fragmented, and right? It might not feel that way sometimes, but if you really look at the many, many, many, many many layers of American governance, politics here is is deeply, deeply fragmented.
01:33:32
Speaker
So it tells us that they they are willing to cut back social services and boost up domestic policing, right? This kind of Schmittian concept of the state that we had talked about sort of maybe in December, January, February, where on this show, we were talking a lot about how If you really look at the core of what they're doing, it's a sort of extreme neoliberalism, right? This kind of idea that what the role of the state is, is to essentially use force to guarantee the stability and profitability of markets, right? And then to create as much market space as possible.
01:34:04
Speaker
I think we're that the budget is very much in a direction of intent, sort of indicating that that's where they're going still, right? You see this with the increase in the Homeland Security budget. You see this with the increase in in the ICE budget specifically.
01:34:18
Speaker
But I think the other thing to keep in mind, and this is sort of the counterpoint, That doesn't mean that those things will happen or that those things will be effective. The kind of liberal freakout that's happened over the budget is that, oh my God, we are now in fascism, right? Not in a process in which authoritarianism is consolidating, but we are in fascism because they have stated the intent essentially through the budget to do that.
01:34:44
Speaker
But the reality of that is, we've been saying this from the beginning, and I know we'll talk a lot more about this on this segment, but the reality of that is that Dictatorships take a long time to consolidate.
01:34:55
Speaker
They take a decade plus in cases where it's successful to really consolidate. And those are in places with, you know, political histories that have much more of a sort of affinity for authoritarianism, that have stronger political parties, that have much less fragmented structures of governance.
01:35:13
Speaker
It takes a long time to do that, even in a small place like, say, well, not small, but comparatively small, like, say, Turkey, right? Or in a place that is geographically as large, but population-wise much smaller, like, say, Russia, right?
01:35:28
Speaker
dictatorship took a long time to consolidate in those places. And we have to keep this in mind. So we can take an intent from this. And I think that that needs to steer strategy that needs to steer our analysis. It needs to steer how we read what they're doing.
01:35:43
Speaker
But what we can't do is fall into the trap of say, throwing our hands up and going, well, it's fascism now we're done because all that's happened is that we've caught their in intent. Yeah.
Isolationist Policies and Global Impact
01:35:54
Speaker
But we haven't caught the reality of that situation yet. like We are still very much in the midst of that fight. Just from the like from the from a pure theory perch, push back a little bit on the neoliberalism intensified because I think one of the key components of neoliberalism and neoconservatism as it adjusted it โ was an insistence on free trade and global markets and using them effectively. And I think one of the things that is both so chaotic and has presented a lot of opportunities, but also is fundamentally different about Trump, even Trump two versus Trump one is like the the really pure isolationism, the tariff stuff, which you know is starting to hit, but hasn't fully hit yet.
01:36:32
Speaker
and And I also think that from a perspective of like you know from ah From a neoliberal perspective, like part of what you're trying to do with neoliberalism is like do a lot of nice talk about democracy and diversity and plurality.
01:36:47
Speaker
That's really, really important for neoliberals. And you know i think that this administration is is pretty insistent on, and needless to say, ah not doing any of that. Even the most basic sort of hat tip to the existence of racism and racial capitalism like DEI was, right which is a very bare minimum thing.
01:37:05
Speaker
is anathema. and this they they cannot They cannot abide it. So I think that that on the one hand, and and I think that that part of what's happening here is is this constant duality, just like you were saying, Tom, about intention versus can they achieve it.
01:37:20
Speaker
like I think there's this really important moment we're in now where there is real continuity, right We are in a process, a political process of so solidification, policies that have been evolving and moving basically in one direction across every political moment since September 12th, 2001. And like I think like we've been in this sort of long, slow, or maybe even the Brooks Brothers riot in 2000. We've been in this long, slow process.
01:37:45
Speaker
fascist coup that is itself a consolidation of reagan that is itself of course a consolidation of white supremacist colonialism that was forced into compromises over a series of of extremely intense struggles and and you know from you know the the abolitionist movement and and more etc etc so there's so those continuities are so vital and if we don't look at them and if we don't say you know as you said as you both are pointing out like you know these liberals are sort of like oh my god, this is like a fundamental transformation of priorities for the United States. It's like, no, my friend, it is not.
01:38:16
Speaker
Also, It is something different. The absolute refusal to listen to courts, the absolute disdain with which it holds the um economic apparatus, the trade apparatus, the the the disregard for legality, which was, after all, designed to make America the richest place on Earth through soft and hard imperialism, like cultural imperialism, war, violence abroad, right? like there There was...
01:38:45
Speaker
This system was built over 50 years at that minimum to make America the most powerful, consistent you know global hegemon that has obviously been collapsing already.
01:38:56
Speaker
But the the fervor with which they refuse to participate in those parts of the international global order, the role of the U.S., both from us it something like USAID, all of those things, like they do represent a change.
01:39:14
Speaker
And they represent a continuity. And that's obviously confusing and weird, right? And so like we have to hold both of those things together. So similarly, in terms of that, I am terrified by what the bill does to healthcare in particular. I think that the Medicaid stuff is really, really scary.
01:39:29
Speaker
I think that healthcare care has been... The main angle of attack, counter-revolution um since 2020, you know, I think that the that the Biden administration really wielded COVID as a counter-revolutionary cudgel with extreme efficiency and effectiveness. And that has only accelerated under Trump. And I think that the attacks on health care and this and and are are really are terrifying and people are going to lose their lives and people are already losing their lives.
01:39:51
Speaker
Hospitals are already closing, right? It's a nightmare. And, not but, and we're living in this situation where they're about to find out why all of those things were put in place, like why the state does that.
01:40:06
Speaker
As you're saying, it takes decades to consolidate a dictatorship. And like they're just trying to like blitzkrieg the consent into place over six months without any real...
01:40:18
Speaker
capacity for for building the consent, right? Like a lot of people are saying like the manufacturing consent machine goes, you know, there's like a joke going around, you know, but like, I don't think they're manufacturing consent anymore. i don't think that's an accurate description of what's happening.
01:40:30
Speaker
um i was talking with Ayman Markadam, ah who's the host of like Politically Depressed on their podcast about this and like, you know the the He was sort of saying it hasn't been that for for the six months. And I think so we are in something different.
01:40:42
Speaker
And it is the same thing it has been since 2001, since 1980, since 1492. And I think what is scary about the bill is precisely that it does, in fact, demonstrate. And if they can pull it off, it would be a massive reorientation of funds and resources towards pure internal repression.
01:41:05
Speaker
And also,
Agricultural Policy and Labor Changes
01:41:06
Speaker
they are already having extreme infrastructural problems doing raids on weed farms in California, right? And so, like, throwing money at a, you know, I mean, throwing billions of dollars, like, multiplying the budget of a department by 10 times, like they're doing with ICE, like, as many people are pointing out, it would make it one of the largest armies in the world by funding.
01:41:26
Speaker
Absolutely true. Also, dumping money on an organization does not make it more capable, right? Like it has to, it has to materially scale up. It has to add staff. It has to find people willing to do it. And like, you know, there's a theory here of some kind, I think, which is like you immiserate the entire population and I'm like, ice agent will be the only job available.
01:41:48
Speaker
I think that's like a, you know, that's like a There's a logic there of a kind, but it's but it's really sloppy. It's going really fast, and it's really unpopular so far.
01:41:58
Speaker
so So what I would say is like the bill was maybe the biggest material step they have taken towards really, really, really, other than the doge stuff, really, really ripping apart the foundations of society. that it's It's a real big step in the war on society.
01:42:12
Speaker
And it's also a really, really visible and obvious one that leaves a lot of us with nothing left to lose. Yeah, I think it's interesting. I mean, you mentioned like the manufacturing of consent part. I mean, I feel like a lot of people that voted for Trump thinking that he was a populist, that he was going to lower grocery prices.
01:42:30
Speaker
There would be more buy-in for a lot of the repressive stuff if they actually delivered on improving people's material conditions, which I think a lot of people โ you know, thought that somehow he was going to do or wanted to do.
01:42:44
Speaker
And I think as time goes on, I think it's just more and more clear that not only was that a lie, but they're going to, in fact, make everybody's lives worse. Literally, like, as you were saying, they're shuttering rural hospitals, you know, people are going to be kicked off of healthcare. care I mean, I think...
01:43:02
Speaker
The best example of this is Trump's agricultural secretary recently came out and said, oh, well, it's OK that we're going to deport all of these working class farm workers that have been here for decades.
01:43:14
Speaker
Trump was sort of mentioning that they might be given some sort of work program. She was pushing back on that after all of the right wing talking heads like freaked out and said, no, we can't possibly have this.
01:43:26
Speaker
you know, amnesty for these people that have been here for decades and decades and and do this integral job to the economy. We're going to deport them, but it's okay because all these people that are on Medicaid and Medicare that quote, aren't working, which is actually not true. A large majority of them do have jobs or are working, or maybe they can't work because they have medical problems.
01:43:48
Speaker
You know, we're going to put them in the fields and that will solve the problem, you know, and also we're going to fix the shortage with automation So robots will just take it over. So, I mean, again, like it's just so clear, like what their vision is. It's, it's, it's attacking everybody. And you've brought this up too. I mean, that's one of their things. They're not actually giving one section of the population information.
01:44:11
Speaker
a little bit more of a sweeter deal they're actually saying no everybody's fucked so and and you know like as you mentioned like they're not improving people's like um conditions but like they're actually and they're making them worse but like all they had to do was keep them the same so like in some ways like in some ways the thing that i think is like the most important like information chart was like this one that this weird this bloomberg guy released which was like ah a chart of small business confidence from like 2010 2025 or whatever and In 2016 to 2020, there was a massive spike, like 700% spike in small business confidence. right
01:44:48
Speaker
So you know everyone talks about Biden's vibe session, but like no, Trump had a vibe bubble. And if all the small businesses think they're doing better than they've ever done before, you know and if you work for one of those businesses, like you're going to believe your boss basically, or like you know you're just going to hear him say that over and over again. right like That vibe is going to be good.
01:45:08
Speaker
So people thought the economy was better. When in fact, it was largely continuous, contiguous with the previous, and but you know, got a little worse, but it was like largely the same. So all Trump had to do was keep it the same and probably would have benefited from the same thing. But like day one, you know, this tariffs thing, like, you know, the car dealers, the real estate brokers, like they like his base, like they're going to eat that fast. Like, and it's, and it's like, you can see it in that chart.
01:45:36
Speaker
the The second administration, it starts to climb again, the small businesses. And then like ah around February 1st, when the cuts start hitting and the tariffs are getting announced, it falls off a cliff, right? So like they actually didn't even have to do that much, and they flubbed it.
01:45:50
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and Vicky, i'm I'm interested in your read on this kind of a thing. You know you brought this up. my My late father used to always say this too, that you know if they make the new deal go away, they'll remember really quickly why they had it in the first place, right? right
Internal Conflicts within Trump's Administration
01:46:05
Speaker
You were talking about how there's clearly moves that are happening here which seem in contrast to the attempt to consolidate power, right?
01:46:13
Speaker
Gutting USAID, for example, killing the ah farms to food bank program, which was like a major farming subsidy for a lot of farmers in the Midwest or, you know, shutting down like the USDA office that helps facilitate farm loans, you know, like real basic things like this, you know.
01:46:31
Speaker
I've been trying to make sense of this myself and, you know, where I've kind of landed on this is that there's a combination of two dynamics going on, one of which is sort of ideology clashing with reality, right? Where it's sort of a dog caught the car situation. Like all of these people had all of these conspiracies about how everything worked and then they ended up in charge and things didn't actually work that way. but And now they don't know what to do.
01:46:55
Speaker
um Between that and and a war of competing factions, right? Right. Within the administration between, you know, kind of the AI tech sector, the kind of Christian nationalists. Right. The Steve Miller kind of white supremacist, Steve Bannonite fascist types.
01:47:11
Speaker
Right. and the various different projects make up this administration. And that seems to be leading to some weird dissonances. Right. right where they're doing things like, for example, raiding a farm like they did in Ventura.
01:47:22
Speaker
The day before we're recording this, Vicky already mentioned this, but they raided a weed farm in Ventura, California, and it sparked a major riot on the highway, at the farm, things like this. And they had to bring dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of agents out there to to do that raid, which is expensive and which is not by any measure the most efficient way to actually detain and deport people. So We're watching these things kind of happen, which seem to be contrary to the way that a coherent, competent attempt at consolidating power would operate.
01:47:56
Speaker
And I'm curious as to what your read on that is. like Why do you think that they're doing things that at times seem counterproductive to that overall goal? Yeah. i mean i think So I think you could have done a lot worse understanding the politics of the last 10 years by just taking โ Just believing everything Trump said at face value, like you'd be wrong about some like details, but you would sort of be right about a lot more stuff than a lot of the pundits who sort of imagine that there's some sort of secret message constantly going on or that he can't possibly mean it.
01:48:24
Speaker
I think they really successfully. So I think in in the in the first administration, i think that they thought that their resistance that they faced was genuinely driven by the Republicans, the rhinos, as they called them, Republicans name only, which is like the, you know, the center right to right wing Republicans who also understood how the Washington consensus worked, right, who tried to maintain things in an orderly fashion, and the Democrats who tried to sort of, you know, who use the hashtag resistance and try to build off of the street movements. But I think in In many ways, they they really failed to understand what happened in that administration, which was that they had a very big street movement.
01:49:02
Speaker
We had a very big street movement. they it in the in the Starting with the airport shutdowns and even with January 24th, which was the the sort of riot on his inauguration day that led to a big wave of repression against largely anarchists and anti-authoritarians, those two things sort of fought the administration to a standstill.
01:49:19
Speaker
And in the intervening years, the administration has โ or the the the organization, the Trump movement, decided that those people who they could see were their real enemies, right? Whereas I think actually the Democrats and the Republicans who kept him โ like reigned in โ made him a legitimate figure in a way that he wouldn't have been had his sort of you know most Bannonite desires or whatever, or just his most openly corrupt desires been and and allowed to flourish.
01:49:45
Speaker
So in the meantime, they have successfully captured the media, I think totally. I think that the New York Times now is largely indistinguishable from post-911 Fox News most of the time.
01:49:57
Speaker
I think they have like fully captured the media apparatus They've also moved themselves entirely into you know these media spheres of paranoia and conspiracy, and they have bought out everyone who resisted, and they've purged the Republican Party.
01:50:11
Speaker
This was an extremely effective tactic for squeaking by another electoral win, right? Because they were beating a Democratic Party that โ I mean, the less said, the better. you know They โ kicking in a rotten door, right, to get back into the electoral um situation. And there was every opportunity to stop them, you know, from January 7th onward, and none of them were taken, right?
01:50:34
Speaker
Okay. So the point isn't to litigate that so much, but to say โ but they and And this is sort of the thesis of the piece, is that they achieved what they achieved, both in the first administration and again in this one, without any real political struggle or organizing. you know If you talk about Erdogan or Putin or Modi or even someone like Jobbik in Hungary, right? like or or Or indeed in Italy, like that their party there as well, who's now โ an acronym is escaping me. Forgive me for not remembering all the fascists' names off the top my head. Fuck them. I hope they all die in rotten hell and I never have to think about them again.
01:51:08
Speaker
Okay, so that those those organizations, those movement leaders, those people went through decades of political organizing and struggle in a real way, in a real material way that like sharpened some of their analysis of how the state functioned and allowed them to carry out internal structures within the bureaucracy of the state while also appeasing society to the extent that was possible, right?
01:51:32
Speaker
And repressing what wasn't appeasable. The Trump apparatus, never mind that Trump has lost his charisma and lost his sharpness, it's just a fact. like the The guy just doesn't have the juice anymore. He's not funny anymore. right like he just He just doesn't have it.
01:51:45
Speaker
Despite the
America's Geopolitical Assumptions
01:51:46
Speaker
the rot at the top, they also purged all the reasonable people from the wings in order to, as one voice, speak, you know, squeak by in an election.
01:51:57
Speaker
And they did that. It was effective. It worked. So they just keep doubling down on that strategy, which is like purely image-based, purely media-based, purely spectacle-based. And that doesn't necessarily mean it won't be successful because they do, in fact, wield the reins of power over the largest, most powerful empire in the history of the world.
01:52:16
Speaker
So it's not as though they couldn't make it work like this. But, you know, if you compare him, I do think the dog that caught the car is like the right thing. If you compare... These are the people who believed the lies that like the neocons told, right? And like like the the people around Dubya, right, you know the Yale grad and like all those sort of โ those classic you know Washington insider types who pretended he was a cowboy.
01:52:40
Speaker
like They made up a bunch of lies about the state, and they hijacked a lot of libertarian and far-right fringe talking points about taxes, and but they didn't believe it And you can see it and that they got into power and they just increased spending, obviously.
01:52:53
Speaker
And the Trump administration has a lot of people who really believe that stuff. They really think the universities are their enemies. They really think that hospitals are their enemies. They really think that the Democrats are their enemies. And it makes them ruthlessly effective at crushing things.
01:53:08
Speaker
And I do think they have, I don't, I don't see the path by which the current political and electoral system recovers. ah That seems less likely to me than um any other variety of much more disruptive and upsetting situations and scenarios. But anyway, the ultimate, the ultimate kernel, I think, of that ah that confusion that they experience is a genuine belief, conscious or unconscious, that America, there is something implicitly
01:53:41
Speaker
naturally true about America that means that it will be the biggest, most powerful country in the world, it will be the most important market, and it will always have control over this land mass, right, that the United States government will always control this continent.
01:53:55
Speaker
And that's because there hasn't been regime change here. It's, you know, other than England, it's the longest running regime, right, yeah on the planet. And
Immigration as a Repressive Project
01:54:02
Speaker
so i think what what they're doing is they're doing a lot of things that that are that look like regime collapse.
01:54:09
Speaker
And if it were happening somewhere else, we would be like, wow, that's, you know, that regime is falling apart. Not that it's not that that's going to be better. Not that that means there's going to be like a victory for justice or the left. Like there are a lot of ways that things get worse while it falls apart. Right. Obviously, we know our history well enough to know that, you know, the balkanization, like, you know, like.
01:54:28
Speaker
Isn't always like a good thing. That word doesn't like inspire a lot of confidence and desire. But also, i think his I think a lot of liberals and even leftists and like people maybe listening to this podcast also don't believe on some level that the US could collapse because it feels unimaginable because it has been...
01:54:45
Speaker
the scent It's the center of a global system that is so powerful, and it has been for so long. And none of us in our lifetimes have lived through a regime collapse. And as you say, as you point out, like it's also an extremely complicated. It's huge like geographically and in terms of population and in terms of market. like Federalism makes collapse really confusing.
01:55:05
Speaker
like It's not clear what it would happen, like how it would reduce the states, etc. So I think... I think there is a general and genuine belief shared by almost everyone, maybe in the world, maybe in the world, and this is you know propaganda and ideology, that the United States of America can't collapse.
01:55:22
Speaker
And I think like contra that, the constitutional regime is already over. I think it has already ended. i think we are in a new period. Again, that doesn't mean that period won't be called the United States of America. It doesn't mean that it it it couldn't be worse.
01:55:35
Speaker
But I think like when things are changing this rapidly and when they're going to war with society so aggressively... at the same moment that their street movement is not they their street movement has left the streets? like If y'all remember, like at this point in 2016, I think y'all probably do, like there was so much more street fighting with alt-right Nazis we had to do. like Where have the Nazis been?
01:55:58
Speaker
right like i mean Obviously, like on some level, they have ICE, they have the government, they don't need it. But those folks are still around. In fact, he explicitly on day one said, i will pardon you, be my paramilitary. Where's his paramilitary?
01:56:10
Speaker
like He has to fund it through ICE because like they're not actually in the streets for it. So none of these things are permanent. These are all descriptions of the current situation. And we are going to have to like hit really, really hard in many ways.
01:56:23
Speaker
But like you know I think I've been saying since April, since that piece, that like an uprising was coming, that these contradictions had to had to lead to conflict because they are extremely effectively ripping apart.
01:56:35
Speaker
the state in some ways at the same time that they're, and they're getting more and more effective at that at the same time that those movements are getting less and less popular politically.
01:56:45
Speaker
And I don't just mean in terms of polling, right? Obviously like polling is whatever, but like, you know, just on the street, like it's just not working for them. And so that's a, that's a contradiction that is leading to a confrontation that we are just starting to see in the ICE fight back.
01:56:59
Speaker
ah Yeah, I wanted to ask, like what do you all think about, there seems to be a consensus on the right. You hear this from Bannon, Charlie Kirk. I even just saw a clip of Nick Fuentes talking about this. I mean, as much stock as we want to put into these people, they were furious when Trump suggested that people would be given amnesty. And it seems like it's clear that the immigration aspect is like a core component of this administration's project this time around. Like that seems to be the big thing.
01:57:29
Speaker
And it seems like a lot of people too on the right are... basically saying like, well, as long as Trump does this with immigration, like it'll all like, I can stomach the attacks on Iran.
01:57:40
Speaker
I can go along with all this other stuff. I don't like, they didn't release the Epstein files. Like, I guess I can roll my eyes. You know, I wonder why, i guess I can go along with it as long as they do, you know, these mass deportations.
01:57:54
Speaker
And I don't know. I'm just curious, like how we see that. It just seems clear that that is the central project of this administration. I think that there's there's a number of things going on there. It's become that for sure, right?
01:58:08
Speaker
I don't think that's where it started necessarily. During the campaign, they had kind of launched all of these lines of attack against you know any number of different people throughout the kind of social space, right? And then when they got into power, they immediately weaponized all of that.
01:58:24
Speaker
And so you started seeing everyone from like, you know federal employees to, you know, people receiving food stamps to people here without documents. You know ah there was this massive pushback, lawsuits, protests, things like this that happened at the beginning at the same time.
01:58:41
Speaker
That the Department of Justice was getting gutted, right, both through cuts, but also people quitting. When the FBI was getting gutted, both through cuts and people quitting and Kash Patel threatening to shut down the national office.
01:58:54
Speaker
You've seen this all throughout the DOJ, ah where they just don't really have the capacity to fight back all of these lawsuits, all of these challenges, all of these whatever.
01:59:05
Speaker
And so what you've watched them do slowly is you've watched them kind of slowly drop certain campaigns or at least push them into the background, right? Immigration at the beginning of this administration was really complicated, I think, because on one hand, as Vicky, as you said, you know they kind of cobbled this coalition together to squeak them over the line of the election.
01:59:25
Speaker
One of the things that happened in that moment was that they brought together the kind of far right tech bro world and also the anti-immigration right who have very contrary interests.
01:59:36
Speaker
Right. And for a while, you saw this kind of very uneven approach to immigration where they were talking about increasing visa programs over here, but then like deporting more people over here. And it wasn't necessarily coherent.
01:59:50
Speaker
One of the things I've noticed is as Musk left, as that initiative to shrink the federal government became less and less popular or got enshrined into the budget bill, the focus, the rhetorical focus, the operational focus has shifted back into immigration.
02:00:05
Speaker
And that seems to be the place where they're willing to sort of consolidate and make their stand. What that tells me is that we're going to see a bit of a shift in approach. That you know if you read like the Project 2025 documents, part of the strategy is about...
02:00:19
Speaker
casting this really wide conflictual net as sort of an attempt to fragment an overwhelming opposition. And then, you know, as the situation kind of consolidates a little bit, sort of focusing on areas where you're making headway.
02:00:31
Speaker
And so where are they making headway? Well, they made a lot of headway in the budget. They're making a lot of headway with immigration, right? Or so they think, or they're at least making headway there more easily than in other areas. And so we're really watching a consolidation there. But I think that there's also a sense in which We're watching the politics of the administration define itself a little bit more clearly around that question. And they're taking a side in an internal debate within MAGA world that they've sided with Stephen Miller over the sort of like AI tech bro set.
02:01:02
Speaker
And that's an interesting shift, right? They brought those people on just like they brought on the kind of crystal moms through Jr. and the weird conspiracy theorists through Tulsa Gabbard. Like they brought all these people in.
02:01:14
Speaker
to kind of squeak them over the line. But I think what we're watching is we're watching a contradiction get resolved. And so part of what that means is that it's likely they're going to be a lot more persistent.
02:01:26
Speaker
with this, that we're likely to see them continue down this path until they've run out of resources, because it really does feel like they have decided to stake their administration on this right now. I guess the thing that I would ask in that question, and this is kind of leads to what I was going to ask, ah maybe is the last thing we talk about.
02:01:44
Speaker
But, you know, again, we use this analogy of the dog that caught the car. I think one of the issues is that a lot of the people that sort of bought, I mean, there's the ideological fascist freaks that want like, you know, mass deportations, a white ethnostate.
02:02:01
Speaker
But a lot of the people that sort of went along with that bought the line that this is about crime. And if we get rid of, you know, a couple of people with face tattoos that are in MS-13, you know, then there'll be more stuff for me and everything will be great.
02:02:17
Speaker
And a lot of people are quickly realizing, no, this is actually an ideological project to purge non-white people from the country. We're going to go after all of the working class people that live around you, work with you. And, you know, for decades, like this is what we want.
02:02:31
Speaker
And think a lot of people aren't down for that. i think the other question is that what happens when like what we're seeing in Texas plays out where you have, you know, a, In theory, a conservative area that is coming up against the reality of the Trump administration, which is incompetent, isn't organized.
02:02:49
Speaker
They're coming up against logistical problems because of just the people that are in charge that are these bottlenecks, but also the fact that all of these agencies have been defunded and just are broken.
02:03:00
Speaker
So. What happens in that context? Or also just with the the budget bill where you have people that are about to be absolutely wrecked because of healthcare care and all these different programs being slashed.
02:03:14
Speaker
What does that mean for the terrain going forward? And I think the question for us is like, how do we interact with that? Because I think there is a real need to try to speak to people that are facing these new realities. I mean, so much of Trumpism is the idea that like, you know, white people aren't going to get it like everybody else's or straight white people, you know, it's just going to be trans people. It's going to be immigrants.
02:03:39
Speaker
It's going to be whatever. And I think what we're seeing is that this is actually much more deeply ideological. i mean, I've said this before in other places, but I mean, Trump has been able to bring the GOP into his orbit, but also MAGA itself has been changed. It's a much more bourgeois...
02:03:58
Speaker
Heritage Foundation project, you know, we're excited about kicking people off of food stamps and Section 8 or whatever. And I think that a lot of people are sort of waking up to reality that now they're part of the target population. So
Regime Change and Resistance Strategies
02:04:12
Speaker
I think...
02:04:13
Speaker
you know there's a real need to sort of interact with that and develop projects and organizing around that reality. And I don't know, i'm just curious your thoughts as we continue to see this play out in real time.
02:04:24
Speaker
That's the question, isn't it? How are people going to respond? That's the million dollar question. i think like, yeah, I think, you know, to to To speak to one small point as a way of sort of ah working up to it, I think that a lot of those people who sort of voted for this and who are saying I didn't vote for this to, you know, whatever, be the, the you know, the guy down the street, they they did vote for that.
02:04:47
Speaker
And on some level, they knew it. And I think what they are experiencing is the shame of what that actually looks like. Right. So I think they're not down for it to the extent that, as you said, as you said correctly, they are not really committed to like the, the you know, the chasing of a white ethnostate, but that's going to make them stay home.
02:05:06
Speaker
I don't think it's going to make them resist. So I think that like those people are never going to be the people we're going to, we want to aim for. Those are never going to be the people we want to organize our imaginary around, right, or anything like that. just Just saying that for that reason, not because I disagree with the analysis.
02:05:20
Speaker
I do think a lot of them are like, whoa, that's not actually what I'm into, but only because it's too visible and it's too ugly, not because they don't like the theory behind it on some level. I think. And, you know, and that's whiteness, isn't it?
02:05:31
Speaker
But yeah, in terms of like the the the question of what's going to happen, you know, I think that there are a lot of different scenarios that we could sort of do on like a sort of, ah in a sort of I mean, I could sort of gloss some of them, right? I think like, you know, you get a counter coup from the capitalists, although i think that's much less likely now that the Silicon Valley people have been, have either kissed the ring or been sort of sidelined. But I think that there was, you know, the possibility of a sort of teal style, you know, counter coup that gets rid of Trump and like, you know, whatever, institute some kind of,
02:06:01
Speaker
you know unity government between Vance and Gadavan Newsom or something. I think you could see ah state pushed to the point of refusing to pay taxes or refusing to refusing the orders and then Trump forcing the issue and then having a sort of slow-moving secession crisis, which would not look anything like the 1860 secession votes that that happened, but would...
02:06:22
Speaker
would would sort of, there would sort of be de facto dissolution of the state into autonomous regions that could then accelerate into civil war.
02:06:33
Speaker
i think you could, Trump could literally just just die or have a stroke or a coma and then like, who knows what happens? I think like, and I think that there's a lot of different scenarios where an uprising really kicks off in a way that it leads to some of those scenarios I've just described.
02:06:50
Speaker
right So I think like one of the things about the United States is it's so big that both population-wise and geographically, that like you know you can't really just storm the Capitol in the same way that you can't you you know traditional revolutionary imaginations work, even if that still worked anymore, which it never really did, and it certainly hasn't for a long time, but whatever. like i think like that the that sort of clean kind of revolution thing doesn't doesn't make a lot of sense.
02:07:18
Speaker
And also... I think that that's a really likely scenario on some level, that revolution in its broadest sense, which is to say an overturning of the regime um and its replacement with something else, is is very likely. Whether or not that, what direction that comes from, I don't know, or what that looks like.
02:07:37
Speaker
In terms of what we can do, you know i think like you know there's a few things. I think like morale is a terrain of struggle. like I think like we have to not get stuck doom posting. I think it's really valuable that we think about things strategically because I think, Tom, as you were pointing out at the very beginning, like the way in which the way in which there is this contradiction between every headline being really scary, but in aggregate, it being really logistically ineffective.
02:08:03
Speaker
I think as people who are not Yeah.
02:08:09
Speaker
you know not we don't have any illusions about what the state is about what democracy was before trump we don't have any illusions about what this this settler colony born on slavery and genocide is but something we can contribute to people is to say yes This is open fascism and authoritarianism. Yes, this is trying to build a dictatorship.
02:08:28
Speaker
And no, they are not achieving it yet. And no, this is not how they would go about doing it. And we can resist them now. And they have not clamped down. like they you know They had a perfect red scare in the anti and the Palestinian anti-anti-Semitism stuff.
02:08:44
Speaker
There was this building Red Scare that like you saw universities like and, you know, liberal society like abandoning the, you know, you know, helping turn people in and firing people and ruining their lives.
02:08:56
Speaker
And, you know, with the exception of some of the very scary deportations that were driven by like Canary Mission and like whatever, like they have literally let that Red Scare fall apart.
02:09:07
Speaker
they They didn't maintain it. There are lots of ways in which โ and and you know they're they've they've disorganized the FBI. They've disorganized their internal their internal repressive apparatus, and they're putting all that money towards ICE. like They're sending ATF agents on ICE raids of like of you know of of sausage factories or whatever. like That is not โ that is โ yes, that is scary.
02:09:27
Speaker
Yes, that is an image of authoritarianism. Yes, that is an image of fascism. And also, it is an extremely ineffective fascism. But like most of the, a lot of what the Nazis achieved was invisible to a lot the civil a lot of the citizens.
02:09:42
Speaker
Like the purging of the disabled, the T4 program, for example, was a secret. Citizens, like they took people and they said, we're going to house them. you know We're going to get them through this economic crisis.
02:09:53
Speaker
and then they and And then they murdered disabled folks. right But they kept telling those parents, oh, we're still taking care of them. Here's an update of how they're doing. right therere They're doing everything as visibly as possible while being extremely ineffective. Man, like...
02:10:06
Speaker
That doesn't mean it won't work, and it doesn't mean it isn't fascism that they're trying to build. But what it does, it it is something that we can point out, that we can leverage, that we can be thinking about, um talking about, and building a movement about that isn't about defending ah status quo that wanted us dead just a little slower, but that also isn't...
02:10:27
Speaker
pretending that this is perfectly contiguous, because if we pretend that this is an exact continuity with the previous you know with previous experiences of government, we'll miss all the opportunities we're having right now.
02:10:38
Speaker
And if we miss those opportunities, then we won't be able to push for real power building. And some of those opportunities will be things like uprisings, and I think that we should be having, in small groups, in person, conversations about how our cities or our towns work logistically and where there are important resources that are available, where and how we could move in a way to guarantee that, you know, for example, how, what are moves we could make either infrastructural that would build mutual aid and dual power or infrastructural that would empty jails and destroy precincts and ICE offices.
02:11:14
Speaker
What are moves like that and targets we can have in our head so that when things pop off and they will pop off, we can, you help guide that energy towards doing real material lasting change rather than just an expression, ah discursive expression, rad though it is, of of our anger and our and our rejection.
02:11:33
Speaker
that's one thing we can be doing. And the other thing I think we can be doing is trying to tap into like building local local networks as much as possible because these disasters are happening.
02:11:47
Speaker
The healthcare is being taken away. the you know This stuff is really scary. And the mutual aid networks that we' started to build that we've been building over the last five years, I think as a reasonable response to the lacks that were visible in the 2020 uprising, which was we don't have these sort of material structures to really make this persist.
02:12:06
Speaker
I think we should keep doing that stuff. And I think we should think as radically and expansively about what is possible as we can. How can we give each other medicine? If they're going to close down our hospital, how would we keep that hospital open?
02:12:17
Speaker
have a real ask Don't just ask that question. Sit down with your friends and really think about it. What would it require? Would you have to squat the hospital? How would you get pharmaceuticals? How would you convince the doctors to work there?
02:12:28
Speaker
If you had to get money, how would you fundraise? Maybe you wouldn't fundraise. Maybe you just take it over. right These are real questions that we can ask that will help us get rid of some of the despair, some of the fear, some of the, you know, chicken little, but that doesn't require us to pretend that nothing is happening, which I think has been a, it's ah it's a reflex I've seen a lot of like, this is just the same as before. And like, that's just not helpful because nothing is the same as before.
02:12:52
Speaker
Every situation is new. right? There's always continuity and there's always change. Right now we're in a period of pretty accelerated change and pretty intense ideological continuity. And we have to hold that contradiction, that messiness, that kind of that confusion, and we have to carve paths with it, I think.
02:13:16
Speaker
Thanks for listening to today's episode of The Beautiful Idea, news and analysis from the front lines of anarchists and autonomous struggles everywhere. Catch you next time.