(Listen to Episode 8 on SoundCloud)

Twin Trouble is on the Channel Zero Network

A network of several anarchist & anti-authoritarian podcasts across so-called North America.

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You are tuned into Twin Trouble, a podcast about abolition and revolution. We are twins, we like trouble.

And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today, some trouble – trouble against the system.

I’m Jason

I’m Jeremy

WE ARE

TWIN TROUBLE!!!

Jeremy:
In this episode, we are pleased to have a chat with esteemed Harvard professor and historian of Anonymous Gabriella Coleman on current affairs in hacktivism and whistleblowing.

Jason:
We are also going to talk a bit about Jan 6th, the first anniversary of the right wing insurrection having just passed earlier this month. We’ll discuss the state of MAGA and their cries of “persecution” and “political prisoners” with regard to the ongoing criminal cases and congressional investigations into the failed coup attempt.

Jeremy:
We’ll also talk briefly about our antifascist video game Smash MAGA: Trump Zombie Apocalypse, we just released a new multiplayer version, so check that out.

Jason:
Lastly, we also interviewed a member of the band La Armada, whose music we feature in this episode.

LETS GET INTO IT!

(MUSIC BREAK)

Jeremy:
We have a special guest today, Gabriella Coleman, many of you know her as biella. We go way back. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Welcome! How have you been?

Biella:
It’s great to be here, I’m in Montreal for one last day before moving to the states tomorrow.

Jeremy:
Wow, it’s been a minute, I know you’ve obviously covered Anonymous. You’re a very highly respected and accomplished person, not just with your university work, you’ve done books, articles, podcasts about hackers, everything – technology, ethics, activism. So we wanted to ask you, in light of recent events, how has so much of the media coverage about Anonymous, and hackers in general, how do they get it so wrong, like, how?

Biella:
Yeah, I mean, so first, I think, it’s important to note that there are journalists and others who definitely do get it right. It’s those that really decide that they want to go deep, and really dive in, and talk to a lot of people. Those that kind of get it wrong, what often happens is that they kind of glom onto one or two individuals, the individuals that are kind of willing to work with the journalists, maybe they kind of over-inflate their role, and this is with Anonymous, right? And when you have a source like that, it’s hard to refuse, and what happens in the case of Anonymous, which is this very distributed, decentralized, collective of collectives, a journalist will sort of portray Anonymous as having either a leader, or just a couple of people who are the single movers and shakers. And so if you’re just relying on one person, you’re going to get a lot wrong. And so that’s one of the problems with covering Anonymous. In terms of hackers, I guess there’s a lot of misconceptions around addiction and hacking, criminality and hacking, and I think journalists are trying to kind of oversell a sensationalist story. And there’s definitely a crop of them that have been working on the technology beat, and end up falling for these sorts of traps.

Jeremy:
Right, that’s an interesting point that you had said about how the media kind of like wants to fixate on personalities, so they could maybe sell a human interest story, and in specifically with the case like Anonymous, there could never be a leader, or a founder. Obviously the whole idea is decentralized and leaderless, so for the news to pick somebody, somebody who’s self appointed, and – we’re kind of beating around the bush here, we’re talking very specifically about Kirtaner, right? I mean, the coverage in numerous articles in the past couple months, the Atlantic – a few others. The guy outed himself, named himself and declared himself a self-appointed founder, and is kind of soliciting these media interviews, and causing all kinds of controversy, I just wanted to know what your thoughts are on it.

Biella:
Yeah, so, I mean, have we named any names? Maybe we don’t need to name any names. But, yeah, recently in 2020, someone came forward, and was very much involved in the early history of Anonymous, the trolling era, right? When Anonymous was used for ultra-coordinated motherfuckery, as it went back then, and often causing a lot of pain and grief in the process. And so recently someone came forward, Kirtaner, who was very involved, very important in that early trolling era. And there’s no reason to really doubt his role, he had a lot of documentation, he founded a board called 420chan, and there was an invasion board, and the invasion boards are where a lot of the trolling raids came off. But, he kind of over-portrayed himself as a kind of leader, a founder, of Anonymous. And then there was a very big article in the Atlantic that featured him, and the article itself was careful not to portray him as this single leader founder, although it so overwhelmingly focused on him, it kind of catapulted him into the limelight, and there was some tweets that kind of mentioned he was a founder. And all of a sudden it kind of just took off, people went with it. It was repeated in places like NPR Marketplace. I even contacted the journalists that’s not quite right, they never responded to me. And it’s just ridiculous, it’s like again, there are movements where you could identify founders, right? The Free Software Movement – Richard Stallman. He had an idea, he created a nonprofit, and even then, the movement itself went farther beyond him, right? It was only possible because of sharing the UNIX source code, or something like that. But with something like Anonymous, whether it’s the troll era, or the hacktivist era, there were so many different groups, different boards, and just the way that operations, whether it was the trolling operations or the hacktivist operations came into being, trying to locate one individual as the progenitor and generator of everything, is almost ludicrous. But again, it’s just easier to tell a story with a single person, right? And Kirtaner is very charismatic, he’ll talk to you for a very long time. So it’s just easier to go that way. I mean, what are your thoughts, you were involved in Anonymous, right?

Jeremy:
Yeah, well – for one, I’m definitely not involved at all anymore, with the day to day stuff about Anonymous, I’m definitely not even allowed to –

Biella:
Right, not at all. You were, once.

Jeremy:
Again, the whole thing about it is that it’s a very fluid phenomenon that’s made up of multiple people and multiple movements and ideologies and stuff like that so you can’t really – one person can’t really be considered an expert in this regard. As far as Kirtaner, you know, I’ve never even heard of him, he was definitely not around when any of the work that people were doing during my era. I’ve heard of some of the things he’s claimed to have done, and to be honest, I’m not even really all that impressed, I didn’t think any of that – most of the stuff he was involved with, didn’t really contribute to the evolution of Anonymous in any positive way – that whole transgressive chan era, that stuff he was talking about, I didn’t think it was the subversive type of transgressive, and to be honest, the more that I hear about what else he’s done, or what he’s doing now, it’s actually is kind of upsetting. Remember, this dude, he claimed recently that he was the one who targeted the epilepsy website, that had affected people, intentionally trying to give people epileptic seizures, right? And he said he did this because he wanted to sabotage the more hacktivist direction that Anonymous was moving in.

Biella:
Right, with the Church of Scientology, exactly.

Jeremy:
So why should anybody just welcome him back after he says he deliberately tried to set us back, now that he just named himself, which is another red flag, I mean who does that? That’s another red flag, obviously some warning signs, and then he just declared himself a founder, and he’s causing all these problems. And he’s also involved with some other sketchy shit, not to mention his sketchy history, there’s some documentation about how he’s definitely used racial slurs in recent history. And some of his associates are definitely federal cooperators, known federal cooperators, and he just thinks it’s all funny like it’s a game. And so there’s some people that are like there’s warning bells going off, cause they kind of see – Hell, I kind of see the same situation like when for example Sabu was out there, being a loud mouth on the internet, a very visible figure that the media actually kind of relied upon as a leader figure. I think the whole problem with the whole idea of leaders and founders is that it always ends up usually being a straight white dude and it just erases the history of the other work that people are doing, in Anonymous but hacktivist in general around the world, it’s more than- even hacktivism is bigger than just Anonymous, this shit dates back, it didn’t start in the chans.

Biella:
Absolutely – some were hacking, some were not hacking. The ones who were not hacking could have easily just used their real name or tried to convert the fame of Anonymous into a personal brand, and everything about Anonymous was configured not to allow that. So it’s so bizarre to have someone just be so public, and step forward into the limelight, and a lot of journalists just lapped it up. Extremely bizarre. And the other interesting thing too, the chans were really good at these raids, right? One of the big raids was against the Church of Scientology, that morphed into an earnest protest, and there was something powerful about having the swarm kind of come together on the internet. But if you look at the history of hacking and Anonymous, the sort of hardcore hacking that happened in late 2010 and all through 2011, part of 2012, that sprung into being after the chans. In September 2010, when a group started to fight for the right to share material, basically, to pirate. Operation Payback September 2010, that was the kind of group or node that then morphed into something that supported WikiLeaks, started to support the Arab Spring, and hackers involved in that era are the ones that started to hack for social justice. Not at all the Kirtaner-era trolls, right? That’s actually like a completely distinct genealogy and trajectory entirely.

Jeremy:
And I don’t want to go too much specifically into Kirtaner, we can talk about how one of the internal strengths and survival mechanisms of Anonymous is it’s hydra-like decentralization so in a way these figures ordinarily would be discouraged anyway, cause they’re not any real asset. But I want to say, how much of this is unconstructive internet drama, just unnecessarily airing dirty laundry, and sowing divisions – how much of this is that, or, is it genuine ideological differences that need this public debate, or are there people whose behaviors or associations need to be called out. Because obviously our enemies are paying close attention, just like we do them, about divisions in our ranks, and of course there’s also the danger that revealing embarrassing, damaging or incriminating personal details to the public, because of an internet beef, that obviously could have some disastrous consequences as well. So how do we go about dealing with these figures who are, like, starting all this shit on the internet?

Biella:
That’s a great question because all movements are going to have differences, right? You have to tolerate some differences, then there are some differences you don’t tolerate. You got nazis who show up, you just kick them super out. But others ones, like hey maybe we don’t like fame and attention, but sometimes we live in a society that recognizes individual action, and so someone wants to come along and say I want some recognition, maybe that’s something up for debate. And so that’s a great question, and in this case, I think it’s just important to sort of set the historical record straight. I think it’s important because the power of Anonymous is precisely the fact that there was no single person. One can still recognize that single individuals had an important role, and also say, the movement works so powerfully because they were willing to sublimate themselves for the collective, right?

Jeremy:
Exactly.

Biella:
And so it’s worth putting that out there, I mean, what’s a shame about some of the drama llama right now is that there has been a resurgence of hacktivism, right? Against the far right. There’s groups like DDOS that are keeping the torch of transparency and whistleblowing alive. Some of this drama does feel like unnecessary division, at this time, when everything does seem quite fragmented, as kind of hacktivism is resurging.

Jeremy:
Yeah like for example I don’t like how certain members of DDOS have been criticized or named, not to get into specifics here, but yeah DDOS is definitely the torch bearer right now. You said something earlier that I want to go into about the publicity-seeking nature, you know, hackers, often the downfall is often the urge to brag. And with publicity seeking, there’s hacktivists known for trying to create headlines. But I wanted to kind of bring up the opposite side of the coin, there’s also those in the hacker underground that kind of completely reject the outwards publicity seeking elements. Just because you get into something doesn’t mean that you should immediately deface or leak data from the target. Sometimes the option is to listen for a little bit, and the decision is when to act, when is the most effective. So what do you think about the difference between these approaches, why would somebody not want to engage with the media, or in particular engaging with researchers and journalists, like why would anyone want to talk to somebody, like you for example. And how does this also relate to the philosophy of non-disclosure, about not reporting vulnerabilities, we were talking about full-disclosure earlier. Why do you think this is, what are the strengths and weaknesses to either of these approaches?

Biella:
Sure, I mean, when it comes to hacktivism, which is different from disclosing vulnerabilities, quite different because they really go into different trajectories. But with hacktivism, publicity is good, because you drum up supporters, you maybe generate new hacktivists. On the other hand, it’s bad, because law enforcement and others are gonna shine their light. There’s always a trade-off between recruitment and safety, I guess. Some of the more recent hacktivists like Phineas Phisher, who I know was partly inspired by you and Anonymous, has been very effective at coming and going. They strike, Gamma Group, Hacking Team, and then they disappear.

Jeremy:
Smart.

Biella:
And they’ve never been caught, which is great. But what it also means is that the kind of collective memory around Phineas Phisher is very short. A lot of people don’t remember them, they tend not to inspire new hacktivists, I mean they do to some degree, there were the Decepticons in Brazil that were inspired by Phineas Phisher. So that’s one issue, the other one is that the media loves to focus on the messenger, and oftentimes the messenger is not important, it’s the message that they’re delivering. And so if they really really do keep anonymous, then it forces the media not to be even able to play that game. So it’s all kind of a trade-off there, when it comes to the hacktivism part.

Jeremy:
That’s a really good point, how you brought up how the sources themselves, when there’s a major disclosure, the news will often try to pick apart the person who had done it, and reveal all their faults, as if that maybe undermines the truths they’re exposing. And about these sources and the relationships they have with journalists or whistleblowing groups, like for example, when you were doing your research, you were never just observing from afar, you were always kind of close to the action. You’ve been on these channels, public and private. What challenges would there be, for somebody being in the position that you have been. Well for one, being kind of a public figure, cause you’re named, but also there’s a lot of journalists and researchers out there who have relationships with sources now who are willing to come forward with some pretty heavy stuff, and we see this stuff all the time, especially over the past year. So what type of advice would you give to people on both sides of the equation for someone who has some info who wants to do the responsible way of disclosing it, or, to the journalist who might be trying to nurture these relationships with sources, how could they protect each other but also be effective?

Biella:
Great question, I do think we are in an interesting era where if you really want to remove yourself, you really can, right? Which is kind of astounding. It was definitely possible, before, this Citizens Commission to Expose the FBI, they just sent what they had gotten from breaking into an FBI field office to journalists at the Washington Post, and other places. And were never caught, and were anonymous, until there was a big book written about them, once the statute of limitations ran out. But it’s much easier to do that today, and I do think that if someone really really wants to protect themselves, then that’s maybe the best route to go. That said, you have to be really technically proficient to use the available tools to hide your tracks. It’s still pretty difficult, and you can’t just be like ‘oh I’ll log into SecureDrop at the New York Times and drop off the material’. No, you need to be on Tor, you might have to be using a proxy, and a few other layers as well. But I also think cultivating journalistic relationships can be very fruitful as well, and so it’s certainly the case that you may not want to be anonymous fully until you do reach out to journalists. And I just think you have to do your homework, which journalists are you going to trust, why are you going to certain journalists. And actually I would recommend for anyone kind of interested in this topic, either intellectually or maybe for more pragmatic, practical reasons, to check out Barton Gellman’s book “Dark Mirror”, which is on his relationship with Edward Snowden and the Snowden leaks.

Jeremy:
Oh yeah, Dark Mirror, he wrote a book, he also worked with Snowden, right?

Biella:
That’s right, he did, and he was a little more removed than Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, but I actually think – I mean he’s an investigative journalists with just so many years, decades, of journalistic expertise, and just reading his book just made me think about that relationship in a slightly different way. And he was so thoughtful about the material, and what he could do with it, and what he did with it later. Because oftentimes, giving over material requires more research, and so which journalist is going to do that research? Not all of them are going to go the extra mile, and that’s something to think about. But again, if you have material, more than ever there are avenues for you to protect yourself, whether you’re going to work with a journalist, or if you want to be truly anonymous. Your options, you have multiple options, and you just have to think about what path you really want to take.

Jason:
A lot of people blame the rise of the alt-right and Trumpian fascism on internet culture, specifically the chan scene. Is that fair? We know QAnon, which has no historical lineage or association with Anonymous at all, and Anons have pretty much universally come out against it. But you do sometimes see some random anti-vaxxer or infowars clown rocking the Guy Fawkes mask, just like they get George Orwell or Rage Against the Machine so wrong. So what does the right adopting the aesthetic or tactics of hacktivism mean? Can you talk of the intersection, if there is any, between hackers and right-wing fascism?

Biella:
So, I’ll start with the beginning, about chan culture and the far right, and then we’ll get to QAnon and hackers. Certainly the image boards became really really important for the far right, and I think that’s interesting, insofar as Anonymous came out of the image boards as well, in 2008, 9, 10, and 11. And then actually Anonymous and the image boards, that relationship was kind of severed by 2012-2013, Anonymous was mostly on chatrooms and Twitter, they weren’t really recruiting on the boards anymore. I think it’s interesting because it goes to show that these boards, which are very problematic, insofar as they had a very freewheeling attitude where sort of anything goes, it shows how that people can be pulled in different directions. And so the fact that you had something like Anonymous and then later the far right come out of the boards, is like wow, it’s a good reminder that especially young people are cultivated and recruited into different movements. Add yeah, the boards in 2011, 12, 13, 14 became hotbeds for more reactionary politics, and how that happened and the different actors involved, that’s the subject of multiple, multiple books. But it was deliberately cultivated by distinct actors from far right nationalists to Steve Bannon to others who really saw the power of going to these boards where there were a lot of alienated, disaffected young people, and getting them kind of energized to fight a new cultural war. So that definitely happened, and then weirdly, QAnon also came out of these boards, later, and it goes to show they’re living media environments that shift, and also shift the type of people that are there as well. But it’s hard, like unless you’re on the boards following them, kind of piecing that history together afterwards is kind of difficult. And so some people just portray these boards as if Anonymous became the far right, you know what I mean? Which is again absolutely ludicrous. But on the other hand, if you’re not following it, I could understand why you might think that, because people use the term “Anonymous” on the boards. And then later on with QAnon, even though they didn’t fully take on the iconography of Anonymous, it would pop up here and there. And so to outsiders, they’re just going to think it’s a linear story, when it’s anything but linear. It’s groups that are there, and then they leave the boards, even QAnon. Boards like 8chan were very important to the initial genesis of QAnon, but then there were other boards that were not anonymous, other figures, QTubers who were very public, and evangelical groups off the internet, who cultivated QAnon. So in some ways I often see the boards as a place where things get seeded and start to sprout, but then the very cultivation of the garden of Anonymous, the garden of QAnon, that happens elsewhere. And what’s interesting about QAnon, is, they’re kind of a cult at some level.

Jason:
That’s “Qult” with a Q.

Biella:
Exactly. And Anonymous, the hacktivists, came into being to fight cults. You have like this full circle, it’s kind of wacky to think about, how you have a group that came into being as activists that fight cults, that like I said broke off the boards. And then ten years later, these boards basically helped seed a cult.

Jeremy:
Plus, Anonymous has always been about exposing the truth, fighting for the truth, and QAnon is obvious like an embodiment of this post-truth era we’re in, where basically people think they’re entitled to whatever facts they want, you could find whatever the evidence you’re looking for on the internet, because you have – you mentioned Steve Bannon – you have bad actors, you have the fascists, you have corporations and governments that are deliberately manipulating technology, messing with the algorithm. You got Cambridge Analytica, and the recent FaceBook leaks. That’s interesting how you mentioned how QAnon is kind of a top-down thing: the drops were signed, and we’re kind of learning who might have been behind some of it. It could go all the way up to like Bannon, Michael Flynn, not to mention the 8chan people who are known. That kind of leads to what I was going to ask you next, about these troll farms, these psyops and right-wing misinformation. So what is the solution, how do we fight this – I know you were talking about the troll farms in one of your podcasts. I know the right-wingers are complaining that their free speech is being violated because they got kicked off Twitter and all that. There are a lot of activists now, their thing is getting people reported, these deliberate bad actors of misinformation. What is the best approach, is that a solution? What should we be doing to fight that, but also maintain –

Biella:
Yeah, I think that’s just one of the toughest nuts to crack, solutions are not always very straight-forward. Certainly we don’t want a couple of corporations, FaceBook and Twitter, to have so much power, that’s always going to be a problem. People are sort of talking about, recognizing that these monopolies, which are controlling our public airwaves, but that private corporations are a problem. One can imagine a very decentralized tech mediasphere, but I still think some of these problems would very much exist, because if the far right and alt-right are able to create their own decentralized tech, they will also exist. And so having a sort of monopoly means that if they take action to deplatform them, then they have nowhere to go. And that’s potentially the positive. On the other hand, you just don’t want these companies to have so much power, and they don’t act transparently. We know that especially with FaceBook. They really really deliver content in ways that will maximize profits for them, not necessarily in the public interest. Again I think decentralizing tech won’t necessarily just magically solve the problem either. I actually don’t have great ideas for the tech landscape, I do think that something more fundamentally is broken in our society, and that’s what needs to be fixed

Jeremy:
No doubt, no doubt. First off, that’s a good point about the monopoly on social media, it’s worth pointing out that all these social media companies routinely crack down on antifascist type accounts all the time so it’s not like – And about what you’re saying the problem is bigger than the technology, most definitely – you can’t blame the rise of protofascism the past couple years exclusively on the internet, it’s very much a reflection of the haunting of racism that our society has, in the United States, since its birth, and it’s lingering still.

Biella:
That’s right, and it comes in these waves. Like when you read about the history of racism in the United States, like “Stamped From The Beginning”, it’s a great book on the history of racism in the US, like a massive book. It just comes in these waves. And media is always important for both the fascists and the antifascists, for the racists and the anti-racists. Whoever controls the means of communication, whoever is better at recruitment, whoever is better at getting their message out, dominates in one era. Certainly you don’t want to have very naive conceptions of free speech out there, that will just sanction what everyone says and does. So that’s one problem we’ve had in America, where there’s such a strong free speech tradition, so it’s easy to be just like “well anyone can do whatever or say whatever they want”. Well, maybe not. But we do live in an era where people can get the word out, and generally I think that’s a better thing. But what that means is that if you want to fight fascism, well you have to think hard about recruitment as well. Not just about fighting the fascists, but fighting the making of the fascists. That’s just as important, we have to remember not everyone is from the cradle of fascists.

Jeremy:
And a lot of them are made this way by these top-down media networks – like Fox News, OANs, the Breitbart Network, Steve Bannon’s stuff – it’s just disappointing talking to someone who has obviously been captivated by this QAnon cult. They’re just repeating soundbites over and over again, because the right is waging meme warfare, so people are just repeating. I kind of wanted to ask you another thing, and this has to do with another shift having to do with the supporters of WikiLeaks over the years, there’s been kind of a shift to the right, and it’s not even necessarily about Assange in particular, but it seems like the right wing is trying to claim this exclusive ownership of the right to free speech and the rights of journalists and stuff like that. How can you explain that, what’s going with that, why are all these WikiLeaks supporters also tweeting pictures of Pepe, what’s up with that?

Biella:
Yeah, WikiLeaks, basically lost the support of many liberals initially and then leftists eventually, especially after 2016, when WikiLeaks released emails right before the American election, and many believe that kind of helped get Trump into power, and that he was in part pandering to Trump to be able to get some sort of pardon, and become released. So he lost the support, very understandably, of a lot of people, just at the moment too that the far right, the reactionary right in the United States, was gaining visibility, and was facing deplatforming from the social media companies. So they started to cry free speech, that they were being persecuted. So then you have this crazy cultural shift happening. And also you have the rise of the rhetoric, of cancel culture, at this very same time as well, where certain people on the right were accusing leftists of squelching speech on campus, supporting cancel culture politics. And all this converged so that yeah basically the reactionaries on the right became known for advocating for a certain type of free speech, the kind of speech they were advocating for is not necessarily the type that I personally embrace. But I do think that it’s important for leftists to have a clear vision of free speech, and it’s important in relation to journalism and social justice. I don’t think that they should have some universal or naive embrace of free speech politics, but they do need some more contained version of why free speech is important. For two reasons: one, because we do have to protect our journalists, they don’t always do great jobs, and I’ll be the first to criticize any journalist that doesn’t, but you know what? The second that journalists don’t have independence and freedom, then you revert to a fascist society. You can’t have the government jailing journalists to get to their sources. That’s one really important thing. The other thing is that I don’t think speech is going to solve everything, at all. Some people say the problem with bad speech is that it needs to be confronted with good speech, and I’m like well, that doesn’t really work many times. But nevertheless, who were the first at Universities to often get booted – it’s the leftists, or those that support Palestine, you know?

Jeremy:
Exactly

Biella:
I work at a University and do believe it’s important to have some parameters of academic freedom. Again I’ve seen those on the left be the ones that have been the most crushed by the loss of academic freedom. So I do feel like leftists need a very clear but contained articulation of why free speech is important. One that doesn’t oversell it as panacea, but one that also doesn’t completely throw it under the bus either.

Jeremy:
Yeah, there’s a lot of nuance, but I also want to hone in on one thing you had said about how the right has adopted this shit, it’s like first off it’s disingenuous because the whole time when WikiLeaks was putting out stuff that exposed US imperialism and militarism and war crimes and stuff like that, they were all calling for all these people to be locked up. That type of stuff, the drones and all that shit right. So it’s really a marriage of convenience, it obviously helped him get Trump elected, but also the fantasies of how WikiLeaks is going to expose all these “satanic pedophile rings”. But when it comes to other leaks that mean something, like Cambridge Analytica, they’re dead quiet on it.

Biella:
Right, exactly, it’s just very bizarre, if some folks on the right would stand up precisely with other leaks, like Cambridge Analytica and stuff like that, then OK, they really do embrace this, but they do so very selectively.

Jeremy:
And predictably, Trump, you know everybody thought maybe he was going to pardon Assange, but of course all he did was pardon all his cronies, Bannon, all that shit.

Biella:
Absolutely, Trump is not the most reliable person to bet your future on. And you know, I was very disappointed in what had happened with Wikileaks, but on the other hand, and this is something I have talked about with you, I am glad that they put independent whistleblowing on the map. That was of great service, and other groups like DDOS and Xnet in Spain, have taken that model and done much better things with it, so I’ll always be grateful for WikiLeaks and Assange for that. And yeah, I don’t think he should be extradited for the Espionage Act.

Jeremy:
Absolutely not.

Biella:
It’s super frightening. It goes back to this speech issue. No, you can’t have journalists, or those those that support journalism, like whistleblowing platforms, be prosecuted under an act that can lead to the death penalty.

Jeremy:
Right. Or, support in any way the notion that the United States can just go anywhere in the world and snatch somebody up and bring them here and charge them.

Biella:
That’s right.

Jeremy:
You brought up some of the more recent work that’s been coming out – DDOS, etc. What has been happening over the past year? We talked earlier that this is almost a golden age of hacktivism and leaking. You got EpikLeaks, BlueLeaks, – what are some of the new stuff going on?

Biella:
Absolutely, 2020 and 2021 has been very exciting for hacktivism and leaking. In the summer of 2020, one of the most important acts of hacktivism was orchestrated a group, an individual, in the name of Anonymous, who acquired a bunch of information related to the police and fusion centers in particular, real troves of data from email to training manuals, and gave them over to DDOS. What was interesting about it was both the data – which I feel like has been underutilized, it hasn’t been mined or studied carefully yet. There’s been a few reports that have come out from it, journalistic reports, but there’s so much more to do. But what was disturbing was that Twitter banned DDOS, and the hashtag #blueleaks, right? This goes back to what we were talking about, wow, the power of one company to do that. And it really chilled the research that was going on around it. But nevertheless, I think it was really important, and it kind of inaugurated this recent period where hacktivists have gone after the police. Then there was also the hack against Epik, which is a web hosting firm popular among the reactionary far right. There was also Gableaks as well. And what I think is interesting about these leaks, all of them including the police leaks, Blue Leaks, is that there might not be evidence of Earth-shattering wrongdoing and corruption that you could then prosecute a single individual. But what they give window into are the movements and culture of, for example, policing, and the ways in which the police are really really implicated in racism, or going after social movements in very problematic ways. So I think it’s really important material for researchers to understand social movements on the right and the corrupt politics in the culture of the police. And what’s also exciting is that these hacktivists haven’t been caught, right?

Jeremy:
Yeah. Good on them!

Biella:
Yeah. So it’s a little bit quieter, it’s people acting more individually or in small groups that are not inviting you to join their operations, but they’re being effective. They’re getting data out there, the data is getting out to researchers, to journalists. I just think that what needs to happen is that there has to be more pressure on the journalistic world to use this data. Cause it’s tough stuff to wade through, you know.

Jeremy:
That’s a lot of the work. You brought up a good point, how there’s a lot of people involved in this, I mean you have the initial person who came, dropped it, and left, right? But a lot of the work, I mean you said it’s underutilized, because it’s often large troves of information that often the media won’t want to touch, so it’s on us to look and find these stories. And there’s been hella stories in them, I remember the BlueLeaks, there was good stuff in the fusion centers about how they were targeting BLM activists and stuff. But also the day to day conversations amongst officers, learning how they talk to each other, it kind of shatters the public’s illusion of what they think police are like. It’s a lot grittier, it’s harsh, it’s not cops in “Law and Order”, and really there’s not even that much difference sometimes between when you read some of these cop emails and some of these right-wing fascists like on EpikLeaks or something like that, they’re actually kind of similar, aren’t they?

Biella

Right, and this is what I mean, they’re so perfect at getting at the ideologies, cultures of the police, which are often very racist. This is what you are able to access, like the training manuals. That again may not be like, there might not be anything illegal in them, technically, they’re training manuals, right? But that gives you window into how police are trained and how they come to think of people in very problematic ways. It’s like a gold mine. It’s funny, I was reading up on BlueLeaks a little bit in anticipation of this, and I was like oh my god, can I get a PhD student who just goes through this material, and writes an ethnography of the police through BlueLeaks? Because they’re so much out there.

Jeremy
That’s a good point how a lot of what the police are doing actually isn’t illegal, and these training manuals, they’re basically entire justifications, legal justifications, the police are saying “Here’s how you can be a brutal racist piece of shit but still stay within the confines of the law”

Biella:
That’s right, and then one can witness this material and go “OK”, and this is still a problem, precisely because of what they’re encouraging, but also because of how they’re able to skirt the law in the process. I really admire both the individuals who are giving this data over and the groups like DDOS who are hosting it, and making it searchable and putting it up there, because again there’s not going to be many groups who could do that. They’ve also at times, even with BlueLeaks, they’ve redacted information, to protect individuals, I mean they lean towards more exposure rather than less, but they do take some precautions. I believe with Gableaks, they made that only available to researchers and journalists to publish it, versus too much information. Another interesting thing is how ransomware groups now are really seeing emails, and journalists and DDOS are publishing emails released by these ransomware groups that are just wanting to make money. But it’s an effective way to gain public support, maybe, or it’s maybe a little like Robin Hood, they take some money, they give something back. It’s a really interesting development, though.

Jeremy:
Yeah, I think the DC Leaks were ransomware leaks. And yeah that’s an interesting development, they may not be necessarily doing it for the same ideologically-motivated reasons that some of us might, but the effect is the same. It’s oftentimes like you said they focus on the source and their foibles, but the truth speaks for itself. Amongst one of those truths, look at the BlueLeaks stuff, you were talking about how it’s within the confines of the law, well that makes me think that everytime someone says something like, “oh, the police, it’s a broken system”. Well actually, they’re behaving exactly how they were originally designed to do, and how the rules of the system are built in a certain way, and we see for ourselves how these rules are written, and what they’re teaching them, and it’s not broken, they’re doing exactly what they were designed for.

Biella:
Right, and it also goes against this “simply bad apples” theory. Well sure of course there could be some particularly noxious individuals, and not every cop is like a white supremacist. But there’s a culture, and people get trained in that. And that’s systemic. Now we get a window into that through these manuals.

Jason:
That’s why we say all cops are bastards. (laughter)

Jeremy:
Biella, it’s so good to talk to you! What’s next for you, what’re you doing?

Biella:
What am I doing?! I’m trying to get to the States! I’ve been trying to get there for the past ten days. So, I’ve been working on Hack Curio, this video portal into hacking, and I will pick that up again. Some of the things we talked about, I’m writing about for a book of essays. I also hope to get a hacker archive project off the ground at my new job, as well.

Jeremy:
Never a boring moment!

What do you think about the kind of narrative, that hackers start out young and wild, might even call themselves even hacktivists or black hats, and might get in a little trouble but when the pressure’s on, you kind of have to grow up, like it’s this thing that you just sell out all the way, you end up working in the cyber security industry, in infosec, the same companies and governments that you once fought against. It’s like this right of passage, at least in the United States, trope’s dragged out repeatedly. And for some reason it’s kind of accepted here, as if you don’t lose your hacker credentials. What’s up with that, and I also wanted to ask you, what role does the university play a part in that pipeline to working in the security industry.

Biella:
Yeah, so that is a common trajectory. I think part of the problem is that there’s such lucrative jobs, the cost of living is so high, it’s just very easy for people to go down that path. And what is a shame is that, and this connects to the university thing which I’ll get to in a moment, is that if there were just more jobs in the tech world, and they don’t have to be at all crazy venture capital high paying jobs, but like decent salaries, I think more people would go for those jobs. And I’ll never forget, once a student who I ran into was like “do you know of any jobs in the non-profit tech world that I can go to”, because he was really against working for the military or doing crazy AI stuff, so he worked in the kind of world like tech in retail, he felt like that was kinda the least harmful. It’s funny, cause I was like yeah, you’re right, there’s not a whole lot of jobs in the kind of non-corporate non-military world in tech. We kind of need to build that up. Someone who is building that up is Nathan Schneider, he’s a professor at University of Colorado in Boulder, he’s trying to bring the idea of the co-op to the tech world. Tech people can come together. And Nathan Schneider is trying to precisely do that. Instead of organizing yourself as a kind of corporation which you sell to venture capitalists, you configure yourself as worker owned and run. And then create technology that can help society, then create also a sort of co-op where everyone has a living wage. So like – man, that’s what we need.

Jeremy:
That’s a vision right there. A lot of people, like me for example, are trying to find a way to use our skills in a meaningful but ethical way that doesn’t contribute to, you know, the military industrial complex or the big algorithm, designing facial recognition software that ends up helping law enforcement or border patrol or something like that. And you said it’s money, and it’s kind of sad but capitalism is basically promising these privileges and positions and power to people who do have the capability to do that, and I can see why – I don’t agree with it at all, but I can see why someone who may never really experienced anything in their life would see why there’s nothing wrong with doing that, or is just doing it for the check – and we have to undermine this, we have to undermine the fact that people think it’s acceptable to go work for – and we’ve had our victories, remember the time people pressured Google to drop their contract with the military, over the AI thing, and so that I think is a good step in the right direction to show that these tech workers – maybe they’re not class enemies. Cause right now, I’m not convinced, honestly, because they built this system, and we’re all suffering under this system.

Biella:
Exactly, we have to have strategies that provide exit and alternatives, both in terms of worker autonomy, and building tech for good! And the only way you’re going to do that is in a non-profit model. It’s win-win, worker collective, and then build tech for good. I think we need more of that. And the University isn’t nurturing that, with very few exceptions. Universities cater either to research that serves military purposes, or, more and more, for like Silicon Valley type companies, and there’s very few exceptions. Princeton for example has a lot of public interest technologists in their Computer Science department, like Ed Felten, who’s very famous. A lot of people kind of go into policy and public interest tech, which is great, but we can’t just have military / Silicon Valley, and a couple of Universities that funnel people into public interest technology, right? It’s just not enough.

Jeremy:
So is there hope for the youth?

Biella:
You know I do think there is, they’re just inheriting such a fucked up world. Because of that, they will actually probably have to fight, right? For a kind of revolution for survival. And it’s sad, because people, our generation and above, left them this mess.

Jeremy:
We failed. It’s your turn.

Biella:
Exactly. So I do have hope, in some weird way, because of our massive failures. And of course we’re still around, we still have to and will fight, but things just have to change. There are ways out of this, whether it’s how people come together to organize, how people come together to work. And we can’t get rid of technology, it’s here. We can’t just fully go back to the pre-technological era, I mean we’ve had for millenia. But how we make our tech, how we use it and what we use it for, that has to change.

Jeremy:
NFTs, really quick: one line, one line.

Biella:
I hate NFTs!

Jeremy:
I was just fucking with you. But I got the quote I wanted, so I’m good!

Biella:
Cool!

Jeremy:
Wow, it’s been good hanging with you!

(MUSIC BREAK)

Jason:
We are living in a dark age of disinformation. Formerly pro-establishment, the so-called patriots have ripped open up a parallel universe where they lose all faith in their country and engage in open rebellion. They are Anti-System now, fresh after licking Trump’s boot. We’ve seen the Big Lie, the stop the steal coup attempt, the failed insurrection, now were in the midst of the far-rights pivot to defy the vaccine and mask mandates, in which they see as proof of Biden’s tyranny and a worthy battleground for these wannabe civil war secession types.

Jeremy:
But the pivot is based on a conspiracy theory and a terribly deadly lie, that this virus is not a big deal, it’s COVID denialism. Antivax propagandists spread misinfo and cause people to not trust legitimate medical information, refuse life-saving vaccinations, and thus extending the pandemic and contributing to mass death. Even the biggest denialist Trump himself has been begging his supporters to take the vaccine because he wants to claim that it was his idea. But his base supporters are in too deep now and don’t wanna hear about that shit, so now the GOP can’t mention the vaccine without potential political blowback from their radicalized base.

We could be having conversations about basic information and best practices to resist plague, coming up with reasonable solutions for society to safely function, addressing global vaccine inequities, but instead we argue with the cult of ignorance over basic truths to the virus. So many of the antivax culture warriors are volatile, eager for a soapbox, eager to livestream themselves getting kicked out of restaurants by cops they claim to support. They say they feel like they’re being treated like second class citizens, insultingly comparing their struggles to that of the civil rights movement, saying the mandates are like racial segregation and apartheid. They compare the unvaccinated to the victims of the mass murderers of the holocaust under the Nazis. They say this with a straight face as they rail against the teaching of actual history and current reality of racism in America. They say My Body My Choice about vaccines and simultaneously want to end Roe v Wade. They talk about electoral integrity while meanwhile the GOP using these very conspiracy theories pushing harder than ever to further erode voting rights, with many states passing racist laws designed to prevent people from voting, all in plain sight. This mindfuckingly offensive upside-downedness signifies that the problems in this country run deeper than just what happened on Jan 6.

Jason:
But Neoliberalism also is on the same spectrum of denialism, also committed to apocalypse capitalism, with the rush to “go back to normal”, ending pandemic relief and ushering everyone back to work and school amidst the Omicron surge. The sociopathic lack of empathy is also exemplified by this growing belief that the pandemic will last forever and we should get used to it. That the new variant is ‘only mild’. It’s fine, it is only the most vulnerable who are affected by this new variant. The loss of life was always in the economic calculus inherent to the logic of capitalism, there exists a level of disease and death that is to be acceptable. So we’re not forgetting the Dems complete failure to handle the pandemic response adequately to the magnitude demanded of the moment, they are kicking people to the curb as well.

We are glad to see people rejecting and resisting apocalypse capitalism. Particularly moving recently are the CPS students in Chicago who have walked out of classes for their rights to a safe education during COVID times. This is an inspiring sign that the kids are alright, despite this city which continues to fail them with massive funding for cops and not for schools, and forcing in-person classes despite the teachers and students struggling for the continuation of remote learning during the surge of the Omicron variant.

Jeremy:
Others, however, seem to be working to help spread the plague: these foaming at-their-infectious-mouth antivaxxers, these MAGA zombies have not given up the fight. Just listen:

(GHASTLY RENDITION OF US NATIONAL ANTHEM)

Jason:
You are listening to the sounds of Jan 6 capitol rioters singing the US national anthem in the so-called “patriot wing” of the DC jail. Haunting! Apparently in a cult-like fashion, they sing it every night at 9, and according to MTG, they sing with “such passion and true devotion for their country, you can hear it in their voice”.

She, Matt Gaetz, and other pro-insurrection GOP lawmakers had visited the imprisoned insurrectionists in a publicity stunt to rally support for Jan 6 “political prisoners”, as they call them, who they claim are suffering abuse in a “two tiered justice system”

Earlier this month was the anniversary of the jan 6th right wing-coup attempt, and as fallout from that fateful day is still ongoing, we reflect on the significance of the attack on congress to overturn the 2020 election. Trump’s insurrection failed that day, but the violent white supremacist extremism in which Trumpism is a symptom of remains as a constantly looming fascist plague that haunts the country.

The same people who went on a rampage over the election at the end of 2020 and at Jan 6 continue to wreak havoc and now have “gone local”, pivoting to harassing school board over mask and vaccine mandates, causing disruptions, even sometimes at health care facilities, demanding Ivermectin and making death threats, complaining about being discriminated against for their “medical status” being denied service, all while denying the realities of COVID as we are in the midst of the surge. As we enter the midterm election year, the likelihood of far-right mobilizations and insurgent violence remains higher now than ever before.

Instead of forming a separate MAGA or “Patriot” party as thought possible immediately after the attack, Trump and his loyalists have decided to double down and stay with the GOP as the dominant force in the party. They are seeking to make internal purges of “RINOS”, or Republicans In Name Only, those unloyal who don’t bend the knee to Trump. Unicorn Riot recently wrote up a comprehensive investigative summary of the fallout of Jan 6, and It’s Going Down’s most recent episode of “This Is America” also breaks down this attempted power grab of the insurgent far-right this time last year.

Since Jan 6, right-wing media has done everything they can to minimize the significance of the attack. They first tried to deny the whole thing was MAGA, saying it was antifa infiltrators. Then they tried claiming it was an FBI setup, then it was merely a group of tourists, and finally the whataboutisms, making a false equivalency between the capitol rioters and the George Floyd uprisings of the summer, the latter they claim was far worse. “Entire cities burned!”, they cried.

But it was Trump who whipped up his fascist supporters into a frenzy and after the election they came out in droves to DC. Jan 6 came on the heels of the “Million Maga Marches”, practice runs for Jan 6. Of course it’s numbers were more like in the ten of thousands, but they were fucking fascists who were very open about their plans for violence. Proud Boys, self-proclaimed “militia”, the “army for Trump” they marched each evening and attacked people in the street and terrorized the city and country. Similar rallies had also been happening at state capitols as well: each night was inches from becoming deadly, yet it was only after Jan 6 did the DOJ say their priority is to investigate and prosecute these white supremacist extremist groups.

Jeremy:
Around 750 individuals so far have been charged by the feds for participating in the capitol riots, many low-level misdemeanors like “parading on restricted grounds”, but there were also hundreds of felonies, including assaults against police, interruption of federal official processes, and most recently conspiracy and sedition in the cases of Stewart Rhodes and 10 other members of the Oathkeeper militias. 350 felonies, but almost everybody, except like forty people, are out of jail: most were granted bail, or already had their cases adjudicated. Many have already accepted cooperating plea deals. Almost everybody got extremely light sentences, such as probation or a month or two in jail. Only a few have received any real time, the most so far is Robert Palmer, who got five years for beating a cop with a fire extinguisher, and then there’s the QAnon Shaman Jake Chansley who got 40 months, he’s at the low FCI Safford. There’s still other cases pending, and some of the more serious and complicated conspiracy charges could drag out for some time, in what they have called the largest federal investigation in US history.

Jason:
While the pawns have taken some heat, the architects of the jan 6 coup attempt continue to skirt accountability. The Jan 6th committee is finally getting around to issuing subpoenas for Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Nick Fuentes, and others high profile leaders and propagandists of the Big Lie. Trump and his closest minions have so-far refused the subpoenas and dragging it out in the courts, filing lawsuits against releases of information, and slamming the Jan 6th commission on investigation as a “Marxist witch-hunt”. He is still out there still saying he won in 2020 while he and the GOP are plotting the next coup in 2024. None of them have spent a day in jail for their crimes, and probably won’t.

Jeremy:
And all these Trump officials refusing the subpoenas, you know they lock people up all the time for contempt. Hell I did an extra six months for contempt, really a year, as we’ve talked about in earlier episodes. So it’s like, what the hell? It’s infuriating to see these powerful, horrible people just get away with this, like fascist horror show Steven Bannon, who was pardoned by Trump after scamming millions on that racist border wall, so now he’s got two criminal contempt charges, but they let him out on bail, and you know when any of us had asked for bail they’re like well that would undermine the coercive purpose of detaining you for contempt. Bannon’s trial’s still like half a year away. All of them, just walking around like it wasn’t nothing, and the Jan Sixers too, nearly all of them got bail or probation, never saw jail. And there’s just so many examples of the gross disparities with how Trump’s crew, how the January 6 insurrectionaries have been treated so lightly as compared with how most others experience the criminal justice system – which is to say, when it’s us, if there is any way to interpret or manipulate the law to be against us, the worst case scenario, that’s what’s happening. But here they are, basically cashing in on the full benefits of white privilege, and their political connections to those in power.

Jason:
One thing we have seen over Jan 6 is the cry from the right about so-called “political prisoners” of Jan 6. Much can be said about the imprisoned insurrectionists’ complaints about conditions in the jail. Much liberal knee-jerk reaction is to say “Lock em up! They deserve every ounce of misery they get!” While relishing in the irony of Back The Blue’s “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” is momentarily amusing, nobody should be sourcing their pleasure in the suffering of our enemies by the prison system. This is the rub we want to get into – What is the abolitionist perspective in regards to Jan 6 prosecutions?

Jeremy:
Prison abolitionists have consistently held that police and prisons aren’t ever solutions, that they need to be shut down immediately, that everybody needs to be freed unconditionally. We aren’t with “Lock Them Up!”, as much as we may detest their politics or actions. It’s actually a little worrisome that these liberals are looking for catharsis or revenge or closure or whatever through imprisonment. And how often have they also argued the same for us? So we’ve got to beat back the liberal lust for carceral solutions.

Jason:
The enemy of our enemy is not our friend – and central to anarchist, antifascist, or any kind of organizing is the refusal to work with or rely on the state to solve our problems. The punitive act of incarceration is an act of harm itself, and instead of keeping people safe, it destabilizes the community. Has imprisoning a few of the rioters prevented those on the outside from engaging in the same kind of violent agitation that we’ve seen on jan 6? Maybe in the immediate aftermath, but here we are a year later, Proud Boys are still regular fixtures of right-wing mobilizations, the violence continues, likely to increase as we enter midterm election year.

Jeremy:
And look at how they’re rallying behind January 6 defendants as heroes, patriots, political prisoners. There’s a lot of websites, “Patriot Freedom Project”, “Citizens Against Political Persecution”, “American Gulag”- that one run by Jim Hoft founder of alt-right disinfo site “The Gateway Pundit”, these are support sites for Jan Sixers, plus the hundreds of fundraisers on GiveSendGo.com, the Christian fascist alternative to GoFundMe. They’re like, “It’s shocking to say, but America now has legitimately political prisoners, en masse”, as if the government is somehow targeting them for their politics or race, as if their murderous fascist coup attempt is some great political act worthy of defending. to defend as say raising millions and millions of dollars, definitely some grifting going on. So they’re trying to gain sympathy about their cases, their jail conditions, while at the same time making sure to spit out their delusional belief that BLM was supposedly treated so lightly by comparison. Basically, their grievances and analysis extends only to freedom and better conditions for their own, the fascist warrior clowns that Trump used up and kicked to the curb. They don’t ever speak up for others affected by the prison industrial complex. They deny the existence of actual political prisoners and prisoners of war. They defend the cops every single time they get away with murder, or defend people like Kyle Rittenhouse, who basically fulfilled their blood lust fantasies.

So after they’ve riled up their most rabid Trump cultists to throw their sore loser riot at the capitol, and a few of them end up in jail, now they want to cry persecution, they want special treatment unlike the other “criminals” who they believe deserve to be in prison. They believe they are the exceptions, really hitting home the point that the prison system was from the beginning never designed for people like them. And so it’s understandable why some would find enjoyment and poetic justice in seeing the tables turned for a change. These Jan 6ers, majority middle upper class cis white men of privilege, they’re just now experiencing a taste of what everybody else had always been subjected to, had to eat the same baloney sandwiches we all had to eat. and they’re crying, writing manifestos from jail, “this isn’t what America is about!” Really tho? People have been fighting against that notorious DC Jail forever, and now, only when these special right wingers, these white people start complaining about it, the government felt like it had to do something to address their astroturfed fury.

So last month the US Marshals did an unannounced inspection of the DC Jail, and found they we’re in not in compliance with the minimum detention standards. First off – there’s never an “unannounced” inspection, obviously, they’re always scheduled and carefully choreographed. the inspectors are good friends with the warden, they’re often former wardens themselves, they’ll already have repainted the walls, already have lined up several bootlicking inmates if they want to question anybody, they’ll just rubber-stamp the process, make themselves look good – the dog and pony show. Anyways, I’m very familiar with the US Marshals detention standards – stuff like, square footage per person, number of toilets showers and sinks, food conditions, access to hygiene, recreation, medical care, etc. So there’s like fifty thousand federal prisoners, mostly pretrial or in transit, currently held outside of the Bureau of Prisons in these raggedy county jail and detention centers, and they’re really terrible places, basically none of them follow the standards, and it’s only gotten worse since pandemic. I remember two summers ago during the height of COVID they suspended all transfers, and we were stuck in transit in Oklahoma City, not the FTC but the local overflow jail in Grady Countyl, and it was just the worst place to be caught during the pandemic, dorms of triple stacked bunks, they were in staunch denial that COVID had completely swept the dorms, and people were trying to get lawyers and congress to look at these obvious detention standard violations, we got no traction, no answers, so literally everybody caught COVID, people died. People are still dying, and it’s like this everywhere, because the prison system is simply unable and unwilling to protect people, even three years into the pandemic, and we still haven’t seen the mass releases that people have been demanding, that are so urgently needed.

So when I read the statements of these Jan Sixers, once you get past the rhetoric, most of their complaints are really kind of basic jail conditions, for example, bad food, or the 23 hour a day lockdown. And I don’t mean to say this to trivialize the conditions people are complaining about, because we’ve experienced it ourselves, and it is terrible, and it all needs to end. But you don’t see them interested in advocating for prisoners rights as a whole. They’re not linking up with existing abolitionist groups, of course, or demanding an end to solitary confinement. They’re not going on hunger strike in solidarity with those at Rikers Island, or Stateville or in Palestine.

Jason:
Really, it’s because they support these systems, “law and order”, they’re part of it. It’s an anomaly that any of them are in jail at all, which is what they really mean when they claim they’re being discriminated against for “being conservative” or “being white”. Most of them used to just getting away with shit, their crimes are the officially sanctioned ones, done in the name of business. In actuality with the millions of dollars raised and support from high profile backers, they have so much more power, influence, and protection than everyone else, not just when it comes to how their cases are being handled in the courts, but also in the prisons themselves. They talk about the jail food, but unlike everybody else there who got to eat the regular shit, remember they raised millions! I guarantee their commissary bags are full every week, and burning up the phones, too. Prison administrators are going to treat them very carefully to avoid retaliatory lawsuits and public attention. There’s been some claims that individual guards have insulted them for being white or whatever, one guy claims he was beaten by guards because he was trying to start a bible study group, supposedly, but it sounds like there’s more to that story then they’re letting on. I’d bet many prison guards are supporters!

Jeremy:
So with all their connection and influence, with support from people like MTG, they finally got the Marshals to admit that the jail is a dump, and they immediately began moving four hundred people into the federal prison in Lewisburg PA. But hilariously, the inspectors actually found that the treatment unit that most of the Jan Sixers are being held at, was actually in compliance with the standards, was actually in far better shape than the other units that the Marshals had denounced: turns out they had it sweeter than everybody else, but still crying. One Proud Boy who had been moved to Lewisburg actually requested a transfer back to the DC jail and a week later was back with the others.

Yes, most of the Jan Sixers are all being held in their own unit, where they have developed cult-like rituals, and are being groomed by the right as patriotic martyrs, the whole experience is sure to push them deeper into the reactionary rabbit hole. One Jan Sixer Thomas Sibick requested and was granted transfer out of there, because he couldn’t deal with the toxic environment. So they’re in this reactionary echo chamber, most have had basically no interaction with other prisoners, and some might not ever, really for their own protection. But the few that may actually be sentenced to some real time – I think the longest so far got five years, one of the dudes who hit a cop with a fire extinguisher – they might be transferred to real prison, and it’s hard to say how they going to make it, especially on their own away from their compatriots. They’re hardcore Back the Blue supporters, “Law and Order” and all that, and many of them former cops themselves, so they probably think they are somehow above other prisoners, well they are going to have rude awakening in general population, Unless they’re sent to like a camp or a low, it’s likely many of them would “check in” and request protective custody, do the rest of their bid by themselves in the hole, people like Derek Chauvin or Dylann Roof, but remember even then on a long enough timeline you still could get got, like how Dylann Roof was beaten up on the way to the showers. It’s also probable they would seek protection from and fall in line with white supremacist gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood with whom they share an obvious affinity. Because these groups, they are very organized, in almost every prison, and really it’s an unaddressed problem that prison is basically a factory that fosters conditions that create white supremacists from the same fake victimhood and racial resentment these insurrectionaries are espousing now. There is the potential these groups reinforce alliances and imprint lifetime commitments to their “cause”, even if they’re a bunch of ineffectual ignorant clowns, they could become far more dangerous when they are released and return to their fanatical hordes, now heralded as heroes. And so obviously prison can’t ever be a solution to this problem, which is another reason why antifascists consistently refuse to work with the state.

Jason:
And if you look at what the jailed and arrested insurrectionists are saying, it is quite clear that even after a whole year, most of them regret nothing and are proud of their actions on Jan 6. They still buy the Big Lie, they still believe and talk about how patriots are rising up and are going to overthrow this fake Biden and bring back Trump. And unfortunately, we are probably going to be seeing more high-profile insurgent violence, as extemist researchers are noting that the level of activity and violent language eminating from far right circles is as high as it was just before the Oklahoma City bombing. Although much of their frustrations are directed to the federal government, or the mayors and governors of big cities in blue states, still they are still on some Turner Diaries shit, imagining violence inflicted on BLM and antifascist activists, who they see as race traitors and communists.

Jeremy:
So the DOJ announced on Jan 6 the formation of a new domestic terrorist task force, ostensibly to deal with this, and although carceral liberals have cheered it on, we should really be worried, especially about this whole “both sides” language around extremism this task force seeks to undertake. Everyone knows they always have and will continue to weaponize this against leftist and BIPOC communities, and probably a whole lot moreso, considering the long and well-documented racist history of the FBI.

Jason:
Look at the vagueness of the language to see the clearness of the problem. They say the biggest threats are from extremists “driven by racial or ethnic beliefs”, which they note includes white supremacists…but also would include “black identity extremists”, a term invented by the feds to delegitimize BLM activists so they could pursue more serious terrorism enhancements.

They also talk of “Anti-government sentiment”, including militia and anarchists, as if they are the same thing. Although the FBI has previously stated that antifa is an idea, not an organization, but that has not at all slowed their continued targeted harassment of antifascists, as we have already seen DHS earlier this year try blaming Portland riots on another new term, “violent antifa anarchist inspired individuals”. A lot of the uprising arrests that happened during the height of Trump’s rage when he sent feds to all the cities are still fighting these trumped-up-charges with the full weight of Biden’s Department of Justice.

Jeremy:
Just thinking of Daniel Baker, anarchist prisoner who was recently sentenced to 40 months for posting on facebook about the need for armed self-defense against the right-wing coup that was bound to happen on Jan 6. Now he never brought a weapon to any building, and his online hyperbolic statements pale in comparison to the mass calls of violence made by the hordes of Jan 6 rioters, yet he got more time than all but one of them so far.

Another person, 20 year old Shamar Betts, was imprisoned for put up a facebook post about an action in Champaign Illinois calling for people to “get busy” after the police murder of George Floyd. Some looting broke out, and the feds arrested him a week later under the 1968 “Anti-Riot Act”. They gave him four years, again for a FaceBook post, in addition to an absolutely absurd 1.6 million dollar fine.

So to embrace the authoritative punitive power, to add to law enforcement’s toolbox in any way, even if it is ostensibly also being used against the fascists, won’t work to our advantage in the long run – the state is our enemy no matter which ruling class party wields the throne. Just like the GOP has, the Democrats will weaponize increases in security and anti-terrorist forces against anarchist and leftist movements.

Jason:
So we oppose the expansion of the DOJ terrorist task force. But fuck the DOJ for a second, let’s talk about ways everyday people have been resisting the MAGA menace. Antifascists have been documenting and confronting the rise of fascism since before Trump, and in the wake of Jan 6, it is good to see that more people are ‘getting into’ anti-extremist work than ever, but in doing so we need to be careful to not reinforce carceral “antifascism”. Abolitionists envision and practice accountability outside the prison system, can we not imagine other tools to fight fascism except the ones primarily used to oppress black and brown people? How do we demand freedom for all prisoners but also not wish to replicate the violence of the prison system against our enemies?

In the wake of Jan 6, groups like Sedition Hunters have done a lot of online sleuthing, pouring over the massive amounts of available video, creating hashtags for the rioters until true names are identified. It is of course helpful to know who these fuckers are: they should be exposed for their actions that day. But then many people are tagging the FBI as if they are on the same side. Aiding a federal law enforcement investigation in order to put people in prison should not be the purpose of researching extremists. These are not long-term solutions: not likely preventative of future attacks nor likely to de-radicalize their base, as we are seeing, the jailing of the Jan Sixers bolsters the MAGA mythology, that Biden has reigned in the tyrannical new world order, giving further cause to the wannabe patriot revolutionaries.

What everyday antifascists are doing and have been doing is paying attention to what the far-right groups are doing in their area and around the country/world. And then, taking action and putting some pressure on them to disrupt their organizing. Some ideas that allegedly exist include documentation or doxing of local fascists, organizing call or email campaigns to get them fired or removed from office, flyering their neighborhoods or hangout spots, calling venues to get their events canceled. And of course organizing counter-protests, and showing up when they show up to the school boards or town halls with an alternative message. This does far more to put the fash on notice than to call the cops, and besides, we already know whose side they are gonna be on anyway.

While we were recording this episode, a major development has taken place”: Unicorn Riot and DDOS released about 500 gigs of leaks from Patriot Front chats and emails. The leaks were dropped as these white supremacists were in DC, escorted by cops as they marched alongside the anti-abortionist organization March for Life. AMAZING! The leaks are massive and are available now for researchers to get into. Included is documentation of their various hate crimes, embarrassing videos of their pathetic training, their internal communications which reveal plenty of identifiers, already leading to plenty of their members being exposed and doxed. It shows the laughability of their security. It shows the deep connections PF has with Proud Boys. It also shows that mosty members of PF self identify as National Socialists, as nazis. Utterly destroying the ridiculous attempts at distancing by right wingers, who claim that PF is not real, but a fed operation. It shows that if you are a nazi, you will be exposed. It shows a lot, we are excited to see the depth of shit to come out on this PF leaks..

Most importantly the leaks show that it is antifascists who are the ones doing the real work to handle the nazi problem in this country. The US government is committed to ignoring the threat besides slapping a few light sentences on some of the insurrectionists from Jan 6, when PF comes to town, you always see the cops leading the march and protecting them, allowing them the street, allowing them safe escape when invariably people chase them down, shouting chanting and laugh at the pathetic sight of the white-hooded modern day klan.

Jeremy:
The chuds are still active, standing back and standing by just waiting for the next insurrection, They are back in full revolt again, rallying all the goddamn time, worse now that we are entering midterm election year. Best to stomp ‘em down before the hordes get too big again. I guess you can say, it’s time to … SMASH MAGA!

(MUSIC BREAK)

Jeremy:
Hey, so have yall played our game Smash MAGA yet?

Jason:
We dropped a new version on the anniversary of January 6, in contemptful observance of that cursed day when America showed it’s ass. The story of the game is that a fascist plague sweeps the nation, entering a dark-age dystopia of zombified Trump supporters that threaten the free world. The events depicted in the game are based on real-life occurrences during the Trump regime. It’s satire, but it’s also a call to action: we wanted to recreate and reimagine these events, as if it could have gone differently if people were mobilized to stop the plague of fascism before it spreads.

Jeremy:
The biggest update in this new version is the multiplayer feature. Firstly, you can plug in a gamepad and do local two-player co-op, which is way more fun taking on the brainwashed masses as a team. But there’s also internet multiplayer, you can jump on our game servers and play with or against others online. There’s the regular modes like cooperative, deathmatch, capture the flag – we got laser tag! And you can compete in the high scores table, we’re doing a monthly tournament to win prizes like zines, tshirts.

Jason:
There’s also one new level that takes place in Mars-A-Lago, where Trump teams up with rich man villain of the year Elon Musk in a plan to spread MAGA toxicity to Mars, to escape a planet undergoing mass devastation by climate change!

Jeremy:
We’re also pleased to say that Smash MAGA is also now available on the Steam gaming platform. If you’ll remember, Steam, just like Apple and Google, had previously banned us from their platform for some suspect justifications. Remember for Google it was “political violence”, for Apple it was “offensive references to targeted groups such as MAGA”. So Steam claimed it was “copyright infringement”, and initially wouldn’t point to any specific violation, obviously we have full fair use, public figures, parody, satire, etc we don’t even really have to get into it.

Jeremy

So after months of appeals and assurances we don’t have any copyrighted content, they eventually gave it the ok, and so we’re on, and getting a lot more exposure too, way more than our initial release last September, which you know says a lot about how these corporate platforms position themselves as gatekeepers as to what apps make it or not, and of course what people are even allowed to run on their devices.

Jason:
So we released the game, it’s been fun playing multiplayer, and also reading the reviews and comments we’ve received so far. Now most people thought it was a blast, some also had some constructive criticisms. But we also got some hateful comments from these right-wingers. You know, usual ignorant shit, Rittenhouse supporters, posting racist memes. And talking about how they’re going to report us, how we should be taken down, which is hilarious cause cancel culture, right? These toxic parts of the gamer community, our game is calling them out, mocking them, and now they’re crying, we knew that was going to happen, They’re mad, it’s cool.

Jeremy:
So what’s next? Nobody believes that the events on January 6th signaled an end to Trumpism. It only showed how real the fascist threat has been, with no clear end in sight. What is the next battleground for the MAGA insurgents, how will they pivot and how best can we turn the tide? We will speculate on these trajectories in a future update – Smash MAGA! United Front Against Fascism. New levels, enemies, features, new twists, so stay tuned.

(MUSIC BREAK)

Jason:
Alright, so, thanks for being on the show, we’re here, we got La Armada, we got Manilo and Paul from the band La Armada. How you guys doing?!

Mani:
Great!

Paul:
Great! Surviving the city!

Mani:
Appreciate the opportunity!

Jason:
We been listening to your songs from your upcoming album Anti-Colonial Vol. 2 that’s coming out on February 11.

Yes sir!

That’s Mani’s birthday, too.

Mani:
My birthday too, yo.

Jason:
That’s awesome, happy early birthday!

Mani:
I mean, we planned it that way, bro.

Jason:
That’s your guys’ own record label – Mal de Ojo

Mani:
That’s correct – Mal De Ojo, the Evil Eye – Records, that’s our own label, we’re operating under that name for the distribution of the record throughout Latin America and here in the US.

Jason:
Awesome, congrats, man. It sounds great. You guys had a few songs already out on your Bandcamp that you can listen to right now. But the pre-order is now available. It sounds great, man. You guys have been making music for like 20 years, congratulations, you’re like scene veterans now, how do you guys feel?

Mani:
Hey, I was just telling Paul, you know the first we played here, in 2007 for the first time I think, and the bands that were around when we started playing Chicago shows, they’re not really around anymore. Barely – only a handful of bands still playing, so it feels like, it definitely feels like you’re a veteran, but – it also reminds you, to always be looking for new challenges, to push yourself to do something new all the time, and to just enjoy the process, man.

Paul:
I think musically we’re still figuring it out. We still feel in that sense that we got a long way to go.

Jason:
Yeah, man, it’s always got to keep evolving. Some new members of the band, I remember watching when you joined, your new singer, and your new drummer joined the band too. New musicians, bringing new elements to the band.

Mani

It’s been a process, learning from the process itself, rolling with the punches. And in some ways, somehow, we managed to maintain cohesiveness, and in our opinion, create the best music we have as a band so far.

Jason:
Now you guys have two guitar players of course, but I think I recall at least one show, Mani, when it was just you, just a three-piece, no guitar, just bass –

Mani:
Yeah, the three-piece experiment!

Jason:
Yeah, just crank the bass, and you know!

Paul:
Experimental bass!

Jason:
So I got some serious-type questions, give you a chance to talk about the various shit that’s been going down. Obviously, you know, the live music scene has totally changed since the pandemic started. As venues are having a harder time hosting indoor shows, venues closing – some bands have been on hiatus, or calling it quits altogether – You guys how have you been faring during the pandemic as a band?

Paul:
It’s been rough, it’s been real rough, I mean – we personally have been lucky that we’ve been able to maintain, like, employment, and in that sense, at the end of the day, we’ve got food and shelter, but on a band level, and on a personal level, it’s been hard – mentally, emotionally, because we were touring a lot before the pandemic, it seems like, eight to ten years before it hit, we were on tour a hundred days out of the year, and when that goes away, so suddenly and unexpectedly, a lot of us felt like – it’s almost like you lose your identity. It happened to me, I was like, who the fuck am I, what the fuck do I do, really? It’s like, am I just a dude with a job, what’s going on? So, we took it as an opportunity to write music, and also to work on our inner relationships.

Jason:
Good shit, man. Take the opportunity to think about some other stuff.

Mani:
It was definitely a scary thing to see a lot of your peers go on hiatus or just quitting altogether. Like a lot of people you looked up to or you were brought up together, next thing you know they’re like I’m not doing that anymore, I’m not playing anymore, I’m done, it’s all done with. It’s a very scary place to be mentally. The only thing to do is channel that energy in making more music.

Jason:
How did you guys feel when over the summer, last summer, when people started getting vaccinated and started doing shows again, did you guys get all anxious when shows started popping up again?

Paul:
Yeah, yeah and no. Seeing live music again was incredible. Playing for the first time was the first time I felt like myself again. But also, the fear of missing out. We weren’t quite ready in May when shows started happening. So you’re like, fuck, am I missing this small window that may close again? There’s also a lot of that, just to keep it real.

Mani:
Yeah, I think for those of us that are in the scene with colleagues that are organizing shows, we have insight of what’s going on behind the curtain. And every show you see is one step from being canceled, all the time. Every show that ends up happening, it’s a miracle that it happened, because with COVID, everything has to be planned way ahead nowadays. And you never know if someone’s going to get sick, it’s like a chain reaction – somebody get’s sick, next thing you know the sound guy can’t make it, the venue closed all together, the headlining band – we had a show in December with Suicide Machines, and it got cancelled three days before the show, because somebody caught COVID. In the blink of an eye, something that you planned for three or four months in advance, it goes down the drain.

Paul:
And you already spent time on it to get prepared, you already spent money on it, you already canceled some other shit, told somebody you weren’t going to their birthday, all this shit to do that, and then you just got to brush it off, it got canceled, it is what it is.

Jason:
I seen some venues are doing rapid tests for COVID at the door – I always wondered, let’s say the band shows up to the gig, and one of them has COVID there and then, and it’s like “Sorry everybody, you’re in the middle of a superspreader event!”

Paul:
That’s brutal! Especially imagine if you’re on tour, and you’re like five states away from where you live, and that shit happens. Now you have to cancel everything, so you lose all that, and you gotta spend whatever you made to get back home. It’s insane, it’s a very rough time.

Mani

It’s also difficult because obviously you don’t want nobody getting sick. You don’t want to get sick yourself. You don’t want people to be saying you’re doing a superspreader. But the punk side of you, the DIY side of you, that always finds a way to figure something out, always – you’re always finding a way to do things, work around whatever’s established, you want to go like “Fuck it, let’s find a way to make a show, make it safe, everyone wears a mask, brings their vaccination card”. So it’s a tricky spot to be in, because throughout the whole pandemic, I always had that thought in the back of my head, how could we make this work? How could we make this show a safe place. It’s tricky, for sure.

Jason:
Yeah, DIY shows people are generally a lot better about wearing masks, and generally people are more conscious about the virus, as opposed to a lot of like mainstream bars you might go to, might go to a show at, and people just don’t seem to give a fuck at all. But of course, people are also doing outdoor shows, generator shows. You guys just did an outdoor fest, you did Ruido Fest, that’s a way different situation than an indoor show. How was that, I mean I was going to ask – what bands were you most excited to play with at that fest, or another show you’ve done recently?

Mani:
Oh, man, it was a great experience, you know growing up in the Dominican Republic, a lot of those bands you grew up listening to, bands like Caifanes, Café Tacuba…

Paul:
Panteón Rococó

Mani:
Maldita Vecindad, you know all these bands are like staples. Every time you talk about rock in Spanish, you have to mess with those bands.

Paul:
It’s funny, a lot of the people, a lot of the English-speaking crowd that know us from playing in the US, we would post we’re playing this festival, and nobody has a fucking clue, for the most part, who those bands are. But for us, like Mani said, those bands are huge, superstars, in Latin America. So for us, we’re stoked, they’re actually bands like our parents know, you know what I mean. So we’re like, let’s do it. So it was a great experience, it’s great to play a festival like that. The food is authentic Mexican food, we get to talk on stage in Spanish and people understand – it’s just a good vibe.

Mani:
It feels good to play a festival as a local band, and kill it, too.

Jason:
Yeah that’s awesome. My brother went, I know –

Jeremy:
Yeah that was sick, by the way.

Paul:
It’s also cool to be the heavy band at that festival. You know it’s not a heavy festival. Those bands are alternative, pop rock, stuff like that and we were by far the heaviest band that played. That’s always a challenge, but it was a challenge we really liked. Like if we could get these people moving, if we could get these people into the bands, we’ll know we did a good job, and it’s a great challenge, it’s fun to be kind of able to get up there and win over the crowd.

Jeremy:
Well yall were tough though, you performed well. Of course, playing a 3 o’clock slot is kind of difficult, and of course you were playing along with a lot of headliners

Paul

Yeah it’s hard to play earlier like that. But we’re kind of used to by now.

Jeremy:
You did Riot Fest one time or another, didn’t you guys?

Mani and Paul:
Yeah, 2017 or 2018?

Jason:
What’s your guys take, your experience playing Riot Fest, maybe in comparison to Ruido Fest. Are there some things you want to say about Riot Fest?

Jason:
That’s all right! You know what we’re talking about! (laughter)

Mani:
I was just waiting on Paul!

Paul:
I think we’re both waiting for the other to talk!

Jason:
A lot of people say “fuck riot fest”, so much, they made beers!

Mani:
I want to talk about it! Our experience personally, they treated us very well, and respectfully. We know the festival’s not perfect, we know the festival needs to be improved in a lot of ways. I’ll give you an example. We did a fundraiser for Assata’s Daughters near the beginning of the pandemic. They have a community center in Douglass Park. We spoke about how this festival that’s making all of this money, and it’s located in a community, probably one of the most underserved communities in Chicago, there’s no money to be made. A bigger percentage of the profits (must) stay in the community. How are we going to develop our communities? We’re going to develop communities with economic power, with more money. How we going to do that? We’re going to hire local help, we’re going to employ people in the community, we’re going to bring local vendors, people to bring their whatever to sell at the space. So as far as that, they even spoke about maybe the possibility of funding a school or a social center, or something for the community in Douglass Park. As far as the artists, we will play whatever platform we can play as long as we can say what we are about so that we can advocate and bring the message to anybody. Especially the most misinformed and uninformed people, because it’s easy to keep playing the same punk venue for twenty people and talk about politics, everyone already knows what we’re talking about. So the last thing I want to say about it, we definitely feel like we’re opening a door for other bands to come – immigrants, people of color, people from the hispanic community, to also be a part of a bigger event, and representation matters. We are a band, we go on tour a lot, we always playing all-white bills playing an all-white crowd every night, speaking in Spanish, it’s hard. A lot of people will tell you go fuck yourself. A lot of people openly Trump supporters. For a band like us, to get on a stage like that, I’m sure is very important for a lot of people, for this city, especially.

Jason:
Well said, you made a lot of great points. When I saw you on the bill I’m like “Fuck yeah!” because I normally look at the bill, looking at these bands that like I don’t really care a whole lot about, but you guys are like – a lot of the bands, like Anti-Flag, sometimes they’re good, there are political bands, but not all bands are. There’s a lot you can say about the politics of Riot Fest and all that.

Mani:
It hits different when you bring it up with a local level. When we go on stage, we talk about the Cop Academy, we talk about Homan Square, we talk about things that are happening in the community, in the very same community that the festival is happening. It brings perspective on people, I’d like to think.

Paul:
I think we make a bigger difference by playing than by not playing it. The only way we would not play it if they were like, “oh you gotta tone it down, you can’t say this, you can’t say that”. Or, if it maybe was sponsored by the US Military, or some shit like that: no, we’re not going to be about that. But you’re giving us the freedom to do our thing, say what we gotta say, you’re making somewhat of an effort to support this community, and you’re going to treat us with respect? Hell yeah we’re going to go on that stage and we’re going to crush it. And also like – that’s hard work, bro. Getting on that shit was hard work.

Mani:
Nobody gave us shit, dude.

Paul:
We weren’t born here, We weren’t raised with “so-and-so is my neighbor”, and we got on this fest – that happens a lot in the music scene, especially the higher you climb. We’ve been able to peek through windows where we see that that’s a thing. Nepotism, in a way, relationships like “I went to preschool with this guy” – that’s not our case. We came in, we were already in our twenties, when we came to this country. The fact that we got on there, as a band that sings in Spanish, as a band up there that was doing guttural screams, all that shit – fuck, that means something to us, that means something to people like us.

Jeremy:
And that’s why a lot of people respect you throughout the years, because you’ve held this consistently. You’ve always been about that life, and you’ve done so much for the scene in Chicago, more than any of these other – we’re talking about the entrenched –

Jason:
Punk elite.

Jeremy:
Yeah, who ain’t done – “Oh, they’re from Chicago?” – they ain’t done shit for the city.

Paul:
Nobody can say we haven’t played benefit shows for ten weekends straight for five summers in a row.

Mani:
That’s the type of thing we should be talking about and I appreciate you brought it up because we talk about it a lot. Regardless, even if we don’t play, we attend Riot Fest, I like to go see the bands, but I also to see the community and the environment outside, and the hustle – the people selling hot dogs, water, whatever they’re selling. I see people parking, renting their parking spots, so I definitely see people with the opportunity to hustle a little bit of money every year, and we were just talking about, I see the community bumping, trying to make some money. A lot could be done – I really think a lot more can be done.

Paul:
A lot more can be done. A lot more can always be done.

Jeremy:
Yeah you guys are doing it though. Speaking of the parking thing, I remember there was some controversy with Riot Fest, city officials were selling public lots to Riot Fest attendees, like –

Jason

Alderman Cardenas, is that the guy – yeah, they put the fence around it, people spraypainted it.

Jeremy:
Then they shut the park down for days, a week afterwards.

Jason:
Yeah because it’s a public park, the neighborhood uses it. So hey, I wanted to ask about, another thing people are doing during the pandemic instead of shows, is making music videos. You guys have always been making very cool music videos. One I was gonna ask about recently is this Checkmate Humanity from Anti-Colonial Vol. 2 coming out. That’s a cool ass video. I saw the interview with Tatiana Mejia about the collaboration. How’d you put it together?

Paul:
All her. All praises to her, and also John, the producer of the record, the director of photography. She’s a Dominican contemporary dancer, and she’s based out of Berlin, and we got to see a piece, a movie that she did, called Kiskeya, and it’s about racism and colorism in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and it blew our minds. So we always wanted to have a visual of one of our songs that represent the rhythm, so people would understand where we’re coming from, the afro-caribbean rhythms that we sow into punk. So when we saw her piece, we decided to approach her to see if she wanted to do it, and she was game – she really wanted to. It’s our favorite piece of visual art that we’ve done. It’s also the best one cause we didn’t have to do shit for it, and making videos is a pain in the ass. So basically we told her more or less the meaning of the song, kind of what we wanted, and we just let her do her thing. She came to us like, look: and it was perfect, we made no changes to it.

Mani:
Yeah it’s also a way to collaborate with other peers and people who are doing different art. It’s a way for us to apply what we’ve learned in the punk scene, we work together through mutual aid. We’re going to make all these videos, I’m going to have my friend be the videographer, my friend to be the director, my friends are the dancers, and we’re all going to come up together. There’s a lot of ego in other areas of art, we’ve noticed that a lot. We always talk about it, because when you play in a punk band, you experience rejection every day, it’s like normal. Like oh no, nobody’s watching your set? Whatever, you’re still going to have fun. It’s not the case in other areas of art, we’ve come to notice. So we’re applying what we’ve learned, working together DIY-style, into the video, and it worked out really good. We created a lot of good experiences, we’re happy with it.

Jason:
So you guys got the album out, it’s coming out in like three weeks. You got the show at the Cobra Lounge, that’s February 26th, the release show, gonna check that out.

Paul:
That’s the thing: we’re ready to play, bro. We’re ready to play. It’s been two years and we’ve hardly been able to play. We want to get on that stage, man.

Jason:
Are you guys going to try to do a tour during the summer?

Paul:
Yeah. I mean, we have a tour in Europe that’s booked, that’s been booked.

Mani:
Been booked since the beginning, since before the pandemic.

Paul:
Yeah it’s been booked since 2019 and it keeps getting pushed, so hopefully that happens, if that doesn’t happen, we’ll just do a US tour.

Jason:
When’s that happening, when you going to start that tour?

Paul:
The European tour is supposed to start at the end of June and go to the middle of July. Yeah, festivals, shows on our own, shows with our other band. Europe is great to tour, man: the hospitality’s way better, the food’s way better. It’s just a great experience.

Jason:
Where are you most excited about going?

Paul:
Me, I like being in Spain.

Mani:
We’re trying also to go to South America this year, for the first time. We have a lot of people who had been listening to our music for years there. A lot of people are digging our music in Chile, Brazil, Argentina – never been there, a lot of people fuck with our music down there, and we can’t wait to go. We’re trying to go this year.

Jason:
We touched on so much shit. Anything else you want to put out there, as we get to the end of the interview?

Mani:
Shout out to the working people! All the people that kept everything fucking running during the pandemic, bro. All the immigrant laborers, all the people that got up in the fucking morning, maintenance workers, mechanics, delivery people, medical staff. All the people who make sure everything was up and running, risking their fucking lives every day. We appreciate you. Let’s try to play some music, man.

Jason:
That’s quite a shoutout – shoutout to the working class!

Mani:
It’s true, bro! Yo, I went out there every motherfucking day, even the first days of the pandemic when everyone was chilling at the crib, and all I saw was people risking their life, risking their homes, risking getting somebody sick at home, to keep everything running. We talk about oh the heroes, well these people are the heroes, people who showed up to work every day to make sure it was all up and running.

Jason:
So a lot of people are realizing this, and we’ve seen people rising up against racism, capitalism, fascism, these last couple years. You guys think it’s encouraging? Does it give you hope for the future? Or do you think we’re all doomed anyway, we’re all fucked no matter what happens?

Mani:
No, I mean if you’re fucking with politics, radical politics, you gotta feel like there’s hope. You can’t turn bitter, bro, you can’t be like shit’s never going to happen. This is exactly the point we’re doing this. But it definitely shows that we’re the disposable for the elite, working people. They don’t give a fuck about us, they don’t give a fuck if we get sick or die, as long as the profits keeps showing up. At the same time, I’m not going to let that shit discourage me, or not fighting, or not doing what I came here to do, what is my calling, why a lot of people – I always say this during interviews, there’s a lot of people with boots on the ground, everyday, working to make a positive contribution. Social workers, school teachers, activists, whatever you want to call it. The problem is that they don’t have the resources and they don’t get the exposure they need to effectively do their jobs. I’m tired of people saying no, nothing’s going to change, nobody cares. Well there’s a lot of people working everyday, and actually doing great things. You know this, you guys both know this.

Jason:
Yeah definitely, people are on the move, man!

Paul:
It’s kind of disrespectful to them to get discouraged.

Jeremy:
And like you were talking about the burnout, earlier. But there’s also a whole new crop of punks, you know, there’s hope – the youth ain’t taking no shit no more, man!

Paul:
Yeah, that’s true, it’s definitely trending in the right direction in a lot of ways. My hope is that enough people catch on in time before we, I don’t know, destroy the Earth.

Jason:
I don’t think so, man. The Earth’s too strong!

Paul:
It just needs to wipe us out, then it’ll be fine!

Jason:
Let’s leave on a good note! (laughter) Thanks a lot so much for coming on here, it’s been great talking here with you guys, thanks a lot. Much respect!.

Jeremy:
Much respect!

Mani:
Much respect right back to you, right back to you! Shout out to Smash MAGA the game! Shout out to Books to Prisoners!