ICE Nation and the War on Everyone

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It's time for you and me to
stand up for ourselves.

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Welcome to unwashed unruly where
hope is optional and defiance is

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mandatory.
Today we're talking about anti

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immigrant repression and the
long war on citizenship rights.

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I'm your host Lola Michaels,
joined by the dead serious Ezra

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Saeed.
Hi, Lola.

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Hi, everybody.
And meme savvy Cam Cruise.

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What's up y'all?
And guess what?

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We love getting new followers
and ratings.

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If you ever thought it's time to
learn why the world is bad, go

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ahead and give us five stars.
You can also send us questions

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at contact at
unwashedun-ruly.com. 170

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billion.
That's the war chest for ICE,

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the federal paramilitary force
unleashed to raid, cage, deport

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and terrorize the most
vulnerable and anyone who gets

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in the way.
Anti immigrant repression is

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bipartisan, but under Trump 2.0
it's open throttle.

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Unmarked grabs, mass raids,
detention camps packed with 10s

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of thousands, people dying in
custody, kids seized from

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schools and churches, legal
residents snatched at hearings,

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Entire communities forced to
live under occupation.

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First they brand immigrants as
invaders.

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Then solidarity becomes suspect.
Anti immigrant terror is a

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testing ground, an excuse to
expand police powers, normalize

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surveillance and grant impunity.
When Renee Goode and Alex Pretty

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were killed in Minneapolis, when
Keith Porter Junior was shot in

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Los Angeles, it exposed the
truth.

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This isn't just a war on
immigrants.

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It's a warning shot to the
population.

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From the first naturalization
laws to today, the state has

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always decided who belongs, who
can work and who can be cast

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out.
Birthright citizenship, the 14th

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Amendment, equal protection,
democratic rights, and the

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privileges of citizenship
embodied in the Constitution

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were won in struggle, and they
can be stripped away in crisis.

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What we're seeing now reopens a
question the ruling class has

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never settled Who counts, who
has rights, and who can be

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thrown out when the system is
obsolete?

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We spend a lot of time talking
on this podcast about

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capitalism.
And so I want to start a little

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bit with the economic framework
of what we're seeing today.

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Because when the economy
contracts and inequality

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sharpens, the ruling class is
always looking for a way to

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deflect anger from the real
enemy and toward vulnerable

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scapegoats.
And so we are in this period

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where layoffs are spreading and
working conditions are

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miserable, the social safety net
is being shredded, and there's

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this very intense economic
assault on all the poor and the

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working class.
So immigrants are the convenient

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target, right?
They're wrongly blamed for

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unemployment, for strained
services, declining wages, that

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those things are all driven by
the capitalist crisis.

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And immigrants are easier to
isolate, to criminalize, to

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strip of rights.
But crackdowns also discipline

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the labor force.
So when you have a terrorized

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section of workers, it's easier
to underpay and harder to

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organize.
So I want to start there.

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What are some of the economic
factors?

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And we can also deal with the
political factors at play when

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we're talking about this
relentless assault by ICE.

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Well, as you mentioned, I think
contrary to Emperor Trump's

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statements, the economy is in
pretty bad shape.

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There's growing numbers of
people being laid off.

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People can't make ends meet.
And as you put it in, in those

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circumstances, the ruling class
looks to get people to punch

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downwards to blame immigrants.
The other side of it is when the

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economy contracts, the need for
immigrant labor by the

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capitalists also contracts.
And so they then decide they're

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going to get rid of a whole
bunch.

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This started out by Trump sort
of very broad and very targeting

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everybody.
But as he himself put it,

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there's quote UN quote, good
immigrants that he doesn't want

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to go after as much, let's say,
which are the farm workers and

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the hotel workers because he
heard back from industry leaders

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there.
They're still needed.

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But there is sort of this broad
assault because they are seen as

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an excess population within the
United States.

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The other thing that's happening
is you just have a very racist

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administration that is
ideologically driven by hatred

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for anyone who's not white.
One sort of sign of this is when

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JD Vance and and his likes keep
going on about a declining

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population growth in the United
States.

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In fact, the United States does
not have that problem.

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A lot of European countries do,
but the United States doesn't.

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What they're specifically
referring to is lower birth

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rates among whites than among
non whites.

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Yeah, it's that the wrong people
are having babies.

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Exactly, exactly.
And then finally, this is really

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a war against the democratic
rights of everybody.

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Not just immigrants, of course
it is, but citizens as well.

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And the more the Trump
administration gets away with

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marauding ICE agents running
through the streets of the

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country, harassing,
intimidating, detaining,

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murdering, beating both
immigrants and citizens, the

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more normal that becomes.
And that simply becomes the way

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things work in America.
And your rights as an American

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citizen, as your democratic
rights are just shredded, which

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is something this ruling class
always wants to do with

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democratic rights for the
populace.

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As a whole, I was going to say
that I think what we're seeing

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is a continuation of the the War
on Terror in many ways, because

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with the War on Terror after
911, it was always a pretext to

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increase the state's power and
to expand the repressive

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apparatus and constrict
democratic rights.

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And that's where we really saw
this very explicit attempt to

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forfeit constitutional
protections and to go after

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basically the executive saying
like we can disappear citizens.

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And I think there is that
continuation of the post 9/11

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War on Terror right now, which
is really to go after leftist

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and pro Palestinian voices.
And so we we saw this early on

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with the ICE raids or ICE
detentions rather of Romesa

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Ozturk, the Turkish Fulbright
scholar from Tufts, who is

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detained by ICE because of
critiquing Israel in an op-ed.

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And then of course Mahmoud
Khalil, a permanent resident of

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the US who was also kidnapped,
detained, still facing

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deportation to Algeria.
So any non citizen who

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challenges U.S. policy is a
target.

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It's very ominous, but it's also
about everyone at the same time.

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Yeah, I mean, Palestinians have
always been a target and pro

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Palestinian voices have always
been a target in this country

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because this country wants to
shut down any popularization of

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the Palestinian cause.
Ahmad Khalil, for example, is a

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fairly compared to a lot of
others, is a fairly militant

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voice in the Palestinian
struggle.

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You see it happening with the
Palestinians in multiple

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different ways, everything from
people being detained, deported.

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So you mentioned Auster, you
mentioned Khalil.

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There's also Laca Cordia, who's
a 33 year old Palestinian woman

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who's been detained by ICE for
years, recently suffered

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seizures.
I'm sure there are many more

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cases that you could mention.
But there's another side to it,

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which is, you know, controlling
media, controlling the media

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landscape, whether it's the
mainstream media, whether it's

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Larry Allison buying TikTok and
and suddenly the number of posts

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relating to Palestine decline.
Yeah, I was just going to say,

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while the administration is
suppressing voices who support

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Palestine or who, you know, have
anything that goes against the

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regime, they're also amplifying
voices that align with their

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cause.
And I think one of the examples

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of that was the Nick Shirley
thing that happened where he

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went around to Minnesota
daycares banging on doors.

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And this is like a little known
YouTube with not much of A

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following.
And all of a sudden, that video

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was all over the place because
it supported the agenda of

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scapegoating immigrants.
So I think it's pretty clear

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that the administration had
something to do with the

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popularization and the
widespreading of this video.

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The anti immigrant hysteria also
serves other purposes, which in

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this case going after daycares
is and a direct attack on

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working people.
It's a direct attack on women.

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And yeah, and it's.
It's and it's an attack on the

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Somali population of Minnesota.
You know, just saying that these

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people are crooks.
These people are stealing your

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tax dollars and creating an
enemy out of a population of

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immigrants then.
The response to that is to cut

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off all funding for daycare
centers, so and.

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And and the context of that,
like there's like no interest in

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the social safety net being
preserved in any way by this

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administration.
So it's an opportunity for them

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not only to scapegoat a
population of people, but to

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defund programs that they don't
want to fund.

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I would go further back and say
it's actually, yes, it goes back

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to the War on Terror, and I
think it is a continuation of

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that.
But it starts before the War on

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Terror.
And it really actually the

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suppression of democratic rights
under the Clinton

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administration, to sort of
paraphrase one of my favorite

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lines from the Lake Gore Vidal,
Democrats load the gun,

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Republicans pull the trigger.
And the attacks on civil

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liberties was was exactly that.
So that initial target by the

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Clinton administration was black
people, the increasing of police

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on the streets, the increasing
powers of detention, of

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imprisonment, the mushrooming of
the prison population.

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In that way, he was continuing
in the tradition of Ronald

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Reagan, but on a far greater
magnitude.

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But with that, as always happens
in this country, comes a broader

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assault and democratic rights.
So you had to basically

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dismantling of habeas corpus
rights.

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Now that's not going to just
apply to black people.

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That's going to apply to
everybody.

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You had the new definitions of
terrorism that he introduced

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under his watch and all that was
seized upon by the Republican

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Bush administration after 911
and mushroomed.

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And it has to always be
recalled.

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This was completely bipartisan.
Every Democrat has gone along

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with the Patriot Act.
If you recall this big beautiful

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bill from last year, there was a
lot of objections from Democrats

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and they voted against it.
But the objections centred

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mainly about the destruction of
social safety net, such as there

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are left in the United States,
and that's fine.

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Except what there was barely any
peep about was this qualitative,

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massive increase of funding to
ICE.

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Right.
They're slush fund because.

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They share the same program.
Every administration since ICE

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was founded has increased it
from the prior administration,

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whether it's Republican or
Democrat.

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Now, granted, Trump increases it
on a level where it's like a

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paramilitary or a military
force, and we'll come back to

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that later, but they didn't
really object to that.

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Yeah, I think that's one of the
funny things about all this, is

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the Republican Party is really
trying to brand the Democrats as

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the pro immigrant party, the
party that opened the doors,

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that opened the floodgates for
immigrants.

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But it's really not the case at
all.

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Like the the it's totally a
bipartisan thing.

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Obama was the deporter in chief
during his time.

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Like Obama.
Still holds the record.

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Trump may catch up, but Obama
still holds the record.

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Yeah.
But I don't think that Trump's

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deportation Dr. is really about
numbers in that sense.

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Like it's really about amping up
the shock and awe policing.

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You know, anyone who looks
Latino, anyone who's brown, you

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can be abducted at any moment.
You know these agents are given

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the green light to cause chaos
explicitly without any pretense

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of accountability there this
extrajudicial terror that you

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can get swept up in an unmarked
car and go to an undisclosed

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location and go to a torture
camera at your.

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Child's graduation, like there,
is a terroristic element to the

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way that this campaign it is.
Supposed to imbue people with

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terror.
Those scenes you see out of

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Minneapolis and before them out
of Chicago.

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And if rumors are correct, New
York and Southern California are

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next.
We'll see of people running

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around with their whistles,
screaming ices here and then

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getting attacked.
It just gives you a taste of the

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terror in neighborhoods that's
being felt.

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You mentioned that the murders
by ICE in the street of

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protesters, nothing's going to
happen.

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No punishment, not even the
pretense of a punishment, not

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even a pretense of an arrest,
not even a pretense of a trial.

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None of that.
You know, you hear so many

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cases, whether true or not, of
supposedly some guy gets let off

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00:13:15,800 --> 00:13:18,520
on a technicality because the
cops didn't read on his Miranda

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00:13:18,520 --> 00:13:21,240
rights or something like that.
There's no Miranda rights being

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00:13:21,240 --> 00:13:24,120
read to anybody.
There's it's just unfiltered

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00:13:24,120 --> 00:13:28,640
terror against the populace as a
whole wherever they go.

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And it's like everybody's
sitting there.

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00:13:29,920 --> 00:13:32,680
Which city is next to have a war
declared on it?

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00:13:32,920 --> 00:13:36,040
They basically have normalized
paramilitary forces running

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00:13:36,040 --> 00:13:38,720
through the streets of the
country terrorizing the

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00:13:38,720 --> 00:13:40,560
populace.
Now that's normal.

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00:13:40,800 --> 00:13:42,760
You know, you can't talk back to
them.

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00:13:42,760 --> 00:13:45,080
You can't do anything.
You're supposed to just obey

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00:13:45,080 --> 00:13:47,760
their orders.
Like they are gods from Mount

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00:13:47,760 --> 00:13:50,240
Olympus.
And if you disobey, they have

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00:13:50,240 --> 00:13:53,840
the right to basically kill you.
And it's everyone.

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00:13:53,840 --> 00:13:56,600
It's, it's not just immigrants,
it's everyone watching, kids

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00:13:56,600 --> 00:13:59,240
included.
I think This is why people are

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00:13:59,240 --> 00:14:03,400
reaching for these historical
comparisons and comparing ICE to

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00:14:03,400 --> 00:14:06,600
the Gestapo.
Not only because these ICE

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00:14:06,600 --> 00:14:10,480
agents are being massively
recruited in alt right Nazi

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00:14:10,480 --> 00:14:14,320
circles, but they're being
completely politically protected

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00:14:14,560 --> 00:14:18,160
and there's no pretense of even
damage control with like a slap

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00:14:18,160 --> 00:14:19,600
on the wrist or anything like
that.

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00:14:20,560 --> 00:14:23,000
I want to start off playing a
clip from Renee Lichtman.

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00:14:23,000 --> 00:14:27,600
He was a Holocaust survivor and
his citizenship was in question

257
00:14:27,600 --> 00:14:31,600
by commanding officer in the US
Army when he gave a

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00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:34,120
presentation.
This clip from him speaking this

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00:14:34,120 --> 00:14:40,160
is in 2017, OK it's Trump 1.0.
It's when Michigan was

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00:14:40,400 --> 00:14:44,360
entertaining a bill to allow
police to act as federal

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00:14:44,360 --> 00:14:51,080
immigration officers and he drew
parallels between the anti

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00:14:51,080 --> 00:14:55,640
immigrant terror and what he saw
growing up in Nazi occupied

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00:14:55,640 --> 00:14:58,240
France.
So remember, this isn't in 2017.

264
00:15:00,120 --> 00:15:03,560
I'm a child survivor of the
Holocaust.

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00:15:03,560 --> 00:15:10,240
I was, I was about two years old
when the when the war began and,

266
00:15:10,240 --> 00:15:14,880
and I went into hiding.
My family members were picked up

267
00:15:15,200 --> 00:15:20,600
in the streets of Paris in the
very same way that ICE people

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00:15:21,040 --> 00:15:25,480
are deputizing local police and
picking them up in the streets.

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00:15:25,480 --> 00:15:28,880
This is a photograph of the
French police deputized by the

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00:15:28,880 --> 00:15:33,320
Nazis picking up Jewish men.
And they got the list of the men

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00:15:33,600 --> 00:15:38,560
to be picked up by the French
police who kept lists of the

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00:15:38,560 --> 00:15:43,480
Jews in Paris, including Jewish
children, including children on

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00:15:43,480 --> 00:15:47,240
my street who were picked up and
went to the gas chambers while I

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00:15:47,240 --> 00:15:52,000
was fortunate to be in hiding.
I see a lot of parallels, Mr.

275
00:15:52,000 --> 00:15:54,760
Chairman.
I see a lot of parallels to what

276
00:15:54,760 --> 00:15:59,680
is going on right now in cities
like Ann Arbor and Pontiac,

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00:15:59,800 --> 00:16:03,360
where ICE is coming in and with
the help of the local police,

278
00:16:03,360 --> 00:16:07,720
are picking up picking up
immigrants.

279
00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:11,480
Yeah.
I mean, one of the differences

280
00:16:11,480 --> 00:16:14,960
between then and now is it's not
the local police that they're

281
00:16:14,960 --> 00:16:17,920
relying on anymore.
They have their own paramilitary

282
00:16:17,920 --> 00:16:19,560
force to do it.
And also what?

283
00:16:19,720 --> 00:16:22,320
Is missing from all this too
that we haven't really talked

284
00:16:22,320 --> 00:16:25,440
about is all the detention
centers you have on any given

285
00:16:25,440 --> 00:16:27,760
day 58,000.
I think that number is

286
00:16:27,760 --> 00:16:31,280
increasing to almost 100,000 a
day in detention centers.

287
00:16:31,880 --> 00:16:33,960
They have no food, water,
shower.

288
00:16:34,280 --> 00:16:36,640
They're in cages.
They're treated as animals.

289
00:16:36,800 --> 00:16:38,280
Yeah, concentration.
Camps.

290
00:16:38,520 --> 00:16:40,240
Yeah, the.
Infinite parallels.

291
00:16:40,600 --> 00:16:43,960
One thing that Ezra, you
mentioned to me before this

292
00:16:43,960 --> 00:16:47,400
episode was how ice is
resembling something like the

293
00:16:47,400 --> 00:16:50,440
Praetorian Guard in the Roman
Empire.

294
00:16:50,520 --> 00:16:53,080
The Praetorian Guard was there
to protect the Emperor, and they

295
00:16:53,080 --> 00:16:56,640
were like the elite combat
troops whose loyalty was to this

296
00:16:56,640 --> 00:16:58,200
one authority.
I mean, they were.

297
00:16:58,200 --> 00:17:04,000
Elite in relation to who had
arms in the city of Rome.

298
00:17:04,040 --> 00:17:08,079
So compared to other soldiers,
they weren't particularly elite,

299
00:17:08,079 --> 00:17:11,000
but they were elite in the city.
And then I guess you can draw an

300
00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:14,440
analogy that the ICE guys, not
very well trained, they're not

301
00:17:14,440 --> 00:17:17,640
going to be elite compared to
American, your average American

302
00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:22,839
military unit, but they are the
ones who are most elite on the

303
00:17:22,839 --> 00:17:24,760
streets.
And the Praetorian Guard,

304
00:17:25,160 --> 00:17:29,160
whereas the military in ancient
Rome, at least theoretically had

305
00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:32,800
to answer to the Senate.
You know, theoretically the

306
00:17:32,800 --> 00:17:34,800
Praetorian Guard didn't have
that pretense.

307
00:17:34,800 --> 00:17:37,160
The Praetorian Guard simply
answered to the emperor.

308
00:17:37,160 --> 00:17:41,400
It was his personal guard.
And it could be used to dispose

309
00:17:41,400 --> 00:17:44,880
of enemies and whether they be
rabble, whether they be

310
00:17:45,120 --> 00:17:48,000
aristocrats.
And I think the analogy to me is

311
00:17:48,280 --> 00:17:51,280
these ice paramilitary forces
marauding through the streets of

312
00:17:51,280 --> 00:17:52,640
this country.
They don't.

313
00:17:52,840 --> 00:17:54,880
I mean, they've made clear they
don't answer to Congress.

314
00:17:55,320 --> 00:17:58,120
They have showed nothing but
contempt to Congress.

315
00:17:58,120 --> 00:18:01,680
When congressmen and women have
show up at detention centers,

316
00:18:01,920 --> 00:18:04,280
they're basically spanked and
told to get the fuck out of

317
00:18:04,280 --> 00:18:06,280
there.
Like, you know, they answer to

318
00:18:06,280 --> 00:18:09,840
only one force, which is Trump.
Yeah, and it seems.

319
00:18:09,840 --> 00:18:12,280
Like, they're operating on
completely different rules than

320
00:18:12,280 --> 00:18:15,280
any other, like law enforcement
or military agency.

321
00:18:15,280 --> 00:18:18,320
They don't wear uniforms.
They don't have name tags.

322
00:18:18,320 --> 00:18:22,120
So yeah, they don't operate like
other enforcement forces in the

323
00:18:22,120 --> 00:18:23,240
country.
Yeah, I mean.

324
00:18:23,240 --> 00:18:26,160
You could say that the way the
cops have occupied and attacked

325
00:18:26,160 --> 00:18:30,160
America's ghettos against and
the black population is where I

326
00:18:30,160 --> 00:18:33,840
would draw the analogy.
You know, in those cases, the

327
00:18:33,840 --> 00:18:37,000
cops have basically free reign
to do whatever they want.

328
00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:42,440
This is on a national scale.
It is directly answerable to the

329
00:18:42,440 --> 00:18:47,000
president and it's basically
targeting anybody they perceive

330
00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:52,000
to be an obstacle, which is why
you can have white military VA

331
00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:55,280
nurses being gunned down in the
streets by these guys because

332
00:18:55,280 --> 00:18:56,800
they are perceived to be an
obstacle.

333
00:18:56,800 --> 00:18:59,160
And so they gunned them down,
and we have.

334
00:18:59,160 --> 00:19:02,360
An administration that's openly
saying that they have impunity

335
00:19:02,360 --> 00:19:05,400
to do so, yes, I mean.
In every one of those cases, the

336
00:19:05,400 --> 00:19:08,960
response is not, oh, we need to
pull back a little, this is

337
00:19:08,960 --> 00:19:11,000
maybe a step too far or anything
like that.

338
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:14,880
No, the response has been to
kill and then kill the victims.

339
00:19:14,880 --> 00:19:17,720
So they kill them physically and
then they destroy their

340
00:19:17,720 --> 00:19:20,920
reputation by claiming they were
domestic terrorists and things

341
00:19:20,920 --> 00:19:24,080
like that.
You know, he came to the demo to

342
00:19:24,080 --> 00:19:26,880
commit a massacre that, you
know, she was trying to run him

343
00:19:26,880 --> 00:19:29,440
over.
You can all watch the videos and

344
00:19:29,440 --> 00:19:31,160
see that that's not what's
happening.

345
00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:34,520
But it doesn't matter because
there isn't an analogy with the

346
00:19:34,680 --> 00:19:37,360
the Nazis in the sense of, you
know, Gobbles, you know, you

347
00:19:37,360 --> 00:19:39,840
just tell a lie.
The bigger the lie, the more it

348
00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:42,120
germinates.
But I think there's also another

349
00:19:42,120 --> 00:19:45,080
analogy that I'd like us to
make.

350
00:19:45,200 --> 00:19:46,880
I mean.
Obviously there's been a ton of

351
00:19:46,880 --> 00:19:49,720
analogies with the Gestapo,
which is very convenient and

352
00:19:49,720 --> 00:19:53,600
resonates, but there's a lot of
homegrown analogies as well.

353
00:19:53,600 --> 00:19:56,680
Yeah, the.
Gestapo analogy is correct in

354
00:19:56,680 --> 00:20:00,160
the sense that they look like
them, they act like them, Vino

355
00:20:00,160 --> 00:20:02,800
dresses like them.
I mean, they, you know, they're

356
00:20:02,800 --> 00:20:06,240
on point.
My only problem with it is that

357
00:20:06,240 --> 00:20:09,880
we're in the United States.
You don't have to go to all the

358
00:20:09,880 --> 00:20:14,440
way to Germany in the. 1930s, to
get your analogy, there's a very

359
00:20:14,440 --> 00:20:18,520
homegrown American analogy.
Frederick Douglass called them

360
00:20:18,920 --> 00:20:22,280
the biped bloodhounds, the slave
patrols.

361
00:20:22,760 --> 00:20:25,160
This is what, you know, what
these guys are.

362
00:20:25,160 --> 00:20:29,520
And if you remember, we did an
episode on race in this country

363
00:20:29,520 --> 00:20:32,360
where we were pointing out that
the Nazis were drawing lessons

364
00:20:32,360 --> 00:20:34,520
from the United States in the
1930s.

365
00:20:34,840 --> 00:20:39,200
So the US was doing this before
there was ever even Nazis, from

366
00:20:39,200 --> 00:20:42,680
the 19th century where the slave
patrol before the Civil War

367
00:20:42,680 --> 00:20:46,760
becomes the Klansmen, becomes
the cop, becomes the force that

368
00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:50,640
terrorizes the ghetto, and it's
now the force that terrorizes

369
00:20:50,640 --> 00:20:54,240
every minority and anyone who's
not a minority who they perceive

370
00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:57,840
to be an obstacle.
You don't need Germany in the

371
00:20:57,840 --> 00:21:01,840
1930s.
America is a walking, talking

372
00:21:02,160 --> 00:21:06,640
analogy that still lives.
It never died, it simply took on

373
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:09,800
different forms and it's now
taking on a new form.

374
00:21:10,120 --> 00:21:11,840
So yeah, they act like the
Gestapo.

375
00:21:11,840 --> 00:21:15,200
But you know what they are?
They are the modern day

376
00:21:15,560 --> 00:21:17,440
bloodhouse.
They are the slave patrols.

377
00:21:18,120 --> 00:21:20,520
I'm going to give a.
Little plug for our two-part

378
00:21:20,720 --> 00:21:23,400
series on the whitewashing of
American slavery, which you can

379
00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:25,160
find wherever you get your
podcasts.

380
00:21:25,400 --> 00:21:26,560
Thank you.
That's right.

381
00:21:27,240 --> 00:21:29,240
But like, you know, you want to
talk about history.

382
00:21:29,520 --> 00:21:33,240
As far back as one can tell in
in the history of Christianity,

383
00:21:33,680 --> 00:21:35,840
churches have been considered
sanctuary.

384
00:21:36,600 --> 00:21:40,320
It's very rare to just barge
into a church as the state force

385
00:21:40,320 --> 00:21:41,880
and attack and detain someone
out.

386
00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:44,600
To my knowledge, ICE hasn't done
that yet.

387
00:21:44,600 --> 00:21:49,000
But they're hanging out in the
parking lots of mainly Catholic

388
00:21:49,000 --> 00:21:52,840
churches where Latinos go on
Sunday to round them up.

389
00:21:52,840 --> 00:21:57,960
As they leave or as they enter,
you see images of little 456

390
00:21:57,960 --> 00:22:02,360
year old kids running away in
terror because ICE is going

391
00:22:02,360 --> 00:22:05,920
after goddamn school.
Bus stops sitting outside of

392
00:22:06,040 --> 00:22:09,600
schools capture kids as they're
coming in and out or their

393
00:22:09,600 --> 00:22:13,240
parents.
And how is that not like the

394
00:22:13,240 --> 00:22:17,480
slave patrols who haunted down,
escaped and other blacks

395
00:22:17,720 --> 00:22:22,120
throughout the country in every
walk of life to to basically say

396
00:22:22,200 --> 00:22:25,280
you do not belong here, you must
disappear another close.

397
00:22:25,280 --> 00:22:30,160
Analogy that I'm thinking about
is all The Dirty wars in Central

398
00:22:30,160 --> 00:22:34,560
America and Latin America where
the church was supposed to be a

399
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:36,600
sanctuary.
One was considered a hotbed of

400
00:22:36,600 --> 00:22:40,800
communism and the military
regimes in those countries would

401
00:22:40,800 --> 00:22:44,680
go into churches regularly and
go after leftists and kill them

402
00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:48,720
and murder them and look at El
Salvador and all the US backed

403
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:52,040
regimes that were doing this.
So there's a parallel with what

404
00:22:52,040 --> 00:22:53,920
they do abroad and what they do
at home.

405
00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:54,840
Absolutely.
And.

406
00:22:55,160 --> 00:22:58,440
There's also a parallel, you
know, a regime that needs to do

407
00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:02,280
that is a, is actually a kind of
a weak regime because it's not a

408
00:23:02,280 --> 00:23:05,520
sign of strength, it's a sign of
desperation that you need to do

409
00:23:05,520 --> 00:23:07,520
things like that.
The fact that the US

410
00:23:07,520 --> 00:23:11,960
increasingly resembles a third
world tin pot capitalist

411
00:23:11,960 --> 00:23:15,880
dictatorship in a lot of ways,
not quite all there yet, but

412
00:23:16,080 --> 00:23:19,840
it's getting there, is a sign of
its decline.

413
00:23:19,840 --> 00:23:24,480
As a hegemonic empire that rules
over the world, it can't

414
00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:28,560
maintain things the way they
used to maintain them, and so it

415
00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:33,360
resorts to these sort of crude
methods that are usually the

416
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:37,440
preserve of the crudest
dictators you mentioned.

417
00:23:37,640 --> 00:23:41,480
Goebbels and this administration
is full of white nationalists,

418
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:45,320
especially Stephen Miller.
Sounds like Nazi propaganda

419
00:23:45,320 --> 00:23:49,400
minister Goebbels all the time.
I mean, he explicitly uses the

420
00:23:49,400 --> 00:23:52,840
invasion rhetoric.
You know, he said that

421
00:23:52,840 --> 00:23:55,640
immigration is a civilizational
threat.

422
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:56,720
You know, that's how he frames
it.

423
00:23:56,720 --> 00:23:58,880
So all the language is very
similar.

424
00:23:59,280 --> 00:24:05,320
And part of the recruitment to
ICE is we need a racially pure

425
00:24:05,320 --> 00:24:08,160
country.
You know, America has changed.

426
00:24:08,360 --> 00:24:11,680
It's being innovative.
You know, you must protect the

427
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:13,600
homeland.
So that's where they're.

428
00:24:13,600 --> 00:24:17,040
When they go on these recruiting
missions, it's like you can join

429
00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:19,200
ICE and you can kick someone's
head in.

430
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:20,720
Like you can go after the
vermin.

431
00:24:20,720 --> 00:24:22,080
Like, explicitly.
Yeah.

432
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:24,880
The.
Blatant racism has been pretty

433
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:27,760
mind blowing.
Usually it kind of exists below

434
00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:30,480
the surface.
There's some subtext, but ICE

435
00:24:30,480 --> 00:24:34,800
has been posting lots and lots
of references to things that the

436
00:24:34,800 --> 00:24:39,240
KKK has used, things that are
associated with the Proud Boys.

437
00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:42,400
So it's not really like a secret
at this point.

438
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:45,720
It's pretty open.
Last year in August ICE posted a

439
00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:49,760
picture of Uncle Sam and the
caption for that picture was

440
00:24:50,040 --> 00:24:53,880
Which way American man and that
is a reference to a book by an

441
00:24:53,880 --> 00:24:57,600
anti-Semitic guy that's just
full of racist bullshit and is

442
00:24:57,600 --> 00:25:00,760
embraced by neo Nazis.
They have another one with

443
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:04,160
George Washington and it says
America for Americans, and that

444
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:07,560
is a slogan that was used in KKK
posters repeatedly.

445
00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:12,880
After Renee Goode, there was a
post that had the quote We'll

446
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:16,040
have our home again.
And that is a lyric from a white

447
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:19,360
nationalist band that is
embraced by the Proud Boys that

448
00:25:19,360 --> 00:25:22,520
they sing their songs at like
Proud Boy meetings.

449
00:25:22,760 --> 00:25:26,080
There was a meme going around in
white nationalist groups of a

450
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:28,720
dog whistle.
Besides some of these posts, the

451
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:31,360
administration is harnessing
people's racism.

452
00:25:31,360 --> 00:25:34,560
They're like hauling on the the,
the scum of this country to come

453
00:25:34,560 --> 00:25:37,080
out and kick some people's heads
in going back to some of.

454
00:25:37,080 --> 00:25:40,160
The ads that you mentioned, can
we just talk about the aesthetic

455
00:25:40,280 --> 00:25:43,200
for a little bit?
Not only the the the mottos, but

456
00:25:43,240 --> 00:25:46,880
it's kind of like this
nostalgic, like this vintage.

457
00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:50,640
Yeah, it's like alt right
nihilism and then this classic

458
00:25:50,640 --> 00:25:53,880
Americana propaganda, which is
like, let's go back to your

459
00:25:53,880 --> 00:25:56,600
forefathers land, you know?
Yes, exactly.

460
00:25:56,600 --> 00:26:00,000
Yeah, the style of the posters
is kind of World War 2

461
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:04,760
propaganda esque type thing, and
it aligns with the, you know,

462
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:07,840
make America Great Again.
This is who we are before we

463
00:26:07,840 --> 00:26:11,280
were spoiled by the invaders.
So there's very much like

464
00:26:11,280 --> 00:26:14,120
calling back to the times when
white people had the most

465
00:26:14,120 --> 00:26:16,960
supremacist, yeah.
White is right.

466
00:26:17,280 --> 00:26:19,440
Well, they still.
Do, and at least the white

467
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:23,080
ruling class still does Marco
Rubio, just on the points you're

468
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:25,160
making, just give a speech at
the Munich, at the Munich

469
00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:28,560
conference in front of a bunch
of European leaders, and he was

470
00:26:28,560 --> 00:26:30,920
explicit.
Now, Marco Rubio's family is

471
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:34,280
from Cuba, but as he himself
points out, he's really of

472
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:37,840
Spanish and Italian descent.
He's a European, of course.

473
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,600
All of the all of the
colonizers, children's children

474
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:43,240
are sure thing.
Yeah.

475
00:26:43,240 --> 00:26:45,320
So I'm just.
Going to I want to read you a

476
00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:49,480
few bits of this speech.
So in a time of headlines

477
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,520
heralding the end of the
transatlantic era, let it be

478
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:55,680
known and clear to all that this
is neither our goal nor our

479
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:58,080
wish.
Because for us Americans, our

480
00:26:58,080 --> 00:27:02,000
home may be in the Western
Hemisphere, but we will always

481
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:05,280
be a child of Europe.
This apparently got massive

482
00:27:05,280 --> 00:27:08,640
applause.
Did you know that JD Vance's

483
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:11,600
wife Usha is just really tan
Also well.

484
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:15,160
She spent a lot of.
Time in Mar a Lago, you laugh.

485
00:27:15,480 --> 00:27:18,800
You laugh Hindu.
There's a whole layer of Hindu

486
00:27:19,120 --> 00:27:25,000
high caste Indians who view
themselves as part of the white

487
00:27:25,200 --> 00:27:29,480
quote UN quote white tradition.
They are Indo Europeans and they

488
00:27:29,480 --> 00:27:34,160
are not like the southern
Indian, the dark southern Indian

489
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:36,520
people.
So yeah.

490
00:27:37,440 --> 00:27:41,640
So there's a whole layer of
upper caste Hindu Indians who

491
00:27:41,760 --> 00:27:43,840
think they just have a tan and
that's it.

492
00:27:44,080 --> 00:27:46,960
So I don't know what about her.
I'm not saying she says that,

493
00:27:46,960 --> 00:27:51,480
but this isn't too far away.
So this is more from Mr. Rubio

494
00:27:51,480 --> 00:27:54,160
at this Munich conference in
front of all these European

495
00:27:54,160 --> 00:27:56,320
leaders, he got a standing
ovation.

496
00:27:56,400 --> 00:28:01,280
By the way, mass migration is
not was not sorry.

497
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:03,360
He's a little illiterate.
Oh, I thought you were going to.

498
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:04,800
Yeah, I thought you were going
to cry.

499
00:28:05,320 --> 00:28:07,240
Emotional This is a really good
speech.

500
00:28:08,440 --> 00:28:11,520
Mass.
Migration is not, was, not isn't

501
00:28:11,520 --> 00:28:13,800
some fringe concern of little
consequence.

502
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:17,400
It was and continues to be a
crisis which is transforming and

503
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:21,040
destabilizing societies across
all across the West.

504
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:23,440
But then he jumps to say, what's
the answer to that?

505
00:28:24,320 --> 00:28:28,600
It should also be focused at the
answer on together advancing our

506
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:32,640
mutual interests and new
frontiers, on shackling our

507
00:28:32,640 --> 00:28:36,240
ingenuity, our creativity and
the dynamic to build a new

508
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:39,920
Western century.
And he goes on to say before the

509
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:42,960
end of the Second World War, the
West had been expanding its

510
00:28:42,960 --> 00:28:46,480
missionaries, its pilgrims, its
soldiers, explorers pouring out

511
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:50,040
from its shores to cross ocean,
settle new continents, build

512
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:53,160
vast empires extending but
across the globe.

513
00:28:53,440 --> 00:28:57,280
But in 1945, for the first time
since the Age of Columbus, it

514
00:28:57,280 --> 00:28:59,480
was contracting.
Europe was in ruins.

515
00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:02,880
Half of it lived behind an Iron
Curtain and the rest looked like

516
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:06,080
it would soon follow.
The Great Western empires had

517
00:29:06,080 --> 00:29:10,520
entered into terminal decline,
accelerated by godless communist

518
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:15,280
revolutions and by anti colonial
uprisings that would transform

519
00:29:15,280 --> 00:29:19,320
the world and drape the red
hammer and sickle across vast

520
00:29:19,320 --> 00:29:21,920
swaths of the map in the years
to come.

521
00:29:21,920 --> 00:29:23,800
Now I listen to that.
I say that's a good thing.

522
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:25,440
He does not mean it is a good
thing.

523
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:28,640
You're like bring out.
The hammer and sickle baby, but

524
00:29:28,640 --> 00:29:30,440
it.
You know, this, this is

525
00:29:30,440 --> 00:29:34,760
basically a speech of Long live
white civilization, which I have

526
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:36,600
to say in passing doesn't
there's no such thing.

527
00:29:37,200 --> 00:29:41,120
There is no such thing.
But basically this is the other

528
00:29:41,120 --> 00:29:43,520
side of what Cam was talking
about.

529
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:46,880
Because you have the crude ads
and the crude drawings, and then

530
00:29:46,880 --> 00:29:50,760
you have Marco Rubio, who is a,
you know, has illusions,

531
00:29:50,760 --> 00:29:55,080
delusions of becoming president
at some point, basically

532
00:29:55,680 --> 00:29:59,640
presenting European civilization
and himself as part of it, as

533
00:29:59,640 --> 00:30:02,080
the only legitimate civilization
in the world.

534
00:30:02,360 --> 00:30:05,760
And that's the ideological
aspect of it, far beyond the.

535
00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:08,720
Sunken Place.
I want to talk a little bit more

536
00:30:08,720 --> 00:30:12,600
about the Democrats in all this
because anytime that there's

537
00:30:13,200 --> 00:30:16,200
sadistic treatment of
immigrants, it always becomes

538
00:30:16,200 --> 00:30:19,080
this political football for the
two parties.

539
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:24,320
You know, Trump loves to revel
in this overtly nativist, pro

540
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:27,400
fascist policy.
We talked about how the war on

541
00:30:27,400 --> 00:30:31,200
immigrants is bipartisan.
Ezra, you mention your Gore

542
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:33,400
Vidal quote, which I love that
you bring that up every single

543
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:36,200
time that the Democrats love the
gun, the Republicans pull the

544
00:30:36,840 --> 00:30:39,000
the trigger of.
The point is, is that Trump did

545
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:41,400
not invent this apparatus,
right?

546
00:30:41,400 --> 00:30:43,920
He inherited it.
He stripped off all the PR

547
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:46,360
layer.
And what you get right now is

548
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:50,920
the Democrats posturing and
grandstanding as the party of

549
00:30:51,000 --> 00:30:55,320
decency under that is really
that they want the war to be

550
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:58,400
carried out in a different way.
They want to dupe people to vote

551
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:01,200
for them.
And so anytime a Republicans

552
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:04,200
ramp up chauvinism, the
Democrats step in with this

553
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:07,120
language of inclusion.
And they want to be, you know,

554
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:10,600
the good cops just keep
immigrant repression kind of

555
00:31:10,600 --> 00:31:13,680
managed concealed.
I don't think you have to be any

556
00:31:13,680 --> 00:31:17,920
sort of leftist or radical to
know that the detention camps

557
00:31:17,920 --> 00:31:21,360
and the militarized border, the
mass deportations have survived

558
00:31:22,080 --> 00:31:23,920
administration after
administration.

559
00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:26,000
Like we talked about.
There's a Direct Line.

560
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:32,880
More.
People were deported under my

561
00:31:32,880 --> 00:31:37,560
husband and Barack Obama without
killing American citizens and

562
00:31:37,560 --> 00:31:41,120
without putting children into
detention camps, then were in

563
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:44,160
the first Trump term or this
first year of Trump's second

564
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:46,600
term.
So I think it's important.

565
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:51,160
And what the?
Democrats successfully do, or

566
00:31:51,160 --> 00:31:55,440
tried to do, is channel all that
anger away from independent

567
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:58,440
struggle and back into these
electoral dead ends.

568
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:03,400
I want to actually play a clip
from an immigration attorney

569
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:06,480
named Eric Lee.
He was on Democracy Now in late

570
00:32:06,480 --> 00:32:09,640
January.
He is an attorney representing

571
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:14,280
ICE detainees being held in the
infamous daily immigration

572
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:17,960
detention facility in South
Texas, Family Residential

573
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:20,960
Center.
And he just really nails what's

574
00:32:20,960 --> 00:32:24,360
at stake in the abysmal
conditions in these detention

575
00:32:24,360 --> 00:32:26,440
centers in terms of the
Democratic Party.

576
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:30,600
The conditions in this facility
are abysmal.

577
00:32:31,080 --> 00:32:34,480
The But I think there's another
point to be made about the

578
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,840
overall situation because yes,
the Democrats are holding their

579
00:32:37,840 --> 00:32:40,720
press conferences.
It's a midterm election year.

580
00:32:40,720 --> 00:32:44,120
We all know that they do this
every time there's some horrific

581
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:47,160
crime perpetrated against
immigrants, whether it's family

582
00:32:47,160 --> 00:32:52,720
separation in 2018 and
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's teary

583
00:32:52,720 --> 00:32:55,400
eyed photo op.
And then they go away and

584
00:32:55,400 --> 00:32:58,320
nothing changes.
Dilly was opened by the Obama

585
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:01,920
administration in 2014.
It's been filled up with

586
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:04,200
hundreds of children and their
parents.

587
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:10,960
The Biden administration kept it
open for 3 1/2 I believe 3 1/2

588
00:33:10,960 --> 00:33:14,240
years of his term.
Obviously Trump is making

589
00:33:14,240 --> 00:33:17,240
everything worse.
The conditions are deplorable.

590
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:20,880
They're getting worse and worse.
But it's very important as this

591
00:33:20,880 --> 00:33:25,040
protest movement develops across
this country, as the calls for

592
00:33:25,040 --> 00:33:28,680
more demonstrations grow and
grow, as calls for a general

593
00:33:28,680 --> 00:33:32,320
strike grow, the Democratic
Party is as equally responsible

594
00:33:32,320 --> 00:33:36,440
as Trump for creating the
infrastructure of mass family

595
00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:38,520
and adult detention in this
country.

596
00:33:38,760 --> 00:33:43,120
And it is necessary that this
protest movement stay 100 miles

597
00:33:43,120 --> 00:33:46,800
away from the Democratic Party
and develop its orientation to

598
00:33:46,800 --> 00:33:49,280
the working class.
That's the only way that Dilly

599
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:52,800
is going to be shut down, that
the families inside, like my

600
00:33:52,800 --> 00:33:56,600
clients are going to be freed.
And that is got.

601
00:33:56,600 --> 00:33:59,960
That has got to be rule number
one with the these protests as

602
00:33:59,960 --> 00:34:02,920
they develop going forward.
Here.

603
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:04,720
Here.
Thank you, Eric Lee.

604
00:34:05,480 --> 00:34:07,280
So yeah, I don't know.
If this is like taking us a

605
00:34:07,280 --> 00:34:09,840
little off the track, but I
think it's interesting to think

606
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:13,000
about the history of detention
centers in the In the early

607
00:34:13,000 --> 00:34:16,440
1900s, when there was a lot of
immigration happening through

608
00:34:16,440 --> 00:34:19,760
San Francisco and through Ellis
Island, the way they would

609
00:34:19,760 --> 00:34:21,920
detain people was in local
jails.

610
00:34:22,159 --> 00:34:25,960
So the federal government would
pay local jailers to house

611
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,320
immigrants and because they were
making money per head, you know,

612
00:34:29,600 --> 00:34:32,120
each person they detained, they
would get X amount of dollars.

613
00:34:32,320 --> 00:34:35,520
The jails soon became like over
full because it was an

614
00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:39,840
opportunity for local
municipalities to like just make

615
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:43,320
some federal dollars.
And so from the history of

616
00:34:43,320 --> 00:34:45,600
detention centers in this
country, since when they first

617
00:34:45,600 --> 00:34:48,719
began, the conditions became
deplorable really quickly.

618
00:34:48,920 --> 00:34:51,600
And with almost all of the
detention centers we're using

619
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:54,639
now are also privately owned.
So there's a lot of money to be

620
00:34:54,639 --> 00:34:58,000
made and there's just like a
long history in the US of

621
00:34:58,240 --> 00:35:01,680
profiteering off of
incarceration and, you know,

622
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:04,160
just deplorable conditions
associated with that.

623
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:06,360
So I'm.
Glad you mentioned that, because

624
00:35:06,400 --> 00:35:08,440
there's a whole other side to
this, which is the private

625
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:11,040
detention center or the
industry.

626
00:35:11,240 --> 00:35:13,560
It's just like you have the
private prison industry, and in

627
00:35:13,560 --> 00:35:16,920
the case of detention Centers
for immigrants, you start

628
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:19,280
getting private ones under the
Reagan administration in the

629
00:35:19,280 --> 00:35:23,880
early 1980s.
But they are relatively modest

630
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:26,160
in size and relatively modest in
usage.

631
00:35:26,440 --> 00:35:30,080
The real explosion of immigrant
detention centers?

632
00:35:30,080 --> 00:35:30,920
Let me guess, let.
Me guess.

633
00:35:31,120 --> 00:35:32,240
Please do.
Clinton.

634
00:35:32,720 --> 00:35:37,280
Yes. 1996 There's a couple of
laws passed by Congress.

635
00:35:37,640 --> 00:35:42,480
One is called the IIRIRA.
Oh my God.

636
00:35:43,200 --> 00:35:44,480
Bill.
And the other one is called

637
00:35:44,480 --> 00:35:49,160
AEDPA Bill.
And what it did, what these laws

638
00:35:49,160 --> 00:35:53,400
did, is expand the categories of
immigrants that could be

639
00:35:53,400 --> 00:35:56,120
detained.
And once you've done that, you

640
00:35:56,120 --> 00:35:58,640
can detain a hell of a lot more.
Can you explain?

641
00:35:58,640 --> 00:36:01,000
What you mean by categories?
What do you mean by categories?

642
00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:03,480
Well, I mean.
This is before ICE, this is the

643
00:36:03,640 --> 00:36:06,960
old INS, Immigration
Naturalization Services.

644
00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:12,600
So for example, they tended to
go after like somebody who

645
00:36:12,640 --> 00:36:16,960
entered the country illegally,
maybe committed some low level

646
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:21,240
crime or something like that,
and that's who would get rounded

647
00:36:21,240 --> 00:36:22,680
up.
Or as we talked about the

648
00:36:22,680 --> 00:36:27,840
contracting of the economy and
they deport a number of migrant

649
00:36:27,840 --> 00:36:32,120
laborers that they know about in
construction or in the hotel

650
00:36:32,120 --> 00:36:35,480
industry or agriculture.
What these categories expanded

651
00:36:35,480 --> 00:36:40,040
to is basically the very
existence of somebody being here

652
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:43,520
undocumented becomes a crime
that is.

653
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:47,080
That then.
Becomes something you can detain

654
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:50,880
them for without them having to
do something else to commit a

655
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:52,280
crime.
Just by virtue of being

656
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:56,520
undocumented, exactly the other.
Thing about the categories is

657
00:36:56,600 --> 00:37:00,280
whereas before, if you, let's
say you did commit a crime as an

658
00:37:00,280 --> 00:37:04,280
undocumented immigrant, the
insurance had discretion on

659
00:37:04,280 --> 00:37:07,000
whether they thought you would
be a flight risk or not and

660
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:10,160
stuff like that.
So that some got deported, some

661
00:37:10,160 --> 00:37:13,760
didn't.
These laws mandated that you

662
00:37:13,880 --> 00:37:17,720
must be detained and you face
deportation when you are

663
00:37:17,720 --> 00:37:20,720
basically accused of a crime.
So it's kind of like the

664
00:37:20,720 --> 00:37:24,360
immigrant version of three
strikes or mandatory sentencing

665
00:37:24,720 --> 00:37:28,880
that any discretion before was
now replaced by a requirement

666
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:32,080
for detention.
So, so then it's, it's a free

667
00:37:32,080 --> 00:37:35,440
for all at that point, you can
just go about doing as many

668
00:37:35,440 --> 00:37:39,480
detentions as your budget and
manpower a lie allows.

669
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:42,600
And so you can detain a hell of
a lot more people.

670
00:37:42,800 --> 00:37:45,280
And once you detain a hell of a
lot more people, these private

671
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:49,400
detention centers mushroom in
size and quantity.

672
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:53,080
And, you know, Needless to say,
they're American concentration

673
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:55,680
camps.
And, and as Eric Lee pointed

674
00:37:55,680 --> 00:37:59,520
out, it's completely bipartisan.
You know, I remember having

675
00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,000
discussions with people after
Biden got elected.

676
00:38:02,160 --> 00:38:04,920
The kids are still in cages.
That didn't change.

677
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:07,800
He doesn't brag about it, but
the policy didn't change.

678
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:09,160
Well, Speaking of.
Biden.

679
00:38:09,160 --> 00:38:11,920
I actually wanted to mention the
memorable clip from the most

680
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:15,160
likable person in the Biden
administration, besides Biden

681
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:17,120
himself was, of course, Kamala
Harris.

682
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:22,160
And this was a very famous clip
that went viral from 2021.

683
00:38:22,160 --> 00:38:25,640
And it was in response to the
families that have been

684
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:28,720
devastated coming from Guatemala
and other places in Central

685
00:38:28,720 --> 00:38:32,840
America that have been plundered
and pillaged by US imperialism

686
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:36,040
and decades of neo colonial
subjugation.

687
00:38:36,400 --> 00:38:41,600
And this is what her message was
to those families.

688
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:47,080
I want to be clear to folks in
this region who are thinking

689
00:38:47,080 --> 00:38:51,680
about making that dangerous trek
to the United States.

690
00:38:51,680 --> 00:39:00,080
Mexico border do not come.
Do not come. the United States

691
00:39:00,080 --> 00:39:04,440
will continue to enforce our
laws and secure our border.

692
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:10,840
There are legal methods by which
migration can and should occur,

693
00:39:12,240 --> 00:39:15,960
but we, as one of our
priorities, will discourage

694
00:39:16,640 --> 00:39:22,000
illegal migration.
And I believe if you come to our

695
00:39:22,000 --> 00:39:26,800
border, you will be turned back.
It's just like the timing of

696
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,480
this clip, I think is what makes
it really funny and really

697
00:39:29,480 --> 00:39:33,000
egregious because it was after
the Trump administration and the

698
00:39:33,000 --> 00:39:36,640
Democrats were constantly
criticizing Trump's immigration

699
00:39:36,640 --> 00:39:40,000
policy, how cruel it was to put
people in cages and to tear

700
00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:42,040
apart families.
And then the Democrats came in

701
00:39:42,360 --> 00:39:44,720
and literally continue the same
exact thing.

702
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:47,080
It's it's wild.
Yeah.

703
00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:49,480
Speaking.
Of that, I think there's really,

704
00:39:49,480 --> 00:39:52,040
there's something else I wanted
to play for you guys, which is

705
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:56,960
someone put two clips together
of Bush and Obama speaking on

706
00:39:56,960 --> 00:39:59,200
immigration.
And it's it's from an article

707
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:02,960
called Immigration a tale of 2
presidents basically noting how

708
00:40:02,960 --> 00:40:06,160
they sound completely similar.
So this is George Bush from

709
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:09,080
2006.
That was when there were those

710
00:40:09,080 --> 00:40:11,320
mass mobilizations for immigrant
rights.

711
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:16,720
And Obama in 2014.
So it's two different periods, 8

712
00:40:16,720 --> 00:40:19,640
years apart.
Obama in 2014 had already earned

713
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:22,360
his reputation as the deporter
in chief.

714
00:40:22,960 --> 00:40:26,400
And I want to give a comical
trigger warning, which is that

715
00:40:26,520 --> 00:40:29,520
Bush sounds like a more decent
human being than what we're

716
00:40:29,520 --> 00:40:34,400
compared to politicians saying
these days, my fellow.

717
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:37,480
Americans I've asked for.
A few minutes of your time to

718
00:40:37,520 --> 00:40:39,760
talk with you.
About the reform of America.

719
00:40:39,760 --> 00:40:50,640
'S immigration system.
We must begin by recognizing the

720
00:40:50,640 --> 00:40:53,280
problems with our immigration
system, our immigration.

721
00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:56,160
System is broken and everybody
knows it once here.

722
00:40:56,160 --> 00:40:59,480
Illegal immigrants live in the
shadows of our society, remain

723
00:40:59,480 --> 00:41:01,360
in the.
Shadows or risk their families

724
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:03,040
being torn apart we're a nation
of.

725
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:06,440
Laws, and we must enforce our
laws, even as we.

726
00:41:06,440 --> 00:41:09,600
Are a nation of immigrants we're
also a nation of laws we're also

727
00:41:09,600 --> 00:41:11,400
a.
Nation of immigrants and we must

728
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:14,720
uphold that tradition which has
strengthened our country in so

729
00:41:14,720 --> 00:41:17,280
many ways for more than two. 100
years.

730
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:19,880
Our tradition of welcoming
immigrants from around the world

731
00:41:19,880 --> 00:41:22,600
has given us a tremendous
advantage over other nations,

732
00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:24,760
the United States.
Must secure its borders.

733
00:41:24,960 --> 00:41:27,240
Today we have.
More agents and technology

734
00:41:27,240 --> 00:41:30,520
deployed to secure our southern
border than at any time in our

735
00:41:30,520 --> 00:41:33,640
history, some in this country.
Argue that the solution is to is

736
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:36,800
to deport every illegal
immigrant, and that any proposal

737
00:41:36,800 --> 00:41:38,480
short of this amounts to
amnesty.

738
00:41:38,680 --> 00:41:42,120
I disagree, but even as.
We focus on deporting criminals.

739
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:45,720
The fact is, millions of
immigrants in every state, of

740
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:49,280
every race and nationality still
live here illegally.

741
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:51,520
Tonight I want to speak.
Directly to members of the House

742
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:53,920
and the Senate.
An immigration reform bill needs

743
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:57,360
to be comprehensive because all
elements of this problem must be

744
00:41:57,360 --> 00:42:00,120
addressed together or none of
them will be solved at all.

745
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:02,360
Meanwhile I worked.
With Congress on a comprehensive

746
00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:06,280
fix and last year, 68 Democrats,
Republicans and independents

747
00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:09,200
came together to pass a
bipartisan bill in the Senate,

748
00:42:09,240 --> 00:42:10,840
America needs to.
Conduct this debate on

749
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:13,840
immigration in a reasoned and
respectful tone, my fellow

750
00:42:13,840 --> 00:42:16,040
Americans.
We are and always we'll be, a

751
00:42:16,040 --> 00:42:19,240
nation of immigrants.
We were strangers once, too.

752
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:21,440
We must honor the.
Great American tradition of the

753
00:42:21,440 --> 00:42:25,280
melting pot which has made US1
nation out of many peoples as my

754
00:42:25,280 --> 00:42:28,280
predecessor.
President Bush once put it they

755
00:42:28,280 --> 00:42:33,680
are a part of American life.
President Bush Junior just

756
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:37,200
sounds kind of like a like a
normal non crazy guy.

757
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:39,840
Yeah, he.
Doesn't he's doesn't sound like

758
00:42:39,840 --> 00:42:42,680
lunatic, even though everyone
made fun of Bush at the time.

759
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:44,440
First of all, yeah, they were.
Like lunatic.

760
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:46,600
They were like he's.
A bad speaker.

761
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:50,360
He's a balloon.
He looks like a fucking genius

762
00:42:50,360 --> 00:42:52,800
compared to the now Republican
Party.

763
00:42:53,040 --> 00:42:55,640
Yeah, we're just.
Racing to the bottom here, Jesus

764
00:42:55,640 --> 00:42:56,720
Christ.
Yeah.

765
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:00,840
I mean, that's part of it is too
is like what we're dealing with

766
00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:04,120
right now because you you lower
the standards so much and you

767
00:43:04,120 --> 00:43:08,000
make it so intolerable that
anyone who comes in with any and

768
00:43:08,000 --> 00:43:10,720
moderate rhetoric sounds like
they.

769
00:43:10,720 --> 00:43:12,920
Don't fit in anymore.
I understand.

770
00:43:12,920 --> 00:43:16,840
But people need to remember that
under George W Bush, while he

771
00:43:16,840 --> 00:43:21,120
may sound more decent than Obama
on this particular clip, this is

772
00:43:21,120 --> 00:43:24,800
the man who annihilated
1,000,000 Iraqis and launched

773
00:43:24,880 --> 00:43:29,200
the War on Terror and launched
the invasion of Afghanistan.

774
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:32,160
This was a war criminal who
should be spending his final

775
00:43:32,160 --> 00:43:35,200
days in an Iraqi prison or an
Afghan prison.

776
00:43:35,320 --> 00:43:39,440
He was simply more sort of
standard in terms of actually

777
00:43:39,440 --> 00:43:42,560
both him and Obama were simply
more standard in dealing with

778
00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:45,320
immigration.
Obama was just harder about it,

779
00:43:45,720 --> 00:43:49,200
but the standard being you close
the spigot when the economy

780
00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:52,320
contracts and you open it when
the economy expands.

781
00:43:52,760 --> 00:43:53,480
Yeah.
What?

782
00:43:53,560 --> 00:43:57,720
Bush and Obama, they both said
this myth that has always been

783
00:43:57,720 --> 00:44:02,400
repeated by politicians, this
myth that the US has always been

784
00:44:02,880 --> 00:44:05,520
welcoming.
We're a nation of immigrants

785
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:09,680
were this big happy melting pot
everyone gets folded in, you

786
00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:13,400
know, and it was used in the
past as a way of flattering the

787
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:17,080
system and, of course, erasing
the fact that the entire history

788
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:20,080
of immigration in this country
is about exclusion and race and

789
00:44:20,080 --> 00:44:22,480
labor control.
And so, yeah, what you said, as

790
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:26,840
are like, when capital needs
workers, like Mexican laborers

791
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:30,400
for agriculture and railroads
and Chinese laborers for mining

792
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:33,000
and construction, then of
course, the borders were more

793
00:44:33,000 --> 00:44:35,680
porous or, you know, policy was
more LAX.

794
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:39,320
When those same workers became
inconvenient, they were

795
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:42,160
criminalized, excluded, deported
in mass.

796
00:44:42,160 --> 00:44:45,280
Like.
So this melting pot myth is

797
00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:50,440
really important to debunk
because the US has always been

798
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:54,280
very selective about who is
counted as an immigrant.

799
00:44:54,280 --> 00:44:58,200
Who's worth welcoming?
And it's always been about the

800
00:44:58,200 --> 00:45:01,160
needs of capital more than
anything that has to do with

801
00:45:01,200 --> 00:45:03,920
supposed equality or democratic
rights or anything.

802
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:06,280
Yeah, I mean and.
There's multiple examples

803
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:09,320
throughout American history,
from the Chinese Exclusion Act

804
00:45:09,440 --> 00:45:14,960
to the infamous 1924 law that
restricted immigration from

805
00:45:15,400 --> 00:45:18,920
mainly European undesirable
European countries or

806
00:45:19,080 --> 00:45:23,400
undesirable European regions, as
they put it, like Jews or or

807
00:45:23,400 --> 00:45:27,240
Greeks or Italians, because they
hadn't been considered fully

808
00:45:27,240 --> 00:45:30,880
white yet, weren't black, but
they weren't fully white either.

809
00:45:31,200 --> 00:45:34,480
And it was it was under the
auspices of the 1924 law that

810
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:37,760
Jewish refugees couldn't escape
Nazi Germany to the United

811
00:45:37,760 --> 00:45:40,720
States.
You had in the 1930s mass

812
00:45:40,720 --> 00:45:43,640
deportation, I think of
1,000,000 1/2 or I may have

813
00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:46,800
their number incorrect of mainly
Mexican workers.

814
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:49,800
This is amid the Depression,
including many of them being

815
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:53,040
citizens of the United States.
We're just rounded up and

816
00:45:53,040 --> 00:45:54,280
deported.
That was the.

817
00:45:54,280 --> 00:45:57,720
Repatriation campaigns, yeah.
So this.

818
00:45:57,720 --> 00:46:01,640
Idea of America as a welcoming
place for immigrants is a myth

819
00:46:01,640 --> 00:46:04,000
that like you said is used to
flatter the system.

820
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:07,040
The reason the current
administration doesn't do it is

821
00:46:07,040 --> 00:46:10,120
because they're straight out
racist who simply want

822
00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:13,480
immigration from only white
countries, only W European

823
00:46:13,480 --> 00:46:15,560
countries and so white South.
Africans.

824
00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:17,840
Yeah, exactly.
Thank you for raising that

825
00:46:17,840 --> 00:46:20,400
exactly.
White S Africans, the scum of

826
00:46:20,400 --> 00:46:24,440
the earth, the Afrikaners, who
chafe under the idea that they

827
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:27,640
could be living under a
government dominated by black,

828
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:31,280
by the overwhelming majority of
the country, they're welcome

829
00:46:31,280 --> 00:46:33,680
here.
So this administration has gone

830
00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:37,840
the different route like that.
Rubio's speech of immigration is

831
00:46:37,840 --> 00:46:41,800
not the thing that built our
country and the cornerstone and

832
00:46:41,800 --> 00:46:44,600
all that stuff.
No immigration is a mortal

833
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:48,080
threat to the United States and
to West Europe.

834
00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:52,280
And they could say the melting
pot in the past because they

835
00:46:52,280 --> 00:46:55,760
were always referring to
immigration from European

836
00:46:55,760 --> 00:46:58,040
countries.
That's what they meant.

837
00:46:58,280 --> 00:47:01,480
And even if at the time of the
immigration took place, these

838
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:05,720
Europeans may not have been
viewed as completely white like

839
00:47:05,960 --> 00:47:09,240
Anglo-Saxon or Germanic
Protestants, there was a certain

840
00:47:09,240 --> 00:47:13,120
directionality of assimilation
and ultimately assimilation into

841
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:17,360
white America.
But if you are a darker skinned

842
00:47:17,360 --> 00:47:21,320
Latino or a Latino with a lot of
of a native background,

843
00:47:21,760 --> 00:47:24,080
indigenous background, you're
not welcome.

844
00:47:24,080 --> 00:47:27,280
And that was never part of the
melting pot.

845
00:47:27,560 --> 00:47:31,280
Never ever, ever.
The melting pot was Italians,

846
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,080
Irish, Greeks, the immigrants
who.

847
00:47:34,080 --> 00:47:36,440
Eventually became white.
It was never.

848
00:47:36,680 --> 00:47:40,560
The Mexican it was never.
The Salvadoran it was, and it

849
00:47:40,560 --> 00:47:45,080
certainly was never an immigrant
from Africa or Somalia.

850
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:47,440
That was never part of that
mythology.

851
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:50,200
It was the same.
Thing around Haiti, when you had

852
00:47:50,320 --> 00:47:56,080
the decimation of Haiti and the
backing of military regimes, the

853
00:47:56,320 --> 00:47:59,400
complete destruction of that
economy and it's like all these

854
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:01,400
regulations about Haitians
coming to the US.

855
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:04,800
And meanwhile, you know other
groups that are politically

856
00:48:04,800 --> 00:48:07,800
aligned with the US, like
counter revolutionary Cubans

857
00:48:08,240 --> 00:48:11,320
after the Castro regime.
I mean, it's always been

858
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:14,040
politically motivated who is
considered a good immigrant

859
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:15,800
versus a quote UN quote bad
immigrant.

860
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:16,760
Yeah.
And.

861
00:48:16,800 --> 00:48:20,880
Just in terms of Cubans, to go
back to Mr. Rubio, whose family

862
00:48:21,000 --> 00:48:25,480
fled before Castro came to
power, there were two kinds of

863
00:48:25,760 --> 00:48:29,320
Cubans who were fleeing after
1959.

864
00:48:29,600 --> 00:48:33,240
One was straight out counter
revolutionary bourgeois elements

865
00:48:33,640 --> 00:48:36,880
who were rightly going to face
justice under the Castro

866
00:48:36,880 --> 00:48:41,240
government and nationalization
and and collectivization of

867
00:48:41,240 --> 00:48:43,920
land.
But the others was the sort of

868
00:48:44,120 --> 00:48:48,280
thin layer of well off middle
classes in Cuba who were almost

869
00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:52,160
all white who left because the
Castro government granted full

870
00:48:52,200 --> 00:48:56,040
equality and rights to black
Cubans and they didn't want to

871
00:48:56,040 --> 00:48:59,840
live in a country where their
neighbor could be a middle class

872
00:48:59,880 --> 00:49:01,720
black Cuban.
Also the literacy.

873
00:49:01,720 --> 00:49:03,600
Campaigns.
It was like we can't have these

874
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:05,800
peasants reading books.
Yeah, so.

875
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:08,160
That's who America welcomes,
yeah.

876
00:49:08,640 --> 00:49:11,920
I wanted to talk a little bit
about how the US ruling class

877
00:49:11,920 --> 00:49:15,960
has this long record of
conjuring up this enemy within

878
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:18,760
to justify repression against
citizens as well.

879
00:49:19,120 --> 00:49:24,040
And it doesn't always take place
during a particularly like anti

880
00:49:24,560 --> 00:49:28,120
immigrant wave of hysteria.
But let's talk about this in the

881
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:32,200
context of Renee Goode and Alex
Pretty in Minneapolis, because I

882
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:34,160
think that shook a lot of
people.

883
00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:36,640
They weren't undocumented
migrants.

884
00:49:36,640 --> 00:49:39,600
They were legal citizens.
And it's not that their life is

885
00:49:39,600 --> 00:49:42,720
more valuable.
It was that citizenship did not

886
00:49:42,720 --> 00:49:44,480
protect them from being
murdered.

887
00:49:45,240 --> 00:49:49,480
And so you have a white lesbian
targeted because she was

888
00:49:49,560 --> 00:49:52,000
defending immigrants and because
she was gay.

889
00:49:52,000 --> 00:49:57,480
A VA nurse, Alex Preti, who was
armed, who was gunned down after

890
00:49:57,480 --> 00:50:00,360
stepping in to help someone else
push by agents.

891
00:50:00,840 --> 00:50:05,480
I think what you have with Trump
and the language that he used to

892
00:50:05,480 --> 00:50:08,320
condemn Renee Goode and Alex
Preti, you know, the they're

893
00:50:08,320 --> 00:50:11,200
professional agitators.
They're violent.

894
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:16,840
You know, this is just part of
the stripping away of rights for

895
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:21,800
anyone who is somewhat defiant
against US rule.

896
00:50:22,440 --> 00:50:26,720
This is not particularly new in
the context of U.S. history.

897
00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:30,680
You go back to the 1920's, the
Palmer Raids, right?

898
00:50:30,680 --> 00:50:35,040
The first Red Scare, where
thousands of suspected radicals,

899
00:50:35,040 --> 00:50:39,480
and this included U.S. citizen,
were arrested without warrants.

900
00:50:39,640 --> 00:50:41,760
They were held without due
process.

901
00:50:42,880 --> 00:50:45,880
Of course immigrant radicals
were deported, but citizens

902
00:50:45,920 --> 00:50:50,000
during that time were prosecuted
under sedition laws and stripped

903
00:50:50,000 --> 00:50:54,200
of constitutional protections.
The World War 2 internment of

904
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:57,640
Japanese Americans.
You know you have 120,000 people

905
00:50:57,640 --> 00:51:00,640
of Japanese ancestry
incarcerated in the these

906
00:51:00,640 --> 00:51:04,000
internment camps and 2/3 of them
were citizens during the Civil

907
00:51:04,000 --> 00:51:07,840
Rights movement.
Activists beaten and murdered by

908
00:51:07,840 --> 00:51:11,360
either the Klan or the FBI or
both for challenging segregation

909
00:51:11,880 --> 00:51:15,000
during the Vietnam War.
Kent State, it was white college

910
00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:18,320
protesters shot demonstrating
against US imperialism.

911
00:51:18,560 --> 00:51:20,840
So just goes on and on.
I mean, I've seen a lot.

912
00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:26,160
Of posts about Peretti and good
and the fact that Oh my God,

913
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:27,840
white people are feeling this
now.

914
00:51:27,840 --> 00:51:29,480
I mean, there's no reason to
mince words.

915
00:51:29,480 --> 00:51:32,320
One of the reasons it stands out
is not just that they were

916
00:51:32,320 --> 00:51:34,520
citizens, they were white
citizens and they were gunned

917
00:51:34,520 --> 00:51:36,120
down.
And not only were they gunned

918
00:51:36,120 --> 00:51:38,520
down, they were then demonized
afterwards.

919
00:51:38,800 --> 00:51:41,600
And this isn't something
there's.

920
00:51:42,200 --> 00:51:44,000
I believe there's a
misconception here.

921
00:51:44,760 --> 00:51:48,400
Being white Shields you or
immunizes you to use that term

922
00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:51,920
from the day-to-day terror that
the state inflicts on mainly

923
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:56,080
black people but also depending
on the situation of the time,

924
00:51:56,400 --> 00:52:00,560
other non white populations.
But being white does not shield

925
00:52:00,560 --> 00:52:05,520
you from the state when the
state perceives you as an enemy

926
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:08,640
or an obstacle.
And there are numerous examples

927
00:52:08,960 --> 00:52:12,160
that you touched on, a few if
you talk about the the Battle of

928
00:52:12,160 --> 00:52:15,520
Blair County in the early 20th
century, which was a a major

929
00:52:15,520 --> 00:52:20,840
labor strike where people were
killed actually to be on both

930
00:52:20,840 --> 00:52:22,880
sides.
This was, I think as as far as I

931
00:52:22,880 --> 00:52:25,200
know, an entirely white labor
strike.

932
00:52:25,320 --> 00:52:27,640
The workers were all white.
You know, we talked about the

933
00:52:27,640 --> 00:52:31,040
strikes in the 1930s that built
the industrial unions in this

934
00:52:31,040 --> 00:52:33,600
country.
When workers were killed, almost

935
00:52:33,600 --> 00:52:36,360
all of them were white,
mentioned civil rights

936
00:52:36,360 --> 00:52:38,040
activists.
Obviously black civil rights

937
00:52:38,040 --> 00:52:40,000
activists were killed, so we're
white ones.

938
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:43,160
It goes on and on.
Being white Shields you from the

939
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:46,960
day-to-day violence, but doesn't
shield you from when the state

940
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:49,520
sees you as an enemy.
When the state sees you as an

941
00:52:49,520 --> 00:52:52,000
enemy, you are an enemy.
And it certainly doesn't shield

942
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:54,200
you when you're engaged in class
struggle.

943
00:52:54,520 --> 00:52:57,720
So that's just one side of it.
The other thing I think it's

944
00:52:57,720 --> 00:53:02,040
important to note is this
country was founded on the

945
00:53:02,040 --> 00:53:06,560
premise in its founding that
those who own the country should

946
00:53:06,560 --> 00:53:09,840
be the ones to run.
In other words, the franchise

947
00:53:10,160 --> 00:53:13,480
was limited to property owning
white males.

948
00:53:14,480 --> 00:53:18,680
And what happened in this
country is as democratic rights,

949
00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:22,640
particularly voting, expanded
and and widened, they got

950
00:53:22,640 --> 00:53:25,320
shallower.
And what I mean by that is it

951
00:53:25,320 --> 00:53:28,600
mattered less and less what the
what was happening in the actual

952
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:31,120
voting.
I'm not saying this to say that

953
00:53:31,120 --> 00:53:34,120
the franchise is unimportant.
It's an important democratic

954
00:53:34,120 --> 00:53:38,120
right that people have fought
and died for, but it's how the

955
00:53:38,560 --> 00:53:42,440
bourgeoisie, the ruling class,
responds to the expansion of the

956
00:53:42,440 --> 00:53:44,400
franchise.
You know you're going to vote

957
00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:47,360
between the two choices we give
you, between the politicians

958
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:50,440
that we hand you.
And it gets entrenched more and

959
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:53,200
more and more by the time you
get the Civil Rights Acts and

960
00:53:53,200 --> 00:53:55,920
the Voting Rights Acts, which
are now been, have now been more

961
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:58,440
or less gutted.
The Democratic Party by that

962
00:53:58,440 --> 00:54:02,280
point starts to act as the party
that takes in the disgruntled

963
00:54:02,640 --> 00:54:06,120
and feeds them lies.
And the Republican Party is just

964
00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:08,240
the party of kind of white
racist reaction.

965
00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:12,120
But in American history, the
expansion of democratic rights

966
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:15,080
has been translated by the
capitalist rulers into them,

967
00:54:15,080 --> 00:54:18,080
meaning less and less.
And, and in a certain sense, I

968
00:54:18,080 --> 00:54:21,160
think the bulk of the American
populace understands that, which

969
00:54:21,160 --> 00:54:23,880
is why the biggest voting bloc
are those people who don't vote,

970
00:54:23,960 --> 00:54:25,920
because there's a sense of it
doesn't matter.

971
00:54:26,160 --> 00:54:27,960
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.

972
00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:30,080
Who you vote for, it doesn't
matter what you vote for.

973
00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:33,000
They're going to do what they're
going to do because this country

974
00:54:33,120 --> 00:54:36,480
is run by a ruling class.
It's not run by the people and

975
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:38,080
it's certainly not run for the
people.

976
00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:42,080
And so if you think about that
as you have a ruling class that

977
00:54:42,160 --> 00:54:45,960
faces pressure to grant more
rights, but as soon as they

978
00:54:45,960 --> 00:54:48,400
grant them, they look to take
them away.

979
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:51,120
Think of the Voting Rights Act
as an example.

980
00:54:52,000 --> 00:54:55,240
Then there's a very, there's
very real logic to what's

981
00:54:55,240 --> 00:54:58,480
happening right now in terms of
the attacks on the democratic

982
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:02,480
rights of everybody, the rights
that they were forced to give

983
00:55:02,480 --> 00:55:06,880
you, Yep, in a period of intense
social struggle, they're going

984
00:55:06,880 --> 00:55:10,320
to try to take away now and they
are taking them away.

985
00:55:10,480 --> 00:55:13,960
I don't believe if supposing the
next administration is a

986
00:55:13,960 --> 00:55:17,040
Democratic administration, they
may not do things the same way.

987
00:55:17,400 --> 00:55:18,760
But what has got They're not
going to.

988
00:55:18,760 --> 00:55:20,720
Bring any of those back, right?
What?

989
00:55:20,720 --> 00:55:24,320
What has become normalized will
remain normalized the way.

990
00:55:24,360 --> 00:55:28,200
I envision it is that when you
talk about democratic rights,

991
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:31,480
the main rights that the ruling
class, the capitalist class is

992
00:55:31,480 --> 00:55:36,480
committed to is it's right to
hold property, to own the means

993
00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:40,000
of production, to exploit labor.
And then all those other

994
00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:43,200
democratic rights under
bourgeois democracy like, you

995
00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:46,880
know, free speech and trial by
jury one period.

996
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:49,960
All of that that's been fought
for and struggled for.

997
00:55:49,960 --> 00:55:53,920
It can only be maintained
through some sort of independent

998
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:56,960
action outside of the system
because those things are all

999
00:55:57,200 --> 00:55:59,440
reversible.
I mean, that's really what we're

1000
00:55:59,520 --> 00:56:03,560
dealing with right now with the
tax on the 14th Amendment and

1001
00:56:03,560 --> 00:56:07,080
the birthright citizenship,
which has been explicitly under

1002
00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:09,320
attack in this administration.
They're all.

1003
00:56:09,320 --> 00:56:12,560
Reversible or they only apply to
that class.

1004
00:56:12,800 --> 00:56:15,640
That's the other thing right
side about that, you know, so

1005
00:56:15,640 --> 00:56:19,400
free speech for them.
We, you know, we get censored,

1006
00:56:19,920 --> 00:56:22,040
you know, so-called fair trials
for them.

1007
00:56:22,080 --> 00:56:24,560
You know, the rest of the
populace can be railroaded

1008
00:56:24,600 --> 00:56:27,840
because if you have money, you
can then work the system and if

1009
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:32,280
you don't have money you can't.
And so the law on the face of it

1010
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:36,000
is indivisible, but its
application is very divisible.

1011
00:56:36,240 --> 00:56:38,000
And that's just the nature of
capitalism.

1012
00:56:38,320 --> 00:56:40,760
The law, insofar as it
restricts, it restricts the

1013
00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:43,720
populace, and insofar as it
grants, it grants to the ruling

1014
00:56:43,720 --> 00:56:44,840
class.
Let's talk a.

1015
00:56:44,840 --> 00:56:48,080
Little bit about the 14th
Amendment, because as we wanted

1016
00:56:48,080 --> 00:56:50,840
to do in this episode is take
this back to some of the war on

1017
00:56:50,840 --> 00:56:53,200
citizenship, which was kind of
always in this country a

1018
00:56:53,200 --> 00:56:57,200
battlefield first against
British rule, then against the

1019
00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:00,960
southern slave holding class in
the Civil War and later through

1020
00:57:01,160 --> 00:57:04,200
explosive class and social
battles in the 19th and 20th

1021
00:57:04,200 --> 00:57:06,400
centuries.
As you were saying, Ezra, the

1022
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:08,880
promises of those rights were
always clawed back.

1023
00:57:08,880 --> 00:57:14,960
So after the 14th Amendment
granted citizenship rights, to

1024
00:57:14,960 --> 00:57:17,440
quote all persons born or
naturalized in the United

1025
00:57:17,440 --> 00:57:20,240
States, which by the way, did
not include Native Americans,

1026
00:57:20,240 --> 00:57:22,360
they weren't citizens until
1924.

1027
00:57:22,640 --> 00:57:25,880
Promises to black people were
clawed back after radical

1028
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:28,720
Reconstruction was defeated.
That citizenship for black

1029
00:57:28,720 --> 00:57:30,560
people was mostly on paper,
right?

1030
00:57:30,560 --> 00:57:32,880
There was Jim Crow, lynch mob
terror.

1031
00:57:32,880 --> 00:57:36,560
They were second class citizens.
So it was always about policing

1032
00:57:36,560 --> 00:57:39,080
who got these rights.
And then if you think about it,

1033
00:57:39,320 --> 00:57:42,800
citizenship as a whole is
actually a recent victory.

1034
00:57:42,840 --> 00:57:47,120
So in 1967, a Freudian versus
Rust, the Supreme Court case

1035
00:57:47,440 --> 00:57:50,440
said basically said that the
government couldn't strip

1036
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:56,480
citizenship involuntarily.
So before 1967, Congress had

1037
00:57:56,480 --> 00:58:00,320
broad powers to revoke
citizenship for certain acts,

1038
00:58:00,680 --> 00:58:03,640
like if you vote in a foreign
election or like you serve in a

1039
00:58:03,640 --> 00:58:08,280
foreign military or, or if your
behavior was somehow deemed, you

1040
00:58:08,280 --> 00:58:11,120
know, inconsistent with
political allegiance.

1041
00:58:11,160 --> 00:58:15,880
And so that act in 1967, it was
supposed to set a precedent that

1042
00:58:15,880 --> 00:58:19,120
citizenship couldn't just be
stripped away because the

1043
00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:21,560
government disapproves of your
actions or your speech.

1044
00:58:21,760 --> 00:58:25,480
There's this is 1967.
This is 50 years ago.

1045
00:58:25,480 --> 00:58:27,720
No No 60.
Years ago, yeah, 60.

1046
00:58:27,720 --> 00:58:30,280
Years ago.
So I mean, we're talking about

1047
00:58:30,480 --> 00:58:33,960
in the last 60 years winning a
very recent victory that's

1048
00:58:33,960 --> 00:58:36,040
already being reversed before
our eyes.

1049
00:58:36,240 --> 00:58:38,680
I didn't know about.
That Supreme Court decision, it

1050
00:58:38,680 --> 00:58:42,480
makes sense that it happened in
67 amid the upheavals of the

1051
00:58:42,520 --> 00:58:46,000
civil rights in Vietnam, antiwar
movement, but it makes sense

1052
00:58:46,000 --> 00:58:48,680
that they're trying to been
chipping away at it and trying

1053
00:58:48,680 --> 00:58:50,840
to take it away now.
I mean, the Trump administration

1054
00:58:50,840 --> 00:58:54,200
has made clear it wants to strip
citizenship from people that

1055
00:58:54,320 --> 00:58:58,400
hold views that they don't like.
And if I were to summarize

1056
00:58:58,400 --> 00:59:01,760
what's happening right now, I
would say it's as much about the

1057
00:59:01,760 --> 00:59:05,440
demunition of democratic and
citizenship rights as it is

1058
00:59:05,440 --> 00:59:09,480
about the deportation,
detainment and terrorization of

1059
00:59:09,480 --> 00:59:12,520
immigrants.
I think the 2GO hand in hand,

1060
00:59:12,880 --> 00:59:16,720
what the ruling class gets away
with vis A vis the most

1061
00:59:16,720 --> 00:59:22,600
vulnerable, the most despised of
the population is a precursor of

1062
00:59:22,600 --> 00:59:24,240
what they have in mind for
everybody.

1063
00:59:24,280 --> 00:59:30,200
And, and where Trump stands out
is the precursor is not very far

1064
00:59:30,200 --> 00:59:33,160
away from the cursor itself.
They kind of, they're going

1065
00:59:33,160 --> 00:59:34,840
together.
And in terms of the 14th

1066
00:59:34,840 --> 00:59:38,960
Amendment, I mean, that came out
of black struggle, the Civil

1067
00:59:38,960 --> 00:59:42,360
War.
And I have very little

1068
00:59:42,360 --> 00:59:47,440
confidence that it will remain
as it is once this Supreme Court

1069
00:59:47,440 --> 00:59:49,000
and this administration get done
with it.

1070
00:59:49,600 --> 00:59:52,280
We will see so as.
We were preparing for this

1071
00:59:52,280 --> 00:59:54,920
podcast and thinking about the
14th Amendment.

1072
00:59:55,120 --> 00:59:59,400
It was also Super Bowl time, and
our boy Bad Bunny was playing

1073
00:59:59,400 --> 01:00:02,800
the Super Bowl halftime show.
And there was this whole

1074
01:00:02,800 --> 01:00:06,280
argument over, you know, we
should have an American, not

1075
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:08,280
this foreigner.
And then a whole bunch of people

1076
01:00:08,280 --> 01:00:11,160
were clapping back saying Bad
Bunny is an American.

1077
01:00:11,360 --> 01:00:14,880
And it kind of, it led me to
look a little bit more into what

1078
01:00:14,880 --> 01:00:17,600
Puerto Rican citizenship
actually entails.

1079
01:00:17,840 --> 01:00:20,960
And it's essentially.
A second class citizenship

1080
01:00:20,960 --> 01:00:23,480
that's been legislated for the
Puerto Rican people.

1081
01:00:23,720 --> 01:00:26,880
So Puerto Ricans, yes, they are
American citizens.

1082
01:00:26,880 --> 01:00:30,480
Like they can enter and leave
the country without passports,

1083
01:00:30,480 --> 01:00:34,760
They can work without a visa,
but they are not full citizens.

1084
01:00:34,760 --> 01:00:37,720
They fall under something called
statutory citizenship.

1085
01:00:38,040 --> 01:00:43,200
So in 1917, Congress passed the
law making Puerto Ricans

1086
01:00:43,200 --> 01:00:46,280
statutory citizens.
And what is 1917?

1087
01:00:46,680 --> 01:00:49,680
It also happens to be around
World War One, right?

1088
01:00:50,000 --> 01:00:54,600
So it's not like the American
government granted citizenship

1089
01:00:54,600 --> 01:00:57,000
to Puerto Ricans because of
their benevolent hearts.

1090
01:00:57,000 --> 01:00:58,800
It was because they needed
soldiers.

1091
01:00:58,800 --> 01:01:00,640
You know, they needed workers
and soldiers.

1092
01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:04,920
So that's when the Puerto Ricans
became considered American

1093
01:01:04,920 --> 01:01:07,680
citizens.
But Puerto Rico is not a state,

1094
01:01:07,680 --> 01:01:10,120
it's AUS territory or a
Commonwealth.

1095
01:01:10,440 --> 01:01:13,240
So Puerto Ricans actually don't
have any representation in

1096
01:01:13,240 --> 01:01:15,560
Congress.
They do have a resident

1097
01:01:15,560 --> 01:01:19,200
commissioner, somebody who can
participate in debates, but they

1098
01:01:19,200 --> 01:01:20,960
don't actually get to vote for
anything.

1099
01:01:21,200 --> 01:01:24,440
If you are a Puerto Rican
person, an Islander who has a

1100
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:27,080
permit, who lives permanently on
the US, you can vote for

1101
01:01:27,080 --> 01:01:29,760
president, but otherwise you
don't really get any say.

1102
01:01:29,760 --> 01:01:33,960
So yes, you are technically an
American citizen, but you are a

1103
01:01:33,960 --> 01:01:36,280
second class citizen.
You don't get the right of a

1104
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:39,280
full United States citizen.
Yeah, and I think the bad.

1105
01:01:39,280 --> 01:01:42,560
Bunny stuff just shows the
point, which is like that

1106
01:01:42,560 --> 01:01:45,200
citizenship is considered to be
only for whites.

1107
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:49,640
Like, oh, we have these colonial
subjects and they're Latino and

1108
01:01:49,640 --> 01:01:53,760
they're singing in Spanish and
they're American citizens, but

1109
01:01:53,760 --> 01:01:55,240
they're really not.
And they have to stay in their

1110
01:01:55,240 --> 01:01:57,040
place.
Like, it's all about keeping

1111
01:01:57,320 --> 01:01:59,040
their colonial subjects in their
place.

1112
01:01:59,120 --> 01:01:59,920
Yeah.
And to say.

1113
01:01:59,920 --> 01:02:02,600
They're Americans is false
because like you said, they're

1114
01:02:02,600 --> 01:02:04,880
Spanish speaking people with a
different history and a

1115
01:02:04,880 --> 01:02:07,920
different culture.
And Puerto Rico exists just for

1116
01:02:07,920 --> 01:02:10,560
exploitation reasons just so
they can kind of suck whatever

1117
01:02:10,560 --> 01:02:13,720
resources they can from the
island to provide a tax free

1118
01:02:13,720 --> 01:02:16,760
place for businesses to operate.
None of it benefits the Puerto

1119
01:02:16,760 --> 01:02:19,800
Rican people and all of it is
meant to benefit the mainland

1120
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:21,400
America.
I find both sides.

1121
01:02:21,400 --> 01:02:25,400
Of this debate to be wanting.
One side is entirely racist and

1122
01:02:25,400 --> 01:02:26,800
I've got really nothing to say
to them.

1123
01:02:26,840 --> 01:02:29,040
And the other side that keeps
responding, well, they're

1124
01:02:29,040 --> 01:02:30,320
American.
They're American.

1125
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:34,120
No, Puerto Rico is a nation.
It's a nation that is held in

1126
01:02:34,120 --> 01:02:37,640
subjugation by US colonialism.
And on the one hand, I can

1127
01:02:37,640 --> 01:02:40,720
understand the reticence of many
Puerto Ricans to actually fight

1128
01:02:40,720 --> 01:02:43,800
for independence because God
help you if you're a Caribbean

1129
01:02:43,800 --> 01:02:47,720
country that is up against the
behemoth called the United

1130
01:02:47,720 --> 01:02:49,400
States.
I mean, look at what's happening

1131
01:02:49,400 --> 01:02:51,280
to Cuba.
Look at what happened to Haiti.

1132
01:02:51,360 --> 01:02:54,480
And so it's a separate nation,
and it should have its

1133
01:02:54,480 --> 01:02:57,200
independence, and its
independence should not be

1134
01:02:57,200 --> 01:03:00,920
contingent upon the US marauding
through the Caribbean.

1135
01:03:00,920 --> 01:03:03,960
But that's that requires A
fundamental change in the US

1136
01:03:03,960 --> 01:03:08,080
itself, a social revolution.
I want to talk a little bit at

1137
01:03:08,080 --> 01:03:11,040
the end of this episode now
about labor and the fight for

1138
01:03:11,040 --> 01:03:12,800
immigrant rights and against
ICE.

1139
01:03:13,240 --> 01:03:17,640
When we're talking about the
period today of the intense anti

1140
01:03:17,640 --> 01:03:22,480
immigrant hysteria and nativist
reaction, it's not unique in

1141
01:03:22,480 --> 01:03:24,960
history.
The ruling class has always

1142
01:03:24,960 --> 01:03:28,280
whipped up racial and ethnic
hatred as a way to keep the

1143
01:03:28,280 --> 01:03:32,080
working class divided and to pit
workers against one another to

1144
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:36,600
weaken its ability to struggle.
We're in a moment in U.S.

1145
01:03:36,600 --> 01:03:39,920
history where union membership
is at very historic lows.

1146
01:03:40,520 --> 01:03:44,040
Immigrants make up a growing
share of organized workers and

1147
01:03:44,040 --> 01:03:48,520
even a larger share of those
doing the most dangerous, low

1148
01:03:48,520 --> 01:03:52,200
paid and precarious jobs.
And undocumented workers in

1149
01:03:52,200 --> 01:03:55,520
particular are forced into the
worst conditions and then blamed

1150
01:03:55,520 --> 01:03:58,680
for them.
So what we're really looking at

1151
01:03:58,680 --> 01:04:02,840
is the need for like a serious
fight back for defense of

1152
01:04:02,840 --> 01:04:07,360
immigrant workers, you know, the
unions needing to organize mass

1153
01:04:07,360 --> 01:04:10,920
resistance to deportations and
raids and workplace terror.

1154
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:14,160
But we're not seeing that.
And I think part of that is the

1155
01:04:14,160 --> 01:04:18,560
leadership of the unions, like
what I would call the union

1156
01:04:18,560 --> 01:04:24,520
official Dem, which mainly ties
workers to the Democratic Party.

1157
01:04:24,560 --> 01:04:30,320
We've seen this for a long time
in kind of echoing protectionism

1158
01:04:30,320 --> 01:04:34,360
like America First, you know,
oh, we need to promote American

1159
01:04:34,360 --> 01:04:36,960
workers 1st and not foreign born
workers.

1160
01:04:37,000 --> 01:04:42,760
We also see this in how the
unions organize the cops and

1161
01:04:42,760 --> 01:04:46,400
Border Patrol.
So in the case of Alex Pretty,

1162
01:04:46,480 --> 01:04:51,520
who was a VA nurse, his labor
union, the American Federation

1163
01:04:51,520 --> 01:04:55,440
of Government Employees has a
local that represents Border

1164
01:04:55,440 --> 01:04:59,360
Patrol agents, so affiliated
with the same union.

1165
01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:04,200
So you're talking about a labour
officialdom, a union bureaucracy

1166
01:05:04,200 --> 01:05:10,920
that actually works with the
very machinery that's used to

1167
01:05:10,920 --> 01:05:12,840
repress workers.
Yeah, and I think this.

1168
01:05:12,840 --> 01:05:16,360
Is one of the reasons that
people feel very estranged from

1169
01:05:16,360 --> 01:05:19,240
their unions.
They feel more like this big

1170
01:05:19,240 --> 01:05:22,640
bureaucracy than something
that's actually, like, tied to

1171
01:05:22,640 --> 01:05:25,120
their needs as workers?
Yeah.

1172
01:05:25,640 --> 01:05:27,520
You mentioned earlier the
melting pot.

1173
01:05:27,520 --> 01:05:31,800
One of the reasons the ruling
class like some degree of

1174
01:05:31,800 --> 01:05:35,280
immigration is because that
isn't a super exploited layer of

1175
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:38,600
the working class.
And it's also a way to keep the

1176
01:05:38,600 --> 01:05:41,960
working class at each other's
throats because you can

1177
01:05:41,960 --> 01:05:45,120
highlight the ethnic, racial and
national differences.

1178
01:05:45,200 --> 01:05:49,400
There's this famous quote by Jay
Gould, infamous 19th century

1179
01:05:49,480 --> 01:05:54,240
railroad Baron or robber Baron,
and he says I can hire 1/2 of

1180
01:05:54,240 --> 01:05:56,360
the working class to kill the
other half.

1181
01:05:56,800 --> 01:05:59,520
And that sentiment exists to
this day.

1182
01:05:59,560 --> 01:06:02,360
So take what's happening right
now.

1183
01:06:02,440 --> 01:06:05,200
Conditions for working people
are truly atrocious.

1184
01:06:05,200 --> 01:06:08,720
And this is not just black and
Latino working people.

1185
01:06:08,720 --> 01:06:11,600
It's truly atrocious for white
working people too.

1186
01:06:11,640 --> 01:06:15,520
And what a large section of the
working class has been convinced

1187
01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:18,120
of, particularly white workers,
but not exclusively.

1188
01:06:18,120 --> 01:06:21,520
Don't forget Trump got a healthy
dose of the Latino vote as well.

1189
01:06:22,320 --> 01:06:26,080
Is that their conditions are as
bad as they are because of

1190
01:06:26,080 --> 01:06:27,840
people more vulnerable than
them.

1191
01:06:28,480 --> 01:06:32,320
Not because of the trillionaires
and billionaires who are sucking

1192
01:06:32,320 --> 01:06:35,160
up all the wealth in the
country, but because of

1193
01:06:35,160 --> 01:06:38,480
immigrants who are below them.
The other side you have the

1194
01:06:38,480 --> 01:06:41,680
unions, which are basic
self-defense organizations of

1195
01:06:41,680 --> 01:06:45,120
the working class.
The problem is, as you said, the

1196
01:06:45,120 --> 01:06:48,080
labour official demo or the
labour bureaucrats are

1197
01:06:48,080 --> 01:06:51,720
fundamentally pro capitalist.
They believe in the capitalist

1198
01:06:51,720 --> 01:06:55,600
system and they've been in power
since the Second World War in

1199
01:06:55,600 --> 01:06:58,760
one form or another.
And they have driven the unions

1200
01:06:58,760 --> 01:07:01,720
into the ground such that very
few people even look to the

1201
01:07:01,720 --> 01:07:05,480
unions as a way to fight, much
less to the working class as a

1202
01:07:05,480 --> 01:07:07,680
whole.
As you mentioned, their response

1203
01:07:07,680 --> 01:07:11,680
to any attack on the working
class is to say vote Democrat.

1204
01:07:12,520 --> 01:07:15,080
Occasionally with the Teamsters,
you get vote Republican.

1205
01:07:15,280 --> 01:07:19,480
But they were among those in the
forefront of anti immigrant

1206
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:23,440
sentiment up until really the
2000s, when they suddenly came

1207
01:07:23,440 --> 01:07:26,360
to the realization that if you
want to organize, you're going

1208
01:07:26,360 --> 01:07:28,320
to have to organize.
Yeah.

1209
01:07:28,400 --> 01:07:30,640
Latino.
Workers because there's self.

1210
01:07:30,640 --> 01:07:33,440
Preservation right they're.
Growing part of the of the

1211
01:07:33,440 --> 01:07:37,160
working class in the US.
Look, the reality is this

1212
01:07:37,160 --> 01:07:41,840
country's unions were built by
communists of one strand or

1213
01:07:41,840 --> 01:07:44,680
another.
That's who led the formation of

1214
01:07:44,680 --> 01:07:47,560
industrial unions in this
country, because there was at

1215
01:07:47,560 --> 01:07:51,680
least a visceral understanding
that the forces of Labor and the

1216
01:07:51,680 --> 01:07:55,800
forces of capital are enemies.
And if you don't have that as

1217
01:07:55,800 --> 01:07:58,240
your starting point, the unions
aren't going to do anything.

1218
01:07:58,720 --> 01:08:02,200
Yeah, because what they're going
to do is exactly what that

1219
01:08:02,280 --> 01:08:04,160
lawyer, Eric Lee, was talking
about.

1220
01:08:04,280 --> 01:08:06,960
They're going to redirect
everything into voting for a

1221
01:08:06,960 --> 01:08:08,680
Democrat.
And as we've been talking about,

1222
01:08:08,680 --> 01:08:11,320
the Democrats do the same thing.
They just do it in a different

1223
01:08:11,320 --> 01:08:15,000
style.
So the only force that can

1224
01:08:15,000 --> 01:08:18,200
actually fundamentally change
this society is the working

1225
01:08:18,200 --> 01:08:20,160
class.
But the leadership of the

1226
01:08:20,160 --> 01:08:23,560
working class is made-up of
people who are the scum of the

1227
01:08:23,560 --> 01:08:26,880
earth because they are the enemy
within, within the labor

1228
01:08:27,040 --> 01:08:28,840
movement.
They organize cops.

1229
01:08:29,120 --> 01:08:31,439
They they organize Border
Patrol.

1230
01:08:31,600 --> 01:08:34,880
They have no strategy to fight.
That general strike in

1231
01:08:34,880 --> 01:08:36,520
Minneapolis was not a general
strike.

1232
01:08:36,520 --> 01:08:39,840
Let's say things by their name.
That was a powerful

1233
01:08:39,840 --> 01:08:42,240
demonstration.
But a general strike means you

1234
01:08:42,240 --> 01:08:44,800
shut down the city.
Here's a general strike in

1235
01:08:44,800 --> 01:08:46,600
Minneapolis.
We are shutting down the city

1236
01:08:46,640 --> 01:08:49,240
until ice leaves.
Nothing works.

1237
01:08:49,880 --> 01:08:54,960
That's a general strike
indefinitely, at least until our

1238
01:08:54,960 --> 01:08:56,800
demand is met.
And it's.

1239
01:08:56,800 --> 01:09:00,520
Not just about having a union
show up at a protest, it's about

1240
01:09:00,680 --> 01:09:04,080
actually using the power that
they have to shut down

1241
01:09:04,080 --> 01:09:05,279
production.
And it's not about.

1242
01:09:05,279 --> 01:09:08,560
Having union contingents or
anything like that at a rally,

1243
01:09:08,760 --> 01:09:11,160
it's about actually shutting
down the city.

1244
01:09:11,319 --> 01:09:15,640
We are shutting down this city
until ice leaves, then we'll go

1245
01:09:15,640 --> 01:09:18,760
back to work.
And that had that happened, that

1246
01:09:18,760 --> 01:09:21,279
would have been a signal to all
the other cities in the United

1247
01:09:21,279 --> 01:09:24,760
States on how to deal with the
with these marauding goons and a

1248
01:09:24,760 --> 01:09:26,840
strike.
Like that is going to be

1249
01:09:26,840 --> 01:09:30,520
integrated and it's going to be
a show of force because of the

1250
01:09:30,520 --> 01:09:34,200
fact that it's going to take up
the struggle of the working

1251
01:09:34,200 --> 01:09:36,040
class and immigrants side by
side.

1252
01:09:36,040 --> 01:09:38,800
But I think the integration
point is the key thing, because

1253
01:09:38,800 --> 01:09:42,240
that's when you're actually
breakdown those false divisions

1254
01:09:42,319 --> 01:09:45,279
that the capitalist class
promotes and pushes and you

1255
01:09:45,279 --> 01:09:47,680
give.
The working class as a whole, as

1256
01:09:47,680 --> 01:09:51,640
a whole, white, black, Latino,
immigrant, native born, a sense

1257
01:09:51,640 --> 01:09:54,440
of its power.
If something like this succeeds,

1258
01:09:54,720 --> 01:09:56,440
they have a sense of their
power.

1259
01:09:56,560 --> 01:10:00,920
They have a sense that they can
actually run things, not just be

1260
01:10:00,920 --> 01:10:04,040
beholden to what the crumbs that
the capitalists throw at them.

1261
01:10:04,040 --> 01:10:09,080
But that does require a struggle
within the unions to get rid of

1262
01:10:09,080 --> 01:10:12,440
these, the 5th column that
occupies the union leadership.

1263
01:10:12,920 --> 01:10:15,680
If the unions aren't going to
struggle for their own

1264
01:10:15,680 --> 01:10:18,080
existence, aren't going to
struggle to better the

1265
01:10:18,080 --> 01:10:22,600
conditions of their own members,
how can they possibly struggle

1266
01:10:22,600 --> 01:10:24,920
for something like immigrant
rights, Right.

1267
01:10:25,040 --> 01:10:27,480
And I'm I'm happy.
You focused a little bit on the

1268
01:10:27,720 --> 01:10:31,360
integration aspect of it because
I was listening to this woman,

1269
01:10:31,360 --> 01:10:35,640
Cecilia Guerrero, who is a
organizer trying to organize

1270
01:10:35,640 --> 01:10:37,760
workers.
And one of the things that she

1271
01:10:37,760 --> 01:10:41,760
points to is how racism is
harnessed by employers.

1272
01:10:41,760 --> 01:10:45,320
There is racial segregation
within many industries that

1273
01:10:45,720 --> 01:10:48,960
employers capitalize on to keep
their workers divided.

1274
01:10:49,160 --> 01:10:51,200
One really good example she
brought up was restaurants.

1275
01:10:51,200 --> 01:10:54,960
Restaurants will generally have
a host who's like a young woman

1276
01:10:54,960 --> 01:10:58,600
who's maybe in college, and then
they'll have a bunch of waiters

1277
01:10:58,760 --> 01:11:01,720
who are also like college
educated, tend to be lighter

1278
01:11:01,720 --> 01:11:03,760
skinned people.
And then the back of the house

1279
01:11:03,760 --> 01:11:07,200
is all undocumented workers or
maybe people of color with

1280
01:11:07,200 --> 01:11:10,920
criminal histories.
And whenever there is something

1281
01:11:10,920 --> 01:11:14,960
to be fought for, some sort of
something to organize around the

1282
01:11:14,960 --> 01:11:17,000
people at the front of the
house, they don't relate to the

1283
01:11:17,000 --> 01:11:20,960
people in the back of the house.
And, you know, the boss sees

1284
01:11:20,960 --> 01:11:23,240
that division and he
capitalizes, and it's very

1285
01:11:23,240 --> 01:11:26,160
purposeful.
So the idea of integration in

1286
01:11:26,160 --> 01:11:28,240
the struggle, I think, is really
paramount.

1287
01:11:28,240 --> 01:11:32,520
It has to be a coalition of all
workers, regardless of race and

1288
01:11:32,520 --> 01:11:33,880
background.
Yeah, I'm glad you.

1289
01:11:33,880 --> 01:11:37,400
Mentioned that example because
that's exactly why communists

1290
01:11:37,400 --> 01:11:40,240
fought for industrial unions.
Let's just take the example of

1291
01:11:40,240 --> 01:11:41,640
the restaurant.
You work in the restaurant.

1292
01:11:41,640 --> 01:11:45,440
It doesn't matter if you are the
host, the waiter, the janitor,

1293
01:11:45,520 --> 01:11:48,280
or the cooking the dishwasher.
Yeah, the dishwasher.

1294
01:11:48,360 --> 01:11:51,320
All you are all part of 1 union,
all of you.

1295
01:11:51,960 --> 01:11:54,800
And when that union goes out,
you all go out.

1296
01:11:54,800 --> 01:11:57,360
There's no such thing as a
strike of just the hosts.

1297
01:11:57,640 --> 01:11:59,760
There's no such thing as a
strike of just the dishwashers

1298
01:11:59,880 --> 01:12:02,560
that, you know, that's a
simplified example of the old

1299
01:12:02,560 --> 01:12:04,880
crap unions that that still
exist in this country.

1300
01:12:05,360 --> 01:12:07,960
But the industrial union is one
out, all out.

1301
01:12:08,000 --> 01:12:10,840
And that's, and it was precisely
because of that was also, you

1302
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:12,440
know, because of racial
divisions.

1303
01:12:12,440 --> 01:12:13,960
The black workers got the worst
jobs.

1304
01:12:13,960 --> 01:12:15,520
The white workers got the better
jobs.

1305
01:12:15,560 --> 01:12:18,960
No, we are all members of 1
union, one local.

1306
01:12:19,080 --> 01:12:21,920
You walk, you all go out
together and you all come back

1307
01:12:21,920 --> 01:12:23,320
together.
Yeah, exactly.

1308
01:12:23,320 --> 01:12:25,560
Exactly.
And this is a struggle that is

1309
01:12:25,600 --> 01:12:28,840
as old as capitalism is.
If you look back, you can find

1310
01:12:29,320 --> 01:12:32,480
old letters that Marx is writing
to a friend about the English

1311
01:12:32,480 --> 01:12:36,080
workers and the Irish workers.
You know the English workers

1312
01:12:36,080 --> 01:12:38,840
blaming the Irish workers for
their problems and like the

1313
01:12:38,920 --> 01:12:42,760
division being sewn there to the
benefit of the capitalist class,

1314
01:12:42,960 --> 01:12:44,840
right?
You're absolutely right and the

1315
01:12:44,920 --> 01:12:47,920
example you referenced.
In the view of the Irish worker,

1316
01:12:47,920 --> 01:12:52,960
the English worker is a stupid
slave of his bourgeoisie, and

1317
01:12:52,960 --> 01:12:55,960
indeed he is, until you break
with your bourgeoisie.

1318
01:12:56,080 --> 01:13:00,600
And so, yeah, the key is the
working class, but you have to

1319
01:13:00,600 --> 01:13:02,880
take it out of the realm of the
individual worker.

1320
01:13:03,160 --> 01:13:05,760
It's not just that individual
workers may vote for this or

1321
01:13:05,760 --> 01:13:09,280
that politician, They might.
It's that as a unit, as a

1322
01:13:09,280 --> 01:13:13,360
cohesive collective, they are
led by people who SAP all

1323
01:13:13,360 --> 01:13:15,520
potential power of the working
class.

1324
01:13:15,640 --> 01:13:18,600
To go back to the Minneapolis
example, when you call it a

1325
01:13:18,600 --> 01:13:21,760
general strike, you're letting
these bureaucrats off the hook

1326
01:13:21,840 --> 01:13:24,400
because they look and they go,
okay, cool, that's a general we

1327
01:13:24,400 --> 01:13:26,160
don't have to do anything well,
also they.

1328
01:13:26,160 --> 01:13:29,800
Also deeply pervert the word
general strike by making it like

1329
01:13:29,800 --> 01:13:32,560
a consumer boycott, like feel
good about yourself because you

1330
01:13:32,560 --> 01:13:34,920
don't buy from Amazon or you
don't buy from all these

1331
01:13:34,920 --> 01:13:37,000
corporations that are affiliated
with ICE.

1332
01:13:37,000 --> 01:13:41,000
But that's on a completely
individual level and has

1333
01:13:41,040 --> 01:13:43,920
absolutely no effect in bringing
the system down.

1334
01:13:44,040 --> 01:13:46,560
Yeah, it's.
Completely atomized and it's and

1335
01:13:46,560 --> 01:13:47,920
it's.
A little silly too, because

1336
01:13:47,920 --> 01:13:50,920
everybody says I'll take the day
off from work, don't go

1337
01:13:50,920 --> 01:13:53,720
shopping, but like, everybody
will go shopping a little extra

1338
01:13:53,720 --> 01:13:56,320
the day before and then spend
the day on Google and watching

1339
01:13:56,320 --> 01:13:57,760
Netflix.
So like, really?

1340
01:13:57,760 --> 01:14:00,360
Yeah, I think.
The key thing is consciousness,

1341
01:14:00,400 --> 01:14:03,840
because the consciousness that
exists right now, the working

1342
01:14:03,840 --> 01:14:06,560
class in this country has a
very, you know, bourgeois

1343
01:14:06,560 --> 01:14:09,480
ideology.
There is a lot of myths around

1344
01:14:09,480 --> 01:14:14,880
immigration that have been
successfully pushed by the

1345
01:14:14,880 --> 01:14:18,360
ruling class about immigrants
stealing American jobs, not

1346
01:14:18,360 --> 01:14:22,040
paying taxes, you know, driving
down wages, all this stuff.

1347
01:14:22,120 --> 01:14:27,040
These are all lies.
And there's a recycling of these

1348
01:14:27,040 --> 01:14:29,520
myths in the unions.
And that's why you need a

1349
01:14:29,520 --> 01:14:32,440
different type of consciousness.
Absolutely.

1350
01:14:32,440 --> 01:14:36,200
So one of the things that get
thrown around and that's false

1351
01:14:36,200 --> 01:14:40,000
is that supposedly undocumented
immigrants take up so much of

1352
01:14:40,000 --> 01:14:43,480
social services and cost so much
money and all this stuff.

1353
01:14:43,480 --> 01:14:47,080
And the response to that usually
is no, no, look, they pay these

1354
01:14:47,080 --> 01:14:50,120
taxes and and they actually
contribute more than they take.

1355
01:14:50,120 --> 01:14:52,000
And the whole framework is
wrong.

1356
01:14:52,160 --> 01:14:54,360
This isn't the working classes
economy.

1357
01:14:54,360 --> 01:14:56,360
This is the economy of the
bourgeoisie.

1358
01:14:56,400 --> 01:15:00,360
It's the job of the working
class to demand more of it, to

1359
01:15:00,360 --> 01:15:05,320
demand more services, to demand
more money, to demand more

1360
01:15:05,320 --> 01:15:07,520
health protections.
Yeah, more protections.

1361
01:15:07,520 --> 01:15:09,960
For everybody, when they say
where's the money going to come

1362
01:15:09,960 --> 01:15:11,760
from, that's your fucking
problem.

1363
01:15:11,760 --> 01:15:14,760
It's your economy.
We'll worry about it when we run

1364
01:15:14,760 --> 01:15:17,360
the economy, but that's an.
Effective method for them

1365
01:15:17,360 --> 01:15:20,800
because the idea is there's
quote UN quote finite resources,

1366
01:15:20,800 --> 01:15:24,640
which is obviously not the case
because we just kicked off this

1367
01:15:24,640 --> 01:15:28,400
episode talking about resources.
For lots of fucking things, 100

1368
01:15:28,400 --> 01:15:34,040
and. $70 billion for ICE.
It's crazy. 170 and a trillion.

1369
01:15:34,120 --> 01:15:37,360
And 1/2 for the military is what
they want to spend, having spent

1370
01:15:37,360 --> 01:15:39,560
a trillion before, now they want
to spend a trillion and a half.

1371
01:15:39,760 --> 01:15:41,800
But but we can't.
Afford universal healthcare

1372
01:15:41,800 --> 01:15:43,920
guys, we just can't afford it so
there's.

1373
01:15:43,920 --> 01:15:46,400
Plenty of wealth.
The question is, they're

1374
01:15:46,400 --> 01:15:50,160
distributing it as the
bourgeoisie sees fit.

1375
01:15:50,520 --> 01:15:54,160
And the answer to that is not to
show that immigrants contribute

1376
01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:56,200
more than they take.
That means they're super

1377
01:15:56,200 --> 01:15:57,160
exploited.
That.

1378
01:15:57,160 --> 01:16:00,480
And that is bad for the whole of
the working class, because when

1379
01:16:00,520 --> 01:16:03,000
wages are depressed for one
sector of the working class, it

1380
01:16:03,000 --> 01:16:06,160
depresses wages for everybody.
Your job is the working class.

1381
01:16:06,160 --> 01:16:08,640
Your job as a union is to fight
for more.

1382
01:16:08,680 --> 01:16:10,000
Yeah, not race.
To the bottom.

1383
01:16:10,080 --> 01:16:13,080
Exactly so.
In that case, what should the

1384
01:16:13,080 --> 01:16:15,320
slogan of the working class
actually be right now?

1385
01:16:15,600 --> 01:16:18,120
Well.
Historically, one of the slogans

1386
01:16:18,120 --> 01:16:21,040
that would get raised is full
citizenship rights for all

1387
01:16:21,040 --> 01:16:23,920
immigrants.
And obviously we should continue

1388
01:16:23,920 --> 01:16:27,160
to raise that slogan, but we
might want to modify it to also

1389
01:16:27,160 --> 01:16:29,560
include full citizenship rights
for all citizens.

1390
01:16:29,560 --> 01:16:41,560
But we don't love anybody who
doesn't love us.

1391
01:16:41,560 --> 01:16:42,960
Thanks.
For listening to Unwashed and

1392
01:16:42,960 --> 01:16:46,280
Unruly before signing off, tap
that follow Button and TuneIn

1393
01:16:46,280 --> 01:16:48,840
next time for some more
unhygienic takes.