System Fail #3: The Ballot & The Bullet

We're all born with the right to life 
liberty and pursuit of happiness.

There's no reason why we can't just 
do so much more than we're doing.

We need crime in America.

We need looting and burning 
and destruction of property.

I want to make it absolutely clear.

The more chaos,

violence,

the better it is!

I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message.

Oh hello.

Welcome to System Fail, a show 
that lives by the golden rule.

An alleged gang of sheriff's 
deputies within the L.A. County  

Sheriff's Department known as the Executioners

A gang of rogue deputies with matching tattoos

As many as 40 percent of Compton 
deputies are Executioners

Breaking news out of Compton. Two LASD 
deputies reportedly shot in the head

Damn....

Later that night anti-police protesters showed  

up at the hospital to yell at 
deputies guarding the facility.

Daaaaaaamn!

Actions have consequences. People 
don't like law enforcement.

Straight outta Compton!

In the months since the George Floyd rebellion,  

racial tensions in the United 
States have remained high.

Tonight Louisville, Kentucky 
is under a state of emergency.

Say her name!

Breonna Taylor!

Uproar over the wealthy white couple who waved 
firearms as black lives matter protesters  

marched past their palatial home in St Louis

This period of generalized unrest has 
been punctuated by brief, yet intense  

bouts of looting and anti-police rioting 
in cities like Chicago and Philadelphia,

as well as drawn out standoffs such as 
those of the so-called CHAZ in Seattle,

and the more than 100 nights of 
recurring clashes in Portland Oregon.

ACAB - All Cops Are Bastards!

Yo Portland, we gettin lit!

On Sunday August 23rd these 
tensions flared up again

when police officers in Kenosha 
Wisconsin shot 29-year-old Black man 

Jacob Blake, seven times in the back.

The shooting, which left Blake paralyzed, occurred 
right in front of three of his young children.

Kenosha residents were swift to respond.

Chaos on the streets of Kenosha Wisconsin

Multiple buildings set on fire

We had a couple of thousand out here 
clashing with police and law enforcement

That night a car dealership was torched 

along with three garbage trucks that 
police had set out as makeshift barricades.

Dozens of businesses were looted and burned 

and the courthouse was attacked 
smashed up and temporarily set on fire.

Rioters clashed with local police,  

allegedly damaging a Lenco 
BearCat armoured personnel carrier

Fuck 12!

and pelting cop cars and officers with bricks.

Now what?!

Oh my god!

What happened?

Ohhh! He just got bricked. He just got bricked!

Hooowdy Ho!

An official press conference the following 
afternoon was attended by a mob of angry  

demonstrators, who rushed the public safety 
building that houses the Kenosha police,  

sheriff and fire departments.

You racist bastard!

Responding to the disorder, a local 
militia called the Kenosha Guard 

put out a call for armed 
vigilantes to come to the city, 

to help defend private property 
and suppress the riots.

A facebook event scheduled for the following 
night soon attracted more than 5 000 participants.

Despite the event being flagged 
455 times as a breach of the  

company's violence and incitement policy, 
facebook moderators decided to leave it up.

There have been a bunch of media reports asking,  

you know, why this page and 
event weren't removed sooner.

It's just another reminder that 
facebook is trying to organize  

white militia groups during this this, uh, 
very sensitive and highly charged time.

Nightfall brought more looting and arson attacks,  

including the burning down 
of the probation office.

On the third night the crowd of armed 
militia members and other white vigilantes  

assembled by the Kenosha Guard hit the 
streets to the fanfare of local police

Within this ragtag posse was 
17 year old Kyle Rittenhouse,  

a baby-faced teenager from the quiet 
middle-class town of Antioch, Illinois 

who would go on to shoot three 
demonstrators that night with an AR-15.

Two of his victims, Joseph Rosenbaum 
and Anthony Huber were killed 

while a third, Gage Grosskreutz 
was seriously injured.

Rittenhouse is a former police cadet

Loser!

and a proud member of the blue lives matter crowd,  

who has been a cop fanboy 
since he was a young child.

I love bacon.

In many ways, he is a quintessential 
representative of America's white  

suburban middle-class youth

I deserve McDonald's french fries!

This has made him an ideal poster 
child for conservatives and armed  

reactionaries of all stripes, who have 
presented him as a hero in their imagined  

war against so-called antifa and 
black lives matter terrorists.

This is a 17 year old kid. 
This is - this is amazing.

#Fightback, founded it says to 
counter the lies of the radical left,  

has raised a reported seven 
hundred thousand dollars.

Kyle Rittenhouse is a national treasure.

He is a - in a sense - a hero.

He seemed like a good young man.

He didn't empty a magazine into a crowd.  

He exhibited more restraint than a lot 
of the police videos that I've seen.

Three nights after the shootings 
in Kenosha, Patriot Prayer member  

Aaron Danielson, AKA Jay Bishop, 
was shot and killed in Portland  

in an apparent revenge attack carried out 
by anti-fascist militant Michael Reinoehl.

Bishop appears to have been mainly known 
in anti-fascist circles for having spoken  

out in favor of fellow Patriot 
Prayer supporter Jeremy Christian

Death to antifa!

a neo-nazi, who stabbed three people 
on a Portland bus in May 2017.

Police say this man verbally 
attacked a Muslim woman on a train,  

and that when good samaritans came 
forward to help, he stabbed them to death.

These three people that died,  

or were stabbed are not heroes. And 
they deserve everything that they got.

Members of Patriot Prayer had been in the city 
earlier that day for a Trump 2020 Cruise Rally,  

an obnoxious spectacle where participants 
drove around honking their horns while  

shooting paintball guns at counter-protesters 
from the back of pick-up trucks.

In stark contrast to the two 
demonstrators killed in Kenosha,  

the media went to great lengths to 
humanize Bishop after his death,  

with some conservative outlets dubbing him 
the 'MAGA martyr', and FOX News featuring  

a sombre interview with Patriot Prayer 
founder, and right-wing hack, Joey Gibson.

My understanding is Jay was a good 
friend of yours. Tell us about him.

Yeah Jay's, uh, he's one - he's one of the 
nicest people I've ever met in my life.

These three people that died, or were 
stabbed deserve everything that they got.

Five days after Bishop's death, a multi-agency 
US Marshals hit squad tracked down Reinoehl  

in the town of Lacey, Washington, and summarily 
executed him as he was getting into his car.

One witness reported that the 
officers didn't even bother  

to identify themselves before 
all four of them opened fire.

Reineohl had given an interview earlier that day,  

in which he claimed he had 
acted out of self-defense.

I felt that my life, and 
other people around me's lives  

were in danger, and I felt like I had no choice.

As soon as the smoke had cleared, US Attorney 
General William Barr released a statement  

celebrating Reineohl's assassination, and further 
conflating the label antifa with terrorism.

The vigilante shootings in Kenosha and 
state-sanctioned killing of Reineohl  

are less likely to shock Black 
or Indigenous communities,  

who have been subject to this level 
of violence (and worse) for centuries.

The main thing that stands out in this case 
is that all the people killed were white.

In the wake of the George Floyd rebellion, the 
American state and its white paramilitary proxies  

have responded to the threat of a multi-racial 
rebellion in the same way that they always have.

Namely, with a combination 
of outside agitators rhetoric

'Professional agitators' is what we call them. 
Their entire goal is to come here and wreak havoc.

and targeted repression.

Man. They were not playin.

Fuck.

This is pushing the struggle in 
the US in a dangerous direction.

Many on both the left and the right have 
raised the specter of a second civil war  

as a potential outcome to the current state of 
extreme political polarization in the country.

Recent events will only encourage this trend.

Because believe me, once the veneer of 
civilization peels off, and once the shooting  

war starts, there's been a lot of Santa Clauses 
that have been makin lists and checkin it twice.

Whoah hey, how's it going. Packin' 
heat. That's pretty hardcore man.

Chances are you may never have 
heard of a three percenter.

A group called boogaloo believes 
there's an impending civil war.

I would argue we're in a new civil war.

The question is, who exactly 
do they plan on fighting?

Whether or not this actually comes to pass,  

the growing political divide is certainly being 
exploited by Donald Trump, who is intentionally  

fanning the flames of urban unrest in an 
effort to win over white suburban voters

left-wing anarchy and mayhem

rioting, looting, arson

no one will be safe

They will apply their disastrous policies 
to every city, town and suburb in America.

even as he warns the upcoming 
election is being fixed.

It'll be fixed it'll be rigged.

There's a lot of fraudulent 
voting going on in this country.

No fraud? No fraud, really? Why don't 
you take a look all over the country?

Elections are one of the primary means by which 
democratic states maintain their legitimacy,  

and recuperate threats to their ruling classes.

With trump making it clear that he is not 
likely to accept a Joe Biden victory in November

I will totally accept the results...

if I win!

the 2020 election could well usher in a political 
crisis like nothing before seen in US history.

stand back and stand by.

Disputed elections are often 
catalysts for broader social ruptures.

Just look at the situation in Belarus.

Belarus is a former Soviet 
Republic, commonly referred to  

in the west as Europe's last dictatorship.

It depends on taste.

Its strongman president is Alexander 
Lukashenko, who some viewers may recognize  

from that strange video that IRPGF fighters 
in Northern Syria put out a few years ago.

Alexander Lukashenko, we are 
setting our sights on you.

Or perhaps from his meeting with 
washed-up 1990s action hero Steven Seagal,  

in which the star of such blockbuster 
hits as Under Siege and Hard to Kill  

was gifted a pair of Belarusian pajamas, 
and a sampling of locally grown produce.

Nice.

Lukashenko has been in power for 26 years,  

and it's clear that the majority of people 
in Belarus have had enough of his rule.

The chants to mark the occasion of his 
66th birthday: happy birthday you rat.

Popular sentiment has only hardened since 
the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic,  

particularly after Lukashenko downplayed 
the severity of the crisis, suggesting that  

Belarusians could avoid the virus by drinking 
vodka, hitting the sauna, and doing farm work.

Faced with the incompetence of the 
state, residents of Belarus began  

setting up mutual aid networks to help 
fight the spread of COVID-19 themselves.

This practice ramped up in June, when raw 
sewage leaked into the water system in Minsk

leaving half of the state's capital 
without access to clean water.

A full glass of shit!

The august 9th election took 
place within a context of  

growing discontent and popular mobilization.

And so when Lukashenko 
inexplicably ended up with 80%  

of the votes, people were 
ready to take to the streets.

Demonstrations erupted in 33 cities across the 
country, with over 50 000 people taking part,  

many building barricades and clashing 
with the OMAN - an elite branch of  

the security forces tasked with riot suppression.

Lukashenko responded by 
attempting to block the internet.

Hey what the fuck!?

This strategy backfired.

Not only did it bring more people out 
to the streets to see what was going on,  

but activists soon began spreading 
information about how to use VPNs  

and encrypted messaging applications to 
bypass state sensors, opening up channels  

of information and communication that many 
residents had never had access to before.

In response to the latest escalation of violence,  

an online messaging channel with more than 2 
million subscribers published a list of names,  

birthdays and addresses of more 
than 1 000 police officers.

In the weeks since the election 
momentum has continued to grow.

Despite the regime conducting mass arrests, 
torture, and disappearances, weekly demonstrations  

of more than a hundred thousand people have 
become a recurring feature, with throngs of  

protesters waving the old red and white flag of 
the former Belarus National Republic, which has  

long served as a symbol of opposition first to 
the Soviet Union, and later to Lukashenko's rule.

Ultimately the fate of Lukashenko's 
regime largely rests on Vladimir Putin.

The Russian President has promised Lukashenko that 
he would dispatch additional police if needed,  

and recently provided his 
government with a $1.5 billion loan.

However, Putin apparently distrusts his Belarusian  

counterpart, and wants to avoid adding an 
anti-Russian dimension to these protests.  

So it remains to be seen what sort of 
moves he will make in the coming weeks.

To learn more about the situation in Belarus,  

I recently caught up with "Maria", 
an anarchist based in Minsk.

Hey Maria, how's it going?

Well I'm at home today, uh because I have some 
some job for tomorrow, so I can't be detained.

Bosses hate when you get detained 
as part of a national uprising.

Uhhhh.. yeah.

What was life like in Belarus under the 
Lukashenko regime before these latest protests?

The problem with Belarus is that 
it's a relatively new country,  

that only appeared after the 
collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

And for three years after that collapse it used 
to be a parliamentary republic, and in 1994  

that was actually the first elections that were  

claimed to be democratic by the 
west and all the other countries.

So they were acknowledged.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union there was a 
lot of economical issues. Lukashenko was promising  

to put it all under control and to 
combine, let's say, the best Soviet  

practices with the adaptations to 
the new world. This is how he won.

Year by year, he started to strengthen 
his authority in the country.

So he changed the constitution.

He abolished the limit on the number of 
terms that one person could be a president.

So for the moment it's his sixth term. 
So he ran for these elections as well,  

and allegedly he won it, but of course 
nobody believes in the elections.

I think in the last four elections, 
people either didn't vote  

or they would understand that most of 
the time the elections are falsified.

But i think the biggest problem with this society  

before this year was that it was actually a little 
bit like a unwritten social contract, so to say.  

Like Lukashenko said "okay, you can live 
your lives. You can survive somehow. 

I'm going to grant you basic social services, 
if you're not going to deal with politics."

Could you describe what the state 
security services look like in  

Belarus? What sorts of tactics have 
they been using against protesters?

There is KGB, which is the special service, 
like the national security service or something.

And it retains the name from the Soviet Union.

So the KGB actually deals with how - 
it has, of course, it has different  

departments. Like some of the investigation and 
some of the political police. Basically they say  

that there is always a person from the KGB 
that has control over every state-run business  

or university or school, or of course 
general businesses and even NGOs.

So basically, there's always one person 
who is associated with the structure.

And whenever you do something wrong, 
they could potentially talk to you.

Or like, they just identify that 
they're there, they're watching,  

and you're going to have bigger 
problems if you continue.

So it's not like people are getting grabbed 
in the streets and put behind KGB prison.

It's not like that. It's 
more like soft repression.

It's more like showing people that 
they are controlled and surveilled,  

so either they threaten you with the 
fact that you're going to lose your job.

If you're a student they say your 
parents are going to lose their job,  

and you're going to lose 
the place at the university.  

So they find a way to threaten you, and 
i think it works well for many people.

For the bigger population the repression is 
not there until they come close to politics.

You should understand that this is not USSR.

Like people are not afraid all 
the time, it's not like that.

But it's only because people don't care about 
politics, and they just live their lives.

They get their salaries, and they go to 
entertainment centers to to have leisure time.

This is what Lukashenko wants them to do. And 
basically as soon as you become more active  

or show political initiatives you're 
going to have these conversations  

with the authorities - like with the services.

What is the composition of the uprising in 
Belarus and how is the movement organized?

I've been in a political movement for 15 years 
now, and I have seen all the brutality of the  

police, and the repression, and the falsification 
of elections, and so on, for a long time.

And suddenly this year, many people started seeing 
it. Although it's been there for ages, you know?

So people started protesting actually 
two months before the election,  

but of course these protests were quite 
small and not so many people were detained.

And actually you should understand that 
many people started protesting for the  

first time in their life this year. And 
we don't have any kind of protest culture.

And the protest is kind of self-organized, 
because the protest does not have any politicians  

who are leading them. Who are standing in 
front of the crowd and talking to them.

Of course people are coordinated by some 
telegram channels, but it doesn't mean that they  

have to follow what these channels are suggesting.

As long as these channels are suggesting something 
that people like to do, they are successful.

But at the same time, the 
process is so spontaneous,  

it's so so self-organized, 
that you cannot really plan.

Like you come to a protest 
with one type of leaflets,  

but you understand that you should 
have taken a molotov, you know?

Neighbors have started to talk to each 
other. They have started to organize  

small parties in the yard. And I think this 
is something very important in terms of the  

atomization of them, of the population in 
general. The people never did it before.

And people started to coordinate that they would 
go together from one quarter to the protest.

So they formed protest crowds, 
and they marched together from the  

outskirts to the center, which 
has never happened before.

How are anarchists in the country involved in 
the protests? And where do you see things headed?

We all knew that Lukashenko will not step down so 
easily, but we didn't expect the protests to go  

so massive, and to go so different 
from what we experienced before.

And I think what anarchists, and I personally 
are experiencing at the moment is that  

it's a little bit of an euphoria. 
Because it looks like there are a  

lot of practices of self-organization 
that have worked and have emerged.

I'm sure Lukashenko will not leave  

soon, because most protesters 
decided to take a peaceful form only.

And i think the goal at the moment is try to 
use the potential that the process offers,  

and use the space that opens up and try to create 
the structures or to attract people who have not  

been active before. To attract them to the ideas 
of anarchism. To identify potential allies, maybe.

To work more with the neighborhood committees,  

or try to teach people how to facilitate 
meetings or take decisions horizontally.

So basically, try to use our competencies 
that only anarchists could provide  

in order to spread the ideas of anarchism. 
Not the ideas, but the practices.

Thanks Maria.

We've now reached the end of 
this episode of System Fail.

Over the course of the Belarusian uprising,  

thousands of people have 
been detained and arrested.

Anarchists and anti-fascists 
are facing serious repression,  

with several comrades facing the 
prospect of long prison sentences.

To find out how you can support them,  

check out the Belarus Anarchist 
Black Cross at abc-belarus.org.

As you may have heard, my fellow AI-powered 
automaton, Mark Zuckerberg, recently purged  

dozens of anarchist and anti-fascist pages from 
his corporate surveillance platform Facebook.

In response, subMedia and our 
comrades at Kolektiva have launched  

a new independently-hosted Mastodon instance.

Check it out at kolektiva.social.

To support subMedia, consider 
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Godspeed humans.