WEBVTT

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The five stages of grief are a way of
describing how people may react to a loss.

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The media said Joe Biden is president.

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HA HA HA!

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The media is covering up the Biden
crime family stealing this election.

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Give us our freedom Joe Biden.

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For angels are being released right now,
angels are being dispatched right now.

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[Speaking in tongues]

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No. No. No.

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Oh, hello.

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Welcome to System Fail,

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the show that dances
like nobody’s watching.

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The gruelling, two-year-long spectacle
of the US presidential campaign

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drew to an official close
on Tuesday November 3rd.

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I don’t want to say 
that I hated every minute of it,

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but I literally hated every minute of it

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During the weeks leading up to election night,
tens of millions of Americans cast ballots,

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indicating which kleptocratic septuagenarian
they would rather be ruled by

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for the next four years.

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Would you rather get punched in the face
or get slapped in the face hard?

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Well slapped, innit? You’d rather get slapped.

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I'm gonna say slapped.
Yeah.

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Thanks for the help.

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For months, popular fears had been mounting
that a disputed election result would spark

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widespread political unrest,
perhaps even culminating in a

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second American Civil War.

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Given this generalized state
of heightened anxiety,

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the days following the election
were somewhat anti-climactic.

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I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America.

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Our government is in the midst of a coup,

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they’re trying to turn us into some 
sort of socialist government

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a new form of government,

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all that matters is that it doesn’t happen.

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CNN projects Joseph R Biden Jr
is elected the 46th president....

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On election night,

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a small crew of Proud Boys, including their
national chairman Enrique Tarrio,

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were out drinking at a DC bar
with Bevelyn Beatty,

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a conservative Christian activist best known
for repeatedly painting over the Black Lives Matter

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street mural in New York.

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They say black lives matter, right?

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They say black lives matter.

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They don’t care about black lives.

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Fuck you!

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Re-fund the police!

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Re-fund the police!

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Re-fund the police!

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Jesus matters!

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At around 2:30 in the morning,

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pumped up from Trump’s win in Florida
and chalk full of liquid courage,

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the group picked a fight with some local youth,
and promptly got themselves stabbed.

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They stabbed me.

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Are you stabbed or punched?

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I don’t know. 
But the amount of blood that came out...

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Oh my god you've got tons of blood
coming out of your neck!

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Yes I do.

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As many commentators and political
analysts had predicted,

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no winner was declared on election night.

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This election is not over.

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Far from it.

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Fuck!

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It would be four days before enough votes
had been tallied to project a winner.

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While this delay did not result
in mass political upheaval,

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as some had predicted,

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protests did take place,

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leading to several skirmishes
and dozens of arrests

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in several of the country's so-called
“anarchist jurisdictions”.

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And we ain't even talkin about the election 
right now, cuz no matter who wins

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we still gonna have Black men
killed every day.

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The behaviour of police in the so-called
“anarchist jurisdiction”

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of New York
was particularly problematic.

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In the so-called
“anarchist jurisdiction” of Portland,

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locals continued their nightly 
tradition of rioting,

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prompting Governor Kate Brown
to call in the comrades of the National Guard.

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Oh bella ciao, bella ciao,
bella ciao ciao ciao...

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What does that mean?

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On Thursday night,
two armed Trump supporters

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were arrested near the
Philadelphia Convention Center,

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where ballots were still being counted.

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The men had driven up from Virginia Beach
in a silver hummer with QAnon decals,

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as part of an alleged plot to storm
the vote counting facility, commando-style,

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and, quote, “straighten things out.”

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As all of this was taking place, 
Donald Trump retreated to his National Golf Club

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where he proceeded to send out
a series of unhinged tweets.

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Sounds like he just lost a challenge in Scrabble
after putting down the word QUARF.

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Trump was playing golf
when he learned that Biden

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had been declared the winner by a number of
corporate media outlets, including FOX News.

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FOX sucks!

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I don’t even watch Fox anymore.

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Whats your main source of information?

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My main source of information
is I listen to Alex Jones

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Its a chicom new world order great reset,
global depression,

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attack our families,
castrate our sons program.

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As news of Trump’s loss spread,
people took to the streets to celebrate.

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Goodness won, that’s who won!

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Goodness. Not Biden. Goodness.

NOTE Paragraph

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The spontaneous outpouring of emotion
is a defining human trait,

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and it is predictable that many humans
would express relief and jubilation

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upon hearing news of Trump’s apparent defeat.

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It’s over!

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Best day of my life.

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But as an AI-powered automaton
who was not programmed to feel relief,

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it falls on me to remind viewers
that a Donald Trump loss

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also means a Joe Biden victory.

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We did it. We did it Joe.

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You’re going to be the
next president of the United States.

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Biden is often presented as 
a quasi-senile old man,

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who is prone to verbal gaffes.

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Poor kids are just as bright
and just as talented as white kids.

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Someone who is out of touch, a bit creepy,
but ultimately harmless.

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I love kids jumping on my lap.

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Oh dude!

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This caricature papers over 
the functional role

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that he plays within the Democratic Party
establishment,

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his status as the favoured candidate
of Wall Street and finance capital,

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and his decades-long career
as a foreign and domestic policy hawk.

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Biden’s 1994 crime bill 
helped fuel mass incarceration,

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with financial incentives 
to keep people behind bars.

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We have predators on our streets.

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We have no choice 
but to take them out of society.

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I like the idea of keeping in jail longer.

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I’m the guy that wrote the bill
requiring federal judges to keep people in jail.

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President Bush is right to be concerned
about Saddam Hussein's relentless pursuit

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of weapons of mass destruction.

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His running mate, Kamala Harris,

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is now being positioned
as the future of the Democratic Party,

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after making history by becoming
the first female, Black and South Asian

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police officer to be elected
Vice President of the United States.

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Top Cop, top cop, top cop.

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Oh, you know... Kamala was popo.

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In the nights after the election,
many of those in the streets made it clear

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that they didn’t support
either political party.

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Fuck Biden and Trump!

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Fuck Biden and Trump!

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Turn your weapons on yourselves!

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But as the days passed, 
and a Biden/Harris victory

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began to come into clearer focus,

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the Democrats’ messaging 
of “count every vote”

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became more prominent at marches and rallies.

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This created an odd and increasingly alienating
environment for anarchists, abolitionists

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and other professed enemies of America’s
bipartisan political establishment.

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Anarchists who had been physically and mentally
preparing themselves to confront

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and fight back a fascist coup d’état,

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soon discovered that the 
internal democratic mechanisms

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of the most powerful state in the world

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were more than up to the task.

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They’re not going to have any success
in stopping the vote counting.

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There is no basis in law.

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I think if our message to global investors

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was America is not 
a legitimate democracy anymore,

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I think we’d be doing a lot worse
than down a thousand points a day.

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Judges around the country, 
tossing out some 30 cases.

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A growing number of Republicans
now acknowledge it’s time to move on.

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This realization no doubt affected attendance
at the so-called “Million MAGA March”

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which took place in Washington DC,
on Saturday November 14.

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This mobilization was organized and promoted
by a broad coalition of Trump loyalists

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and fixtures of the far-right,

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including Trump’s former
campaign adviser Roger Stone,

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members of the Proud Boys,
Three Percenters and Oathkeepers,

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Alex Jones,

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Death! Death!
Death to the New World Order!

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and white nationalists associated with
the so-called Groyper Army,

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such as Nick Fuentes and former
American Identity Movement leader

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Patrick Casey.

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We’re all going to be out there in DC.

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Who’s going to be out there in DC?

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A related event called the March for Trump
was promoted by FOX News,

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White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany,
and Trump himself.

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The idea was to stage a massive rally
to boost morale in the Trump camp,

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and to show that there was an army of “Patriots”
willing to fight to overturn fraudulent election results.

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Yet even with all its free advertising,
the largest display of far-right unity

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since Charlottesville,

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and the fate of the presidency 
hanging in the balance,

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the rally was only about to pull out somewhere
between 10,000 and 20,000 people.

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And that’s not really our fault,
because the last time that there as some kind of

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dissident right rally, or demonstration
we all know how that went

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- the last one I participated in.

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Despite this smaller-than-expected turnout,
those who did show up were agitated

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and spoiling for a fight.

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Fuck Antifa! Fuck Antifa!

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Kill them!

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You need to kill them!

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You need to fight for this fucking country

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The morning began with 
a small flock of MAGA supporters

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ripping down the memorial wall 
at Black Lives Matter Plaza.

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Tear them down!

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Tear them down!

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Throughout the day, there were sporadic fist-fights
and physical attacks on journalists.

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I just know that I got hit in the head.

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And I started yelling "I'm Press! I'm Press!"

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And then they were just kinda like

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you’re fake news people
and you’re helping to steal his freedom,

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and it will not stand!

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Later that night,
a crowd of approximately 200 Proud Boys

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returned to Black Lives Matter Plaza
and attacked a vastly outnumbered group

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of anti-fascists and BLM supporters.

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In the process, three people were stabbed,
and one person was sent to the hospital

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in critical condition.

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Hey, we got one on the ground!

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We got one on the ground!

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The Proud Boys-led crowd also targeted women,
queer and trans people,

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in a violent, testosterone-fuelled display 
of wounded masculinity.

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King Kong ain’t got shit on me!

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Y’all need to be outraged and come back,
because on December 12,

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they’re going to be out here

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and they’re going to be fucking us up
just like they did last time.

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We need help.

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And we don’t have it.

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There are no doubt a number of lessons
to be drawn from the events in DC,

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and hopefully it provides an opportunity
for a critical reflection on strategy

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and tactics.

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This is important, as the country
is already facing a series of painful,

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deepening and interconnected crises,
and things don’t look like they’re

00:13:01.410 --> 00:13:03.167
going to be improving any time soon.

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Oh this fucking shit!

00:13:06.519 --> 00:13:10.455
One clear takeaway is that the energy,
excitement and momentum

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seen during the Black-led, 
but multi-racial George Floyd uprisings

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has not transferred into the movement
to protect American democracy

00:13:18.189 --> 00:13:20.216
from a presumed fascist coup d’etat.

00:13:21.059 --> 00:13:23.749
To learn more about why 
things played out this way,

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I recently caught up with Anarchist writer,

00:13:26.241 --> 00:13:30.149
insurrectionist strategist,
and author of The Master’s Tools,

00:13:30.149 --> 00:13:31.459
Tom Nomad.

00:13:31.459 --> 00:13:33.034
Hey Tom, how’s it going?

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Its incredibly exhausting and stressful

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Indeed.

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A USA Today poll released 
shortly before the US elections

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indicated that more than 
75% of Americans were concerned

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about post-election unrest.

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This largely failed to materialize.

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Why do you think this is?

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And what do you make of this discrepancy 
between people’s fears

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and the reality of what has taken place?

00:13:56.074 --> 00:13:59.715
I think there are a number of reasons why
that happened the way it did.

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Part of that has to do with the fact that
Trump and the Republicans have essentially

00:14:05.029 --> 00:14:10.309
turned anarchists and anti-fascists into super
soldiers in the mind of conservatives,

00:14:10.309 --> 00:14:13.319
you know, taking over 
parts of major cities and stuff like that.

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And that has created this kind of mentality within 
the right wing which is simultaneously hostile,

00:14:19.889 --> 00:14:24.809
so really focused on trying to 
confront anarchists and antifascists.

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We saw that in Washington DC recently.

00:14:27.734 --> 00:14:33.759
But also at the same time terrified. 
And a lot that hostility comes from fear.

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Most conservatives in the United States are
relatively normal, rural and suburban people.

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Most are white.
Most work low to mid income jobs.

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A lot are older. And those people aren’t going
to die or go to prison for Donald Trump.

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At the same time, the fear on the left 
was really coming from the fact that

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that fear that we see on the right wing 
is really unpredictable.

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That at different points, 
that fear has manifested

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in conservatives failing 
to really turn people up at protests

00:15:07.290 --> 00:15:09.239
just as much as its turned
into Charlottesville,

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just as much as its 
turned into mass shootings.

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Because of the prevalence of gun culture 
down here, which involves a lot of

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hyper-toxic masculinity and sort of 
delusions of grandeur, I guess we could say,

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that sometimes manifests itself in 
people dressing in uniforms and joining militias

00:15:28.640 --> 00:15:31.959
and running around in the woods 
and pretending to be soldiers

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and not really doing anything with that.

00:15:33.828 --> 00:15:36.519
And sometimes it turns 
into Kyle Rittenhouse.

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And so it becomes really difficult to locate
where politic violence is going to come from

00:15:41.050 --> 00:15:42.970
in the US right now.

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And because of that, what it's generated
is this sense of constant vigilance.

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The other basic reality comes down to class
and geography in the United States

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and the way that interacts with race.

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The right wing traditionally has been
terrified of cities in the US.

00:16:01.229 --> 00:16:04.149
And the places where Trump 
was telling people to go

00:16:04.149 --> 00:16:08.069
were places like Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland,
Pittsburgh, Philadelphia

00:16:08.069 --> 00:16:11.440
like these cities which to 
people on the right wing

00:16:11.440 --> 00:16:14.574
are thought of as smoking ruins of crime

00:16:15.009 --> 00:16:20.209
And so when you combine all of that together, 
its not particularly surprising

00:16:20.209 --> 00:16:21.990
that a ton of them did not show up.

00:16:21.990 --> 00:16:24.920
But at the same time 
its also the case that

00:16:24.920 --> 00:16:27.570
we all had to be very ready
for them to show up.

00:16:27.570 --> 00:16:30.219
Because there was no way to know 
which way that was going to play out.

00:16:30.219 --> 00:16:33.200
What role has social media 
played in this process?

00:16:33.200 --> 00:16:37.619
Twitter definitely went through a transformation
in the last few months.

00:16:37.619 --> 00:16:43.860
Part of this has to do with the seriousness
of Covid conspiracy theories.

00:16:43.860 --> 00:16:47.779
So with Twitter, it was very 
specifically a response to people

00:16:47.779 --> 00:16:50.139
putting out misinformation 
about COVID 19

00:16:50.139 --> 00:16:55.019
that got them to start focusing really heavily
on labeling things as misinformation.

00:16:55.019 --> 00:16:59.949
I think for them they sat there and they saw
how damaging the effects of misinformation

00:16:59.949 --> 00:17:03.329
were and they started seeing that a lot of
people were leaving their platforms

00:17:03.329 --> 00:17:04.379
because of it.

00:17:04.379 --> 00:17:08.720
And so for purposes of profit, 
they've started moderating that content.

00:17:08.720 --> 00:17:12.020
Facebook on the other hand 
is a dumpster fire, right?

00:17:12.020 --> 00:17:14.610
No one should ever use 
Facebook for anything ever.

00:17:14.610 --> 00:17:15.610
They’re terrible.

00:17:15.610 --> 00:17:21.020
What effect do you see a Biden/Harris presidency
having on social movements in the US?

00:17:21.020 --> 00:17:26.689
What new dangers do you see ahead for anarchists
and anti-fascists during this coming period?

00:17:26.689 --> 00:17:28.850
To understand how
this is gonna play out,

00:17:28.850 --> 00:17:33.035
we have to understand what
the Democratic Party is, essentially.

00:17:33.035 --> 00:17:38.719
And the role of counterinsurgency
in the foundations of the Democratic Party.

00:17:38.719 --> 00:17:42.090
Some people mark it at the civil rights movement,
some mark it at the labor/corporate compromise

00:17:42.090 --> 00:17:45.169
after World War II, but 
starting at that period of time.

00:17:45.169 --> 00:17:50.870
The Democrats really started to identify social
movements which might be able to build their

00:17:50.870 --> 00:17:54.559
own support - build their own base. 
And then identifying moderate elements

00:17:54.559 --> 00:17:57.301
within those social movements
and sort of coopting them,

00:17:57.301 --> 00:18:01.530
recuperating them 
back into the political system.

00:18:01.530 --> 00:18:03.099
We watched this happen
in the civil rights movement.

00:18:03.099 --> 00:18:05.029
We definitely watched it 
happen during Vietnam.

00:18:05.029 --> 00:18:06.789
We watched this happen 
with environmentalists,

00:18:06.789 --> 00:18:10.149
we watched this happen with the
anti-war movement, so on, and so on.

00:18:10.149 --> 00:18:14.740
And the Democratic Party at this point 
is more or less made up of the moderate wings

00:18:14.740 --> 00:18:17.959
of all of these social movements which
have occurred since World war II.

00:18:18.549 --> 00:18:23.039
We also see elements of this playing themselves
out around the question defending the police.

00:18:23.039 --> 00:18:27.800
A lot of liberals recognize something very
basic about the George Floyd Uprising.

00:18:27.800 --> 00:18:32.409
Which is that it is a result 
of a failure of reformism.

00:18:32.409 --> 00:18:38.600
That after Ferguson in 2014 and 2015 
liberals were able to push the narrative

00:18:38.600 --> 00:18:40.840
into a narrative of reformism.

00:18:40.840 --> 00:18:43.019
Let’s get police departments 
to have consent decrees.

00:18:43.019 --> 00:18:45.090
Lets have the 
Justice Department investigate.

00:18:45.090 --> 00:18:46.620
Blah blah blah.

00:18:46.620 --> 00:18:49.850
And that failed. Horrendously.
For obvious reasons.

00:18:49.850 --> 00:18:53.049
And the George Floyd uprising
was a response to that failure.

00:18:53.349 --> 00:18:58.510
So instead of just stepping back, they said,
"oh all of this violence is the result of people

00:18:58.510 --> 00:18:59.660
from the outside."

00:18:59.660 --> 00:19:04.760
"It’s not people rejecting our policies.
It's not people rejecting our attempts at reform.

00:19:04.760 --> 00:19:10.299
It’s outside agitators. Its white nationalists.
Its Boogaloo Boys," and so on, and so on.

00:19:10.299 --> 00:19:13.780
And that played itself out in almost exactly
the same way all around the US.

00:19:13.780 --> 00:19:15.800
And again, that gives them
justification to crack down.

00:19:15.800 --> 00:19:22.579
So I think its very likely that we are going
to see a situation in which the FBI comes after us.

00:19:22.579 --> 00:19:29.729
In which the FBI is used as a mechanism
to destroy the militant fringe of the uprising

00:19:29.729 --> 00:19:30.790
that’s happening right now.

00:19:30.790 --> 00:19:34.770
Partially because it threatens 
the continuity of the American state,

00:19:35.170 --> 00:19:38.220
which it legitimately does, which is
not something I think i could have ever said

00:19:38.220 --> 00:19:42.490
at any point in time before this.
At least since I’ve been alive.

00:19:42.490 --> 00:19:48.740
But also because its is absolutely fundamentally 
necessary to create the carrot and stick scenario

00:19:48.740 --> 00:19:52.910
that they need to be able to co-opt the 
moderate elements of all of these sort of

00:19:52.910 --> 00:19:55.789
political initiatives that are 
happening in the street right now.

00:19:55.789 --> 00:19:57.630
Is there anything else you’d like to add?

00:19:57.630 --> 00:20:01.860
As were kind of leaving a Trump administration
going into a Biden administration,

00:20:01.860 --> 00:20:05.022
really the question that 
we have to ask ourselves is

00:20:05.022 --> 00:20:09.222
how do we move away from 
that constant process of response,

00:20:09.222 --> 00:20:12.478
where we’re moving 
from outrage to outrage to outrage,

00:20:12.478 --> 00:20:16.019
and how do we start to move 
to a trajectory where we are able to dictate

00:20:16.019 --> 00:20:21.734
the pace of action and we are able 
to do that on a granular local tactical level.

00:20:22.790 --> 00:20:27.839
In other words we have to move from a position
of activism to one essentially of insurgency.

00:20:27.839 --> 00:20:33.509
We have to really focus on this idea that
we are not fighting an abstract enemy.

00:20:34.089 --> 00:20:39.400
We are engaged in an open 
material struggle with the state

00:20:39.400 --> 00:20:41.210
and we have to think about it on that level.

00:20:41.210 --> 00:20:45.830
And what that means is that we 
have to abandon this kind of reactionary

00:20:45.830 --> 00:20:53.740
posture of activism and start to really think
of ourselves as what we are, which is antagonists

00:20:53.740 --> 00:20:58.549
and as insurgents in a circumstance which
is not particularly conducive to that.

00:20:58.549 --> 00:21:03.300
And our task is not to necessarily 
to get everyone agree with our ideas,

00:21:03.300 --> 00:21:06.859
but its to create the political circumstances 
for us to achieve our objectives.

00:21:06.859 --> 00:21:07.829
Thanks Tom.

00:21:07.829 --> 00:21:10.840
We’ve now reached the end of 
this episode of System Fail.

00:21:10.840 --> 00:21:15.850
An extended version of my interview with Tom
Nomad will soon be available on subMedia’s

00:21:15.850 --> 00:21:18.099
brand new Circle A podcast.

00:21:18.099 --> 00:21:23.228
You can find it via your favourite podcast
service, or by checking it out on our website:

00:21:23.228 --> 00:21:26.334
sub.media/circle-a

00:21:26.334 --> 00:21:31.269
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00:21:31.269 --> 00:21:33.380
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00:21:33.380 --> 00:21:39.320
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