MAGA Incites Violence on Campus
Overlooked in the campus protests is the witch-trial hearings by MAGA Mike Johnson’s House that bullied university presidents and scrutinized their federal funding, pressuring them, as Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton famously wrote in the Newspaper of Power, to “send in the troops.” Ultimately, the responsiblity falls on campus leadership, with several schools, like Rutgers University and Northwestern University, choosing a peaceful approach, reminding us that another world, free of police brutality, is possible.
Following the anniversary of the Kent State massacre on May 4th, Gaslit Nation looks at the campus protests, reminding everyone that peaceful protest and civil disobedience won hard-fought progress in America’s history. Biden recently stopped a shipment of arms to Israel, thanks to the growing pressure. We also check-in on the coup, out in the open, against our democracy, with Rudy Giuliani trying once again to exhort Ukraine to invent dirt on Biden. This is what led to Trump’s first impeachment. He’s back at it, because Giuliani, along with all the rest of the coup plotters, were never punished.
This week’s bonus show, available to subscribers at the Truth-teller level and higher on Patreon, looks at the latest reports that Ivanka Trump, after failing to make Nikki Haley the nominee, wants back on the Trump campaign and the White House. Expect to see Ivanka speaking at the RNC in July, wearing a pair of earrings you can buy from her own personal brand for $199.99! We also answer questions from our listeners at the Democracy Defender level and higher–so subscribe today to join the fun at Patreon.com/Gaslit!
Thank you to everyone who supports the show – we could not make Gaslit Nation without you!
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Show Notes:
Donald Trump's new FBI director pick has Russian ties of his own: Christopher Wray looks good on paper, but his law firm represents Russian-controlled oil companies. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/06/08/trump-new-fbi-director-chris-wray-russian-ties-rosneft-gazprom-column/102603214/
FBI Director nominee removed reference to case involving Russian government from law firm bio
https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/20/politics/kfile-fbi-nominee-law-firm-bio/index.html
FBI Nominee Christopher Wray Earned $9.2 Million at Law Firm Since January 2016 Ethics disclosures detail his work at King & Spalding and list around 20 pages of assets
As corporate lawyers in 2016, Wray and Rod Rosenstein’s top deputy, Rob Hur, probed the Blackwater founder’s paramilitary aircraft plans. What happens now?
https://theintercept.com/2018/03/19/erik-prince-frontier-services-group-chris-wray-fbi/
Russia Questions Loom for Trump FBI Pick
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-questions-loom-for-trump-fbi-pick
Trump’s Arrest, Kissinger’s War Crimes, and The Long Hunt for Justice
Rudy Giuliani Wants to Do the Exact Thing That Got Trump Impeached Giuliani called for Republicans to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
https://newrepublic.com/post/181095/rudy-giuliani-trump-impeached-zelenskiy-biden
What Columbia Should Have Done Instead of Brutalizing Its Student Protesters Two other universities showed that the school clearly had other options.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/columbia-student-protests-nypd-shafik-escalation.html
The US universities that allow protest encampments – and even negotiate While semesters at other schools speed toward a violent close, several universities have sought a more amicable solution https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/04/universities-allow-student-campus-protest-encampments
Were 'Snipers' on Roofs at Gaza Student Protests? What to Know
https://www.newsweek.com/snipers-roofs-gaza-student-protests-indiana-ohio-1895314
Cop Slammed Emory Professor’s Head Into Concrete, Then Charged Her With Battery
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/cop-slammed-emory-professor-head-195707606.html
NYPD officer fired gun while clearing Columbia protest
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68947267
‘It wasn’t equal:’ Counter-protesters overwhelm pro-Palestinian students at the University of Mississippi https://mississippitoday.org/2024/05/02/it-wasnt-equal-counter-protesters-overwhelm-pro-palestinian-students-at-the-university-of-mississippi/
US soldier was arrested in Russia last week, officials say
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/06/politics/us-soldier-arrested-russia
Giuliani wants to pressure Ukraine to invent sandal on Biden: https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1785050398266474644
Tucker Carlson’s Kremlin Propaganda Tour: https://twitter.com/United24media/status/1785353424726380615
Hanna Cotter:
That's right and campus is a lot more calm now, but she said the green was unrecognizable last night. She also wanted to address Governor Sununu saying all these protests are anti-Semitic, saying she's Jewish and she only felt unsafe when police intervened.
Annalise Orleck:
I was mad, because they had taken my phone and I was mad because they just body slammed me and it hurt. And so I went. I was like, "Give me back my phone," that I'm trying to get my phone back. I did. And at that moment, three police lifted me up in the air, slammed me down onto the ground. I mean, threw me down onto the ground on my bad shoulder. They said I was resisting arrest.
Hanna Cotter:
Video captured by News nine shows the moment Dartmouth college professor Annalise Orleck was arrested by police during last night's protest. The sixty-five-year-old says she was among a handful of professors who showed up to support students at what she says was a peaceful protest until law enforcement arrived in riot gear.
Annalise Orleck:
It's really shameful in a sleepy little campus in a rural area like Dartmouth that they brought in this ridiculous show of arms and strength and violence.
Hanna Cotter:
Orleck, who's been a professor at Dartmouth for more than three decades, says part of her bail condition is being banned from Dartmouth's campus. She says her emails to the institution have gone unanswered.
Annalise Orleck:
I've been employed here for 34 years long before the current senior administration came here, and I'm told I'm not welcome on that property. My message is stop weaponizing anti-Semitism. Talk to your students. Talk to your staff. Don't assault sixty-five-year-old women in the name of keeping the campus safe.
Andrea Chalupa:
Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine. The film the Kremlin doesn't want you to see. So be sure to watch it.
All right everyone. So we are going to be speaking a bit about the campus protests and we're going to give an update on the latest in Russia's War against all of us, including Kremlin, propagandist Tucker Carlson, as well as Kremlin Propagandist Giuliani, Trump's former lawyer as well as fellow coup-plotter, and their old friend fellow coup-plotter, Russian propagandist, Bannon. All of the names I just mentioned, all share the same hyphens, coup-plotter, Russian-backed, and so on and so on. So they're all at it again instead of being in prison where they belong because Christopher Wray of the FBI has his own Russia connections. If you want more on that, just look to the show notes. So this week's episode and so on.
We'll be doing a big Christopher Wray super special because our democracy is once again vulnerable to raise FBI as well as Russia backed MAGA's ongoing, out the open, we all see it with our own eyes, believe your eyes and your ears coup, against our democracy. None of this is normal. America is on the brink. It's really happening. I know we're all living our lives. We're self-caring. We're doing whatever we need to get through the day and to reclaim our joy, reclaim our sanity, but let's also stay vigilant and make a plan to protect our community, protect our democracy, and to not submit in advance, to not obey in advance.
We need you. I need you. We are ultimately going to win. We are absolutely 100% going to win. It is just a matter now of urgently needed harm reduction and to put an end to these fascists once and for all by putting them back in the box where they belong instead of out, being normalized by the New York Times, by the mega donors like John Paulson and running for office. But we are going to win. Humanity has been here before. I hope we will not be here again. We are here now and we will win. We're going to get through this.
And if you want to be a part of the solution and joining our extraordinary community of listeners who are all over the world, listening to this fighting a good fight alongside you, go to our website, GaslitNationPod.com and go to our survival guide, right on the homepage, the 2024 Survival Guide. There's a series of very easy steps that you can do wherever you're listening to this to help protect democracy in the United States because if we fall, it's game over for so many countries around the world and currently strong and stable democracies like,, let's look at the Scandinavian nations. They're going to have extra pressure put on them if the US should fall. What I'm saying is that no place is safe, not the Scandinavian countries, not New Zealand, not Australia, not France. This is happening in Canada. This MAGA virus is global. There's nowhere that is safe from it.
So we have to win for our democracy here at home for the sake of not just us and our kids here at home, but for the whole world and we will win. We have no other choice.
All right, so we're going to be talking about the campus protests and obviously this is a very fraught issue. I've connected with friends with Gaslit Nation listeners on both sides of Palestine and Israel. I've had some very tearful conversations in recent weeks, especially as the police brutality has escalated on campuses like Columbia and so many other places. This is a conversation for nuance. We celebrate nuance here at Gaslight Nation. So if I get anything wrong, if I fall short or if you want to join the conversation, just write to us at Gaslightnation@gmail.com. That's gaslightnation@gmail.com. I read everything that comes in. I read everything, and I'm always learning from our listeners. You guys are wonderful. Thank you so much.
Last Saturday, May 4th marked the 54th anniversary of the Kent State University shootings when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on students protesting President Nixon's expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia. 13 students were shot, four killed, and one permanently paralyzed. The Vietnam War would last another five years. The country deeply divided and the anti-war protesters were labeled as radicals. In total, the US killed millions of civilians in the Vietnam war with many more deaths discovered in recent years, and that's according to the wonderful investigative journalist Nick Turce, who we had on the show in an episode called Trump's Arrest, Kissinger's War Crimes and the Long Hunt for Justice, which you can find in the show notes for this week's episode that was from last May.
The Anti-War campus protests of today are the largest campus protests since the Vietnam War. The country once again is deeply divided. On May 4th, we posted the iconic photo of the Kent State massacre of a young woman screaming over a body of a fellow student laying face down on the ground. We asked, do you think today's campus protesters will be on the right side of history? Why or why not?
Here's what people had to say. One commenter wrote, "I think the protesters will be on the right side of history overall, the people of Gaza are victims of the fight between the terroristic Hamas and the over-militarized Israel government." Another wrote, "I am concerned There'll be another Kent state with the heavy-handed police responses. I hope I am wrong." Another person wrote, "It seemed so weird that Netanyahu would take time out of his war to comment on it." The campus protests. "What's that about? And are the protests part of a grand design to divide the left before November?"
Another commented, "LBJ was not the youth votes candidate. College campuses protested the Vietnam war. A large part of progressive voters stayed home on election day in 1969. Nixon won, and look what happened the following year. Progressive staying home or voting third party will hand trump the White House. Do you think he'll hesitate to use lethal force on Americans? Nope. Be careful what you wish for principled progressive voters who just couldn't support Hillary and just can't vote for 'genocide Joe."
And another wrote, "In the early days of the Vietnam War protests, the media coverage like today spent 95% of its publications on the protests and 5% on the cause of the protests. But it was only after body bags arrived at Dover Air Force Base that the coverage flipped. Media has learned nothing." Yeah, we're get into it in this conversation, but the GOP MAGA, Mike Johnson's MAGA cult of Christian nationalists that control the house, that see Israel as part of their end time prophecy, including the destruction of Israel of ushering in the age of Jesus where all the believers that accept Christ get to go up to heaven and the Israeli Jews that don't, they get to be trapped here in the inferno with all the witches and all the feminists and all the gays and everyone... I'll be there.
So the bottom line is that these campus protests that we're seeing, the violent ones, the violent ones, and there's some atrociously violent ones, which we're going to get into in a minute, that was all incited by MAGA, by Mike Johnson's MAGA House, Mike Johnson being the architect of January 6th, and really pushing the bogus legal claim that Trump and the rest of his cult grasping at straws and trying to overturn our democracy, right? That Mike Johnson.
And so what they did was they brought in all of these campus presidents over several weeks, grilling them is members of both sides, but mostly the Republicans are being just lethal in their questioning, trying to deliberately destroy careers. If you look at Columbia President Shafik, who has a very mousy voice, very timid, and she just got steamrolled by the GOP in her house hearing and was plastered all over the New York Times, which desperately wants Trump back because the New York Times has always been the newspaper of power. Always been on the side of the jackboots. Just look at my film, Mr. Jones.
And when you watch Mr. Jones, keep in mind the New York Times newspaper of today denied allowing us the right to use Walter Duranty's article, the actual article that he wrote in that film. We had to rewrite it from scratch. I did invent some all new words based on what Duranty actually said, to protect ourselves legally from the New York Times. They didn't even want to be part of a historical truth, a historical record because the New York Times is a newspaper of power. It is a newspaper of power. And who exudes power more than fascists?
It was the New York Times that normalized cottons, his op-ed saying, send in the troops, send in a National Guard to crush protests during the George Floyd movement, which led to a lot of people across America finally opening their eyes and understanding why we have to say Black Lives Matter and leading to a lot of substantial changes. Not enough, but it was a watershed moment. And the MAGA cult, their response to that has been fascism. They want fascism and the New York Times has been aiding them in that quest.
As one recent example showed, we had a really good economic report. It was a great economic report. However you feel about Biden, it's a fact that he's overseen one of the largest recoveries in the US in recent history. Doesn't mean that we're all peachy keen, clearly. We're still living in the fallout, the devastation of the Reagan revolution. But the New York Times reported that the most recent economic numbers as though as dire, ominous, dark, and they just normalized the reporting on Trump and so on.
So all of this is to say that the violence we saw erupt last week across campus protests, that was incited, that was driven by the House scrutinizing these campus presidents, getting them all under congressional oath to say that they were going to be harder, be tougher. That pressure campaign very public also included pressure from high-up donors, also included the MAGA house, which has investigatory powers to scrutinize the leadership of Columbia University and other college campuses where the protests have been very strong and scrutinize also whatever federal funding they get.
And so this is a big old culture war pressure campaign. Why are they doing this? Number one, they want to label the Democrats as radical, as chaotic because they are the law and order of totalitarians that are going to come in and straighten everybody out. That's the appeal of a strong man to a certain voter, which is about 30% of the voting base of America, largely driven by Christian nationalists who make up the Republican party base.
And on top of that, they want to play cover for Israel. They want to distract from the very real atrocities being carried out by a desperate, pathetic man named Bibi Netanyahu who's desperate to cling to power. He knows that if an election will be called, it'll be finally a chance to get rid of him, a long-serving, like, twenty-year prime minister who has waged war against Israel leading to the largest protests in Israel's history against him. He tried to purge the courts, overthrow the court system in Israel. He has been horrible to the families of hostages. The members of his government have been reluctant to meet with the hostages and their families. There have been some violent crackdowns in the anti-war protests in Israel, including against the family members of hostages, including against members of the opposition.
And all of the terror that Netanyahu's government has unleashed, it has increasingly driven Israel towards falling off an authoritarian cliff. There's been attacks against LGBTQ plus people. There's been attacks against religious minorities including Christians.
If you care about democracy, you should be speaking out against Netanyahu's government. And so this is who MAGA is linked with, and they want these chaotic protests to distract you from the fact that Israel's already going into bombing Rafah in southern Gaza where over a million Palestinians are seeking shelter. And Israel's telling them, "Get out," because Israel has already started bombing and they're telling them to get out, to escape just doing some lip service because they promised the U.S in exchange for funding.
The Biden administration on their part has paused a shipment of ammunition that was due to go to Israel last week. Netanyahu called them out on this and Biden's administration has been very aggressive on the ground in Egypt in brokering ceasefire talks between Qatar, Egypt, Hamas, Israel. And Hamas as of today. This is Monday, May 6th has accepted, has accepted a plan for a ceasefire. It'd be a phased ceasefire. This has sent out a wave of relief among Palestinians, but here's the problem. Israel has to accept it too, and Netanyahu needs this forever war to stay in power because they know the broader population of Israel hates them. Hates them.
Since this war started in early October, there's been all sorts of viral videos of members of Netanyahu's cabinet being confronted on the street by Israelis being screamed away and the protests have been growing, especially the protests led by the hostages' own families, who do not want the Israeli government to prioritize ending Hamas, but instead freeing their loved ones.
And what has Netanyahu's government done? They've literally bombed Palestinians off the face of the earth, killing an estimated over 34,000, the vast majority women and children, producing some of the most horrendous war footage ever seen in history. Uniting aid groups in documented war crimes, accusations against Netanyahu and his government. And in doing all that, Netanyahu's government has killed several hostages. They've lost several hostages.
So Israel is a massive powder keg. If an early election were held, it is doubtful that Netanyahu would skate through. Maybe he would because of how the base, his base is hardcore. The Orthodox base is basically paid off by Netanyahu's government, has been for many years. It's how they've been able to stay in power in part. The ultra Orthodox who get a lot of funding for their projects who don't have to, including settlements in the West... illegal settlements in the West Bank, and they are exempted from serving in the military, which further drives a wedge in Israeli society.
So if you look at how divided we are here in the United States over these campus protests including that, not just that, but we're so this polarization crisis that we have, that is what strong men engineer deliberately to divide and conquer. That is what Netanyahu has done over his 20 years rule over Israel. That is what Trump has done starting with his cult of birtherism. That is what Paul Manafort deliberately engineered to help bring Yanukovych to power. He created these culture wars among Ukrainians to try to drive a wedge there. Putin certainly did it with traditional, so-called traditional family values, in his war on gay people inside Russia. So that's what we're seeing here. So if you feel extra divided, more than usual in the US, think Republicans and their close ally, Netanyahu and it's all deliberate to make you feel that way. So be aware.
Now let's look at the campus protests. In recent weeks, there have been over a thousand arrests at campus protests across the country. Excessive police force witnessed in viral videos and photographs include several university professors getting body slammed to the ground by police, including Steve Tamari, a professor of history at Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He was filming the protests and the police brutality and then police slammed him to the ground and dragged him away. On the campus of Emory University in Georgia economics, professor Caroline Fohlin approached police as they held a student to the ground during an aggressive arrest. As soon as she even got close, she was slammed to the ground by a big, burly police officer. Her head nearly hitting the concrete. She was screaming, saying, begging, "No, my head. Watch my head. The concrete. Watch my head." She was arrested and charged with battery.
On Tuesday, as the NYPD cleared out Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, which had been occupied during the anti-Vietnam war protests in 1968, one of the police officer's guns accidentally fired, the bullet lodging in the wall, according to BBC new., it's a miracle no one was killed. Columbia University canceled its May 15 campus-wide commencement address. Press reports confirmed that there were snipers on the rooftops overlooking protests at Indiana University and Ohio State University as police clamped down there. At the University of Mississippi, counter protesters overwhelmed the anti-war protesters, including a white frat boy named James J.P. Staples of the fraternity Phi Delta Theta, making monkey noises at a young black woman. Staples has been kicked out of his fraternity and the internet has exposed him, including the several DUIs his father racked up in his youth to show the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal wrote about visiting Columbia University, sitting on a bench and calling to the protesters walking by, "Friend, friend," which is a weird thing to do and, being Peggy Noonan, she complained that no one would want to speak to a weirdo, trying to bait them over with, "Friend, friend, I come and piece from the Wall Street Journal," to a progressive anti-war protest. So the protesters instead ignored her, and the response was, "We're not trained. We're not trained to speak to the press." And thank God you guys do that because I'm telling you, some of your viral videos have been a little awkward because it's hard facing national, international press scrutiny, being under all that pressure and having the heightened pressure of having to fear for your life because the police, the NYPD, whose union endorsed fascist Trump, is coming in with its use of excessive force and a gun firing off. So yeah, these kids are in a stressful situation. The last thing they should be doing is talking to press.
Besides, that's what politicians, their staff, corporations do all the time. "No comment. No comment." Media training matters, because the media is looking for a viral story. I was at a brunch with a whole bunch of editors, journalists at major news outlets, and somebody raised the question, "Would you ever speak on the record with a news outlet?" And every single journalist at the table said no. Why would they all say no? Because they know that their colleagues are hyper-trained to just get the best story possible. Your feelings be damned. Your humanity be damned. And so those kids are right not to talk to the press, because it takes media training to talk to the press. And so the first rule of media training is be careful what you say in front of the press because they will use it. They will use it to get the best story.
As we have seen over recent years during the rise of white domestic terrorism, Proud Boys get treated better at these protests than these anti-war protesters are being treated. Columbia University remains locked down with local residents complaining they have to show their ID cards at police checkpoints to get into their homes. To have campus protests of this magnitude, it's... Yes, there's going to be elements among the protesters that cross lines. There were photographs coming out of the UCLA protests showing a white van with some Elders of Zion anti-Semitism, which is so dangerous and has absolutely no place in any peace movement.
I just want to tell all my listeners. I understand, especially to Jewish American listeners, I know how fraught it can feel navigating your way among the left. I've felt that for years because of how infiltrated Russian propaganda is among the left. How so many voices on the left for years would appear on Russian-funded propaganda networks like RT and spouting all sorts of nonsense. And so I know how some Jewish listeners may be feeling about how they don't feel like they have a home on the left anymore. They may still feel very culturally tied to Israel and that Israel has a right to exist. And so it's not very unified, these anti-war movements, in the sense of where do they all stand on whether Israel has a right to exist or not. It's not clear.
But what is clear is that the overwhelming engine of what is driving these protests is an end to this genocidal war. It's for the US to go above and beyond to rein Netanyahu in. Netanyahu is absolutely lawless and shameless and doesn't care what the US wants him to do. So that's what these protests are largely about and I want to reassure everyone of that. They're anti-war pro-peace protests that include several organizers and participants, countless who are Jewish themselves, who have ties to Israel themselves. They just want an end to all of the traumatized, bombed out homes, schools, babies. It's so dark what has happened there. It is so beyond grim. It just needs to end. That's what it's about. It's about ending this American and Israeli carnage. That's what it's about.
And I understand there's some elements on these campus protests that suck. They have no right to be there because they do not stand for peace. They do not stand for peace. And we encountered those same forces at Occupy Wall Street, bringing their darkness there. I just want to share my empathy for Jewish listeners who do feel a certain way towards these protesters. And I want to just share my empathy towards you and reassure you that, as so many have already who've been watching this protest closely, that the majority just want peace and an end to Israel's genocide against Palestinians. And that's where we are just ending the bloodshed right now, ending it now, and forcing through a meaningful lasting sustainable ceasefire. And then from there, building a two-state solution. That is the only way.
And unfortunately, we're up against a Trumpian Putin-allied strong man Netanyahu who needs this genocidal war for his own political survival. That's the big Trump card here. And by keeping the war going, he further inflames the US and that further divides the left and the votes needed for Biden in this very close electoral college.
So if you're wondering, is Netanyahu carrying out this war... is part of the bonus for him that he gets to undermine Biden and the Democrats and help bring Trump and Kushner back to power, so they can together develop Gaza into Israeli beachfront property? The answer is yes, very much so.
Now, how do we mitigate that? Well, university presidents have to be smarter and how they handle the protests. For instance, president Shafik of Columbia University, she got baited into her heavy-handed approach at Columbia that ultimately backfired because, look, she had to close the commencement address. She could have killed one of her students when that NYPD officer's gun went off. And she just looks like she lost control there and she just took the MAGA bait. Maybe she was all for it, willing to do it, but she came off as very mousy.
And I listened to the house hearings. The woman was just getting steamrolled by Republicans. So what is the way forward now? I mean obviously, campuses are wrapping up for the summer. The protesters are not going to go anywhere until the ceasefire takes hold. But the Guardian points to a way, and I'm going to read from the Guardian now, and you can find this article in the show notes. "Northwestern University in Illinois, the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, which is already voted to divest from Israel, Rutgers University at New Brunswick, New Jersey, and the University of Minnesota and Minneapolis have also brokered agreements with students, while others including Wesleyan in Connecticut and the University of California at Berkeley have allowed the protest encampments to continue." And again, that's from the Guardian.
So there is a way. You just leave the kids alone. They pay money to go to University. Some of them going into debt to pay off their college loans. In school, they're taught to have an open mind, a free mind, to be tolerant of others, to know their rights, to exercise their rights, to understand the revolutions, the progressive movements, the many lives that have been lost, fighting for those rights. And then you're going to smash a boot in their face? That's not how this is supposed to work. You're playing into Tom Cotton and the rest of the MAGA cult's desire to usher in a normalized fascism.
So university presidents and administration staff need to have a stronger backbone and not taking the MAGA bait and allowing protests to happen. It's civil disobedience which has built our country. I'm totally against violence. There should be absolutely no violence. But civil disobedience like camping out, refusing to go... As long as you're peaceful, that's fine.
The reason why violence is so bad is because it becomes a loss of control. Once you enter the realm of violence, you're not in charge anymore. And there's so many bad actors that want to discredit you and your movement, so these outside agitators will come in and push for violence to make you look bad. Ukrainians resisted violence for that reason in the Euromaidan protest of 2013. They tried to be as peaceful as they could until finally Yanukovych's storm troopers came in and were just shooting them and clubbing them over the head and they had no choice but to go to war. And they fought and so many died. So you don't want to go towards violence unless you have absolutely no choice. We're not at that point yet by any means.
And it's the power structures in this country that are morally responsible to be anti-violence first and foremost, and not sending in these brutal over-militarized cops to play Rambo against sixty-five-year-old college professors and freshmen. What are you doing? That is just immoral, and it's absolutely going to backfire because... Let's say you disagree with what they're saying. You're just going to bring in more sympathy and attention for their cause. That's what you're doing.
So the way to keep things cool, the way to keep things calm is just to let the protests exercise their rights as long as they're not violent, let them be and negotiate with them in good faith, and have set up a transparent process on how to do that for everyone's sake, for the very soul of our country and the democracy we all need to be fighting for.
Now there's a lot going on in other parts of the world. In the country of Georgia, which has been overtaken by Russian-backed oligarchs, Russia is trying to complete its state capture of Georgia, a country that invaded a region of in 2008. And they're doing this through a series of laws targeting non-profits and media outlets that get support from abroad. It's a way to choke off Georgia's civil society from the world. And this is the pro-Russian government's second attempt to force through this law, despite mass demonstrations that stopped it the first time. And this pro-Russian oligarchy wants to pass anti-gay laws and make it easier to launder money to Georgia. Basically, this is Russian state capture.
And in Russia last week, an American soldier stationed in South Korea thought it would be a good idea to visit Russia. Apparently he was there on vacation. It wasn't a official trip. As we currently understand. This is very new reporting out today. If you are an American, get out of Russia, because this American soldier is just the latest to be arrested by the Russians. The charges are theft, but it's not that. It's because he's just the latest hostage, because Russia is a terrorist state. They rack up these hostages to use as leverage when negotiating with its enemies.
They did this during the time of Stalin. You can see it in my film, Mr. Jones, when the Metro-Vickers engineers are arrested. British engineers. So for the love of God, everyone stay out of Russia for your own protection and to stop giving Kremlin leverage.
Speaking of the Kremlin, Rudy Giuliani is calling on Mike Johnson and his mentor, Jim Jordan, to do what Trump got impeached for doing. Pressure Zelenskyy into creating a scandal on Biden in Ukraine in exchange for aid. Here's Giuliani on Bannon's podcast, War Room.
Rudy Giuliani:
Beginning with Brennan, when he was informed of Hillary coming up with the false plot. It should begin with him and it should include Brennan. It should include Biden, the vice president who approved it and helped out. They should bring over from Ukraine about 20 Ukrainian witnesses. I can get them that are still being held there. A couple I found out very recently are in fear of death and somebody should lean on Zelenskyy. You want another penny? Give us your Biden... Give us your Biden file.
Andrea Chalupa:
I know what you're thinking. Giuliani and Bannon should both be in prison instead of on podcasts. Normalizing corruption and the ongoing Russian-backed coup against our democracy. Why are they not in prison? It's really Christopher Wray. It's really Merrick Garland. They are ushering us into an authoritarian regime, putting it back on us, the grassroots, to do everything we can to stop the Trump asteroid this November 5th.
It sucks that it comes down to us. I really wish I was reporting on some exciting arrests, that Merrick Garland wasn't a puppet for corrupt forces in America. I wish I was reporting on some good stuff. But no, as I always have said on this show, grassroots power is the most reliable power we have left. It's down to us, guys.
Tucker Carlson is continuing his Kremlin propaganda tour. His latest as he is interviewing Russian Steve Bannon, Aleksandr Dugin, who said that fascism is inevitable for Russia and perfectly natural. And so here's a clip from that interview where Dugin calls, surprise, the progressives are the totalitarians.
Aleksandr Dugin :
Democracy has meant the rule of majority and now it is about the rule of minorities against majority, because majority could choose Hitler or Putin. So we need to be very careful with majority. And majority should be taken under control and minorities should rule over majority. Majority, it is not democracy. It's already totalitarianism. And now we are not about defense of the individual freedom, but about prescription to be woke, to be modern, to be progressive. It is not your right or not to be progressive. It is your duty to be progressive, to follow this agenda.
So you are free to be left-liberal. You are no more is free enough to be right-liberal. You should be left-liberal, and that is a kind of duty. It is prescription. So liberalism fought during its history against any kind of prescription, and now at its turn became totalitarian, prescriptive, not free as it was.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yes, we are the totalitarians for wanting to be left alone, keeping the government off our bodies, out of our bedrooms, out of our doctor's offices and hospital rooms, and ensure we protect our freedoms of speech, assembly, right to vote and so on. And if you need a reason to check out the Gaslit Nation 2024 Survival guide on GaslitNationPod.com and run through that checklist, get your community all fired up to do everything we all possibly can to protect our democracy in these few precious months ahead before November 5th, 2024, Election day.
Here on Catholic News Network is Princeton professor Robert George, a buddy of Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society, who packed 30% of the courts under Trump, overturning Roe V. Wade. They plan to take away our right to vote, next ladies.
Robert George:
Yes. Well, I had the honor, Tracy, of submitting this brief with Professor John Finnis, the world's most eminent philosopher of law. Happens to have been my doctoral supervisor at Oxford University many years ago.
The two of us went through the historical evidence for the understanding of the Framers and ratifiers of the 14th amendment, precisely on the question of whether those Framers and ratifiers regarded the child in the womb as a person within the meaning of that term, as they used it in the 14th amendment to the Constitution. That's the amendment that requires that states accord to all persons within their jurisdiction, the due process of law, and also the equal protection of the laws. And we concluded, and I think the evidence is quite overwhelming, we presented that evidence to the Justices that in fact the Framers and ratifiers perfectly well understood that unborn babies were full members of the species homo sapiens, were living human beings from the earliest embryonic stage from their conception, and that they meant to protect those children when they referred to person. They met by person all living members of the species, homo sapiens. All living human individuals.
Andrea Chalupa:
This election is here and it's happening and it's bigger than Biden. We have the chance to hack away at corruption at the root by building our power at the all-important state level, where crucial quality of life issues from voting rights to environmental protections to LGBTQ+ rights and more are decided. Karl Rove ran the same strategy for the GOP during the Obama years, laying the groundwork for Trump to come to power in 2016. Now we're reversing this dangerous trend, securing key victories in swing states to protect our elections and advance progressive laws in states like Michigan and Wisconsin. Yes, even Wisconsin. Another world is possible when we unite and build together.
Here's how. Join me, Andrea, at State Fair, a giving circle that collects small dollar donations among friends and family to build big power in key states. If 1000 Gaslight Nation listeners set up a $5 recurring monthly donation, that's $5,000 we're sending to turn so-called Red States Purple and so-called Purple States blue. Some of the races we've supported won by only a few votes and we flipped the House in Pennsylvania, flipped the entire House, elected like 12 new people. Massive. And they have a crazy extra crazy Republican party in Pennsylvania. And that's what we did together through States Project. Thank you. Your $5 monthly donation will make a huge difference. Join me and my friends at State Fair today. You can sign up at GaslitNationPod.com. Just click on the 2024 Survival Guide on our homepage.
Step number two, are there any young people in your life? Gen Z or younger? Give them the gift of the excellent book Run for Something. A real taught guide to fixing the system yourself. It helps people of all ages run for office. So if you are thinking of running for office, be sure to read this inspiring and practical guide. Both the book and the organization, Run for Something, encourage, recruit, and train young people to run for office and flex their power. Inspire a young person and anyone you love and trust with empathy in their hearts and science in their minds to run for office to today.
Number three, help the helpers. State Bridges is a sister District Action Network program, in which volunteers from across the country fundraise for organizations doing year round power building in key battleground states like Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. State Bridges supports organizations engaging communities underrepresented at the polls like mothers of color, rural voters and Latinx voters. Sign up to attend a virtual fundraiser and donate to help the helpers at State Bridges.
Number four, write letters to voters in swing districts with a vote forward. Check out any of their easy letter writing campaigns that have already started and write letters as you listen to Gaslit Nation. We'll be keeping you company.
Most importantly, number five, check your own voter registration now at election protection site, Vote.org. Make sure you're registered and check in with your family and friends to confirm their voter registration too. Commit to helping five people in your life make a plan to vote and bring them along to a Gaslit Nation phone bank this fall, because the only ones coming to save us is us. Grassroots power is the most reliable power we have left.
Our discussion continues, and you can get access to that by standing up on our Patreon at the Truth-teller level or higher.
The U.S has the highest rate of maternal mortality than any other developed country. That's shameful. Christian Nationalists backed by the oil and coal lobbies worsened this crisis with their authoritarian abortion bans. Donate to the Women's Reproductive Rights Assistance Project. That provides support to those who need an abortion or emergency contraceptives. Donate at WRRAP.org. That's WWRAP.org.
To help get Ukraine urgently needed humanitarian aid, join me in donating to Razom for Ukraine at RazomForUkraine.org.
To help civilians and refugees in war zones like Gaza, donate to Doctors Without Borders at DoctorsWithoutBorders.org. And if you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to The Orangutan Project at the OrangutanProject.org.
Gaslit Nation is produced by Andrea Chalupa. Our production manager is Nicholas Torres, and our associate producer is Karlyn Daigle. Our episodes are edited by Nicholas Torres and our Patreon exclusive content is edited by Karlyn Daigle. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes. It helps us reach more listeners and check out our Patreon. It keeps us going.
Original music in Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Vissenberg, Nik Farr, Damian Arriaga, and Karlyn Daigle. Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smythe of the New York-based firm, Order. Thank you so much, Hamish. Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the producer level in Patreon and higher. Work for Better, Prep for Trouble. Lily [inaudible 00:43:57]. John [inaudible 00:43:59]. Ellen McGirt. Larry [inaudible 00:44:01]. Dee Scott. [inaudible 00:44:03]. David East. Ida. Joseph Mara, Jr. Mark Mark. Sean Berg. Kristen Custer. Kevin Gannon. Sandra Collins. Katie [inaudible 00:44:13]. James D. Leonard. Leo Chalupa. Carl [inaudible 00:44:18]. Marcus J. Trent. Joe Darcy. Anne Marshall. [inaudible 00:44:22]. D.L. Sinkfield. Nicole Speer. Abby Road. Jans Ulstrup Rasmussen. Sarah Gray. Diana Gallagher. Leah Campbell. Jared Lombardo, and Ann Marshall and Tanya Chalupa. Thank you all so much for your support of the show. We could not make Gaslight Nation without you.