00:03:39.180Thank you. Thank you. Let's make that bubble pop.
00:03:41.780Woo! I'm very stoked to have you on the show.
00:03:44.760You have a very big brain when it comes to these issues.
00:03:48.180So I think you're very in demand this week.
00:03:52.080So I appreciate you taking some time to come on the show.
00:03:55.520I obviously want to start with the real big news this week.
00:04:01.420um you know i think something might have happened on the extremism beat i don't know if you heard
00:04:06.240but um is it the pusher t song against yeah yeah it was actually so i'm really glad that you could
00:04:11.840come on to talk about that um but no obviously four men were arrested in quebec um some of them
00:04:19.380active members of the canadian armed forces um looking to seize land allegedly and create an
00:04:26.220anti-government militia so as you do yeah as one does just you know can't boys have hobbies you
00:04:33.860know um so what was your initial reaction when you saw this news i was kind of like
00:04:40.460yeah here we go again right because it is it is a thing since time immemorial i guess
00:04:48.340where uh some members of the far right and some members of anti-government militias um going back
00:04:55.180to the 60s, 70s in the US and sometimes in some sense in Canada as well, do have this nexus with
00:05:01.360kind of military experience, not necessarily active members, which is what's unique about
00:05:06.860this case is it's the first one as far as I know where it's been active members of the military
00:05:13.120who've been arrested. It's usually reservists or it's usually veterans. There's a mass amount of
00:05:21.460research on how much veteran veterans are get involved in kind of far-right movements but
00:05:25.680in terms of active members this is the this is the first one so it was quite shocking
00:05:30.160two things were shocking one is that the fact that they were active members and number two
00:05:34.540is the mass amount of weapons they somehow were able to amass before raising any any alarm bells
00:05:44.000I guess so both of those are unprecedented but the idea of just the idea of the military and
00:05:49.880far right and anti-government isn't particularly the new part yeah definitely and i maybe uh folks
00:05:56.760listening might not necessarily i i don't know maybe maybe we got some military grunts listening
00:06:01.640but uh you know could you explain what kind of the distinction is between um active duty and like
00:06:08.520uh reservist and i mean i think most people know what a veteran is but um like what what is distinct
00:06:14.440about that here um so active active duty means like you're you know actively a member of the
00:06:21.080canadian military then there's then there's an entire cohort of reservists who are just part
00:06:26.680of the broader canadian military apparatus who might be called upon in some future conflict um
00:06:32.520if if needed to kind of get involved veterans or people who were members of the military and who
00:06:38.360are now um outside part of civilian life either they you know they might have gone to afghanistan
00:06:43.800they might have gone to iraq um and and are now kind of or might have just been members of the
00:06:49.000canadian military and have now left and and so um when i say there's a lot of research about
00:06:54.520veterans being involved in the far right that goes back to the people who came back from the vietnam
00:06:59.560war and so on but um in terms of active members of the canadian military being involved and
00:07:05.320particularly arrested for this kind of stuff um unprecedented yeah i you know when i reached out
00:07:13.400to you about this for my tiktok um i you mentioned that this is an issue that the caf the canadian
00:07:21.480armed forces have been trying to root out but that it's a real uphill battle so i i guess i'm
00:07:28.040wondering like how serious is this extremism problem within the canadian armed forces and
00:07:33.480what makes that kind of a unique or distinct issue um relative to folks who are radicalized who are
00:07:41.560like civilians um i mean i think the the baseline is of course that they they have access to weapons
00:07:49.320they have access to weapons training they have access to tactical training which in theory makes
00:07:55.480them a little bit more dangerous than your average civilian who wants to go out and do a mass shooting
00:08:00.040or something who has no none of that experience um so that always strikes people as like a bit
00:08:05.720more dangerous when active soldiers or even veterans um are getting involved in these movements um
00:08:11.880what's challenging here uh is again we don't know the details of the investigation or how they got
00:08:19.320caught but there's there's there's a lot of challenges here and a lot of questions that
00:08:24.040arise right so for the most part when you're recruiting members in canada there's no real
00:08:28.520ideological screening there's no real a a friend of mine i was just talking to said you know nope
00:08:34.200they never really asked me for my social media handles there's no like combing through your past
00:08:38.440social media posts and your likes and the kind of things that you did for the tick tock video
00:08:42.520there's none of that that happens before you joined the military right and and after you
00:08:46.840joined the military um there there needs to be some sort of reporting that happens from someone
00:08:51.560close to you or someone in your ranks who says you know this guy's saying racist stuff or this
00:08:55.880guy's doing uh strange things or this guy's stockpiling weapons and in order for some sort
00:09:01.480of investigation to be kickstarted right the canadian military is not just sitting there
00:09:06.840going through their soldiers instagram feeds and going through their because they're not allowed
00:09:11.560to collect information on canadians and so in order to start collecting information on a particular
00:09:16.120individual there needs to be some reason some law some uh something that you did wrong that
00:09:21.400was reported that that kickstarts that process so we don't know for these four like how that worked
00:09:27.560And whether they were walking around saying racist things or whether someone noticed that they were, you know, taking cartridges of ammunition or something like that in order to kickstart that investigation.
00:09:38.340Right. And so that's, I think, the challenge for outsiders is that you assume that this is a highly regulated, closed environment and that it should have kicked all kinds of alarm bells should have gone off.
00:09:51.240But there is a kind of mechanism that needs to be followed, which we don't know to the extent that it was followed here.
00:09:57.560We also don't know whether, it seems from some of the reporting that the RCMP kind of led the investigation and then the military police assisted the investigation, but we don't know who found out first, right?
00:10:08.120Was it the military police who kind of first found out these guys were saying things and then once they realized that, oh, this is elevated to the level of terrorism or IMVE, ideologically motivated violent extremism, which is now the government speak for this, whether they then had to kind of transfer it to the RCMP.
00:10:27.560And so we don't know who found out first and who passed it on to the RCMP.
00:10:34.820We also don't know whether all the weapons came from the military or whether they got
00:15:32.460and saw that at least one of these four men had, like, several far-right conspiracy meme pages,
00:15:39.320had a lot of posts that were about stuff like COVID and, you know, gun laws, like, opposing gun laws, opposing Trudeau's gun laws.
00:15:48.660And one person I spoke with from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network told me that what I had found on the profile that I shared with them
00:15:55.660were, quote, hallmarks that this individual held either right-wing or far-right ideology.
00:16:00.780um i guess i wanted to ask you like and i know that you probably are reticent to speculate too
00:16:08.680much but um is that your reading of the available information so far as well or do you think it's
00:16:17.240possible that these guys were maybe like radical environmentalists or you know something along
00:16:21.880those lines like what is what is your read on what we are dealing with here with this arrest
00:16:27.760yeah that's i mean an interesting question um that the the challenge or or what i haven't heard i
00:16:34.080guess in some of the coverage so far is this nexus that does exist between anti-government extremism
00:16:39.040and far-right extremism right people are talking about it as if they're necessarily two separate
00:16:44.880things and sure not all anti-government extremists are far-right but a lot of them are and a lot of
00:16:51.680And a lot of them share kind of overlapping worldviews that do that do exist together.
00:16:57.180And so, you know, from, you know, being anti-multicultural to anti-immigration to sharing, talking, you know, accusing people of having globalist agendas, supporting, you know, being against feminism, being against LGBTQ rights,
00:17:13.900uh uh pocket railing against um you know our guns being taken or pandemic mandates and and so on so
00:17:22.220there is this overlap that happens between um being against government overreach and being
00:17:27.580anti-government to also talk moving very closely into far-right spaces and this has also been true
00:17:33.420for a long time right if you look at the aryan nations compound in idaho if you look at uh ruby
00:17:38.140ridge if you look at a lot of the attacks that have happened in the u.s that the anti-government
00:17:42.460sentiment and the far right sentiment are basically inextricable um so that part isn't necessary so
00:17:48.060when when the rcmp statement says like these guys are anti-government but then they also say like
00:17:52.780ideologically motivated violent extremism um it strikes me as probably far right you're right that
00:18:01.020there might be some press release in a couple of weeks where they say they're you know they're
00:18:05.020actually animal rights activists or something um i would be very surprised he liked a page saying
00:18:09.820he was anti-vegan so unless he's had a real ideological turnaround since he did that because
00:18:14.860you know there's some people like all kinds of stuff over the years and maybe forget to unlike
00:18:19.340it but humans are complicated yeah yeah um but but but this idea of con you know conspiracy theories
00:18:26.700um grievance narratives um all this stuff and and what kind of i would say separates them and puts
00:18:34.060them in my mind at least closer to the far right space is this idea of owning land right seizure
00:18:39.500of land um there aren't necessarily many animal rights activists far left activists who are
00:18:44.700talking about seizing land whereas that's core to far-right activism going back 70 years right and
00:18:50.300when you talk about the white ethno state when you talk about what the arian nations did in north in
00:18:55.180the northwest pacific uh northwest pacific um actually actually taking over land and wanting
00:19:01.020to create uh this kind of haven for white people uh that is what that has been part of uh far-right
00:19:06.220activism for a long time and anti-government activism for a long time. And so that I think
00:19:11.480pretty squarely takes it out of potentially far left spaces. Again, I don't, you know,
00:19:17.060humans are complicated and we'll see, but I would be very surprised if it turned out to be something
00:19:22.580else. So that kind of intermeshing isn't particularly surprising for me either,
00:19:30.160because one of the things the pandemic did, and once we learn more about their biographies,
00:19:35.080um i'm i'm almost certain we'll find that they were uh that they kind of came of age came of
00:19:41.160extremism age yeah during during the pandemic during uh kind of the trucker convoy days during
00:19:47.720the pushback against mask mandates and vaccine mandates because that was a pivotal time in the
00:19:54.280extremism space in canada and globally where all of these different disparate movements came together
00:20:00.680right they they they hung out in the same spaces they hung out in the same online spaces and
00:20:04.760offline spaces um and and so a lot of extremist identities were born um during that kind of uh
00:20:12.6802020 2022 period um which i think is probably a spillover it's i don't think it's a surprise that
00:20:18.840the you know investigation goes back to 2021 and and and you know so on so um i do think you can
00:20:26.520logically place them um in the anti-government anti or anti-government far-right nexus um if
00:20:32.600you just kind of pay attention to what it read in between the lines of what the rcmp is saying
00:20:37.880definitely and it makes a lot of sense what you're saying about the um you know we don't have their
00:20:42.200biographies yet but we do know that one of the individuals is 33 but the others are all 24 25
00:20:49.080which would put them you know covid started in 2020 so that would have them like 20 years old
00:20:54.68019 years old when that kicked off. So I want to have a broader discussion about far right
00:21:03.580extremism in Canada. But before we move on from this specific case and have that broader
00:21:09.580conversation, I did want to touch on what you already touched on earlier, which is the fact
00:21:15.160that these guys had a lot of weapons. Your fellow researcher, Jessica Davis, actually told media
00:21:22.720that this is the largest cache of equipment and weapons and explosive devices that have
00:21:27.200ever been found in a terrorist incident by a long shot in Canada. What does that tell you
00:21:33.280about this specific threat and what concerns does it raise for you more broadly as well?
00:21:40.160I mean, it tells me that somebody messed up along the way, right? Because if this was
00:21:46.960even half of it even a third of it was military equipment um somebody messed up or they had
00:21:55.760someone on the inside again like not to speculate but yeah there's just no way when you have to
00:22:00.480account for every spent shell casing in a range that you're walking out of there with grenades
00:22:05.400and night vision goggles and uh 11 000 rounds of ammunition it's just someone is looking the
00:22:12.160other way or someone is working with you or someone's something someone messed up there's
00:22:17.720just no way around it um it and it might be that a solid chunk of it was bought in the open market
00:22:22.960sure we'll see but um but it is surprising that they were able to uh kind of amass that much
00:22:31.280weaponry um and it i mean again this is this goes to the question of the investigation is like we
00:22:39.340would, you know, it would be very interesting to know why the RCMP, assuming they were being
00:22:44.040watched from 2021, allowed them to amass this much weapons before deciding to press charges,
00:22:50.640right? Like, what were they waiting for? Why not 5,000 pieces? You know, I mean, like, why 11,000?
00:22:57.700Why this many weapons? Why grenades, right? And so there's so much unknown here in terms of what
00:23:04.660the tipping points are for uh charging how the investigation proceeded how they uh waited how
00:23:10.880they felt like they had an airtight case before uh before charging what what was required before
00:23:16.660they felt like they had an airtight case um there's so many unknowns here but um what's
00:23:21.520just just from the numbers of things got you know they gathered in in january 2024
00:23:26.420um someone messed up um and um and it would also be interesting to know whether you know who
00:23:33.980reported it within the military was it was it reported to someone in military police who um
00:23:39.820if it wasn't ideological would have maybe dealt with it internally in in a kind of uh under
00:23:44.940military law uh but once they realized that oh this is an actual ideological thing a terrorism
00:23:50.620thing um then they had you know they had no choice but to bring the rcmp in um so a lot of unknowns
00:23:56.300But, yeah, the numbers are, as Jess said, like it's unprecedented in terms of any plot, any arrest in Canadian history to have this much ammunition just sitting around.
00:24:11.460Yeah, it feels like, I don't know, if they hadn't caught them, it could have been like a Waco situation or something really bad.
00:24:18.940So at least this was stopped ahead of time.
00:24:22.680So, I did want to broaden, as I mentioned, this into a discussion of the far-right extremist
00:24:34.700You know, like I've reported a fair bit on the offline organizing we've seen from groups
00:24:39.640like Diagalon, as well as the broader growth of active clubs in Canada and around the world.
00:24:45.380There's actually a really great breakdown from ISD about it, from your crew there.
00:24:51.180um so i guess first and foremost could i just ask you to explain to the audiences if you're
00:24:56.900comfortable doing that like what uh active clubs are yeah i mean active clubs um are basically a
00:25:07.240group of guys who get together sometimes with a name sometimes not sometimes large groups sometimes
00:25:13.740three guys with a hangover, who practice fighting, who are training for physical combat in some
00:25:25.980future war that they're expecting, right? That's the stated goal. But part of what this does is
00:25:33.440also uh feed into this kind of um uh misogynistic masculine uh toxic masculine environment that
00:25:43.120we're seeing now which is um it's about bringing it's about belonging right it's not you know
00:25:50.080all academics kind of talk about belonging to death but it this is actually about uh male bonding
00:25:56.400and um supporting each other uh and uh sticking up for each other and having each other's back
00:26:03.120And that's why it's so effective, right? And the ideology is kind of sprinkled in there, could come after, but it's really just about, we feel under threat. The world is out to get us. That includes feminism, immigration, what have you, is out to get us. Us being men, but also white men.
00:26:21.560But some of these some of these active clubs do have kind of broader reach, I think, especially some of these militia groups.0.99
00:26:30.480And so we're under threat and we're going to kind of stick together and prepare and make sure we're ready when, you know, shit hits the fan.0.99
00:26:38.460Right. And so that's kind of the leftovers in many ways of some of these groups that were listed terrorist entities in Canada.0.98
00:26:45.980And you saw the birth of these kind of active clubs as a result.
00:26:50.660And so now they're quite powerful and quite organized, and they're just kind of waiting in many ways to kind of see what will happen next in society.
00:27:11.460Yeah, it's something that really, it's freaked me out.1.00
00:27:15.280Like I especially seeing how they're all kind of coordinating like in telegram chats and stuff like there's a diagonal on active club that, you know, explicitly states that their birthright has been taken by and they're being pushed out of society by foreigners and that explicitly identifies that they accept members of European descent, which I don't know.0.99
00:27:39.140I have a feeling they only mean some Europeans, but yeah, it's usually just code for white.1.00
00:27:44.520but i don't have to tell you that um but um the thing that i find freaky is that they're like
00:27:51.080all cross advertising they've done meetups so and uh that includes with folks from patriot front
00:27:58.440that includes you know uh across borders so with us groups um i guess you know canadian media for
00:28:07.960a really long time was very fixated on islamic extremism and that was like what grabbed all the
00:28:14.040headlines and i i guess what i want to ask you is like is this the bigger threat in canada and how
00:28:21.720concerned are you and maybe it's dumb to equate those things but i guess i just want to ask you
00:28:27.320how concerned you are about these domestic patterns of offline organizing from far-right
00:28:33.880anti-establishment groups yeah no i mean isis and al-qaeda inspired um extremism is still there
00:28:43.400There's cases that still pop up from time to time.
00:28:46.560There's still people trying to flee to Afghanistan or Yemen or Syria that pop up from time to time.
00:28:52.220It's way down from kind of the peak in 2015, but it's still simmering.
00:28:58.860But I would say that the challenge with the far right is that it's not so ideologically coherent as jihadism is.
00:29:07.620right jihadism is a thing it al-qaeda isis you can you can explain it very clearly whereas when
00:29:14.020you talk about ideologically motivated violent extremism if you want to use the canadian
00:29:17.380government's language you're talking about incels you're talking about accelerationists you're
00:29:21.860talking about crowd boys oath keepers three percenters boogaloo boys adam waffen the base
00:29:29.220this kind of new nihilistic order of nine angles nexus with you know child sex trafficking and
00:29:37.540and and pedophilia like it's it's just so many things um and and we just kind of we just kind
00:29:44.340of say oh that's the far right and you're like okay but it's so much so much diversity within
00:29:50.740that label that it almost kind of loses its purpose right yeah um i think i think the core
00:29:57.700message maybe that unites a good chunk of them except the incels um is or even if you throw in
00:30:02.180indian cells is misogyny um is this sense of in-group loss a kind of demo what i've called
00:30:09.860like a demographic panic which is idea of of like we are losing our place in society culturally
00:30:15.700racially um and populationally if that's a word and we need to do some and we need to do something
00:30:21.860about it right and and so that kind of unites a lot of these militia groups and the far right and
00:30:27.620um and a lot of the misogynistic misogynist groups as well um and and so at core they have a lot of
00:30:33.460things in common like the great replacement idea and all these things but they're so ideologically
00:30:37.860diverse that um and they all exist in canada that that's the other thing i think people think that
00:30:42.580this is like all this diversity is in in the united states or in europe but we have uh these
00:30:48.500movements in canada not only that something i've been pushing back against a lot is this kind of
00:30:53.540canadian only focus right it's that this movement is a transnational social movement by nature so
00:31:00.100you had alexandra bisonette wear a maga hat to the quebec mosque shooter you had the christ church
00:31:05.140attackers send money uh to defend europe uh the group defend europe uh for stopping migrant boats
00:31:12.020coming into into europe from uh from north africa and and so they all they're all sharing resources
00:31:17.300they're all consuming content and information from each other they're all feeding into this0.58
00:31:22.420kind of ecosystem uh of of hate and so yes they may act locally they may amass weapons locally
00:31:28.500they might have local northern quebec ambitions but they're part of this broader ecosystem and
00:31:35.140and the more you kind of lose sight of that i think you kind of are going to miss a big part
00:31:40.660of the story right i would bet my house that these four guys that were arrested in quebec
00:31:45.300were consuming american content were consuming european hate content um so yes they're canadian
00:31:50.580but they're also very much part of this transnational movement that needs to be kind of kept front and center because they're all saying, you know, that that's what's giving them that sense of empowerment, that it's not just me in this kind of rural city in Quebec who feels this way, but I'm part of this global movement that's pushing back on all fronts against liberals and Jews and all these things.
00:32:12.980and we're in that we're an embattled minority but we're united internationally right and and so um
00:32:20.020that's that's what's giving them that kind of uh momentum which which needs to be uh repeated often
00:32:26.580because because um i think researchers and journalists you know are locally based and
00:32:32.180therefore they ask very local questions sometimes and i'm just like no like money is going resources
00:32:38.020ideas are flying yeah yeah borders um and so i think i think we need to keep in mind that these
00:32:43.540guys are all um consuming just like us just like we consume a lot of american content they also
00:32:50.580consume a lot of american content it just happens to be hate content totally yeah um one thing that
00:32:57.460struck me actually because i you know weaseled my way into all these like telegram groups and stuff
00:33:02.660and keep an eye on these guys is you know like we've got guys from canadian uh extremist groups
00:33:09.060going on podcasts from members of the nordic resistance movement which was classified as i
00:33:14.420believe a terrorist organization in the us recently and then you know they're also supporting and
00:33:19.540sharing active groups from australia um supporting guys like thomas sewell who's like an australian
00:33:26.180neo-nazi and uh and that's literally what comes up on wikipedia when you google him so like you
00:33:32.500know it's not there's no ambiguity there um but yeah so it's like uh these are really international
00:33:40.900movements and i think that does contribute in a big way to people feeling emboldened because if
00:33:44.900you're the only person in your village who's saying awful stuff you might feel quite isolated
00:33:49.940in that rhetoric and maybe be convinced away from it but this is probably i'd imagine it's very0.96
00:33:54.420emboldening to have this kind of global community of dog people willing to say the same things as0.82
00:34:01.700you um how dangerous and um real is that growing threat like what does that actually look like in0.96
00:34:10.180terms of how it impacts our society and the risks it places on everyday people especially racialized
00:34:16.180people and women and lgbtq folks i mean it's huge and and this is where that nexus happens between
00:34:24.180hate crime and terrorism right and and sometimes it's hard to know what's what and and what the
00:34:28.900overlap is there um but we're seeing a rise in hate crime we're seeing a and sometimes that's
00:34:35.700you know quote unquote mundane things like graffitiing and flyering and uh spray painting
00:34:40.980but other times it's actual violent uh violence that's happening to uh places of worship or
00:34:46.900individuals um and and so that's on the rise and um some of those guys are linked to at least in
00:34:53.620the online space these movements and and so um how much of where does that hate crime end
00:35:01.140and where does the extremism and ideological part begin sometimes it's not hard to tease out
00:35:06.660but i i think it has social society-wide consequences right i mean the mainstreaming
00:35:11.540of some of these ideas um is is very dangerous because i've been shocked just by how much
00:35:17.460conversation that i used to find on the swamps of swampy corners of the internet is now just
00:35:22.740talked about and debated out in the open um i mean it's they're in the white house so that's
00:35:28.660something um there's a guy in the there's a guy in the white house with an infidel tattoo which
00:35:33.220used to be um like speaking of the military there's a that that that's a very uh american
00:35:38.580military thing when they went into iraq and afghanistan um when uh bin laden was making0.75
00:35:43.780these videos or others were making this saying we're going to kill all the infidels the american0.94
00:35:47.540military started tattooing infidel with dotted lines across their necks right to say this is0.99
00:35:51.780where you can cut me but i'm going to kill you first um and so that's he's the minister of0.86
00:35:55.780defense he's in the us um and and so when you talk about mainstreaming like this is what we're0.95
00:36:02.740talking about right um and so so much of so much conversation has become normalized
00:36:07.540um and what that does and a lot of terrorism scholars now talk about uh stochastic terrorism
00:36:12.580which is the idea of rising boats right so when you have five people online saying crazy things
00:36:18.420there's a odds that maybe one of them will do something crazy physically but when there's five
00:36:23.620million of them now the odds of how many of those five million are going to act has increased so now
00:36:29.780law enforcement has to watch that many more people uh their society is is under that much more
00:36:35.700threat by all these people um and so that's the that's the consequence of mainstreaming all this
00:36:42.100hate and rhetoric is that more and more people are now um consuming this content agreeing with
00:36:47.940this content voting according to those belief systems and a good chunk of them are willing
00:36:53.860and are ready to kind of act on it as well right and and so you've now increased the amount of
00:36:58.820people increase the potential for violence by 10 20 fold um and and so society-wide consequences
00:37:05.060happen um it starts to pull at kind of the fabric of social discourse the things that keep us
00:37:10.980together um and and so um you know public safety canada when we were at their conferences back in
00:37:18.5002012 um there used to be a lot of this content of or a conversation around the social fabric in
00:37:25.540canada is strong right like it's we're not like the united states we you know we we won't react
00:37:30.820uh like they did after 9 11. we're you know we're not we're not one attack away from just tearing
00:37:35.540each other apart and i used to kind of be like yeah i think i i think you know the foundation
00:37:39.860is pretty strong stronger here anyway but now i'm not so sure right i like seeing seeing what
00:37:45.620happened after the pandemic in particular the pandemic was supposed to be this kind of asteroid
00:37:51.060you know armageddon moment right bruce willis armageddon moment like it like unites it's
00:37:56.660supposed to unite the world actually within five minutes we turned on each other um and uh started
00:38:03.060and and and so i'm kind of like i don't know if we're ready for another we're not ready for no
00:38:08.420like emergencies right and um and and so yeah it's just all bad right we're just
00:38:16.740it's just all that we're not we're not we're not we're not socially ready for what's happening
00:38:22.500we're not uh ready at in terms of our fractured media we now live in very different worlds from
00:38:28.020each other um and so so much has changed from that conversation in 2012 um and these conferences a
00:38:33.540decade ago that i'm like we're we're one bad event away from just um sorry this is taking
00:38:39.940i've taken a dark turn that's honestly here at bubble pop despite the light and joyful joyful
00:38:46.900name uh we tend to talk about the dark so you know despite all the despite all the pink yeah exactly
00:38:57.380yeah no i'm um i don't even know what your initial question was but yeah it's it's um
00:39:02.020it's not good yeah no that's my academic opinion on that totally yeah that did answer my initial
00:39:09.860question and i guess the natural question out of that is the one that i think you're probably sick
00:39:15.900of being asked um and it's one that i feel like there is no easy answer to like if i may just like
00:39:22.420ramble for a split second here one thing that i think is um a huge part of the problem actually
00:39:28.720that you highlighted there is um the foot that some media folks or people who like describe
00:39:37.200themselves as media have like one foot in the extreme one foot in the mainstream and they kind
00:39:42.080of normalize a lot of rhetoric and launder it and it makes its way into these mainstream spaces
00:39:47.520and um but that's just one part of a much bigger issue and i i guess what i wanted to ask you is
00:39:54.400like you said we're not ready we're not ready for the asteroid we're not ready for the you know to
00:39:58.960come together like that how do we mar how do we fix this how do we make it better could you please
00:40:07.360solve this for us right now here on this podcast bubble pop with rachel gilmore thank you very much
00:40:13.680no i always say like i'm very good at diagnosing the problem i i but i have zero band-aids or
00:40:18.240But I think part of it is, part of it, I've always said this, is like turning down the temperature of our rhetoric a little bit.
00:40:39.560And I do think we need to get back to a kind of debate culture, civilized conversation culture where some of these conversations can be had.
00:40:48.240um even with people we disagree with that doesn't mean as soon as i say that people are like well
00:40:52.400you should talk to nazis i'm like no no like i'm not talking about hate speech i'm talking about
00:40:58.480political disagreement right like there there is a difference and you can have an actual
00:41:03.120conversation where you disagree on something without dismissing them as you know the epitome
00:41:08.560of evil um and so until we get back to there that's one thing until we get back there i think it's
00:41:13.520difficult uh we like that that might produce a sense where we're once again living in the
00:41:19.840same universe right we're not just in different corners um the other problem is the social media
00:41:26.400companies um that you know it used to we always talk about them as there's this like outside thing
00:41:34.400that's like floating around in our society like viruses or something and i'm like no it's now
00:41:38.880part of how we move through space right move through public space and how we consume information
00:41:45.760how we see information now we talk to other people um so they have kind of an outsized influence and
00:41:51.760um they their their kind of um uh commitment to kind of stop stopping out hate speech and and
00:42:00.880misinformation um was building in a good way after christ church and the christ church call
00:42:09.280um but is now going back in the opposite direction with the trump trump too right and so um i i think
00:42:15.920that's a very dangerous kind of trend a lot of my friends who worked at twitter's trust and safety
00:42:20.880team got fired a lot of my friends who worked at the human rights team at in on twitter got fired
00:42:26.720and so there are all the guardrails for some of these institutions are gone or replaced by or
00:42:31.840replaced by loyalists um and so that that that's gonna contribute to the conversation that we're
00:42:38.320having right how we talk about some of these things um yeah again i'm back to diagnosing see
00:42:45.280no but but you know what at least in diagnosing you can kind of pinpoint where we have to start
00:42:50.160talking about solutions right like that's really i think key i mean um obvious like like that's
00:42:55.920where you get into maybe discussions of is there a role for government here is a role for regulation
00:43:01.520how do we regulate this kind of thing responsibly and like it's just it's it is a minefield but i
00:43:06.720think that diagnosing is a very important part here um and yeah i think that there's also a lot
00:43:14.080of takeaways there for the individuals i mean um one thing that i found interesting and i'm sure
00:43:19.280you've had so many moments like this in your career um because you've done so much more than
00:43:23.200i have in this space and had so many more conversations like you're like uh it's like
00:43:28.640i'm running the 100 meter dash and you're on an ultra marathon but um you know i i did have one
00:43:34.480instance where you know obviously i've reported a fair bit on diagonal and that made me the subject
00:43:39.920of a lot of their ire and someone actually reached out once because he was feeling disaffected
00:43:46.160and he spoke to me and i didn't attack him and i i tried to actually listen and have a conversation
00:43:55.220and what i found interesting at the end of it was he um had become disaffected for some very
00:44:01.320very good reasons um and he said you know i was wrong about you you weren't what they said you
00:44:09.500were and i'm and he apologized to me for how he spoke to me and like i spoke about me in the past
00:44:15.120and i just think that like if we make space for those conversations hopefully we can all kind of
00:44:20.320i don't know i don't want to tell people that they have to like you know there's an onus on
00:44:24.660them to be like lovely and inviting to people who hate them and like have said horrific things
00:44:30.540but i i do think that there is like um we need to find make sure that there are pathways back
00:44:37.720for people and hopefully that can help i think what you're i think what you're your guy there
00:44:42.560realize is and i think this happens to all of us and this is again social media is um we're arguing
00:44:48.660against cartoonish characters of each other right exactly there's no real there's no real person
00:44:54.460to person interaction i'm arguing against who i think you are and you're arguing against who you
00:44:59.760think i am and so we it's like we've created avatars and they're fighting but we don't actually
00:45:04.920know each other personally and so social media has brought that to the fore and kind of accelerated
00:45:09.300it um and this is why like going back this uh like the kind of birth of these conversations
00:45:15.540uh i don't know if you know this youtube channel called like i think it's called like jubilee or
00:45:18.740something where some of it is some of it is cringe but i'm like good i'm like how do i bring this like
00:45:26.500into the classroom and this kind of thing right and so that that parts of parts of that are useful
00:45:32.260for what i'm trying to think about is it's like we need to kind of get back to talking and and
00:45:37.460seeing each other as people not these kind of you know phantasmagoric like cartoon characters yeah
00:45:44.500yeah i definitely think that characterization um caricaturization if that is a word
00:45:51.060we're inventing a few words in this episode today but um it's definitely uh a massive part of the
00:45:56.500problem um amar i know that uh i told you that i probably wouldn't keep you much longer than 45
00:46:02.580minutes so i'll try to wrap things up but before i do absolutely wrap things up i want to just give
00:46:08.340you the chance like is there anything on this issue or on this topic that you wanted to use
00:46:15.220this moment to share with the world like is there anything that you've gleaned over your years of
00:46:21.380experience that maybe the rest of us might not recognize or realize about the issues of extremism
00:46:26.980and radicalization or is there anything we didn't touch on today that you just feel is important to
00:46:30.500I mean, so I think one thing to keep in mind, and you kind of touched on it towards the end there, is there are people who've left these movements, who are great resources to understand these movements.
00:46:43.120And there is a redemption journey, right?