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The Massacre at El Mozote · Conspiracy! The Show

0:10
Speaker 1: Welcome to Conspiracy The Show, the world's most trusted conspiracy
0:16
Speaker 1: theory podcast, with your hosts Adam Todd Brown and Olivia Hidar.
0:32
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome to Conspiracy The Show. I'm your host
0:37
Speaker 2: Adam Todd Brown joining me as guests this week. Plural
0:43
Speaker 2: for starters. John Lewis is here. John, how's it going?
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Speaker 3: All right?
0:47
Speaker 4: You don't even like his spirits quit. That's not the tagline.
0:52
Speaker 2: It is because you two are the only ones who
0:54
Speaker 2: ever volunteer to do this show. Kim Crawls here also, Hi,
0:58
Speaker 2: we are Yeah. People are really reluctant to do this
1:01
Speaker 2: show because the word conspiracy has so much stink on it.
1:04
Speaker 2: I think people assume I'm coming on here in flatten
1:08
Speaker 2: insurrections and things of the like, when I mean.
1:11
Speaker 5: That's why I volunteer, because I thought that's what we
1:14
Speaker 5: were Wait, that's not what we're doing today.
1:16
Speaker 2: You should have gotten the email. We planned the insurrection.
1:18
Speaker 2: We're just on to other stuff now.
1:20
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I need to keep it.
1:22
Speaker 4: The other tagline for this show could be stories that
1:25
Speaker 4: minorities thought everyone believes already seen the show, Like, yeah,
1:30
Speaker 4: well I thought everybody leave all this shit you've.
1:33
Speaker 5: Already knew about this. Yeah, I was thinking today while
1:36
Speaker 5: I was reading about today's subject, I was like, do
1:39
Speaker 5: you think maybe Adam would do a fun conspiracy, just
1:42
Speaker 5: one where it's a bunch of yucks, like the Avril
1:44
Speaker 5: Levine one, just as a palette cleanser.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, tell me you don't listen to the podcast. Without
1:49
Speaker 2: telling me you don't listen to the podcast. I've actually
1:51
Speaker 2: done the Avril Lavine conspiracy. I've covered a bunch of
1:54
Speaker 2: fun stuff. It's not I've been doing this podcast since
1:57
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen ish. It is. Oh yeah, we're closing in
2:03
Speaker 2: on three hundred episodes. It's not all sad things. It's
2:07
Speaker 2: just we're talking about Ronald Reagan this month, and Ronald
2:11
Speaker 2: Reagan sucks and he ruined the world and nothing he
2:16
Speaker 2: did was happy except when he died, obviously, but beyond
2:21
Speaker 2: that he didn't do much good. So I don't know
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Speaker 2: there are no fun Reagan conspiracies, you know.
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Speaker 5: No, I'll listen to the fun ones. Sorry to tell
2:30
Speaker 5: you that I don't. I haven't listened to all the episodes.
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Speaker 2: I mean, I was joking. I assume most people haven't
2:35
Speaker 2: listened to all my podcasts. It's fine.
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Speaker 3: It's like Huey Freeman from the Boondocks.
2:39
Speaker 4: See Ronald Wilson Reagan, he even got six letters and
2:42
Speaker 4: three of his name sees it different?
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Speaker 2: Oh shit, he does. Oh so he is in hell
2:47
Speaker 2: right now. That's good. I like that.
2:48
Speaker 4: Hopefully they got a super max heil. I it's different
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Speaker 4: tiers or something.
2:52
Speaker 3: You know.
2:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want that.
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Speaker 5: I want there. What did you say that one time?
2:55
Speaker 5: It was so funny. Somebody called in. We're taking calls
2:58
Speaker 5: for I think the fifth hundred episode, five hundred episode.
3:01
Speaker 5: That's how you hit it, that's how you see that. Yeah,
3:03
Speaker 5: fifth hundred. Mon's tired you somebody who said you don't
3:08
Speaker 5: believe in hell or something like, how can you say
3:10
Speaker 5: that you don't believe in hell? But you want Ronald Reagan?
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Speaker 5: And you, without skipping a bee, you just selled. I
3:15
Speaker 5: want there to be a hell so Ronald Reagan can
3:17
Speaker 5: be rotting in it. Yeah, and I think about that
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Speaker 5: twice a week.
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Speaker 2: Ronald Reagan was the worst president we've ever had. Trump
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Speaker 2: included he's worse than any one term president because he
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Speaker 2: got two terms and got to do all sorts of damage.
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Speaker 2: I also know it's weird to say it's Reagan month
3:33
Speaker 2: on Conspiracy The Show when it's the middle of the month,
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Speaker 2: so I guess it's more like Reagan the next four
3:40
Speaker 2: weeks on Conspiracy The Show. Hell, maybe six weeks. There's
3:43
Speaker 2: a lot, and even then we won't get through all
3:46
Speaker 2: of the havoc Ronald Reagan and the Cia reeked on
3:51
Speaker 2: the world. We're going to talk about some of the
3:53
Speaker 2: big scandals, like the Iran Contra affair, the Savings and
3:58
Speaker 2: Loan scandal, which is a really under but also we're
4:01
Speaker 2: going to talk about some lesser known stuff like what
4:03
Speaker 2: we're talking about today, which is the massacre at El Mazote.
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Speaker 2: I had it written as the Mozote massacre, but actually
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Speaker 2: the name of the village is El Mazote. And if
4:14
Speaker 2: I write the El Mazote massacre, that's gonna look insane
4:17
Speaker 2: because that just means the Masota. This was a thing
4:21
Speaker 2: I had never heard of. And when you sometimes hear
4:25
Speaker 2: people say the United States created MS thirteen, which is
4:30
Speaker 2: the gang the government is the most scared of right now,
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Speaker 2: this is the kind of shit they're talking about. This
4:36
Speaker 2: is exactly the kind of thing that we did in
4:40
Speaker 2: Latin America to cause people to flee to the United States,
4:45
Speaker 2: and with MS thirteen, we did shit like this. A
4:49
Speaker 2: bunch of people fled El Salvador ended up in south
4:52
Speaker 2: central Los Angeles, surrounded by street gangs. They create a
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Speaker 2: gang of their own to protect themselves from these street gangs.
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Speaker 2: Fast forward to nineteen ninety two, Bill Clinton removes protection
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Speaker 2: from those people who sought refuge in the United States,
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Speaker 2: deports them back to El Salvador. They take MS thirteen
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Speaker 2: with them, And that's literally how that grew and flourished
5:18
Speaker 2: started here because we forced people out of l Salvador,
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Speaker 2: and then once they became a criminal outfit of their own,
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Speaker 2: we sent it back to El Salvador for them to
5:28
Speaker 2: deal with it. That's the thing that really bothers me
5:31
Speaker 2: about immigration, and when people take this hard line stance
5:36
Speaker 2: on immigration. I could maybe buy it if it wasn't
5:40
Speaker 2: US causing all the problems that make people want to
5:44
Speaker 2: flee to the United States. But it is. It's us,
5:48
Speaker 2: and so we have some responsibility to fix it in
5:52
Speaker 2: a way that doesn't end in millions of people dying.
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Speaker 4: Even though down to the way America labels it when
5:57
Speaker 4: it is people fleeing Ukraine, there refugees. But when it's
6:01
Speaker 4: people fleeing Central America or Haiti or something like that.
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Speaker 3: They're immigrants. They're all refugees.
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Speaker 4: They're not just leaving their entire life because you know,
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Speaker 4: they want to take a trip to America like most
6:12
Speaker 4: people would prefer to live in their culture where they
6:15
Speaker 4: live and stuff, Like you know how bad it got
6:18
Speaker 4: to be to make a raft out of like sticks
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Speaker 4: and empty bottles and stuff.
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Speaker 3: And that's not a joke.
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Speaker 4: They literally making rafts out of anything in some parts
6:27
Speaker 4: of the world to try and make it here. Yeah,
6:29
Speaker 4: And it's so crazy human immigrants, the way they look
6:32
Speaker 4: at other immigrants. Y'all know that they flee the same
6:36
Speaker 4: reason that you flee. And it's just crazy that the
6:38
Speaker 4: way America kind of turns people against each other and
6:40
Speaker 4: this classism and colorism and all of that stuff, like depending.
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Speaker 3: Who gets to be a refugee, who gets.
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Speaker 4: To be an immigrant, and well who did it the
6:47
Speaker 4: right way and who got grandfathered in and all that shit.
6:50
Speaker 5: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's terrifying because it's getting to a it feels
6:55
Speaker 2: like a breaking point where I mean, Trump keeps promising
6:59
Speaker 2: on day one the largest deportation effort in history. I
7:05
Speaker 2: don't know if people are not paying attention when he
7:07
Speaker 2: says that, but his administration is promising to round up
7:12
Speaker 2: ten to thirteen million people the Jesus Christ first day
7:16
Speaker 2: of his administration. They have used the words send them
7:20
Speaker 2: to camps which are already constructed on the border with Mexico,
7:25
Speaker 2: and then expel them from the country from there. So this,
7:30
Speaker 2: what we're talking about today is kind of the genesis
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Speaker 2: of what's happening today. And the shit happened in nineteen
7:38
Speaker 2: eighty two. It's older than a.
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Speaker 3: Lot of people I know older than me.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, that's it's as old as I am.
7:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, And on top of being a really good example
7:49
Speaker 2: of how brutal the shit we did in Latin America
7:54
Speaker 2: in the eighties under Reagan was, it's also a great
7:58
Speaker 2: example of how much much influence the government and the
8:02
Speaker 2: military exert on the media in this country. Yeah, we
8:08
Speaker 2: really like to pretend that we are just the freest
8:12
Speaker 2: place on earth and there are no limits on our freedom.
8:16
Speaker 2: We can do whateveryone. They killed journalists in Russia. Yeah,
8:21
Speaker 2: people got mad when Trump said we do here too,
8:24
Speaker 2: But we do here too, and there's a reason we're
8:27
Speaker 2: number fifty five on the World Press Freedom Index, which
8:32
Speaker 2: is a list of the freest countries according to Wild Press.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I'm not surprised, but that's wild.
8:41
Speaker 2: And here's an interesting thing to note about that in
8:45
Speaker 2: the past year we've dropped ten spots. So under Biden,
8:51
Speaker 2: in the past year, we've dropped ten spots on the
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Speaker 2: Press Freedom Index.
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Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, that makes sense because you know, I've
8:59
Speaker 4: got a lot of YouTube friends, and just between cop
9:02
Speaker 4: City and trying to talk about Palance Sign what's going
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Speaker 4: on from the actual factual point, a lot of us
9:09
Speaker 4: we just can't do it because you will straight up
9:11
Speaker 4: get your video flagged, even if you're trying to just
9:14
Speaker 4: report point.
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Speaker 3: I mean, you know what I'm saying, report stuff.
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Speaker 4: And it's so crazy that the media can decide what
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Speaker 4: you're allowed to talk about, you know. From that point,
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Speaker 4: it's just so it makes sense that America is dropping
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Speaker 4: like that.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's kind of an illusion how free we
9:32
Speaker 2: are here when it comes to the press, because yeah,
9:34
Speaker 2: you can write stuff, you write whatever you want, you
9:37
Speaker 2: can say whatever you want, but the government will retaliate
9:40
Speaker 2: if you say the wrong shit. And this is an
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Speaker 2: example of it. What we're going to talk about today.
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Speaker 2: But first, before we get into what happened at El Mazote,
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Speaker 2: which is in El Salvador. For the record, happened in
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Speaker 2: December nineteen eighty one, we should talk about the School
9:57
Speaker 2: of the Americas.
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Speaker 5: Which never heard of this.
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Speaker 2: This deserves a few episodes too. Maybe we'll cover this
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Speaker 2: at some point. It's still in operation for starters, but
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Speaker 2: now it's called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
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Speaker 2: Anytime the government has a building with that long of
10:17
Speaker 2: a name, evil shit's happening inside that building, guarantee.
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Speaker 4: Also, they went from like four syllables at twenty five.
10:26
Speaker 4: That couldn't make it more cinis just on a building.
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Speaker 2: And they still try to acronym it, so it's risk
10:34
Speaker 2: which that's dumb, that's stupid. Just call it School of
10:38
Speaker 2: the Americas. Sounds awesome. Yeah, that's what it should have been.
10:42
Speaker 2: Just keep the name if you're going to keep it.
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Speaker 5: Also sounds super sketchy and spy like. But at least
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Speaker 5: oh sure, sure it's not so long and sketchy, but
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Speaker 5: School of America's definitely sounds dangerous.
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Speaker 2: It is literally where the United States trains dictators and
11:00
Speaker 2: rebel groups that we then used to impose our will
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Speaker 2: on Latin American countries. And if it seems like I'm exaggerating,
11:08
Speaker 2: please note they stopped teaching classes in English in nineteen
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Speaker 2: fifty six. They only teach classes in Spanish. This is
11:16
Speaker 2: a place that is purely meant to train people to
11:20
Speaker 2: go fuck up Latin American countries. It was located in
11:24
Speaker 2: the Panama Canal Zone until the Panama Canal Treaty kicked
11:29
Speaker 2: it out, and that's when it moved to Fort Benning
11:32
Speaker 2: in I think ninety six something like that. And a
11:35
Speaker 2: lot of what we did in Latin America in the
11:38
Speaker 2: eighties under Reagan starts with the School of Americas, including
11:43
Speaker 2: the massacre at El Masete. Because the US had a
11:46
Speaker 2: big stake in the Salvadoran Civil War, which lasted from
11:51
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine to nineteen ninety two, brutal civil war
11:55
Speaker 2: lot I mean, as opposed to all those chill civil
11:58
Speaker 2: wars throughout history. Of course, it was brutal. This one
12:01
Speaker 2: lasted a long fucking time and the ruling party were
12:09
Speaker 2: a right wing military hunta that was opposed to communism,
12:13
Speaker 2: and that is all you needed to be on our side.
12:18
Speaker 2: In the nineteen eighties during the Cold War was just
12:21
Speaker 2: don't be on the side of Russia. But they had
12:25
Speaker 2: groups within the country that wanted to side with Russia
12:28
Speaker 2: and wanted to be a more communist leaning regime, and
12:33
Speaker 2: instead of letting them fight that out at the ballot box,
12:37
Speaker 2: we you know, sent the CIA in to fuck things
12:40
Speaker 2: up and destabilize the country.
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Speaker 3: We did a lot of that question.
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Speaker 4: You lived through the Cold War, did America ever explain
12:47
Speaker 4: what was supposed to be so bad about communism? Because
12:50
Speaker 4: the more I learned about it, I'm like, wait, so
12:52
Speaker 4: you mean workers having rights and stuff? Why are we
12:54
Speaker 4: supposed to not like this?
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Speaker 2: I think it's the workers having right stuff. Yeah, I
12:59
Speaker 2: mean America is owned by corporations. We are capitalists as fucked.
13:05
Speaker 2: The United States didn't want to fucking give people that
13:07
Speaker 2: kind of stuff, so we have to fight communism, and
13:11
Speaker 2: so yeah, we backed this regime that was in charge.
13:15
Speaker 2: There's obviously more to the civil War in El Salvador,
13:18
Speaker 2: but we're not gonna be able to get to all that.
13:20
Speaker 2: So at the School of Americas, the United States trained
13:25
Speaker 2: what would go on to become one of the most
13:28
Speaker 2: elite and feared counterinsurgency groups in El Salvador called the
13:33
Speaker 2: Atlacatal Battalion. We're gonna call them ab from now on.
13:39
Speaker 2: That name is a mouthful and they don't deserve that
13:42
Speaker 2: much respect. You'll see. They were formed in eighty one
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Speaker 2: as l Salvador's quote first rapid response unit dedicated to
13:50
Speaker 2: fighting leftist gorillas end quote. According to a nineteen ninety
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Speaker 2: two La Times article about the battalion being disbanded and
13:58
Speaker 2: their job in L South was just to hunt for communists,
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Speaker 2: find the communist sympathizers, find the gorillas they were fighting,
14:08
Speaker 2: and take them out.
14:10
Speaker 5: And also in the eighties, calling someone a communist or
14:13
Speaker 5: accusing someone of being a communist anywhere.
14:16
Speaker 2: Was I mean, these were communists. It's just whether they
14:20
Speaker 2: needed to be hunted and executed or if you could
14:25
Speaker 2: just let the people vote on who they want to
14:28
Speaker 2: run the country. That's the question. And we usually didn't
14:32
Speaker 2: let people have that second option. We would just go
14:36
Speaker 2: and install whoever we wanted. And what's especially tragic about
14:42
Speaker 2: the attack on Almazote is that the village had a
14:46
Speaker 2: reputation for being neutral in the Salvadoran Civil War. It
14:51
Speaker 2: was Catholics apparently who were mostly sympathetic to the communists
14:57
Speaker 2: side of things. Meanwhile, Elmazote was mostly Evangelical Protestants, who
15:03
Speaker 2: it seemed like, just kind of wanted to stay out
15:05
Speaker 2: of it and let those two sides fight. To the
15:08
Speaker 2: point that the military had come through town before and
15:12
Speaker 2: they were, you know, just cordial. But they also knew
15:16
Speaker 2: as far as the rebel groups go, they knew this
15:19
Speaker 2: was a place you couldn't really recruit members. They weren't
15:22
Speaker 2: interested in fighting, but they weren't going to fight you either.
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Speaker 4: And the attack what purpose to deserve? Was it just
15:29
Speaker 4: to send a message or what? Because they didn't really
15:33
Speaker 4: accomplish anything by doing this attack.
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Speaker 2: That's the thing. It seems like just a war crime.
15:41
Speaker 2: It seems like they got there looking for one thing,
15:44
Speaker 2: realized it wasn't there, got mad, and decided they were
15:48
Speaker 2: going to have some fun, and by that I mean
15:52
Speaker 2: literally murder the entire population of a village and burn
15:57
Speaker 2: it to the ground. One person survived, who was actually there.
16:00
Speaker 2: A lot of people fled before it happened, but one
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Speaker 2: person who was there survived, which that's terrifying.
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Speaker 5: I don't know how you even live up any sort
16:09
Speaker 5: of normal life after that I don't know how you
16:11
Speaker 5: even you don't you just you've never you never are
16:14
Speaker 5: okay again. That's such a small way to put it.
16:17
Speaker 5: That changes your DNA.
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Speaker 2: American journalist Mark Danner he wrote a book about this
16:24
Speaker 2: attack based on various witness accounts. It was called the
16:28
Speaker 2: Massacre at El Mazote. The timeline of events according to
16:33
Speaker 2: that book is as follows. And I don't know if
16:37
Speaker 2: warn is the right word, but I want to warn
16:39
Speaker 2: people that while this is going to be a little graphic,
16:42
Speaker 2: I'm skipping over a whole lot. This was a brutal,
16:46
Speaker 2: brutal attack on this village, and the details of it
16:51
Speaker 2: are the worst. It's the worst. So December tenth, nineteen
16:56
Speaker 2: eighty one, units from this battalion arrived at Elmazote after
17:02
Speaker 2: fighting with gorillas in a nearby village. This is Elmazote.
17:06
Speaker 2: It's a very small place. There's like twenty houses. There
17:09
Speaker 2: was a church, there was a smaller building behind it.
17:12
Speaker 2: There's a schoolhouse, and it seems like that's all that
17:15
Speaker 2: was there. And on that first day, soldiers order everyone
17:19
Speaker 2: out of their houses and into the town square, where
17:22
Speaker 2: everyone is searched and asked about insurgents in the area.
17:27
Speaker 2: They're told there's no one here, which was true. There
17:30
Speaker 2: apparently were people related to this insurgent group in Elmazote,
17:35
Speaker 2: but they fled. They knew this was happening, they knew
17:39
Speaker 2: the military was coming through, so they left. And there's
17:43
Speaker 2: a pretty harrowing quote later about that. But the military
17:47
Speaker 2: shows up, They take everyone out of the buildings, line
17:50
Speaker 2: them up, ask them all these questions, and then tell
17:53
Speaker 2: them go back inside. If you come out, you're going
17:56
Speaker 2: to be killed. And that's the thing. If you read
17:58
Speaker 2: the account of the one survivor, one of the first
18:02
Speaker 2: things you'll read is she was like, we trusted the military.
18:06
Speaker 2: We were told as long as we stayed inside and
18:09
Speaker 2: didn't come out, we would be fine. And so no
18:13
Speaker 2: one saw this coming at all. So everyone stays inside.
18:17
Speaker 2: The next morning, soldiers come back out, take everyone back out,
18:21
Speaker 2: separate the men from the women and children, and interrogate, torture,
18:27
Speaker 2: and murder all the men by the end of the morning.
18:31
Speaker 2: So span a few hours at noon, they start rounding
18:34
Speaker 2: up the women and older girls. And I think everyone knows.
18:40
Speaker 3: They pillaged is another term that goes with that.
18:43
Speaker 5: Yeah, Yeah, the pillage means I've never looked into that pillage.
18:48
Speaker 4: Well when they say pillage, yeah, they go hand in
18:53
Speaker 4: hand together.
18:54
Speaker 2: And then all the women and older girls were murdered,
18:59
Speaker 2: and then they kill the children in the most brutal way.
19:03
Speaker 2: They slit their throats and hang them from trees. Which
19:07
Speaker 2: at that point you're really not on any kind of
19:11
Speaker 2: fucking fact finding mission. You're not looking for communists. You
19:14
Speaker 2: just are bloodthirsty, fucking maniacs who like killing people and.
19:20
Speaker 5: Get to do it behind the guys of a military,
19:22
Speaker 5: and the guys of.
19:23
Speaker 2: A not just behind the guys of a military, but
19:27
Speaker 2: a military that was trained by the most powerful country
19:30
Speaker 2: on Earth. We financed and trained the people that did this.
19:33
Speaker 2: They came from the school of the Americas. This is
19:37
Speaker 2: that fucking drug commercial in the eighties where we're like,
19:40
Speaker 2: where did you learn this? And they're like, from you?
19:43
Speaker 2: All right, we learned it by watching you. That's this.
19:47
Speaker 2: We trained these motherfuckers. This is us. Basically, it's not
19:51
Speaker 2: American troops, but they might as well be. They were
19:54
Speaker 2: trained by us, and they were there fighting on our behalf.
19:57
Speaker 4: But we were saying earlier, it's basically what America, what
20:01
Speaker 4: had just stopped doing not that long ago. This happened
20:04
Speaker 4: in the eighties, but pretty much well into the seventies,
20:07
Speaker 4: America was doing this shit like you all.
20:09
Speaker 3: Fighting for equal rights. Sorry, well, we'll just have to
20:12
Speaker 3: teach these.
20:13
Speaker 4: Up with the blacks a lesson just going from town
20:15
Speaker 4: to town, they would burn it down. And you know,
20:17
Speaker 4: it's still people living that witnessed to lunchons. And you
20:22
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying that some people mind lunchings is
20:24
Speaker 4: something that happened a long time ago, but they were
20:26
Speaker 4: still happening.
20:28
Speaker 3: Or just the history of America. One of the.
20:31
Speaker 4: Electual does the nineties, one of the YouTubers out followed.
20:36
Speaker 4: She was talking about just prom culture in America. Up
20:39
Speaker 4: until the late nineties, there were just there were literally
20:42
Speaker 4: segregated proms. They wouldn't allow black and white proms to happen.
20:46
Speaker 4: So just going down to town just killing people. It
20:49
Speaker 4: sounds like they didn't have any motive. But if they
20:51
Speaker 4: learned this from America, this is what America teaches. You
20:54
Speaker 4: see a group of people fighting for equality or something
20:58
Speaker 4: that you feel like they shouldn't had, you just go
21:01
Speaker 4: around killing and you know that this stuff has been happening,
21:05
Speaker 4: and then that traumas passed down.
21:08
Speaker 2: The death toll ended up being around the estimate I
21:11
Speaker 2: think is seven hundred and ninety four people that were
21:14
Speaker 2: killed in this attack. And this is one village. This
21:18
Speaker 2: is an operation that lasted from December eighth to the
21:21
Speaker 2: twenty first, and they went to a bunch of villages
21:24
Speaker 2: and the results were very similar. It's just that this
21:28
Speaker 2: one is where it was the worst. And again we
21:32
Speaker 2: trained them that blood is on this country's hands. And so,
21:37
Speaker 2: as you'd expect, the Reagan administration wasn't in any hurry
21:43
Speaker 2: to let people know about this. So it took a
21:47
Speaker 2: while for people to find out about this. Because this
21:49
Speaker 2: it's nineteen eighty two. There's no social media, there's no smartphones.
21:53
Speaker 2: You kind of have to rely on the media to
21:57
Speaker 2: tell you about stuff like this. And the New York
22:01
Speaker 2: Times had a reporter in El Salvador, a guy named
22:04
Speaker 2: Raymond Bonner, and he on January twenty seventh, nineteen eighty two,
22:10
Speaker 2: wrote a story in The New York Times about what
22:13
Speaker 2: happened at Elma's Ota, And we'll link to what are
22:17
Speaker 2: basically the only two major media outlet articles about what
22:22
Speaker 2: happened and his report. It's fucking harrowing. He talks about
22:27
Speaker 2: seeing charred skulls, piles of bodies, and he talked to
22:33
Speaker 2: the lone survivor, a woman named Rafina Amaya, who she
22:36
Speaker 2: managed to escape into the jungle when they were separating
22:40
Speaker 2: the men and women. She managed to get to the
22:43
Speaker 2: jungle and hid in a tree. Her husband, who was blind,
22:47
Speaker 2: was killed, and then her kids were killed. One of
22:50
Speaker 2: them was eight months old. So they're killing babies. When
22:54
Speaker 2: how do you kill a baby?
22:56
Speaker 5: Like, how do you kill anybody one? But how do
22:58
Speaker 5: you fucking kill a baby?
23:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't get it. Yeah, I don't know. I
23:04
Speaker 2: don't know. I guess because the United States trained you
23:07
Speaker 2: to who knows? She said. When the soldiers first showed up,
23:10
Speaker 2: they asked where the weapons were, and when they were
23:13
Speaker 2: told there were none, they just became irate. There had
23:17
Speaker 2: been Communist sympathizers in the village before this, but they fled.
23:22
Speaker 2: And this is a quote from Carlos Martinez, who was
23:26
Speaker 2: forty six at the time. He's one of the people
23:28
Speaker 2: that fled. Before this quote. We didn't think they would
23:32
Speaker 2: kill children, women and old people, so they remained end quote.
23:38
Speaker 2: And these monsters showed up and did exactly that. They
23:44
Speaker 2: didn't find who they thought they were going to find,
23:47
Speaker 2: so they were like, we gotta kill someone, so they
23:50
Speaker 2: killed everybody else. So this was just a straight up
23:55
Speaker 2: war crime. There was no benefit to the security of
23:59
Speaker 2: the United States. This didn't benefit anyone. This was just
24:03
Speaker 2: men and women who had and children who had nothing
24:07
Speaker 2: to do with this conflict, just murdered by people we.
24:11
Speaker 4: Tread, yeah, and just sending a message that basically it's
24:15
Speaker 4: an no neutrality either you against communism or you with it.
24:18
Speaker 2: Yeah.
24:19
Speaker 5: And if you're not against it, you're with it.
24:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, right Jesus. So this report comes out in the
24:25
Speaker 2: New York Times, and then a few days later a
24:28
Speaker 2: Washington Post reporter named Alma Guillermo Prieto visited elma Zote
24:33
Speaker 2: and published a story in that paper, and we'll link
24:37
Speaker 2: to both of them. You can read the original articles.
24:39
Speaker 2: They are as horrifying as you'd expect. But what's also
24:43
Speaker 2: horrifying was the Reagan administration's response to it, and also
24:48
Speaker 2: the way the media immediately fell in line with the
24:52
Speaker 2: government's response, because at this point, a lot of what
24:56
Speaker 2: Reagan was doing in Latin America was co but it
25:00
Speaker 2: wasn't a secret. It was known that we were involved
25:04
Speaker 2: in what was happening down there, so they weren't in
25:08
Speaker 2: any hurry for the story to get out, and when
25:11
Speaker 2: it did get out, the journalists who talked about it
25:14
Speaker 2: got ruined. This is a quote from Raymond Bonner. That
25:18
Speaker 2: story was the beginning and end of my career at
25:22
Speaker 2: the New York Times. And the first attack comes from
25:27
Speaker 2: this conservative media watch group called Accuracy and Media. Who
25:33
Speaker 2: Clay exactly.
25:36
Speaker 4: Who claimed and just a Branch had a government or
25:38
Speaker 4: CIA offshoot.
25:39
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and they claimed that both of these reporters held
25:44
Speaker 2: their stories to coincide with a deadline Ronald Reagan was
25:48
Speaker 2: facing where he had to prove the human rights situation
25:52
Speaker 2: in El Salvador was getting better in order to keep
25:55
Speaker 2: funding going for what they were doing in El Salvador,
25:59
Speaker 2: and a mad that being your criticism instead of no,
26:04
Speaker 2: that didn't happen, it's like, oh, yeah, well we did
26:06
Speaker 2: that terrible thing. But you're just telling people because you
26:10
Speaker 2: want them to find out that Reagan did it. Yeah,
26:12
Speaker 2: of course that's why. But of course that's why. Anytime
26:15
Speaker 2: that's the defense as opposed to know what you're saying
26:18
Speaker 2: is false, you can just assume that story is true.
26:21
Speaker 5: I would say, imagine learning this as Raymond Bonner. You
26:25
Speaker 5: write this article, you think, oh, I'm a reporter, so
26:28
Speaker 5: I'm going to report the news the world needs to know,
26:31
Speaker 5: and then you find out, Oh, you don't get to
26:34
Speaker 5: report the news. You get to report what you are
26:37
Speaker 5: told to report, or your life is ruined.
26:39
Speaker 2: Right.
26:40
Speaker 5: That's I don't feel like we're that much different today,
26:43
Speaker 5: you know, No, in terms of media.
26:46
Speaker 2: Oh no, definitely not. I mean there's obviously things you
26:49
Speaker 2: can't report in the media now. I feel like you
26:53
Speaker 2: can kind of vet media outlets that way. Newsweek is
26:56
Speaker 2: the still only outlet that report on the fact that
27:01
Speaker 2: the Department of Defense has been building a spy network
27:05
Speaker 2: in the United States that is now like forty thousand
27:09
Speaker 2: people who just go out into communities. They have fake
27:13
Speaker 2: social media profiles, fake names, and I guarantee you they
27:17
Speaker 2: are in La comedy. If you're a fucking musician, they're there.
27:22
Speaker 2: If your fucking YouTube personality, you probably know someone who
27:26
Speaker 2: is one of them. There are more of them than
27:30
Speaker 2: there are undercover CIA agents, and they're operating in the
27:34
Speaker 2: United States. And one media outlet reported about it. How
27:39
Speaker 2: is that not the government influencing our media. If people
27:44
Speaker 2: are wondering why we're fifty five on that list, that's why.
27:49
Speaker 2: That's obviously why. And it's because these outlets like The
27:52
Speaker 2: New York Times Washington Post, they lean on government access
27:57
Speaker 2: to do their job, which is kind of a backwards
28:00
Speaker 2: way to do it. Why would you go to the
28:02
Speaker 2: government and be like, is this story people are saying
28:05
Speaker 2: about you true? And then the government will say no,
28:08
Speaker 2: and they're like, well, we asked the government and they
28:10
Speaker 2: said no, and it's like, yeah, we did do that.
28:13
Speaker 4: But of course, America had a whole thing called co
28:16
Speaker 4: and tail Pro and I'm trying to remember, I'm assuming
28:20
Speaker 4: that wasn't official when it was happening, and people probably
28:22
Speaker 4: called you conspiracy up for talking about co and tail Pro,
28:26
Speaker 4: and then it came out like no, they literally just send,
28:28
Speaker 4: you know, people out in the black neighborhoods and just
28:31
Speaker 4: buy and that's their job.
28:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you never heard of co and tail Pro.
28:37
Speaker 5: No?
28:38
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Back when the Black Panthers were at its height,
28:41
Speaker 4: I think it was reported pretty much like fifty percent
28:44
Speaker 4: of them had government ties. CO and tail Pro was
28:47
Speaker 4: a counter intelligence program and they would warn the civil.
28:50
Speaker 3: Rights movements and to the mid seventies.
28:53
Speaker 4: If it was a group of people like, hey, we're
28:56
Speaker 4: organizing to the hungry kids before school to go, government
29:00
Speaker 4: would just go send them out the spy and stuff.
29:02
Speaker 3: And it was just so well known.
29:03
Speaker 4: They just basically infiltrated any leftist movement and you know,
29:07
Speaker 4: made sure Fred Hampton got killed in his bedroom in
29:11
Speaker 4: a shootout even though he never fired, and stuff like that.
29:13
Speaker 4: They were spying on Muhammad Ali and stuff, like anybody
29:17
Speaker 4: that was so quote unquote radical.
29:19
Speaker 2: The Fred Hampton thing, I didn't realize. It's not just
29:23
Speaker 2: that he didn't shoot. An FBI informant drugged him so
29:27
Speaker 2: he didn't even wake up when the police kicked his
29:30
Speaker 2: door in, so he obviously didn't fucking shoot. And the
29:35
Speaker 2: only question about whether the government had Fred Hampton assassinated
29:40
Speaker 2: is if they knew the police were gonna shoot him.
29:43
Speaker 2: Everything else the fucking United States government signed off on.
29:48
Speaker 2: The only thing we don't know is if they were like,
29:51
Speaker 2: also shoot him in bed. But if that wasn't the plan,
29:54
Speaker 2: why fucking drug him?
29:56
Speaker 4: I yeah, And I know some people have issues with
29:59
Speaker 4: how many would historical inaccuracies, but the movie Judas and
30:03
Speaker 4: The Black Messiah was really good.
30:04
Speaker 3: If you've all never.
30:05
Speaker 4: Seen that with a Key Stanfield and my man them
30:09
Speaker 4: get out, two of my favorite actors outs.
30:11
Speaker 3: It was a really good movie.
30:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a really good movie. And so let's
30:15
Speaker 2: get back to the media and how they the other
30:18
Speaker 2: handled this story. I already mentioned accuracy, and media basically said, well, yeah,
30:24
Speaker 2: it's true, but you just released it to hurt Ronald Reagan.
30:27
Speaker 2: It's like the hurting Ronald Reagan was just gonna happen,
30:31
Speaker 2: no matter what I mean. It didn't do shit to
30:33
Speaker 2: hurt Ronald Reagan, but you get it.
30:35
Speaker 5: People still worship that guy.
30:37
Speaker 2: And then after that, representatives from the Reagan administration started
30:41
Speaker 2: claiming that either the attack never happened or that the
30:44
Speaker 2: accounts were exaggerated, which of course they did because again
30:50
Speaker 2: they did this, the Reagan administration, the US government did this.
30:55
Speaker 2: We trained these people who went in and did this.
30:58
Speaker 2: This is US, so I'm not surprised they tried to
31:02
Speaker 2: cover it up. They also, at various times claimed that
31:05
Speaker 2: what happened at Elmizote was a gunfight between two opposing groups.
31:10
Speaker 2: It was not, and shortly after the stories ran, Thomas
31:15
Speaker 2: Enders then Assistant Secretary of State for Inter American Affairs
31:19
Speaker 2: set in front of a congressional committee that quote, no
31:22
Speaker 2: evidence could be found to confirm that government forces systematically
31:26
Speaker 2: massacred civilians. So they did eventually start just straight up
31:31
Speaker 2: denying that this happened, probably because they knew proving it
31:37
Speaker 2: was going to be really, really difficult. Raymond Bonner described
31:41
Speaker 2: what he went through just to write that article. He
31:44
Speaker 2: had to wade through a river, carrying his writing stuff
31:48
Speaker 2: above his head. At one point, this is a crazy
31:52
Speaker 2: remote village. It was suggested that at one point the
31:56
Speaker 2: people the government sent to confirm if this happened not
32:00
Speaker 2: never even made it there. So they just came back
32:03
Speaker 2: and said it never happened because they couldn't even get
32:07
Speaker 2: to this village.
32:08
Speaker 3: What the hell they could complete it? It did not finish.
32:10
Speaker 3: You just say it didn't happen.
32:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, take a fucking helicopter. You're the government people that
32:16
Speaker 2: did this massacre had helicopters.
32:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, you get some jeeps to some shit.
32:20
Speaker 2: Yeah.
32:21
Speaker 5: Well yeah, it's pretty convenient, though it's hard to get
32:23
Speaker 5: to it, so we'll just say it didn't happen.
32:25
Speaker 4: Like yeah, And also once the guy whose job titled
32:29
Speaker 4: I didn't even know existed until five minutes ago, was like,
32:32
Speaker 4: it didn't happen, Like what do you even do at
32:34
Speaker 4: that point?
32:34
Speaker 3: You know it's an actual that's.
32:36
Speaker 4: The conspiracy, And we will say conspiracy that the conspiracy
32:39
Speaker 4: is not that it has happened, it's that people were
32:42
Speaker 4: complicit in covering it up.
32:44
Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing. And we'll talk about another example
32:47
Speaker 2: of this in a minute. But once the Reagan administration
32:50
Speaker 2: starts denying this, all these other media outlets kind of
32:53
Speaker 2: rally around them and start questioning these two reporters' credentials. Basically,
33:00
Speaker 2: the Wall Street Journal published a piece about media coverage
33:04
Speaker 2: of El Salvador and accused Bonner of being quote overly
33:08
Speaker 2: credulous end quote, and accused the Washington Post of rallying
33:12
Speaker 2: behind a reporter out on a limb, and then Time
33:15
Speaker 2: magazine weighed in shortly thereafter with a criticism of the
33:19
Speaker 2: reporting that I'm not even joking. I'll read the quote
33:23
Speaker 2: in a second, but it boils down to, hey, just
33:25
Speaker 2: because women and children died, it doesn't mean they weren't
33:28
Speaker 2: communists too. This is Time fucking magazine. This is a quote,
33:33
Speaker 2: and even more crucial, if common oversight is the fact
33:36
Speaker 2: that women and children, generally presumed to be civilians, can
33:41
Speaker 2: be active participants in guerrilla war. New York Times correspondent
33:46
Speaker 2: Raymond Bonner underplayed that possibility, for example, in a much
33:50
Speaker 2: protest to January twenty seventh report of a massacre by
33:54
Speaker 2: the army in and around the village of Mazote end quote,
34:00
Speaker 2: it's got their throat slit.
34:01
Speaker 5: I don't care if there were and then they were
34:03
Speaker 5: hung afterwards.
34:05
Speaker 2: I don't care if they were fighting with gorillas. You
34:07
Speaker 2: just take those kids back to some place and fucking
34:10
Speaker 2: deprogram them if you need to. You don't murder them.
34:14
Speaker 2: What the fuck? That's nuts.
34:16
Speaker 5: I mean, we're watching this right now in real time,
34:19
Speaker 5: but we have social media that shows us what's happening
34:23
Speaker 5: in Gaza. Russia bombed a hospital in Ukraine a few
34:27
Speaker 5: days ago, and it's the same thing. It's white people,
34:30
Speaker 5: so it's refugees and it's a tragedy and it's so sad.
34:33
Speaker 5: But then when Israel did the same in Gaza, it
34:37
Speaker 5: was just very different wording. There's no murder, there's no
34:41
Speaker 5: it's it.
34:42
Speaker 4: They worried like it was just a spontaneous combustion. But
34:45
Speaker 4: when it was Russia, it was like Russia bombs.
34:47
Speaker 5: A hospital innocent children.
34:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
34:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, And now there is no longer Communism, it's jimas
34:54
Speaker 4: so it just happened. Now they would be like, oh, well,
34:56
Speaker 4: you know that that was a Jimaskan. Sorry, that's why
34:58
Speaker 4: it happened.
34:59
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's and it's and a lot of the media
35:02
Speaker 5: is falling in line because this is a big ally
35:05
Speaker 5: of ours and Biden and every you know, it's just
35:07
Speaker 5: it's but I just I can't imagine. Sorry, fac you
35:11
Speaker 5: lost somebody in that village and you're devastated, right, the
35:15
Speaker 5: guy who was like, we left because we didn't think
35:16
Speaker 5: they'd killed children, women and old people, and we left,
35:19
Speaker 5: and he survives, and then he has to also deal
35:22
Speaker 5: with the fact that now we're just gonna say it
35:25
Speaker 5: never happened on top of a grief in the guild,
35:28
Speaker 5: and then you have to also defend it for the
35:30
Speaker 5: rest of your life that this this actually happened.
35:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. What I find interesting here is we're talking about how, oh, well,
35:40
Speaker 2: there was no social media, so it took a while
35:43
Speaker 2: for people to find out. Yeah, so what if people
35:46
Speaker 2: did find out, what was that going to do because,
35:48
Speaker 2: like you said, we have social media. Now we see
35:51
Speaker 2: everything happening in Palestine. We see all kinds of shit happening.
35:57
Speaker 2: What changes Remember all that justice reformed that happened under
36:01
Speaker 2: Biden because we saw all those videos. No, there wasn't
36:05
Speaker 2: any would having social media back when this happened, it
36:08
Speaker 2: wouldn't have changed shit, So accuracy and media. They continued
36:13
Speaker 2: criticizing Raymond Bonner throughout the first half of nineteen eighty two.
36:17
Speaker 2: In July of that year, they dedicate an entire report
36:21
Speaker 2: to him where they basically call him a Communist agent
36:26
Speaker 2: and talk about how he worked for Ralph Nader and
36:30
Speaker 2: was at very least a Communist sympathizer, never mentioning that
36:34
Speaker 2: he was also in the Marine Corps in the Vietnam War.
36:38
Speaker 2: As this criticism keeps mounting, The New York Times eventually
36:42
Speaker 2: just recalls Raymond Bonner from El Salvador and basically fires him.
36:47
Speaker 2: I mean, he left the paper and quit, But it
36:50
Speaker 2: was because they pulled him off of this El Salvador
36:54
Speaker 2: job because they were buckling to right wing pressure. It's
36:58
Speaker 2: not because his story was incorrect. It was just the
37:00
Speaker 2: right wingers in the Reagan administration were mad about it.
37:04
Speaker 2: So The New York Times fired a guy over it,
37:08
Speaker 2: which the paper of record, ladies and gentlemen.
37:11
Speaker 5: So jesus.
37:12
Speaker 2: The Times did deny that they pulled him for that reason,
37:15
Speaker 2: but whatever the thing is, no matter why they pulled him,
37:19
Speaker 2: that sent a message to everyone else. I'll link to
37:24
Speaker 2: a Columbia Journalism Review article. They interviewed this reporter who
37:27
Speaker 2: said that the incident quote left us all aware that
37:31
Speaker 2: the embassy is quite capable of playing hardball. People treat
37:35
Speaker 2: it carefully. If they can kick out the Times correspondent,
37:38
Speaker 2: you've got to be careful end quote. And that's how
37:42
Speaker 2: you crack down on the media. You don't kill every
37:44
Speaker 2: journalist who reports on something. You fucking get the guy
37:48
Speaker 2: who reported on it first fired, and now no one
37:51
Speaker 2: else wants to talk about it.
37:52
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's not like he was just some rogue reporter.
37:55
Speaker 4: I'm assuming the New York Times has levels that you
37:58
Speaker 4: go through.
37:59
Speaker 3: You submitted somebody.
38:00
Speaker 4: I'm sure a few people had to report it and
38:02
Speaker 4: then they got that call like nope, and they're like,
38:05
Speaker 4: all right, we'll end ap proven that anymore. And it
38:07
Speaker 4: might not have It might not have even been the government.
38:10
Speaker 4: It could have just been there. They the government had
38:12
Speaker 4: their three biggest advertisers called like, hey, we're going to
38:16
Speaker 4: be pulling our ads if this guy is still employed.
38:18
Speaker 4: You know, that's where the money is. An advertisement. Like
38:22
Speaker 4: you said, these big corporations basically control our government, and
38:26
Speaker 4: that's what controls media. If they pull, they ass and
38:29
Speaker 4: that's it. You basically just a zine or some religious magazine.
38:33
Speaker 3: The weirdo gave you.
38:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, your fucking podcast on the internet at that point, right.
38:39
Speaker 2: So the other reporter, Alma Guiermo Prieto, wasn't attacked quite
38:45
Speaker 2: as hard for her article, but she thinks it's just
38:49
Speaker 2: because The Times was bigger, so ruining that guy was
38:52
Speaker 2: just going to ruin everyone. That said. The Reagan administration
38:56
Speaker 2: did send a letter to her boss claiming she used
38:59
Speaker 2: to be employed by a communist newspaper in Mexico. Thank God,
39:03
Speaker 2: just trying to fuck with her. This is a quote
39:06
Speaker 2: from her. The price I paid, and that all reporters
39:08
Speaker 2: in El Salvador in those critical and brutal years of
39:11
Speaker 2: the war paid, was a loss of confidence in themselves
39:15
Speaker 2: and the besieged feeling of always having it be our
39:18
Speaker 2: word against the state. Department end quote. She also pointed
39:23
Speaker 2: out something that we've already kind of touched on that
39:26
Speaker 2: the criticism around what was happening in El Salvador eventually
39:31
Speaker 2: stopped being well, no, there's no evidence of what you're
39:34
Speaker 2: talking about, and it just became, oh, you're a leftist
39:37
Speaker 2: sympathizer if you say what we're doing in El Salvador
39:41
Speaker 2: is wrong. And boy does that sound familiar, right?
39:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly?
39:47
Speaker 2: That sounds like a tactic. Maybe this reminds me a
39:51
Speaker 2: lot of the Gary Webb story. Gary Webb is the
39:54
Speaker 2: reporter who broke the story that the CIA essentially started
39:59
Speaker 2: the crack epidemic in the United States. This that we're
40:03
Speaker 2: talking about today, Elmasote also falls under the umbrella of
40:07
Speaker 2: the Iran contra affair. So did them selling crack? That's
40:11
Speaker 2: where that emanates from. And what's really sad about Gary
40:15
Speaker 2: Webb is when that story came out, instead of the
40:19
Speaker 2: New York Times and the LA Times looking into the
40:24
Speaker 2: facts behind his claims, they started attacking him as a
40:29
Speaker 2: reporter and saying stuff like, well, here he says they
40:33
Speaker 2: sold a lot of crack and it wasn't a lot.
40:36
Speaker 2: It's like, okay, so you think it wasn't as the
40:40
Speaker 2: CIA didn't sell as much crack as he said, So
40:44
Speaker 2: now this story is bullshit. It made no sense the
40:47
Speaker 2: way they attacked it. But they attacked him hard enough
40:52
Speaker 2: that to this day, a lot of people think that
40:54
Speaker 2: story was debunked. It wasn't fucking debunked. They just attacked
40:58
Speaker 2: him as a writer.
40:59
Speaker 4: And I to think is most white Americans inherently want
41:03
Speaker 4: to believe in the United States as a land of
41:07
Speaker 4: the free and stuff, so they're looking for confirmation bias.
41:10
Speaker 4: It's similar to when you talk to a cult member.
41:12
Speaker 4: You I tell people all the time, you can't reason
41:15
Speaker 4: with somebody that based their life off of emotions instead
41:19
Speaker 4: of facts. So you know, you're not going to outfact
41:21
Speaker 4: somebody when they're basing their life off of emotions. And
41:24
Speaker 4: that's what happens with a lot of these stories. People
41:27
Speaker 4: aren't really looking for a proof. They're like, oh, well,
41:29
Speaker 4: see that company that's been around for one hundred years
41:32
Speaker 4: said that, so you know it mustn't be true what
41:34
Speaker 4: they said.
41:35
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think people, for the most part, you know,
41:39
Speaker 5: in their opinions, they're like, well, I believe that in
41:41
Speaker 5: sort of the six other people that believe exactly what
41:44
Speaker 5: I believe, and I'm not going to look in any
41:46
Speaker 5: deeper than that. I got these six people who are
41:49
Speaker 5: also not very educated. They agree with me as well,
41:51
Speaker 5: so this must be fact. But it's also like people
41:54
Speaker 5: believing that America is, you know, the land of the free.
41:57
Speaker 5: So great a lot of these people. That's like identity
42:01
Speaker 5: and being told something that you've believed your entire life
42:03
Speaker 5: that is like to you're in your blood. Most people
42:06
Speaker 5: can't handle that. They would rather dey deny, call you
42:09
Speaker 5: a liar, say this, you know, makeup something to just
42:11
Speaker 5: turn around and face the fact that we're not that free.
42:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mainstream media outlets leaning on government access the
42:19
Speaker 2: way they do is bad for us. It's really bad
42:22
Speaker 2: for us. And it has gone a long way toward
42:26
Speaker 2: fostering this line of thinking where, Okay, you said the
42:31
Speaker 2: government did this, Well, the New York Times asked the
42:34
Speaker 2: government and the government said they didn't. So you're a
42:36
Speaker 2: conspiracy theorist.
42:37
Speaker 5: Now, that is dumb opinion.
42:40
Speaker 2: That is one of the most effective propaganda campaigns of
42:45
Speaker 2: all time, because we really have hit that point where
42:49
Speaker 2: even people who you know, even during the Trump administration,
42:53
Speaker 2: people you know, who don't trust Donald Trump just put
42:58
Speaker 2: the word conspiracy in front of anything the government did
43:01
Speaker 2: while Trump was in office, and those same people will
43:04
Speaker 2: be like, that's a conspiracy, but I don't deal in conspiracies.
43:08
Speaker 2: They usually add the word right wing in front of it.
43:10
Speaker 2: No matter what you're talking about, every conspiracy is a
43:13
Speaker 2: right wing conspiracy. And at some point we have to
43:16
Speaker 2: get it through our heads that government dissent and questioning
43:20
Speaker 2: the government doesn't make you a conspiracy theorist makes you
43:23
Speaker 2: a fucking American.
43:24
Speaker 3: That's what you're supposed to do, exactly.
43:27
Speaker 4: That's like what the whole civil rights movement was, questioning
43:31
Speaker 4: the government or you know, saying that y'all say these
43:34
Speaker 4: things to be true, but look at how y'all moving,
43:36
Speaker 4: you know.
43:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, And on top of being disgusting racists and bigots.
43:42
Speaker 2: One of the biggest disappointments about these right wingers that
43:46
Speaker 2: we saw in the nineties who were like, h get
43:48
Speaker 2: your guns, the government is coming. They were just waiting
43:51
Speaker 2: for the right fucking government boot to lick and they
43:54
Speaker 2: found it and it's Trump. So that was a whole
43:57
Speaker 2: fucking scam too. They were never gonna overthrow the government.
44:00
Speaker 2: They just want the right president to fucking worship.
44:03
Speaker 5: It's like, which is so embarrassing. I've never thought about
44:06
Speaker 5: Trump ever until he became president, you know what I mean,
44:09
Speaker 5: Like you'd see him on TV home alone. I never
44:11
Speaker 5: thought any But it's just it's an embarrassing. It's dangerous
44:15
Speaker 5: and it's awful, don't get me wrong, but it's also
44:18
Speaker 5: kind of embarrassing. But that's your.
44:19
Speaker 4: Guy, that guy.
44:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's why poopy Don.
44:23
Speaker 5: What do they call him? Diaper don? That's put in
44:26
Speaker 5: Uh oh he poops his pants? Oh, putin Don? Yeah,
44:29
Speaker 5: I guess he poops his pants. He always wears a
44:31
Speaker 5: taper Trump?
44:32
Speaker 3: Was that Donald Trump? It was some story?
44:34
Speaker 4: I think it got too big? Was that humber one
44:36
Speaker 4: that somebody else in his cabinet? The Oh no, that's putting?
44:39
Speaker 4: Ron to say some story about he couldn't find some
44:43
Speaker 4: spoon on a plane. He just started eating, putting with
44:46
Speaker 4: his hand like a hare or something.
44:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't be president if you're doing that. That's really.
44:59
Speaker 5: Are Also, didn't he know the thing that we all
45:01
Speaker 5: learned in grade school? You used the lid as your spoon? Yeah?
45:04
Speaker 5: Why did Ron not use his lid for his pudding?
45:07
Speaker 2: Why did he use his hands, probably thought it was
45:09
Speaker 2: gay or something.
45:11
Speaker 5: He can't eat at everybody's house. That's it that you're
45:14
Speaker 5: just yuck.
45:16
Speaker 2: So one of the other things these journalists had working
45:19
Speaker 2: against them is the details of this story sound like
45:23
Speaker 2: movie shit. It sounds incredible, And that was the response
45:28
Speaker 2: a lot of people had was Okay, so you just
45:30
Speaker 2: believed this one witness who told you this thing happened,
45:34
Speaker 2: and they're like, you read where I saw charred skulls
45:37
Speaker 2: and stuff, right, But if anyone out there, I don't
45:40
Speaker 2: know any right wingers listening to this are like, hmm,
45:43
Speaker 2: I'm still unconvinced. In nineteen ninety two, when the salvador
45:47
Speaker 2: and Civil War finally came to an end, part of
45:50
Speaker 2: the peace treaty involved sending a team of anthropologists to
45:56
Speaker 2: Mazote to exhume bodies and see was it a shootout
46:01
Speaker 2: between two groups or were these two writers correct? And
46:07
Speaker 2: of course there was no shootout. Everything they reported happened.
46:11
Speaker 2: This amount of people they said died, they exhumed the bodies,
46:16
Speaker 2: they were able to determine how they died, and it
46:19
Speaker 2: was as brutal as described. So all of this shit
46:24
Speaker 2: has been confirmed and of course, the Salvador and Minister
46:29
Speaker 2: of Defense informed a truth commission that was eventually set
46:33
Speaker 2: up to investigate that. Uh oh, they had no records
46:36
Speaker 2: of what soldiers from this battalion were involved. So because
46:40
Speaker 2: this battalion carried on until nineteen ninety two, it was
46:43
Speaker 2: dissolved when the civil war ended, and it was one
46:46
Speaker 2: of the most again elite and prestigious units within this
46:51
Speaker 2: side of the El Salvador military, which again we trained them.
46:56
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, a judge named Jorge Guzman reopened a
47:00
Speaker 2: judicial inquiry into the massacre, which sounds like progress, but
47:05
Speaker 2: as we speak, the country is ruled by a dictator
47:11
Speaker 2: named Naib Boucel. We actually did an episode of the
47:15
Speaker 2: Unpopular Opinion podcast about him because he calls himself the
47:20
Speaker 2: world's coolest dictator. He really leans into the dictator shit.
47:24
Speaker 2: He was very opposed to reopening this judicial inquiry because
47:30
Speaker 2: he's on the side of the government that did it.
47:32
Speaker 2: He's on the side that let's why we're not mad
47:35
Speaker 2: at them, because he's a dictator that is still beholden
47:38
Speaker 2: to us, and so it seemed like this was going
47:43
Speaker 2: to end in maybe some sort of justice. They reopened
47:47
Speaker 2: the inquiry. In April twenty twenty one, someone testifies in
47:51
Speaker 2: front of that inquiry and breaks the news that US
47:54
Speaker 2: military advisor Alan Bruce Hazelwood was most likely present when
47:59
Speaker 2: the massacre had So it's not just that we trained
48:02
Speaker 2: these motherfuckers. We were there to watch them do this.
48:06
Speaker 2: So they're making progress, making progress. And then that inquiry
48:10
Speaker 2: ended when Naive Bucel issued a law that any judge
48:15
Speaker 2: over the age of sixty had to retire, and the
48:17
Speaker 2: judge looking into this was sixty one, and they think
48:21
Speaker 2: that's why he wrote that law was just to end
48:25
Speaker 2: this inquiry, and it put hundreds of people out of work.
48:29
Speaker 3: The sixty day.
48:30
Speaker 4: I feel like that's something we can make work over here,
48:32
Speaker 4: even though it was used to evil. We should probably
48:35
Speaker 4: in our politics in America.
48:37
Speaker 5: Yeah, like the reason he did it isn't People were excited.
48:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the reason he did it isn't great. But
48:42
Speaker 2: I was like, I mean, yeah, yes.
48:45
Speaker 4: You little bit too out of it should be affecting
48:48
Speaker 4: people lives at sixty years old.
48:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like when right wingers are like, defund the FBI,
48:54
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, but not for the reasons you want,
48:57
Speaker 2: like you just want to replace them with a right
48:59
Speaker 2: wing FBI probably. So Yeah, I had a bunch of
49:03
Speaker 2: stuff in the notes here about MS thirteen, but I
49:05
Speaker 2: talked about that up top. But again, this is how
49:09
Speaker 2: MS thirteen started. This is a big part of how
49:12
Speaker 2: the immigration crisis in general in this country started, was
49:16
Speaker 2: us going into Latin American countries either overthrowing their governments
49:21
Speaker 2: or putting down movements that we're trying to overthrow the government,
49:24
Speaker 2: and making it such a dangerous place to be that
49:27
Speaker 2: people were willing to now send their kids alone on
49:32
Speaker 2: foot to try and make it here. You don't do
49:35
Speaker 2: that if things are mostly chill. It's not Oakland down there.
49:39
Speaker 2: It's not just people are getting their cars broken into,
49:42
Speaker 2: Like this is fucking real, goddamn peril that people are fleeing,
49:47
Speaker 2: and we treat them like they are freeloaders coming to
49:51
Speaker 2: this country because we're so free and rich, and meanwhile
49:54
Speaker 2: we're all broke and oppressed, and.
49:58
Speaker 5: Also we like we somehow figured out how to make
50:01
Speaker 5: half of us blame these people that are trying to
50:04
Speaker 5: come over here for a better line. I'm really a
50:07
Speaker 5: lot of times, I'm very grateful I don't really have parents,
50:09
Speaker 5: because all my friends are dealing with their parents who
50:11
Speaker 5: suddenly have just become very trumpy liberals their whole life
50:14
Speaker 5: and now. And I was with my friend's mom the
50:16
Speaker 5: other day. I was helping her with something, and I'd
50:18
Speaker 5: met her one other time before this, and we'd spend
50:22
Speaker 5: a half hour together, and she mentioned the illegals four times,
50:26
Speaker 5: and I was just like, great, so do you want
50:29
Speaker 5: to finish this thing? I came over to help you
50:31
Speaker 5: with or and she was just like, well, I'm struggling
50:34
Speaker 5: and they come over here and they're handed everything they
50:36
Speaker 5: need on a silver platter. And I was like, I
50:39
Speaker 5: know you really want to talk about this, but I
50:42
Speaker 5: wouldn't be able to pick you out of a line
50:43
Speaker 5: up in two weeks, So I'm not. But there's a
50:45
Speaker 5: machine that has gotten people to really believe and vote
50:49
Speaker 5: against this when it's simply not true.
50:52
Speaker 4: Dad, And it's so many myths about black people a
50:55
Speaker 4: lot of states have before Trump, we're voting out affirmative action.
50:59
Speaker 4: But like one of the mass shoot us, I can't
51:01
Speaker 4: keep up with him and his manifesto. He said he
51:03
Speaker 4: was angry that because he heard that black people get
51:07
Speaker 4: like seventy five thousand dollars from the government for something
51:11
Speaker 4: and all of.
51:12
Speaker 3: This stuff is like how they voted. What's state.
51:14
Speaker 4: I think Harvard had some lawsuit or something because some
51:18
Speaker 4: kid didn't get into college because he thought it was
51:20
Speaker 4: black people and they were like, no, man, you didn't
51:22
Speaker 4: get in because all of these legacies got in above you.
51:25
Speaker 4: But yeah, it's been going on forever, and now you know,
51:28
Speaker 4: immigrants are just a new target. It's America has been
51:33
Speaker 4: able to convince its citizens to blame each other instead
51:36
Speaker 4: of the government for not doing his job.
51:38
Speaker 2: Yeah.
51:38
Speaker 5: Oh yeah. That's some theories on why Martin Luther King
51:41
Speaker 5: was assassinated. He was able to get poor white people
51:44
Speaker 5: and poor black people to unite and be like, oh yeah,
51:47
Speaker 5: the government's fucking us. And there's theories. And that's why
51:50
Speaker 5: they took him out is because he was actually able
51:52
Speaker 5: to unite people.
51:53
Speaker 2: I don't think that's a theory. That's that's what Cohen
51:57
Speaker 2: tell was about that.
51:59
Speaker 3: That's more.
51:59
Speaker 4: Also, so that's more why we got Fred Hampton killed.
52:02
Speaker 4: He was starting to Rainbow Coalition. The reason they killed
52:06
Speaker 4: Martin Luther King is he was realizing more that socialism.
52:10
Speaker 4: He was going more radical left. One of his last
52:13
Speaker 4: speeches was I forget the name of it, but you
52:17
Speaker 4: can pull it up on YouTube. He was actually becoming
52:19
Speaker 4: more socialist and getting closer to what Malcolm was teaching.
52:23
Speaker 4: And you know, if you go off of what the
52:25
Speaker 4: media says, Malcolm was just super radical.
52:27
Speaker 3: But it wasn't like that.
52:29
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's why they killed Martin Luther King because
52:31
Speaker 4: he was he was getting closer. He said something like
52:34
Speaker 4: I've led my people into a burning building or something
52:38
Speaker 4: like that. But yeah, man, America, it's a mother fucking
52:41
Speaker 4: the way they just manipulate images.
52:43
Speaker 5: Yeah, and how people just believe it and they're just
52:46
Speaker 5: they just.
52:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's easier. It's easier to just believe the government
52:53
Speaker 2: is good the government.
52:55
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I'd rather be mad all the time, you
52:58
Speaker 5: know what I mean, that's the road I've taken, for sure. Ignorant.
53:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so that's the Mazote massacre. It is a
53:07
Speaker 2: thing that people will never be taken to task for. There.
53:13
Speaker 2: I don't think is ever going to be any sense
53:16
Speaker 2: of justice when it comes to this, especially now that
53:19
Speaker 2: that inquiry that had been going since twenty sixteen is
53:23
Speaker 2: essentially shut down. And that's the Reagan administration. We're doing
53:28
Speaker 2: a bonus episode next week, where we're gonna go through
53:31
Speaker 2: a bunch of other lesser known Reagan scandals in a
53:37
Speaker 2: little more rapid fire succession, because we've got a lot
53:39
Speaker 2: to get through. The HUD rigging scandal, that was an
53:42
Speaker 2: interesting one. There's so many God damn my god, I
53:46
Speaker 2: don't care.
53:46
Speaker 3: It is that housing, right, Yeah? Those housing urban development
53:50
Speaker 3: or something like that.
53:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a bribery scandal where somehow they were
53:56
Speaker 2: allocating HUD money in a way that benefited people who
54:00
Speaker 2: were friendly with the Reagan campaign. Which I'm surprised anyone
54:04
Speaker 2: got in trouble for that, because that's the kind of thing,
54:07
Speaker 2: like diverting money from poor people doesn't usually get you
54:10
Speaker 2: sent to jail. Just ask Brett Farv there's right, can't like, guys,
54:16
Speaker 2: what's crazy about that? I'll probably bring it up on
54:19
Speaker 2: a local news roundup episode at some point in the future.
54:23
Speaker 2: But someone was finally arrested in the Mississippi welfare fraud thing,
54:29
Speaker 2: and it was the reporter who broke the story because
54:33
Speaker 2: she refused to name her sources when the governor ordered
54:37
Speaker 2: her to So rest Easy America. There's been an arrest
54:41
Speaker 2: in that. Oh my god.
54:44
Speaker 5: Yeah, fu about The amendment that we care about is
54:47
Speaker 5: the second one, because like the freedom of the press
54:50
Speaker 5: is a pretty big one, and that's a big thing
54:53
Speaker 5: we're taught is that press don't have it, doesn't have
54:55
Speaker 5: to give up their sources to protect sources, so they'll
54:57
Speaker 5: report the news.
54:59
Speaker 2: Unless you're right wing wants you to then. Yeah, So
55:03
Speaker 2: that's our episode. We'll have more Reagan shenanigans to come
55:08
Speaker 2: this month. Hopefully it's not all this sad, but probably I.
55:12
Speaker 5: Don't feel like there's gonna be any good stuff that Reagan.
55:15
Speaker 2: I don't remember any Yeah, he would have had good
55:19
Speaker 2: I mean, we could talk about that creepy Genesis video
55:21
Speaker 2: where he was a puppet in it. That was fun.
55:23
Speaker 2: Land of Confusion.
55:25
Speaker 5: No, I don't know what that's about, but I would
55:26
Speaker 5: like to learn more. That seems weird.
55:29
Speaker 2: Land of Confusion by Genesis. It was a creepy ass video.
55:32
Speaker 2: So hey, Kim John, thank you both for doing the pod.
55:36
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. You what do we have to plug
55:39
Speaker 2: before we get out of here, because this feels like
55:40
Speaker 2: a great time to plug stuff. Adam Todd Brown dot
55:43
Speaker 2: substack dot com. You can go read my writings. I
55:46
Speaker 2: do a solo podcast called in Broad Daylight that you
55:49
Speaker 2: can listen to there. That's also a video podcast, so
55:53
Speaker 2: there's like pictures that pop up on the screen, things
55:55
Speaker 2: that they like. Oh, there's only three episodes. It's been
55:58
Speaker 2: fun so far. Go watch it. Give me a reason
56:00
Speaker 2: to keep doing it. And that's it. Cam, What do
56:03
Speaker 2: you got to plug?
56:04
Speaker 5: It always feels so weird to plug anything after a bummer.
56:07
Speaker 5: Oh really, Well, listen to my podcast. But yeah, Kim
56:13
Speaker 5: crawl kymkral crawl space every Wednesday. I wrote a book,
56:18
Speaker 5: Confessions of a Recovering Party Girl. I'm putting some of
56:21
Speaker 5: my podcast clips on TikTok, so follow me there too,
56:24
Speaker 5: if you'd like.
56:25
Speaker 2: John, what do you got?
56:27
Speaker 4: Well, it's huge to search my name on YouTube because
56:29
Speaker 4: it's only it's spelt that way so that people can
56:32
Speaker 4: find me and not the civil rights activist John Lewis,
56:34
Speaker 4: because my video essays takes so long to right light
56:37
Speaker 4: two to four weeks. I just launched a solo podcast
56:41
Speaker 4: that I'm putting on my second channel. But if you
56:43
Speaker 4: follow my name where you'll see it. It's called retro Rewind.
56:47
Speaker 4: What I'm doing is going back and listening to albums
56:49
Speaker 4: that are minimum fifteen years old with hindsight to see
56:53
Speaker 4: how well they age, and then pulling up Pitchfork reviews
56:56
Speaker 4: and reading those. I wanted to do the source reviews,
56:58
Speaker 4: but apparently they didn't archive their reviews. If anyone knows
57:02
Speaker 4: how to find those reviews online, let me know. I
57:06
Speaker 4: search your wayback machine. It's pretty impossible.
57:09
Speaker 2: Oh that's crazy.
57:10
Speaker 4: I dropped two episodes on my second one. I did
57:12
Speaker 4: jay Z The Black Album and then Loupe Fiascos The
57:16
Speaker 4: Food and Liquor. So it's pretty interesting, you know, listening
57:19
Speaker 4: to these albums just because especially hip hop, I say,
57:21
Speaker 4: in these fifteen years, because that's how long it takes
57:24
Speaker 4: to sound to really change. And you can go back
57:27
Speaker 4: and listen and see how things sound with fresh ears
57:30
Speaker 4: and was it just hot den or is it still
57:32
Speaker 4: hot now?
57:32
Speaker 3: Yeah?
57:32
Speaker 2: That sounds interesting. People should check that out. And I
57:36
Speaker 2: think that's it. Let's get the fuck out of here.
57:38
Speaker 2: Kim say goodbye, goodbye, everybody, John say goodbye.
57:41
Speaker 4: Stay woke, y'all, but not the new way America bastardized it,
57:45
Speaker 4: the pre Trump arawoke Bye everybody.
57:49
Speaker 2: We love you.
57:54
Speaker 4: People.
57:56
Speaker 5: You're trying to this out to stan stretch stretched at
58:08
Speaker 5: the battles at a stro