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Episode 284
To better understand the impact of the US/Israel War on Iran this week, Sam talks with Sussan Tahmasebi, Executive Director and the Co-founder of Femena, the support organization for women human rights defenders in MENA/Asia. Then, she talks with journalist Jonathan Larsen about the influence of Christian fascist ideology on the military and the wider support for this potentially apocalyptic war. Follow Jonathan’s work on Substack at jonathanlarsen.substack.com.
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Music for this episode: Penny the Snitch by Ikebe Shakedown
Episode 284: From Minab to Armageddon
Sun, Mar 15, 2026 8:29PM • 1:12:09
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
US-Israel war, Iran, carpet bombing, human impact, Christian nationalism, Trump regime, fascism, non-violent resistance, Armageddon briefings, religious ideologies, displacement, economic hardship, women’s rights, military commanders, global calamity.
SPEAKERS
Jonathan Larsen, Sam Goldman, Sussan Tahmasebi
Sussan Tahmasebi 00:00
In the West, certainly they justified this war as Iran is a terrible place. It treats women awfully. But here it is, in the first act of war that we have these school children killed. This is not a strategic strike. It really, literally, is carpet bombing. And the lives of Iranians have very little value for any of the warring parties.
Johnathan Larsen 00:20
The commander told the NCOs, tell your troops that it’s okay. This is part of God’s plan. Jesus has anointed President Trump to light the signal fire for Armageddon in Iran and bring about the return of Jesus Christ. They have an auditorium at the Pentagon. They transmit the prayer session throughout the Pentagon. It is a toxic blend of this maximalist will to power with religious ideologies. You
Sam Goldman 01:00
Sam, welcome to episode 284, of the refuse fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with refuse fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show refuse fascism works to unite all who can be united in mass, relentless, non violent resistance to drive the Trump fascist regime from power. This week, we’re sharing two interviews regarding the US Israeli war on Iran. First, you’ll hear a conversation with Iranian American feminist activist Susan tamasepi on the human impact of this war, then you’ll hear a discussion I had with Jonathan Larson discussing the Armageddon briefings, Christian nationalism and the US war on Iran, as always, we want to give a heartfelt thank you to everyone who rates and reviews the pod. Supports us on Patreon, subscribes on sub stack and picks up refuse fascism merch that support is how this platform keeps going and growing. And if you’re listening and haven’t done that yet, no worries after this episode, take a moment. Rate the show, review the show, subscribe, become a patron. Get a t shirt, get a sweatshirt. It helps so much in getting these ideas out where they need to actually be. But first, there’s just a few things I have to say. This war is not some side issue. It is the sharpest spear point right now through which this fascist regime is advancing its project. And we need to understand something clearly, even if there are tensions within parts of the Maga base, even if some people who helped bring this regime to power are now uneasy about a wider war, those at the top, those in this fascist regime, they are hardening and cohering around the only option for fascists, escalation, escalation of an illegitimate, illegal and murderous war, whose consequences will be devastating for the people of Iran, for the people of the entire region, for people here in the United States, for the people of the world, and for the future of life on this planet. So I think it’s helpful to listen carefully to the language coming from the people running this war. Trump, Secretary of War, Pete hegseth, those listening know he’s a crusading Christian fascism zealot who believes he is carrying out God’s will. He has been openly boasting about how this war will be fought.
Pete Hegseth 03:34
Our response. We will keep pressing. We will keep pushing, keep advancing. No Quarter no mercy for our enemies.
Sam Goldman 03:44
No Quarter means executing prisoners. No Quarter means killing people who surrender or are wounded instead of taking them prisoner. That’s not just savagery. It’s criminality. It’s a war crime banned since the Civil War outlawed by the Hague and Geneva Conventions and prohibited in the Pentagon’s own rule book. Yet Trump’s war Secretary brags about it like it’s a slogan he promises
Pete Hegseth 04:13
death and destruction from the sky all day long.
Sam Goldman 04:19
He sneers at the Geneva Convention as quote, unquote stupid rules of engagement. When asked about Iran, he
Pete Hegseth 04:27
said, The only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re going to live.
Sam Goldman 04:31
This is Nazi talk from the Secretary of War, of the most powerful and lethal militaries in the world. It is language preparing you to go along with atrocities of greater and greater magnitude. When he brags about war without mercy and celebrates the violation of international law language that constitutes an incitement to war crimes, he is not merely describing what the Trump regime has done. They are letting you know what is to come. The question is, how much more will we allow over 1300 people in Iran have been killed. The UN estimates 3.2 million people displaced as families flee bombardment. The war has already spread across more than a dozen countries in the region. This is how catastrophes spiral, and now the Trump regime is openly preparing for the next stage. They say, the Strait of Hormuz, through which 1/5 of the world’s oil flows, quote, unquote, will not be contested. What does that seemingly bureaucratic phrase mean? It means this gangster fascist is serious about the real possibility of American troops invading Iranian territory. 5000 marines and sailors are already being deployed to that region. Trump is demanding, quote, unquote, unconditional surrender, naked Imperial aggression on a scale that could spell game over for humanity and while the bombs fall abroad, fascism consolidation accelerates at home, even as this war is an expression of his fascism. Hegseth is banning journalists from press briefings because they took pictures he didn’t like. He’s attacking CNN.
Pete Hegseth 06:15
The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better
Sam Goldman 06:19
openly cheering for David Ellison to take over the network once Trump’s FCC approves the merger, when hegset starts calling for this billionaire ally of the regime to take over a major news network and make it more supportive of the regime. Let’s be clear, that’s the behavior of tyrants. Usually, most regimes, at least put on a show try to hide that kind of pressure. Nope. In Trump regime fascism, this one is openly demanding loyalty. This war is already fueling a wave of Islamophobic hatred in this country. Fascists in and out of power, including us, congresspeople, are demonizing Iranians and Muslims as enemies of civilization. The regime is reopening investigations into the 2020 election and dragging officials before federal grand juries even using immigration enforcement agencies to probe election results. They are considering cutting funding for programs created under the Voting Rights Act that protect the right to vote. So when people say that’s why the midterms are so important, or wait till the elections, the fascism will be toast. I have to say that is so dangerously disconnected from the reality we’re facing. This is a regime working hard to kick off world war three, already undermining the elections. If you think you are getting a free and fair election from Trump without a fight, you are not facing reality. It’s worth mentioning that polls show only 29% of people in the United States support this war. Think about that, a massive war that the overwhelming majority of people do not support, and yet it continues to escalate. That tells you something fundamental about fascism. It does not rely on majority support. It does not care about those poll numbers. It relies on power, fear and the passivity of those who oppose it. Look, telling a pollster you oppose the war is not the same thing as acting to stop it. Which brings me to something that needs to be said very plainly, the Democratic party cannot be relied on to fight this fascism the way it must be fought. They wring their hands about whether Trump has a plan for this war, not that he has this war, not that he’s committing these war crimes. They complain about procedures that this regime has already shredded. They are not calling the millions of people into the streets to stop a war that could spiral into global calamity, they will channel outrage into waiting for elections, even as this regime is actively undermining the conditions for those elections to exist in any meaningful sense, the Democratic Party leadership won’t fight this the way it needs to be fought. They can’t, but we can. Everyone who has a heart for humanity, everyone who refuses to accept a future defined by endless wars of aggression, repression, cruelty and bigotry, has to act with the urgency this moment demands we have to move heaven and earth to stop this war, and that means building a movement of mass, non violent resistance powerful enough to remove this regime from power before it is too late, not waiting but acting together in our millions again and again until we win. If you feel the urgency of this moment, join us. Refuse Fascism is holding a webinar Saturday March 21 that’s next Saturday at 2pm eastern that’s 11am Pacific Time, to grapple with what it will take to actually stop this war and to stop the Trump fascism. Regime and to organize people to act everywhere, raising the demand stop the war on Iran, Trump must go now on no Kings Day. So this is part of a building for no Kings Day, powerful contingents that are going to go to, hopefully, where there’ll be the biggest protests that this nation’s ever seen, and to go in them and fight for this understanding and this political program of mass, relentless, non violent resistance to remove this regime now, because the future is not yet written, but it will be shaped by what we do now. So the question for all of us listening right now is simple. Will we watch this horror unfold, or will we act with that? Here is my interview with Susan tamaseby.
Sam Goldman 10:55
It is a real honor to welcome back onto the show. Susan tomasebi. Susan is a woman’s rights activist, a civil society activist. She’s the executive director of Femina, an organization that promotes gender equality, that supports women’s human rights, their defenders, their organizations and feminist movements in the Middle East and North Africa. Welcome Susan. Thanks so much for talking with us.
Sussan Tahmasebi 11:22
Thank you so much for having me, and thank you for paying attention to what’s happening in Iran.
Sam Goldman 11:27
If it’s all right with you, I’d like to start with talking a little bit about what happened at the elementary school in minap, because I think it was to me, it said so much about what they were signaling the US and Israel about where this war was going to go and what it was going to look like in terms of human impact. For listeners, I feel like this story, this crime, captures the Human Reality of this war and the city of manab. US strikes hit a school and nearby homes.
Sussan Tahmasebi 11:58
175 people, mostly girls, between seven and 12 years old, along with some teachers and parents, were killed. Children’s bodies were lying partly under debris, and the us’s immediate response was, it wasn’t us. We didn’t do it, and even when they were given evidence that it was Trump, went and said it was Iran using weapons that they don’t even have. I just wanted to ask you, what do we know about what happened there, and what does it reveal to you about the reality of this war?
Sussan Tahmasebi 12:34
I’d like to preface this war with talking about what Iranians were already going through. In the last nine months, we have had three major crises that we’ve dealt with in Iran and so Iranian society is extremely traumatized and vulnerable, and, you know, negatively impacted. First, we had the 12 Day War in June. And I think for us observing, and you know, we’re human rights organization, but we are very clearly also an anti war organization, not just for Iran, but really for the region. We think that political solutions are the best solutions. But we were surprised at the 12 day war to see so many people, so many voices from inside the country, who were anti war, because I think if you follow Iran at all, you will see that there’s a very vocal diaspora that is pro war, and they were pro this current war as well. But so there was definitely impact, shock, nervousness, and you know the sense of uncertainty for the future that Iranian society was dealing with on December 28 we had protests that were largely economic protests that started in Tehran Bazar, that lasted for about 10 days, and then they turned extremely violent on the eighth and the ninth of January, where 1000s were killed, peaceful protesters that were killed by the regime. A lot of people showed up for these protests because diaspora based political groups and diaspora based broadcast channels called people out. President Trump gave guarantees to the protesters that if the Islamic Republic used violence, that he would also use violence against the state. The son of the former king of Iran, former Shah of Iran, who was one of the people who called people out to come who has name recognition because there’s multiple broadcast channels being broadcast into people’s home that support the return of the monarchy. He also said things like, they had 50,000 IRGC and security forces that had joined him. And so people really went to these protests with a desire, I think many of them to overthrow the Islamic Republic because, you know, the Islamic Republic is not a democratic system. It’s dictatorial, you know, and it has refused every effort to reform. People have tried to reform it for decades, and there’s been serious resistance. And also, Iranians are also suffering from great economic hardship. So a lot of different issues that brought people out. I don’t think all of the people were necessarily supporters of the monarchy. Certainly, there were some of them who were very Die Hard supporters of the monarchy, but others really looked at this as an opportunity to have their voices heard and to create serious change in the political system, perhaps for many, to the point of overthrow for some, but nevertheless, very serious change. But they were met with the lethal force by the Islamic Republic, and 1000s were killed, and 1000s were also arrested. So there was this incredible shock from this this massacre, this catastrophe that happened during these protests, and people were still mourning, dealing with the shock, they were in a state of trauma, a lot of people running after their family members who were arrested. Some had lost family members who were breadwinners. So this was the state of Iranian society when the war started. And I should say that after this massacre, there was a lot of anger, justifiably so. And I think a lot of people wanted strikes. I think they wanted strategic strikes that would get rid of the regime, what people weren’t able to do themselves peacefully. But I think that that tide is now quickly turning, because they’re seeing the incredible damage that this war is causing. And on the first day of the war, two things happened. First is the US struck the residence of the Supreme Leader and killed him, along with the post of other high level security IRGC officials and government officials. Some people reacted with great Glee and happiness about this, but the supporters of the Islamic Republic obviously were very upset. So that night, when news of the killing of the supreme leader was released, and finally confirmed, people were screaming out of their windows at night and on their balconies and celebrating it at the same time, there were a number of other people who were mourning and out into the streets and upset about this. So I think that that’s really important, because it shows how divided Iranian society is, and how polarized it is, and this is of concern, because in the context of war, this level of polarization and disagreement could potentially turn into civil war. I think many people are thinking also about this. Another thing that happened on that same day was the striking of this girls school in minab. And minab is in hormones gun Province, which is a very deprived, economically disadvantaged area. It’s also a lot of ethnic minorities live there. Obviously, I think, you know, it also turned into a war of narratives, different narratives. Many people said, Oh, the Islamic Republic. Did it? You know, when the pictures of the graves were published, they said, Oh, this is not even Iran. It’s Pakistan or another country. So there was this incredible war of narratives about who did it. We didn’t do it. It wasn’t us. We didn’t take responsibility. And ultimately, I think that reports now show that it was actually the US that did strike this school. And what I’ve also heard that this was a double tap. Double taps are like two explosions, one following the other. And as far as I know that this is also a war crime, because it’s intended to kill those people who come to the rescue. And the stories that I’ve read is that the school officials vacated, took the kids out of the school area and took them to an area that they thought was safe. Many of them were moved to what school officials thought was a safer location, but they were killed with the second bomb. I think it’s quite depressing, and certainly I think that a lot of people you know in the West, certainly they justified this war. As you know, Iran is a terrible place. It treats women awfully. But here it is, in the first act of war that we have these school children killed. Those who support the war have refuse to acknowledge that this horrific crime has happened on the Iranian side. Certainly, the government has really promoted this as an act of aggression, which it definitely is. It’s an awful thing. I heard a recording of this guy who was speaking in a discussion room, and he was talking about, you know, what has happened to the Iranians outside the country, in the diaspora? He was saying that we understand here that you are angry and we are angry too. And he was talking about how he has eight years of prison sentence to serve. He’s like, but why are you taking it out on us? And he pointed to this killing as well. And he said, Why is it that you can’t even acknowledge and send your condolences to the parents. You know. It doesn’t matter who killed them, you know. And I think this is what we are seeing with what’s happening now, and we saw it with the massacre too, is that a lot of people who were afraid that the massacre was going to be used as an excuse for military intervention refuse to speak up and condemn the massacre that happened against the protesters, and now we’re seeing it. The people who support the war are not willing to speak up when Iranians get killed. Nevertheless, I think what we see from all of these lessons is the lives of Iranians have very little value for. Any of the warring parties, and that’s where we’re experiencing the most loss, whether it’s in the protests or as a result of this war, is that Iranians are being killed, and it’s indiscriminate. It doesn’t matter who they are, Israel and the US talk about how they’re targeting military locations and military facilities and people associated with the government, but that’s actually not the case. So on the first few days, there were reports that over 1200 people had been killed. We don’t have any updates on those figures. And these are not 1200 people who were killed, 1200 people who were actually killed as a result of the war and buried. But those figures haven’t been updated because, I think, similar to Israel, similar to the US, each of these governments thinks that it’s a sign of weakness to talk about their casualties. So we’re not hearing more about the casualties, but we are hearing certain things that, to me, is especially distressing and concerning, is that, first of all, this is not a strategic strike. It really, literally is carpet bombing, and certainly carpet bombing Tehran, which is my city, and many other cities as well to see this is it’s horrific and just incredibly depressing for me. But according to the Red Crescent Society and the latest reports that I read, over 19,000 structures have been hit since the start of this war. Over 16,000 were civilian structures, and I think the majority of them are residences. And this creates an incredible level of displacement inside the country, because you know, when you hit the residences, and most of these bombings are happening in cities, and especially in Tehran, which is overcrowded. Tehran is the city of over 10 million right? So when a building is hit, it’s not just one person’s home, it’s multiple residences. So multiple families are getting displaced, and especially with the economic hardships that Iran has experienced in recent years, most of these people, the only asset they have as their home, probably similar to other places as well, and sometimes this asset is the only asset that multi generations of the same family have, and there’s no replacing it. How do you replace it? And when we have this level, we don’t have numbers on displacement. And it’s very difficult to verify this, because at the same time, the Islamic Republic has cut off the internet access, so people don’t have access to the internet. They can’t get in touch with their family members outside, we can’t really get a sense of what’s happening inside the country. It’s very difficult to document the impact of the war. So we don’t know the numbers of displaced people, but it’s in the hundreds of 1000s, and when we have displacement at this level, it makes vulnerable groups even more vulnerable, and that means women and children. And with the earthquake that we had in BAM two decades ago, one major development that happened was a lot of trafficking of women and children, and so this level of insecurity will also contribute to that trafficking as well, it’ll make women and children much more vulnerable. And I think that we’ll hear more about this once the communications are set up, you know. But also, one other thing that is happening is that police stations are being struck and bombed in all the different cities. There are probably different reasons, and, you know, there are different theories about why this is happening. Some people speculate that it’s because it’s trying to make Iran’s borders and border security weak. But as a woman and a woman’s rights activist in a time where you probably have a lot of trafficking, I sort of think that lack of police and that kind of security will make women even more insecure, even in a context where the law doesn’t necessarily support women, is not supportive. But if you lose your family member, if you can’t find them, who do you go to? And you have no police and no police stations to go to. So this war is not a war about Iran’s nuclear program, because Iran was engaged in negotiations prior to this war and the same in June, the same Iran was also engaged negotiations with the US in June as well, when the US and Israel struck same again this time around, and according to the Omani Foreign Minister, Iran had actually made concessions in this round of negotiations that it had never done before, and that this deal was going to be better than the JCPOA deal of 2015 that Trump basically threw out and refuse to abide by, because it was an Obama deal. Certainly I don’t think Iran is an imminent threat to the US, nor was it, despite the rhetoric, a threat to Israel, because we saw in the June war that Iran did not retaliate in the same way it’s retaliating now in terms of the strike, so it wasn’t, and I think that they knew
Sam Goldman 24:43
that I really appreciate you bringing in as someone deeply connected to the region, so much texture to what this war is meaning for Iranians right now. What the implications. Are, what this immediate impact is, and what the context of this situation was for the people of Iran, which we don’t hear enough about, in my opinion, and I think that frequently, despite the women and children being the top victims of war, it is also the same tired, so tired excuse of doing this in the name of liberation, or doing this in the name of women, this time, I feel like it’s even fake lip service, like nobody’s even really trying to make that claim, because you really couldn’t, in any good conscience, Do that, given the reality that you spoke to about what the impact of this war is meaning for Iranian women and Iranian children, and I’m wondering, like, given the incredible courage of movements in recent years, not only but especially women, life, freedom, uprising, what does this type of war mean for those who are struggling for the liberation of women in Iran?
Sussan Tahmasebi 26:08
So, you know, the women life Freedom Movement was an amazing movement that emerged out of very sad and difficult conditions, the death and police custody of masajina Amini, who was a young woman who was arrested under the pretext of not observing her hijab properly. She was reportedly beaten in custody and then later died and went and later passed out and went into a coma and died in hospital. You know, immediately the Iranian women’s movement actually held the protests outside the hospital where she was being held, but then during her funeral, there were additional protests in the Kurdish city, where she’s from, and the slogan Gen Azadi, which is a Kurdish slogan, or zanzi Azadi, woman life freedom, was chanted. National movement emerged around this that was asking for accountability. People were angry about the death of Mahsa. They were asking for accountability. This was, you know, not only because of its Kurdish roots, but I also think the demands that women and Iranian society made around this movement were also very well rooted in the long, deep and strong women’s movement that had been operational for several decades, but especially the last two decades, Certainly groups outside the country, they also tried to claim this and usurp this movement as their own. But I think that because it was so deeply rooted, the demands were so deeply rooted, they weren’t able to do that. And we saw now, for example, the Reza Pahlavi, the son of the Shah, took everything that he had on his instagram about the woman life freedom movement off, basically rejecting the movement, and I think it’s because they couldn’t claim it as their own. It had its own roots. It had its own history. And, you know, even though that wasn’t as Bloody as the protests that emerged afterwards, but certainly there was a lot of people who were killed, unfortunately, but nevertheless, it had some very serious achievements. A lot of men dismiss that, because what they tried to get out of this movement was like a serious political transition or overthrow of the regime. But what actually happened is this movement resulted in some gains, some very serious and important gains for women, for example, in the way that they dress so Iranian women started defying the dress code, the mandatory hijab, and appearing public as they wished. And you know, you see that still to this day, they started singing in public. They started running marathons. They’re riding motorcycles and motorbikes. None of this was allowed by law. Some people dismissed it and said, Oh, this is fake. But no, I don’t think so. I think these are the gains that women made at the cost of their own lives, and they were significant gains, if you’re a woman, in a sense, because of their efforts, we were going through a sort of Renaissance with respect to women’s rights before this and certainly in the bigger cities, certainly there’s going to be pushback following the protest. It’s incredible repression. I think if this war ever ends, they’ll again be incredible repression. And even during this war, there’s a lot of repression going on. Now there’s, you know, security forces on the streets, people still being arrested, threatened. People outside the country are being threatened. They take positions in support of the enemy that they’ll face backlash. But ultimately some of these hard won gains will be pushed back, but certainly in a time of war, this war is indiscriminate. When people are just trying to survive, you can’t think about these gains, and you can’t keep pushing for these gains. So I think that it really pushes Iranian society back, Iranian society that was dealing with so many challenges anyway, it pushes Iranian society back even further. Now we have to think about survival. Instead of talking about rice, we have to talk about humanitarian needs. That’s what we’re going to have to be focused on. And I think we’re going to be focused on that for a long time, because, as I said, the damage this, it’s indiscriminate, and it’s everywhere. 70. Seven health centers and hospitals and pharmacies have been destroyed. This is, according to the Red Crescent, 65 educational centers have been destroyed, and 16 Red Crescent, which is like the Red Cross, has been destroyed as a result of the war. So this is significant. One of the first buildings that was struck, and the target was actually the Iranian radio and television that Israel targeted. And this is also a war crime, because they said that there’s propaganda coming from this, and they hit all the different antennas. And one hospital, Gandhi hospital, was hit, which is a neonatal hospital. The nurses were evacuating children, and incubators, and a lot of people died there as well. So you know, when people have to worry about just simple, basic access to health care, if you’re pregnant, how do you get health care? What are the hospitals that are still operational in some of these places, they’re remote villages or remote cities that are underdeveloped, so you don’t even have a lot of health care facilities, and now they’re being damaged in different ways. People are thinking about survival. So when you think about survival, you can’t really think about rights, right? It’s a hierarchy. And so I think that we have to see what happens. I see the future of my country, unfortunately, extremely bleak. And I think before we had a terrible condition, you know, we had a dictator, a system that didn’t respond to any efforts, any demands of the people for reform, that consistently showed up with force. But nevertheless, people, and certainly women, were pushing the system back step by step. It took multiple decades, but they were doing that. But now I feel that it’s the people that are going to be pushed back and maybe in an irreversible manner, because, by all accounts and everyone’s analysis, that this regime is going to survive even this bloody conflict, and when it does, it’s going to have an ax to grind, not only with the countries that attacked it, but Perhaps with its own citizens that no longer want it. I anticipate that we’re going to have a major period of repression unlike both you’ve seen before, and I hope this analysis is wrong, that somehow we emerge from all this death and destruction in a state that’s more democratic, but it seems unlikely. I don’t think that we can expect liberation, and we’ve always said this, and I think civil society deep rooted civil society. In Iran, people have been doing this work and have been watching what’s happening in the region. Recognize that we can’t have liberation through bombs, and we can’t ask one fascist government, genocidal government, to come and rescue us from the hands of another fascist government. So I don’t anticipate that the situation is
Sam Goldman 32:45
going to get better. Susan, I want to just thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us, to share your insight and expertise. My heart is with you and with your family, friends and others who are in Iran, and you know if there’s any last words or anything that you wanted to say, if there’s anything that you want to direct people to as well. Now is a great opportunity.
Sussan Tahmasebi 33:10
After the killing of protesters, we came up with a plan to sort of see how we can support the women human rights defenders, and we continue to really work on that. I suggest that people take a look at our website, take a look at our social media, where we continue to feature the cases of Iranian women protesters who were arrested, because there’s so many of them. And we do believe that this brings some accountability. It’s better than them being totally anonymous. These are regular, ordinary people, so we’re doing that, and we’re trying to support women, human rights defenders and women’s civil society inside the country, and in turn, hopefully, if we can support them, then they can support people inside the country. So do take a look at our website. Do take a look at our social media and keep updated on what’s happening. We’re trying to do reports. We had something on protection. How do we protect human rights defenders? We’re working on a document on the humanitarian needs. It’s slow. A lot of us are Iranian, and I think we’re also mourning these developments. It’s very difficult for us, and people don’t have news from their families because the internet is shut down. But do follow us and keep in touch. And I look forward to talking with you again. This is just the beginning of a very long and difficult road that we have ahead of us. So I look forward to speaking with you and your audiences in the future about what’s happening in Iran.
Sam Goldman 34:27
Take care. Thank you so much. Thanks. Thank you.
Sam Goldman 34:36
Next here is my conversation with Jonathan Larson. This is a slightly edited down version of my interview that originally aired as a sub stack live this past Thursday. Be sure to subscribe to our sub stack so you can read and see all that we’re doing over there and support this work and a big thank you to. Everybody who tuned in and participated in the live this past Thursday.
Sam Goldman 35:10
Right now, we are in an extremely dangerous moment. We’re now nearly two weeks into this illegitimate and illegal war that the US and Israel have launched on Iran, bombs have been raining death and destruction for nearly two weeks. The death toll is way over 1300 people, including many children, and this war could quickly spiral into a wider regional or even global war. What makes this even more chilling is that for not just a powerful layer of Trump space, but a powerful section within the regime themselves. This war in the Middle East isn’t just geopolitics. It’s interpreted through an apocalyptic religious framework, and that’s why I wanted to speak with and I know that you wanted to hear from veteran journalist and founder of the fucking news substack, Jonathan Larson. Jonathan recently reported on complaints from service members who say they were exposed to Armageddon briefings framing this war in explicitly apocalyptic terms. And this reporting to me, to you, I’m sure, raised profound questions about what ideology is shaping the most powerful, the most lethal military in the world, what it means when elements of the US military, leaders of the US military are being influenced by a movement that sees catastrophic war potentially game over for humanity as divinely ordained. So Jonathan, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks for having me, and I hear you spells from a disposable camera on specifying on Iran and not with Iran. I hear that So Jonathan, first, can you tell us about the article that’s now gone viral that you wrote based on military Religious Freedom Foundation complaints that came in the immediate aftermath of the war on Iran launching basically, what did Mr. FF report that they were hearing, who was supposedly saying it, how many complaints did they report? And maybe kind of like how you went about investigating that,
Jonathan Larsen 37:07
at the risk of showing how easily the sausage was made. There was not any real investigating to this. I’ve covered the military, Religious Freedom Foundation, the Mr. FF, multiple times in the past. I have enough of a good relationship with Mr. FF, President, Mikey Weinstein, that I can tell him to shut the hell up already. Basically, we’re in sort of on and off, pretty steady touch. And on that Monday, less than 72 hours after the US and Israel had started the war, I was speaking with Mikey, and he mentioned that they were getting these calls, and the number of calls at last count has reached 200 and these are individual complaints. It’s a little unsatisfying as a journalist and possibly as a consumer of journalism as well, that you know, Mikey didn’t create a spreadsheet for us categorizing all of these complaints. Rapture, not rapture, pre millennial, post millennial dispensation list, all these terms that, to me, sort of blend together as Dungeons and Dragons, but the general gist was one of the complainants did agree to put what they had to say in an email, which, by the way, of course, I hope people understand there are very strong incentives for them not to use email to make complaints outside the military about the military. I hope folks understand that and the reasons for anonymity this one email that they got was from a non commissioned officer, a non com or NCO, who said they were stationed at a combat unit that was not in the area of responsibility, the Iran combat zone, I guess you would say, but they were with a ready support status, a combat unit in ready support status, which meant that they could be called to action at any time. This would have been Monday morning. Their commander said to the NCOs that the spirit of it, no pun intended was basically to try to, I think I’m extrapolating, a little bit, sort of calm people down and let them know everything’s okay. Unfortunately, their way of doing that was assuring them that this was part of God’s plan, which makes even some Christians feel not okay. The majority of Mr. Ff clients. They call their whistleblowers or complainants. They call them clients. A majority of them are Christian and a majority of them are Christians complaining about Christian proselytization. In this case, the commander told the NCOs tell your troops, I’m paraphrasing, but not much here, tell your troops that it’s okay. This is part of God’s plan. Jesus has anointed President Trump to light the signal fire for Armageddon in Iran and bring about the return of Jesus Christ. So basically, little bit of bad news, good news, I guess, was the intent there. And obviously this is not okay, both in just sort of an intuitive human sense, but also a by the book sense, and the person who committed this complaint. Linked to email said they were representing I believe, 15 people total, including 11 Christians, one Jewish person and one Muslim. But again, the majority are Christians who very likely subscribe to a denomination of Christianity that doesn’t actually espouse these particular beliefs. And so they were not happy about it. And according to Mikey at the Mr. FF, they received complaints from every single branch of the US military. At the last I heard it was 50 different installations spread across all the branches of the military.
Sam Goldman 40:34
I think that it’s, excuse me, fucking insane that these are not allegations of like, Oh, I heard some not so on the street saying this. This is allegedly coming from a US military commander speaking to military officers right after this war on Iran started, I feel like people have to sit with that, and then they have to sit with the fact that this is not one allegation, but multiple since your reporting came out, the story has been all over the place. What impact are you seeing? What else has come to light? I know that there are more investigations happening about it. What else do we need to know?
Jonathan Larsen 41:14
There’s a lot going on around all of this, but I think the most important thing for people to know is why I was surprised that it went so viral. And the reason I was surprised is that, as I mentioned, I’ve been talking to the Mr. FF and covering their activities for years. And what you just said, I would suggest, is actually a little bit off about how strange this is. You know, if you heard this from someone on the street, this is not unusual within the US military. It’s not omnipresent. It’s not official policy, but I’ve covered any number of complaints like this that the Mr. FF has received, and that pattern tends to iterate itself with heightened intensity, let’s say in times of active conflict or the prospect of active conflict, and if it’s in the Middle East, then we’re really talking the mrff. For instance, they pointed out that they saw similar rhetoric after the October 7 attack and Israel’s response to Hamas going into Gaza. This is the kind of rhetoric that is not uncommon within the military at all. What made it, of course, unusual here was that now we’re talking about one of the most far reaching military conflicts, certainly involving the United States, that we have seen arguably since maybe even before the Gulf War, given the number of countries targeted by Iran since then, Mikey said that they got a handful of complaints as well, about sort of last minute Bible study sessions as well. Some of the, I forget how many, maybe they got 14 calls, something like that. About commanders. It’s not unusual again, for commanders to have these Bible studies, which are like optional. The word Mikey uses is voluntold. When your commander says, Hey, why don’t you come a no is optional, but also you’re risking quite a bit in terms of your career, standing in a place where your boss has a lot more control and say over your life than a civilian boss. On Wednesday, I reported the additional Bible studies that were scheduled last minute, like normally they might schedule regular ones every week, every month, or something like that. This was after the bombs started dropping. On Saturday, it was like, you know, okay, everyone Bible study my place tomorrow. The context was clear. We don’t know what was said at these Bible studies, because, according to Mikey, none of his clients actually went to them. Then by Friday, there were a couple more developments. One was a group of, I believe, 30 members of Congress, led by Jared Huffman and Jamie Raskin. They’re the co founders of the congressional free thought caucus. They got a whole bunch of members of Congress, including Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, including Pramila Jayapal, the former Progressive Caucus Chair, their folks in Ilhan Omar, a bunch of sort of boldface names, if you will. And what they did was they were asking, they were sending an official letter to the inspector general of the Pentagon saying, We want you to look into this and breaking down a number of different categories of things that merit further investigation and further details. I don’t know whether the Inspector General is going to respond. I don’t know whether that’s the norm. And then the last thing I would say that happened is what didn’t happen? The dog that didn’t bark. People might assume, not wrongly, that I don’t get a lot of people to respond to my requests for comment, because I’m a lowly sub stacker. In fact, however, the Trump administration has been pretty responsive to me, more so, I would say, than Biden administration was. I’ve gotten comments from the Pentagon before. In this case, there was nothing. No, we’ll get back to you. No, sorry, we’re not going to comment. Certainly, no explanation of what was going on here. So nothing. As the week went on, from Monday, it turns out that other reporters who were picking up on this, they were getting the same absolute ghosting from the Pentagon, which is even more unusual for them, because these are brand name outlets. These are people who have working relationships with the Pentagon Press shop. So for them to say nothing, even to those folks, they did at one point refer folks back to some videos that hexf had done before the news had come out, so it was sort of demonstrably non responsive to the story. Then on Friday, as I wrote up on my sub stack, Mikey told me that a senior Pentagon official said that internally within the Pentagon, they had heard from some commanders that, yeah, I might have said something along those lines. The reason we didn’t hear from the Pentagon about it was because they had yet to settle on what their comms strategy was going to be about this. What would they admit? How would they phrase what they admit? And also the overarching question of, is this okay? And reportedly, what this official was saying was, we haven’t seen this from the Pentagon yet, but this sort of leading contender for a response was basically First Amendment dude. They’re allowed to say what they want. You know, maybe making a case under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, but we never heard so we don’t know what their thinking is on this, let alone whether they’ve settled on anything.
Sam Goldman 46:19
It’s really helpful context that I appreciate. You know, I think part of why people may have a hard time believing that these military commanders could have said this to their troops is because they haven’t been following how much attention the Christian fascist forces have paid to recruiting and evangelizing to troops precisely because they have been planning for this sort of apocalyptic war for some time. I’m going back to when General Jerry Boykin under Bush, one of these special operations guys, was saying all this incredibly insane stuff about going on a crusade against Islam. Now fast forward to today, and he’s executive vice president at the Family Research Council, which is no surprise, loudly proclaiming that this war against Iran is so great and wonderful, asking God to bless Trump and the US for waging it, and realizing that was happening. Yeah, and I’m not sure whether folks have seen but you know, it was just last week in the Oval Office. They’re praying in the Oval Office, surrounding Trump, putting their hands on him in a way that if this was a few years ago, that would be a story, and now it’s just normalized. And I think that somebody have put it in the chat, it’s no surprise that military commanders are doing this. Look at who the self proclaimed Secretary of War is this is somebody who celebrates the Crusades, who has it literally dude on their body. You spoke some of this already. I was hoping you know, can you fill in some of the holes for people on how this is not surprising for anybody who’s been tracking this, in other words, that they’ve been planning for an apocalyptic war for some time.
Jonathan Larsen 48:04
I certainly couldn’t speak to how many are actively planning for it, but counting on it certainly that’s one of the biblical interpretations out there. I think there’s a few things that explain why people are so like, what the hell when they hear about this? One is that hegseth Personal theology. And I don’t claim to be an expert by any means, I think we’re more familiar with his theology in social aspects. There was a lot of attention paid to the views of women of Doug Wilson, one of the pastors with whom hegseth has affiliated himself. I did some reporting last year, White House Cabinet Bible study that hegseth sponsors and attends, and the guy who runs that a far right preacher named Ralph drollinger, he’s got his own distinct theology. All of these theologies, my guess, are different from the commander in the case of this story, and so it risks getting kind of blended together as one big, sort of apocalyptic rapture stew, and some of them may feel it’s their mission to set the table for prophecy. I don’t think there are a lot of the sort of like imagine that they have to press the button to fulfill prophecy, but I do see a lot more setting the table right. That explains a lot of US policy towards Israel as well as Jerusalem and things along those lines. They have an eye on what biblical prophecy is. But I think the other reason that is it’s so shocking to people. I used to work with a guy named Paul rykoff who started Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and one of his big beefs was what a small percentage of the population now serve in the military, and the cultural schism that creates it makes it much more difficult for the general population to have a sense of what it means to be in the military. Forget the movies, just the day to day. This is a very culturally different thing from what most of us out here. Or in the free world, come to know his life. So that’s one circle in the Venn diagram that most of us don’t intersect with. And extreme Christian religiosity, whether you want to call it Christian nationalism, whether it is Christian nationalism, it’s not necessarily you can still be, you know, fundamentalist Christian and Evangelical, and not be those things. But most people aren’t those things. The intersection of those two worlds is relatively small relative to the general population, so the idea that there are dozens, scores, maybe more, Commander and above rank who believe this stuff, who fall into that intersection and are comfortable, not just under Trump, but under Presidents of both administrations, they’ve felt pretty comfortable sharing this stuff. And to be clear, there is 100% a case to be made here for hegseth and Trump creating an atmosphere of permissiveness where this kind of thing is celebrated, but both parties prior to Trump created and tolerated an atmosphere where it wasn’t actively rooted out. There was no educational effort to explain to commanders. Nope, here’s why, not. So we’re sort of seeing the fruits of that. We were a little bit closer to peg Seth’s approach to things than we should have been, or would have been if both parties, when they held the White House and the military had been vigilant about this kind of thing, they weren’t, and this is what we get now.
Sam Goldman 51:28
I appreciate you exploring that. You know, I think that what we’re facing now is just a lethal recipe for blind violence and death without mercy. I think that, as we were talking about earlier, in a situation that holds the danger for spiraling out into, not to be hyperbolic, but could spiral out into nuclear annihilation. This is dangerous lunacy, and it represents, in my opinion, the acceleration of consolidating in all out Christian fascist America. And that is not me saying that. I think Trump is a Christian fascist. He’s not, but he foments and relies on them to implement his agenda. You’re focusing on Pete hegseth, I think is important. A lot of people look at him, not wrongly, so, as this ridiculous character he is, on the one hand, he comes off as this, like drunk buffoonish News host, but that’s not the full picture. The New York Times, I don’t know if you saw just published a piece portraying his journey from Wall Street to the rock war, claiming that his so called nation building experiences there in 2006 disillusioned him from attempting to view any war efforts through a moral lens, I think that completely papers over the Christian fascist morality that pulses through his body. As I said earlier, he’s got a slogan from the original Christian crusades tattooed on his body. I don’t think that Christian fascist morality is a good morality, but it has a coherence to it, the valorization of might and dominance of traditional hierarchies, men over women, whites over people of color, rich over poor, and so on. I was wondering, what are some of the things that you think people are missing or need to understand about Pete hegseth In particular, and his worldview to understand the implications of whatever you want to call it, Christian fascism, Christian nationalism, Christian extremism, leading the military.
Jonathan Larsen 53:29
Not to be facetious, but I’m going to be facetious, I guess I would say to anyone seeking to understand Pete hegseth, good luck to you. I suspect that this is not a man who is especially intellectually rigorous about his theological positions, he implemented these monthly prayer sessions. Tell us
Sam Goldman 53:48
about those, because I don’t think a lot of people know about them.
Jonathan Larsen 53:51
They have an auditorium at the Pentagon. They transmit the prayer session via closed circuit throughout the Pentagon so anyone can watch it within the military. And of course, you’re voluntold that you don’t have to come, but it sure would be neat if you did. So the room is always packed, and we have no way of knowing, of course, how many of those folks are true believers, and how many of those folks are true believers in their career? And I think a lot of people tend to view the idea of a prayer meeting in pretty benign, anodyne terms. Look, the founding fathers were deists, but they had some tolerance, some acceptance of religious observance within government. They had chaplains in Congress. But I think when people think about these things in anodyne terms, they tend to assume it’s basically a fairly down the middle pastor gets up and says, basically, I sure hope things work out. Okay, I’ll be great. Be nice to people. Coffee’s over on the table. And also, in the context of the military, there is explicit guidance. For instance, the chaplaincy corps. It’s very baked into the military that the religious aspects of the military are not supposed to be sectarian aspects of the military, they are supposed to be resources to serve the spiritual needs of anyone in the military. Hegseth, in these monthly prayer sessions, has not been observing or honoring the spirit of that. The people he brings in month after month are his people, people who think like him, people who believe what he believes. That said, I did say earlier, it’s it’s possibly a mugs game to try to suss out what HEG Seth believes, because there’s Doug Wilson, there’s another guy whose church he goes to, but he also lends his name as a sponsor. I reported this last summer to this guy, Ralph drollinger, who for years now has been holding weekly Bible studies for the Senate and the House when they’re in session and for the White House when there’s a Republican in the White House. And drollinger has his own theological take on things. And we also saw Pete hegseth speak last month at the National Prayer Breakfast. That event is run by an organization called the Fellowship Foundation, which people are probably much more familiar with as the family. Thanks. Jeff Charlotte, exactly. He wrote two books, the family and C Street about the Fellowship Foundation, which was then made into a Netflix documentary series, if people want to learn more about that. But that’s its own take on Christianity. In fact, they don’t even call themselves Christian. They just say they’re followers of Jesus, and we’re not denominational. We’re all just followers of Jesus, His teachings, or what have you. That’s very different from drollinger. Drollinger, in fact, has said that the prayer breakfasts are Maybe I’m exaggerating here or not remembering, but are like a curse on America. They’re too ecumenical. So we have hegseth, who is theologically associating himself here with a very broad range of spiritual religious leaders, so broad that some of them are at odds with each other. It’s hard to necessarily map his beliefs or the tenets of whatever faith he has onto Pentagon policy and Pentagon actions. The way I tend to think about a lot of these folks is as the Protestantism of Protestantism. With Protestantism, we got the whole idea that you don’t need the church to mediate between you and God. All you need is a Bible. And now we’ve got basically, you know, who reads books anymore? Now, what you have is sort of like a Christianity of the ID, which is basically, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this stuff about those people. I don’t like that. That’s a Christian thing. And boy, I sure am on board with that, whether it’s stuff that gets virtually no ink in the Bible, transgender issues, LGBTQ stuff, abortion, all of these things, of course, tiny little portion of the Bible compared to say, all of the instructions not to charge interest on loans. So basically, we have this Protestantism of Protestantism, where they just say, Yeah, I’m all about Jesus, the noted blood thirsty killer and warrior, right? We get these entirely inconsistent kind of baffling things, although I will point out that has been the nature of organized Christianity for centuries. But the point is, as I said, it is a bit of a mugs game to try to like divine. No pun intended. Where hegseth is going with this stuff. I think to some extent, he and Trump alike are ruled by ID more than ideology, religious or otherwise.
Sam Goldman 58:33
I think that there’s a lot that you put on the table, and I think that there is a great deal of trying to make sense of what this means, but also what real world impact it’s having right now. And I think that part of it is we’ve never seen anything quite like this before, even as the roots have been there for some time, as people have been talking about in the comments, which I really appreciate. I think that when we look at someone like Pete hegseth, I really recommend that people listen to Sarah Posner has an episode on reign of terror that gets deep into hegseth and explores some of his fellow travelers as well, which people know less about. I think that on the last episode of the refuse fascism podcast, we got a lot into the role of Christian Zionism and the many Christian Zionists within the regime and surrounding the regime, and the belief that this war plays a key role in the sequence of events that leads to the second coming and that that apocalyptic worldview helps explain why a large part of Trump’s white evangelical beast is cheering for that war rather than fearing it. If people do not believe me, go to Tiktok, and you will see very not extremist looking people celebrating this war because of their religious understanding. And I think that’s really important to understand that it’s not a fringe thing. And I think that at the same time. Time, a lot of experts on Christian nationalism have pointed out some of the different theological strands at work. Jonathan, you were mentioning this earlier, Christian Zionists are pre millennialists. What does that mean to people listening? It basically means they believe history is moving toward a set of Prophet sized events, culminating in the battle of Armageddon and the return of Christ. Pete hegseth, where he comes from, is a post millennialist tradition, and in that framework, believers see it as their duty to actively build God’s kingdom on earth. For hegseth, that belief is that biblical law, not civil law, not international law, is the ultimate authority. People have questions about this. You can find HEG Seth on tape talking about pursuing what he calls maximum lethality in moral and religious terms, as Jonathan you were talking about. He hosted prayer gatherings at the Pentagon, where his own pastor has spoken about war and military force in this explicitly theological language. I’m wrapping this up to say that while these strands differ, theologically, they converge politically, both reinforcing the idea that this war is justified, this war on Iran, that is, and that American military dominance is part of that divine mission. There’s no over emphasizing. I think that both of these are ways that people are coming to the shared belief that Iranian lives are disposable and America needs to dominate at the same time, I think that there is something to talking about these dynamics carefully and understanding some of the differences while we don’t all need to go and become theologians,
Jonathan Larsen 1:01:40
I think you find across a range of Christian theologies, at the moment that America, that American exceptionalism, isn’t just a global thing. It’s a preordained, anointed thing, that America is literally created by God with the purpose of serving God’s will and divinely anointed to carry out God’s Will on Earth, which basically says, whatever the hell the US does. Who the hell are you to naysay it? It is a toxic blend. I’m obviously not the first to use that phrase. Of you know this maximalist will to power with religious ideologies that are all happy to pave the way and say, do as thou wilt, in the name of God or in the name of prophecy or in the name of both. So, yes, very dangerous, as you said.
Sam Goldman 1:02:31
As you were talking, I was looking at one of the comments and Bridget was writing, can you talk a little bit about the separation of church and state? Do you feel that that has vaporized? You know, I think that that’s kind of what you were getting at, is that’s the intent of some of these it’s
Jonathan Larsen 1:02:44
interesting because drollinger, for instance, he says he supports separation of church and state. He does not want a theocracy. But what a lot of these folks want is, they sort of want to have their cake and bless it too. They want the constitution to exist. They want the three branches of government to exist, but they want everyone within those things and using those things to use those things for God’s will, as Ralph drollinger interprets it. So technically, yes, separation of church and state, but what they’re talking about is a political scenario in which the only people with access to those levers are people who are all sort of pulling in the same direction. I do think that there is, I hate to be absolutist in any direction ever, except for saying that I hate to be absolutist, I guess. But I think it’s encouraging that we haven’t heard from the Pentagon. I think if they had decided, You know what, we may not have won in Tehran yet, but we’ve won here. Now we’re in charge. Now we do whatever the hell we want. If that were the case, I think we would have seen a potentially robust, unembarrassed, straightforward, owning of what these commanders did, saying, Yeah, of course, they told their troops that all of our troops should know that this is God’s war. Trump is God’s man, and this is God’s plan. We haven’t seen that. I think that means, to some extent, they are still sensitive to the realities and the logistical and political realities of the existence of other people in the government, people in Congress, who may not be comfortable with it. Trump himself may not be comfortable with it. This is not a guy who we’ve seen demonstrate a great facility, shall we say, with the Christian faith and the practice thereof. So he might not want things to get too religious. And also, there are going to be, I guarantee you, lifetime military leaders who will be saying to hegseth, I pray we cannot let this be cast as a religious war. We went through this with the Iraq war and the war on terror. We go through this every time. It’s incredibly dangerous and provocative to let anyone frame it in those terms, a, because it’s false and they don’t get to make those decisions, but B, because you are potentially. Actually bringing down the wrath of who knows what on the heads, not just of the US military, but allies and potentially civilian targets here in the United States who could be targeted by anyone who now justifiably thinks they are acting in defense not of the Islamic Republic of Iran, but of Islam itself. That’s a real thing that the Pentagon, I hope, is very much aware of and sensitive to,
Sam Goldman 1:05:24
I think that that’s really helpful and important to keep in mind as we move to wrap up this conversation. As important as this story is, it has not been the only thing that you’ve been covering as it pertains to the Trump regime, and I just wanted to give you an opportunity if there’s a development that you think that people aren’t paying enough attention to, that you’ve been looking into. I just wanted to give you a Yeah, sure,
Jonathan Larsen 1:05:48
you’ve asked me if I want to go down the rabbit hole, and I always do. For the past year or so, I’ve been looking into these non governmental actors, a former CIA official and Venezuelan expatriate, who have been claiming, especially on right wing and friendly media, to be feeding information about Venezuela to the Trump administration over the past year. First, the Miami Herald revealed one of these guys involvement in this and confirmed that this guy was, in fact, giving briefings to first the Trump transition team and then the administration, and since then, Seth Hatena, he’s a national security reporter. He’s on substack. He’s confirmed this stuff. The Guardian has confirmed this stuff, basically that these two guys are, in fact, talking to and feeding this arguably bogus, specious information about Venezuela, including things like trende Aragua being an army sent here by Nicolas Maduro, election theft, things along those lines. What I’ve been reporting this week so far is that what we didn’t know until now was, how did they make this connection with the Trump administration? How does a random no offense to the ex CIA official, but how does an ex CIA official and a Venezuelan expatriate. How did they get connected to the Trump administration? Well, it turns out that the person who connected them was Senator Mark Wayne Mullen, Republican of Oklahoma, which I actually knew last year that these guys were claiming it was Mullen that, of course, is now much more important than it used to be, because now he’s about to take the reins, or at least he’s been nominated to take the reins at the Department of Homeland Security. Department of Homeland Security, of course, deals with immigration, and this is a guy who has helped conspiracy theorists who claim that their information, which Mullin gave to Trump in their telling of this, led to the deportation and arrests of 800 Venezuelans. So we’re looking at someone who’s got no government experience in this field. But if these guys are telling the truth, was secretly at the core of some of those horrific deportations that we saw in March and April of last year to seek out in El Salvador, apparently he was a key player getting that information to the Trump team. And of course, the other area where DHS should not be, but a lot of people are very concerned it will be, is the elections, and that was the other half of the connection that Mullen made with these guys and the Trump team was their wild claims that Venezuela, along with China, Iran, Cuba, Serbia, Russia have rigged or attempted to rig elections in 72 countries, including stealing the 2020, presidential election. So the guy who’s going to be in charge of DHS, our largest federal law enforcement agency, and potentially the tool that Trump is possibly going to deploy at the polls, that guy turns out to have been at the heart of this election conspiracy stuff, which is blaming Venezuela, which would, in theory, trigger all of these rationales for a federal takeover, whatever that means. So those stories are up on my sub stack right now, and with Mullins confirmation hearing coming next week, I’m really hoping we can flesh out exactly what happened there before he puts his hand on the Bible and is sworn in as DHS Secretary.
Sam Goldman 1:09:08
I want to thank you for the reporting you’ve been doing, for helping break this down with us this afternoon. These are incredibly serious questions about war with implications, not just for people in Iran, although the implications are right now very devastating, not just for the implications of people living in this country, but really the whole fucking planet. And it’s really, really past time that this madman get his fingers off the nuclear button. And by that madman, I mean Trump, he is given backing to Pete hegseth, seeking to rip off the mask and remake the US military as a fascist fighting force. As HEG Seth says it maximum lethality, not tepid legality. It’s really, really important that we share this conversation, that we help more people. Pay attention to it that we say uncompromisingly that this war on Iran needs to stop, that the Trump fascist regime must go. And I just want to encourage everyone to follow Jonathan’s work. If you don’t subscribe to his sub stack already, go over and do that. The fucking news is a place where you should check out. Share this live if you found it valuable and thank you. Thank you so much. And if you found this conversation meaningful, please subscribe. I just want to say thanks again, Jonathan and to everyone in the name of humanity, refuse to accept a fascism America. Take care. Thanks for listening to refuse fascism. I hope to see you on Saturday, 2pm Eastern, for stop the war on Iran, Trump must go now. What will it take to stop this war and to stop the Trump fascist regime? It’s a zoom webinar in preparation for no Kings Day. You don’t want to miss it this Saturday. 2pm Eastern, RSVP in the show notes, so that you can get the link to join support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/refuse
Sam Goldman 1:11:09
fascism, by subscribing to our sub stack or picking up some of our merch for all those things, see the show notes and for $0 of course, you can help grow this show By sharing this episode, reading and reviewing it on Apple podcast or your listening platform of choice, and recommending our substack to others, stay connected and get involved at refuse fascism.org and on social media at refuse fascism, you can also text refuse to 855-755-1314,
Sam Goldman 1:11:38
so You’re always in the loop about developments and actions. A huge thank you to Richard Marini, Lena Thorne and Mark tinkleman for helping produce this episode and every episode until next time. In the Name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America. You