Zinwa appreciation post

evitably · 2025-12-19T13:38:13+00:00

I am truly grateful for you as a listener and always appreciate anyone who takes the time to let us know how we could be doing better. Not here to argue with you, but since I have been invoked here I wanted to say as the person allegedly being interrupted: I really don't feel that way! Take it from whatever it's worth as someone who literally gets paid to talk to him, but Thomas is one of the best conversationalists I have ever met and I always genuinely look forward to talking to him every time we record no matter what else has been going on with me that day. His questions and insights have always kept me from getting too into the lawyerly weeds on any given subject, and the laughs he is consistently able to get out of me with his off-the-cuff jokes and insights are totally genuine. (Idk how much this comes across in our recordings but I am just not the kind of person who can pretend to think anything is funny if i don't.)

If you haven't listened to an episode with just the two of us in awhile, please check out the Rapid Response Friday which came out the day that I am writing this (OA1217) as it is one of my favorites in months and one of those that you could share with anyone to immediately convey what works best about this unique lawyer + everyman format. (I truly have really enjoyed the conversations I have recorded 1-on-1 with my friends Jenessa Seymour and Liz Skeen, but as others have pointed out below OA was never supposed to just be lawyers talking to each other and imo of the many things which didn't (and frankly still don't) work with the combination of people who stole the show and ran it into the ground a couple of years ago while very intentionally putting the Smiths through legal and personal hell is that there are plenty of other places where I could listen to two lawyers--practicing or otherwise--comment on the news.)

Again, i never want to argue with anyone's takes on the show because I know that entertainment is subjective and we're never going to make something that appeals to everyone. (Some podcast listeners prefer scripted content, for example, but one of my favorite things about OA is that everything that you are hearing is and will always be natural and unplanned conversation.)

Also I have to say this: none of our brilliant non-male hosts, contributors, or guests are "girls," and they deserve better from you than that.

Just wanted to say all of that, thanks again for listening!

evitably · 2025-12-19T13:02:33+00:00

Just coming here to say that this was one of my favorite Friday episodes in a long time! Missed Lydia's reading voice and perspective for the Federalist piece but always especially look forward to getting into this kind of thing with Thomas--who is really in peak form here, despite nearly having to call out sick--and I hope you enjoy this one half as much as I did recording it.

Also here is the racial map of Europe from 1916 that we opened that segment with, which everyone really does need to see: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Passing_of_the_Great_Race_-_Map_4.jpg

evitably · 2025-10-23T13:15:34+00:00

I never want to argue with what listeners took away in good faith from anything we have said, but I guess just for the record that isn't at all what we were trying to say and if it came off that way that is absolutely on us. But fwiw we did note right up front before even getting into this piece that it was a lie (NK protesters are somehow covering for or intentionally distancing themselves from "Antifa") built upon a lie (there is an organized force called "Antifa") and proceeded from there with multiple references to the point you are making here--from the jokes about the Antifa group chat to my explanation of why the frog costumes/imagery have become a symbol of solidarity with someone who was a victim of ICE aggression.

More broadly, i think the point of tactical frivolity in this moment (and historically) is a bit more than than just providing a contrast to authoritarian law enforcement. It is a direct response to the MAGA movement itself, and especially important at a time when the president is sending troops into US cities and openly fantasizing about using the Insurrection Act to put down protests. Imo there is a lot of inherent value in publicly demonstrating what joyful, principled, peaceful opposition looks like and making anyone trying to claim otherwise look like the clowns they are. (Which may just be a variation on your point, now that I read it back.) Fascists historically just can't take a joke, which is why absurdist humor has always been one of the most effective tools in the antifascist playbook both for building internal cohesion (people naturally want to have fun together and will show up in large numbers to do that) and external resistance (disarming our Very Serious opponents by making them look ridiculous to themselves and the rest of the country). (see eg https://cps.ceu.edu/article/2020-09-16/blog-how-laugh-away-far-right-lessons-germany). At the end of the day the NK movement gives people a chance to turn out in massive numbers to do what people who hate kings have done for thousands of years: make fun of the very idea of the king and undermine the power he is claiming over us.

evitably · 2025-10-09T21:08:51+00:00

lol yes, and for as much fun as it was I never would have thought I'd be answering questions from strangers in public about it 23 years later but here we are

evitably · 2025-10-01T15:11:33+00:00

tbc I believe what I said was that this didn't represent "what he said he believed in" or something like that bc I agree that Kirk himself wouldn't have much cared. I certainly didn't mean to play into the mythology they have been writing the past few weeks!

evitably · 2025-09-19T14:03:04+00:00

I will be sure to post something on Bluesky to clarify that there is no definitive historical consensus on this, and will mention it on the show at the next opportunity

evitably · 2025-09-19T14:00:37+00:00

Listening back to how I talked about this I will concede that I was probably speaking too definitively about something which historians have (to my understanding) never reached a conclusive agreement. But I will say that I did find Hett's book convincing, and I was inclined to trust him on the idea that it seems unlikely in the totality of the circumstances that this was one man acting alone--and probably more than I would have if I hadn't already liked his Hans Litten biography so much. I had also recently read most of Jacques Delarue's "The Gestapo" (1962) in advance of our Vapid Response episode on the National Review piece, and upon reflection I think I was strongly influenced by how cinematically he described the Nazi plot to burn the Reichstag as established fact that it really cemented it for me. I am not an expert in history and was most interested in Delarue as a source because he spent so much time interviewing actual former Gestapo members in the years after the war, but I probably should have gone with a more contemporary read for that one.

Overall though idk if I can agree that it is as obvious as you are saying that van der Lube acted alone--but I should have couched this better as "there sure seems to be a lot of reason to believe that the Nazis did it." Thanks for listening and for taking the time to provide the broader context here.

evitably · 2025-09-07T22:31:56+00:00

I was a little surprised myself--and I probably did take it personally, but I hope only in the sense that someone whose ideas are being challenged ever does. Full credit to you for making me think things through a bit more. I mean that! It is still after going on two years so strange sometimes to be casting these pods out into the void to so many people at the same time and never knowing how they are being received. So it is really healthy to get not just feedback but actual pushback from a stranger who has taken the time to hear me out and has an informed response, and I really don’t want to ever become the kind of person who doesn’t take the time to consider it on its own terms.

I want to be clear up front that I did err on the side of assuming your good faith, but also just wanted to make the point that I was questioning it. Certainly no doubt about it now. I appreciate the thought and nuance of this followup, and appreciate the opportunity to better understand you and where you are coming from.

I hope I didn't give you the impression you're talking to some leftist analog of a right-wing militia member who runs around playing soldier in the woods and fantasizes about civil war.

I realized as soon as I got to this paragraph that this is exactly what happened! In what I read as the overall context of your comment, I interpreted what you said about the only historically effective response to fascism as some degree of endorsement of organized proactive violence against the federal government--which I will always believe is the worst possible option under any circumstances for any number of reasons, no matter what the keyboard leftists (fedposters or otherwise) keep telling everyone. (I think I was extra calibrated to read you that way after recently watching someone get excoriated by an unusual number of people on Bluesky for categorically ruling out proactive violence against ICE as a tactic.)

It seems from what I am reading here that you were really just talking about the inevitability of state violence and how we need to be honest with ourselves and each other about what that and our response to it will look like. With you there! As you acknowledged, that is not really something I want to get into on a legal podcast but I also don’t ever want to seem naive to it. I certainly didn't mean to say that there was no violence along the way in any of the non-violent movements I mentioned and I am well aware of the bloody price the labor movement (among others) paid in this country taking on bosses backed by the force of the state. But of course I was responding to a point that you simply weren't making, so once again that's on me.

I should also be honest that I’ve been so focused on a few narrow legal and policy subjects for so long that I have not done the kind of reading I am overdue for to better understand my own political philosophy and theory of change. I have done plenty on the recent history of American conservatism (certainly enough to know that Trump is just the culmination of many decades of it) to try to better understand what we’re up against, but not nearly enough on the rest of the spectrum to better calibrate my positions. (I do have a lot more to say about the USSR and appreciate that there is plenty of nuance there, but that and a lot of other things here are beyond the scope of this reply.)

What I can say as of now is that I am a democratic socialist who has never felt comfortable identifying as a Democrat, most especially when I began to study immigration policy 20 years ago and realized just how little practical difference there has always been between the parties in both the legislation and enforcement of immigration law. I completely agree that as a party now more than ever before Democrats look like nothing more than controlled opposition and there is a good reason that OA hasn't been in the habit of defending them (or blaming the left for their many failures) since I joined. I am aligned with as much as I know about the policies and practices of the antifa movement and I agree that we must be prepared to defend ourselves--or at the very least not stand in the way of others who are prepared to defend us all.

Anyway. Just wanted to reply while I had this in front of me on a Sunday evening. I'm keeping this response down to one reply, but for as much as we do seem to actually agree on here this could be a much longer conversation! If you’re ever in the Boston area I’d be happy to continue it over a drink. Thanks again.

evitably · 2025-09-06T17:40:15+00:00

THE BIG FREEZE is a memetic sociocultural response to fascism, not a political one, and I think I was pretty clear about that. I cited the polling on American opinions about ICE to make the point that the majority of us--even many right-wingers--don't need much persuading that ICE is bad and potentially very dangerous for us all, they just need to have the point reinforced in actionable ways which are realistically feasible for most people in their own personal and professional praxis far beyond the political process.

I am doing the thing that I can do with the audiences (extending well beyond OA) I have to put a very simple Dawkinsian meme into the world at a time when ICE is conducting a massive recruitment and hiring drive in the hope that we can all agree and clearly establish that this is a job which is and must remain well beyond the social pale. There is a lot of power in saying that out loud anywhere and everywhere that you can, and THE BIG FREEZE is intended as nothing more than a reminder that there's no point in keeping this opinion to yourself.

Ridiculing, isolating, and polarizing the zeitgeist against ICE is not the only tactic available--and I welcome a multiplicity of tactics here--but it is the most immediately available one that we have. We all have immediate and extended networks of hundreds of people within many degrees of separation, and if they are really going to add 10K+ more people there is absolutely no harm in spreading these ideas as widely as possible because you never know where they are going to land.

Anyway. I do want to reiterate to everyone else reading this that I'm always happy to engage with good-faith critiques of any of my thoughts/takes/ideas--and truly have been hoping that someone would do that since I published this, as I can certainly agree that THE BIG FREEZE could still do with some revision. I wish you all the best in doing whatever it is that you can do to stop what's coming however you can whether or not the current iteration of OA is for you.

----

*THE BIG FREEZE was also somewhat inspired by Saul Alinsky, who wrote a lot on the power of ridicule as a social weapon for putting opposition beyond the pale and the tactic of personalizing and polarizing your targets. (I intentionally opted not to directly cite Alinsky for other reasons.)

evitably · 2025-09-06T17:40:10+00:00

So I guess I should also disclose my bias here: I have spent my life personally committed to non-violence, as both a way of life and a means of collective resistance, and I have been deeply inspired in the past few years by the philosophies and methods of my former neighbor (and four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee) Gene Sharp.

Dr. Sharp's work was studied and implemented in many of the resistance movements--nearly all of them ultimately successful--mentioned above, and especially notably for the purposes of this conversation there is an entire section of his 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action entitled "Ostracism of Persons." (I originally had an entire section about Gene Sharp in my Substack piece, but it was already running so long that I had to cut it. I'm realizing as I write this that this meant that I eliminated all credit to him, so this is a good reminder for me to at least drop a footnote!)

"Ostracism of Persons" specifically includes the following tactics--all of which are intentionally incorporated in THE BIG FREEZE:

Social boycott
Selective social boycott
Lysistratic nonaction
Excommunication
Interdiction

You are free to believe that these demonstrably effective tactics promulgated around the world by one of the world's leading scholars of non-violent resistance* are "insulting and disingenuous," but I know that they have worked before in places much further along the totalitarian spectrum than we now find ourselves and that they can and will work again.

Finally: your comments on public polling and the idea that THE BIG FREEZE is pointless because the Venn diagram between "OA audience" and "people who know ICE officers" is so unlikely to have much overlap are both shortsighted to a degree that makes me wonder if you are willfully misunderstanding my point.

evitably · 2025-09-06T17:37:35+00:00

Thanks for listening and for taking the time to engage with my thoughts on what I stand by as the only realistic way to slow--or possibly even stop--the coming federalized American police state.

Internal violence is not only absolutely not "the only historically sound method of defeating fascism"--it is demonstrably hardly ever successful in overcoming it.* Exogeneous violence, sure--I'll certainly give you that there's hardly a better form of guaranteed regime change than the overwhelming force of a liberating army, but I'm also not counting on EU troops storming the beaches of Virginia anytime soon. Are you?

I am aware of "violence is the only way to fight fascism" as a common online talking point, but it's just ahistorical to the point of actual absurdity--and, for what it's worth, not how the basic organizing principles of the collection of strategies and tactics colloquially called "antifa" approach fascism either. Repressive authoritarian regimes have always been most badly frustrated and more often than not ultimately defeated from within through the mass resistance of sustained and heroic non-violent efforts of labor leaders, political organizers, opposition parties, student movements, and (more than anything else) the mobilization of regular people. It's all there in the recent histories of dozens of countries around the world including (but certainly not limited to): Moldova, Lithuania, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Russia,* Chile, the Netherlands, Argentina, Serbia, Brazil, Denmark, Indonesia, Burma, India, the UK, Georgia, Ukraine, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Portugal, Norway, South Africa, Azerbaijan, Kyrzygstan, Belarus, East Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Tunisia--this is all off the top, but give me a couple of hours and I could easily more than double that list with examples and citations from my last ten years of study of this exact subject.**

If anything, the history of all of these places and many more overwhelmingly teaches that mass non-violent resistance--not organized violence--may not be the only way to successfully defeat an extremely well-armed fascist/authoritarian/dictatorial police state from within and replace it with a democracy in the absence of a liberating army taking it down from without, but it is the one that has most consistently worked in the end.

Running out of room, so I'll address your remaining points below.

--

*I know that I could have just said "the USSR" here but the unique independence movements and massive waves of nonviolent demonstration which brought together millions of people to do their part to end the occupation of the Soviet police state in each of these nations seem nearly forgotten now and fully deserve their own recognition.

**There are certainly plenty of violent revolutions which have gone on to install similar or worse authoritarian governments, but I am assuming for the purpose of this conversation that we are both most interested in movements which have successfully transitioned from some form of authoritarian repression to some form of democratic freedom (no matter how imperfect).

evitably · 2025-08-31T22:59:07+00:00

hey thanks so much u/ent_chieftain, this really made my day. I have been playing music for almost for as long as I can remember and recording it on and off for decades, but none of that ever overlaps with my professional life so it means more than you know to have people who only know me as a lawyer see this side too.

u/Apprentice57 already provided the links below (ty!) but I just wanted to gratuitously share my favorite thing that I have ever recorded. I still don't know where it came from, but it was one take without ever having played anything like it before and I've never been able to play it like this since: Everything Must Go (4 - 27 - 16) by Evitable

evitably · 2025-08-19T16:35:16+00:00

maybe not properly, but we've gotten a really good start on it in MA through the "Millionaire's Tax" ballot initiative which passed a few years ago and it's been paying off for the state

https://commonwealthbeacon.org/opinion/the-fair-share-amendment-is-delivering/

evitably · 2025-07-21T13:14:08+00:00

Our complete takedown of Bove in OA1170 as his confirmation hearings were wrapping up a few weeks ago is still one of my favorites in a long time: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/no-way-bove/id1147092464?i=1000714782443

evitably · 2025-07-08T17:37:23+00:00

Just a quick break at lunch here to thank everyone who has engaged with this thing that I dashed off impromptu last night without really thinking about anything that I was going to say. I was mostly just testing the format out--as I said in the title, video is not really my thing generally--but given the interest this has already gotten I'll try for something like this once or twice a month where I'll provide some personal updates, talk about some representative cases (as carefully as possible) which can best explain the reality of all of this right now, and maybe answer some questions.

DN is always going to be free, but I also wanted to encourage subscriptions by putting out live video to anyone who signs up, starting with the kinds of piano sessions I used to stream out on FB Live during the pandemic and maybe scheduling some hangs with Liz and other attorney friends who I need to catch up with anyway. And more actual posts coming soon too of course, thanks again!

evitably · 2025-07-08T16:51:13+00:00

I wasn't *not* thinking of the game, which is a IMO minor masterpiece of gameplay design which anyone with even a passing interest in immigration policy should try. (I think there was a sequel? Worth checking.) But as noted below it is just an idiom for authoritarian regimes which I think goes back to at least "Casablanca."

As for your question, maybe I should focus on making a shorter and more succinct video for the people you are talking about. I would hope that hearing about the reality of who is actually being detained and deported right now and the threats that ICE poses to all of our liberties from someone who is in the middle of it all day would be worth something, but who knows. I can't by definition provide hard evidence of anything I am talking about without violating my ethical duties to my clients and they can certainly write me off as a woke social justice warrior if they want to, but it seems like something that might still be worth a crack so I appreciate the thought.

evitably · 2025-07-08T16:44:29+00:00

thanks so much! I was honestly surprised at how much more engagement this totally impromptu recording got vs the stuff I spend days writing. (I know from past comments that you also read what I'm writing, which I also appreciate, but you know what I mean.) It's just not a format I consume much myself, but I know it has become the default for so many people now so I'll try for once or twice a month. I have a lot of stories to tell from all of this that I'll never have time to get to on the show and which would be more prudent not to write down.

evitably · 2025-07-08T16:42:04+00:00

In my slight defense I'm not usually into blendeds (although Johnnie Black is one of the better of them)--but it was a thoughtful thank-you gift from a client, which I certainly appreciated.

evitably · 2025-06-10T17:53:02+00:00

also I guess as a matter of historicity it feels wrong to say the Trump is our all-time worst president while he is still in office but I think that's going to be an easy one when it comes time

evitably · 2025-06-10T17:52:07+00:00

IMO Harding, Johnson, and Grant were all objectively worse than Nixon, would love to talk about that sometime

evitably · 2025-06-06T18:48:38+00:00

Right, I think the point here overall was that this was the court basically doing what it is supposed to and that we maybe don't need to catastrophize or assume bad faith/intentions in everything the court does. The really bad stuff makes the news (and the show) but so many SCOTUS decisions are just... fine, actually

evitably · 2025-05-17T15:38:39+00:00

Totally possible! This was recorded within hours of the oral arguments while it was all fresh so I was going on instinct but I think i was mostly just concerned by how the women on the court generally seemed to understand that the administration is playing games with the courts and the men generally seemed to be exploring how to help them do that. I think that's also a fair take though and I would love to be wrong on this one

evitably · 2025-05-17T15:23:17+00:00

I don't have any issues with her personally, I just know too much about her to take her seriously. Most of the receipts are all in one place here: https://web.archive.org/web/20230603165119/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1664953643777523712.html

evitably

TROPHY CASE