Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2017

The AIH Transcript for October 9, 2017

Hosts: Carol Off and Jeff Douglas

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

CAROL OFF: Hello, I'm Carol.

JEFF DOUGLAS: Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas. This is As It Happens.

[Music: Theme]

JD: Tonight.

CO: Silence on set. Harvey Weinstein's downfall comes as no surprise to a reporter who spent years trying to get a story she could publish about the producer and allegations of abuse.

JD: On the pledge and her chair. A Texas high school student says it took a lawsuit to get her back in class after she was expelled for sitting through the United States pledge of allegiance.

CO: Banding together. A student in Catalonia says that he and the hundreds-of-thousands of others who demonstrated in Barcelona yesterday want the region to stay securely inside Spain.

JD: Banding apart. After a series of sexual assaults at concerts over the summer, a Swedish comedian organizes a festival that is excluding most men.

CO: The spendthrift and not so swift. The Nobel panel gives this year's prize in economics to a man who explained why most of us don't behave reasonably when it comes to money.

JD: And…Same difference. A Quebec community sees its candidates for mayor include home addresses in their election ads, after two men named Pierre Tremblay face off for the city's top job. As It Happens the Monday edition. Radio that knows when a politician needs to say more than just their Pierres.

[Music: Theme]

Back To Top »

Part 1: Weinstein: open secret, Catalonia Unionist, typhoid challenge

Weinstein: open secret

Guest: Kim Masters

JD: It has been a seemingly swift fall from grace. At the 2015 Oscars Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein was thanked more frequently than god. Now, he has been fired from his own company after reports of numerous incidents of sexual harassment were published in The New York Times last week. Mr. Weinstein's behavior however, was reportedly an open secret in Hollywood. Kim Masters has tried to publish a story on these allegations for years. Ms. Masters is the Hollywood Reporter is Editor-at-Large. We reached her in Los Angeles.

CO: Kim, when did you first hear rumors about Harvey Weinstein?

KIM MASTERS: That was more than 20 years ago. I heard through a colleague of a director who happened to be a woman, who had heard about a very well-known actress who had, had one of these bad experiences — a very bad experience as it was told to us — with Harvey. And you know, we immediately started looking into it of course, and it was like this wall of silence that we could not penetrate.

CO: Well, what exactly did you hear 20 years ago? What was the story — what did the prison allege?

KM: The allegation was even more serious than what has been revealed so far. And so I want to be careful because, as I say, we have not yet managed to confirm that level. You know, there's a lot of very bad behavior, and this would have been even worse. And it's very possible that subsequent reporting will reveal it, but let's just say it would have been in the criminal area.

CO: And this is a woman who told you this 20 years ago?

KM: Or more, I mean honestly I can't quite remember when it started but it's been — the New York Times I think talked about this behavior continuing for decades, and that is the case.

CO: So if you're dealing with something that is possibly criminal in nature is there any other way you can report the story? Did you have any support among your editorial bosses that would allow you to pursue the story?

KM: Support? You know, I worked at different publications over the years and I think I had a couple of occasions where I had editors who I believe would have gone forward with the story. I'm absolutely sure Janice Min at The Hollywood Reporter would have gone forward with the story. We almost had it a couple of years ago and the source withdrew at the last minute. So we would have published that story, but the bar is really, really high when you're going to make these allegations in terms of journalism. So it is not easy is my point.

CO: How often over the decades have you heard stories about Harvey Weinstein and these kinds of allegations of abuse?

KM: Intermittently. I went to see a film maker — a very well-known filmmaker and I'm actually trying to reach him to see if I can use his name — I went to have lunch with him several years ago. He was somebody who was very associated with the Weinstein family and he was just absolutely ashen. He had just heard about allegations involving Rose McGowan, and honestly I had assumed that he knew, and I said, “Well how did you not know this, because I've known this for years?” And he said, “I did not know this, and I am shocked and horrified, and I will not do business with them ever again.” And I think he really didn't. So not everybody was willing to accommodate and ignore the behavior or the allegations. But many people did do exactly that, they rationalized whatever they did one way or another.

CO: And you mentioned Rose McGowan, she has tweeted, “Ladies of Hollywood, your silence is deafening. And I'm looking for actresses like Nicole Kidman and Gwyneth Paltrow who have said nothing to come forward.” Do you think it's up to those stars, those women who have power of their own, that they should be the ones to come forward at this point?

KM: That was always what we hoped would be the case. And some women are starting to speak up, maybe not from first-hand experience, but just to say that they support Ashley Judd, who did go onto the record. I mean, technically Rose McGowan is still not on the record about what happened to her. I suspect she signed a nondisclosure agreement. You know, we know that Harvey settled bunches of these cases and wrote a cheque. So I hate to put the burden only on the women. Why is it only the women who have to speak up? There are men who work there and haven't been asked to speak up so publicly. So as much as I would like to see anyone support women who speak up in these difficult circumstances, I'm not sure the burden should be only on the women.

CO: What we know of situations say in show business, say in New York we had Roger Ailes and Bill O'Reilly, Bill Cosby. There's other stories of allegations about Hollywood, the casting couch is one of the oldest cliches in the business. But what you always learn are about the enablers, the enablers are the ones really that allow this to happen, right? I mean they be functioning alone to be able to get this kind of access, no?

KM: Yes, I mean there are enablers, people who are either unable by silence or by outright complicity. And it's a disgusting by-product of too much money and power.

CO: How do you think then that Harvey Weinstein was able to get away with the numbers of the allegations that have come forward so far?

KM: You know, he's been in a bit of a low ebb in the last few years and that's probably why this is happening now, in part. But in the day his power was quite intimidating, and I think a lot of people were afraid that they might not be believed, that they would be attacked by — that would hire an army of lawyers — as he has done now. Somebody like him can litigate you to death, whether they have a just cause or not — and smear you. It's asking a lot to say well, you know, “Why don’t you just go ahead and stake your career and your reputation and see what happens?” So people settled.

CO: The pattern is the one, that as the New York Times is reporting, is one in which women were sent to have meetings with Harvey Weinstein, and they alleged that they went to his hotel room as they were instructed, and then there would be all these sexual overtures, all of these efforts to try and get them into massages, everything else. But the agents and studio people who sent them for those interviews, for those meetings with Harvey Weinstein, would they not have known that those young women, many of them in their early 20s, budding starlets, would they not have known that this is what they faced when they got there?

KM: I have to say the short answer is probably yes they would have. Look, I think there's a lot of soul searching going on, and I’m sure a lot of people who are either perpetrators of harassment or enablers are frightened right now about what might come out about them. So these people have to reckon with their own consciences. I know some people — I spoke to an executive a high level executive in the Miramax days — he said that people were aware and wary of being alone with Harvey. So sometimes these people would say to whoever the executive they had contact with at the company you know, “Do not let me be with him alone. You have to come to this meeting.” And they would say, “OK, I'm coming to the meeting,” and then they’d all get into the car to go to the meeting, and then shortly before they got there Harvey would pull over and say, “OK, I've got this you should just get out.” And I don't know that they felt that they had a choice, I mean, I would like to think that someone would say ‘no I'm not getting out,’ but they got out and left and left Harvey to go on alone.

CO: You said earlier you had a source in your story, the original story, and the source backed off at the last minute. Why did she back off, do you think?

KM: I think the simple answer is fear. And I'm assuming there was a nondisclosure agreement. You know, this is a big problem these nondisclosure agreements, and not just in Hollywood. And I don't think the law is especially clear as to whether if you violate them what is the consequence.

CO: Will you try to reach out to her again now that this story is out there?

KM: You know, if somebody is a low level, is not a strong, powerful person, it is asking a lot for them to put their jobs and commit professional suicide, it's just a big ask. It is now a crisis and a scandal for the Weinstein Company and Harvey has been fired, and that's worth something and hopefully this will also contribute to a change in the culture, but I don't know because women are so underrepresented in the industry, in the executive offices and elsewhere, that the power imbalance remains a big problem. And as long as it's that egregious I think people will abuse their positions.

CO: All right we'll leave it there. Kim, I appreciate speaking with you. Thank you.

KM: Thank you.

JD: Kim Masters is the Hollywood Reporter's Editor-at-Large. We reached her in Los Angeles. Harvey Weinstein gave a statement to the New York Times saying in part quote, “The way I've behaved with my colleagues in the past has caused a lot of pain and I sincerely apologize for it.” unquote. Mr. Weinstein's lawyer said that he quote “Denies many of the accusations as patently false.” To read more on this story go to our website: www.cbc.ca/aih

[Music: Piano Ballad]

Catalonia Unionist

Guest: Ernesto Lopez

JD: Hundreds-of-thousands of people filled the streets of Barcelona yesterday chanting “Don't be fooled. Catalonia is Spain.” As the Catalonian government gets ready to declare itself independent, it seems that pro-Spanish Catalans have finally found their voice. The Spanish government says that it does not recognize the results of the October 1st referendum, in which the pro-independence side says 90 per cent of those who voted, voted to leave. Ernesto Lopez is a Catalan law student who is against independence. We reached him in Barcelona.

CO: Mr. Lopez can you describe what it was like to be out on the streets of Barcelona yesterday?

ERNESTO LOPEZ: Yesterday it was an incredible day. Yesterday all the city Barcelona was full of people. It was an historic day, which is two hours before it actually began, the streets were already filled with people.

CO: And what is the message that you and the others wanted to send to the government of Catalonia?

EL: The message was to say that the government of Catalonia, is that on Tuesday they want to declare independence, tomorrow, and our message was, “No not in our name.” We don't want to separate from the rest of Spain, we are better together. We want to stay in the European Union. You don't have any legitimacy to break the Constitution and to separate us from Spain.

CO: Now I know you are a student, you're a law student in Catalonia, with a lot of young people, we've spoken with some who are very excited by the whole independence movement in Catalonia. Why do you oppose it?

EL: I oppose it because I believe that political communities should be bigger not smaller. I believe that the future passes through European integration. I believe in a federal Europe. I believe even someday, in a global government. I believe that the future comes from understanding people who live outside the national borders and working together. I don’t want Catalonia to become a little country. With globalization, we would be completely insignificant.

CO: So you oppose independence, but what about the message from those fighting for independence? Do you think that Catalonia could have a better relationship with Spain? Do you think, as the independentists say, that you're being treated badly, taken advantage of? What do you say to that?

EL: Spain has problems but we need to talk about them as a whole. We cannot transform these problems that Spain obviously has in [inaudible] against Catalonia. We can speak, we can make reforms but only inside the law, because outside the Constitution there is no possible dialogue. And if the Catalan government still is threatening to gain independence if the demands are not met, this is a not negotiation — it's hijack.

CO: The authorities in Catalonia, the referendum they had last weekend, they said that the ‘yes’ side won the referendum with 90 per cent of the vote. Did you cast a ballot in that referendum?

EL: No, I didn't cast a vote for one simple reason, I never vote if there are no guarantees of the vote. We sent two of our volunteers to see if it was possible to vote four times. They could, because there was only one census. And so you could go to as many points or you want and vote again, and again and again.

CO: So you feel that it was not a legitimate vote for those reasons, that you could vote as many times as you want to, you don't know who actually voted. What do you think about the way that the Spanish authorities responded? What did it think about the way the police cracked down on people? The taking of the ballot boxes, the strong-armed way that they dealt with the the independentist movement?

EL: I personally think that the Spanish government, if it wanted to stop the referendum, had many other options. The Spanish government thought that the Catalan police would obey judicial orders. The Catalan police disobeyed judicial orders and after that nobody had no plan B. And what happened was a complete mess, and something that never should have happened — never. It was a horrible day and it never should have happened.

CO: Do you think it's possible that the police by doing that, they pushed more people in to the arms of the separatists?

EL: Maybe. Maybe some who didn’t have a very clear [inaudible] for independence. But you know, only three of the more than 10 businesses that have left Catalonia this week, they support 300 per cent of the Catalan GDP, three hundred percent of our GDP. And these businesses have gone because of the threat of our Declaration of Independence. But what Catalan separatists are doing it directly is a threat to the economic recovery Spain is beginning to experience.

CO: As you mentioned, there are these major businesses, corporations are pulling out of Catalonia, there are all kinds of reactions to that. The federal government is saying it will crack down. What do you think will happen tomorrow if Catalonia goes through and declares independence?

EL: Tomorrow it's possible that we are going to see some type of declaration of independence, but it will have no effects because a declaration of independence only works if other states recognize you. And from the debate in the European Parliament last week we saw that no European state member will recognize a declaration of independence. It would be completely useless. What they are looking for is for the Spanish police to arrest and Catalan governors — they want to provoke a situation of violence.

CO: Mr. Lopez we will be watching tomorrow doing during the week and see what happens. I appreciate you talking to us tonight. Thank you.

EL: Thank you very much.

JD: Ernesto Lopez is a Catalan student who opposes independence. We reached him in Barcelona.

[Music: Upright Bass]

Same name mayor

JD: Dateline Les Éboulements Quebec.

[Music]

JD: We are in the final stretch before the November 5th voting day in municipalities across the Province of Quebec. With just four weeks to go, candidates are scrambling to distinguish themselves from their rivals on the ballot. That is proving a little harder in one small community on the north shore of the St. Lawrence. The nominations in Les Éboulements have left just one name on the list — but it is there twice. And that is because the two men who want to be mayor also share a name — Pierre Tremblay. Now the Pierres say this is not a problem. But here's how one local woman responded when she heard about the Tremblay two-for.

SOUNDCLIP

WOMAN SPEAKING FRENCH.

JD: “Two Pierre Tremblays? That's going to cause confusion,” she said. “They better be identified well.” And the Pierres are doing their best. Both the Pierre who is pushing for faster development and the Pierre who's worried about out of town investment are putting their street addresses on signs and other campaign literature. And now it is up to voters to decide which Pierre, at what address, they want to address as mayor.

[Music: Upbeat Tropical]

Typhoid challenge

Guest: Daina Sadurska

JD: Developing countries that have to grapple with typhoid fever can breathe a sigh of relief. The medical journal The Lancet has published the results of a human trial of a new typhoid vaccine. It is 87 per cent effective and most important, unlike previous typhoid vaccines, it is safe to give to children and infants. Now in order to conduct this trial the researchers at Oxford University wanted to get the results as soon as possible. So rather than giving the vaccine to a group of people at risk of contracting typhoid and then watching them for a few years, they did something called a “challenge test.” That means they gave some people their typhoid vaccine, and then deliberately infected them with a live typhoid virus to see what happened. Daina Sadurska was one of the people who participated in the trial. She is a postgraduate student in biology at Oxford and that is where we reached her.

CO: Diana, why on earth did you agree to be exposed to typhoid fever?

[LAUGHTER]

DAINA SADURSKA: That's a very interesting question. So, well many readers actually. One of them — it's interesting to have science done on me rather than by me, which is a nice change of pace. And also this is a typhoid vaccine which is safe in children, and vaccines are the most powerful tool for saving lives especially children's lives. So, this was a big thing to take part in this.

CO: You thought you’re basically doing something useful.

DS: Yes, absolutely.

CO: But you also got paid. How much did you make?

DS: So we were paid about, if I remember correctly, two-and-a-half-thousand pounds for that.

CO: So I think about $4,000. That's a pretty good chunk of change.

DS: Well it is. That was for one year participation in study. Two Fairly intense weeks of go into the hospital every day, and giving blood samples, being infected. Quite a few people actually getting the disease, so.

CO: OK, how did it actually work? Tell us what you did in order to do the test.

DS: So, initially all the volunteers were screened, to see whether we were eligible for the study. And one one of the things we were screened for was to make sure that we don't have gall stones, because that is how typhoid can become latent — hiding in the gallstones. And that's why we think Typhoid Mary was able to infect so many people, that she actually had typhoid in her gallstones. And then we were given the vaccine, and some months from then we went up to the hospital and drank a shot of typhoid from a test tube and voila. And then some of us, about six days from then, got typhoid. I was one of the lucky ones, I got the new vaccine ,so I didn't get any disease, but I was still going to hospital still every day giving blood, giving samples.

CO: But you actually took the typhoid fever, you took the vial. Is everyone given typhoid or they're different, where there placebos at all?

DS: The way it worked, there were three different vaccines that were given to people. One of them was the new typhoid vaccine that they were testing, the other one was the old typhoid the vaccine that is licensed in the UK. And the third one was a placebo, it was a Meningitis B vaccine. So it was not in any way effective against typhoid. And then all of these people were given typhoid to drink. So there was a one-in-three chance that you would have no vaccine, no effective vaccine and still drink typhoid.

CO: How sick did people get? Do you know others who did get typhoid and didn't have the right vaccine?

DS: Yes I do. Most of them described it as having a really bad flu. The moment typhoid bacteria were detected in blood by the doctors or the moment someone had high fever, they were immediately given antibiotics and then the infection would clear up within about two days.

CO: Now these trials are called challenges aren’t they? You say you have a lot of reasons why you want to take part in it. A lot of people who take part in these do so for the money. And they tend to target students because they usually need some money. So what do you think of the ethical concerns about that?

DS: Well, of course I had many reasons to take part but one of the reasons was the money because it was welcome addition to by student stipend. We need these volunteers, we need people who are willing to test vaccines in order for these vaccines to be available for the general public.

CO: What did your family say when you told them you had done this?

DS: Well, when I told my family they were rather shocked at first. So there was a bit of a family history regarding typhoid, because on my mother's side of the family my great grandmother's family contracted typhoid during World War I, and only my great grandmother, her sister and her brother survived — so a lot of people died. So when I told my mom that, ‘oh yeah, by the way being infected with typhoid,’ you can imagine what her actually was. But when you calmly and reasonably explained that actually this is pretty safe, how tightly controlled the studies are and all the details, then really these things become a significantly less scary.

CO: Do you know if this vaccine is now, because of the test and it seems to be is good a success rate with it. Do you know that this is actually going to mean that this vaccine will be available for people?

DS: Currently in fact, this vaccine is available and is being used in, if I remember correctly, India. So considering the results that indicate, if I remember correctly, over 80 per cent effectiveness, and the fact that this vaccine is safe in children and infants, which is a huge thing. The previous one was not allowed for children under 12 years of age, and typhoid is actually more dangerous to children than adults.

CO: And what did you do with the money you got?

[LAUGHTER]

DS: Me and my boyfriend, who also took part in the same trial, we decided that we didn't want to spend any of this money which we gained from, as we tend to call it, our pain and suffering. We didn't want to spend it on mundane everyday survival things. So we ended up going on a holiday together to Croatia, which was amazing.

CO: All right that sounds lovely. Daina, I appreciate speaking with you, thank you.

DS: No problem, you’re welcome.

JD: Daina Sadurska is a post graduate student in biology at Oxford. That is where we reached her.

Back To Top »

Part 2: Pledge protest, cis man-free music festival

Pledge protest

Guest: India Landry

JD: Players across the NFL continue to take a knee as the U.S. national anthem was played at games yesterday. Meanwhile, a high school student in Texas has been holding a protest of her own. For the past three years India Landry has been sitting while her classmates stand to swear the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. She says the Pledge goes against everything she believes. But a week ago, she was expelled after she sat during the pledge while in the school principal's office. The story made headlines, the family filed a lawsuit, and then the principal called Ms. Landry to say that she can return to school and that she can continue to sit. We reached India Landry earlier today in Houston

CO: India, can you describe what happened the day you were expelled from school?

INDIA LANDRY: I was sitting in the office and the principal of the school was in there, and the secretary, and the Pledge of Allegiance came over the intercom and they both stood and I didn’t. And when they saw me not standing they asked me to stand, and I said I wouldn't do that. And they said, “Well you're going to stand or you can’t be here.” And I said, “I won’t do that,” and they said, “Well you’re kicked out of here,” and she walked out of the room.

CO: And then what happened?

IL: I sat there and I waited, and while I was waiting the secretary was like, “This isn't the NFL. You won't do this here.” And then they brought me into another room where I talked to an assistant principal and the whole time she was saying, “Your mom needs to be here in five minutes, because if she's not we're going to have the police escort you out of the building because you are 17.”

CO: So did your mom come?

IL: Yes, my mom she lives like 30 minutes away from the school, so she couldn't be there in five minutes. They still kept me there.

CO: So India this wasn't the first time you had sat through the Pledge of Allegiance is it?

IL: No.

CO: How long had you been doing that in class before this incident in the principal's office?

IL: Since I've been in high school — so three years.

CO: And what inspired you to sit through the Pledge of Allegiance?

IL: I just didn't feel it would be right for me to stand because I'm standing for something that isn't true.

CO: Can you tell us what first prompted you to do that? Was there a particular incident that made you feel you couldn't stand anymore for the pledge?

IL: It wasn't a particular incident, it was like multiple things that I kept seeing happen in the news, going on in the world —police brutality and injustice.

CO: Tell me some of the things you saw and learned about that made you make this decision?

IL: Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner.

CO: These are young black men who were shot by police.

IL: Yes.

CO: Your school said this isn't the NFL this is not the National Football League. Were you inspired by Colin Kaepernick the quarterback who knelt during the national anthem?

IL: I had been before that happened, but then I saw that and I was happy that, that was happening too.

CO: And what are the actual rules at your school?

IL: You don't have to stand. And then when they see you not standing they call home to your parents. Once your parent is OK with you not standing they're just supposed to leave it alone.

CO: And what does your mother think of you not standing?

IL: She's proud of me. She supports my decision.

CO: When your mom came to get you that day how did she react?

IL: She was scared for me. When she got to the school to pick me up nobody would see her or tell her what happened, they just told her she had to sign me out and bring me home.

CO: Did they tell her what had happened?

IL: No.

CO: So you had to tell her that the reason had been that you were sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance. What did your mother do about that?

IL: She called the school and they wouldn’t answer. Then four hours later she received a phone call from them, and then they told her what happened.

CO: And what had they decided was going to happen with you after you had been kicked out?

IL: They told me I couldn't come back. They talked on the phone about it, my mom didn't understand why, because it's not illegal to not stand. We had a meeting with them, they still won't let me back in the school. We got to to the superintendent, he said that I couldn’t get kicked out of school for it and the principal of school still wouldn’t let me back in.

CO: And what has happened now?

IL: On Friday they called and said I could return to school.

CO: What do you think prompted that?

IL: Probably because they realize the amount of trouble they'd be in for it because of me being on the news.

CO: I want to understand a bit more about how you perceive this other the movement that's going on. I mean, you've heard from U.S. President Trump that he says this is this is disrespectful to flag and country, it’ss disrespectful of servicemen and women in the United States. What do you say to him?

IL: I don't agree. I think that is disrespectful of him to not understand why people are protesting.

CO: What is it you think he doesn't get?

IL: We're protesting injustice. And if the flag represents liberty and justice, then obviously with what’s been happening, it doesn't. So we can't stand for something that isn't supporting of everyone.

CO: Back to your classmates what have they said about all this since it's become a story?

IL: A lot of them told me that they'll be sitting and they don't think it's fair.

CO: Will they sit in solidarity with you or because they agree with you?

IL: I guess for both reasons.

CO: Your mother called a lawyer. Are you still pursuing legal action?

IL: Yes.

CO: What is the plan?

IL: I just want to be able to get justice for myself so that it won’t happen to people that want to sit.

CO: So your family is suing the school?

IL: Yes.

CO: OK. So you'll be back at school tomorrow?

IL: Yes, I think so.

CO: Well, how are you feeling about that?

IL: I'm nervous, scared.

CO: Why are you nervous and scared?

IL: Because I don't want to be mistreated again.

CO: Do you think you're going to have a lot support from your friends and your classmates?

IL: I hope so.

CO: All right India, it's great to talk to you. Thank you.

IL: Thank you.

CO: Bye.

IL: Bye.

JD: India Landry is a student at Windfern High School in Texas. We reached her in Houston.

[Music: Ambient Bass Tones]

Scott Pruitt Clean Power repeal

JD: Donald Trump's environment czar has announced that he's repealing what was supposed to be the centrepiece of what was supposed to be Barack Obama's environmental legacy. The Clean Power Plan was created in 2015. It was meant to fight climate change by reducing emissions from coal-fired power generators. Back then, Scott Pruitt was Oklahoma's Attorney General — he fought the Obama policy in court. Well, now President Trump has put Mr. Truitt in charge of the U.S. EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency. So here is Scott Pruitt making the announcement in Hazard, Kentucky earlier today.

SOUNDCLIP

SCOTT PRUITT: The war on coal is over. And there is great exuberance, great applause. You know what’s exciting about that, is that video. When we got back to Washington, D.C. guess where we put it? We didn't put it on the shelf, we put it on the website of the EPA. Those miners there in western Pennsylvania, emotional with respect to that message from the President. And as I’m here today, your senator promised that the EPA would come back and spend time here in eastern Kentucky. And I'm excited to be with you here today because it's not just to visit about all the things that we're doing, which is I think very, very important this country, but I'm here to make an announcement that's very, very important for you. Tomorrow in Washington, D.C., I'll be signing a proposed rule to withdraw the so-called Clean Power Plan of the past administration and thus begin the effort to withdraw that rule.

[APPLAUSE]

SP: Thank you. It's good eastern Kentucky to hear that, right? No better place to make that announcement than in Hazard, has Kentucky. And’ I’ll tell you, when you think about what that rule means, that rule really was about picking winners and losers. You know, regulatory power should not be used by any regulatory body to pick winners and losers. The past administration was unapologetic. They were using every bit of power, every bit of authority, to use the EPA to pick winners and losers in how we generate electricity in this country — and that's wrong. What we ought to be about as an agency, and this is not the most profound state that you may hear this year, but regulations ought to make things regular. They ought to work with folks all over the country and say how do we achieve better outcomes by working with industry, not against industry.

JD: That was the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Prewitt, in Hazard, Kentucky earlier today. He was announcing the Trump administration's plan to repeal the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. A number of Democrats and environmental groups have spoken out against the move, including New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. Mr. Schneiderman announced today that he will sue the Trump administration saying quote “By seeking to repeal the Clean Power Plan, especially without any credible commitment to replacing it, the Trump administration's campaign of climate change denial continues. Once again putting industry special interests ahead of all Americans’ safety, health and the environment.” unquote.

[Music: Warped Bass]

Cis man-free music festival

Guest: Emma Knyckare

JD: Twenty-three. Twenty-three — that is how many sexual assaults were reported at a popular Swedish music festival this summer. And that number prompted the festival, Bråvalla, to be canceled next year — but it also got Emma Knyckare thinking. She is a Swedish comedian who came up with a new type of event. It is called State Festival, and almost all men will be barred from attending. The idea recently became more real for the comedian. It hit it’s goal on Kickstarter, raising more than 82 thousand Canadian dollars, and that is enough to stage the event next summer. We reached Ms. Knyckare in Gothenburg, Sweden.

CO: Ms. Knyckare, why do you want to have a man-free festival?

EMMA KNYCKARE: Carol actually it's not a man-free festival. It’s for women, but it's also for non-binary people, and trans persons. I wanted to have the festival because we want to create a safe place o free zone for these kind of varied groups of people.

CO: All right. So maybe it's easier to say who's not allowed at your festival.

EK: I can say, to make it simple, we can say we are not allowing cis men to the festival.

CO: So it's someone who identifies with the gender they were born with?

EK: Yeah.

CO: And cis men includes gay men?

EK: Yeah.

CO: And how will you know who is who? How are you going to check for credentials?

EK: We can't know that. We can't look in people’s pants and say ‘you can't come and you can't.’ So I think it's up to everyone to be honest, because here in Sweden many guys are like, “Yes this is a really good project and we want our girlfriend, our sisters and friends to come to the festival and have a really nice time and to be safe.”

CO: Can you go back to this summer and tell us what happened at the festival in Bråvalla that led you to think this was necessary?

EK: Yeah, it's not only Bråvalla but this summer in Sweden there were a lot of sexual assaults, and actually, also rapes in the public crowd —10 guys going into a crowd and rape one girl. Everyone stand in a ring, just looking, and the people trying to help her can't come through. But then we started to discuss this problem in Sweden, like why is this stuff happening and what can we do about it? And I had my first day of my vacation, and I was sitting home drinking a little bit of wine and was thinking, because I'm a comedian, so I was thinking about if we just put out all of the men from the festival. Like, what if we had a festival without men until all men have learned to behave? What would happen then? And then I just tweeted this out, and people thought it was a really good idea. And I guess for me it was just like a joke from the beginning, but then it turned into being a real festival actually.

CO: This level of violence you're describing is very disturbing. And were there are other reasons for that? I mean, there are festivals that I presume don't have that much sexual violence. Do you think there are other ways to have prevented that at Bråvalla?

EK: I don't know if they could have prevented it or not. It's interesting that when we do in this Statement Festival, as we call it, because we’re thinking of how the place is built where we have the festival, we put the toilets no close to a forest, so you don’t have to go on walk alone for one kilometre for yourself right into the forest. So I think it's going to be special when women are thinking about how the place is going to look.

CO: Can you describe how you think the festival will look and be like?

EK: I don't know yet because we have just started to work with it. I think it's going to be revealing for many people who are going to be there. Just to be in a place and know that nobody's going to hurt you or you don't have to look over your shoulder all the time. And then we also have a problem in Sweden that we have a lot of male artists in the festival. It's like really strange bookings, a lot of men, not many women. So we are going to try to book a lot of woman artists, and that's also like a big difference to the festivals.

CO: Will you have male artists?

EK: Not male artists. But if they want men in their band then we don't say ‘no that's not ok.’

CO: I know you have had some arguments put back to you, that you are discriminating against men, that all men are rapists, that they also understand what it is to be vulnerable and oppressed, homosexual men, non-white men are saying that to you. So what do you say to them?

EK: I can say to them yeah, I know that not all men are rapists, but I can't know who is a rapist. So if we exclude men from one festival, two days in one year, it's just two days. It's the best thing to do, I think right now to be safe, and this is just a reaction, it's not a solution of the problem. I hope this festival is not going to happen in the future. But I think right now, we need it to start a debate, and to start talking about the problems, and to just to create this safe zone, this safe place for a lot of people.

CO: Ms. Knyckare I really appreciate speaking with you, thank you.

EK: Yeah, thank you so much.

CO: Bye, bye.

EK: Bye, bye.

JD: Emma Knyckare is a comedian and the creator of Statement Festival. We reached her in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Back To Top »

Part 3: Far-right undercover student: feature interview

Far-right undercover student: feature interview

Guest: Patrik Hermansson

JD: Richard Spencer took his tiki torches back to Charlottesville on Saturday. The Virginia community was the scene of deadly clashes in August after Mr. Spencer led an extreme-right protest against the removal of a statue honouring Robert E. Lee. The white nationalist leader said that he and his followers had returned to show that quote, “our identity matters.” That is the kind of statement that Patrik Hermansson wanted to understand when he decided to go undercover. A year ago the Swedish graduate student took on a mission — to infiltrate the extreme right and gain their trust. Mr. Herrmansson spent the past year befriending and then traveling with key far-right organizers, first in the U.K. and then in the U.S. He did it under an assumed identity, all the while sending information to the NGO Hope Not Hate. Patrik Hermansson was in our London studio.

CO: Mr. Hermansson, welcome to As It Happens.

PATRIK HERMANSSON: Thank you.

CO: Why did you decide to do this — to go undercover into the world of the extreme right?

PH: Well, I’ve been active as as an anti-fascist for years, primarily through writing and taking pictures for an organisation in Sweden called Expo, and then I moved to London and was attempting to get in touch with similar organisations here. And I asked Hope Not Hate if I could help them out.

CO: Hope Not Hate is the organization that you were with when you decided to do this right?

PH: Yes, so I went undercover for Hope Not Hate, so they suggested I should go undercover in this London-based organization, and it seemed like the best way to do antifascism.

CO: A very risky way to do it. How did you do it? Was it easy to become a member — to infiltrate it?

PH: To become a member is not super difficult, but to get into the centre and to be part of vetting people and speaking at the conferences like I did, that takes some work. So it's basically you're spending a lot of time with them, being consistent with your identity so everything fits together, so you are believable.

CO: So how did you sell yourself? What was your way of talking your way into that centre? What was it that appealed to them about what you were selling?

PH: Several things, I think. So first of all, what we have to understand is that these groups are incredibly racist, so this idea that white people are better than other people is very ingrained, and part of the whole ideology. And then building on that, they believe that white people's origin is basically Scandinavia and northern Europe. So since I was from there I was considered like an attractive, good type of member that they wanted, because whiteness is not just about — it's not a binary. There are multiple levels of whiteness. You can be more or less white and I fit into the “more white” categories as I have blue eyes and I’m from Scandinavia and that helps.

CO: You were like the gold standard of white supremacy.

PH: Basically. And it's a bit of a scary idea, but it works to our advantage in this case.

CO: To your advantage to what? So who did you meet — some of the names we’ll know, some of them I guess we won’t — but who were the key players with whom you eventually made contact and earned their trust?

PH: Well, we started in London Forum, which is not publicly known, but it's one of the most influential far-right organizations in Europe, and then in the U.S. I was in touch with, and spoke at conferences organized by Greg Johnson, who was one big ideological leader of one section of the alt-right, book publisher and writer. Then I met with people around the Richard Spencer when I was the editor at his organization Alt-Right Corporation, his name is Jason Jorjani.

CO: And he's associated with Richard Spencer, and people will know Richard Spencer because he's the man infamous for his Nazi salute, and rallying people around him in a very, very public forum after Donald Trump was elected, right?

PH: Exactly. So I've been to several of his rallies around the U.S. this summer and met many of his top people.

CO: And when you met these men, and men who are almost exclusively what you met, what were their goals? What did what did you learn about their ideology and what their objectives are?

PH: The objective or what they're fighting against, is what they think is their destruction or the downfall of Western society, Western culture, or in some of the most extreme cases, the white race. So they believe that left wing ideology, mass immigration, as they say, feminism are threats that will undermine the Western world, and that's what they fight against. So they do that by trying to shift politics and culture in a way where white people are going to say they're better than other people, where it is basically a separation between races, as they see it, but also male and female. So women have very specific traditional gender roles and men have the opposite role.

CO: Women are expected to be in the home, having children and taking traditional roles, out of the workforce.

PH: Exactly.

CO: And white men are at the top of the heap. And so what did you learn as to how they would achieve these goals should they find themselves in a position to do so? What would they do with the people who they don't consider to be part of the world they believe should exist in Europe or the United States or Canada, I guess?

PH: A common way to argue for them is a repatriation, that's kind of the first step, so that’s sending people that are not white away — this include citizens as well.

CO: So ethnically cleansing those who are not part of the white race and sending them back, or in some in some instances they have used the word exterminate.

PH: In some cases they go so far, in some cases talk about a coming race war. Others argue that we will have to institute concentration camps in Europe and in North America again. So there are different ways to argue about this, but they’re are all kind of horrific ideas.

CO: And do the people with whom you met — did they all subscribe to these ideas?

PH: To varying degree — most yes. There are exceptions, but the most extreme ones that I hung out with during this year, basically all consider that each country should be inhabited by one people, as they say, and one people is defined by skin color.

CO: There's people like that Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi who is with the Daily Stormer, who states quite clearly the goal of the movement is to ethnically cleanse white nations of non-whites and establish an authoritarian government. And they also believe that Jews should be exterminated.

PH: Yeah, so anti-Semitism is a ripe through the whole movement, it goes through everything. Everything that is wrong about society, for them, is explained through different ideas of Jewish world conspiracies, and therefore they argue for those types of ideas you just explained.

CO: But this ideology of the extreme right, you could have learned from reading what they published They don't hide these views do they — especially not anymore, since they’ve become so, well I wouldn’t say popular, but at least almost mainstream. What did you learn that you didn't know by infiltrating their ranks?

PH: Yeah, it’s easy to get the impression that we did this just to get a collection of really horrible racist quotes, but that's not at all why we do this. We're out to understand these people, to understand how they recruit. What kind of people they recruit, and why those people connected with them? What they're going to do next? So their plans, and these plans they want to know in detail. We want to know where exactly, what cities and towns they are organizing in and so on. And we want to know this because then we can mobilize against it. So Hope Not Hate, which has released a report, also organize different types of grassroots movements and campaign movements across the U.K. and now soon in the U.S. as well. So those are always informed by the research that we do, and some part of that research is infiltration that I've done now.

CO: And you also witnessed some bizarre rituals. Can you tell us some of the things that you saw as far as how they do their I guess brotherhood bonding?

PH: Of course I guess you're are referring to the paganism part. It's like I said in the beginning, this idea of Scandinavia as the origin of the white race means that there are also very interested in Scandinavian culture, or some sort of caricature of Scandinavian culture — so the belief in the Asgardian gods like Thor Odin, so many meetings are opened with us drinking mead from a horn. And there are rituals where you pray to your ancestors and then drink mead from this horn which you pass around.

CO: I mean being Swede yourself, were there times that it was hard to stifle laughter or some reaction that would be betray you?

PH: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, many of the times I go to these meetings I'm horrified. But then there are some moments where you are laughing, and you have to really struggle not to laugh straight out when they blow a horn and those types of things because it's quite comic sometimes.

CO: You must have had so many kind of out-of-body experiences where you’re just watching yourself sitting among these people, but you said horrified, did you find that I mean, because you're hearing things that you just — yourself, your own beliefs, you are vehemently opposed to them. Were there times you were tempted to speak out and say, “No, I can't do this anymore?”

PH: Almost. I mean, there are times where you feel quite horribly frustrated. You want to really argue, you want to put your foot down, but you can't, you can't leave, you just have to sit down and smile and and agree with them when you just want to do everything to stop them. But you have to see that in the long term that we have a long term perspective of why we were doing this. We had a goal and that's to counter these movements in an efficient way, and to argue with them at the single meeting with 20 people it's not that. So you have to look further and then you realize it's worth it.

CO: You're listening to a feature interview with Patrik Hermansson. He's a Swedish graduate-student who spent a year undercover with the extreme right movement. And there's one thing about this this term that gets used — Alt-Right — this is alternative right that has been abbreviated to alt-right. Lots of people are opposed to using it including myself. I mean, it does seem to be a term that sort of makes it sound kind of palatable. And so what do you make of this debate about what kind of language we should use to describe so that it doesn't, I guess, normalize this as a political movement.

PH: It's a good question, and I've followed that debate and we bring it up a lot, in a report that is given out. And our take on it is that this is actually different. We could call them Neo-Nazi's just because it feels good, but it's not actually always correct. It's a different movement, it works differently. They have very different ways of recruiting. They see the enemy a little bit differently, and therefore it's important to distinguish between different groups. I think that if we put all these different far right groups, and the alt-right is a far right group, and just define them very simply as fascist, for example, or white supremacist, that's often brought up that they should be called. The problem with that is that they all become the same and they're not. And I really believe that we need to understand these people and these movements on a deep level if are supposed to counter them.

CO: But is it not true that Richard Spencer when he coined this phrase, and he's credited for having done that, he did it because he wanted to normalize the language. The goal at this point is to — as you infiltrated them, they're trying to infiltrate mainstream conservative movements to move conservatives toward these ideas — to make them palatable. What are they doing in order to make this, I guess put a face on it that seems acceptable to maybe a large group of people?

PH: I'm sure you're completely right. These groups are trying to become mainstream and they have tried strategies in how they're supposed to do so. Their strategies now involve, of course, to affect culture, and they use the Internet and social media primarily to do that. And one of the most common and famous ways are the memes, these humoristic pictures, I guess you call them. So they disguise a very hateful message with ironic or humorous overtone.

CO: Can you give an example?

PH: Well, Pepe the frog is probably the most famous one. So you have this little frog that looks cute, often painted as, you know, a Jewish caricature or Trump, it's a bit difficult to explain without seeing them.

CO: But they're essentially racist?

PH: It’s racist, but then there is irony often targeted against the left or something like that. And this provides a very comfortable way to express racism because you could always fall back and say “It was just a joke, it was just a joke.” But the thing with memes and things online is that you can always push it a little bit further, a little bit further. And then after weeks or months what you said yesterday and that was extreme a couple of months ago, then bacomes all right and doesn't seem so extreme anymore, because you've come up with something even worse.

CO: And how successful do you think, in your view of what you’ve seen, are being in sort of making it attractive, and kind of ironic, and something that just is attractive to a lot of people who may not have even looked at this before?

PH: Yeah, well you can say what they really try to do and what I think they have become quite successful in, is to become the rebels — to be the underdog. And that's attractive to young people, of course.

CO: And you also hear that from people like Milo Yiannopoulos, who says “Well, you are all wrong about this. This isn't some extreme group of racists.” He calls them “fun loving provocateurs,” “defenders of Western civilizations,” “daring intellectuals,” and this is quite attractive, especially on university campuses isn't it?

PH: Yeah, I mean University students are one of their main targets, and certain groups in North America are very big at university campuses and they’re racist organizations.

CO: When you were undercover during that time there were a number of things happened in that year. The terrorist attacks, the U.S. election, the Brexit vote. How did they respond? What were the high points for them in the events of the past year, or the year that you were there?

PH: Yes, of course Trump's election, that was of course important.

CO: How important? What did they see in that?

PH: They believe — or many people in alt-right — believe that they were playing a significant role in getting him into office.

CO: There's a lot of truth to that, isn't there?

PH: It's very difficult to measure, you can argue back or forth, I can't tell for sure. But anyway, that was a big motivator, for both the European and North American alt-right, because they felt that they had an influence on politics — that they could do something.

CO: And did they feel that — because there was a time that interview that President Trump gave in which he said that he denounced the alt-right. He disassociated himself from it. What reaction was there in those ranks when he did that?

PH: Yeah, and that’s the thing with Trump. So the whole movement goes back and forth between supporting him and being very disappointed in him. So we have those things like you said there, and we have to go intervention in Syria for example, making them very disappointed. But when he disappoints them when he disappoints them, it's usually blamed on some outside force, like the deep state or another Jewish world conspiracy. But then there are some moments where he's regained their favour and that’s for example, after Charlottesville, where he kind of equated the violence on both sides, saying that the alt-right and what he called the “alt-left.”

CO: And you were there you were in at the event in Charlottesville, and as a member of the extreme right. You were you were part of them, so looking at that from their side of it what did you see? What was that like to be there?

PH: It was a very tense day. I was right in the middle next to Spencer and his main people, David Duke cetera. So we were surrounded by police, and it's this large group of mostly very young men. They have shields, helmets, gas masks, goggles, some have fire arms. So they're clearly expecting violence and the language is extremely hateful. They talk about bloodbaths and Jews, and it's quite horrific. So of course they expected violence and there was violence, as well. But I wasn’t right where that happened.

CO: Were you there when the car drove into the alternative protesters killing a woman? Were you around for that?

PH: Yeah, so after the demonstration had been shut down, I kind of turn back to myself for a couple of hours, and just walked around town and I saw this counter-demonstration, and I stood there right on the corner when that car crashed straight into the front of that demonstration. And I didn't really understand it at first. I saw it kind of at the side of my vision and then it stopped right next to me in this crossing. I saw a shoe fly in the air, but it took me a couple of moments until I realized what happened, and that's when the crowd kind of erupts and panics and runs away. And it took a couple of moments I think for most people there to really figure out what happened unless you were further up the street and we saw it from the start.

CO: What was it like for you to be there?

PH: It was terrifying, of course. It came out of nowhere and it's so violent and gruesome, so that's a difficult experience.

CO: But do you return to their ranks afterward. How did they talk about what happened that day? How did they talk about that car event?

PH: I didn't meet them in person that evening but online — we are following them closely online in the forums and private chat rooms etc. — and they were obviously in panic, part of it because they didn't want their movement to look bad. But at the same time they supported this guy that did it. And they called Heather that died there, the most awful things — sexualizing her of course.

CO: There were some reports of people saying in the movement that she wasn't valuable anyways because she wasn't of breeding age, or she wasn't having babies, and so it’s no loss to society, right?

PH: Yeah exactly. They used all sorts of ways to justify it. And she wasn't valuable and it was it was her own fault and so on.

CO: How could you stay there? When you're in the midst of that, it just must be sick making.

PH: It is. Many times it is. And just like I explained earlier, when you are in these horrific moments and contexts, and people express themselves in certain ways and it's threatening, you just have to think of why you are there and what you're trying to achieve.

CO: And then when you heard President Trump's response to Charlottesville, where he said that all sides were responsible here, he didn't react to the violence, it was days before he even addressed the death of the woman and he, as you mentioned earlier, he said this alt-left was violent. How did the people you had infiltrated, how did they respond to President Trump's message?

PH: For them it’s a validation of their entire cause. So after that he really came back into favour again, people became more pro-Trump again from having being disappointed in him. So that really spurred the movement on as well. That's the type of comments that normalize these ideas.

CO: Do you think President Trump is of the same ideology as the man you met in that organization.

PH: No, I can't say that, that would be a stretch. I can just say that sometimes his language helps spur these people on — that’s no question.

CO: We're speaking with Patrik Hermansson, who spent a year undercover with the extreme right movement working for an NGO called Hope Not Hate. And do you have a sense since you said you were there to try and figure out how they organize, what their reach is, how they're going to recruit? Do you think you have the information you need to counter the movement or do you think that this is something that is far more powerful and fast moving than you initially thought?

PH: We have information about certain parts of the movement. We focused here on a few organizations but there are so many groups and they organized online. And we can't even estimate the size of the movement in an accurate way. So we've done what we can in one section of it, but it's so vast that you just one the infiltration cannot take it down the whole alt-right —absolutely not.

CO: And how did they feel about you. Have they tried to approach you since you have gone public with your report? I mean, these are people who advocate genocide, so do you have any concerns about your safety?

PH: Of course I have, but Hope Not Hate has done this for decades. They have very good insight into these movements and we have good connections with the police. So I don't feel personally threatened.

CO: Have you had any approaches — anything scary?

PH: Of course online people say all sorts of things, but that's expected.

CO: Has this changed you, yourself, personally?

PH: If anything it's motivated me. During this year I've had moments of a bit of political depression, and a realization that these people are very dangerous and that they organize very broadly. So that was scary. But now in the long term it's motivated me.

CO: You said in a few places were that as you listen to all this language, this hateful Islamophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynist language that eventually you heard so much of it, it almost became normal, you became kind of inured to it to some degree. Did that worry you?

PH: Of course. I've said that and I stand by that. It's very tiring to listen to these things in the beginning, but after a while it just becomes normal. There are very few things that would surprise me now or shock me now, and that itself I find it scary, because if a you can do that to me which is not super strange because I was so deep inside of it, but if it can do it to me, it can do it with society overall. And we can't let this type of language be normalized because it dehumanizes large groups of people. And that leads to violence against him.

CO: Is that possibly the most frightening thing about it, is how quickly and easily it becomes where people can say, “Well I don't believe in all this extremism, I don't support Adolf Hitler, but you know these people have something to say.”

PH: Absolutely. And so now we see a split here between the alt-light which is a bit lighter and the alt-right. And when we have this really extreme, racially motivated movement and then this little bit softer side of it, that softer side all of a sudden starts to look all right, and we can talk to them and they slowly become mainstream. So these two, quite separate groups, push the whole agenda together although they might not agree with everything.

CO: Very alarming and insightful report. Mr. Hermansson, I appreciate you speaking to us today. Thank you.

PH: Thank you very much.

JD: Patrik Hermansson spent the past year infiltrating extreme right organizations for the British anti-racist group, Hope Not Hate. He was in our London studio. And you can find that feature interview on our website: www.cbc.ca/aih.

[Music: Ambient Guitar]

JD: And this brings us to the end of As It Happens for this Thanksgiving Monday October 9^th.

CO: The News is coming up next on CBC Radio One. As It Happens will be back again tomorrow. I'm Carol off.

JD: And I'm Jeff Douglas. Good night.

Back To Top »

Provide Transcript Feedback

CBC would like to acknowledge the support of the Broadcasting Accessibility Fund.

October 9, 2017 episode transcript

More Stories Like This