Jenny Beth sits down with Jake Tower, writer of the award-winning film Surviving Socialism that releases on 6/9/2023. You can find more info and sign up to watch the film for free when it releases on 6/9/2023 at survivingsocialismmovie.com.
Jenny Beth sits down with Jake Tower, writer of the award-winning film Surviving Socialism that releases on 6/9/2023.
You can find more info and sign up to watch the film for free when it releases on 6/9/2023 at survivingsocialismmovie.com.
Jake Tower (00:00):
There was a poll taken of young Americans asking them, would you vote for a socialist candidate for president? And 70% said, yes.
Narrator (00:12):
Keeping our republic is on the line, and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world. But the title she is most proud of is Mom To Her Boy, girl Twins, she has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.
Jenny Beth Martin (00:44):
America has seen better days over the last several decades. Our government has spent mountains of money more than it brings in, and Congress shoes, no real signs of slowing down. It seems like the money printers are always on in Washington, DC the debate between the two major parties used to be based on generally the same foundational principles grounded in the Constitution and rooted in capitalism. But now one site is swiftly and embracing the tenants of socialism, calling for more and more government control over our lives. At best, this is ignorant. At worst, it's just plain evil. America became the greatest and most prosperous nation in the world because of the foundational principles of individual freedom, the protection of private property, and the free market system. This framework set off a tidal wave of innovation that propelled our nation through rapid advancements in every sector of the economy that ultimately spilled over into the entire world. On Friday, June 9th Tea, pretty Patriots action is releasing in new film called Surviving Socialism that highlights the firsthand accounts of the harms, the victims of socialism experience. In this episode, I sit down with the writer of the film, Jake Tower, to discuss why we decided to make the film. For more information about the new documentary, you can visit surviving socialism movie.com. But before we jump into the episode, be sure to hit the like button and to subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you are watching. And be sure to share it with your friends. Jake Tower, thank you so much for being with us today. You are the writer of the new documentary that we have coming out in two days on June 9th, surviving socialism. And, um, let's talk about that documentary. I, I bet there are a lot of people who are watching and listening right now who haven't heard anything about it at all.
Jake Tower (04:15):
Right? Well, Jenny Beth, you were kind enough to raise the money to make this film. And you're an executive producer on the product, as is Kevin Mooney hand, who's also executive producing this podcast. So, uh, I was fortunate enough to be hired by our director, Luke Livingston, uh, to write this documentary. The basic idea was just people don't know about socialism. What can we find out about it? And more importantly, there was an inciting incident that really put the impetus on making this film. And that was a couple years ago. There was a poll taken of young Americans asking them, would you vote for a socialist candidate for president? And 70% said yes. So for anyone who is Gen X or older, they heard this like a sucker punch to the ear, which is why we call our film Surviving Socialism. Don't get sucker punched because, uh, like I say, anyone, gen X or Older, uh, they lived through the Cold War.
(05:24):
They had uncles, fathers, grandfathers who fought in Korea against communists, who fought in Vietnam against communists. So why would having defeated the Soviet Union and having the Soviet Union collapse, why on earth would anyone vote for an explicitly socialist candidate for president? Hit 'em like a sucker punch. And what we come to find out is how could the kids be otherwise? Right? I think everyone has known for a pretty long time that political correctness in the universities has just become, uh, like a socialist indoctrination camp for them. But what we find out in our film, uh, through the reporting of man, uh, Maggie Vandenberg, who just got married, and so her name now is Maggie McCarthy, great person. And she goes out on the streets of San Francisco, and she films a public school of, uh, kindergartners through, uh, sixth grade. And they, in their time at school, are using taxpayer dollars to make signs saying, no kids in cages.
(06:49):
You build a wall, we tear it down. Trump is Hitler, Trump is a Cheeto president. And then the teachers on, on a school day, take them, uh, and march the kids down the street, they block off the street and they're, the teachers are like, oh, yay. We're giving our kids their first protest. And it's a totally partisan, totally socialist indoctrination system of education starting in kindergarten. I think most Americans didn't know that. They're waking up to it now after the Covid lockdowns. And they were able to see what their kids are actually learning on, uh, as they look over their shoulders on the Zoom call or the platform or whatever they're learning from.
Jenny Beth Martin (07:40):
So we have the situation where the younger generations think it's okay to vote for someone who is socialist, or that a little bit of socialism won't really, really harm anything. And, and we're trying to address that and make sure they understand more about what socialism is. Um, we am part of the, some of the people who we highlight in the, the documentary are, are people who have survived socialism and also younger people. Um, do you wanna talk about some of the people who are in the documentary?
Jake Tower (08:12):
Yeah, we do. Uh, I, we have a number of people who have been the victims of socialism or communism from around the world. I think. Uh, we have a gentleman who grew up in Ukraine, which was at the time part of the Soviet Union. And, uh, one day, uh, the NK v d, which is the precursor of the kgb, the police state of the Soviet Union came to arrest, uh, his uncle. But his, uh, mother, who was there at the time, said, I don't know where that person is. Didn't matter to them. They shipped her off to the Gulag, they shipped her off to Siberia to this, right up at the Arctic Circle in a gold mining town where basically political prisoners were put to work to death, mining gold up in sub-zero temperatures. And literally when she was taken to the site, she was pushed outta the box car, given a pickaxe and a shovel, and told, build your own shelter before winter.
(09:27):
Comes four years later, she died. They dug a hole, buried her in the tundra at the Arctic Circle. That's just one story. And there's others, probably the most, uh, the story we go into in the most detail is that of, uh, Oscar Za and his wife, they're from Venezuela. He was a, uh, home builder, and he built a number of condominiums as part of a development project. But they had a member of the chauvinistic, the, I guess Caesar Chavez. The name of his party is the overtly socialist leaning towards Communist Party. And one of the party members came in his red shirt one day and said, you know what, uh, sorry, I can't afford to pay for the condominium that I ordered from you. And he said, well, you know, I waited 10 months for you to get the loan. I'm sorry, I gave you all the chances.
(10:37):
And this guy came back a couple weeks later with, again, these like storm troopers. They're all wearing red shirts and berets, and they, they just break down the doors and they hand him, uh, they just say, this place is yours now. And then they're all cheering, yeah, we won, you know, against the bad guy capitalists or whatever. So Oscar Za and his wife, they felt like, oh my God, they take my pr all our property away. They take my business away. Um, I'm gonna have to leave the country. It feels like a gun in the head. You can't complain. You can't do anything about it. So now he comes to the United States, and he has a very vital warning for us. He says in Venezuela, they heard from people that they knew in Cuba, like, uh, Castro, when he came to power in the late 1950s, early 1960s, he said, I'm a Democrat.
(11:41):
I'm, I want free and fair elections. But quickly after he took power, he canceled the elections, never had them, and then implemented full-blown communism in Cuba where it stays to this day, people are still suffering from it. And the people of Cuba warn the people of Venezuela. Starts out socialism becomes communism. Sure enough, people are starving in Venezuela. Why? Because the socialist government institutes price controls. It'll say, oh, you're a baker. Well, you can't charge any more than 10 cents for a loaf of bread. Well, what if the ingredients cost more than 10 cents? Then bakers don't make any more bread. And that's the situation they're in. That's why the people are starving. They're eating garbage out of garbage bins to, and they've lost like 17 pounds on average, cuz there's not enough in the garbage bins. That's how bad it is. And so the ultimate warning from the people of Venezuela is happen in Cuba, happen in Venezuela. Don't think it can't happen right here in America.
Jenny Beth Martin (12:52):
Um, when we were filming, it took us a while to, to get this filmed and, and we're going to be releasing it and we're just going straight on online with it. But when we were filming, it was during 2020 at, which is part of why it took so long, cuz everything locked down. But we were, um, the riots broke out in 2020. And so we wound up seeing a different side of socialism here in America than what we we had previously seen. Do you wanna talk a little bit about that?
Jake Tower (13:22):
Yeah, it was very interesting. So when we first started filming, it was the, as I said, the principle question was, would you democratically elect a socialist candidate for president? Presumably if Bernie Sanders had been elected, he would've brought quite a number of socialistic policies to the forefront and probably gotten many of them passed. But what about then, then what we saw was it wasn't just a policy matter anymore. Starting in May of 2020, we started seeing rioting in the streets. Okay. Principally by Black Lives Matter and also from Antifa. And so one of the things we explore in our film is the socialist roots of both of these organizations. For example, with Black Lives Matter, we have Patrice Colors, one of the founders who says right to the camera, me and the other founders, we are trained Marxists. We are very well versed in this ideology.
(14:33):
We are trained Marxist. And so why all the corporations of America thought it was a good idea to give millions of dollars to a Marxist organization that was inciting violent riots against target stores storefronts, throwing fire bombs into police stations in Minneapolis. I don't know. But it's like Lenin says, uh, we don't have to worry about the capitalists. They'll be glad to sell us the rope that we'll use to hang them with. That's exactly what happened with BLM in this country. Second cause of most of the rioting was Antifa. Now, uh, if you ask people about Antifa, they go, well, how could you be against Antifa? Antifa stands for anti fascist. It's like, are you for fascism? Or why wouldn't you also be against fascism? Everyone's against fascism. Yes. It's just, um, people don't understand that Antifa wasn't just formed recently in this country. It actually started in the 1920s and 1930s in the Weimar Republic of Germany. Before Hitler came to power, the Nazis had the stormtroopers, everyone's heard of them. They were street thugs who would go around breaking up the rallies of other political parties, just like we see happen all across the United States, uh, nowadays. And the Antifa was formed as the communist storm troopers to do actual battle in the streets with the Nazi stormtroopers. Okay. So they, they are the, the socialist or communist equivalent of Nazi stormtroopers, and they remain so to this day,
Jenny Beth Martin (16:29):
Which is part of the reason why we see the violence and is coming out of them. And they're very, very Yeah. Aggressive and in your face. That's right. That's the history of the entire, the entire organization.
Jake Tower (16:41):
I saw a bit of film, I guess you guys were just yesterday, uh, on the south lawn of the No, no, no, yeah. South Lawn of the Capitol. Right. And you had someone disrupt Yes. Your presentation there, right. Someone just feels comfortable breaking up a, it was, let's say a political presentation.
Jenny Beth Martin (17:02):
Right? Well, and and it was, what you're, you're talking about is a press conference with I think 12 or 13 members of Congress and a couple of outside organizations. Uh, that particular one was about exiting the World Health Organization and asserting the sovereignty of the United States of America. Um, and, and you had people who, who came and disrupt disrupted it. And it's not just like this is some political demonstration in the middle of a towns square in, um, Marietta, Georgia. No, it isn't. That it is. This is a members of Congress ta doing a press conference and answering questions from the press about bills and what they think is right for the country.
Jake Tower (17:52):
Yeah. And, um, how different is that from marching into the halls of Congress and, um, breaking up proceedings there, whether it's the Kavanaugh hearings or another time in Congress, right? It's, it's wrong. It shouldn't happen. It's not allowed to happen in courtrooms. You would be in contempt of court, right. If you did that and you would be put in jail and rightfully so. And people say, well, it's my free speech, right? Well, no, you know, I went to law school. So I can tell you that's what's called the heckler's veto. Okay. Heckler's veto is not, um, protected free speech under, uh, the US Constitution, uh, as per numerous, uh, US Supreme Court decisions. In other words, you can't, any, the people who have the free speech rights are the congressmen who are standing up to express their opinions if you just shout them down. If you disrupt the proceedings that you're just being a heckler and you're vetoing their free speech rights. So that's, you know, if you got something to say, go hold your own rally, go hold your own proceedings, go hold your own press conference.
Jenny Beth Martin (19:04):
And, and you know, what you just said about the heckler's rally, which is going off just slightly away from the documentary, but I've seen several different videos online over the last, over, over months, not just the last couple of days. Uh, most recently I saw one where it was a few parents who were standing up for children's rights and protecting children from, from surgery related to toran transgender, um, type issues. And they're, they, they have a podium. They clearly have the, they have organized an event to be at this particular public square or, or sidewalk area, and police are not making the move. So it it, from what I can see from this particular video, they had the right to be there. And they were, they weren't violating any rules or laws by, by being there. And then, and then you had people who were coming up and screaming at them and interrupting. And then one person, they're standing at the podium, the the lady is at the podium and another person just comes and just starts yelling and screaming nonstop and did exactly what you, you were saying. And I was wondering, as I watched that particular one, how would I deal with that? Because I ha our organization has been known to do a few demonstrations and protest. How, how would I handle that particular situation? So it's useful information to know.
Jake Tower (20:32):
Yeah. It's, it's the opposite of what we think of as representative democracy, right. Where we elect congressmen to go and deliberate on issues and to make pronouncements and speeches on their proposed policies. Alright? And then we, you know, the very word parliament, which is the form of democracy they have in England and many other countries. It comes from the French, which means from the, the French parlay to speak. It essentially means government by speaking, okay. Government by discussion, not government, by threatened violence in the street, by screaming in someone's face and by your very physical presence, assaulting them. That's, that's not the kind of right government we want to have. But that's part and parcel of the long socialist tradition of government.
Jenny Beth Martin (21:31):
Um, going back to the, the documentary, we also feature in the documentary, uh, two young people, which should give people a hope that, that not, you mentioned the poll where 70% of young people would vote for, for a socialists. There are people who will not, who are younger, uh, including Morgan Zegers and Scott Presler. Do you, do you wanna address anything about, talk about anything about them?
Jake Tower (21:56):
Yes. Uh, every film to be a good film n needs its villains. We've talked about those, but it also needs its heroes, right? Uh, if at the end of your movie, it's just like, oh, whoa is us, we're doomed. We're dos We'll never make it. We're right. Yeah. Then you're like, Eeyore, then you just can't move ahead. I mean, people are paralyzed with learned helplessness. And so we have our heroes in the film, and they are, uh, canis Owens. And, um, we show how she started her own movement, which was Brexit, which was basically to talking to African-Americans and saying, Hey, what's the Democrat party done for you lately? Maybe you should try something else. Maybe you're not the victim that you're being told you are in school. Maybe through education, through hard work, through having, staying out of jail, um, making sure you get married before you have kids.
(23:01):
Hey, maybe you could have a good life too in America. That's the American dream. Why don't you pursue it? Rather than wasting all your time just, um, complaining that it's not handed to you. Uh, so she gives us hope, she gives us inspiration. We also have Morgan Zegers, who, uh, founded her own organization called Young Americans, uh, against socialism. Yes. So, uh, anyway, uh, yes, uh, basically she, she talks at, uh, length in the film about she realized there was a problem when she went to college on the first day. And she came into her, uh, roommate's, uh, and her dorm room. And the roommate had already decorated the room, and there was a poster on the wall and it said, welcome to the party. And then it showed the following people, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Castro. And they're all wearing little party hats, and they have little tropical beverages that they're drinking.
(24:16):
And I think it's, uh, I think Mao is on the turntable, you know, uh, uh, you know, spinning some records or something like this. And so it says, welcome to the party, and there's all these communist dictators. And so Morgan Zegers asked her roommate, what's up with that? She goes, oh, didn't I tell you I'm a communist?
(25:18):
And here's what I like about, uh, Scott Presler, is he seems to have found a way forward to recruit more people to become Republicans and register them to vote. And he doesn't just do it by going door to door, knocking on, uh, people's screens and asking them to register. Uh, he started a couple years ago when, you remember when in Baltimore they had that horrible rat problem? Yes. And, uh, Scott Presler said, you know, I'm tired of just hearing everyone fight and scream about this. He put on Twitter, I'm going to Baltimore this weekend. I'll be there Saturday on this corner, and I'm gonna clean up trash. Anyone want to join me? And between 102 hundred people showed up and they carried out 10 tons of trash, and they got it all done. And they didn't receive any government subsidies. In fact, the Democratic administration of Baltimore, uh, they said, oh, you don't have a permit.
(26:27):
You can't do this. But the police officers came up and said, Hey, do you have a permit to do this? And they go, um, no. And he goes, the police officers told him. It's like, you know what? We're glad you're doing this. Just please go ahead. So then finally, the, the, the permit was denied the weekend after they had actually done the cleanup already. But he, his attitude is not Come in, what can you do for me? Could you register for my party? His is, Hey, we care about you. We're here to clean up your neighborhood. We're here to give you hope that you can take care of your own neighborhoods too. That you can be self-sufficient. You don't have to wait for the government broom pushers to come and clean this trash up. And then seeing that they, that he cares about them enough to help that they then gladly sign up and register to be Republicans. So it's all very, very, uh, inspiring.
Jenny Beth Martin (27:26):
It. It is. And I think that, uh, I, I encourage everyone who's listening and watching this to, to go watch the documentary. It, there's no cost to it. I think that we're putting it behind an email walls. So we're asking people to give their email addresses so that, that we know who's watching in, and we can follow up with action items like from Scott and from Morgan and from Candace and Tea Party, Patriots, um, tea Party, Patriots action. So the, we, we just, we want it to be a tool that you can use to educate people and then be inspired to take action. Because we have a country to save. We can't let our country turn into a socialist country.
Jake Tower (28:03):
I totally agree. And hopefully you'll be able to show it to your friends, family, various groups you might be members of. If you're a member of Tea Party Patriots and you have a chapter or something, uh, by making the film free online, you'll be able to hook it up to a TV monitor with your computer and show it to your group. It's only an hour long, but we really pack in so much information and you know, I just feel like the whole country's been turned upside down in the last couple years, and people feel so bewildered by it. They don't know what to make of it. This film really kind of puts it all in perspective. It's not an accident. It's part of a, the long march through the institutions and now through the streets of socialism. And it's taken us all by surprise. And that again, is why we call it surviving socialism. Don't get sucker punched.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:04):
Absolutely. So, um, we will, we encourage people to go watch the documentary. You can find it@teapartypatriots.org. And Jake Tower, the writer of Surviving Socialism, thank you so much for being with us
Jake Tower (29:19):
Today. Jenny Beth, thank you so much. It's been a great pleasure today. Can't wait for the film to come out and everyone to see it. Thank you so much for putting it all together, making it happen.
Jenny Beth Martin (29:29):
Oh, my pleasure.
Jake Tower (29:30):
You're a real patriot. God bless you for all the work you do. Jenny
Jenny Beth Martin (29:33):
Beth, thank you. And I really hope people go watch it and, and enjoy it. Get a lot out of it and share it with others. Thank you so much. Very
Jake Tower (29:40):
Good. Thank you.
Narrator (29:42):
The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mooney hand and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots.org.
Jenny Beth Martin (30:01):
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