870 - Holiday in Cambodia feat. Brendan James & Noah Kulwin (9/23/24)

Does anybody have the clip of Biden saying huwudububa?

Thanks for an amazing episode! I had to subscribe after hearing this one on the main feed. :) The escalating to de-escalate justification is Strangelove incarnate.

Felix and Noah’s dead silence during that godlike TNG riff hurt my soul.

Worth noting that during the Lon Nol era famines were a huge problem in Cambodia that were only mimimized by the US sending food aid, and today the US still claims that Cambodia owes it money for that aid (something in hundreds of millions of dollars)

Felix is right. Yes Israel is a client state but so many US institutions are fully captured by Israeli intelligence and interests pushing us into this suicide pact with an ethno-state. It's so destructive to our own global standing that it can't fully be explained away as "normal" American geopolitics or the economics of empire. It's not like the Khmer Rouge had an intricate political lobby deciding who wins our elections, or an intelligence unit operating in our urban police stations and major corporations. It really feels like these aren't just normal vassal state things, but a genuine case of the tail wagging the dog.

Brendan is the only guest who’s ever been willing to just say “Felix, buddy, I don’t know what that reference is, please explain it”

If this Cambodian prince turns out to be more wild than Mobutu Sese Seko I will be impressed

Banger I’m hoping the blowback guys head to Latin America next season

Great episode. I just renewed my Blowback subscription.

Anyone know the exact quote of that Guatemalan leader?

“There must be some unstated reason…” Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics. Will can’t sftu about the Biden admin but doesn’t realize selling weapons to allies is one of the most important industries in the US? He’s smarter than that. The argument is so surface level and is getting so incredibly boring and repetitive. Biden, who gives a fuck? What is he going to do, an executive order that will stand for 15min? The shit is borderline performative at this point.

Brendan has a great bit of analysis at 18:00

Does anyone else feel like they are being wildly optimistic by saying that Israel is in an increasingly untenable position? It's obviously true that a larger number of folks than ever before are critical of it, but none of them have any power, and eventually this war will end, and Israel will be in a better position than ever to keep swallowing up land.

I personally identify as a Cannabis fueled demon from hell

east asians remembering when the americans bombed their entire family into sludge versus east asians remembering the Battle of Soju River (667CE) [they will never forgive Emperor Yang for this humiliation]

Regarding the surprise at the lack of bloodthirsty rage by the previous victims of U.S. and western ghoulery speaks to what a freakish minority we really are. The culture over here has trained us to think everyone will need or want murderous revenge because we would. The West is the aberration.

Respectfully, where is the Halloween movie mindset announcement

I hope Felix gets to own a retired fighter jet one day. I want that for the little guy

What movie is the Min Max Sample from?

TNG reference made me feel like I’m exactly where I’m meant to be listening to this.

How is the guests have better, more consistent audio levels than Will? Get Will a headset or something. It sounds like someone is rolling the volume knob up and down on my beautiful boy. TALK INTO THEN MIC.

Israel is a puppet state. It’s just that the puppet is more possessed violent and evil than Chucky

Felix and his stupid fighter jets lmao

Yeah, Russia did not take Kyiv. I wonder how the Palestinians resistance would do against the Israeli occupation if it were backed by NATO? 🤔

God Noah's voice is so sexy

Another great episode. Love the back blowers 👍

Thank you Hillary Clinton for busting out the classic “Outside Agitators” trope.

Regarding the "why are so many Palestinians still alive" question, the answer is pretty simple - Israel literally can't kill them faster than they already are. Unlike with, say, the Holocaust, the IDF can't just go door to door in Gaza and capture/kill everyone (because they don't actually have ground-level military control and will face resistance, vs the Holocaust where their targets were minorities where they lived). So all Israel can do is just keep dropping bombs and cutting off aid. They're already doing everything they can to wipe out Gazans, short of dropping a nuke. Basically peoples' brains have been warped by the Holocaust being the go-to example of genocide. So they think "well you can always just ship everyone to concentration camps," when you actually can't do that in many situations (like Gaza).

Will’s chuckle at Felix mentioning the F35 program after bringing up fighter jets 2 prior times in the episode.

Saudi Arabia is another good example of an American ‘client’ state which has bitten the hand that feeds it. The W Bush administration actually classified parts of the 9/11 Commission Report to protect them.

I don’t think a harsh program of austerity would lead to a civil war in Israel. What I think would be more likely is the state becoming more authoritarian and theocratic given the dominant politics of the country.

Mark Ames trying to interview Sy Hersh was a trip, we shall see how you fare Brendan and Noah 🧐

10/10 episode

Will Matt's book have an international release? UK specifically.

You'd think if you are focusing an episode or entire season of your show on a country/people you would learn how to pronounce it. It's spelled Khmer but the pronunciation is Kh-Mai instead of Kh-Maer

Speak about this lunchtime

I’m so sick of invoking the term empire. No it’s not liberal, but it’s not imperial either. It’s just fucking stupid. Felix is right to criticize them for this. This is Israel making the US their client state, its ideological failure of so called “liberals” to live up their own ideals. It’s the abandonment of liberalism, not the expression of empire or liberalism or military industrial whatever dead end theory helps people sleep at night.

i love the josh shapiro aave voice wtf

Yo Chapos, will Matt's book be available for international postage, to like Scotland?

I love when Noah rudely interrupted Will towards the end

at the office toaster ovening my little burrito lunch and looking like a normal guy but secretly listening to the most Twisted podcast about Atrocities, totally incognito

Why be subjected to Creedence when there is Cambodian psychedelia? https://youtu.be/UxmkqZUy5tE?si=vcT8OkyLWcxPDImY

We’re all just fleshy orchids rotting in Jim Angleton’s suburban Virginia greenhouse

OG Brendan dropping the beautiful boy Caleb reference

Is there a different five eyes israel is a part of or is felix talkin out his pissy ass

"The last time Israel invaded Lebanon they stayed for 20+ years..." Well, the was the SECOND last time, the last time they didn't stay that long.

The Occluded Producer

Israel isn’t a member of five eyes. The countries are U.S., U.K., Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

Two personal big things about Blowback: 1. The MGS themed hoodie from last season is my favorite goddamn thing to wear 2. A specific song from Brendan’s musical alias, The Great Vorelli, has been in my ON REPEAT folder for several years… BURY THE BODY AND TELL NO ONE 🔥

Chris - please fix the noise gate or whatever is going on with Will’s mic. The beginning and end of everything he says is muted and sounds terrible.

Seeing these two guys in this exact context: well well well if it isn't the blowback brothers

I would watch a tv series about american anti communist covert ops if the vibe was "trying and failing miserably to be like band of brothers and instead coming off like if barney fife was a serial killer"

I for one am disgusted Felix deadnamed Keeeeev

Husband to a divorced wife, father to an estranged son, and I will speak to your manager, or leave a bad review

5 Eyes Murder and Lies Eh feels very Bush era diss but it's the best I can do rn

Always fun when bizarro “Will” and “Felix” are on.

"If we don't back [Israel], they'll just go to Russia!" There's another reason that this is utterly unworkable (besides the obvious, the fact that the Russian Fed. has no defensive compact with a dozen other regional and international military powers and can't actually accomplish its own strategic goals right across the border, much less on the other side of the Earth), one that I sort of suspect a lot on the Left and even many liberals don't like to acknowledge: a little known country called 'the Islamic Republic of Iran' that some of them might have heard of. Seriously, Russia and Iran have been fighting together in Syria for more than a decade by now. The entirety of Iran's military forces and capability, that isn't sixty-plus-year-old Yankee surplus junk*, is supplied either by Russia, or in the event that Russia is put-off by sanctions (like with the S-300 years ago), manufactured domestically using Russian information sharing and industrial expertise. In what world Russia willingly give up its alliance with Iran (and for that matter, Syria, with its only Mediterranean naval base and an Arab ally literally older than Russian independence from the USSR) for a gigantic liability like being Israel's America? We're overestimating the fact that so many Israelis have Russophone surnames and happen to be the descendants of Soviet Jews (who hardly had the fondest memories of the USSR considering they emigrated in the first place). Particularly among the pro-negotiation liberal commentariat (whom I sympathize with, insomuch as I want an Iran deal), there's this "worst nightmare" imagination that somehow the periodic disagreements between Russia and Iran over what postwar Syria will look like or how much of Artsakh Azerbaijan gets to carve out before they call NATO, will turn into Russia giving up a twenty-year strategic partner in favor of...the ultra-aggressive NATO partner who's been blowing up Syrians since around the Korean War. *Or a gift from the Gipper.

I’m going to slow down my car by accelerating into the brick wall

Wherever both the 4th Reich theory and Caleb Jacoby are found, look for me, ma, I'll be there

Spitting division lmao

Sihanouk = Garak, got it

Sometimes I’m left longing for slop. Sometimes there’s three slops in three days. All I know is this field is beautiful, the farmer is my friend who brings food, and the other cows and I will surely live here in peace, forever.

To Brendan's point about the "tail wagging the dog" being a more generalized phenomenon than simply Israel, this is common enough to essentially be a rule at this point. A classic example is France in 1958 where a bunch of colonial psychos essentially orchestrated de Gaulle's return to power in the putsch d'Alger. Peripheral, colonial projects, when given enough autonomy and strength, will bend the politics of the host state to fit their agenda, not the other way around.

Felix first mentions fighter jets at 7:09

"Holiday Inn, Kampuchea"

The Nazis may have lost the battle, but they sure as fuck won the war.

SEASON 5 BABY!!

So I guess all this carnage just has to happen because Mossad is sitting on those Epstein tapes, huh?

Felix begins speaking at 1 minute and 33 seconds

so u ben 2 scholl 4 a year or 2 and u kno uve cn it all

Is this where chapo and friends finally do the most exhaustive history and dissection of the DK's song as a definitive footnote to the main story?

If holiday in cambodia is not played during this chris…. you will be getting a strongly worded email

When are you guys coming to Phoenix, AZ? Or better yet the Trump Store in Show Low, AZ.

First uhhh

Chapo Trap House