Andrew T
Appearances
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
He's keeping it real. He's keeping it indisputably real.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Well, and yeah, that's also just like like as much as like the French colonialism, you know, bad, obviously, it's like Asia just be doing that. And China's probably the biggest culprit.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It's always the last war. Yeah. It's just like that's the one that sticks.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Although how much I, there, there is a question, I guess I'm, I'm asking more than like poking at this, but it's like, that is also exactly the type of thing that like a broad multinational religion could start to spread in terms of supporting imperialism. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Besides the beloved tattoo, I personally enjoy the video of Ben Affleck putting Jennifer Lopez in the car and then slamming the door and then realizing the paparazzi caught him. Yeah. Being like...
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Right, right, right.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I have no idea what mood I'm in, but this is how we're starting the podcast.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Straight up torture.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Robert, of course, is not saying that if you don't beat your kids enough, they will become Pol Pot. But he's not saying that.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Oh, he's like playing himself.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
You know, that general philosophy, I think, held on for quite some time, if my parents are any indication.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Oh, kicking a kid is really fucking nuts.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Like, truly. Yeah. It just requires so much intention and preparation.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. I owe a lot to you. They say you never forget your teachers or how many ants they tortured you with, and it's true.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Fun. Fun fact about Gone Girl is he had to stop production for multiple days because he was refusing to wear. I think it was like a Yankees hat that they wanted him to wear. But he's like, I'm from Boston. I can't wear it.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Perfect. They ended up like settling on him wearing a Mets hat. And it's like, it's like, come the fuck on. Come the fuck on. Incredible stuff. The murderer clearly was a Yankee fan. Like, what are you doing here?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I think that also means he possibly didn't really, he didn't read that movie the same way the rest of us read that movie. No, no.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
This podcast has literally nothing to do with Boston, the Yankees, Ben Affleck, back tattoos.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Do the thing as it was done before.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
We got you on for a big boy.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Religion is a handy tool, but it's not the only handy tool.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
The real genocide juice is in here.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
So it's sort of like a reasonable resentment.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah, that's how it goes. The resentment turns into the worst thing. Yeah, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
And this is so weird. I did not know that. That's yes. That's like so bizarre.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
You know, it's it's very odd on that score. You know, the like the modern day version of that is prior to now. Most U.S. presidents like Trump, at least you're like clear, like, OK, this guy's a fucking like exactly who he seems.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
But like, yeah, truly, people, you know, there's no amount of genocide George Bush could commit that people would, you know, be like, I drink with him.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
And it's not like it's not like this is coming up in, you know, therapy notes that we can find.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
right yeah for her yeah so yeah yeah but it's also like like having that I mean I'm you know 15 is old enough to kind of realize like this probably shouldn't be happening yeah this is this abundance is conditional upon some of the other maybe horrible things that are maybe the fact that these these old ladies keep on
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
We're coming off a time where just anything that's considered violence, you could societally ramp it up from what us soft Americans are used to.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Jesus.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
You're heading in that direction. Listen, again, it's just refreshing to hear about a murderous dictator who reads books.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah, the non-fascist collaborators are still not such great dudes.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It's terrible.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I was hoping you had some stats on Pol Pot's numbers.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
So at least there's that to comfort us. What position did he play?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I'm just really proud that you're you take the time to look up stuff about, you know, LeBron, Ramon James.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I was going to say, because LeBron's 6'9", 250.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I mean, I bet on him every time.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
But right piece, wrong time. You know, yeah, it's like any risk game.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
And that is the power of representation.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
And you don't have to – the consequences of your tough decisions, you don't spend enough time in office for them to come back.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
That's Robert's Boston Rob.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
The difference is these motherfuckers have never read a book, but otherwise, yeah, pretty close.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I'm going to be surprised.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Jesus Christ. Let's fucking go.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Right. It's all very WWF.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Just like, yeah, let's get a populist name going.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
You thought it was gladiatorial combat, but that wasn't nearly camp enough.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Let's not let it go unsaid that he was obviously studying to be the 20th century version of a podcast producer.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I was going to say, Pol Pot wanted my, coming for my job.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
How fucking dare you?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I would die for you. You're going to give me up for Pol Pot?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
The important thing is Sophie could organize a genocide. Pol Pot could never produce a podcast. That's right. That's right. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
This is gonna sting for a little while. It's about range.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
You butter me up with a LeBron stat and then you kicked me to the curb for fucking Pol Pot.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
The Pol Pot podcast.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
The Pol podcast. I would choose you!
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I mean, so far it sounds fucking dope. What could possibly go wrong? What could possibly change? What could possibly go wrong?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
You know, he doesn't realize it's abuse, and that's the important thing.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Why would you write that in? It's the power of shooting your shot, I guess. That's what the force is, is just shooting your shot.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Watto had his own agenda.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. No, I think primary universe.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
You know what?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. Well, it's all about a bunch of anonymous money guys.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I mean, my podcast is Yo's is Racist. I don't know. Let's keep it real.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I just try. Just like the Pilgrims did.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I just think that's something that only you can do. I don't know what about Jiminy Cricket was like, I want to do Roberts Boston.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It's a he's I mean, he's also just like he's got the name recognition and he didn't have a massive whitewashing campaign waged on his behalf.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Or like John Doe sort of.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Andrew, what do you think of Ben Affleck's back tattoo?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Oh, Ben Affleck's back tattoo? I think it's actually a pretty pleasant commitment to... It's like the most authentic thing he has going on. Yeah, yeah. Like, he is just a Boston guy.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
but somewhere in that period. My grandparents literally also had this. I wonder if now I'm realizing they did this for the same reason, but they were very, very squirrely about what their actual birthdays were growing up.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It's like if I really sat down, I could maybe make an educated guess.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah, my grandparents were like it was there was a war. Records got lost. We don't know.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Birthdays weren't high, even for kids.
Behind the Bastards
Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
God, there's like this trend that's going around on TikTok right now, but it's like, it's like, oh, you're so beautiful. And then it's like, thanks. And then you list something that you grew up with that made you the way that you are. And it's like, this is exactly what that is. It's like, oh, you're so beautiful. You're like, thanks.
Behind the Bastards
Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I grew up in the era where grown men tracked how old the Olsen twins were.
Behind the Bastards
Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Once again, I checked under my chair and there was nothing there.
Behind the Bastards
Part Five: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I remember... No, because I'm the one that was like, no, Robert, you're going to D.C. You have to hit up Bridget.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)
World-level athletes with no money. We invented a dish that was so bland, we called it flavor, because it was the only way you could add flavor to the dish. So it had the name flavor, but it was extremely bland. And it was white rice, frozen peas, because they're cheap. Kidney beans. Kidney beans have more protein per 100 grams than minced beef. Did you know that?
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)
I found out when I was broke, walking the aisles at a grocery store, trying to find the cheapest protein money can buy. Couldn't bring myself to be a vegetarian, so I'd add a little bit of meat, minced beef. And if I was really rich, I'd have hot sauce.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)
Am I a bad person? Because the more you didn't like it, the more I enjoyed it. I fucking loved how much you hated it. Turn me on. Why am I like that? Why? I am one of the most dangerous men on this planet. Sometimes you forget exactly how lucky you were to get fucked by me. Would you rather me pin you down and make you do things you didn't like, or would you rather fuck you?
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 1 & 2)
You didn't like that I was thinking I can do whatever I want to. That's what it is. I'm the smartest person on this fucking planet. Are you seriously so offended I strangled you a little bit? You didn't fucking pass out. Chill the fuck out. Jesus Christ, I thought you were cool. What's wrong with you?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Not to completely let her off the hook, but it is a little just like, that's what you did when you were especially marketing to middle-aged women. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I feel like it's so weird, too, because it's like at the time as you're describing it, I probably wouldn't have perceived it as such. But like we're also in an era where like influencer and just like you like that is the product that everyone, you know, the children today are very casually selling.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah, it's almost like the concept of like selling out for like between the 90s and the today's of it. It's like, you know. it's not something that you would bat an eye at everything you're describing right now.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I think it's just that someone else in the congregation just named a kid Nebuchadnezzar and you just had to like one up. Now that's a name. That's a name.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
without being too wildly cynical the value of being related to elvis has also diminished greatly in the last probably 20 years so yeah it's like no reason to keep it up yeah yeah it's certainly like there's less uh yeah you get less credit from being related to elvis oh cool
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I mean, but also like without getting too gross about American history, the obvious thing is when a black person and a white person have the same last name, the antecedent tends to be a different thing than direct. Well, or whatever. I mean, there's lots of awful ways, but.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
But it feels like myth making is sort of a fair way to say it. Like this is just kind of part of it. The exact shorthand, especially in a like entertainment capacity.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
You really blasted past the eel part. Shut up.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
How old? Wait, how old is she in this time period? One to six. Oh, my God. Yeah. Or birth to six, I should say. Right. I feel like that's exactly the type of disagreement that you always have with you. You don't really remember how nice everyone was to you when you were six. No.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I think there's like an element of like, it's a little bit like Obama where you're like, It's good that there is a different type of like like like a black person being able to achieve the highest ranks of whatever.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
It's just that feels like exactly like perception, though, like between zero and four, if your mom leaves. Yeah. how would you materially know the difference between four and one? You know, really you're, you're a, you're barely there. Right.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
It's just like when the successful person in your family is the richest person in media. That's when it becomes a thing. That's a complicated... Some of this sounds so standard to any shit-talking family, I have to say.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
But there's also like some version of like having to. So you're like kind of grading on a curve. It's like for a billionaire, she's probably pretty good, you know, relatively speaking. I mean, but she has, you know, she has all the trap. It's the same with Obama where you're like every president has committed crimes against humanity. That's just the job.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. Well, see, I went through it. I paid off my student loans. I did X or Y bullshit. And it's like, well.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
But like so for a while, you're like, it's sort of nice that he's like, you know, he is who he is. But then you're like. I just wish you weren't doing all these terrible things.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I think that's exactly like, as we've been saying, these are all the skills you gain. I do feel it's worth saying that though sometimes you gain these skills, also the majority of the time people are crushed and hurt by this type of treatment. It can be both.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Anyway, interesting. I don't have children, but it is so fucked up to me. That's like, I mean, we're not going to make them safe, but we don't want to make them feel unsafe. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I will say another thing that is kind of weird and partially because I'm relatively not versed in Oprah and the elements of her bastardiness. You know, the ones that I know about mostly seem to be about elevating horrible men. Right. Which you can almost sort of do. You know, I could see paths to that. Anyway, I guess what I mean is like none of these like.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
trauma well not even not the traumas but none of these like lies or like questionable stories it's like weird because that doesn't seem like the dimension of which like like the type of bad person that does those things tends to be more of like just a general asshole or a liar in some way and it's just interesting that i'm like this doesn't seem to be the bad part i guess like No, no.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Even in the retelling. Sorry. Even if they are exaggerations like it's so weird because it's like she could do all that stuff and still not promote Dr. Oz. She could be a weird kind of like shady, you know, Hollywood person, which happens.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
That's wild. I didn't realize that the church circuit was basically like open mic night for being a talk show host. It's a specific kind of open mic night.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
It is a pretty unique thing. I can't imagine. I mean, I don't think I got comfortable speaking publicly till I was like 28. So like the fact that like a six year old was like, Let me, I just need, I just need some stage time this Sunday morning.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I guess I was, I liked attention, but like truly public speaking is I think different.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. Yeah. I will say, I don't think anyone's scrutiny of any of the tales they tell about being six or younger would hold up to anything that's been put through this. No. So, like, every knock against Oprah in this capacity, I am...
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yes, yes, yes. Plug. I'll just go. Dio's is racist. That's my podcast. We have the premium shows at suboptimalpods.com. I'm trying to think. Mostly just been talking about this amazing celery salad I made the other day. I've had it three times since I made it.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Celery, lemon, shallot, and dates. Okay, that's it, actually. It's a crazy-ass salad. I put blue cheese in it, too, but, you know. And walnuts. All right, now I'm done. That's my plug.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Robert's clearing his books. It's really just like a tax deferral situation.
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I had that wagon. That's so disturbing. The radio flyer people, do you think they were like, you gotta get in there? Is that good for them?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Wait, and maybe I'm missing something. And she would say that or she has said that because it's just like a crass stunt?
Behind the Bastards
Part One: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I will just say as someone who is like a little more outside of the Oprah sphere, I think compared to everyone else here, I feel like I didn't particularly perceive... I hear what you're saying about she was one of the faces of, but it was so pervasive everywhere.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Some kind of charisma. Dr. Oz, it's like he's so repellent. You're just like, oh my God, without Oprah's cosign, he is- There's no way this man is a star.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
This, I think, is is the place where I'll try to drop my my my quote, which is, I mean, it does seem like like Oprah is she's like the enzyme for bastards. Like she just makes she takes she finds the worst people or the worst people get into her orbit and she makes them a million times stronger than they ever had any right to be.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I mean, on some level, she has to be following what she believes the audience wants. But why pick those specific people? It is a little baffling.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I mean, we'll never know because it's not like there's like whistleblowers from the Oprah camp, but like surely there had to be discussions. Yeah. Like Oprah, why these guys?
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I mean, I guess that's the other side of Oprah is like because she's gotten so far on gut. I mean, maybe it's just a charming five minutes at a fucking cocktail party or a meeting.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Man, that's, it's wild to have a vibe spaced empire. I mean, I guess we're, we are living in one. So what do I know?
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
150 degrees. When when the room gets closer, it goes like that's closer to my oven controls than my thermostat controls. Yes. Which is real bad.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I just double check. Yeah. One fifty is medium is north of medium rare.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
It is impressive that she's able to scrub so much shit off the internet, I will say.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
If anyone's just listening to this also, I didn't realize he was such a Timu-ass, Wolf Blitzer-looking motherfucker.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
It's a little, though, also, like, I mean... Listen, I'm coming at this from a place of utter non-belief in this, and I do understand that parts of this industry have helped people in certain ways. But the idea of advocating for regulations on... I guess this is the same as the FDA technically has to have a handle on the supplements industry, or casinos have some guardrails.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
But it is so dark, because it's like, this shit is fake. Yeah. So like what regulation other than this should not be, these should not be claims that you can make because they are lies. Can there possibly be, I guess, I guess you shouldn't kill people. You can lie to them, but you can lie to them, take their money, but you shouldn't kill them. I don't know. It's very dark.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I'm loving hearing a kid did something and being like, I'm so much more money than you, kid.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
It's still Pontiac. Honestly, there's a part of me. That's like the, the bigger thing is like, That will never be in an era where any media is consolidated enough that it's worth that level of outlay. Like, what is it like a hundred cars? Yeah. 50 cars, something like that.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Speaking of the publishing industry, though, is there is there no like like fact checking?
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. There's also a thing that like white audiences, like white Americans assume black Americans know, have special insight into Africa or Africans. Right. But why would they?
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. Well, and the other thing is like just knowing anything about the media and entertainment industry, those readers were two to three white people who were just doing their best speed reading like 80% of the books.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like the question is like, do you create the market or does the market create you? Because it's like... Even from the early stories, it's like... It was also clear she was just trying a bunch of shit, and the thing that worked was the thing she gravitated towards and more and more and more and more, which is just like, you know, how you do it?
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
But also, like, just on its face, how stupid is that statement? Like, what do you think the fucking moment of opportunity is, you dummy? That's luck.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
But it's the, like, everyone's grandpa survived the landing in Normandy. Like, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
You shouldn't want to have to be a warrior. It's...
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Uh-huh. It's bleak. It's also, though, like, I mean, so much of, like, what's wrong with America is, like, can just we make everyone learn basic statistics just once?
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. It's starting to feel like the five parts have been leading to this. So, yeah, I'm ready. Okay.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Like, hey, we should get some local artists. Great, make it happen.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
God, it's so deeply idiotic. I mean, the thing that's coalescing now is like Oprah has like a professional credulity verging on idiocy that is just what audiences want because that's what everyone is.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
But I guess neither do most of the bastards, at least from their point of view.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. Well, like, that's what I'm... Like, the credulity, the, like... I mean, look, at least as far as, like, all this anti-vax and, like, anti-science and anti-reality stuff goes, it's like...
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
you know, while she is like an enzyme for this stuff, like she herself is also just like down the line from like, if there wasn't medical racism, it's unlikely that she would have a foot to stand on or, you know, would have even delved into this like anti-vax, anti, you know, or like any other number of structural things that exist.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
So it's like the bastards are still the people that set up all the inequality in the first place. And she has really done some part to intensify it. But I do think if it weren't her, it would have been someone else. Like, it's just a niche that exists. And like someone would have fallen into it.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I guess to me, the pushback on that is that is what the audience likes. And someone would have filled that role if it wasn't her.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. Yeah, but I'm just like... I mean, we as a society, species, I don't fucking know, are inclined to believe this stuff because it is the path of least resistance on how you perceive reality and solve problems. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I am like part of her calculus of amplifying this stuff is on some level. I don't even know who the competitors would be, but she was like, if it's not me, I'm just going to pull an analogous, I think talk show host, like fucking, it's not Jenny Jones, but Kelly Clarkson will do it. Sally Jesse Raphael.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
It's just like, someone is going to put these people on and this message is going to make waves because the fucking idiots who watch my show crave this. You know, that's the version where at least she's kind of an aware person and
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
We had our bong hits in the commercial break. So now we're just going for it.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. I don't actually know anything about this director, but does it have anything to do with his last name?
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I just have a sinking feeling that maybe the reason one of the incentives has to do with the number of buildings his name is on.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
No one said rich kids can't make good stuff.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
It's just that they get a lot more chances to do it.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I will just say, I feel like this should be said, even if literally every single charter school had better test scores or even a good measure was a better school.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
They are still a net negative on the education system. Literally, even I mean, it's the same example with the Oprah school, which is like, yeah, OK, you can make a good school, but it comes at an immense opportunity cost. And that's what's like the problem here.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Oh, we're resegregating the education system? Cool.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
It's also like these fucks will like, I mean, you see it on so many other places where they're trying to reinvent the wheel where they like, I feel like transportation is such a clear one where it's like, they're going to try to do self-driving cars before they try. Oh yeah. Properly funding a subway system in Los Angeles. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And it's like, I don't I'm sorry, guys.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
All the solutions for these ills were invented in like fucking whatever, 1800. We're just electing not to do them because you're a billionaire.
Behind the Bastards
Part Six: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Listen, if he had even like an ounce of like self-belief, his ass should be on Mars right now.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
And Andrew, I tried to make your salad and it was really good.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
yeah it's such a hateful ideology and worldview but like the way people i i know people who have said shit like this and it's like the way they dress it up as like no it's actually like a really profound like you would it's the law of attraction like you want this to be happening to you in some way the way they dress it up like it makes them more superior i don't know something about that aspect of it really gets me it's interesting because and i also think
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. I'm like, it's like so tempting to way overthink it. And Andrew, I feel like that you just really sum it up. Some people just aren't smart. That's what's going on. Don't overthink it. I think it,
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
That's such a good thing to claim. The balls to be like, oh, I'm not wrong. You're saying Jesus is wrong.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
All of our faces on the screen are like that Winona Ryder trying to do a trigonometry equation meme. Are we good?
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I can see how it functions as a pretty useful like political and social ideology.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
You said it in a way where I truly for a second was like, I don't know if he's making a joke or not.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
What really annoys me about this is how they're so good at taking that one kind of like true thread, which is like plenty of people feel unheard by the medical space and like, you know, they feel like their symptoms or whatever or their illnesses are not being properly treated. And so... I can see how this is so tempting to be like, oh, well, what do they know about anything?
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Why should I trust any of this? They're all hucksters. It's such a callous but tempting way of getting people, walking people toward this very dangerous line of thinking. Does that make sense?
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I know we're here to talk about her as a bastard, but you gotta love that. That is incredible.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Just out of curiosity, though, did any of the people that she called like Satanist baby rapist, did they ever sue her? Just out of curiosity.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Oh, fuck. I remember this like it was yesterday. When I said that when my mom would sit me down after school and it was time for us to have a serious talk about something, I always knew it had been on Oprah. And I remember very clearly this episode because, as I said, I went to Catholic school. I went to all-girls school. I was the biggest nerd in the world. I was not having sex with anybody.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
But my mom sitting me down and being like, is this a thing that's happening at school? I was like the, the way that the fan to the fiction that like young people were doing things like rainbow parties. It just, yeah, it just really is burned in my mind that like Oprah had really put a fantasy world in the head of people like my mom.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Like people were like dry humping behind the Walmart and like that was it. Like it wasn't like sex parties. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
That was another thing. I don't think it was on Oprah, but if you wore like those jelly bracelets, it was like, oh, if you wear a brown one.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah. Like I could tell when Oprah covered something on her show, if my mom sat me down after school to be like, are you having rainbow parties? I was like, we're going to be talking about rainbow parties, Bridget.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
They couldn't have waterboarded that shit out of me.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Those bracelets were like very popular when I was coming of age and they were genuinely like y'all could look this up. They were banned from schools.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
OK, yeah. Oh, yeah. Have y'all seen that meme where it's like Ice-T from Law and Order SVU explaining fake things? That's what that reminded me of, just someone sitting on stage being like, oh yeah, the kids are calling it cat littering. It's when, da-da-da-da. That's what that was. It's just somebody making up fake things for entertainment.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
I mean, if you've ever seen videos of women moms who were like, I was at the Walmart and a man looked at my child. Stay safe, mama bears. Like, it was the scariest thing that ever happened to me. We're like, it is this fantasy that around every corner there is a threat to you and your child.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
And I think it's dangerous precisely because it keeps you from seeing the actual threats that are there, right? Like the creepy soccer coach, the creepy guy at church, right? Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
And I also think with the rainbow parties, if you are so busy thinking about these fabricated fictional threats to your kids, the things that are actually happening in your kid's life day to day at school, how are they going to come talk to you?
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
How are you going to foster a safe, open, communicative environment if you've been led to believe that these fictional threats are out there and that they're real?
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
You know, the start of Robert starting a boy army.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
Yeah, you can subscribe to my Boy Army newsletter. No, just kidding. You can listen to my podcast. There are no girls on the Internet. My podcast with Mozilla Foundation, The Makers of Firefox, called IRL, about who has the power in AI. And follow me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in D.C.
Behind the Bastards
Part Four: Is Oprah Winfrey a Bastard?
that's the trip of engaging in this kind of discourse, right? Like when you actually have substantive stuff to say, of course people are going to paint everything with such a wide brush when you also do these like satanic panic antics, right? Like part of me is like, that's kind of on you for having this in your portfolio in the first place.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I'm 29 years old and I'm a four times kickboxing world champion. I see myself as smarter than average. I was a chess champion from a very young age, from the age of three. My biggest tool is that I'm not afraid of anything. I don't need the money. I don't want to be faint. I don't want any of that. So I'm going to be the most emotionally controlled person in the house.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
We've chosen sexy because we're assuming the person who describes themselves as sexy is an idiot and not being an easy choice. No.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
We've chosen because it'd be an easy choice.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Top G is an individual who is capable in all realms, as my father said. Sheer indefatigability and unmatched perspicacity made him a feared opponent in all realms of human endeavor. When you are Top G, you are dangerous at everything. That's why I'm Top G. If they were to say to you, you have to go on a racetrack and race Tate in Supercross, you'd be like, You have to go debate Tate.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
You have to go try and get a girl, and Tate's also trying to get a girl. It doesn't matter what the competition is. As soon as they say my name, you're going to be like, oh, for fuck's sake. My unmatched perspicacity, my ability to perceive, my sheer indefatigability, the fact that I never get tired. You add all this together, I am a feared opponent in any realm of human endeavor.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Even things I don't yet know how to do, you do not want to compete with me in those things. That is why I am...
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Family and friends are actually the best staff you can possibly get. Now people say don't mix friends with business, don't mix family with business. Can you clean my board? Sit here and wipe it, please. Don't mix friends with business. Get that shit off. Don't mix friends with business. Don't mix family with business. That's a lie.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
So the reason people say this is because people are dickheads and they can't get along with anyone. They can't get along with anybody long enough to make any money. But I guarantee you have family members right this second who can make you money. I guarantee you, you have a 15-year-old niece, nephew, cousin, brother, whoever, who knows more about computers than you do.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I guarantee there's a 15-year-old out there with nothing better to do who knows more about Photoshop than you do right now. His stupid ass needs a job. So you can start a company right now.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Don't get legal before you get rich. This is super important. We're talking about hustling here. I'm telling you the hacks to becoming rich. Do not get legal before you are rich. You can fix your legal bullshit when you've already made money. It's a shame I've deleted my, or erased my beautiful makeup diagram. But it's very similar to what we were saying earlier.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I know so many people who register the company, registered for VAT, registered with the tax man, already have an accountant, and haven't made any money yet. I, in most of my companies, will make a million dollars before I'll even consider fucking around with a tax form, talking to an accountant, or registering any fucking companies.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
All that shit is on the later base until you have proved the viability of your company and you have money coming in. When you're rich and you have money in the bank, then worry about that stuff. Do not waste your time, energy, and money doing all that legal crap before you know anything about whether your business is going to work or not.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
That's a crime. It's a time sink. If every time I had to start a company or an idea, I had to go register a company, get an account, and do tax forms, do VAT forms. What a waste of time. I've started maybe 100 companies in my life. 20 of them made money. You're telling me 80 times I would have had to fuck around? Don't do that.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I know so many people who have a company legally but don't have a company in reality because it exists as a legal entity but it does not provide cash. A company provides cash. If you're a street drug dealer, you own a company. Much more than the guy with all the legal entities which ain't making money. Do not, we're hustlers here. This is the Hustlers University. Do not confuse this. Money in.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
What's the lessons I've been teaching you? Money in. Where's the money in? Pointing at the empty whiteboard.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I just gave you the example of the 15-year-old cousin who can make websites. Now you own a website company. Or your 15-year-old cousin who can do, I don't know, fucking who knows what he can do. He can mow lawns. Every 15-year-old can mow lawns. Now you have a lawn mowing business. Bang. Tell his stupid ass to go deliver some flyers. Drive him around your car.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
play some Tupac, chill out in your car, text some bitches, drive at five miles an hour, let him drop off all the leaflets, and then let him mow all the lawns. You collect all the money and just pay him a percentage. Bang. You now own a lawn mowing company. Congratulations. Use what you got. I made a lot of money with webcam girls. If you're watching this, you don't know that.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Webcam girls, you can go to chatterbait.com. You see girls on there on webcam, getting naked, talking to dudes, taking money. That made me millions and millions of dollars. I came up with that idea by sticking to this principle. Use what you've got. So right now, if you're sitting there. What are you saying? And I mean everything.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
You have a car that's on lease. You have physical strength. Let's say you're a strong guy. When I was making my list, I was writing everything down. I was like, well, I've got six girlfriends. Six girlfriends. So, okay, how can girls make me money? Strip club, but that takes money to set up. Remember? Costs. Again, nothing on the whiteboard. I cannot get money in a strip club without a club.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
So I looked at all the costs for a strip club and realized it's too expensive before I could get money in. It's too big a risk. Remember? It's too much risk. I could lose 300, 400 grand. Can't risk that. How can I get money in? How can I get money in for having hot girls without spending money out? So my first idea was strip club. But I looked at all the costs.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I was like, OK, so why do men spend money on girls in strip club? Because the girls are beautiful. They get to look at the girls, see some titties. How can I do that without the club? Well, the internet. If I put them on the internet, it's cheap. This is literally how I thought. I stuck to my business principles. Okay, it's cheap. Start looking up. Bound. Discovered the webcam websites.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
All right, so I've already got the girls. I've already got a laptop. I've already got the internet. Bang. The day I had the webcam idea, the same day I was making money. I didn't spend any money, but I was making new money because I refused to allow myself to spend money. Then I started making new money in with the webcam because I knew I had the internet. I knew I had laptops. I knew I had girls.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Use what you've got. Look around you. What people do you have? Does your old mother need a new job? Maybe she's at home and she's bored.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Maybe she'll mail. Does your old mother? Do you have cousins, nieces, nephews? Do you have a girlfriend who has nothing to do? Use what you have.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Rent a car. Find a way to rent a car with unlimited mileage per month. Tell him he's going to do 10 hours of Uber a day to train how to drive. Lie to his ass and say that in the Uber app you can track and make sure he ain't breaking the speed limits so he drives safe. Put his ass on Uber, pay for his gas, and give him half the money and keep half for yourself. Bang. Done. Set him up.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Get him ready. This is shit. I didn't plan. I'm just telling you things off the top of my head. Because this is how I think as a hustler. I don't need to sit and think. I just know there's money. And I find a way to get the money. That's how I am. So right now, you've got cousins out there who aren't driving Uber. If you can convince them to drive Uber, well, then why don't they do it without you?
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Easy. You can talk some shit. Make some shit up. Hey, if you've got an Uber account, no. I'll set it all up for you because it's complicated and there's some tax. I'll handle the tax. Don't pay no tax. Just lie. Blah, blah, blah. Get them an Uber. Get them in cars. Bang, bang, bang.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
To get a job, the man to get a job, they inflate the currency so nobody can exist any other way because it's too expensive. The parents are out working all day. The school and the internet and the matrix raise your children. Your children go to school all day and be told things that you may not want them to learn.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Then they sit on the internet and read things and watch things you may not want them to watch. You talk to them for 10 minutes at the end of the day, they go to bed. You're fighting with your 10 minutes against endless hours of the most entertaining programming or the most forceful programming. In school, it's forceful. On the internet, it's entertaining.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
convincing them of ideas that you perhaps don't agree with. I've seen it myself on YouTube. I've seen a guy in America driving his car and his kids were in the back seat and he was arguing with them about an issue. And they was like, where did you hear that? School? He's like, why did the school tell you that? That's not true.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
And his own children are arguing with him because they learned it in school. Have you ever tried to take your children out of school? You'll get fined. You'll get in trouble. No, your kids have to go to school. You have to give your kids away to the school. If you don't give your kids away to the brainwashing, you'll get in trouble.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I think there's a whole bunch of men in the world who understands my value. And if men grow up to be like me, you're going to have a whole bunch of people with no criminal record, dedicated athletes,
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Let's quickly talk about like the red pill, the day game guys. This is why they're wrong. And this is what they don't understand. Listen to me and I'll teach you how to get girls on Tinder and I'll teach you how to go out and get girls at the mall all day.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
If you are walking around the mall all day or you're tendering all day, you are giving out attention and you're giving out more than you'll ever get back because you're a man. You're giving attention out and you don't get enough back. So that's an energy deficit and it zaps you of your powers. Before you know it, you're going to end up one of them little red pill dorks sitting there.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I'm in the manosphere. I'm an alpha. Bro, you're five foot seven. You're not a fucking alpha. How are you an alpha if you're like five foot eight? Alpha of what? Walk into a fucking room of basketball players, multimillionaire, six foot five, big shit, and talk about how alpha you are. Because of your YouTube channel. Fucking these guys living a dream.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Alpha has always, for the longest period of human time, meant capability for violence. That's what alpha has always meant. Apex Predator. A little short dude. Who am I known for? All right, of course you are. Let's meet and let's not even talk. Let's meet and let's just measure our heights. Let's just take a picture side by side. Of me and you. And let's talk about how alpha you are afterwards.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
So they're giving out energy. They don't get energy back. The correct way to get pussy like I have is to absorb the energy from everyone in the room and then expel it in a fireball. A lightning strike of power and prowess so that all the bitches want to fuck you and they pray you come and say hello. That's how you get bitches. You don't go and beg them and give energy away.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
No, you steal the energy from every other male and then you expel it in a ball of fucking lightning.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Now, I have genetic gifts I understand you do not have, but I've also worked on my genetic gifts. I didn't just have them, you know, I worked. But even if you did the work I did, you'd still be top 1%, even without the genetics, because you have no idea how hard I've worked.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
But the point is, if I teach you how to absorb energy from everyone else around you, then you instantly become the most powerful person in the room. So it's not only so much about being big and being strong and having a Lambo, it's about absorbing energy and attention. So you people do not understand. And 99% of the things people teach you, they teach you how to expel energy.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
You can expel and lose huge amounts of energy chasing bitches and trying to make money. You don't get enough back. Whereas if you can flip the script, then the whole world changes. This is what you need to understand.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Yeah. That's bullshit. That's slave mind garbage. Feminist, racist, garbage crap that's been put in your brain that you need to resist absolutely. Nothing to do with Eurocentrism. It's bullshit. It's garbage. You need to resist that kind of shit. I'm telling you, the problems with the world today are very, very specific. And I state this without patronizing you. I don't want to patronize you.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I'm an old man. I've been around the block. The problems in the world today exist because the people who are in charge of the world have done a very, very clever thing. They've specifically designed the world in which a way that the people at the bottom, because we're all at the bottom, even me with all my millions, right?
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
The people at the bottom are so busy fighting with each other that we never look up and realize we're getting fucked. And the reason they do that, the blacks hate the whites, Republicans hate the Democrats, the men hate the women. Eurocentric, he said this, you don't have pay gap, blah, blah, blah. It's all slave mind shit to keep us all fighting amongst each other.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Do you think when a billionaire who's black meets a billionaire who's white, they talk about race? Fuck no. You think a female billionaire and a male billionaire meet? They start talking about Eurocentricism, feminist fucking garbage? No. Stop buying into that shit. It's a fucking trick and it's a fucking lie. All of it. Throw it away. Throw it the fuck away.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
If you want to be attractive as a female, you know what you need to do. You need to go to the fucking gym.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
You need to be smart enough to not let yourself get triggered by the fact that he just said something you're not used to hearing. That's all it is. That's all it is.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
You cannot stop. You cannot give up. You're in the most fantastic place on the planet for making money, Hustlers University, and the only person who can ruin that is you. Most of you are happy to be losers part-time. You want to escape. That's why you joined. You don't want to be a loser anymore. But then that new video game comes out. I'll just play the video game.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I'll just be a loser for two more weeks. Then I'll get back to trying to escape the Matrix. It doesn't work that way. Because you jump in and out of complacency from I'm happy to be a loser and do loser things to I can't be a loser anymore. When you jump in and out, you never get momentum. You cannot quit. You cannot give up. You need that momentum to break free.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
When a rocket is flying out towards the moon to escape the atmosphere, it doesn't fucking pause halfway up the sky, does it? No, it keeps going. Every single second you're not in Hustlers University, there are things happening, conversations happening that you're not watching, information. That could be the one little piece of information you need to break out.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
It could be that one little sentence that changes everything. You're in Hustlers University and you're gonna make money, but it ain't easy. It ain't gonna be given to you on a plate. You're gonna have to work. You're in competition with the entire world. Everyone wants to escape. You cannot be lazy.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I think you're a fool. You're going to go die for what? Biden? I'm trying to protect American freedom. Yeah, you're going to protect the freedom of those people in Nebraska by going over to Yemen and bombing some 13-year-old farmers. Great job. Stupid. You ain't protecting nothing but profits for companies that don't care about you. You should only protect yourself and your boys.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I fought for myself. I became a world champion and got some money. You're not going to get any money and get your leg blown off. Walk around with one leg, Mr. Limpy. Mr. Limpy, G, for what? For Biden? He doesn't care about you. Don't be stupid. Don't be dumb.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
longest time. You know, I've never been to like a music concert and people ask me why. I just look at it and I feel embarrassed. I look at someone up on a stage dancing round and I look at hundreds of thousands of peasants in the crowd. Just yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, it It's embarrassing. I feel cringe. It's like secondhand embarrassment.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
When I see these festivals and everyone's losing their mind or these music concerts, I genuinely feel embarrassed for the people who go. Because to me, that is a form of worship. You can listen to the music at home for free. You don't have to wait in that line and stand out in the cold. I don't know.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
Perhaps it was a bit extreme, but I've always known that they're trying to give us false idols to some degree. And when I speak to atheists... atheists. They go, oh, I don't believe in God. But they've signed up so hard to the liberal woke agenda. They're as religious as anybody, but they're just believing in the wrong things.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
To think they're not. All I'm trying to do is teach men to be strong. If they decide to kill me on a long enough time frame, they're going to be successful. But I can't. I don't want to live in fear. Because what did I say in the earlier tenet? If I become a coward, I will live in fear and it breeds inaction. The music is amazing.
Behind the Bastards
CZM Rewind: The Andrew Tate Story (Part 3 & 4)
I want the world to know that I'd absolutely never, ever kill myself under any circumstances ever. No matter what they say, I did not kill myself. I don't want to be seen as a threat to the elite.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I mean, a sick ass list of nicknames.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I know I'm fixating on all the names, but they're fucking rad.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
What is 87 based off of? Did you find that out?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Now, because this isn't- Exercise for the listener. Yeah, yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I was going to say this is this is this is the tragedy of the YouTube era. Yeah. Is this fucking sport coat when, you know, Robert could just be full jammed out.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess it's just DIY approach to making, you know, your AKs and your plate armor and such.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
To get through the words, we're going to be talking super fast. So if you put this on like 0.66 speed, you can make yourself a fourth episode.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Oh, man. I mean, obviously, in hindsight, but never has that sentiment been expressed and it not been a true psycho saying it.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I mean, the B side of all the cool names is like a sort of juvenile relationship to like your own story, which is kind of weirdly in evident here in evidence here. We're like, why?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. Every conceivable dimension that that power can be gained from. Yeah. Still bad.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Just do the thing that already didn't work, but more.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I mean, I know we're coming at this from a different time and hindsight, but it's so hard for me to even hear the version of that speech that's stirring or motivating. Yes. It's really wild.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
But anyway, we need to get into a random. The difference between like absolute power and within the family and.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
This is not a unit that should exist.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Optics is not good.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Or, you know, any Thanos line.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It's like, again, it's just so hard to put myself in the mindset where you hear this and you're like, let's go.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It's necessary but not sufficient, but it is necessary for the death camps version.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I mean, but also it's like, like all those rules, I feel like most of those times are asymmetrically applied for, you know, whatever means want to be accomplished.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Right. I mean, I wonder if it just comes down to, like, it's sort of functionally the same type of murder, and I wonder if the argument is sort of, like, every genocide is actually politically motivated, like, at least somewhat external to the stated aims of the genocide. So, like... Yeah. What does it really matter?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. I mean, that's like...
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
yeah yeah yeah i mean i guess i still i'm just like not still but like like it is like it's hard to wrap your head around yeah it's hard to wrap my head around and but also like hard to like be like this can't be the i mean it just feels like the stated goal can't be the actual goal i guess but like i don't i don't know what i think the the actual goal is anyway but you know what i mean i'm just like it it has to just be sort of a vague notion of power it feels like
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I like that. That's like Leprechaun rules. Like, episode three, I'm your father for me.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
What is killing your enemies like that for?
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It just creates fucked up incentives.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
You didn't say speaking of mass killing or anything like that. So this is one of the better ad throws.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It just feels like it's also like, does this sort of thing snowball? Like once you get started with the mass killing, then you're like, well, who else can we throw on the list? Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Is, is that like sort of, I mean, I know it's like, as you just said, like, you know, every revolution devours its young, but that still feels like a high percentage of like, yeah, it is. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
So we shit on them a lot. I don't know any of them. Empires go, podcast empire, a lot smaller body count than most empires.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Is that like unique-ish to Pol Pot as far as like, yeah, right. It's just how it goes, of course. Well, it's how it goes sometimes.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
If you can't be one of the boys, then who can you be? There's really no safety here, right?
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. Also, I mean, the detail, obviously every atrocity has someone actually doing it, but like just this dude's job.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah, and just doing it every day. It's like, you know, it's so hard to fathom for me as a lazy person.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. But also, like, you know, from his perspective, you kind of imagine, like, you're largely right. I mean, in this case, you're wrong about the CIA propaganda, but... Up until Cambodia, you're largely right.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. So like – you're like – yeah. Like you see the leg he has to stand on even though he's wrong.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
There's nothing positive happening under the Khmer Rouge. Yeah, the silver lining's hard to find. I mean, you truly have to be a blind believer to just go in there.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It's so crazy.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, there's probably some level of just prion disease that can take over. You're okay with livers. You're okay with livers. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, no. I mean, if you're trying to like like lose lose your conscience.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Probably giving yourself a brain disease is not the worst way to do it.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Sure. Yeah. That's a fucking very, very vivid setup. What was the name of the headquarters again? Office 100. That fucking rules. Yeah, it's very cool stuff.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
But but also if we hadn't, you know, we the United States and the West hadn't put out so much lying CIA propaganda like this would it wouldn't be it would be less possible for for this for this disinformation to spread work.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
There wasn't Twitter and there wasn't like... Yeah. You know, it's just it's more reasonable to be skeptical. Yes.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
That's how they change it up. He's subverting expectations.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. I don't know. I mean, you know, the other side is, like, we're also living through a moment where, like, everyone will cozy up to the dictator who demonstrably will stab you in the back at any given opportunity, and they still line up.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. I mean, you know, and those people are also the ones doing the worst stuff when the time comes to do the worst stuff, unfortunately.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah. It's one of those, like, like whatever, whatever belief you may have in some sort of cosmic justice, this will, this should tip the scales in the other direction.
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Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
It's like such a like holding on to that delusion till the end is so amazing. I mean, I just you know, I it's so hard for me to understand that brain. yep like like rationalizing to that degree like totally i don't know or just you got to put on a show all the way to your last interview you know keep the keep the kayfabe up yep it's fucking grim anyway it's plug time yep
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
My plug is just go sit by yourself for a second and just think about the world and what you can do to help someone.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I mean, look, we're living through the same version of that, but just the book is fucking Atlas Shrugged.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
I mean, just even meeting four different Asian people anywhere, you could probably extrapolate some of this shit.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
He's delusional, but he's too thin skinned and thankfully largely incompetent. Although, incompetence has never stopped so many of these folks in the past. No, it hasn't.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Cold comfort. But maybe that's at least a weakness to exploit.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Oh my God, no. This is the lesson for these three episodes. Don't read books, kids. Listen to podcasts.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
No, not that podcast either.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
One of the biggest L's in military ever took is not just evil, but also somehow extreme, even more pointless than some of the other wars.
Behind the Bastards
Part Three: The Pol Pot Episodes: How A Nice, Quiet Kid Murdered His Country
Yeah, that is, it is, I mean, that's eternally the best recruiting tool. Yes, and...
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Yeah. To introduce myself real quick, I'm Andrew Sage. You can find me on YouTube at Andrewism. And be sure to check out the show notes for all the references, including Angel Capaletti's Anarchism in Latin America, which was an indispensable resource for the entirety of this project. Without further ado, faminos. We have a lot to cover.
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His emotions here are not clearly laid out to you because it's more interesting for you to think about them yourself. Mm-hmm.
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It Could Happen Here Weekly 183
He said, quote, We are cosmopolitans by nature, citizens of all nations and contemporaries to all the ages. The greatest and most heroic human actions belong equally to all. End quote. In other words, our country is the entire world and all men are our brothers.
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It Could Happen Here Weekly 183
And the punishment he could be facing from the Empire is not worth it. He's a career man, and why would he be sent to Narcina 5? He is not going to El Salvador. Yeah. Finally, Cassian is sent to meet a source on K'fring. That's one of the guys infiltrating Saw's operation to learn the location of Galen Erso, the designer of the Death Star.
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And then we have this final montage across all of our characters. We have Mon and Vel having breakfast with the Grunts. You have divorced Perrin flying around on Coruscant. You have Dedra in a Narkeena prison. And Clea gets to see the life of the Rebellion. Saw's at Jedha. Krennic is at the Death Star. B2Emo has a new friend. And Bix is holding a baby watching the sunrise. Uh-huh. So...
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I want to talk mostly about Bix here. But first, I think Mon, eating with the rebel troops is very cool to have her just with the regular people. She's not with Baal and not off in a special counselor's room. She's just with everyone. We'll also talk a little bit about Clea here as well. But I think I want to just do Bix to start if that's okay. Sure, sure.
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so Tony has talked a lot about this ending scene and about how he wanted to end with a sense of hope and like the hope for like life beyond, you know, the empire, like, like life beyond Imperial oppression. And, and Bix with the baby is supposed to like symbolize this. And, and Bix is literally like looking at the sunrise, right? Like the, the, and this, this metaphor of the sunrise, uh,
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has been something for Luthan, how he's never going to actually get to see life beyond the Empire, and he knows that, and he sacrificed that. It also calls into view Cassian dying at the false sunrise of the Death Star. And I've seen, I guess, some people upset about Bic's Just, you know, being like off planet with a baby and feeling this is kind of like relegating her character.
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And I think there's a lot of things going on here. This show goes so, so like way, way beyond like simple politics of like representation and like woke casting, right? Which can often end up feeling like shallow boxes to check. Right. Because this show actually depicts things like carceral injustice, manufactured consent for genocide, how structural patriarchy drives imperial oppression.
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The depth of the political mechanisms the show is tackling, I think, is so much more worthwhile. And it's not immune to criticism for those reasons, but I think that aspect can be overlooked, oddly. I think we kind of take for granted how good the show is at so many aspects of politics.
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And, like, this show specifically has women in so many different roles beyond, like, the, you know, pop feminist girl boss badass, which has been linked to Star Wars through Leia, Ahsoka, and to a lesser extent, like, Rey and Jyn. And this trope is itself kind of low-key misogynistic.
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But in Andor, we have Mon Mothma, we have Vel, we have Cinta, we have Clea, we have Dedra, we have Marva, we have Bix. And I think motherhood is something that characters should be allowed to embrace. And motherhood's always had a very tricky relationship with Star Wars because of Padme. But being a mom is not the issue with Bix's character.
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He also wrote that the abolition of all government in the nations, which frightens you and you consider impossible and absurd, they have never tried it, will usher in a totally new world of institutions in which the peoples of the world will live in happiness. End quote.
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You can still critique how she was relegated to becoming the punching bag for the show. But being a mother is like not bad. There's a quote from the Palestinian militant Laila Khalid, like revolution must mean life also, every aspect of life. And she specifically referenced motherhood. And, like, Bix is a fighter. She's a survivor.
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She fights her way out of depression and PTSD, and she does spend years engaged in revolutionary action. And, yes, it may have been nice to see more of that revolutionary action on screen. We do see some.
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It might have been nice, but this is also a limited series show with a ton of characters, like 400 speaking roles, and that has not been afforded to everybody, and that can be unfortunate, but I think I understand what's going on with this character, and And I do not think the problem is the baby itself. I think that's actually fine.
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And her deciding after years of fighting to take a few years off to have a baby should be viewed as a choice that she's allowed to make, I guess.
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To kind of reiterate on the point about how like fascism also eats its own, something that Tony has discussed before, specifically in relation to like Cyril and Deirdre and Pardigras, right? Tony says like, quote, fascism doesn't just take down the oppressed. It doesn't just come for the people it's trying to control. It inevitably destroys the people who have worked the hardest to build it.
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And that's been true all through history as well. In a different interview, he says, the empire is just shattering, fragmenting, grabbing, destroying, and taking. And then the people that are doing it on the imperial side are all isolated. They think they're part of something, but really they're not. Look at what happens to Dedra. Look at what happens to Pardagraz. Look what happens to Cyril Karn.
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He tries to believe in the dream. It's the carelessness and the cruelty and the lack of empathy. That's what I'm pitching. Even in this little final montage, we have this brief shot of Perrin, which is interesting. That's Mon Mothma's estranged husband, I guess. And Tony has discussed Perrin as well.
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And during the wedding scene, we learned that as a kid, while he was in school, he was kind of a quote-unquote political firebrand. Yeah. And he has sacrificed that a little bit. Tony says, quote, there are a lot of sacrifices in this show, all variety of sacrifices. He's made his sacrifice for hedonism. He doesn't look happy in that car. Unquote. No, I do like the little wrap up we have.
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Oh, man. And I guess, finally, at least for me, I guess part of me wanted to see more of the development of Yavin as how revolutionary cells come together. And Tony has addressed this as well. Quote, Yavin makes me nervous, if you want to know the truth. There's things about Yavin that make me nervous. And the logic about Yavin that makes me nervous, even within the Star Wars canon.
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Rui Canati was a pacifist in his approach to anarchism, which owed his original introduction to socialism being via Charles Fourier, but eventually he came to understand the need for a class struggle. As he said, quote, a social revolution in which many heroic victims will be sacrificed in the sacred altar to restore the justice denied to the people, end quote.
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The security there and how some people know about it, but the ISP doesn't know about it. And there's some places where you... Don't want to poke too aggressively because you don't really want to get into the undercarriage. That was a place where I didn't really want to get into the undercarriage very much. That is understandable. And then finally on Clea and Luthen.
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And specifically, Clea's last look there in the morning after her walk in the rain, after all of this frustration between Luthen and Yavin... Tony says, "...Clea and Luthan are over-amplifying the distrust and hate in the same way that some of the people on the Alliance are over-ramping the disagreement.
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I think one of my favorite moments in that montage at the end is when Clea wakes up the next morning after her night in the rain, and she looks out and sees that there's people running and people carrying supplies, and she's seen how big Yavin is. And there's this Mona Lisa smile that she has that's almost beginning to take pleasure in some sense of ownership of what she's helped create."
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She realizes how much of a contributor, how much of an investor she and Luthan are in Yavin. She's watching the people there and just a little moment of pride comes on her face that she warms up just a little bit and begins to take ownership of the rebellion. That's everything to me. Unquote.
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His work attracted young radicals, many of whom would later play key roles in the development of Mexico's labor movement. Before he started La Social, he had initiated the first Grupo de Estudiantes Socialistas, from which came figures such as Santiago Villanueva, who tried to organize the workers' movement, Hermenegildo Villavicencio, and Francisco Zaracosta, a leader of rural masses.
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The very last thing I'll say because this has gone on for quite a while. I'm so sorry. I was talking with a friend after we watched these episodes and we were talking about how this show really in the end is a call for internationalism. Mm-hmm. Planets are stand-ins for different countries and different cities, right?
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And, like, they aren't doing the full revolution on Coruscant, like, the center for imperial power, right? The imperial core. There is some organization happening there, right? Like, there is people based out of there. There's networking, right? Like, Luton's Intel shop is there. But most of, like, the physical armed struggle is on other planets, right?
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The first base for the Alliance is built on Diafan IV, but the Rebellion isn't initially overthrowing the Empire on Coruscant, though through their interplanetary efforts, the whole galaxy gets liberated and the seat of power can be seized.
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And that, that sort of like galaxy wide cooperation mirroring like a worldwide cooperation that we have like really like lost in the past, past few decades, I think is, is one of, I think one of the points that, that should be taken away from, from Andor here.
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It's the core of this group that would help him to create La Social, which would educate and agitate but also assist workers beyond mutual aid to an active class struggle posture in defense of their interests against bosses. So basically, he took these mutual aid societies and made sure that they didn't stay mutual aid societies, that they were radicalized into resistance societies.
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Because those sort of mutual aid associations were very common in Latin America at the time. You know, workers would create these little groups where they would try and support each other. But it's very easy to fall back on that and to assume, you know, that's all you have to do.
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This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today, I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Sophie Lichterman. This episode, we are covering the week of May 15 to May 21.
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Joe Biden has prostate cancer, there's antinatalist terrorism, and the DHS is maybe going to do a reality TV show. Probably not, but it's a bad plan. How are we doing this week?
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We'll get to that at the ending segment. Sure. Hey, this is Gare from the future cutting in. We recorded this a few hours before some pretty major news, the shooting of two Israeli embassy staff in DC. We will be talking about this in next week's executive disorder, as well as the new budget bill, which targets trans healthcare. Now back to the episode.
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I think let's start with, you know, a brief acknowledgement of Joe Biden's prostate cancer. What was Jill doing to him? Oh my God.
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I'm allowed to say that because I'm the most gay guy coded person on the podcast, which is saying something. So, so yes. And now because we live in a truly sick world, Scott Adams couldn't even let
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Making sure that they have a radical posture, a revolutionary posture, it's important to ensure that you're not just resting your laurels and expecting change to come to you. And indeed, they did not expect the change to come to them. In June 1865, these resistance societies supported the first industrial strike in Mexico.
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He couldn't even let Joe Biden have his moment. This anti-Biden hatred has transcended so far that Scott Adams couldn't even let Biden have his moment and announced the same day that Scott Adams has the exact same type of prostate cancer. So Two down. Biden down, Dilbert down. Big week for prostate cancer.
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Yeah, I'm not going to get into how long he maybe has known he's had it. He's had skin cancer removed before. I think that ship has mostly sailed. I think our opinions on Biden are pretty well documented. So I don't think we can dedicate much more time to this.
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I have actually been thinking about the Thank You Joe chants for... a lot of this time this week, frankly.
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It's one of the most horrifying things as they let this very clearly dying old man out to pasture. Cancer diagnosis aside, very clear he was in some degree of decline. We don't need to retread this. This is pretty well known. But no, I have been thinking about how that whole auditorium broke out and chanting, thank you, Joe, for nearly five minutes.
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So yeah, RIP Dilbert, I guess. Let's move on to anti-natalist terrorism. So I've learned this week that people don't know what antinatalism is, which as someone who grew up in Portland is kind of surprising to me because there was some very, very prominent like antinatalist protesters who would sit up downtown outside of Powell's books pretty frequently. And we kind of all grew accustomed to them.
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And honestly, I'm a little bit sympathetic to their arguments. I understand where they're coming from. Uh-huh. Anti-natalism is the belief that procreation is unethical.
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This could be based on the idea that there's been like this rapid increase in human population, which has done extensive damage to the planet, or that simply being born is inherently a non-consensual act, especially being born into a world with high levels of suffering. So these people opt to not have children as this ethical standpoint. Everyone's entitled to their own choice.
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You don't need to agree with it, but whatever. Now, interestingly, this past weekend, there was a quote-unquote active terrorism that has been linked to antinatalist philosophy. I'm just talking about this as it is an instance of kind of the brain rotification of this entire society and the redditification of terrorism combined with this growing sense of nihilism driving violent extremist actions.
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Unfortunately, it was crushed by the leader of the country at the time, Emperor Maximilian, but it was his occupation and the economic harshness of it all that fomented the spread of anarchist ideas. Another student out of Rocanati's school came Julio Chavez, a precursor to the more famous Emiliano Zapata and a fervent anarchist communist.
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No one was killed except for the perpetrator, alleged perpetrator in this incident. But I still think this is worth talking about as it can be seen as in a sequence of weird terrorism. This is something that Roberts can be working on for a piece later down the line, right? This is not the first car bomb this year.
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We had the Tesla Cybertruck explosion earlier, which was similarly kind of a weird incident.
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Yes, yes. I mean, the gas leak here, if you will. So yes, on Saturday, May 17th, a car bomb went off outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, killing the suspect, 25-year-old man named Guy Edwards Barkas. The FBI is calling this a quote-unquote intentional act of terrorism. The clinic was closed when the explosion happened.
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The building was severely damaged, but no embryos were harmed. Investigators believe that the suspect attempted to live stream the bombing with a website being found online that appeared to be in connection to the incident where the suspect describes himself as a quote-unquote pro-mortalist. Slightly different from antinatalism.
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It is more of an affirmative version of antinatalism. Oh no. Where you want to actually take concrete steps to like decrease the population of the planet. Yeah. Not necessarily in a way that's like promoting like the mass killing of individuals. He says, quote, understand your death is already guarantee and you can thank your parents for that one.
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All a pro-mortalist is saying is let's make it happen sooner rather than later. To prevent your future suffering and more importantly, the suffering your existence will cause to all other sentient beings. That's his definition of a pro-mortalist. It could be linked to other philosophies that encourage self-harm and ending your own life as a conscious choice.
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On his website, he discussed his goal of, quote, sterilizing this planet of the disease of life, unquote, and declared the need for a, quote, unquote, war against pro-lifers.
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His website also highlights other philosophies such as negative utilitarianism, ethelism, abolitionist veganism, quote, basically philosophies that have realized religion is R-worded, that there is objective value in the universe, and it lies in the harm being experienced by sentient beings. So although it may seem, quote unquote, dark, it's the polar opposite of nonsense like nihilism, unquote.
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Right. Negative utilitarianism is something that comes up a few times on his site as well. This is the viewpoint that instead of positive utilitarianism where we try to maximize human pleasure, this is trying to minimize suffering, human suffering and the suffering tied to existence.
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And the aggregate suffering as well as if there's more people and there's going to be more suffering, so you should both... make choices in your own life that may limit your suffering, but also make sure that you don't reproduce, because then even more suffering will happen because of your actions through your children.
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29 Palms is not the West Coast. Like, a lot of this is in conversation with, like, the rationalist subculture. Sure. Post-rationalist. It's like... It offers different solutions.
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He agitated for peasant rebellion and engaged in land expropriations, which grew in popularity wherever he was active, from the Chalco-Texoco region, where he began, to all the states of Puebla and Morelia. As Capaletti recounts, quote, the federal army finally moved against him and defeated and imprisoned he was executed in 1869 by order of President Benito Juarez.
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This is all deeply online stuff. These are popular websites, subreddits, YouTube channels. These are people who are dealing with pretty intense existentialism, depression, who then channel it into this semi-niche online community and online philosophy. Now, Guy's best friend, a self-described, quote, vegan, rad femme, antinatalist...
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recently arranged her own suicide by having her boyfriend to shoot her while she was asleep what what what correct yes this was this was the the bomber's best friend who died very recently uh like last month and guy claims that they were both quote-unquote anti-sex misandrists with borderline personality disorder and he admits that her death quote-unquote put him over the edge
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is the most even though her her anti-natalist tumblr page has like women loving women anti-gender ideology misandry stuff and yet still has a cisgender boyfriend in many such cases um so yeah you can see how this type of community gets like fostered and people make online friends and then encourage their own self-destruction yeah we have to destroy the internet
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A quote that he has on his website is, quote, I've known for years now that I wasn't going to allow myself to make it past my 20s, unquote. And, like, this is a sentiment I hear even a lot of, like, young people saying is this, like, belief that they're not going to survive their 20s.
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Like, their belief that, like, the world is so bent on destruction that I'm probably not going to make it out of my 20s right now. And that changes the kind of choices that young people are making. And this is getting increasingly common.
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The millennial world, it's very different. Yeah. And you even had manifestations of this in that millennial era, right? It got kind of pushed into this like nihilist school shooter culture, which you still see remnants of now in the true crime community.
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There is some crossover between an act like this and some of like the school shooter fandom, the Columbiner stuff, especially considering the resurgence of Columbiner culture that we're currently seeing right now in the United States. But yeah, the general sense of like widespread dread and the interconnectedness of this is more unique.
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The suspect's dad said to reporters that Guy had a childhood obsession with pyrotechnics. He set the family home on fire and burned it down when he was nine. He made rockets, stink bombs, smoke bombs as a child. Videos on YouTube, likely posted by Guy, show M-80s exploding in the desert. a hydrogen balloon being set ablaze, and a bucket of radioactive uranium ore.
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Did he obtain that out there in Wonder Valley? This is still being investigated. His voice in these videos matches the 30-minute audio manifesto explaining his motivation for the attack. saying, quote, basically, it just comes down to I'm angry that I exist and that, you know, nobody got my consent to bring me here.
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Basically, I'm anti-life and IVF is kind of like the epitome of pro-life ideology, unquote.
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Before he died, Chavez cried out, long live socialism, end quote. His manifesto, which was written a few months before he died, would help introduce more masses in the Mexican movement to the idea of class struggle. And like a light bulb over one's head, it immediately made it clear who was responsible for their suffering.
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Explosives have gone missing there before. The base claims that they've been recovered. It is unclear what explosives he used at this point. It was a pretty large explosion. Investigators are low-key impressed at this explosion.
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If you read between the lines, they're surprised at how effective this car bomb was.
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Again, this was a guy who spent a lot of time online, a lot of time on Reddit. It seems like he got obsessed with this. He had a fascination with explosives at a young age. So that obsession combined with this antinatalist obsession and this urge for self-destruction manifested in this action. This week, Reddit banned an antinatalist anti-life subreddit allegedly frequented by Bomber.
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So me and Robert are going to talk more about kind of this trend that we're seeing in extremism or in extremist acts. I still don't like the nihilist violent extremism term, but we are seeing elements of that getting more and more common, especially combined with the true crime community, which essentially tries to encourage young girls to commit school shootings.
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Thank you, James. Thank you, Mia. We're going to go on break and then come back to discuss immigration. All right, we're back. James, I see the amount of text you have in this document. This is a very long section, James.
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Santiago Villanueva and a fellow student of Orokinati named Villavicencio worked arduously to organize the artisans and workers in Mexico City. And they definitely had the cards stacked against them. But they helped to organize an industrial strike in a textile mill in 1868. And in 1869, they established the Circulo Peraltario. And in 1870, the Gran Circulo de Obreros de Mexico.
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Mexico is a massive and storied country, so I can only really give you a gist of its pre-colonial and colonial history for the necessary context. We have to start thousands of years before the name Mexico or Mexico even existed, of course. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the land we now call Mexico is home to some of the world's most unique ancient civilizations.
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And in 1871, the newspaper El Socialista. And this is when the red and black, so famously associated with anarchism, came into the Mexican workers' movement.
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The 1870s saw struggles between radical and moderate factions among workers, proletarian presses making a name for themselves, and the first convention of the General Workers' Congress of the Mexican Republic in 1876, with a manifesto that indicated the growing influence of libertarian ideology in Mexico.
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Of course, there was a tension in that congress between the socialists and the anarchists, but water's wet. Sadly, Mexico wasn't ready for revolution. Or rather, the ruling class wasn't. While Roda Canati and others sowed seeds among students and workers, the country was swinging toward a reaction.
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Because the court case has a certain amount of time it needs to process. If they dismiss the court case... They have a right to appeal. Yeah, but if it's dismissed, then they can expedite other non-judicial removal, yeah.
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As I mentioned earlier, with the rise of Porfirio Diaz in 1876, any space for radical thought began to close. Diaz, the strongman of modernization, was obsessed with order and progress. He welcomed foreign capital, built railroads across the nation, and gutted the countryside to make room for exports. And he crushed dissent.
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Well, thanks for keeping us updated on that, James. Yeah. We're going to go on break and return to talk about the FBI, Palestine, and some exciting new reality TV.
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While Rocanati avoided outright persecution, thanks in part to his foreign status and pacifist leanings, the educational projects he inspired were dismantled or sidelined. The more confrontational elements of the early anarchist current went underground. Those who spoke of abolishing property or questioned the Porphyrian vision of modernity were met with jail, exile, or worse.
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Okay, we are back. First, I want to do some quick updates about the FBI. Kash Patel has announced that he's shutting down the FBI's DC headquarters in the J. Edgar Hoover building. Around 1,500 agents will be transferred around the country. And in this same interview, Kash Patel and Dan Bongino went on TV to say that Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide. And of course, Mega reacts very normal to this.
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Oh, I have not forgotten. This is my beat. I have not forgotten. So yes, of course, Maga's acting very normal about the affirmation that Epstein killed himself. Quote, okay, now I'm losing confidence in them both. This is not good at all.
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But no, there's thousands of comments from these mega Q people who feel betrayed that people like Patel and Bongino have spent years doing content creation talking about this grand Epstein conspiracy that now they claim isn't real or they are in fact covering up the real conspiracy. that Donald Trump was friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
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So yeah, there's also an interview clip where Trump was asked if he was going to release the whole file. And at first he said yes, and then he caught himself and was like, well, actually, no, we'll probably have to be careful about releasing the whole file because it could compromise people. They're like, what kind of people are you talking about there, Don? Anyway.
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Yeah, this is I'm just going to read the headline from NBC because I simply can't improve on it. No, it's perfect. Quote, suspected serial killer shouts out Trump in last words before he's put to death. Keep making America great. Glenn Rogers once told police he had killed about 70 people. He was executed by lethal injection Thursday in Florida.
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Rocanati's allies at Acosta, through his newspaper La Internacional, promoted a 12-point socialist agenda advocating a universal social republic, municipal autonomy, workers' rights, worker associations, wage abolition, and property equality. Despite Diaz's rise, in 1877 he led a present uprising in Sierra Gorda and Planes de la Barranca, battling federal forces until 1880.
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Literally seconds before he got the lethal injection, he said, President Trump, keep making America great. I'm ready to go. Last words. Wow. So that kind of shows you the current wellspring of Trump's support right now. That's really hitting his prime demographic of suspected serial killers.
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For real. Mia, I think it's time to hear the lucid lullaby of Tariff Talk. Tariff!
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Again, all of his truths have been reposted on X now. Yeah.
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Despite his defeat and imprisonment in 1881, the rebellion persisted. Salacosta's ally, Colonel Alberto Santa Fe, introduced the Ley del Pueblo, influenced by Bakunin's ideas, though not a purely anarchist manifesto. This document emphasized land distribution, national industry promotion, army suppression, and free education.
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Santa Fe argued that true Mexican independence depended on reclaiming stolen lands, a movement which, of course, gained traction among the peasants. General Negrete supported Santa Fe's revolutionary efforts just as he had backed Chavez-Lopez and Salacosta earlier. Santa Fe's resistance against Diaz's dictatorship was more radical than mere electoral opposition.
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You have to get your foot in the door. And Carney has also seemed susceptible to this, as there has been a block on arms deals to Israel for the past few months in Canada. We're going to close with another story of anti-humanity, but just a slightly different flavor. And I know this show does often just end up feeling like a bad news roundup, and that is because there's a lot of bad news.
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I have a little good news for the end, actually. That's a good thing we'll have some good news. Yeah, as a treat. And part of the good news here is that this probably will not end up happening, but it's still useful insight into the minds of these ghouls. Yeah. And I've long advocated that reality TV is basically inherently satanic. I think it's a spiritual darkness.
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It is a spiritual darkness that has plagued the United States for far too long. I think it's ushered in a degree of evil that is nearly unfathomable. And the current administration is essentially a reality TV administration on a very clear and obvious level.
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I think watching it is actually a personal moral failure. I think you're channeling darkness into your soul.
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Last week, multiple outlets reported that the Department of Homeland Security was considering participating in a reality TV show where immigrants compete against each other to gain U.S. citizenship. Jesus Christ. The proposed series would be called The American. This nightmare has been dreamed up by Duck Dynasty producer Rob Warsaw.
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It aimed at transferring sovereignty to local municipalities and land to peasant collectors. However, by the 1890s, Diaz effectively suppressed most worker movements through bribery and repression. While industrial workers and miners fared slightly better than the peasants, wages steadily declined after 1898. Roda Canati left Mexico in 1886 after giving over two decades of his life to the cause.
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And apparently he's been trying to make this since Obama's second term, but only now has made progress on getting the necessary backing from the DHS after sending Trump's DHS a 35-page pitch. Warsaw wants it to be, quote-unquote, the biggest loser for immigration. Which, again, reality TV is inherently evil.
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It should not be tolerated on any aspect of human society.
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The Wall Street Journal header reads, quote, This isn't The Hunger Games for Immigrants, says the producer behind the pitch. If you have to say, this isn't the Hunger Games for immigrants, that means this is the Hunger Games for immigrants. Getting a lot of questions about my this isn't the Hunger Games for immigrants shirt already answered by the shirt.
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To quote the Wall Street Journal, quote, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said that she had spoken to the producer of the proposed television reality show and that consideration of the idea was ongoing. It is, quote, in the very beginning stages of that vetting process, she said, adding that, quote, each proposal undergoes a thorough vetting process prior to denial or approval, unquote.
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McLaughlin was also quoted in the Daily Mail as saying she thought the television show was, quote unquote, a good idea. Jesus.
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The pitch details that the immigrant contestants would board a train called The American and ride across the country to meet, quote unquote, interesting Americans and learn about the local history and culture while competing in region-specific, quote unquote, heritage challenges to prove they are the most American.
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Such cultural contests would include balancing on logs in Wisconsin, building a rocket at the Florida NASA headquarters, assembling a Model T Ford in Detroit, and collecting gold in a San Francisco mineshaft. Prizes would be quote-unquote iconically American, like 1 million American Airlines points, a $10,000 Starbucks gift card, or a lifetime supply of 76 gas.
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Immigrants would be split into teams that compete head to head across one hour episodes, ending with an elimination challenge, followed by a town hall and a final vote. To quote the producer, quote, unquote.
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The pitch has pre-vetted contestants first arriving at Ellis Island aboard a boat called the Citizenship. There, they are greeted by the show's host, quote, a famous naturalized American who was also born in another country, unquote. The pitch recommends Sofia Vergara or Ryan Reynolds. Upon arriving, the host would gift each of them a personalized baseball glove. America's pastime.
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Yeah. I fucking hope so. To quote the producer's pitch, quote, we'll join in the laughter, tears, frustration, and joy hearing their backstories as we are reminded how amazing it is to be American through the eyes of 12 wonderful people who want nothing more than to have what we have, unquote. This is one of the most evil things I've ever heard of. Yeah.
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But his two decades of sowing seeds would eventually flourish in the Mexican Revolution, which we'll be covering in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Andrew Sage. You can follow me on YouTube at andrewsung and patreon.com slash stdrew. Thanks again. This is It Could Happen Here. All power to all the people.
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The live finale would have the winner getting sworn in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol by a, quote, top American politician or judge with F-16s flying overhead. Quote, There won't be a dry eye in the house, unquote.
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A little bit cooler than the live grand finale of The American. The pitch clarified that the losers would not be immediately deported and that the contestants would have a leg up in applying for citizenship the more traditional way based on being pre-vetted for this show. So it's good that he had to clarify that they would not be immediately deported upon getting eliminated. That's a good sign.
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At a Tuesday congressional hearing, Kristi Noem denied having knowledge of the reality TV show, despite reporting to the contrary, while also defining habeas corpus in this hearing as a, quote, constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, unquote. So, there you go. Yeah. That's not what that means.
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That is kind of the opposite of what habeas corpus is. And there is substantial reporting showing that DHS staff are looking at this pitch. It might not go through now based on all this backlash, but they were looking through the pitch, including possibly Corey Lewandowski. But yeah, that is the reality TV news. James, do you have anything to end on here?
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ICE isn't impervious. All week, ICE has been releasing statements complaining about being compared to...
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My I am not the Gestapo shirt has people asking a lot of questions. Yeah, and they're also publishing false stats about ICE officers being assaulted in the line of duty. So, like, obviously, they're facing some kind of, like, fear, even among their own agents. That's why they're all, like, covered up wherever they go.
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They're trying to prosecute people for posting information on ICE agents in your area. Yeah.
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First came the Olmecs, often called the Mother Culture of Mesoamerica, known for their colossal stone heads and influence on later cultures. then the Maya with their dazzling cities, mathematics, and calendars, and eventually the Aztecs, who built the grand empire settled on Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. Unfortunately, we can't spend much time on this rich history.
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We must progress to the time of European contact. In 1519, everything changed. Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes arrived and within just two years, the mighty Aztec empire fell. Disease, alliances with native enemies of the Aztecs, technological advantages, and brutal warfare aided the Spaniards in overthrowing a civilization of millions.
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Hello and welcome to Kid Happen Here. I'm back with... Garrison Davis, hello! And I'm Andrew Sage, or Andrewism, on YouTube. Now, previously we explored a lesser-known chapter in Mexico's radical history.
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Before Magón, before the revolution, when a Greek emigre named Plotino Reconati arrived in the 1860s, convinced that Mexico's indigenous communal traditions could form the basis for a new anarchist society. Through schools, pamphlets, and mutual aid societies, he helped sow the first seeds of anarchist thought on Mexican soil.
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Some of his students pushed even further and flirted with many burgeoning streams of anarchism, even as Porfirio Diaz's regime clamped down on anything that challenged his drive for order and progress. Rudacanati faded from view and many of his students and associates had to go underground for a time, but the ideas would live on, like quiet sparks awaiting for the next revolt.
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And the next revolt would come in 1910, when the Mexican Revolution erupted. But keep in mind the context here. When we talk about revolutions, the focus tends to be on the flashpoints, the gunfire, the slogans, the major figures. And I will do a lot of focus on some of the major figures throughout this history.
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We have to keep in mind the revolutions have roots that run deep, run deep below the surface. The revolutions are often shaped by decades or centuries of injustice. And Mexico's revolution was no exception. Because for over three decades, Porfirio Diaz ruled Mexico with what was basically a velvet glove over an iron fist.
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He brought railroads and electrification, but also grave, grave costs for the rural poor, the indigenous communities, and the working classes. By 1910, thanks to his efforts, almost all the land in Mexico was in private hands.
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The rural poor now found themselves as peons and haciendas, while those that fled to the city found themselves proletarianized, made to work at various industries for long hours, low pay, and little protection. Despite appearance stable and efficient and orderly, the system in Mexico was profoundly unjust. And yet, many saw it as a model for progress in a region full of instability.
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a description that seems eerily familiar to the situation that's currently taking place in El Salvador. Beneath the polished veneer, tensions were brewing. Workers were organizing, journalists were risking their lives, teachers and lawyers and even wealthy landowners began to murmur about the need for reform. And in the countryside, those old communal memories refused to die.
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Even after the land was taken, the land was remembered. By the turn of the 20th century, Diaz approached his 80s with no successor in sight and the people were getting fed up. Which brings us into the first phase of the Mexican Revolution. According to Ángel Capaletti, the author of Anarchism in Latin America and the main source of this episode, Francisco I. Madero wasn't quite a revolutionary.
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What followed was three centuries of colonial rule under Newspain, marked by extraction, Catholic conversion, and the mixing, often violently, of indigenous European and African peoples. By the early 1800s, the winds of independence were finally blowing. A Catholic priest named Miguel Hidalgo sparked the fight with a cry for freedom in 1810.
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In all honesty, he just wanted to tweak the status quo, to keep a free market but ban the re-election of presidents. He came from money. He was an upper-class intellectual, a believer in parliamentary democracy and in free markets. He read the Review Spirite religiously. It was a spiritualist journalism.
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And he believed in a kind of metaphysical liberalism, where good governance and good intentions could steer history in the right direction. Madero's party, the Partido Democrata, was formed with a single, clear goal. Ending Porfirio Diaz's decades-long grip on power.
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But to more radical forces, like Ricardo Flores Magón and the Partido Liberal Mexicano, or PLM, Madero's vision was nowhere near enough. Don't get fooled by the name, by the way. The PLM had some revolutionary credentials.
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It started off as a simple, anti-clerical, anti-dictatorial party, but perhaps with the influence of North American and Spanish immigrant anarcho-syndicalists, it eventually took on a libertarian character, guided also in part by the ideological evolution of Malcolm himself. It was neither liberal nor truly a party in the end, but rather a truly revolutionary libertarian organization.
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We'll get back to Magón's story in a second. But the point is, when Magón was calling for social revolution, land redistribution, and workers' control of production, Madero merely wanted electoral reform. He had no real program for agrarian justice and was, quote, generally indifferent to the problems of the Mexican masses, as Capileti put it.
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Still, Madero's 1910 campaign electrified all of those who were yearning for change, revolutionaries and reformists alike. His challenge to Diaz helped ignite a broader uprising that managed to bring Madero into power in 1911. Before we get into what happened during the Madero presidency, let's go back in time to follow Ricardo Flores Magón's story.
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Magón was born in 1873 in the village of San Antonio, Iloxochitlan, in Oaxaca. His roots straddled both indigenous and mestizo heritage. As a law student in Mexico City, he found himself swept into the tide of anti-government agitation. Before he even turned 20, he was jailed for the first time.
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He joined the radical press in 1893 with El Democrata, an anti-Diaz paper that the regime quickly snuffed out, but he wasn't deterred. In 1900, he co-founded Regeneracion, the publication that would become the voice of the Mexican left in the 20th century. It was while behind bars, where he often found himself, that Magón encountered the ideas that would shape his life's work.
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Thanks to the library of liberal landowner Camilo Arriaga, he read the writings of Kropotkin and Malatesta, and through those texts, crystallized his anarchist vision. Now, even though Magón's ideology incubated quietly in his early political life, it didn't stay buried for long. As his conflicts with the Diaz regime intensified, so too did the radicalism of his actions.
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He edited El Hijo del Aguizote, a satirical rag that earned him yet another stint in prison, and after his release in 1904, Magón fled to Texas, where he relaunched Regeneración with renewed purpose.
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By 1905, the paper had helped spark the creation of the Partido Liberal Mexicano, or PLM, which, as I said, wasn't much of a political party as it was a radical organ, though it did have some reformist demands mixed in. They were trying to soften their language, at times to appeal to conservative sympathizers of reform away from Diaz.
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The PLM sought the abolition of the military tribunals, free secular education, workers' rights like the eight-hour workday and minimum wage, and the expropriation of idle lands. In short, it went further than the 1917 constitution that would come a decade later, and it could be seen as the crystallization of many of the Mexican Revolution's most popular aims.
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Specifically, he sought the end of rule by Spanish peninsulars, which are the people who came from Spain and ruled over Mexico. He called for the equality of races, and he called for the redistribution of land.
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Magon and the PLM established alliances across borders, particularly among the industrial workers of the world. But that put a target on Magon's back for both Mexican and US authorities. You already know they can't be having solidarity like that. The Pinkertons rolled up, backed in part by Diaz himself, and they were on Magon's tail constantly.
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Even ended up as far north as Canada, just trying to escape their constant harassment. But despite the repression, their momentum could not be killed. Between 1906 and 1908, the PLM helped organize a string of strikes and uprisings. The most infamous was the Canaia Copper Strike. Mexican miners were paid starvation wages while their American counterparts earned double for the same work.
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When the miners struck for fair pay and better conditions, they were met with deadly force. The rebellion that followed saw American rangers and Mexican troops massacre more than 200 people, and thousands were jailed. Another uprising ignited in Rio Blanco, where textile workers, already paid a pittance, organized with the leadership of Jose Niera, a student of Magón.
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When negotiations failed and repression ramped up, the workers responded not with another petition, but with insurrection. On January 7, 1907, they stormed the mill, freed prisoners, cut wires, and declared open rebellion. The state responded with a bloodbath. Entire families were dragged from their homes and executed.
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Another one of the uprisings was a peasant revolt that began in 1906 in Akayukan and spread through Tuxlas, Minatitlan, and Tabasco. It was crushed, of course. In 1908 in Viescas, though their plans had been leaked to the authorities, revolutionaries had a firefight with police and freed a town jail. Just two days later in Las Vacas, other students of Magón were fighting for justice.
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Another set of guerrillas arose in Palomas, but they failed. Yet another insurrection happened in Valle de Olid, Yucatan, and they suffered summary executions. And all those events, all those small revolutionary bands challenging the state, they failed. But they emboldened the dream of a different world with their will to act. McGowan was jailed again in 1907, but it wasn't over for him yet.
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As Angel Capileti put it in Anarchism in Latin America, Hidalgo proposed to abolish, even if by gentle and gradual means, what he called in almost Proudhonian terms the horrible right of territorial property, perpetual, hereditary, and exclusive. This whole land topic is going to come up a lot in the history, by the way. You may be familiar with the phrase, land and freedom, tierra y libertad.
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And I really don't like to romanticize this idea of these uprisings that they feel, but You know, they're still inspiring. We don't want to go too far into that where, you know, self-sacrifice for self-sacrifice sake. But I think it's important to point out that there were multiple failed attempts before the successful uprising that ushered in the Mexican Revolution.
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It wasn't, you know, a first-time successful attempt. And by the time Magón was released from prison in 1910, the revolution had already begun to burn across Mexico. And that is in part in thanks to the efforts of those uprisings, even though those individual uprisings failed.
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The Catalan immigrant Amadeo Ferez pumped up this energy in 1911 with El Tipografo Mexicano, yet another newspaper with a fierce anarcho-syndicalist spirit meant to mobilize urban workers. At the same time, old anarchist typographers were not only printing their message, they were forming unions like the Unión de Canteras Mexicanos.
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In mid-1912, Juan Francisco Moncaliano arrived from Cuba and quickly rallied a diverse group of workers into Grupo Luz, set on establishing a progressive education platform a la Francisco Ferrer. By September 1912, these unions and grupolos united to form La Casa del Obrero, forging a distinctly anarcho-syndicalist identity.
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They organized lectures, built libraries of classic anarchist works, and launched a new bi-weekly called Lucha, all while energizing a massive May Day rally in 1913, where 20,000 workers rallied. Like Margon, these radicals saw through the hollow promises of Madero's democracy. Voting for a new president wouldn't free the peasantry. Legislative seats wouldn't redistribute land.
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No Congress, no matter how liberal, would ever voluntarily dismantle the system that fed it. For them, revolution was no less than putting land and production in the hands of the people. No bosses, no landlords, no masters. Just workers, organizing life on their own terms. Madero's revolution, if we can even recall that, had mobilized peasants, workers, and radicals.
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But that moderate phase was about to end, because once seated as president, Madero leaned heavily on old elites. He really siphoned energy away from genuine social change with that reformist push that he was doing. A move that sounds all too familiar. Madero's refusal to enact meaningful change lost him his allies very quickly.
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Figures like Pascual Orozco and even Emiliano Zapata, who had initially supported the rebellion against Diaz, became disillusioned. So while Madero governed, the PLM continued its fight, now against the emerging new regime. In northern Mexico, PLM-aligned forces initially rose alongside Madero's, but they did not make common cause with him.
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When strategic positions in Chihuahua were lost, with the middle class and Orozco siding with Madero, the Morganists turned their attention elsewhere. Their next target was Baja, California. In early 1911, they began seizing towns. Mexicali, Los Algodones, Tecate, and finally Tijuana, seeking to establish a libertarian society, a model for what they called a free America.
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But the backlash was swift. American, British, and French businesses owned pretty much all of Baja California. Landowners and newspaper moguls in California, USA, which were often the same people, panicked and ended up smearing the Magonists as secessionists trying to hand over Mexican land to the US. In truth, as Magon wrote in Regeneracion, does Baja California belong to Mexico? It does not.
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That comes from Mexico. Anyway, it took more than a decade of war, but by 1821, Mexico had finally broken free from Spain. Freedom, though, didn't mean stability.
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It is under the control of foreign capital. Mexicans owned nothing of it. The PLM's campaign was not about taking Mexico apart. It was about reclaiming it from the hands of foreign elites. Nothing less than land and liberty.
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As Capaletti put it, quote, On the contrary, Macon's goal was nothing other than a classless and stateless libertarian society that would provide the archetype and point of departure for the Mexican and world revolution. End quote. The downfall of the Baja California campaign came at the hands of bourgeois champion Madero, backed by the US government and capitalists.
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By mid-1911, the McGonus uprising in Baja California had effectively been extinguished. Yet the saga didn't end there.
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On the 14th of June in 1911, Magón and three of his associates were arrested, tried in Los Angeles, and Magón himself was sentenced to McNeil Island Prison in Washington State, a fate he endured until 1914, which meant that Magón wouldn't be present in Mexico for the death of one of his biggest ops.
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Since Madero failed to gain the support of radicals or secure the loyalty of reactionaries, the conservative military overthrew and assassinated him, installing Victoriano Huerta into power in 1930. And just like that, the so-called moderate phase of the Mexican Revolution ended in blood. Huerta's dictatorship tried to turn back the clock to the Porfirian era.
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Huerta ruled with military force and repression. The usual stuff. Persecuting labor organizers, shutting down radical spaces, deporting foreign activists, jailing dissenters, murdering people. Crackdowns eventually hit La Casa de Lobreros publications and destroyed the anarchist library. But out of this repression emerged a new tactic.
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They basically said, you know, you could burn our books, that's fine. Do what you have to do. But you're not going to stop us from spreading our message. they established grassroots orators, the Tribuna Roja, who took the revolutionary message directly to the working classes, giving speeches where they were at and sharing the message even without access to literature.
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The 19th century saw emperors come and go because there was actually a time when Mexico was a monarchy, foreign invasions by the United States via the Manifest Destiny, and Napoleon's France via monarchical Latin League, and internal power struggles.
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By May 1914, a new people, Emancipación Obrera, was launched, though it too fell prey to the regime's brutality. Thankfully, the regime wouldn't last long because Huerta's power didn't go unchallenged. From the north, Venustiano Carranza and the constitutionalists rose to oppose him, claiming to defend Madero's legacy.
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From the south, Emiliano Zapata refused to accept any government that ignored the demands of landless peasants. And throughout the country, armed struggle reignited. Which brings us to Emiliano Zapata himself. He was doing his own thing politically, but he was inspired in part by the anarchist supporters of Magon.
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His ideology was rooted in the Kalpuyi, the collective land systems of his indigenous ancestors. He eventually adopted the slogan Tierra y Libertad and rallied behind the Plan de Ayala, demanding land redistribution and local self-governance. He had little tolerance for political maneuvering. He saw the false promises of figures like Huerta and Carranza.
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For Zapata, revolution was not about elections or modernization. It was about giving land back. That's really all he cared about. In contrast, as the Wario tis Mario, there was Pancho Villa. He was a charismatic northern general and a populist who worked with and against Carranza. As Magón described him, Zapata delivers riches to their true owners, the poor.
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Thea executes the proletarian who takes a piece of bread. End quote. Though both were opposed to Carranza, their goals, strategies, and ethics were far apart. Like I said, Mario Tesuario. Huerta didn't last long, as I mentioned. He was ousted by 1914, so just about a year of being in power and being a violent dictator. And after Huerta fell, Finustiano Carranza rose to fill the vacuum.
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Like I said, he claimed to be continuing Madero's legacy, and his vision of Mexico was just as top-down.
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He wasn't exactly fond of anarchists or the radical left in general, but faced with pressure from the Zapatistas in the south, Alvarez forces in the north, he courted labor organizations like Casa del Obrero Mundial, offered gestures of support, a few favorable labor reforms, and even physical space, like giving them the Jesuit college Santa Brigida as headquarters.
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The Zapotec president, Benito Juarez, who from 1864 to 1867 had resisted foreign occupation by Napoleon's Emperor Maximilian and fought for constitutional reform, sought to stabilize, secularize, and modernize the country.
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In return, Carranza hoped to build a loyal base of organized workers, integrate them into his constitutional army, and neutralize the more radical strains of revolution. And I'm sorry to say that it partially worked. He was able to buy off some of these workers.
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While this alliance gave La Casa de Lobreros space to organize workers throughout the country and ramp up educational and proselytizing efforts, much like what would take place in Spain years later, the anarchists began to lose their anarchist roots from the collaboration.
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Instead of backing Zapata, in February 1915, La Casa signed a pact with the constitutionalist forces and created quote-unquote red battalions within Carranza's army.
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But although La Casa expanded its influence and managed to mount strikes among miners, teachers, drivers, bakers, oil workers, textile workers, carpenters, button makers, and barbers in 1915 in response to the economic pressures of inflation and unemployment, by early 1916, their government allies were cracking down on them. Not long after hiring the Red Battalions, they fired the Red Battalions.
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They shut down La Casa's offices. They sent key figures to jail. In response, the workers' movement held a national congress in Veracruz, and out of this emerged a new labor federation built on anarcho-syndicalist principles, committed not to capturing power, but to dismantling it, the Confederación del Trabajo de la Región Mexicana.
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In May 1916, a general strike erupted in protest of the imprisonment of La Casa's leadership and to demand urgent economic relief. While the strike was an immediate success, its ease led many young militants to believe that change could come through a benevolent state.
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Notably, Luis Morones, who would later lead the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana, or CROM, signed agreements with Carranza's government. Matters intensified ten months later when a second strike broke out due to low pay. In response, Carranza ordered mounted police to break up assemblies and declared martial law.
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The strike was crushed, its committee suspended all activities, and one prominent leader was nearly executed before his sentence was finally commuted. La Casa shut down and the strike failed, but the anarchists endured. By mid-1917, new groups like Luz and several local casas had reappeared throughout the country.
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In the mid-1800s, figures like Juarez led a sweeping movement against the old powers of Mexico, the Catholic Church and the military, which had long dominated both land and politics. Through the layers de reforma, they seized church property, secularized education, and promised a new era of rights and equality.
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However, internal debates culminated in the October 1917 National Workers' Congress, where reformist forces led by Luis Morones properly marginalized the anarchists, setting the stage for the rise of the CROM and a more moderate, pro-management approach, aligned with, of all people, the American Federation of Labor, the AFL.
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Carranza's crowning achievement came in that same year, with the signing of the Constitution of 1917. On paper, it was progressive. Land reform, limits on church power, labor protections. But to many revolutionaries, including Magón, this wasn't the revolution fulfilled. Far from it. It was a revolution managed. Their wildest dreams trimmed down to a policy.
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Even its better reforms were hardly enforced. But with the constitution of 1917, Carranza could still claim legitimacy. He could claim progress. And he could claim that the revolution was over. But what happened to the revolutionaries? Zapata was still fighting for land in the south, but Carranza would assassinate him by 1919.
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Magón was imprisoned in the USA, denouncing the betrayal from behind bars. Workers were still struggling for real power in their workplaces, and the vast majority of rural Mexicans remained poor, dispossessed, and disillusioned.
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In case you're wondering what happened to McGon, in 1916, he was jailed in the US until a group of exiled anarchists led by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman paid his bond. Now that feels like a cameo or crossover episode of some kind, right?
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And then in 1917, the year of the new constitution, he was back in jail again for speaking out against the first world war and calling for a social revolutionary war instead. He was sentenced to 20 years and his health deteriorated steadily. He wasn't a fan of Carranza at all. He called him a strikebreaker, an assassin, and a wolf in sheep's clothing.
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When Carranza's government offered him a pension, he said, quote, all money obtained by the state represents the sweat, the anguish and sacrifice of workers. If this money came directly from workers, I would gladly and even proudly accept it because they are my brothers.
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But when it comes to the intervention of the state after being compelled from the people, the money would only burn my hands and fill my heart with remorse. End quote. So long story short, he didn't accept the money. When the US said they might let him go if he said sorry and petitioned for a pardon, he said in many words, hell no. Among his more beautiful words, he said, quote, repentance.
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I have not exploited the sweat, anguish, fatigue and labor of others. I have not oppressed a single soul. I have nothing to repent for. My life has been lived without my having acquired any wealth, power or glory. When I could have gotten these three things very easily. But I do not regret it. Wealth, power, and glory are only won by trampling others' rights.
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My conscience is at peace, for it knows that under my convict's garb beats an honest heart. So he died in his jail cell in 1922, possibly assassinated. Zapata, like I said, was assassinated by Kranzer in 1919, and Kranzer himself was assassinated in 1920. In case you were keeping track, both of Magan's major ops, he ended up outliving, right?
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He outlived Madero and then he outlived Carranza, but he still died in jail, which is, you know, kind of tragic. But Carranza's successor, Alvaro Obregon, was both friendly with reformists in the CROM and not as hostile to the anarchists as Carranza, which gave the anarchists an opportunity to regroup. Strikes built up across the country.
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But there was a catch, because to weaken the church, the liberals sold off its land, not to the peasants or indigenous communities who had worked on it for generations, but to wealthy buyers. Ejidos, the communal lands of indigenous peoples, were privatized. Under this liberal banner of freedom and progress, they created a new class of landlords and pushed rural people deeper into poverty.
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Miners, oil workers, textile workers, dock workers, and more. Some 65,000 workers in July 1920 alone. Out of this momentum came the Federación Comunista del Proletariado Mexicano, or FCPM. It was an ideologically mixed group, but leaned in an anarchic direction and starkly contrasted itself with the reformist ways of the CROM and the international ally, the AFL.
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The FCPM went on to establish the Confederación General de Trabajadores, or CGT, in 1921 as a direct challenge to the CROM. They were fully declaring their independence from state and party. Their focus was on class struggle. The Mexican government flew to its socialist language from time to time, but the anarchists saw through the charade.
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They called out that so-called socialist-like government's deportation of anarchists and socialists. They even called Morrone, the guy who started CROM, Mexico's Mussolini. It's an interesting insult. The CGT stood against the Moscow-backed Third Internationale and instead allied with councilists like Rosa Luxemburg and Anton Panekoeck.
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They also formed a specifically anarchist section within the group meant to play the same role played by the FAI for the Spanish CGT. The Mexican CGT backed strikes, including in 1921 when they backed a rail workers' strike against US companies. And in 1922, they expelled CGT leaders who had flirted with electoral politics, reiterating their anti-party stance.
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They would not allow themselves to be retaken and capitulated to reformist aims. That same year, May Day protests turned into confrontations when right-wing thugs killed a demonstrator's child in front of the US consulate. And they didn't stop there. Anarchists in the CGT helped organize tenant strikes in Mexico City and Veracruz.
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They led general strikes in textile mills and rallied against state violence. They protested in solidarity with international struggles from Spain to Boston, from the murder of Salvador Segui to the jailing of Sacco and Vincetti. They also had to deal with efforts to defame them through misinformation, such as the accusation that they were embezzling workers' funds.
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Throughout the early 1920s, you had some new libertarian publications jumping out. You had Weber Rojo, you had La Humanidad, Sagittario, Tierra Libre, Alba, Anakika, and so on. And by 1924, under President Calles, who followed the assassinated Obregón, the tides began to shift. Calles was more hostile to the anarchists than Obregon and openly favoured CRON.
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He gave Morones a cabinet post, passed laws to undermine CGT organising, and escalated repression. The CGT held its ground, organising general strikes, occupying textile mills, confronting police, expanding to the countryside, all their usual stuff. They fought for short-term relief and long-term revolution. By 1926, CGT had grown into a federation of 157 affiliated groups.
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Unions, syndicates, agrarian communities all included. And yet, by the late 1920s, things started to fray. The CROM was declining due to their attachments to a government that was no longer conciliatory to their political ambitions. And the CGT couldn't capitalize on that decline of the CROM. The government sought to marginalize them entirely.
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Thousands of former CROM members joined the CGT while the CGT itself began to make some slides toward concession and reformism. And so it reached a point where they were calling themselves anarchists. But the anarchism was nowhere near there. And yet, anarchism didn't die. It morphed, it migrated, and it regrouped.
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Benito Juarez died, but his legacy lived on with those reforms to cement the separation of church and state, freedom of religion, the prohibition of forced labor, and so on. But following him came the Porfiriato, a 30-year-long dictatorship under the Mixtec president Porfirio Diaz, who continued the modernization of the country but also deepened its long-standing inequalities.
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After the fall of Spain in 1939, exiled members of the CNT and FAI arrived in Mexico, reinvigorating the scene for a time. They published Tierra y Libertad, built new organizations, and kept the memory and the fight alive. A few anarchist impulses managed to emerge within the Mexican Communist Party into the early 1930s as well, at least according to Kirkshafer.
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President Calles ended up founding what became the Institutional Revolutionary Party. A contradiction if I ever heard it. and they basically ran the show in Mexico for 71 years straight, from 1929 to 2000. Their administration co-created the conditions that would birth the New Zapatismos in 1994.
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They're not anarchists, as they have been very clear to state, but maybe they'll get a two-parter in the future, going into their history in more depth. The history of anarchism in Mexico has been quite the story, I must say. And with that, we've reached the end of that classical history. Its modern history is still being written, still being told. But this is the end of our exploration for now.
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Not just of Mexico's anarchist history, but of this entire series of anarchism in Latin America. I joked about making an episode about Quebec's anarchism scene, but that may remain a joke for now. We've journeyed a very long way together, from the Andes to Buenos Aires to Montevideo to Sao Paulo to all over.
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We've seen how, long before the name anarchism arrived on Latin America's shores, people were resisting hierarchy, through indigenous forms of autonomy, African-Maroon communities, and peasant traditions of land-sharing and reciprocity.
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We saw how these anarchic and anarchish instincts met new ideas, genuinely and intentionally anarchist ideas, coming from Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin, brought over in pamphlets and in the minds of exiles and immigrants. In Mexico, those forces took on a revolutionary scale. Roda Canati planted the seed. Magón amplified its voice.
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The workers, the peasants, the students, they all gave it their all, their fire. And even when that fire was smothered by reformists, by nationalists, by reactionaries, by capitalists, by the bullets and the bribe, it never truly went out. Across the Americas, these movements rarely won in the traditional sense. They were often betrayed, suppressed, and erased from history.
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But although anarchy was not achieved, anarchists and the anarchist idea will survive. Anarchist thought is radically resilient, and it never really disappears. It usually just goes underground or into the margins, or into new forms, from student collectives to feminist organizations to squats to ecological struggles.
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Inspiring movements that aren't necessarily anarchist, but lean in a direction that questions some of the familiar patterns of authority. Thank you for walking this journey with me. I've been Andrew Sage. You can find me on YouTube at Andrewism and support the week over at patreon.com slash Jane True. All sources, citations, and further reading can be found in the show notes.
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This has been It Could Happen Here. All power to all the people. Peace.
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Porfirio Diaz surrounded himself with intellectuals known as the scientificos. They were positivists, as in adherents of the positivist school of philosophy, which advocated for rational planning and economic development as a path to social progress.
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His slogan was pan o palo, the bread or the stick, and reflected the policy of rewarding compliance with prosperity while punishing dissent with severe consequences. The liberty, order and progress equation sacrificed liberty as the Mexican people were expected to trade freedom for the benefits of these policies.
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Workers ended up facing low wages, long hours, and of course lacked rights, while estate laborers were landless and under the arbitrary rule of mayordomos. Education was largely restricted to elites in major cities. Groups like the Yaqui Indians were forcibly relocated as cheap labor to plantations.
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Governors, though supposedly elected, were effectively presidential appointees, monitored by jefe's politicos who intervened in local affairs. The Rulades, an elite constabulary, maintained order but often disregarded due process, which fostered a whole reign of terror in the rural areas. Diaz's popularity eventually waned as prosperity was monopolized by a small, often foreign elite.
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This elite emulated European customs, which created a stark divide with the growing proletariat and middle classes. By the second half of the 19th century, Mexico was caught in a contradiction, a state that promised emancipation through property rights while dispossessing the very people it claimed to free.
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The liberal project had failed them, and in its failure, space opened for deeper critiques of property, power, and the state itself. a younger generation began questioning the system. And with this rising criticism came rising repression, which set the stage for the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
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This whole era of the turn of the millennia and the start of the 20th century has so much of the same stuff happening all over the world. That's one of the biggest trends that we've been able to see throughout your Latin American anarchism series is how much they all mirror each other and how much of global movements used to exist.
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Not in an organized fashion, but there's some other force that is... that is driving these global trends of revolt and revolution. And we see this a lot in the 1910 to 1920 time period. I mean, even just in Latin America.
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Absolutely. I also think, of course, it's really easy to notice these trends and notice these tides of history in retrospect. You know, when you're submerged in it, it's just like, you know, all these conversations and stuff happening for sure, all these events and stuff happening around you. But it's only by looking in the past, you could say, oh, wow, this was like a global pattern.
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You know, so I'm always curious to see, like, When we look back, I mean, the 2010s are already over. The narratives around it are still formulating, right? We're still in the midst of the 1920s. The 2020s, so you know, the narratives around it will still be developing all now.
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But we're already halfway through, and I'm sure people have already seen certain trends that are going to make for some excellent retrospective commentary.
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Definitely, yeah. Like the past 10 years, we've seen this global far-right power grab and this like... rebirth of right-wing populism, sweeping a whole bunch of neoliberal democracies, like post-90s, post-war on terror, post-end of history stuff, where you see the full extent of the Clinton, Reagan, Thatcher economics completely crumble with far-right populism taking over the reins of
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most popular consciousness yeah to the point where even like the more like liberal parties are being quote-unquote forced to adopt like similar rhetoric looking at like like like the labor party in the uk and here in the states how how much like the democratic party last year like completely caved on like far-right populist talking points on immigration and stuff exactly
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Hello and welcome to Ikrapen here. This may be my final episode. On Latin American anarchism, that is. We've covered Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, the many countries of Central America, the former countries of Gran Colombia, and the Hispanophone islands of the Caribbean. Now we're finally getting to the big one. Mexico. I say we, because I'm here with Garrison Davis.
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I think part of it as well is a failure to advance a positive direction and a positive program.
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You know, when we allow... The terms of discourse, the arena of discussion to be dictated by the right, when we simply react to what they are saying, when we simply respond to their policies and their efforts, you know, we may slow down the progress of their goals.
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But ultimately, as long as we are engaging in dialogue with their goals, they are slowly inching their goals closer and closer to reality.
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Yeah, yeah, that is certainly the trend that I've been seeing the past 10 years, and I'm sure many people have.
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Yeah, I mean, the Overton window is pretty much entirely dictated by what they decide, you know? I think I've mentioned this before. The right decided they wanted to talk about critical race theory, and then critical race theory became the center of conversation. The right decided they wanted to target...
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Right, yeah. And then that becomes the whole thing, the whole center of discussion. They're not putting forward the policies that are going to hurt pretty much everybody as the center of their policy. That's more like an aside thing. When they give themselves salary raises and they cut taxes on the rich, that's not the center of their political messaging.
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Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a show about things falling apart. And today, the thing falling apart is the Galactic Empire. This is episode four of our four-part series talking about the politics of Andor Season 2. Andor has sadly come to a close. This will be our final discussion episode talking about Andor Season 2, episodes 10, 11, and 12. I'm Garrison Davis.
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I'm joined by Robert Evans and Mia Wong. What a exhilarating four weeks this has been. Yeah, I'm going to miss it.
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Yeah, no, it sucks now that we have to just do all this stuff except, like, the eight years in the past version, because the level in which they've advanced here is far beyond, certainly, the U.S. 's revolutionary potential.
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So I think we're going to do these episodes a little bit differently. I'm not going to do a whole synopsis for each of these episodes, since for these last three, the show has mostly eschewed plot for emotional and character beats. So instead, I want to quickly go over each of those character points, and then we can discuss those in detail.
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And most of our discussion will probably be around episode 10, Make It Stop. Yep. Let's start at the beginning. Lonnie's last meeting. Ah, yeah. So the ISP double agent Lonnie Young calls Luthan to an emergency meeting to give him one final batch of intel after burning his cover. It's really shocking and worrying when we see Luthan and Lonnie meeting in public.
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That already lets you know, like, oh, this is the end. Stuff is like the most jover it's ever been for Lonnie.
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The center of their political messaging is various culture-related issues that they can use to rally their base but it's nothing that's actually benefiting people. You know, and instead of circumventing that effort to dictate the course of conversation and dictate our own conversations, instead we're just kind of following along the tail. But that's a bit outside the scope of this.
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So he meets with Lonnie. Lonnie needs, like, assurances for, like, him and his family's safety. Luthen tells him that they'll be able to flee to Yavin together. Sure. Sure, buddy. Yeah. So by accessing Dedra's computer files, Lonnie learns that the Emperor's New Energy Project, the Kalkite mining on Gorman, the Kyber on Jedha, are actually part of a massive superweapon.
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Luthen is warned that Dedra and the ISB are preparing for a raid on Coruscant and he may be the target. Luthen ends up killing Lonnie to tie up loose ends and passes off the information to Clea to relay it to the Rebel Alliance while he goes to thermite their computer hard drive saying, quote unquote, I'll do the burn. I'll do the burn. Again, it's Jover.
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Our shop, our little home, our little base of operations in Coruscant is getting destroyed. This is truly the end of an era here. Luthan either knows or has decided that he has run out of time, and the only way to be sure that the information safely reaches the Alliance is to give the ISB a distraction, and that distraction is himself.
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That's kind of what he discusses in this next section, which is such an efficient piece of screenwriting when Dedra arrives at Luthen's gallery. You can only hide in plain sight for so long, and that time has come. As Dedra arrives, Luthen says, here you are at last. Uh-huh. Every line in their exchange, like, before she lets him know, like, hey, I know who you are.
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But, like, every line leading up to that is a double entendre. Like, every single exchange they have is actually communicating something else, and it's wild. Yeah.
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no no like it's like he shit sucker rebellions already gone you dip shit fascist like you fucking failed too late no but like referring to himself and in some ways her as like as an antiquity like like like you said like he is tired he is done he is yeah he's kind of a relic for the current era of the rebellion and you don't know it yet but so are you Yes, and so is her.
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Only two pieces of questionable providence are in the gallery. Yeah. Amazing. So, Luthan hands Dedra a ceremonial dagger. She asks if it's real. He smiles and remarks, we still don't know. And the tension mounts. The tension mounts, yeah. It's amazing. It's so good. I get every single line. It's like, It's like the screenwriters playing with us. Just amazing.
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I think Tom Bissell and Tony Gilroy, one of these episodes, just phenomenal. Dedra, now I'm nervous. Luthen, you've come all this way. And then she unveils this artifact that she has brought to Luthen for evaluation. She says, it's a little damaged perhaps, but I'd say it's held its value as she looks Luthen up and down. Again, same thing, very efficient.
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That's a bit of a digression here. Before we get to the point of the Mexican Revolution, though, we should really take a look at the slow and steady development of radical ideas in Mexico during the 19th century.
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Luthen is a little damaged, but he's held his value. And Dedra reveals the vintage Imperial Starpath unit that first brought Luthen's operation under Dedra's eye. And now that both of them have their cards displayed on the table, they get to exchange a little bit more clearly without having to use these coded... Yeah. coded phrases like they were before.
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And they had this fascinating back and forth. She talks about how Luthan's been hiding in the shelter of imperial peace and quiet and just wants to burn the galaxy down. And Luthan gets to poke at her for how he's been aware of her this entire time and she's only learned who he is. Quote, I've known you all along. Hardly seems fair. She says, you disgust me. Everything you stand for.
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And he says, do you know why? Freedom scares you. This is what Dedra's last arc is like really about. And it eventually, you know, paradoxically leads to leads to her fate. Now I think probably the best line in this little exchange is Luthen telling Daedra, quote, you're too late. The rebellion isn't here anymore. It's flown away. It's everywhere now.
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There's a whole galaxy out there waiting to disgust you.
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And also cooking his hard drive, buying time as his hard drive burns up.
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Yeah, he uses this ceremonial dagger that he earlier hands to Dedra and stabs himself so that the Empire won't be able to torture and try to extract information from him about the rebellion.
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You see, indigenous resistance persisted throughout Mexico's history through often quiet revolt, acts of non-cooperation that would steadily ensure that Spain could never fully establish its dominion.
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This is like a screenwriting thing. Like, Dedra has to get out of this. They have to access the computer later. It's like, come on, buddy.
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come on i think i think this is this is very like poetically written yeah yeah you know it's it's beautiful i like like the romance of it yeah but man deadra fucked up so bad here oh yeah fundamentally ruins absolutely her entire life the emotions really got the better of her she really wanted to like like win one over on on axis to like validate herself and her obsession the same way like cyril does and it fucking bites her in the ass
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Yeah. Or, like, the learning of the Death Star's existence through the hard drive.
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So Luthen's transferred to the hospital, and then we get a flashback with Luthen as an early Imperial Army sergeant involved in a massacre on Clea's home planet. We see him huddled over in his ship with a flask, repeating the words, make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. as sounds of carnage and destruction go on in the background.
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Even after independence, the colonial structure lived on in the haciendas, the church and the state, so the indigenous communities would continue to resist, sometimes in profoundly anti-authoritarian ways. By the 19th century, and this history is courtesy Angel Capaletti's Anarchism in Latin America, as I mentioned, in 1861, a man arrived in Mexico with a very distinct name.
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Just this, like, very short scene, like, recontextualizes a whole bunch of things about Luthan's character. Yes. Including his behavior on Ferex during the riot, where he, like, doesn't get involved and instead looks on from a distance with, like, a very... like a very blank expression.
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And like when I first saw that episode, to me, it felt like Luthien was like first confronted with like the fatality that he's dealing with, like confronted with like the consequences for actually engaging in revolution. Because he's always been kind of in the shadows. He's been more of this like orchestrator. He doesn't see like the tactile death that accompanies his actions.
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It's like, that's how I first saw that scene. And now this has been fully recontextualized as like, Eryx is like a PTSD moment for him. That's not the first time he's seen combat. It changes the way you can now look back at that scene, which is very, very cool.
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Like a normal revenge story where the Empire kills his family so that he becomes an insurgent. Yeah.
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We'll talk more about that and his motivation at the end when we discuss Clea. Speaking of which, in this flashback, it is shot from the perspective of Clea hiding in a cubby on this ship.
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and luthen uh named i think a layer lar uh which is layer sergeant sergeant layer is his an original name uh well we don't know what his first was but he just reverses it yeah which which come on no but like this is this is this is also like poetic right this is this is oh it is it is this is this is star wars poetry right it's like poetry it rhymes obsec wise don't do that i i just i just got to put this in there don't do that
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He was Protino Constantino Rodacanati. He was a Greek immigrant, radicalized by the revolutions in Europe and steeped in the works of Fourier, who was a utopian socialist, and Proudhon, who was an anarchist, the first anarchist. He had fled the counter-revolutionary tide crashing over the continent with a mission.
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But Sergeant Lair finds Clea as a six-year-old hiding on this ship. We then go back to the present as Clea infiltrates a space hospital to get to Luthen, intercut with flashbacks showing how Luthen used his military experience to train Clea in insurgent warfare. So here we see Luthan being kept alive in this Coruscant hospital for later interrogation.
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And then suddenly Dedra is arrested in the hospital by an ISB marshal for at first unclear reasons, which we will get into later. The ISB has found Lonnie's body. So there's a dead ISB agent in Coruscant. They've heard of how Dedra did this raid without authorization, without notifying the agent now in charge of the Axis investigation. and then she's taken into custody.
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In these flashbacks, we see Luthan and Clea going town to town, pawning historical artifacts while he teaches young Clea insurgent warfare. One of the most devastating exchanges is when Luthan describes Clea as his daughter to a shopkeeper to help negotiate a price. And afterwards, Clea asks, "'Am I your daughter now?' And he replies, "'When it's useful.'" Yeah.
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That's who we are now. Yeah. Clea says, I'll have to think about that. And Luthen says, sometimes it's not up to us.
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yeah another exchange happens after cleo watches this like imperial firing line kill a batch of kids who are allegedly suspected of shooting a stormtrooper i think it probably could have actually been luthan it's unclear and it essentially just demonstrates like collective punishment right and and cleo gets very upset at watching uh this massacre and runs off to Luthan.
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And also like, interestingly, like when Luthan knows this is going to happen, he like chooses to like not watch. He's like, we don't need to be here. We can, we can, we can just leave. But, but Clea chooses to stay and watch and then runs back to him. And, and he, he tells her we fight to win. That means we lose and lose and lose and lose until we're ready.
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All you know now is how much you hate, you bank that you hide that and, You keep it alive until you know what to do with it.
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Yeah, they do their first large-scale direct action together on the Emperor's home planet of Naboo. He teaches her how to blend into the surroundings as they remote detonate an explosive planted on a bridge. While in the present, Clea disguises herself as a nurse to disappear into the hospital where Luthan's being held and blows up the hospital parking lot as a distraction to get to Luthan.
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Rurikinati believed Mexico, with its long-standing indigenous traditions of communal landholding and mutual aid, was the perfect place to plant the seeds of a new utopian society. And in a lot of ways, he was right. You know, he saw in the Ejido system, the indigenous Kuna Lantanya, a living echo of the kind of society utopians in Europe could only dream of.
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These two things mirror each other. It's like poetry. It rhymes. Clea says to Luthan, You're afraid. He says, I'm only afraid of what I'm doing to you as he hands this child a detonator.
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Lucid actually took it away and had himself do it. Yeah. Yeah. But that scene by itself where he's telling her not to look at it, to make sure you're looking at me, only turn after everyone else has turned, very fun stuff happening in Star Wars.
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Okay, we are back. Back in the present day on Coruscant, Clea finally reaches Luthen in his hospital room. And I guess leading up to this moment, it's unclear if she's going to try to rescue him, extract him. And no, there's no time for that. She takes him off life support and lets him die. There is no escape for his character. Yeah. Luthen never gets to see that sunrise, but...
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He did everything he could to give the rebellion the best chance. And Clea gets to finish and live out what he started. He wants to give Clea that sunrise. This relates to his core motivation as a character. He's not getting revenge against the Empire for killing his family or something. That kind of cliched story is not what they're doing here. Instead, this is all... all about Clea.
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It's about how he's found Clea and both of them are broken by what he has done. So then he spends the rest of his life building the rebellion for Clea so that she can live on and she can beat the Empire. And that's the entire like point of him. Like that, that is what's driving him. He is like the most selfless character.
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Tony in an interview said, quote, there are only a certain number of reasons that you can change your life. And one of them is just absolute self-disgust. So we found a way for him to have a belly full of it at the right moment.
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Where the liberal elite saw backwardness, Rudra Kanati saw potential. His aim wasn't to civilize these communities, but to learn from them and help them protect their autonomy from the encroaching state through political philosophy and praxis. He seems to be a very interesting fellow, by the way. I mean, he apparently spoke seven languages. He practiced medicine by day and philosophy by night.
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Yeah, the entire apparatus of the Empire. Yeah, yeah. Yep. I think we're kind of wrapped up with this episode here, but, like, the Clea Hospital, like, infiltration sequence is superb. So good. Like, one person doing all of this stuff to the absolute befuddlement of, like, the Imperial...
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troopers she's really embodying the line from rogue one make 10 men feel like 100 yeah and yeah she's able to infiltrate this hospital like she's working with a team of like 10 people and it's and it's just her shout out to the granny alien in the elevator very very great little comedy moment yeah
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It's maybe the best in the whole series. Like this is absolutely.
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The actress of Clea has said from Clea's perspective, she doesn't really fully see Luthen as her father figure. Because inherently he was involved in the actual killing of her family. She has found a way to love him through that. But it's not like that immediate familial love. It's a different rationalization that she can still give him a final kiss on his deathbed and does care for him.
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But it's so much more complicated and murky and roped in with politics and roped in with...
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All right. Episode 11, Who Else Knows? Krennic and Dedra queen out together. Hell yeah. Look at them go. So, Dedra's in this interrogation chamber, and Krennic grills her about how this piece of information has escaped containment. And Dedra's face throughout this whole scene...
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He was a Christian, but not anything like the Christians that dominated Mexico at the time. Because as Angel Capaletti puts it, for him, the essence of Christianity is charity. That is love for all as it is taught in the gospels. And that essence is the moral foundation of socialism and revolution as well.
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Yeah, no, once she realizes that this is actually about the leakage of the Death Star plans and not just a simple raid on a rebel weapons dealer, she realizes the kind of gravity of her situation. She complains about how she's been forced to scavenge for information because there's not an efficient... Efficient intel sharing operation across different Imperial branches.
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And Krennic says to her, if you're not a rebel spy, you missed your calling, which is the biggest insult you could say to her.
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Right? This destroys her. Yeah. And like, this is the same mistake that like Cyril makes, right? They're trying to like, to like do this, like try hard stuff. You think initiative is rewarded here. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you follow orders. Yeah. You do not take your own initiative. You are not your own person. You follow what you're told to do. You don't take things into your own hands.
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This is how the whole system crumbles. Yeah. It's phenomenal how, like, she is so much, like, you know, especially in Cyril's eyes, right? She is, like, everything that he wanted to be but, like, couldn't. And yet she has all the same flaws as him. They're both children trying to, like... grab and seize their spot in the Imperial world. And they can never escape the logic of children.
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It's phenomenal. So yeah, basically, because she was sent memos accidentally, she was accidentally added to Huthi PC small group, She had information on the desktop that she shouldn't have, that she stored on her computer, that then Lonnie was able to access with a stolen code cylinder, and this is why she's detained.
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sometimes you share and sometimes you don't and yeah yeah no like the idea of him holding on to this code cylinder this this whole year knowing that you can only use this once before you're kind of found out yeah yeah like waiting until he's heard chatter that like Luthan's gonna get raided uses the cylinder then discovers all these other files it it shows how like important Luthan's operation is I think this is I think what these last two episodes are really about is kind of like yeah the redemption of Luthan in the eyes of of the other uh rebel agents mm-hmm
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Pure Christianity, he wrote, is the religion that will regenerate the world when people finally come to understand the power of its basic principles, liberty, equality, and fraternity. But it is Christianity without dogma, like St. Simon's, and without priesthood, liturgy, or hierarchical organization, the model for which he finds the life of Jesus and his earliest followers.
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So, yes, Dedra is completely fucked, and it's hilarious, and Ben Mendelsohn is prancing around the scene. He's having such a good time. It's so good.
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She's a button, right? She's a button. We can push you when we can push you when we desire to, but you don't, you don't go off by yourself. It's phenomenal.
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Yes, everyone's a button. And it's crazy how much of, like, the ISB gets totally wiped out, like, the week of the Death Star's destruction. And, like, this shows, like, the real decline of the Empire is this, like, This, like, administrative bureaucratic state that's been running the real day-to-day operations gets completely wiped out. Yeah.
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And now these two, like, Sith lunatics have to personally run everything themselves, and they can't do it. They just can't. They were relying on all of, like, the Republic holdovers that actually knew how to, like, run a state.
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Primitive Christianity is authentic Christianity, but has been entirely degraded by the Catholic and Protestant churches, and has nothing to do with so many sects that call themselves Christian. End quote. A few months after his arrival in 1861, he published a socialist primer in Mexico that marked him as the first anarchist to put forward distinctly anarchist theory in the country.
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Hello. This is, this has been, it's gotta be like a year long series now, right?
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And that privilege is never extended to the Empire.
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I do want to return to the point of how fascism eats its own at the end because Tony has some quotes on that. I'm just going to speed run through these next few kind of points here. The ISB tracks Cleo's movements via hospital security cameras, even though she tries to avoid them. and evade detection.
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She is basically stuck on Coruscant and starts hiding out in the old safe house, broadcasting an emergency pulse code to her comrades on Yavin. Meanwhile, a divorced Cassian and Melchi get drunk and start bullying their autistic robot friend while playing poker.
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Wilman's old, like, Luthen radio goes off with an SOS message. She takes it to Cassian, who then, yeah, drunk drives their U-Wing off Yavin.
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In the mid-1860s, he formed a group called La Sociale with the goal of spreading the ideas of mutualism, free association, and anti-capitalist cooperation through books, pamphlets, and education. Perucanati and his collaborators launched worker schools aimed at promoting literacy, political consciousness, and autonomy.
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It's so funny that the thing that Cassian does at the end of Rogue One is just like a regular curving on the face. He just keeps doing this. But no, like consistently, Draven, even if he gets pissed off at Cassian, consistently has his back still, which is, I think, really, really sweet. Yes.
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Krennic realizes how fucked they are and tries to get the entire ISB to mobilize to locate Clea as she is probably in possession of the Death Star intel. Quote, there will be no horizon to the scope of your inquiry. And this is where we have some of the most interesting stuff from Partagas and how he views rebellions and revolutions as a disease.
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And this relates to some of his lines from season one, where he describes the ISB as quote-unquote, Yeah. And then when the ISP decides on what grounds they are looking to apprehend Clea, Hardegraz proclaims that, quote, she's diseased. She escaped the hospital with an infectious condition that threatens everyone with whom she may come into contact, unquote.
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Now, while stuck in an ISB holding cell, with an unbuttoned collar, Dedra is crashing out. And you can tell because the collar is unbuttoned. But somehow, she's still able to give the ISB a lead to track Clea through her use of obscure radio signals. One of the cool parts here is an Imperial radio technician is impressed at Lucin's radio setup.
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One such school was the Escuela del Rayo y del Socialismo, the School of Lightning and Socialism. Hell yeah. It combined moral instruction with a deep critique of the exploitative labor system. This was, you know, education as a rebellion, not just to read but to recognize the exploitation and to imagine alternatives.
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and can't help but be excited when learning how it works. But they say that Luthan targeted the storage files and the radio signal library when he burned the console. But still, they were able to track Clea's pulse code to a nearby apartment on Coruscant. And in preparation for the raid on the safe house, the ISP jams comms around the area right as Cassian, Melchi, and K2 arrive to extract Clea.
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At this point. Yeah. It's been going on for some time with breaks in between and everything.
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As Cassian gets into the apartment and finds not Luthen, but Clea, and then tries to plead with her to come to Yavin, he also kind of lambasts Luthen for not coming to Yavin sooner, because he couldn't swallow his pride. And Clea says, quote, Thank the galaxy he didn't. He stayed for this. The people in Yavin have to know what they're up against. Thank the galaxy he didn't. So good. Yeah.
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All right, let's go on break and then we'll return to discuss the final episode. Okay, we are back. Episode 12, Jedha Kyber Erso. So Cass is trying to convince Clea to leave, like, right now, right this very second. Please, dear God, come with me. And Clea's still, like, kind of pissed about the whole situation. Like, Gavin, after all these years, what a bitter ending.
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Cass tries to argue that if she comes, she's helping to keep Luthan alive, which she calls big words. The Imperial SWAT team, importantly, not stormtroopers, instead these goofy-ass SWAT guys, surround the apartment trying to locate Kleia. As the ISB locates Cass, Kleia, and Melchi, they throw a stun grenade, which, this is very interesting to me, does not really affect Cass and Melchi as much.
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Like, Kleia gets knocked out, but the Narkina 5 prison shocks...
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So as K2 just completely demolishes this Imperial Riot team, the ISB calls for backup, but everyone is spread too thin because they're out searching for the emergency disease warrant from Pardigras.
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yeah playa does get to yavin and here we see a lot more of like the the tricky aspects of yavin politics saw is kind of getting impossible to deal with uh he is huffing way too much fuel he's huffing an amount of fuel i don't know if i'm gonna say it's too much but i do love his insistence dude we know you're we know you're on jenna and he's like we know you're on no idea where i am you don't know where i am
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Rudacanati thought of his socialism as the fullest expression of the French revolutionary motto of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which no half-measure like liberalism could ever reach.
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Mothma's trying to argue with him about how they're trying to get to the bottom of the Imperial Kyber mining on Jedha. And they're like, we know you're on Jedha. And he tries to deny it. You don't know where I am. Yes, we do.
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Huffing all that fuel really does rapid age you. Yeah, it's not great for you. So then we have, I guess, the most frustrating part of the episode. Good, but frustrating to watch with this rebel spokes council meeting about Luthan and the Death Star intel. Oh my god, are these people annoying.
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yeah what pieces of shit these people these people who have like done basically nothing yeah they're senators who's like who's who have who have defected to yavin and they don't know the cost of of things that that they're actually dealing in bail says that that luthan stayed on coruscant too long and and again no no luthan stayed for this piece of information
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He recognized that the immediate objective must be, quote, the extinction of poverty, the distribution and increase of the commonwealth, the abolition of prostitution, and the conservation of all our faculties, including the intellectual, physical, and moral ones, for the transformation of humanity through science, beauty, and virtue, end quote.
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And Amon's getting increasingly frustrated as everyone's bad-talking Luthen. Again, we've been very clear on this show about Luthen as a complicated character, with some people more pro-Luthen than others. And Amon herself has a lot of reservations about Luthen. But she also knows it's like her directly and everyone else are only here in part because of what he's done.
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That's not saying he was right about every single thing, but that still is true, right? Like he, this is, he's still very important to this. And everyone's being quite dismissive of Cassian and the intel from Luthan and Cassian kind of gets, you know, put into confinement and gets dismissed and requests to visit Clea in the hospital.
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And this is where Mon finally speaks up and immediately grants him permission. Because, like, she knows all these people. And she's the only one on this little council that, like, knows all of these people and knows, like, how much they have sacrificed.
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But still, like, Mon is still, like, a good operator here, and she asks her cousin Vel to, like, talk with Cassian and, like, suss out how real this Death Star intel is. When Vel does this, she doesn't try to do it, like, covertly. She, like, talks to Cassian very, like, flatly, being like, hey, like, Mon sent me here to try to figure out if this is legit. Is this legit?
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And they discuss the intel. Meanwhile, Clea gets up from her medical bay and starts walking around Yavin in the rain. And like, oh my god, somebody please hug her. Someone do something. She should not be left alone. She's had one of the most traumatic days of her life.
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Someone, like, take care of her, and Vel runs into Clea, and, like, Vel and Clea have had, like, kind of, like, a dicey relationship, but, like, in this moment, we see, like, just the importance of, like, sheer solidarity, and Vel, like, cares for her, gets her to, like, cover, gives her, like, a place to sleep, and it's a really touching scene.
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One of those things was not like the other, as I'm sure you noticed. There was a standout inclusion there, but it makes sense considering his background. He also saw himself as a cosmopolitan, perhaps owing in part to his unique circumstances as a man with a Greek father, Austrian mother, a French education, and Mexican home.
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I do love the moment when Luthan first gives her the information and he forces her to repeat it back to him. Make sure you can express it to me. And then she
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does the same thing to Cassian and Cassian like doesn't like Cassian doesn't repeat it back to her and but yeah like that small like you know like you have to have like a ritual you have to have like a protocol to make sure you actually like to make sure that I know you actually have this information you need to like express it back to me it's just a nice little short moment in the next morning we see Cassian taking care of Vix's plants good for him yeah
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And then this is when Cass and Vel talk. And they say that they're going to drink to Luthan justice once, which again, Cassian's drinking right in the morning. Good stuff.
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Like he does every day, yes. But they say, you know, like, we can't toast them all. Like, Lieutenant Gorn, Nemec, Cinta, Ferex, Marva, Gorman, the Aldanis. And one short little tidbit here. Vel talks about how there's people falsely claiming that they were part of the Aldani crew, which is the most accurate thing I have ever seen. Oh, yeah.
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where they're like everybody keeps taking credit for this and she's like man if someone did that in front of me I'd just shoot their ass I fucking killed him they're the only two people from the Aldani raid still still alive and like yeah like the idea that we're getting like rebels stolen valors but very realistic you know I actually I actually punched Richard Spencer as like as like a 14 year old yeah it's very cool
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Yeah. We then start hearing Nemec's manifesto playing. And it's unclear if there's playing it for the show. To remind us of it, yeah. But then we realize that it's Partagas listening in the Imperial Security Bureau's briefing room. And it's a really wonderful thing to return to. And one of Paragraz's underlings walks up to him and says, it just keeps spreading, doesn't it?
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And he says, it's been hard to contain. Again, using this disease rhetoric. He then asks for a moment to collect himself and then shoots himself in the head. This is one of the most fascinating parts of the show, knowing the tear that he's going to face for failing while also being confronted with how much of his work for the Empire has been worth it.
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I did think that too. Trump announced this during his joint congressional address, and he openly said that he originally wanted to do it on April 1st at the start of the month, but decided not to because he is too superstitious as a person. So yes, originally they were going to be on April 1st and then they pushed it back to April 2nd because they didn't want it to be on April Fool's Day.
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I'm glad we're... So that's a great, great extra insight into the mind of the US God King. Cool. Anyway, let's go on ad break and then come back to discuss all of the other bad things that are happening in the country. Okay, we're back.
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The first thing I want to kind of open to a group discussion on is that on Tuesday, March 18th, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump's ban on trans people serving in the military, ruling that the blanket ban likely violates constitutional rights.
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Stephen Miller responded to the ruling by writing, district court judges have now decided that they are in command of the armed forces. Is there no end to this madness? God, fuck. So I know this is a topic that like we have we've discussed a lot as you know, we're not all big US US military defenders. No, but it's mostly done bad stuff in my lifetime.
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But we still take it like almost like an ontological issue with this ban, because it essentially creates just a secondary class of citizen with with fundamentally different rights from the rest of everyone else. And that is never a good thing.
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Yeah, in some related news, the VA just announced that, quote, effective immediately, the VA will not offer cross-sex hormone therapy to veterans who have a current diagnosis or history of or exhibit symptoms consistent with gender dysphoria unless such veterans are already receiving such care from the VA or such veterans were receiving such care from the military as a part of and upon their separation from the military service and are eligible for VA health care.
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So basically, they will not be admitting, like, new patients to receive gender-affirming healthcare.
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Sure, I mean, like, I kind of get annoyed when people do that, like, comparison, because, like, that's never, like... we're falling into like this artwork trap of like, we're actually using words to mean what they mean. And like, they're not using words like that. You know, like whenever people like laugh about, haha, they banned pronouns at school.
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Now, now you can't say the word I, and you're like, no, like, come on. Like what? Like, that's not what they mean. Like you have to understand like the dog whistles that they're using.
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Sure, it depends what you mean by gender dysphoria, right? Theoretically, you could have gender dysphoria because you're a cis male and you want to become more masculine, right? All of these diagnoses have a very fuzzy ontological underpinning, right? These are just categories that we're projecting. Yeah. Yes. But this is, you know, probably not great. It's probably isn't a good thing.
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Like, for instance, if you already have VA health care, you're not in the military anymore. And now you decide that you would like to receive gender affirming health care. Now you can't, at least through the VA. Yep. So as a related thing. Let's see.
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I think we should kind of close with or like bookend our discussion on like the immigration stuff and the black baggings and deportations which have been happening. A German immigrant named Fabian Schmidt, who has lived in the States with the green card. Such a German name. Beautiful. Since 2008. So like he has lived here quite a while. He immigrated with his mom.
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He was detained and tortured at the Boston Logan Airport upon returning from a visit to Europe. The man's mother says that he was, quote unquote, violently interrogated at the Logan airport for hours and was stripped naked, put in a cold shower by two officials and pushed back into an interrogation chair.
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I'm going to quote from WGBH, quote, she said Schmidt told her immigration agents pressured him to give up his green card. She said he was placed on a mat in a bright room with other people at the airport with little food or water, suffered sleep deprivation and was denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression.
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He hardly got anything to drink, and then he wasn't feeling very well, and he collapsed, said a senior, which is his mom. He was transported by ambulance to Mass General Hospital. He didn't know it at the time, but he also had the flu." Now, Schmidt has since been transferred to multiple ICE facilities. He had a misdemeanor charge for marijuana possession in California back in 2015.
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But that charge was dismissed the following year due to changes in state law. But I think this incident may have flagged Schmidt on the Customs and Border Protection's database.
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And Hillary Beckham, CBP's assistant commissioner for public affairs, gave a short statement reading, quote, when an individual is found with drug-related charges and tries to reenter the country, officers will take proper action, unquote.
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But essentially they like tortured, black bagged this person who's had a green card for like almost two decades for a dismissed marijuana charge like 10 years ago. This is like, you know, like a very white man, like Fabian Schmidt. This is super freaky stuff.
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That was at the airport, they say. Being interrogated at the airport. Yeah, this is a new one. And being forced to forcibly give up your green card during this interrogation session. Yeah.
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At that very same airport, like I think just maybe like a day or so later, a Lebanese doctor and professor at Brown University, Rasha Alwea, was deported this weekend after traveling to Beirut to visit family and attend the public funeral of Hassan Nasrallah.
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Upon returning to the United States, she was detained at the Boston airport, had her H-1B visa revoked, and was deported on a plane to France on Friday, March 14th, before she could attend her in-person hearing that following Monday. According to court documents, her deportation was prompted by deleted pictures on her phone of Shia Muslim figures like Nashwala and the Ayatollah.
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Another very, very frightening incident in those documents. It's unclear how Customs and Border Protection was viewing deleted photos on her phone or, like, open up her phone, right? Because, like, if you recently deleted a photo, it is still contained in your recently deleted folder, assuming you have, like, an iPhone or equivalent.
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But it's unknown how they, like, got into her phone, if she, like, let them look through it, or if they used one of, like, many, like, phone-breaking devices. A great key or whatever. Mm-hmm. But I think it is interesting that this is at the same airport to slightly related incidents.
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Robert, do you want to read a select paragraph or two from Khalil's first public statement?
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I get so particularly upset that Trump's admin uses this vague anti-Semitism justification for some of these actions at least because the head of Trump's anti-Semitism task force just last week retweeted Patrick Casey, who is from the American Identity Movement, a leading alt-right figure who was at Charlottesville, to quote Shane Burley.
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This tweet that was reposted by the head of this anti-Semitism task force claimed that, quote, Trump has the ability to revoke someone's Jew card. Yeah, it's absolutely fucking horrifying.
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It's like unbelievable, unbelievable amounts of anti-Semitism. Yeah, yeah.
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And we will talk more about his efforts to destroy the education system next week on our next episode of ED, as he is continuing to prep an executive order to abolish the Department of Education. And there's plenty of plenty other news, including the federal judge confrontations that we will also report on next week.
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But before we leave today, Mia has a brief note on the bird flu, which I'm sure will be fine. Frankly, I'm still eating eggs. But Mia.
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I'm still eating my chicken tartare. I don't know why everyone's so worried about it.
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And it's only encrypted if you also use encryption to send the message. It's end-to-end.
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Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. It's time to finally continue our journey through Latin American anarchism.
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Now, so far, we've covered almost every country in Latin America at this point, including Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Central America, the countries of the former Gran Colombia, like Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, and also Cuba and a few other islands in the Caribbean.
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And now, before we get to the really big history that I've kind of been saving as the finale, that is anarchism in Mexico, we're going to be talking about the anarchist movement in Uruguay. So, my name is Andrew Sage. You can find me on YouTube as Andrewism. And you can also find the bulk of the research for today's episode in Angel Capaletti's aptly titled Anarchism in Latin America.
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I'm joined today by... James. It's me again. And it's been a while.
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So before we can really get into the history of anarchism in Uruguay, I probably should give some context as to how Uruguay became Uruguay. And well, my source for this history is primarily the Encyclopedia Britannica.
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So before the whole scourge of European colonialism, what is now known as Uruguay supported a population of about 5,000 to 10,000 people, which were organized in semi-nomadic groups. You had the Tarawa, the Chana, and the Guarani Indians, primarily. So the first European visits took place first in 1516, and they weren't particularly successful or of interest.
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Spain was looking for gold and looking for silver. That was their incentive for colonization at the time. And they didn't see any of that. So they didn't have much motivation to stick around. It was until the 1620s, over a century later, that Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries set up religious settlements. But unfortunately, by then, Uruguay's native population had already begun to collapse.
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Thousands of people were succumbing to European diseases that they had no immunity to. A couple centuries later, in 1800, Uruguay continued along with a very small population. At this point, it was about 30,000 people in total, and a third of their population lived in the capital city of Montevideo.
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Another third of their population were African slaves who worked on ranches and meat processing plants and as domestic servants. Meanwhile, the elite, whether they be wealthy traders, bankers, or landowners, mostly traced their roots to Catalonia, the Basque Country, the Canary Islands, and other parts of Spain.
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We get into 1810, when a lot of the Latin American countries had been fighting for their independence, Buenos Aires, Argentina was among them. But while Argentina was fighting for its independence, Montevideo was a royalist stronghold, backed by the Spanish military and naval forces. On the countryside, it was a different story though.
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Uruguay's greatest independence hero kind of came out of that space. His name was José Gervasio Artigas, and he originally led a Spanish cavalry unit, but eventually turned against the crown in 1811 and rallied an army of rural fighters, freed African slaves, and anti-royalist leaders from Montevideo.
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So with the backing from Buenos Aires, his forces were able to score key victories and eventually oust the Spanish. But Artigas had much bigger ambitions. He wanted a confederation of provinces that resisted the dominance of Buenos Aires. In fact, he wanted Montevideo to become the center of a rival confederation.
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As prior to Argentina becoming Argentina, it was sort of a loose confederation centered in Buenos Aires. Artigas' ideas also included things like redistributing the land to freed slaves and poor Uruguayans, which made him obviously very popular among the poor and very much a threat to the elite.
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Eventually, he was forced into exile because he made some enemies that basically sat on their hands as the Portuguese-Brazilian forces invaded and took over the region. Despite his exile, though, the fight really wasn't over. You know, after the occupation, which was often called Brazilianization, it was resisted very heavily by locals and exiles.
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And of course, Argentina, which had become somewhat of a rival power to Brazil in the region, it saw Brazil's influence in Uruguay as a threat. So eventually, one of Artigas' exiled officers, a guy named Juan Antonio Lavallea, would lead a force that would cross the river and reclaim Uruguay.
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The fight would end in a stalemate, and then British diplomats would step in because, of course, the British had their own interests in the region. But eventually, in 1828, a treaty was signed, officially creating Uruguay as an independent nation, a buffer state between Argentina and Brazil.
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In 1830, Uruguay's first constitution was ratified, and at the time the country had a population of just 74,000 people. While that war kind of left the country in ruins, a lot of the once wealthy colonial families were devastated, the cattle numbers had plummeted, and the threat of both Argentina and Brazil still persisted despite the treaty had been signed.
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So then the nation ended up being split into two rival factions. You had the faction that was led by Uruguay's first president, and then you had the faction that was led by Uruguay's second president. And they became fierce rivals that ignited a civil war known as the Guerra Grande, or Great War. And to make a long story short, the first president's supporters became known as the Colorado Party,
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And they controlled Montevideo. And the second president's supporters became known as the White Party or the Blanco Party. And they dominated the countryside. And so they would fight from time to time, each side being backed by different parties. The Blancos were backed by Argentina. The Colorados were backed by France and England and then eventually Brazil. And after about a decade of war...
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There was still no clear victory as to who, you know, came out of it as a success in state. The interior of the country was devastated. Government was bankrupt. Its very existence as an independent nation came into doubt. And the divisions between the people who backed either party became, you know, more stark than ever.
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Eventually, the Colorados were able to force Blancos out of power, thanks to their backing by Brazil. And that move ended up alarming Paraguay, who was also afraid of Brazil's influence. So Paraguay ended up launching what became known as the War of the Triple Alliance, which is something I covered in the episode on Paraguayan anarchism.
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Eventually, after getting out of the civil wars and all these disputes and foreign powers meddling in its affairs, we have the situation that Uruguay found itself in in the 19th century. A situation that waves of immigrants and also anarchism would find themselves in. So Capaletti identifies a few of the ugly forces that shaped Uruguayan radicalism.
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Before anarchism and cynicalism, the first factor shaping the radical landscape in Uruguay's 18th century was utopian socialism. It came to Uruguay with Eugenio Tandenet in 1844, and he was a French utopian socialist. and follower of Charles Freer, who was one of the founders of utopian socialism.
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That whole milieu advocated for a reconstruction of society based on communal associations of producers known as phalanges. And then with their influence, afterwards came the next force of influence, the Italian migrants who had fought in the civil war. These were republicans who eventually became socialists.
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And in the next influence was the mutualist movement that was inspired by Proudhon in the 1870s, first arising in Uruguay among artisans and workers and establishing mutual aid societies to meet people's needs. a friend of Pedro of Perón himself, a guy named José Ernesto Gilbert, had actually moved to Montevideo for a bit after being exiled from France.
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And while I don't think he did anything too actively political, he did pursue botanic studies in Uruguay. And I believe there was some kind of creature named after him. So it's cool. You know, it's a little fun fact. Finally, as we kind of exit the 19th century, you had, of course, the rise of unions and internationalist organizations. In the 1870s and 1880s, you had fights for workers' rights.
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You had the struggle for an international socialism. And you have what Capilati identifies as a Uruguayan section of the Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores. which was established in 1872 and engaged in a public action in 1875 that had some 2,000 attendees.
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They established something of a manifesto where one line had asked, who better and of greater faith than ourselves can destroy the criminal exploitation to which we are condemned? As a whole, the manifesto basically asked workers to unite. And this was in a time where anarchism was finally starting to pick up in the region. Another group formed in 1876.
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This was the Federación Regional de la República Oriental del Uruguay, later called the Federación Obrera Regional Uruguaya, or FORU. And they published papers like La Revolución Social, La Lucha Obrera, La Federación de Trabajadores, La Emancipación, and Solidaridad. And it was a very small but merging movement, but they didn't take very long to start making some moves.
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As Capoletti noted, they celebrated the anniversary of the Paris Commune on March 18th and collected 40 pesos on behalf of libertarian prisoners in Lyon. They also collected money to support their peoples and to support peoples and efforts elsewhere, like in France. What's interesting about the Uruguayan anarchists is that they were among the most internationalist that I have found so far.
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You know, like other parts of Latin America, they did have a large immigrant population.
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But because I suppose the size of Uruguay compared to other countries, the immigrant population was probably larger proportional to their neighbors. So they ended up having a much greater connection to movements and, you know, things that are happening in other parts of the world, including their home countries.
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Yes, that's actually a history that I would love to cover in an episode.
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Wow, that is fascinating. You know what's interesting about the whole Esperanto connection to anarchism is that long before I really got into anarchism or even learned about anarchism, I actually tried to learn Esperanto.
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I didn't get very far. I think it was around the time when Duolingo had first introduced it into their courses. And so I saw it and I did a brief reading on it. And I was like, oh, this looks interesting. And so I tried to pick it up. And I studied it for a little while, but I didn't get particularly far. Yeah.
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But now we're looking in, the connection between Esperanto and ethnicism, it's like, wow, you know, the seeds were already there in a sense.
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For sure. And actually, we're about to enter, well, at least the 20th century in our little historical review here. Anarchism was really starting to finally pick up steam by this point, becoming very commonly known across Uruguay.
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In fact, by 1911, according to Capoletti's research of the official stats, there were 117,000 industrial workers in Uruguay, and of those, 90,000 were affiliated with the FORU. So about 76% of those industrial workers were affiliated with an explicitly anarchist organization. That included port workers, construction workers, metal workers, horse drivers, railway workers, and a lot more.
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And to be honest with you, I'm not entirely sure what kept them from taking bolder action compared to some of their neighbors, considering their proportion, the numbers that they had. but unfortunately didn't take very long for the movement to be divided.
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Particularly after the Russian Revolution, there was, of course, the influence of Bolshevik ideas that split the movement somewhat, bringing workers onto the Bolshevik cause. And then, of course, you had Bolshevik sponsorship. It was within the USSR's interest to support USSR-aligned movements worldwide. And so a lot of libertarian groups around the world went into decline in that time.
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including in Uruguay. Some of the unions end up faltering under the pressure of both the state and, of course, the new draw that was the Marxist-Leninist groups. But, of course, the libertarians never really gave up, as they don't tend to, historically speaking. So the unions and groups continued acting, continued producing papers.
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In fact, there was a major surge in unionization in the 1940s, according to Paul Sharkey's The Federación Anarquista Uruguaya, especially among the textile workers, railway men, dockers, construction workers, and meatpackers. And then outside of the union and paper-pushing scene, Yorsa Uruguayan writers continued to shape the cultural scene with anarchist ideas.
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Florencio Sanchez, for example, was a playwright in the Rio de la Plata region whose experience in nationalist militias led him to align himself with anarchist circles. He worked as a journalist while actively participating in anarchist organizations and publications, including La Protesta in Buenos Aires.
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His plays tackled social issues such as class struggle, intergenerational conflicts, and the hardships of the working class. Then you also had other Uruguayan literary figures influenced by anarchism and contributing to the libertarian literary movement. including poet Julio Herrera Irceg, novelist Horacio Quiroga, and bohemian writer Roberto de las Carreras.
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And interestingly, there was another notable figure in anarchism connected to perhaps the most or one of the most notable figures in anarchism. And that was the friend and biographer of Errico Malatesta himself, Luigi Fabri. Fabry founded the journal Studi Sociali, which was one of the strongest libertarian publications in Uruguay and Latin America.
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And after he died, his daughter, Lucy Fabry, continued his work and edited the journal until 1946. Lucy Fabry was also one of the founders of the FAU. And she also published quite a few books in her time, many of which have yet to be translated into English. I wish I could, you know, check them out.
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Yeah, yeah. I think translators, they don't get as much praise as they should. They're really an underrated contribution to the movement and to the propagation of the movement in new spaces.
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Unfortunately, translation is not as simple as just... going word for word. You know, you really do have to get the spirit of the text out of it somehow, sometimes with different phrasing and that kind of thing.
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I appreciate having the ability to go on a website and have Google translate the webpage quickly for me. But that has very clear and obvious weaknesses when you go through it in terms of actually translating the information.
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It's good for getting a vague gist. Right. But professional translators aren't going away anytime soon.
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Yeah, particularly for the less well-known or less popular languages. Yeah. Although you'll be surprised, some of the most popular languages, most widely spoken languages in the world, are still lacking some key translations. of some very key literature. You know, you'd be surprised, like the kinds of texts that we take for granted, the theory and stuff we take for granted, that's just not...
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Yeah, as long as the idea gets there, the exact words may not necessarily be important.
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Wow. That is something that always moves me, you know, when somebody is able to have such an impact on the lives of others that even in their absence, people, you know, continue their life's work.
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Oh, that's fine. That's fine. I think for this episode, there's just one other interesting moment in Uruguay's anarchist history that I want to cover. And I'll leave it at that before the next episode. But going down this rabbit hole was actually really interesting for me.
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So there was an experiment in the 50s in Uruguay called the Comunidad del Sur, which was an anarchist intentional community experiment. And Capuleti talks about it briefly as an effort by folks to live and work and eat and rear children together away from the injustices of capitalism and the state.
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Now, anarchism is not about establishing intentional communities, but many anarchists have found great reprieve and great joy in establishing those communities, in finding love and care and connection in those spaces. So these people spent about 20 years living together, making decisions together, sharing finances and sharing education.
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But the Uruguayan military dictatorship stepped in and put an end to the project in 1976. They spent that time afterwards living in exile. First, they settled in Peru, and then they ended up in Spain. And then after that, they found themselves in Sweden, of all places. where they continued their communal life and engaged in international political education.
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So that's all I ended up learning about them at first, but I wanted to dig a little deeper and find out what happened to them after that. And I wasn't finding that information in English language sources. So I ended up, unfortunately, having to lean upon Google Translate for the Swedish and Spanish Wikipedias. But those pages went into a little bit more depth.
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And so I was able to find out that this group ended up taking part in the occupation of the Mulvaden neighborhood in the late 70s. And they also translated Latin American anarchist texts into Swedish and vice versa. And then when the dictatorship in Uruguay ended, they returned to Uruguay with the money they raised with the help of their Swedish comrades.
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And initially a few stayed in Stockholm, so there was a split effort between Uruguay and Sweden for a bit. But the ones in Sweden were able to send money and equipment home.
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And so eventually they were all able to focus in Uruguay and set up a printery and established a farm in the countryside outside Montevideo on land purchased with money collected in Sweden, where they focused on collective farming and organic agriculture. Apparently they're still active today. I found what seems to be their website, but it's not accessible. It's down.
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I tried to dig for it on Web Archive, but I wasn't getting much information out of that. But I also found a Swedish website that was talking about the activity, and I'll drop that in the show notes as well. Yeah, that would be cool.
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So that particular website, they said, and this is the Google translation of what they said, but it was, quote, In parallel with the other activities, the organization runs a farm where it produces sweets from figs, gopher, blackberries, and citrus fruits. It also preserves vegetables such as peppers and eggplant, and produces its own tomato sauce.
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This small-scale industry that the organization has built up is mainly run by a women's group. Comunidad del Sur also participates in the collective Lapitanga that works for equality between women and men and against violence against women. End quote. So they're doing some really important work in Uruguay after all these years.
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I can't find their exact location, but it seems they're based somewhere in La Paz. If anybody wants to reach out for further details, what they're up to these days, their story is really fascinating to me, so I'd love to find out.
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Just that whole idea of this group facing this dictatorial repression, resettling somewhere else, catching their breath, engaging in actions elsewhere, and then being able to return home and continue the work, I find that very inspiring.
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Yeah, I mean, shout out to the Swedish anarchists who would have, you know, moved in solidarity with them and,
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Yes, I've noticed the mood is shifting as of late.
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Yeah. But you see the digression we had about translation, it ended up connecting.
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I think that's a great hobby. Although I do question, I think it was like a really cool project in its time. I don't know how well it can pick up today.
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Yeah. Yeah. Maybe eventually I will get back into Esperanto and pick it up again. I'm still, still working on my Spanish as listeners can probably tell, but we'll get there.
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So we'll leave it here for today. But next time, we're going to venture into how anarchists stayed active throughout the 20th century and also contributed to the development of anarchist strategy internationally. Until then, I've been Andrew Sage. I've been here with James Stout. And you can find me on youtube.com slash andrewism on patreon.com slash stdrew. This is It Could Happen Here.
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This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. Tesla derangement syndrome is sweeping the nation. Last week on March 11th, President Donald Trump starred in a 35-minute Tesla commercial broadcast live from the White House driveway to news stations across the country.
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This presidential ad campaign started with Trump announcing that he himself would buy a Tesla in support of his unique advisor, Elon Musk, whose business ventures have taken a sour turn as of late. To assist Trump with his purchase, the South Lawn was temporarily turned into a Tesla showroom with five different models parked in a row to choose which shiny new car to buy.
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A significant portion of this Tesla sales event was spent by Trump praising Elon Musk's work at Doge, as well as Elon's business ventures, and complaining about people treating Elon Musk unfairly, saying that he, quote, shouldn't be penalized because he's a patriot.
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As for the cars, Trump mentioned that he actually already bought a Cybertruck for his granddaughter, Kai, which Trump called the coolest design. But this time he chose a red Tesla Model S. Upon climbing in the car that Secret Service does not allow him to operate, Trump remarked, wow, everything's computer.
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At the end of the live-streamed Tesla commercial, Trump said that he would pay with a check, though for the duration of the event, Trump served as both buyer and salesman, as he read off from a sheet of notes on pricing and features for various Tesla models, like how, quote, Teslas can be purchased for as low as $2.99 a month.
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This whole charade was an explicit attempt to rescue Tesla's plummeting stock price and help foster a new demographic of electric car buyers. Anti-woke conservatives looking to show support of Elon Musk, Doge, and the new Trump administration through consumer purchases.
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Trump himself said that he hoped doing ads for Tesla on the White House driveway would help Tesla's stock value and encouraged others to buy Elon's cars. The next day, Tesla shares did rise 4%, but are now trending back down amid a global wave of protests against Tesla for Musk's involvement with Doge and the Trump administration, as well as Elon's Nazi-curious behavior.
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Trump has tried to face this wave of hate against his new best friend head on, truthing on his platform of choice, Truth Social, last week. Quote, Elon Musk is putting it on the line in order to help our nation, and he is doing a fantastic job.
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But the radical left lunatics, as they often do, are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla, one of the world's greatest automakers and Elon's quote unquote baby, in order to attack and do harm to Elon and everything he stands for. They tried to do it to me at the 2024 presidential ballot box. But how did that work out? Unquote. There's a lot to unpack there.
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From Trump calling Tesla Elon's baby, despite Elon carrying around his baby at the White House near 24-7, to bizarrely declaring protest boycotts as illegal. Not only has Trump called the Tesla boycott illegal, but during the White House car commercial, he announced that vandalism of Teslas will be labeled as domestic terrorism, promising that perpetrators will quote-unquote go through hell.
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White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said, "...ongoing and heinous acts of violence against Tesla by radical leftist activists are nothing short of domestic terror." There certainly has been a surge of violence targeted at Tesla vehicles and dealerships, which I will discuss in detail later this episode.
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But for the past month, there's also been a wave of nonviolent protests and mass mobilization against Musk and Tesla at dealerships all around the country and even overseas, which the aforementioned boycott is a part of. The quote-unquote Tesla takedown protests call to quote, sell your Teslas, dump your stock, join the picket lines. We're tanking Tesla's stock price to stop Musk, unquote.
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Their website has a map of Tesla dealerships around the world and a list of upcoming protests at various locations, which can be searched through via zip code. There have been reoccurring weekly protests at dealerships every Saturday in cities across the country, with demonstrations at more than 50 Tesla showrooms, attracting crowds of between dozens to a thousand, like in Tucson, Arizona.
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Tucson, Arizona. The boycotts and public demonstrations certainly aren't helping Tesla's stock price and international reputation, but they are not the only display of displeasure directed at Elon and Tesla, as others are employing more direct methods to damage the company.
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Beyond peaceful protests, picketings, short-lived dealership occupations, and waving anti-Elon Musk signs outside Tesla stores, Tesla vehicles themselves have become the nation's hottest graffiti mural surface. Actually, around the world, people have been using Teslas to scribble epithets against Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
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Even some eco-conscious owners of Tesla vehicles have defaced their own cars with stickers that read, I bought this before he was a Nazi. Which, hey, you can also put on your old Kanye West records.
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Speaking of Kanye West, some individuals have taken to marking Teslas with a swastika, which at first raised eyebrows and confused some investigators, as typically when there's a swastika graffiti, it's supposed to be anti-Semitic in nature.
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Whereas in this case, based on external factors, this is most likely a public attempt to link Elon Musk and Tesla with Nazism, following Musk's own anti-Semitic posts, far-right politics, and the whole salute thing. Stickers and flyers have spread from the UK to San Francisco, reading, don't buy a swastika. But it's not all stickers and graffiti.
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Okay, we're back. One of the most bizarre instances of Tesla vandalism was when 44 wheels were stolen off 12 unsold Teslas in a Texas parking lot on Valentine's Day. Investigators say they don't currently have any leads since the nearby security cameras weren't recording and the Tesla cameras were not active.
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These Teslas were actually being stored in an Amazon parking lot six miles away from their home dealership. Allegedly, Tesla is contracting with other businesses to store their cars amid a wave of vandalism at Tesla dealerships. On March 11th, wheels were damaged on multiple vehicles at a Tesla dealership in Dedham, Massachusetts.
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In Myers, California, Tesla superchargers keep being sabotaged with epoxy found in the charging cable and anti-Elon Musk graffiti with chargers marked with swastikas. Seven Tesla charging stations at a shopping center were arsoned outside of Boston, Massachusetts on March 3rd.
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And on March 7th, Molotov cocktails were thrown at a Tesla charging station in South Carolina with long live Ukraine on the ground in red paint. A 24-year-old man was taken into custody on March 13th. But it's not just wheel thefts and supercharger sabotage. Tesla dealerships have been a target for anti-Mus graffiti, vandalism, and armed attacks.
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Some commentators have been conflating the picketing protests and graffiti with actual instances of arson and property destruction. People like Libs of TikTok labeling simple spray paint as quote-unquote trans-violence or trans-terrorism. Which is not to say some people aren't taking a more destructive approach towards their Elon Musk grievances.
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Whether that qualifies as terrorism is another issue, though. On January 20th, a man wearing black pulling a wheelie cart approached a Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon, and threw a Molotov cocktail at a Cybertruck. Surveillance footage shows the man pull out, ignite, and throw three more Molotov cocktails from his rolling cart before realizing an eyewitness is charging their Tesla nearby.
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The man in black pulls out a suppressor-mounted AR-style rifle and points it at the witness as they drive away before continuing to throw more Molotov cocktails at parked vehicles. A rock was used to break the glass of the dealership showroom, and another Molotov cocktail was thrown inside the building.
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A criminal complaint claims that this incident caused around $500,000 in damage to the dealership, including damaging seven Tesla vehicles. A month later, on February 19th, the same dealership was hit again, this time with gunshots breaking through windows and hitting vehicles.
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In early March, a 41-year-old man was arrested in connection to both incidents, with court documents claiming fingerprints were identified on recovered glass bottles used for explosive devices, and the suspect's car was identified in footage captured by a police car parked near the Tesla dealership.
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A bit north of Salem in Tigard, Oregon, there have been two incidents of gunshots being fired at a Tesla dealership just this month. A Tigard police press release reads, quote, for the second time in a week, Tigard police are investigating shots fired at a Tesla dealership.
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Early this morning, March 13, 2025, around 4.15 a.m., more than a dozen shots were fired at the dealership, causing extensive damage to cars and showroom windows, unquote. There's also been a series of incidents at a Tesla dealership in northern Colorado. A spree of anti-Musk graffiti and vandalism started in January, with Molotov cocktail-style incendiary devices found on the scene.
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On February 7th, police responded to a call about graffiti and possible arson at the dealership. A few days later, a security guard confronted an individual spray painting the front windows of the dealership. And on February 24th, a suspect was arrested at the dealership, allegedly in possession of bottles and gasoline. She was charged in late February.
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Another person was arrested, allegedly in connection to a similar yet unrelated incident at the very same dealership in Loveland, Colorado. after a Molotov cocktail-style device was found burning between two Tesla vehicles on March 7th. The rocks were also used to damage both the building and multiple cars.
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At around 11pm on Sunday, March 9th, four Cybertrucks erupted into flames at a Tesla parking lot in Seattle, Washington. On Monday, March 17th, two Cybertrucks were set on fire at a dealership in Kansas City. Here's how local TV news reported the incident.
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And just a few days ago on March 18th, an individual dressed in all black fired gunshots and threw Molotov cocktails, damaging five cars at a Tesla service center in Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Review-Journal writes that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force is investigating the matter. Quote, agents arrived at the scene early Tuesday, according to FBI Special Agent in Charge Spencer Evans.
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Evans said that while it was too early to call the attack an act of terrorism, it had, quote unquote, some of the hallmarks and a potential political agenda, unquote. Now, this particular incident in Las Vegas really got to Elon Musk, who spent the rest of the day complaining on Twitter that Tesla has, quote, done nothing to deserve these evil attacks, unquote.
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Attacks on Tesla have not been contained to the United States. In early March, 12 Teslas parked outside of a dealership in southern France were set ablaze, and outside Berlin, unknown persons set fire to a high-voltage transmission line on a power pylon, cutting power to a massive Tesla manufacturing plant in Germany for multiple days.
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This follows a series of direct actions and a forest encampment where the Tesla Gigafactory seeks to expand by leveling 250 acres of forest. The German forest encampment lasted nine months before being successfully raided by police this last November, with police destroying tree houses and trashing tents.
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After the whole my heart goes out to you salute and subsequent endorsement of AFD, Musk's reputation in Germany specifically is suffering a steep decline. To quote the Washington Post, quote, Tesla stock has fallen by more than 35% since Trump's inauguration. And last year, the company suffered its first annual sales drop in more than a decade.
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In Germany, Tesla car sales plummeted by 76% in February compared with a year earlier, according to figures released Wednesday. And some owners have expressed buyer's remorse over owning a car some now see as a symbol of far-right politics, a stark departure from the environmental consciousness it once epitomized.
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And we'll talk more about how these protests are affecting Tesla's international reputation after this ad break. Okay, we're back. Right after the November election, Tesla stock surged to a never-before-seen high of $1.54 trillion. But as Musk's direct involvement in the government was ramped up, Tesla has fallen to about $777 billion.
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The massively inflated value of Tesla stock is directly related to the public perception of Elon Musk. And Tesla stock greatly determines Musk's own net worth, which is down more than $140 billion from this past December peak. When Elon's reputation gets damaged, so does Tesla's, and vice versa. Tesla stock has been declining for nine consecutive weeks.
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JP Morgan analysts recently said that Tesla has lost so much value so quick that there really isn't any comparison. Quote, we struggle to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly. Unquote.
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And Forbes writes, quote, last week, JP Morgan analysts described the recent melting of Tesla's perception, especially in pockets of the world in which Musk inserted himself into right-wing politics, such as Germany. About 53% of respondents to a CNN poll published last week said that they hold a negative opinion of Musk compared to roughly 35% with a positive view and 11% with no take, unquote.
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Overseas, Tesla sales in general are way down, even as electric vehicle purchasing is going up. New data from the European Automotive Manufacturers Association show that Tesla registrations in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK have dropped by 45%. when you compare January 2024 to January 2025.
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And this decline from Tesla comes as overall electric vehicle sales have increased 37% in the same January 24 to 25 head-to-head comparison. China's own EVs are surpassing Tesla in global production and sales in China. which is a huge EV market. And Chinese manufacturer BYD is on track to overtake Tesla in global sales this year.
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And so if you consider the Tesla protests as a sort of public display of unhappiness with Tesla and Elon Musk, combined with all these other economic factors impacting the automaker, if these trends continue, Musk and Tesla could be in real trouble. After the Las Vegas attack this Tuesday, Musk went on to Fox News to explain the situation as he sees it.
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Essentially, Tesla is seen as an extension of Elon. And right now, Elon is seen as an extension of the Trump government. And even if people feel powerless to stop the government, hurting Tesla is seen as a much more achievable goal with ripple effects that reach Elon, Doge, and the Trump administration. And compared to protesting the government...
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Tesla is a soft target with cars and dealerships all across the country, not just in state capitals or in Washington, D.C., whereas government facilities are typically hard targets by both being less accessible and more protected. JP Morgan analysts wrote, quote, Mr. Musk's work with the Department of Government Efficiency has proven controversial domestically.
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And while as many members of the political right may be pleased as those on the left are displeased, the effect on Tesla sales seems nevertheless negative, unquote. Musk is certainly trying to make the best of it by tapping into the previously untapped EV market of mega-conservatives.
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And though the Tesla brand is gaining popularity amongst conservatives, that demographic is just far less likely than liberals to actually switch from a gas to electric car. Still, the president and conservative media have been doing a lot of free Tesla commercials. Last week, Sean Hannity announced on air that he would be buying a Tesla.
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On Friday, March 14th, Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she is opening an investigation into the attacks against Tesla. Quote, if you're going to touch a Tesla, go to a dealership, do anything. You better watch out because we're coming after you, unquote.
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She released a statement on Tuesday after the Las Vegas arson, writing, quote, the swarm of violent attacks on Tesla property is nothing short of domestic terrorism, unquote. Musk just can't seem to understand that tons of regular people really hate him now and instead has to invent some grand conspiracy against him. Here's how he explained it on Fox News.
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On X, the everything app, Musk is much more open about who he suspects are these larger forces. Musk has spread claims that, quote-unquote, multiple Democrat NGOs are coordinating, quote, attacks on Tesla dealerships, staff, and vehicles. Last night, a number of Cybertrucks were torched in Seattle. Democrats are becoming increasingly more desperate and violent, unquote.
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People in Musk's replies posted about how protesters are being paid by, quote, Democrat fundraising platform ActBlue, which is funded by Soros, unquote. ActBlue seems to be the right's new favorite conspiracy topic from claiming that USAID was illegally laundering money to Democrats through ActBlue, and now that ActBlue itself has the ability to funnel money to activist groups.
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ActBlue doesn't give away money or directly fund anything. It's a donation-based platform for registered organizations. This is like saying GoFundMe paid for your top surgery. No, people donated on a fundraising platform. But nevertheless, this claim is going gangbusters on XTheEverything app and being boosted by Musk and his associates.
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A popular right-wing politics account on X called Insurrection Barbie posted that, quote, attacks on the Tesla dealerships, which have been linked to the Indivisible Project, a left of Stalin NGO that organizes street protests for the Democratic Party with shady prepaid debit cards that they run through ActBlue, are committing economic terrorism meant to tank Tesla's stock and drive a wedge between Musk and Trump, unquote.
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Elon himself has claimed that a mysterious investigation, quote unquote, has found, quote, five ActBlue funded groups responsible for the Tesla protests. Troublemakers, Disruption Project, Rise and Resist, Indivisible Project, and Democratic Socialists of America. ActBlue funders include George Soros, Reid Hoffman, Herbert Sandler, Patricia Bauman, and Leah Hunt Hendricks.
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If you know anything about this, please post in the replies. Thanks, Elon. Unquote. Now, the main organizations behind the Tesla takedown protests, two activist groups called the Troublemakers and the Disruption Project, don't even fundraise on ActBlue. They have no affiliation.
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But that hasn't stopped Elon from targeting specific activists and accusing them of committing crimes simply for organizing pickets outside stores. Meanwhile, invoking the old anti-Semitic George Soros conspiracy...
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as Elon himself has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to right-wing politicians this past year and has threatened to primary any Republican congressman who doesn't cave on Trump's agenda. So anyway, that is what's happening with Tesla derangement syndrome all across the country and even the world. Every day, it feels like we are getting closer and closer to the cool zone.
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oh lord the coming has begun the coming has begun this is it could happen here executive disorder yes our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the white house the crumbling world and what it means for you i'm garrison davis i'm joined by mia wong james stout and robert evans yes and as james stout just noted the coming has begun so we're going to also begin
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This episode, we are covering the week of March 12 to March 19. Obviously the most important piece of news right now is that Minnesota Republican State Senator Justin Eichelord, who just last week sponsored or co-sponsored a bill that legally recognizes Trump derangement syndrome as a mental illness, which disqualifies you from possessing firearms, was literally that same day- Within hours!
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Arrested in a sting operation for trying to meet up with and have sex with a minor.
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It's truly phenomenal. Pat O'Connor theory never fails. Anyway, let's move on to the actual important news, which is mostly bad. This has been a pretty rough week.
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Yes. So I guess I'll turn to James Stout. It's me. Hi, everyone. Hi, James.
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I mean, like, all of these justifications are really, like, freaky in terms of constitutional power and stuff.
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Yeah, but specifically that last one being, like, it doesn't count because we're over international waters is, like, super frightening in terms of, like, human rights abuses.
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Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here, because it could. My name is Andrew Sage, and I'm also Andrewism on YouTube, and at time of recording, the year is still technically new. So I wanted to start it off with some refreshers on anarchism. In the first episode, we'll look at the meanings of anarchism, authority, and anarchy.
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And the next time, we'll look at free association, mutuality, mutual aid, and the role of solidarity. And don't worry, next month I'll be getting back into the Latin American anarchism series, as I still haven't done Uruguay and Mexico yet. Oh, by the way, I'm not talking to myself. I'm here with the one and only... Mia Wong.
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So I suppose to start off with, I want to find out, and I ask this question with tongue in cheek, of course, how familiar would you say you are with hackathon?
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Yeah, I mean, we'll see is right, because let's say I've been an anarchist. When I was first introduced to anarchism, I would say somewhere around 2017, 2018, through Christian anarchism, actually. That was during my deconstruction.
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I stumbled upon Christian anarchism and briefly flated with it, but didn't really get seriously into the studying of anarchism until like late 2019, early 2020, around the time, and late in 2020 is when I started my channel. let's say I've been studying anarchism for about five years, seriously, I feel like I'm now getting started. You know, like I'm now starting to like grasp what it is.
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And the thing is, there's so many interpretations of anarchism, you know, so many different schools of thought. I mean, that's not to say that it can't be defined or that any attempts to define anarchism is like exclusionary or un-anarchist. And I see that argument floating around that like, well, no, you can't define anarchism because that's actually authoritarian. But, you know,
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There are such a thing as definitions, but there is room, of course, for a negotiation of meaning.
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Yeah, exactly. But let's say, if you had to define anarchism right now, what would you say is a non-negotiable ideology? basic fundamental definition for you?
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Yeah, I think that's, that's pretty solid for me. I find it fairly similarly. I would say that I think the opposition to authority is the most important part. You know, I would say the definition I've been sort of workshopping, sculpting over time, um, And as a writer, I really like to play with words a bit and find the best ways to put things.
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So for me, what I've come up with is that anarchism is the political philosophy and practice that opposes all authority, along with its justifying dogmas, and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy, a world without rule where self-determination, mutuality, and free association form the basis of our society.
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And so basically the rest of this episode is going to be me breaking down how I came to this definition, what I'm expounded upon with this definition. So for one, just taking a look at the structure of it, we are looking at an oppositional stance and a propositional stance, opposing and proposing. You know, we're not just...
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for the negation of all things, although there are schools of anarchism that do lean in that direction. We also, of course, we want to be constructive. We're not, as some people seem to presume, you know, obliterating the state and then leaving warlords in their wake, you know?
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Exactly. And as you know, Bakunin is one of the earlier thinkers of anarchism. Though I've never really been partial to him, you know? To me, usually I've been more of a Kropotkin and Malatesta kind of guy. But lately, as sort of problematic as he is as well, I haven't gotten into a bit more Proudhon. I recently got the pictures of Proudhon Reader that Ian McKay put together for AK Press.
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Yeah, but he certainly wrote a lot. And so I want to dig through and see what gemstones of his work I can find, you know?
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I think that's... That's important to sift through.
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Marx also didn't always understand Fridon's definition. Honestly, I don't think Fridon necessarily always had a very consistent application of his ideas. Hence the misogyny despite being an anarchist and becoming a politician at one point in his life and all that jazz.
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Yeah. Unfortunately, the US's cultural hegemony has sort of propagated that American version of the term as the popular one. But yeah, whether you're talking about anarchists or libertarians or mutualists, You're all getting it from basically that same sort of original pool of late 19th century, early 20th century thinkers.
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And we're sort of using their sort of explorations to build something of a political philosophy. But in my definition, I call it a political philosophy, but that can be a contentious way of describing it, you know. Anti-politics is a term that's used to describe opposition to or distrust in traditional politics. And social politics is usually associated with the art and science of government.
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So there are anarchists who would argue that anarchism is not a political philosophy. It's actually an anti-political philosophy.
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I feel you. I feel you. To me, it's like... It's what I like to pick up. look around at, you know, play with for a little bit, put it back down kind of thing. You know, I'm not committed to it. But I think it's like, it's good to look at more than one angle of definition and understanding. Yeah.
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I mean, of course, I suppose a critique that could be made of the finalism as anti-politics is a sort of a narrowing of the definition of politics to just that sort of art and science of government when politics can also be defined really broadly as just about the relationships between people and groups. which anarchism is concerned with primarily so.
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But I do find it an interesting point to wrestle with. And so other than it being a political philosophy or anti-political philosophy, we could also define anarchism as a practice. This is something that I believe Graeber did in his life. He saw anarchism in one interview.
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He said, quote, It's possible to act like an anarchist, to behave in ways that will work without bureaucratic structures of coercion to enforce them, without calling yourself an anarchist or anything. In fact, most of us act like anarchists, even communists, a lot of the time.
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To be an anarchist, for me, is to do that self-consciously as a way of gradually bringing a world entirely based on those principles into being. End quote. So this is basically the idea that anarchism is not just something you think in your head. It's a method of change. It's something that you practice.
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It's something that, in fact, some anarchists don't even want to call themselves anarchists because they see anarchism as something that you do rather than something that you are.
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Yeah, that's possible. That sounds really familiar.
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Yeah, for sure. Another part of the definition of anarchism that I put forward is the opposition to all authority. And that statement could actually get me some pushback, get me in some trouble with some anarchists surprisingly. And I'm sorry, I blame Noam Chomsky. Oh my God. As a historian, as a linguist, okay, whatever, sure.
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But it was not historically controversial among anarchists to say that you were opposed to all hierarchy and all authority.
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yeah the definitions of those terms do get confused often because like a lot of words in the english language they do have multiple meanings you know you don't want to fall into the equivocation fallacy where you use a word or phrase in one way and then you use it another way in the same argument so someone might say for example anarchism opposing authority is stupid because authority just means having a difference in expertise or a difference in influence
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Or that hierarchy, opposition to hierarchy is stupid because, you know, food chains or, you know, the hierarchy of needs. But as you know, anarchists are focused on very specific things when we use these terms. So arguing against it with other definitions doesn't make sense. And bi-hierarchy is...
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Anarchists are for just stratification of society, which gives some individuals, groups, or institutions authority over others. And authority refers to the recognized right above others in a social relationship to give commands, to enforce obedience, to control property, to exploit, and so on.
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And I really don't see the benefit in Chomsky's sort of unjust authorities or unjust hierarchies approach to define him. And I feel so.
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Exactly, which is why I say opposition to all authorities and their justifying dogmas. Because all of them have dogmas, including the example that Chomsky uses, which is typically of the parent pulling their child away from traffic. That is not an exercise of authority. And the relationship between a parent and a child is something that can and should be interrogated.
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You know, that is a caretaking relationship primarily, a relationship of responsibility. It does not have to be a relationship of authority in the sense that I suppose.
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Exactly. Because then it also makes it harder for people to sort of question the authority they're more comfortable with, or the hierarchies they're more comfortable with. So you'll see that where so-called anarchists say, oh, no, we don't actually oppose all hierarchies. You know, parents think, and it really...
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You're seeding ground in a sense because you make it harder to identify and really question those things because you're shutting down that avenue of questioning. And so when we speak of authority, we're really speaking about that right, the rights that authority gives to certain people over other people, privileges that are recognized and enforced.
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and a right being a sort of a priority that is above others. You know, the right of authority is a guarantee to actions or resources that absolve the individual holding that right of consequences. The right of authority compels and subordinates the desires and needs of those below that authority. So, you know, authorities have the right to command, recognized and enforced by their underlings.
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You know, they have the right to enforce the obedience of their underlings. They have the right to control all the properties the earth has been carved into. You know, the right absolves them of certain consequences and sort of goes in one direction. It's a unilateral sort of thing.
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So the authority can take your house, you know, the bank, the government, the landlord, they can take your house, but you can't take theirs. You know, an authority can assault you, whether you're a soldier, a police officer, whatever. You cannot assault them. An authority can take the fruits of your labor. They can take from the wealth of what you produce. But you can't take from them.
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That's theft, right? Authority cannot be an authority by themselves. They have to have authority over. They have to have a hierarchical social relationship that deprives some to their benefit. And anarchists oppose authority because, you know, among other reasons, those subject to authority become controlled.
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They become dependent, exploited, prevented from accessing their full potential and even their bare necessities. And really that prevented from accessing their full potential is why a lot of anarchists have spent a lot of time targeting our approach to parenting and our approach to education.
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You know, just this morning, I was reading a bit of Emma Goldman and she was talking about Ferrer's schools.
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The way that she speaks, honestly, she was an excellent writer, an excellent speaker, but the way that she did so and the way she approached and recognized this need to tap into our potential, particularly from young, to prevent it from being limited by the impositions of authority is just...
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extremely profound it's necessary it's necessary to start at particularly at that age but really at any age to to break away from that condition that that recognizes and enforces and obeys and accepts authority and the right of authority you know if everybody if everybody including their underlings decided tomorrow not to recognize and enforce the authority of presidents of kings of capitalists
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that frag would be gone in an instant. It ultimately starts with us being able to actually question, to challenge, to resist authority. And that's something that has existed since humans have been humans. Throughout history, we see this sort of compulsion to resist authority. And that sort of seed of resistance is what anarchists hope to have flourish.
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We are back. So like I said before, authority gets confused with a lot of different things. Force and violence is a main one. It's one that Marxists in particular love. That's a conflation of authority with any use of force. You know, the slave resisting the slave owner is actually an example of authority.
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Yeah. Yeah. I mean, force and violence are associated with authority and they can be a mechanism of defending authority, but they're not in and of themselves authority. They're not the source of authority. They don't constitute authority. And you could just as easily use them to resist authority.
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Exactly. Exactly. And really, we have to understand violence forces are things that are used by authorities. But if I punch somebody in the face, that doesn't make me an authority over them. You know, if I defend myself from being a punch, that doesn't make me an authority over the person trying to punch me.
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The source of authority is really about that right, that position, that recognized right above others, that position, that social relationship above others. That's what grants authority. It's recognition. The general of an army is not an authority because he's holding a gun to the heads of all the other soldiers and making them do things.
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The general is to be recognized as authority because of his position and the privileges and rights and powers that that position gives him. If tomorrow all the soldiers decided to turn on their general, as has happened historically, that is 100% possible. That is an instance of force or of violence being used to resist authority rather than being used to be authority.
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Another thing that gets confused with authority is
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influence or or respect so influence is really something i mean i might find somebody's abilities or qualities or achievements admirable right i respect that about them that doesn't mean they have an authority over me i might be inspired by someone in a way that affects my character or development or behavior but again that doesn't that influence doesn't automatically translate into authority
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You'll find that a lot of the anarchist thinkers of the late 19th or the 20th century, they were very influential. They were not authorities, but they had a profound impact on the people around them. And they were a profound inspiration to us even to today.
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For those who have listened to some of my Anarchist History episodes, you'll know that he kind of shows up sometimes. He shows up in Egypt. Literally everywhere. He shows up all over the place.
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And that really gets into some of the interesting conversation around anarchism and leadership and the different ways that you can sort of interpret the concept of leadership. But I'll save that for... Another discussion. There are two other things that authority gets confused with that I want to address. The first is coordination.
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And what's interesting about coordination is that it's very much tied to authority a lot in the present day. You know, a lot of the rules we have in the current system, coordination and authority get tied up together. So you have a manager of an enterprise and that manager coordinates all of the workers in that enterprise. But the manager also has authority over those workers.
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You know, to fire, to... to discipline, to do all these sorts of things. Or a general in an army might have a coordination role of ensuring that there's communication between various militias or various regiments and that the soldiers within that regiment know exactly what their goal is, what their task is, and how they can go about accomplishing it.
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That is in many ways a coordinating role, but it's also tied up with the authority of the general as in the right above the soldiers to command them, to enforce obedience, to punish, and that sort of thing. So we get tied up between a coordination and authority a lot, but coordination does not have to be tied to authority.
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In its simplest form, coordination can just be the communication of information between parties to ensure they work together smoothly and effectively. That can and already does take place between equals. Okay, here's a good example. You're trying to move a couch into a house or an apartment.
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And for those of you who have had to squeeze a couch through a doorway, you kind of know what I'm talking about already. Because you have to kind of come at it at a certain angle. You know, the size of a doorway and the dimensions of a couch require a very particular approach. So you might have somebody who stands to the side and they tell that person, okay, all right, turn it slightly this way.
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Because when you're lifting a heavy couch, You kind of just want to put it down. You can't really think, okay, what angle should I take it at? So you might have somebody in a position to say, all right, back up. Okay, come forward. Okay, turn it slightly, turn to the left, that kind of thing. That's a coordinator role. But that person doesn't have authority over anybody there.
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It's just communicating information to ensure that the shared task that the people involved have can be executed effectively. So that's a long way of saying that we can't have coordination and organization in anarchy. It doesn't have to be, or doesn't have to involve authority. Finally, one of the pet favorites of confusion is the confusion between authority and expertise.
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Authority and expertise is really the example of the equivocation I was talking about earlier. Because authority is a synonym for expertise by certain definitions. But the kind of authority Anarchist opposed has nothing to do with expertise, which is what Bakuyan was talking about with his authority, the bookmaker argument.
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Now, if I could go back in time, I would just go and tell Vic Huden, listen, A lot of people are not going to read this in full and understand the full context. So maybe don't use the word authority here. Maybe be more specific and use the word expertise or something so people don't get confused. Because when you read it in context, it becomes very clear.
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But there are people who take the title of that article, or they take one quote or one passage that's taken out of context from the whole, or they take like, for example, there's a version of that article that is cut off from the entire thing on Marxist.org, I think.
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So it's like an incomplete version of that text available in one page and then the full version is available in the anarchist library. Incredible. So you have people who basically use that article to argue that actually, you know, Bakunin wasn't against authority, but in context, it makes sense. What he's talking about authority there, he's specifically talking about expertise.
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He still says that in the end, he's not going to be commanded by that expert. He's just going to take their perspective into account because he understands the incompleteness of his own perspective. That is a very different relationship from the sort of command and subordination that we see in an authoritarian relationship.
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And while expertise often gets conflated with authority in positions in the current system, that often is damaging to authority itself.
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If you think about the relationship people have, for example, with, and this is a sort of a contentious one, but if you look at the relationship people have with like their own like personal doctor, their family doctor, this is the relationship that they might have with a public health professional.
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When people go to their personal doctor, it's very easy for them to sort of, you know, accept that sort of expertise. They have a relationship with them. They understand that they trust them, whatever the case may be. Of course, there are places where, because healthcare is inaccessible, people don't have that relationship with their doctor. But, you know, I'm speaking internationally here.
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That is true. That's the influence of, you know, cis-hetero-patriarchy and its impact.
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Exactly. It often just means that the person has been given the stamp of approval by an institution that has been granted authority. But the institution being granted authority does not necessarily or should not have monopoly on expertise and often does not in practice have the full understanding.
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The people who are produced by that institution do not necessarily have that full grasp and everything to see that they can be treated as an unquestioned authority or expert.
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Yeah. And that's exactly the point I was going to make to the institution of authority and the fact that authority so frequently... you know, mess up and so frequently like abuse the trust of people, increase the sense of mistrust, a rightful and valid mistrust in authorities that can often be misdirected or exploited towards ends that are not necessarily equivalent.
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So because these people in public health positions are tied up with the government, people already don't trust any legitimate expertise that they may have gets soured, essentially, by that position of authority, poisoned by their association with a government that has clearly proven itself to not have the best interests of people in mind. Alright, so, just to get back to the definition again.
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Anarchism is a political philosophy and practice that opposes all authority, along with its justifying dogmas, and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy. A world without rule where self-determination, free association, and mutuality form the basis of our society. So, I mean, I've spoken a bit about that those justified dogmas came at Chomsky a little bit.
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And we spoke about how that's sort of incoherent because every ideology opposes unjust hierarchies. So I think it's important that anarchism calls out, you know, all the justifications. I'm sure you could think of some of the main justifications that tend to be used. One of the oldest justifications is, of course, the divine rights of kings. Yeah. That one's mostly been broken.
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Hopefully, we don't have to deal with that shit anymore.
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I don't know. Maybe the American people yearn for the Trump dynasty.
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Yeah, it's imperial presidency. But yeah, I mean, in more liberal circles, the justification for authority is usually the social contract theory that individuals implicitly consent to authority. But I don't know about you, Mia, nobody asked for my consent. And also, I don't have any way of relinquishing my consent. So is it really consensual?
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Yeah, exactly. And it's not like I can step out of it. I mean, you hold a monopoly on literally every inch of territory on Earth. Some state leaves some claim to some part of the world. There's no escape. So it's not a contract you can opt out of, you know. Another justification that authorities tend to use is this idea of meritocracy and economic Darwinism.
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That the best of the best, they rise to the top. That there aren't really any systemic inequalities or structural barriers. That there is a survival to the fittest, and the fittest win, and the losers are losers. And they fail because they're losers.
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That's a very cynical sort of take that I don't think many people openly espouse outside of like right-wing circles, but it's definitely one of the justifications for authority that gets used. Another one is also in conservative circles, the idea of natural hierarchy. The idea is that hierarchies are part of the natural order.
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You know, people will use evolutionary biology or religious texts or pseoscientific claims to justify the inequality between genders or races or classes. Colonial and imperialist powers, for example, would justify their dominance by claiming cultural superiority. They would use ideas like the white man's burden and civilizing missions to enforce their authority over other peoples and their lands.
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And that justification, while questioned and challenged to be, still is at the basis, at the root of almost every institution in our modern world.
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The necessity of order and efficiency tends to also be used as a justification for authority. You know, the idea that authority is needed to maintain order, to keep things in place, to make decisions. And this is really ignoring the capacity that people have already proven historically and presently to organize cooperatively, to organize without authority.
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to take on horizontal and decentralized approaches, because it's something that is treating complexity as synonymous with hierarchy, that you have to organize this way. It ignores all the inefficiencies of bureaucratic systems. It ignores all the harm caused by authoritarian systems. It just says that, you know, we need these things to function, but we don't.
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Like, what are you talking about? You know, this is all people who make these arguments don't necessarily have an understanding of our systems. The internet is not organized by one central body. The internet is already fairly decentralized. It's become more centralized upon certain platforms.
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But as an infrastructure, the internet is really a network of nodes that are all over the world and all over space. Or we could take, for example, the international postal system. All the mail that gets distributed around the world internationally is not one central global body that's in charge of that. It's multiple organizations that coordinate their activities to ensure that you get your mail.
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Or if you look at even basic supply chains of goods and resources, it's not all handled by one central industrial body. It's not all handled by the government or by one corporation. It's a set of relationships between groups, between companies, between mining companies and resource extraction companies and shipping companies and processing plants and factories and all these networks.
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already not undertaken entirely by one central body. They may be organized internally hierarchically, but that can very easily change. Finally, final justification I want to get into is this idea that authority is the lesser evil. That authority might be imperfect, but it's preferable to boost alternatives, like total anarchy.
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And of course, when people say anarchy here, they mean it in the pejorative sense. They don't mean like actual anarchy in the sense of the political philosophy. They mean it in the sense of, instead of having one central authority, they have one to compete in authoritarian powers, a bunch of warlords fighting for power. That is not anarchy in the sense that anarchists pursue. That is...
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you know, petty authority fighting for dominance, which is, if you think about it, really how historically states came into being.
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So the more positive side of the definition of anarchy is one that I haven't quite gotten into yet, and I haven't broken down the ideas of mutuality and free association. But I'll save all that for the next episode. If you can't wait until then, my videos on how anarchy works and what anarchy needs should whet your appetite. But until then... I've been Andrew Sage.
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You can find me on YouTube at Andrewism and Patreon at St. True. This is It Could Happen Here, the show where we chronicle collapse as it happens and explore how we might build a better future. And in my case, occasionally take a look at the past as well. And that's it. All power to all the people.
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G'day, g'day, this is Andrew Sage bringing yet another episode of It Could Happen Here. As my granny used to say when she answered the phone, what's happening? And the answer in this case is anarchy. Last episode, I gave a definition of anarchism.
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That anarchism is the political philosophy and practice that opposes all authority, along with its justifying dogmas, and proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy. A world without rule where self-determination, mutuality, and free association form the basis of our society. Then we took that definition and we broke it down a bit further.
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You can go back to that episode if you want to hear how, but I left my explanation a bit incomplete. I didn't get into the positive side of the definition.
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Let's go. Swankism proposes the unending pursuit of anarchy, a world without rule where self-determination, mutuality, and free association form the basis of our society. The unending pursuit element is another important part of the definition. You know, it's ongoing. It's a strive. It's not some perfect utopia that we reach and stagnate with it.
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In fact, it's not even assuming that people will become perfect anarchists. It's about currently and constantly pushing to be better, to create systems that produce better outcomes and greater anarchy, to continuous redevelopment of the values necessary to maintain anarchy, to never get complacent, and to understand this is a species-level project.
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The idea of anarchy being a world without rule is actually something that gets some pushback from some anarchists as well. There's this sort of rules-not-rulers version of anarchism that has a lot of sway in some circles. Ah, the anarcho-constitutionalists. The anarcho-constitutionalists.
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It was popularized by the sort of direct democracy, libertarian Marxist crow that kind of got their popularity in the 80s and 90s. But it's not something that I consider an accurate representation of what anarchism strives for.
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You know, now that we have access to more historical anarchist literature than ever, if you dive into any of it and you get to the root of what anarchy is, it becomes very clear that anarchists were not into this whole terror of democracy thing. They weren't really into any form of democracy as in the rule by majority or the rule by some abstraction called the people.
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Anarchism is really about, it's not just no ruler, it's also no rule. I've been brought into this understanding by the efforts of the translator and sort of scholar of anarchist history, Sean Wilber, who in my opinion is putting forward some of the best historical analysis of anarchism today. He's actually who inspired a lot of my definition of of authoritarian anarchism.
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And so I'll have his work linked in the show notes, of course, but in this get into this sort of no rules definition of anarchy, a lot of people might ask, you know, wouldn't we still need rules? But of course, Enforceable rules are just really a form of laws that are backed by authorities, which anarchism opposes. And unenforceable rules are not really rules at all.
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They're closer to norms of behavior. And if living in a society tells you anything, you should know that norms should be as open to questioning as the most rigid of rules. In fact, norms can be even more dangerous if we let them slide as just the way that things are and the way we do things around here.
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We tend to speak a lot of, you know, the people and the community and stuff in anarchist circles, but I think it's important to make sure it's clear that there's nothing special about quote-unquote the people or quote-unquote the community. You know, what the people or the community thinks is right and wrong should not be a litmus test on what is right and wrong.
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There's no virtue in being a majority. And there's also no virtue in being a minority. Because we can see with instances where there are minorities, such as the elite, the rich, who obviously have us over all the time. And then there are instances of majorities that just exist to reinforce a lot of the rules and norms and authorities that are keeping all of us down.
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So a litmus test is not what a majority votes for, what a majority wants, or what minorities desire. It's really the absence of authority, the absence of this sort of power over others at all. And it's also inevitably the absence of permission and prohibition, the ability to permit things, the ability to prohibit things.
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When a thing is allowed and a thing is disallowed, yes, people can do what they want, but but everybody else can also do what they want. And so that creates the incentive to be thoughtful and responsible in what you do. And to be thoughtful and responsible in how what you do affects other people. You do things and your things are open to any number of consequences.
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And so if you want to avoid negative consequences, you gotta get informed. You have to learn about how your actions might affect others through communication with individuals and groups. And you have to find compromises and solutions to points of conflict. You're not an island. You're part of a web of mutually interdependent relationships.
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And that's something that exists in every kind of society at mutual interdependence. The problem with hierarchy is that in a hierarchical society, to access that web of mutual interdependence, you have to obey authority. You have to take part in authoritarian systems to have access to human community.
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So in an anarchic society, you don't have us obeying authority, but our behavior is still regulated, in a sense that we are dependent on other people. And we want to have, as much as possible, a harmonious relationship with those other people. Perhaps controversially, I could say that it's actually the absence of rules and rulers that makes anarchism work.
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Because, for one, harm can never be fully captured by rules, and rules cannot capture all the possible circumstances where harm could occur. But also for two, the existence of rule often provides protections for authorities. This is something we talked about in our definition of authority in the last episode. This idea that authority is the right that grants it privileges and protections.
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You know, the idea that the police officer can beat you up, but you cannot raise a hand in defense of yourself.
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you know the bank can evict you from your home but you can't be throwing molotovs into the bank you know that sort of thing is a very unequal relationship that is enforced and defended by rules by the rights granted by those rules and so rather than approaching society with a one-size-fits-all approach to rules that are enforced by some type of authority we can instead create solutions that are tailored to specific problems
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And yes, we might approach concepts like best practice and solving problems and conflicts, but that'll be different from rules. You know, that's something that's not enforced, something that's constantly in negotiation, something that's constantly taken into practice and developed and shifted, and it's far more flexible.
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And I know that it can be difficult to break away from the idea that we need rules and that the rulers are essential, but it's necessary that we can conceptualize anarchy from that angle, with that implication. And it's difficult because of how we've been socialized, how we tend to view human nature. And I take time to develop these ideas, to dwell on them further.
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I'm still grasping some of these things and trying to understand them. But between this episode and the next and all the books and all the work that is being put out there to sort of develop anarchism, to bring it to more people. And of course, through practice, we can get a clearer sense of how anarchist organization can work in all of its harmonious complexity.
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I say organization and complexity specifically because it is often assumed that the presence of anarchy is the absence of organization or the absence of complexity because those terms are often associated with or synonymized with hierarchy and authority. But you can't have organization and complexity without them.
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So, on the next part of the definition, we get into the idea of anarchy being a world where self-determination, mutuality, and free association form the basis of our society. Self-determination is probably the easiest to explain of the three terms that are used to define such a society because it's just the idea that individuals can define and pursue their own paths.
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It's the belief that people, individually and collectively, have the capacity to live and organize themselves in ways that reflect their own needs, desires, and values. It rejects the notion that others, whether they be states, corporations, religious institutions, or other elites, should have the power to dictate the lives of individuals or impose structures of exploitation and control.
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Self-determination is the basis of autonomy, which is necessarily followed by free association. But first and foremost, I want to get into the idea of mutuality. Mutuality is feeling and action in a relationship that is based on shared benefit between individuals and groups in a society. It is reciprocity, it is communication, it's a sharing of sentiments and an exchange of positive actions.
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And it's not unique to anarchy. Mutual interdependence, which is a component of mutuality, is also not unique to anarchy. It can be found in pretty much every society. Because we rely on mutuality to survive and progress through our day-to-day life.
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Whether working together to clean the house for Christmas, or troubleshooting a problem in the workplace, or taking part in a club or sport, or sharing resources following a natural disaster, mutuality happens constantly, informally, and often without recognition. This is something that Kramer talks about. In Debt to First 5,000 Years, he says this is the glue that holds society together.
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Not contracts or power, but solidarity, empathy, and the natural human inclination to care for others. Our world is so divided and yet we still find ways to care. And are there obstacles to that care? Of course. There are various prejudices, propagandized mindsets, socioeconomic systems, and material conditions that limit our practice of mutuality.
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But these are problems that Anki seeks to rectify. Obviously, issues like colonialism and white supremacy have fractured societies along racial lines and created distress and competition where mutuality could flourish.
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The propaganda perpetuated by states and corporations also limits our capacity to imagine mutuality and create this sense of scarcity in this competitive mindset that creates an unnecessary dichotomy between the success of the individual and the success of the collective.
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Because of the very nature of these hierarchical systems forcing us into exploitive relationships, things like mutual aid end up being replaced by transactional exchanges. Care and community become commodities. Basic human needs become profit-driven markets. And the state takes on a lot of the role that was formerly filled by mutuality.
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Now, just the idea of disaster response, for example, is dominated by bureaucratic agencies that monopolize and direct the resources
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that could be used and more effectively used by people addressing their own needs locally and of course with the implementation of the property regime with privatization fencing off the commons that once supported communal life it creates that sort of scarcity that limits our interpersonal practice of neutrality and when people are poor when they're struggling to meet their own needs they often lack the resources or energy to extend help to others
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Food insecure families may not have the capacity to engage in community support networks. Or, you know, if you look at how cities are often designed, they're structured to isolate people. They make it harder for people to form bonds of trust.
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The existence of all these non-places like highways, the absence of third places, and the prevalence of suburban sprawl all make it more difficult for us to form bonds of trust and solidarity. And then of course you have the intervention of the state into people's efforts to engage in mutual aid. You know, the state punishes and criminalizes mutual aid efforts for migrants or for homeless people.
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You'll often see the police or border authorities preventing people from helping those people, charging them with criminal penalties just for trying to help their fellow human. And all these are things that limit the free and full flourishing of mutuality. But we shouldn't look to the limits of mutuality in our current system as an indication of how it might be limited in another system.
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In fact, we can look at these limits and see what ways mutuality could flourish even further when they no longer exist. By taking the time to dismantle prejudices, to challenge propaganda, to build alternatives, and to create abundance, we can start to recognize the potential of our mutuality.
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And so really, getting from point A to point B, it becomes a matter of expanding our solidarity, which will expand our capacity for mutuality to drive our social organizations. Solidarity is about establishing and recognizing the bond between all people. Understanding that I sense a gain from you doing well and vice versa.
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Remember that our system incentivizes selfishness that acts to the detriment of others. So anarchy doesn't need perfect people. It just needs systems that have better incentives. So anarchic systems would incentivize generosity and selflessness, of course. But the real trick is really in creating systems that utilize selfishness to the benefit of others.
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Making it so that even the most self-interested and self-observed people are a net positive or at least a net zero on the impacts on the rest of society because they will find themselves acting in ways that are generous and that are selfless in order to get the gains that they desire for themselves. You could call it a kind of a selfish selflessness.
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And so clearly the system of capitalism has these systemic incentives and structures that allow for selfishness to not only expand and propagate and be reinforced, it also ensures that that impulse, that inclination has an extraordinary impact on the lives of millions of people. An individual selfish person alone cannot do that much to impact others.
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but put them in a position of power and all of a sudden their decisions can impact the lives of thousands, millions, even billions. So the practice of anarchy is a way of creating a society where no one stands above another and where lives are built on cooperation instead of domination. Reshaping how we practice mutuality by building new habits of cooperation that work without rulers.
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And that's what social revolution is all about. It's an ongoing and intentional transformation of our society, of our economy and culture and philosophy and technology and relationships and politics. It's the ongoing negation of all forms of authority and prejudice and the ongoing affirmation of freely associating equals.
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It is in many ways a reconstitution of our natural initiative, our capacity for mutuality and our responsibility for ourselves and each other. And that starts here and now, not at some distant point in the future. It won't be easy, but it's necessary to unshackle our mutuality, to create a society where it can flourish. And this is where we get into things like mutual aid.
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It's confused with charity very often, but it's a manifestation of our mutuality. It's a voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange of services and resources in a society. And so it's not about tit-for-tat payback or measuring each person's contributions.
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It's about taking responsibility for one another as members of a society and building social relations that sharpen our ability to collaborate and share. To paraphrase Peter Kropotkin, practicing mutual aid is the surest means for giving each other and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectually, and morally.
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With mutual aid, like I said earlier, it derives its basis from our interdependence, which is another component of mutuality. Mutual interdependence is the very basic idea that we rely on each other for various aspects of our lives in every kind of society. And in anarchy, our mutual interdependence is unrestricted by authority and instead guided by complementarity.
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So we are all approached and appreciated as unique equals, cooperating on that basis. Mutual responsibility is another manifestation of mutuality. And it's the idea that in the absence of legal order, in the absence of authority, when society is no longer guided by laws that are binding and enforceable by some authority, we must be guided instead by responsibility.
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That actions are not pre-authorized or pre-judged by external rules, but that each action is undertaken freely and subject to any number of responses, positive and negative.
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If you're curious about this idea of legal order and permission, prohibition, and mutual responsibility, I recommend Sean Wilbur's A New Glossary on the Libertarian Labyrinth, as it offers the exploration of that concept and a lot more to synthetic anarchism.
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So anarchy demands a high degree of self-awareness, care, and reciprocity from individuals and communities, not through coercion or enforcement, but through voluntary, continuous, and conscious negotiation incentivized by the nature of the system itself, with its basis in cooperation and the desire to prevent unnecessary conflict.
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In hierarchical systems, a community of justice often escalates conflict. Imprisonment, for example, tends to breed resentment and resistance and further criminalization. In anarchy, the absence of pre-authorized retaliation encourages us to find dialogue and to create restorative practices.
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If a conflict arises over a resource, people have an interest in reaching a resolution that benefits both, rather than escalating things into prolonged disputes. So such a society will necessarily require responsibility. They're both responsibility for the environment and responsibility for other people.
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You know, if you are costing the ecosystem its resources, you can't just offload that cost onto everybody else, as is common in capitalist systems. You have to be in dialogue with other people to ensure that your actions are balanced by replenishing the resource, by mitigating harm, or by securing some kind of collective agreement.
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And if somebody is creating a disruptive situation, if they're blasting loud music at night, we cannot rely on an external authority to mediate, but we have to mediate in some way.
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We have to find ways to ensure that they bear the costs of disturbing others, whether that involves apologizing or making amends or adjusting their behavior, or if they don't want to take on other people facing other consequences as necessary. So social revolution really aims to prepare us for that responsibility.
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It's, as Wilbur describes, a basic principle for encountering, recognizing, and engaging with others. It's our beefed up and extremely demanding version of the golden rule. The organic emergence of this responsibility and the incentives of this system could create a sort of a mutual understanding, which is another aspect of neutrality.
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As people will necessarily form norms of behavior that will guide the interactions between them, they'll facilitate consultation and negotiation, they'll restrain the escalation of conflict, they'll maintain the viability of shared commons and libraries of things.
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And similarly, our desire to prevent the escalation of conflict, to prevent threat to our being, and to prevent threats to our social harmony or society's integrity, would thus develop a sense of mutual defense.
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It's in all of our interests to minimize the potential harm of our actions, to proactively seek out solutions to potential and actual conflict, to ensure that we won't get flak and pushback and negative consequences to the things that we do and threats to the sustainability of our society and our lives.
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And for yet another manifestation of mutuality, we come to the idea of mutual interests, which are what make free association as the basis of anarchic social organization possible.
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Free association is the founding principle of anarchic social organization, and it refers to the ability of each person to move around, to associate and disassociate with others as they so choose, without being subject to authority. Free association is free from the impositions of wage labor, from the boundaries of citizenship, and from all other hierarchical relationships.
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This is different from the sort of liberal idea of freedom of association, where under capitalism, that freedom of association is the freedom that comes with signing contracts and controlling private property. So being free from authority, we still have to do what we have to do because we're still mutually interdependent.
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But that free association empowers people to connect with others and to form groups based around shared interests or desired actions to pursue those interests or actions.
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So our interests might be as broad as wanting to eat, or as niche as wanting to maintain the traditional Japanese art of wood joinery, or they might span the globe, or they might be unique to a particular interest, such as those who are interested in maintaining the cleanliness of a local river. So groups don't just exist for the sake of existing.
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They don't exist to perpetuate their own existence. They exist with a particular goal in mind, whether that is maintaining roads, producing and distributing food, or building housing. And then such groups may exist for a long time, or they may dissolve frequently. They may split or they may merge. They may overlap or come into conflict.
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And the spaces where they interact could be called spaces of encounter. They can place in factories or in gardens, specifically tailored online platforms or some sort of community center. So free association may occur on the level of networks of individuals or federations of groups.
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But I need to explain the commune and the federation because those are things that can be interpreted in a few different ways. You know, federations, people might think of government, communes, people might think of, well, local government or counties or something of that nature. Yeah, hippie cult. That too.
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So Anarchy is about finding ways to cooperate in ways that are not bound by the traditional boundaries of authority. And that includes the traditional boundaries of shared territory. The anarchist commune has been confused very often with things like intentional communities or administrative divisions. But if we're going by Kropotkin's description in Words of a Rebel, chapters 10 to 11...
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He makes it clear that commune describes any group formed on the basis of free association. In fact, he juxtaposes the free commune with traditional conceptions of the commune. He says for us, quote, commune no longer means a territorial agglomeration. It is rather a generic name, a synonym for the grouping of equals which knows neither frontiers nor walls.
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The social commune will soon cease to be a clearly defined entity. Each group in the commune will necessarily be drawn towards similar groups in other communes. They will come together and the links that federate them will be as solid as those that attach them to their fellow citizens.
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And in this way, there will emerge a commune of interests whose members are scattered in a thousand towns and villages. Each individual finds the full satisfaction of his needs only by grouping with other individuals who have the same tastes but inhabit a hundred other communes."
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So Kropotkin's commune is essentially a fluid collective of individuals and groups, wherever they find themselves, coming together of their own volition and according to their shared interests, projects, and activities, without being bound to territorial designations. So you don't expect to see like a bunch of like mini governments all over Anarchy.
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A bunch of mini community governments all over Anarchy. Because an abstract group in the community may not even necessarily share many real interests in common. And so trying to put them all into one body, one polity that is responsible for identifying and enacting their will, it tends to be dominated by the group's most dominant voices.
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It tends to subordinate individuals to the will of a nebulous collective, a nebulous majority. And so the alternative to this sort of polity form, as Wilbur describes it, is the federative principle, understood in its most radical anarchic senses.
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So not in the sense of networking conventional static polities like a confederation of city-states, but instead bringing together the information and perspectives necessary to facilitate the dynamic process of free association.
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We can look to Antinomies of Democracy, another bit of writing by Wilbur, which further explains how the federative organization is the process by which we identify specific social selves as an interest or needs and establish their involvement in large-scale collectivities that are formed on the basis of those conversion interests.
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So these collectivities might exist on a sort of a consultative basis as they seek out and disseminate information or advice that relates to interests at the recognition where relevant of expertise. So there might be such associations based on armed defense or co-housing construction or agroforestry.
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There might be consultative associations with a journalistic focus or with a rewilding focus or an accessibility focus. They may exist on any scale, depending on the specificity of the information needed, from as a local as an apartment building to as far-reaching as a continent or even the entire globe.
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Consultative associations could create blueprints, they could document the available labor and expertise, they can source resources, and they can share feedback, all so that interested and affected individuals and groups can easily access everything they need to make informed decisions.
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So in anarchy, we'll see a variety of individuals grouping together and interacting in ways that are perhaps illegible from a top-down view of society, but in ways that work to accomplish their goals, resolve their conflicts, and maintain social harmony. It can be difficult to imagine this possibility due to how thoroughly our disempowerment and domestication has been.
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You know, we live under a global order that seems to deny any alternatives and extols its understanding of human nature as the only valid interpretation. The propaganda of our education, our mass media, and our inherited understanding as subjects in hierarchical society has limited our consciousness of our situation, and thus our drives and powers to transform our situation.
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There are those of us who can overcome this through theoretical and historical study, but there are others who can only overcome this conditioning through demonstration. Some are not convinced by intellectual anarchist arguments. They have to be transformed through experiences.
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So to borrow the terminology of innovation adoption, it is up to us early adopters, those who are into the revolution before it becomes cool, to convince the majority of the possibility of freedom by example. And furthermore, as William Gillis wrote in The Distinct Radicalism of Anarchism, quote, To reach a moment where we sit back, entirely satisfied, would be to abandon anarchism.
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To the radical, there is no litmus for due diligence, no final finish line, no moment where we pat ourselves on the back. The vigilance of the radical is never satiated. End quote. And that's it for me today. We'll get more into revolution, powers, drives, and consciousness, and more in future episodes. In the meantime, you can check out my channel, Andrewism, on YouTube.
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I talk about things like this all the time. I've been Andrew Sage. This is It Could Happen Here. All power to all the people. Peace.
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Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I want you to imagine a world where everyone shared a second language, not because of imperial conquest, but out of a shared desire for unity and understanding. That was the dream behind Esperanto, a constructed language designed to be the basis for global bilingualism.
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Long before I learned anything about anarchism, I spent some time trying to learn Esperanto It had shown up on my Duolingo one day and it seemed like such a fascinating and simple project to pick up. I was enamored with the philosophy behind it, so I generally spent a few months on and off trying to learn it.
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That was probably a decade ago at this point, so I don't remember too much about it, but the connection was there. And it's really because I've been exploring this topic for this episode that I ended up going back and dabbling in some of it again. I've learned recently that there's actually somewhat of a connection between Esperanto and anarchism.
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So let's take the time to explore the origins of Esperanto, its anarchist connections, its flaws, and its future. My name is Andrew Sage, and I'm here once again with... It's me, it's James again.
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Right. Yeah. It's a really inspiring project. And so I know you're probably gonna know all of this information, but I do have to share it with the audience.
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Sure. So Esperanto was first constructed in a little booklet in 1887 by Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist L.L. Zamenhof. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the name itself comes from the pseudonym he took on to publish the booklet. He called himself Doctoro Esperanto. Esperanto meaning one who hopes. and hope to reanalyze the whole project.
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According to a BBC article written by José Luis Pena Redondo, he lived as a Polish Jew in the multicultural Russian Empire, in a time rife with racial and national conflict. He was trying to promote peace and understanding, and he saw an international language as a way to do that.
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With a flag of green and white, the colours of hope and peace, for his efforts, Zamenhof himself was nominated 14 times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He genuinely believed that if we all shared a common second language, quote, education, ideals, convictions, aims would be the same too, and all nations would be united in a common brotherhood, end quote.
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Esperanto was created in a time when modernism was on the rise, and the idea of rationality and science was being used to quote-unquote optimize the world. When it was featured in Paris' Exposition Universelle in 1900, the language caught on amongst the French intelligentsia, who saw it as more optimal in the messy and illogical realm of natural languages.
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Because it was so easy, all words and sentences being built from 16 basic rules that could fit on a paper, and the language lacked the confusing exceptions and special rules of other languages, it was once seen as the language of the future.
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Esperanto made its full-fledged public debut in 1905, when Samenhov published the Fundamento d'Esperanto, which laid down the basic principles of the language's structure and formation. Esperanto is designed to be simple, logical, and accessible, drawn from the influence of Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages in its construction.
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The orthography is phonetic, so all the words are spelled as pronounced, and the grammar is so straightforward, there's a consistent word ending for nouns, pluralization, adjectives, and verbs. But although simple, it can convey complexity. There's a lot of suffixes you can add to give degrees of meaning, and there's room for compound words too.
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Its European focus would be the target of criticism later on, but it actually ended up being picked up in some unusual places anyway. Zamenhof translated literature and wrote original verse, and after years of effort, there were speakers to be found across Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan.
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By 1908, the Universala Esperanto Associo was founded, and it can now find members in 83 countries worldwide. There's also 50 national Esperanto associations and 22 international professional associations that use Esperanto. There's an annual World Esperanto Congress and more than 100 periodicals published in Esperanto. Estimates range widely in terms of how many people speak Esperanto today.
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There are apparently a handful of native speakers, folks who were raised speaking Esperanto.
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But L2 speakers are somewhere between 30,000, L2 being, you know, second language speakers, are somewhere between 30,000 to 2 million. Oh, wow. According to Wilfred's article on Esperanto and anarchism, there are tens of thousands of books in Esperanto and several hundred mostly swampy articles that appear regularly.
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Hardly a day passes without international meetings, such as those of specialized organizations, conferences, youth get-togethers, seminars, group holidays, and regional meetings. There are several radio stations that broadcast programs in Esperanto, And Esperanto has even been used by couples of different origins as a family language.
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Funny enough, as with every language, even an aspiring universal language, it has since had its offshoots.
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I saw on Wikipedia that merely a year after Zamenhof's creation of Esperanto, in 1888, Dutch author Jay Brackman proposed a few changes to the language, like combining the ending for the adjective and adverb, changing conjugations, introducing more Latin roots, getting rid of the diacritics, and so on.
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This language would be called Mundo Linco, and it was the first of many offshoots from Esperanto proper. Even Zamenhof would try to reform the language at one point, in 1894, but it was rejected by the Esperanto community and eventually even himself. These reforms would later be used to develop Edo, another attempt at universal language with far less success.
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I also learned via Wikipedia that there was an attempt to make Esperanto more complex by introducing Cherokee components, called Polispo, created by a Native American activist named Billy Ray Walden. Esperanto speakers continue to play with the language in all sorts of ways to this day. Esperanto is an evolving language, and Zamenhof himself is honored as part of this global Esperanto culture.
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They celebrate his birthday, the 15th of December. There are statues and streets and plaques remembering him worldwide, and even an asteroid bears his name. At one point, according to the BBC article, there was an effort to establish an Esperanto-speaking land called Amikeho, which would have been a 3.5 square kilometre territory between the Netherlands, Germany and France. Yeah. Nice.
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Yeah. A couple of micro states. It could have been another micro state, but the idea was very quickly squashed following World War I. Yeah.
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Yeah. Yeah. Esperanto was really huge in the anarchist movement at a certain point.
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But we're going to get to those connections soon enough. I want to bring up this other interesting story. There was actually an effort by Esperantists, including a delegate from Iran, to get the language to become the official language of the League of Nations. But take one guess as to which country blocked that effort.
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Yeah, the French government seemingly hated Esperanto, at least according to an article on Imp of the Diverse blog site. They blocked its study in universities and public schools, and as the article quotes the opponents directly, quote, On September 10th, 1922, the New York Tribune ran a translation of a piece by the editor-in-chief of Le Matin, Stéphane Lausanne.
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Mr. Lausanne spent half his editorial writing about Esperanto. And I'm not going to do a French accent for this section, but just imagine like the most French Frenchman reading this. That Finns or Albanians favored such a propaganda is comprehensible. Their dialect has no chance of imposing itself on the universe. They need a second language. Just as well Esperanto as any other.
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But that French people or English or Germans could have let themselves be allured by this linguistic Bolshevism, that is far more extraordinary. It is nevertheless a fact that Esperanto, which was born 25 years ago and ought to have died through ridicule, continues to have disciples in Europe.
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Every year, in a different capital, they hold a congress, at which they are not very numerous, but where they make a great noise. They get so excited that, quite recently, the Minister of Public Instruction had to address a circular to all the French educational resorts to warn them against the danger of Esperanto.
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An article in the Washington Herald on that same day explained the danger, at least according to the Ministry of Public Instruction. T'ha! Furthermore, they argue that a national language plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and points to Poland and Lorraine as examples. Esperanto is an artificial language of no real merit, writes one professor.
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It has no very definite origin, and while it aims to draw the scattered people of the world together, does it not rather tend to denationalization? End quote.
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Yeah, their imposition of national identity was perhaps among the most successful in the world.
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In terms of its earliness and its consistent enforcement.
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And, you know, they weren't the only enemies of Esperanto. And do you know that saying, judge me by my enemies? Yeah, who else have we got? Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, and the Soviet Union also hated Esperanto.
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The Nazis, they were nationalists and Zamenhof was Jewish. So his family was actually targeted and the language was banned. And Esperantists were targeted and put in camps during the Holocaust, which is really tragic. Yeah, pretty fucked.
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His whole family was heavily targeted by Nazi Germany. Franco associated Esperanto with anti-nationalism and anarchism, which, true. Yeah, he wasn't wrong. So it was targeted for a while.
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And the Soviets, while originally recognizing Esperantists, eventually reversed that policy under Stalin during the Great Purge and executed, exiled, or gulagged Esperantists. And as you can imagine, all that repression all at once kinda killed Esperanto's momentum. Today, despite its goal of being a truly international language, Esperanto's global reach remains uneven.
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While it has made some strides in recent years, it's still underrepresented in many parts of Africa and Asia. The majority of Esperanto speakers today are in Europe, though its development outside of Europe deserves some attention, as Esperanto managed to leave a mark in China, Iran, Togo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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But the response to Esperanto historically should give you an indication as to how anarchists must have felt about Esperanto. As an internationalist or anti-nationalist movement, anarchism was very supportive of the Esperanto project. Let me run you through the timeline courtesy Wilfred's Esperanto Anarchism. One of the earliest anarchist Esperanto groups was founded in Stockholm in 1905.
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The same year, the anarchist Paul Berthelot founded the monthly magazine Esperanto. Similar groups soon emerged in Bulgaria, China, and other countries. In 1906, anarchist Anarcho-Syndicalist founded an international association, Paco Libereco, Peace Freedom, which published the Internacia Sociale Review.
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By 1910, Paco Libereco merged with Esperantista Lauristaro to form Liberiga Stilo, Star of Liberation, strengthening anarchist Esperanto networks. The 1907 International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam formally addressed the role of Esperanto in international communication. Subsequent anarchist congresses continued to pass resolutions advocating for Esperanto's use within the movement.
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By 1914, these anarchist Esperantist organizations had published extensive revolutionary literature, including anarchist texts, in Esperanto. Around this time, correspondence between European and Japanese anarchists became more active, facilitated by Esperanto. In Prague, Eugene Adam proposed the formation of Senescesa Associo Tutmunda, the SAT, or the World International Association.
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Unlike other Esperanto associations, SAT rejected nationalism wholesale and sought to create a transnational, class-conscious workers' movement.
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To quote Why Is There an Esperanto Workers' Movement by Gary Mickle, SAT was not meant to usurp the role of political parties by engaging in political struggles directly, but was to be a cultural association engaged in workers' education, one that would help to break down national and ethnic barriers between workers by involving them in practical collective activity, bringing workers into contact, freeing them from the shackles of nationalism.
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SAT's ideas, and especially the ideas of its anationalist faction, were an early statement of an idea that has more recently come to be known as globalization from below. So in August 1921, 79 workers from 15 countries gathered in Prague to formally establish SAT. By 1929 to 1930, SAT had grown to 6,524 members across 42 countries, reaching its peak influence.
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The use of Esperanto flourished in German workers' movements between 1920 and 1933. By 1932, the German Workers' Esperanto League had 4,000 members, leading to Esperanto being called the Workers' Latin. But, as you can imagine, this was not to last by the time Hitler came into power.
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The Scientific Anarchist Library of the International Language, or ISAB, was founded in the USSR in 1923, publishing anarchist works by Kropotkin and Anne Bordervoy in Esperanto. This also would not last the Great Purge.
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The Berlin Group of Anarcho-Synicalist Esperantists greeted the Second Congress of the International Workers' Association in Amsterdam in 1925 and reported that Esperanto had become so integrated into their movement that an international libertarian Esperantist organization had formed. This likely referred to the TLES, the World League of Stateless Esperantists, which later merged with SAT.
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Esperanto was also popping off amongst anarchists and socialists in Korea, China, and Japan. Liu Shifu, a key figure in Chinese anarchism, began publishing La Voz del Populo, The Voice of the People, in 1913, the first anarchist periodical in China. His work relied heavily on information from Internacia Sociale Review and helped popularize Esperanto in China.
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Japanese anarchists and socialists, as I mentioned, were among the earliest Esperantists in the country, but faced heavy persecution. And sadly, between Imperial Japan, Francoist Spain, Nazi Germany, and Stalinist Russia, the rise of totalitarian regimes leading to World War II largely suppressed the anarchist Esperanto movement.
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After the war, the Paris Anarchist Esperanto Group was the first to resume organized work, launching the publication Sench Tatano in 1946. Most anarchist Esperantists have since been organized within SAT, with an anarchist faction maintaining its autonomy. In 1969, this faction began publishing the Libere Sana Bulteno, later renamed the Libere Sana Ligilo.
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By 1997, SAT membership had dwindled to fewer than 1,500 members. The initial radical vision of SAT was weakened by political shifts and the growing dominance of English as a global lingua franca. The early separations between SAT and mainstream Esperanto organizations was a response to bourgeois political neutrality, but it also contributed to its marginalization.
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And today, the anarchist Esperanto movement exists largely as a niche within SAT. So, what can we say about the role of Esperanto today? Well, one of the more interesting currents I found within the Esperanto community, mentioned by Firth, is Raumismo, a philosophy named after the Finnish city of Rauma, where a youth congress in 1980 helped define this approach.
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Raumismo views Esperanto speakers as a kind of linguistic diaspora, a cultural group bound together by a shared language rather than a national identity. Instead of focusing on making Esperanto a universal second language, Raul Mistos embraced it as just one language among many, valuing its use in literature, culture, and everyday communication without any grand ideological ambitions.
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But it's possible Esperanto can still play a role in facilitating exchange and collaboration between people of different linguistic backgrounds. A German anarchist once lamented the barriers to international understanding, quoted in Firth's article.
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More or less in isolation from one another, we work and fight without engaging in exchange about our victories and defeats, and without supporting and encouraging one another. Intensifying contact above the regional level with people having similar ideas and aims should be an important component of our work in order to make effective active solidarity possible. End quote.
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And that's the trouble even today. Linguistic barriers hinder international cooperation. Groups struggle to maintain foreign language correspondence, organize multilingual meetings, or find interpreters. Instead, communication tends to rely on chance. You know, if someone in a group happens to speak a certain language, that determines who they can connect with.
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But when those key individuals move on, those connections can end up falling apart. So I get the appeal. I mean, wouldn't it be beneficial for these movements, and for any interest group working across language barriers, to have a relatively easy-to-learn, politically neutral means of communication?
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Major languages like English, Spanish, or French don't fully solve the problem, as they come with historical baggage and imbalances in fluency levels. Esperanto, on the other hand, provides a more equitable solution because everybody is starting from the same point.
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Since it isn't tied to any one nation, it avoids the power dynamics that arise when non-native speakers must conform to the linguistic norms of dominant cultures. Unlike English, which often privileges native speakers and places others as perpetual learners, Esperanto fosters a more level playing field.
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English is treated like a global lingua franca right now, but a lot of people leave school without ever developing enough fluency to navigate an English-dominated world. And English is not the easiest language to learn. Esperanto, regardless of whether it ever becomes a global standard, offers an alternative path.
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It can help people overcome language learning anxieties, as particularly those who feel disempowered by traditional educational systems, and it can inspire an interest in language itself. If you've ever met an Esperanto speaker, you know that they are very passionate about linguistics, more often than not.
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Many of the speakers go on to study linguistics, language politics, or even lesser-known languages. It's also a great way to develop translation skills in a friendly, cooperative environment. For monolingual English speakers, using Esperanto can be an eye-opening experience. It puts them in the shoes of those who never got to rely on their native language in international settings.
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Rather than viewing Esperanto as a competitor to other languages, perhaps a more productive approach is to see it as a tool for promoting multilingualism, cultural exchange, and a more cosmopolitan mindset. Within the Esperanto-speaking community, opinions on its future vary widely. But one thing is clear.
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The question of how we communicate across linguistic divides is still very much alive, and Esperanto offers but one possible answer. However, as I alluded to earlier, Esperanto is not without its critiques, as covered by Firth. Let's start with one of the most frequent critiques. Esperanto is an artificial language.
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Unlike the so-called natural languages, which evolved organically over time, Esperanto was deliberately constructed. But here's the thing. Since the rise of the nation-state, the line between natural and artificial languages has become increasingly blurry.
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Many national languages, like standard German or standard French, have been shaped by deliberate standardization, legal regulations, and media influence. In that sense, every language is to some degree engineered. Authors, storytellers, and ordinary speakers continuously influence language development, meaning that Esperanto is not as different after all. It does continue to evolve.
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And here's where I think James C. Scott had a rather negative characterization of Esperanto as a purely high-modernist endeavor, as though all Esperantists sought to make Esperanto the official international language. In Seen Like a State, he claims that Esperanto was created to replace the dialects and vernaculars of Europe. but such was never the case.
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It was always meant to be a language used to facilitate communication. There was more than one motivation for Esperanto's use, and boiling such an exercise in human creativity and attempted connection down to just that status focus, to me, seems needlessly reductive.
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He also calls it, quote, an exceptionally thin language without any of the resonances, connotations, ready metaphors, literatures, oral histories, idioms, and traditions of practical use that any socially embedded language already had, end quote. Which may be true when it began, but it's certainly not true now, with over a century of use and evolution.
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His analogies between Esperanto and planned cities also missed the mark for me, as Esperanto has clearly operated as a self-organized and grassroots movement for most of its history and has never really received the backing of states or their enforcement.
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When I saw that, I remember reading Seen Like a State some years ago, and I've already glossed over that. But in doing the research for this, I ended up, you know, stumbling upon it again. And I was like, hmm, after reading the history, I was like, this isn't quite accurate.
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Oh, that's nice. Yeah. There's another common claim about Esperanto, which is that it's Eurocentric, right? And linguistically, there's some truth to this. Esperanto originated in Eastern Europe, and it still carries structural elements that resemble Indo-European languages. The majority of Esperanto speakers today are European, and its vocabulary is largely drawn from European languages.
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However, critics who make this argument often suggest alternatives like English or Spanish, languages that are just as, if not more Eurocentric in their historical and political reach.
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Esperanto, in contrast, has evolved through influence from non-European languages as well, particularly through its development in China and Japan, its illustrative word formation, a feature more common in languages like Turkish or Japanese, and what some call the Hungarian period of Esperanto's history.
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So while Esperanto has European roots, its global evolution challenges the idea that it's exclusively European in character. Another critique... is that Esperanto is sexist. The argument goes that because feminine forms are typically created by adding in to a base form, like labaristo, worker, becoming labrestino, female worker, the language assumes masculinity as a default.
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And while this is a valid concern, Esperanto differs from many European languages in a key way. It does not assign grammatical gender to inanimate objects. A chair isn't arbitrarily feminine like in French or masculine like in German. However, in practice, gender bias can still creep in.
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The basic form of a noun is often assumed to be masculine, even though Esperanto allows for explicitly male forms as well. Like in any language, reducing linguistic sexism in Esperanto requires conscious effort in how people actually use it.
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Exactly, exactly. Esperanto is and continues to be a grassroots movement. And that has actually been a subject of critique for some. You know, perhaps one of the biggest critiques of Esperanto is that it never achieved its original goal of becoming a universal second language. Zamenhof, its creator, envisioned a world where Esperanto would bridge linguistic divides.
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But for many, learning a language that relatively few people spoke simply wasn't practical. but the rise of the internet changed the game of Esperanto. What was once difficult to learn and use daily has become far more accessible. For example, Esperanto is actually one of the most over-represented languages on the internet.
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The Esperanto Wikipedia has around 240,000 articles, putting it in the same league as languages spoken by tens of millions of people, like Turkish and Korean. Google and Facebook have offered Esperanto versions of their platforms for years, and language learning services like Duolingo have helped introduce it to a new generation of learners, like myself.
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In fact, the people who developed Esperanto courses for Duolingo did so voluntarily, simply because they believed in the language's potential. Esperanto has fostered a unique online community, and there's even a free hospitality network called Pasporta Servo, where Esperanto speakers can stay with each other around the world.
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No money required, just a shared language and a common philosophy of global connection. Not everyone learns Esperanto for the same reasons. Some people seek intellectual challenge, some want a sense of unique community, and others are drawn to its political neutrality.
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As communications lecturer Sara Marino points out in the BBC article, people engage in Esperanto for many different motivations, whether it's personal fulfillment, social inclusion, civic engagement, or just the simple joy of learning a new language. it's important not to reduce Esperanto learners to a stereotype. Their reasons for participating are as diverse as the language itself.
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So, where does Esperanto stand today? It may never replace English as the global lingua franca, but perhaps that was never the point. Instead, it serves as a tool for promoting bilingualism, fostering cross-cultural connections, and encouraging people to think differently about language itself. And I think that... is worthy of its own reward. That's all I have for today.
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Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage. I run Andrewsum over on YouTube. I'm joined by the one and only Garrison Davis. Hello. Hello, hello. You don't sound particularly festive.
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As you mentioned, A Cabin in the Woods, it actually reminds me of this movie that came out to Netflix a little while ago. I don't know if you've seen it, Leave the World Behind.
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Yes, it's pretty apt that you were in a cabin and all this was going on.
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Exactly. But we're not focused on the U.S. for this episode. Thank goodness. Instead, we're going to be going back into the past and the present as well, because the struggle really doesn't end, and taking a look at the struggle of the Mapuche in Chile and Argentina. I'd actually mentioned them in my exploration of Latin American anarchisms that, you know, they would need their own episodes, so...
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Here we are taking a look at everything that they've been up to. And it's really thanks to the work of my fellow anarchists, M. Gould Hawke and John Severino and their research that I've been able to put together this elucidation of indigenous anarchist history.
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So the lands that now bear the titles of Chile and Argentina have long held the Mapuche people, long before borders were drawn, long before the world learned to cage the wild. The land itself is considered Walmapu, and it's deeply entwined with the identity of the Mapuche people. While Mapu is of course not just a geographical tomb, it is also a spiritual one.
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It is a tapestry of their histories and their dreams, and also their view of the world through a lens of reciprocity. Because the Mapuche do acknowledge their kinship with the land, the rivers, the mountains, and that worldview that they hold, and have traditionally held rather, champions balance and harmony and respect for all forms of life.
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which is what has been fueling their ongoing fight against occupation. So in a sense, the Mapuche struggle echoes an anarchist ethos of autonomy and mutual aid, but I wouldn't go as far as to call them anarchists. You know, I mean, They have a very specific cultural, historical, and spiritual context that is distinct from anarchist thought, despite the similarities and overlaps here and there.
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So today we'll be exploring the history, people, and struggles of Almapu that have shaped the Mapuche experience. Now, ancient archaeological finds from tools to pottery have suggested that the Mapuche may have settled in present-day southern Chile and Argentina as far back 2,500 to 3,000 years ago.
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Genetic and linguistic research connects the Mapuche lineage to other indigenous groups across the Andes, meaning that their ancestors may have migrated down the western spine of South America in waves, adapting to the rainforests, coastlines, and valleys of what's now Waumapu.
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Historically and currently, the Mapuche have spoken Mapudungun, and the language itself carries aspects of their cultural identity, as is to be expected. Mapudungun is a polysynthetic language, meaning its words can be formed by combining smaller parts to reflect complex ideas. Mapuche itself combines Mapu, meaning land, and Che, meaning people.
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Some Mapuche lived on the border of the Incan Empire. meaning that they were in contact with centralized state organizations and hierarchical societies, and would have chosen to differentiate themselves and their societies from these status peoples. So how did they do so exactly?
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The Mpuche way of life would have revolved around, as I said, a deep respect for kinship, communal responsibility, and spiritual stewardship of the land. The society itself was based around the lof, or family-based communal unit.
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At each loft holding shared responsibility over a specific territory, ensuring the one's personal wealth doesn't override the interest and wellbeing of the environment and the community. The loft wasn't just limited to the people of that family-based communal unit. It would also incorporated the ecosystem that that unit encompassed and occupied. Nature was in a sense, part of the family.
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Rivers, mountains, forests, and other animals were treated as living relatives, with a spirit and agency that deserved respect. In the Mapuche worldview, all beings and elements possess Nguyen, the life force, and so they have to be respected. And that belief system also leads the Mapuche to practice a sustainable use of resources and intergenerational land care.
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And it also compels their, as I said, resistance to colonial resource extraction, deforestation, and industrial expansion. In Mapuche spirituality, Wanu Mapu, or the land of the ancestors, refers to the spiritual realm connected to the physical world. They've traditionally believed that the spirits of past generations inhabit this realm, offering guidance and protection.
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The machis, or spiritual leaders, serve as the bridges between these worlds. So they're supposed to do things like conduct ceremonies, heal the sick, and connect with the ancestral spirits. They've served as the custodians, in a sense, of spiritual knowledge and medicine. and that makes them an essential component in each lof.
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The socio-political structure of the Mapuche has been a confederation of lof groups, known as the Ailarawe system, where the different lofs would come together to make communal decisions and joint actions, particularly in times of conflict or threat.
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Each loft would be represented in these confederations by a longco, who would be bringing their community's voice and perspective to regional councils without necessarily exercising centralized authority. The decisions in these councils are based on consensus, traditionally, and cooperation, compromise, honouring the collective will as much as possible, rather than imposing will from above.
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And contrary to popular belief, this lack of centralisation has actually made them more resilient, not more fragile. Rather than bickering and fighting and splitting and splintering constantly, the Mpuche have historically united themselves and together resisted multiple attempts at subjugation.
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Their decentralized alliances have empowered them to respond flexibly and quickly to the ever-changing landscape of the threats they are facing. And this resistance continues to this day, but let me not skip ahead.
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The Spanish first made their way to Mapuche territory in the mid-1500s, initially confident that they could conquer the area with the same ease they had subdued the Inca Empire to the north. But the Mapuche were not easily intimidated. Early encounters quickly turned to conflict, and the Spanish found themselves up against a serious resistance movement.
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From the start, the Spanish had underestimated the Mpuche's ability to adapt. When the conquistadors introduced horses and new weaponry, Dumpuche observed and learned quickly, incorporating captured horses and arms into their own defense strategies.
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Rather than a simple series of skirmishes, this struggle would become a prolonged confrontation, one of the longest and most determined resistances to colonization throughout the Americas. This was La Guerra de Arauco, or the Arauco War, known for over a hundred years of protracted, brutal conflicts maintained by guerrilla warfare.
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And there would be no definitive battle or grand conclusion to this war. The Mapuche recognized that they were facing vast resources. They knew they had to find ways to level that playing field.
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And so using their familiarity with the forests, rivers, and mountains of Habapu, they ambushed, evaded, and outflanked Spanish troops, cut off supply lines, and employed tactics that frustrated and exhausted their lost and ill-equipped opponents.
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The Lumupuche were fighting on two fronts, defending their territories from physical invasion and preserving their cultural practices from Spanish influence. Though the Lumupuche are traditionally egalitarian, they did elect toki or warriors during times of conflict.
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These figures were limited to their role in coordinating forces during these conflicts and had no other political power to wield above others. One of the more notable of these toki was a man named Lautaro. He was a young Mapuche who had been captured by the Spanish as a teenager and had worked for some time as a stable boy for Chief Conquistador and Governor of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia.
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While working as a stable boy... Lautaro managed to secretly observe many of the tactics that the Spanish employed. He gained intimate knowledge of what made them tick, in a sense. And he eventually escaped captivity and brought this knowledge back to his people, transforming Mapuche resistance by effectively using captured horses and new formations to confront the Spanish on even ground.
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Lautaro was a brilliant military strategist and by all accounts, a charismatic young man that inspired his people through several major victories, including defeating a large Spanish force at the Battle of Tucapel in 1553, which was a confrontation that killed his former master and a good bit of Spanish morale.
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Unfortunately, the outbreak of a typhus plague, a drought, and a famine slowed the Mapuche advance to expel the Spanish, as they had to spend some time recovering. But Lautaro did try to push a band of Mapuche as far north as Santiago, Chile, to liberate the country from Spanish rule.
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Unfortunately, before he could even turn 30, he was killed in an ambush, and, well, his spirit continues to live on as a symbol of Mapuche resilience. As the war evolved, they had cycles of conflict interspersed with uneasy pieces. Spanish settlements in the Mapuche frontier became isolated, vulnerable outposts subject to sudden raids.
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So in an attempt to hold the territory, the Spanish had to divert large amounts of their resources to maintain a military presence, which was a very costly strategy that didn't end up being sustainable long term. So finally, after decades of failed attempts to subdue the Mapuche by force, the Spanish had to adopt a different approach.
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resulted in a series of peace treaties virtually unheard of in the rest of colonial Latin America. Among these was the Parliament of Quilin in 1641, which established a formal boundary between Spanish-controlled Chile and the autonomous Mapuche territories, granting the Mapuche legal recognition as an independent people with territorial rights.
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This is virtually unheard of across the rest of the Americas. That's to tell you how powerful their resistance was at the time. The Spanish crown recognized Mapuche control over land south of the Biobio River and agreed to regular negotiations.
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And although this agreement was tenuous and at times violated, it did also mark an era of semi-autonomy for the Mapuche, allowing them to maintain their land, language, and traditions in the face of surrounding colonial expansion.
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The fact that they could even secure legal recognition of their autonomy from a state power as stubborn as the Spanish in a time like the 17th century is just remarkable. But unfortunately, as you could probably predict, that recognition of their autonomy would not last.
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In the 1800s, Chile and Argentina emerged as independent republics following Spanish colonial rule, each driven by an appetite for territorial expansion and a nationalist vision that excluded indigenous autonomy. With new ambitions to civilize and consolidate their nations, Chilean and Argentine leaders saw the Mapuche-held lands as resources to be exploited.
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Both governments had justified their encroachment on Mapuche land under the guise of national progress. To them, these indigenous lands were free real estate to be conquered and improved. not sovereign regions held by an indigenous population.
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The Islampuche way of life has a barrier to their economic development, to be replaced with European-style land holdings, settler colonies, and extractive industries. Under new management, they would not respect the 1641 Parliament of Kilin. As far as they were concerned, they didn't sign that agreement, and they would never sign an agreement with savages.
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Establish and shore up your resources for a later attack. Yeah. And I can just say, well, I didn't sign that, you know, somebody else signed it, so... I don't have to be beholden to it pretty much. And so Chile would launch their campaign to annex Mapuche land, known as the Pacification of Araucana, initiated in the 1860s.
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Some have argued that this attempted annexation was triggered by the events surrounding the wreck of Joven Daniel at the coast of Harkanya in 1849, where a wrecked Chilean navy vessel was allegedly looted and its survivors allegedly attacked on Mapuche territory by members of Mapuche society.
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Despite the Mapuche arguing that there had been no survivors, and despite them handing over some of the accused of looting to be tried by Chilean authorities, even returning some of what was allegedly looted, the perception of the incident as a brutal loot and rape by the Mapuche fueled anti-Mapuche sentiment within Chilean society.
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Although President Manuel Bulnes of Chile dismissed the opposition's calls for a punitive expedition at the time, the conquest would eventually come to pass, beginning in 1861. If you dig into this story, by the way, you come to find out that a lot of the lutins in Mapuche were accused of...
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was actually members of Chilean society embezzling the resources from the wreck and then playing it off as if the Mapuche were wholly responsible for the loss of the resources. Some of the same people who were accusing the Mapuche looters of stealing all the loot from the ship, many of them had received some of that loot from the Mapuche themselves. The Mapuche were trying to return the loot.
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And they decided to keep it for themselves instead of, you know, returning it to Chilean Gofman. So it was like the whole trial was bunk. There was a whole bunch of corruption and it was a real mess. And although the president did, you know, dismiss the attempts to attack at the time, like I said, it would come to pass. The campaign was justified, as every government does, by necessity.
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The reality, however, was a brutal invasion aimed at uprooted Mapuche communities, displacing thousands and absorbing their lands into the Chilean state.
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And obstacles they were because Chile knew where they wanted to reach in terms of what they saw as their rightful borders. And the Mapuche were literally a wedge, an obstacle between them and reaching where they wanted to reach at the tip of South America. It was almost like a race between Argentina and Chile to see who could reach the edge and claim it first.
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And Tepuche were something that was keeping them from doing that. And additionally, Tepuche would not have been granted the same legitimacy of a claim as Argentina. You know, Chile and Argentina would eventually come to an agreement about where their border would lie. And they respected that agreement. Same cannot be said for the Mapuche.
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I mean, of course, there were a lot of border disagreements. Of course, yeah. In South America following the, you know, evacuation of the Spanish. But, of course, those are treated on equal footing. The natives are different. Matter.
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So Chilean forces would go on an advance into Araucania, forcibly remove thousands of Mapuche families from their ancestral territories and subject those that remained to the authority of the Chilean government.
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The traditional colonial land holdings that remained were fragmented and redistributed, often to Chilean settlers, and the government imposed European-style laws, education, and religion to attempt to assimilate the Mapuche and suppress their identity.
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Military outposts and settlements were also established in the newly annexed land, festively facing the region under martial law and making it difficult for Mapuche communities to resist openly. replace the words Chilean government with Israeli government and Mapuche with Palestinian. And that's just to tell you how antiquated the current tactics of colonization are.
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Yeah, I mean, a lot of the former major colonial powers have found more subtle means of considering the exploitation and subjugation of people around the world. So it's very rare to see something so open and flagrant. You know, it's something that you expect to see in historical accounts such as this, of...
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land holdings being chopped up and given to settlers and laws and education being imposed onto a native population to suppress and to assimilate their entity you know military outposts being established on julianic's land martial law being established for the native inhabitants all those things hear about it in the push of the american frontier and you hear about it in
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throughout South America and Africa, including our history, you don't really tend to think about that key and now when it is happening in full key.
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That's the way I think about all the time. They were like a century late, pretty much. Yeah. If they had started this process like a century earlier, they would have actually probably have gotten away with it, unfortunately.
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Yeah, I mean, when you think about how the severity of the climate situation is just going to worsen, and you think about the pressures at places on the most exploited regions of the globe, how that might pressure, you know, migration, and how that might pressure sort of efforts to resist the sort of tightening of the hold of exploitation.
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Up until the call that I was reading, this book called Warner People's History of Fashion, And just thinking about the whole textile trade as a whole and how it impacts different parts of the globe and whatever. And just talking about this now, I'm just thinking like, if workers in those countries were to stand up,
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Well, in all this time, some of the most deadly workers' struggles have taken place in these regions, in these settings. But if they were to stand up and resist now, I mean, it might get even more open and blatant with the suppression of those people and those voices.
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And as they attempt to try and make their way out of those hotspots, those hot regions of instability and violence and climate catastrophe, You know, we have all this migrant rhetoric to make the struggle even worse.
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For some reason, you're saying that my mind fixated on the fact that you said undocumented. And this reminded me of the absurdity of all of this. The difference is literally some pieces of paper. The difference is literally a roll of the dice spawn point from one side of the border or another. I'd have to allow this to like totally dominate our lives.
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And to sort of pull us a bit back onto the track, you can also see the mirrors between the current Palestinian struggle and the ongoing Mapuche struggle. And even going back to this time that I've been discussing the Mapuche struggle of the past. Because despite all of this colonial expansion, the Umpuche resisted not only militarily, but culturally. They held on to their language.
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They held on to their customs. They held on to their spiritual practices. They held on to their identity in defiance of assimilationist policies. And across the Andes, meanwhile, Argentina was pursuing a similarly aggressive campaign. which is known as the conquest of the desert.
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This was led by General Julio Argentino Roca in the 1870s and 1880s, and this really sought to eradicate and displace all the indigenous groups that were in the area, including the Mapuche, who had lived in the fertile Pampas and Patagonian regions, to secure valuable land for, wait for it, cattle ranching, agriculture, and European settler expansion.
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Cattle ranching, as in, you know, the whole meat trade. The cows are more important than the people. Exactly. And the demand for the cows is more important than the people. You see this violence of agricultural expansion in other places as well.
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As I said, I was reading one, and one of the things she notes is that part of what pushed the American westward expansion was that they were growing cotton And cotton is extremely water-intensive. And historically, cotton was grown in a polyculture. It was grown with other plants, right? With these cotton monocultures, it really quickly strips the soil of its nutrients.
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And so they were pushing westward because they kept on having to find new land to grow the cotton on. And of course, who was working that cotton? And who was working those plantations? Just exploitation all the way down. And all that just to feed this rapacious appetite of expansion.
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You know, we had thousands of years of sustainable growth and sustainable cyclical economies, but things that would last. And just in these last few centuries, we've just completely lost that because above all, the line has to go up.
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And then it's also tied to the petrochemical trade, because to maintain these soils in this unnatural form, you have to basically pump the land with these artificial fertilizers, which are typically derived from petrochemicals.
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Yeah. And this is what we're looking at here in this particular historical narrative. We're just watching the fall of Wild Mapu, of course, but we're also looking at, in a more grander sense, the fall of the remaining communities that actually were maintaining that connection to land.
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They're being, in this process, subjugated so that there is no resistance and no present alternative to the extractive model. That was at least part of the goal of this expansion.
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As we see in Argentina, the few Mapuche who survived this massacre, because they employed all sorts of tactics ranging from scorched earth policies to forced relocations to like outrageous, you know, the few that survived were relocated to reservations, stripped of their land and reduced to laborers within this modern or rapidly modernizing Argentina.
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And General Roca's campaign was celebrated by the Argentine elite as a triumph of civilization over barbarism. We haven't heard that before. So in both Chile's pacification of Araucana and Argentina's conquest of the desert, you had this large-scale dispossession of Apuche land and Guamapu now being fully split by the border of Argentina and Chile. The vast majority of Apuche now live in Chile.
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There are only a few tens of thousands left in Argentina to this day. Initially, Mapuche leaders and communities launched uprisings and guerrilla attacks against the Chilean and Argentine military forces, fighting to defend their territories. But as military suppression intensified, resistance also had to adapt.
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Mapuche communities had to adopt more crude forms of opposition, maintaining cultural practices, stories, and languages as an act of resistance. Some Mapuche leaders petitioned for land rights and autonomy through legal channels, seeking to challenge dispossession through the courts.
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Others continued to resist through armed confrontation, often leading to isolated uprisings when government forces overstepped or attempted to seize more land. The Mapuche resistance that follows this period is basically rooted in the traumas of this period, as the people were forcibly integrated into Chilean and Argentine societies, yet never fully accepted.
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As we move into the early 20th century, Mapuche communities continue to be hit hard by policies that aim to dissolve their traditional ways of life. The Chilean and Argentine governments squeezed Mapuche onto reservations, while surrounding lands were given to powerful landowners and settlers.
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Land scarcity was a significant issue, as Mapuche families often had plots too small to sustain their traditional agricultural practices. And this dispossession led to economic hardship and widespread poverty, further marginalizing them from national economies.
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The assimilation attempts to frame indigenous community identity as something to be erased in favor of European norms pushed out the Mapundun language and cultural ties and aimed to impose Spanish as the primary language. Thankfully, today, Mapundun still survives as the language of the Uche people.
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At the time, the Uche were also forced into low wage labor on settler farms, experiencing, of course, very harsh conditions and very little protection. Many of the Mapuche ended up migrating from rural areas to cities as the arable land dwindled. Ended up finding themselves in places like Santiago and Temuco beginning in the 1930s.
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And then Mapuche families ended up working as laborers in urban centers where they faced new forms of discrimination. A lot of Mapuche women ended up going to work as servants within the houses of the Chilean elite. And during this period of hardship, early Mapuche political movements began to take shape.
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In the 1910s, Mapuche leaders organized groups like Sociedad Capulican Defensora de la Araucana, which advocated for land rights and civil protections, aiming to reclaim the dispossessed land and fight against the abuse of indigenous laborers. These early organizations marked a significant shift in Mapuche strategy, representing a movement towards formal political approaches to resistance.
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The establishment of political alliances with sympathetic groups also strengthened the Mapuche cause. In the 1920s and 1930s, indigenous organizations began working with the Chilean communist and socialist parties, focusing on indigenous labor issues and broader anti-landlord campaigns.
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However, these alliances often prioritized national labor and agrarian reform over specific indigenous rights, leaving the Mapuche to continue the fight largely on their own terms. But in spite of this limited political power, these early efforts helped lay the groundwork for later land rights activism.
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From the mid-20th century onward, rapid industrialization, extractive forestry operations, and monoculture plantations began to dominate Mapuche land, and pollution increased, rivers were contaminated, forest biodiversity was replaced by non-native species like pine and eucalyptus plantations, and All of this leads, of course, to soil depletion.
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The remaining Mapuche agriculture and local ecosystems were naturally threatened, which fully compelled their resistance. At the same time, they were still, of course, working to preserve their language, their cultural practices, their music, their arts, their spiritual ceremonies. For a small moment, there was some hope.
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as the government of Salvador Allende, you know where this is going, passed an indigenous law that recognized their distinctive culture and history and began to restore Mapuche communal lands. But I think we all remember how that turned out. Bam bam, you have a whole coup sponsored by the US and Pinochet is in power.
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In power, Pinochet calls for the division of the reserves and the liquidation of the Indian communities. He literally sounds like a cartoon villain with everything I've read and learned about him. I mean, who speaks of the liquidation of a people?
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Yeah, I mean, that's something I always think about. When I think of a lot of the most brutal world leaders across human history, I often think, you know, this person did not spawn out of thin air. There was a time when this person was a newborn. And they were babbling, learning to speak, learning to walk, became a toddler, small child, preteen, teenager, young adult.
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So much nature and nurture would have gone into the person they became. But they had the same spawn point as everybody else. They all started as a baby. And Pinochet was, unfortunately, no exception. After the passing of his Decree 2568-1979, the number of indigenous communities was reduced by 25%, and several Mapuche leaders were murdered, threatened with imprisonment, or exiled.
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After the fall of Pinochet and return to democracy, the Mapuche had a resurgence in identity and political activism for the 1990s. This revival gained momentum after the passage of Chile's Indigenous Law in 1993, which acknowledged Mampuche land right to advocate for bilingual education, opening new paths for cultural reclamation.
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That same year, Mampuche representatives at the UN pushed for Chile to adopt ILO Convention 169, a key indigenous rights treaty, but Chile didn't actually ratify the convention until 2008. Despite the established run to the National Corporation of Indigenous Development, or CONADI, in 1993 to facilitate indigenous inclusion in policymaking,
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Mapuche involvement in such state institutions has not guaranteed genuine representation. Several Canadi leaders who openly advocated for Mapuche autonomy or pushed against corporate interests have been removed from their positions.
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In 2015, Governor Francisco Juanchumilla, a pro-Mapuche advocate in Araucana, was removed from his position due to his support for legal reforms recognizing Mapuche rights. You can't go in and change the system. The system changes you while it gets you out of the way.
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With the intensification of extractive industries encroached on Mapuche lands, a wave of activism emerged specifically aimed at protecting secret territories and the environment. Mapuche activists frequently have stood up against forestry companies, hydroelectric projects, and multinational corporations that have aimed to exploit their resources.
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They've engaged in land occupations and protests for land restitution and environmental protection. The Chilean state's reaction to Mapuche activism is entirely predictable. Harsh repression. Under anti-terrorism legislation, Mapuche activists face heightened police surveillance, imprisonment, and accusations of terrorism, a tactic which is...
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universally used to delegitimize resistance to injustice and violence and exploitation and destruction.
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Or you're some like low level clerk who just happens to be within Hezbollah.
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Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, the media has a big part to play in all this. You know, terrorist as a term is associated with certain stereotypes about various groups of people. The past few years, it's been the, you know, machete and AK waving Islamist fighter. But in other time periods, it was another prominent stereotype. You know, the Black 70s revolutionary or Viet Cong.
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And in the Chilean situation, media portrayals have also reinforced stereotypes of Mapuche violence, which of course serves the role of obscuring the reality of their fight for justice and environmental stewardship. It hasn't all been for naught, the Mapuche struggle, that is. They have had a few legal triumphs.
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Rulands, where the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has held Chile accountable, in air quotes, as much as any state is actually held accountable for violating Mapuche rights. Grassroots groups and its collectors worldwide have also supported Mapuche efforts. But clearly these small victories and triumphs are really not much. They're not enough.
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Within the broader Mapuche movement, you do have the reformists and the assimilationists, and you have groups like Coordinadora Arauco Mayeco,
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or CAM, and their splinter group, which is Waichan Auka Mapu, and they have adopted separatist stances, advocating for direct action such as land occupations and resistance against state forces, because they view autonomy and territorial reclamation as essential to Mapuche sovereignty, and they have no interest in compromise with the extractive industries and governments that are responsible for their suffering.
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Traditionally, these groups are focused on acts of economic sabotage against companies that are infringing on their lands and their stewardship. Within wider Chilean society, there is still some prejudice against Mapuche, particularly, but not exclusively, from the right wing. But Chile's 2019 uprising against inequality and government abuses found strong support and allyship.
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between right-wing Chilean society and Mapuche communities, who had seen echoes of their own grievances in national protests. The protests were initially sparked by a metro fare hike, but they quickly became a national movement demanding systemic reform.
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In both urban and rural spaces, Mapuche communities joined or supported protesters by resisting continually governed policies that marginalized their communities and undermined their cultural rights. Mapuche symbols and flags emerged prominently, aligning indigenous struggles with these broader demands for social justice. And the government's response, can you predict, was swift and severe.
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Military and police forces were deployed to use excessive violence. Mapuche been knew about this, but some of the Chileans, they're experiencing this for the first time. And this mutual experience of repression reinforced alliances between the Mapuche and other Chilean activists, as both faced the state-driven violence of propaganda that portrayed them as radicals and terrorists and extremists.
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So despite the crackdown, the uprising saw unprecedented support for the Mapuche cause, amplifying calls for restitution of indigenous lands, formal recognition of Mapuche rights in a reformed constitution, and a decolonial approach to governments that respects indigenous autonomy.
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The 2019 protest laid the groundwork for a national constitutional reform, with significant Mapuche involvement to public support.
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The drafting of New Constitution 2021 raised the potential for enshrining Indigenous rights, with Mapuche representatives actively participating in the process and creating renewed optimism for meaningful legal protections that respect Mapuche culture, territory, and autonomy. That somewhat progressive attempt at a constitutional reform, which also included gender equality measures, was rejected.
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And so there was another attempt just last year in 2023, but it was a very conservative attempt, shaped by the far-right Republican Party, with stricter provisions on immigration, a ban on abortion, and a free market focus that did not resonate with the majority of voters. 55.8% voted against the 2023 draft, and 44.2% in favor.
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Chilean President Gabriel Boric, whose administration had supported constitutional change, acknowledged that further attempts at constitutional reform were unlikely.
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So for now, Chile continues to be governed by the constitution that dates back to the dictatorship of Pinochet, while its leaders are looking at alternative paths for addressing social, economic, and environmental issues, in line with Chilean public opinion.
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If you know anything about me and my positions, you'll know that I'm not confident in the ability of states to meaningfully respect people's agency and autonomy ever, but I wish the Mapuche all the best wherever their struggle goes. And I've personally found their story very impactful. It's one of resilience, adaptability, and days of centuries of adversity.
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They've had an unyielding desire to maintain their connection to the land and cultural identity. And their ongoing fight is really just a testament to the power of solidarity. And that's it for me. This has been Ikarapane. All power to all the people.
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Hey, and welcome to Grappin' Here. Today we'll continue on our journey through Latin American anarchism, where we last left off with a look at the anarchist history of Uruguay. We talked about Uruguay's general history, its radical influences, anarchism's period of popularity in the early 20th century, its radical experiments, and its cultural influence.
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So today, James and I, because James is here. Hello, James.
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Today, we're going to look at what Iroquoian anarchists have been up to from the 50s onward, paying special attention to the activity of the Federación Anarquista Iroquia and the idea of especificismo. By the way, as James just indicated, I am Andrew, Andrew Sage. You can find me on YouTube as Andrewism. But all that aside, let's get into it.
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The Federación Anarquista Uruguaya, or FAU, was founded in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1956. According to Paul Sharkey in the Federación Anarquista Uruguaya, the FAU had very strong working class roots, as many of the militants came from labor-heavy districts like El Cero, which definitely shaped their outlook. The FAU was also very much emphasizing direct action over electoral strategies.
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It favored armed struggle as a necessity in reaction to safe repression and economic exploitation. And the FAU had a very strong stance against Marxist-Leninism. Although some members sympathized with aspects of Marxism, many of them resisted the bureaucratic and authoritarian tendencies that influenced that milieu.
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Unlike in many other Latin American countries, as you may have recalled us covering in the past, anarchism persisted in mainstream relevance even after the rise of the Bolsheviks and their influence globally, and of course the coinciding fall of the anarchists in Spain.
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According to Oliver Zizenko's 65 Years of Revolution, the FAU came about in a time when Uruguay's prosperity coming out of World War II had come to an end, as its agricultural exports were no longer needed to feed the Allies' massive standing armies. This economic downturn triggered major social unrest, which the anarchist presence was able to spring upon.
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One such instance of unrest involved 150,000 workers going on strike in solidarity with their fellow workers in a tire factory. During the strike and after, the FAU involved students, unionists, intellectuals, community organizers, and even a few exiles from the Spanish Civil War to build up a more united labor movement.
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So rather than having unions split along political ideological affiliations like moderates, socialists, anarchists, right populists, and so on, there would be one big tent just focused on labor. Now... I personally think a big tent has its benefits and its drawbacks, as with any other strategy. I think the benefit is obviously that it has the ability to mobilize a large number of people.
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But I think the difficulty and the drawback is that having so many affiliations under that big tent can mean that there's not really much of a shared goal left behind. Like, yeah, the anarchists want anarchy. The right populists might just want to secure some benefits and protections. And the socialists may be interested in launching a party.
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Sure, they all proclaim to have some interest on the side of the workers. But how that manifests looks different from group to group. But we'll see how that big tent approach turned out for the FAU. So they formed the National Confederation of Workers, or CNT, as that big tent in 1964. But even before that, there was a split. Not too much of a surprise.
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After the Cuban Revolution, the FAU was actually divided between those who were opposed to Castro and those who critically supported the revolution. Those who were opposed to Castro eventually broke away from the FAU in 1963 as Castro entrenched himself in the Soviet bloc, while those who remained in the FAU were critical of Castro and his government but still supported the fall of Batista.
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Of course, with the Cuban Revolution came that very noticeable shift in American foreign policy. They saw that with all that happening right in their backyard, they'd need to take a very different approach if they wanted to win the Cold War.
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Sosuzenko actually describes how in 1961, JFK changed the approach of the now infamous School of the Americas from preparing for Soviet invasion to preparing for anti-communist counterinsurgency against homegrown revolutions. So as a result, militaries across Latin America became more right-wing and seized power for themselves to protect civilians from the danger of their rights.
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In 1964, it was Brazil. In 1968, it was Peru. In 1973, it was Chile and Uruguay fell. And in 1976, Argentina fell. As Ozenko noted, in just over a decade, Uruguayan anarchists would become surrounded by right-wing dictatorships which collaborated to round up and exterminate left-wing dissidents of all flavors. Not to mention, the economic situation wasn't exactly getting better.
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According to Paul Sharkey, between 1955 and 1959, the cost of living doubled and wages did not keep pace. By 1965, inflation was running at 100%, and by 1967, at 140%. Madness. Yeah, well, just wait and see, Andrew. Oh yeah, we are living in some interesting times. Yeah, you never know. So the president that preceded the military dictator imposed a wage freeze and devalued the currency.
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That was his bright idea, his solution to the crisis. So people's lives were obviously getting worse. And the time had come for some decisive action. So the CNT aided in strikes across sectors and even tried to call for a general strike. As Uzenko writes, the FAU decided that they were going to take on a strategy of urban guerrilla warfare.
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So they tapped into a coalition of leftist groups to rob and hood food from the corporations to give to the poor. Awesome.
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Yeah. But sadly, the coalition couldn't last very long. Differences in strategy would lead to the FAU doing its thing by building defense councils, similar to those organized in the Spanish Civil War.
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while the other groups copied a Che Guevara-style guerrilla army approach, forming the National Liberation Movement Tupomeros, or the MLNT.
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Yeah. Although the, the MLNT was necessarily anarchist.
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Although I'm glad that you bring up this point because it's actually something that I was writing about earlier today in preparation for a video. I think there's a conflation that anarchists need to be careful with between leadership in the sense of authority, as in the right to command and control and that kind of thing, versus leadership in the sense of guidance, advice, coordination, expertise.
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I think that just as you might have an anarchist construction collective, right? And they're building a house. Mm-hmm.
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You might have something like a foreman who is coordinating all the actions that all the different builders and all the different tradesmen are engaging in to ensure that the different parts of the house come together cohesively and seamlessly, that nobody's like stepping on anybody's toes, that everything is being done in a proper timing.
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That is an instance where there would be coordination without necessarily having authority. It's just really a division of labor to ensure that the task that everybody is there to accomplish can be accomplished. And the person who is given that particular task within that division of labor is doing so by taking on that responsibility.
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But just as they have the responsibility, others will also have the responsibilities. And that does not elevate them above the other people in that association.
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And so kind of in the same way that you have that in a construction site, I think that that is the kind of approach we need to take in a military formation where the person who is, you know, respected for their knowledge of military strategy or has the information or the expertise to be able to handle the planning of that approach because we're all here to win, right?
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We're all here to defend our freedom and to defend the freedom of the people we love. So there's no sense in splitting off into a bunch of different groups and failing at our task when we can come together where necessary to engage in the coordination of our strategy to improve the chances of our success.
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You know, and of course there is a vulnerability in times of warfare that we do have to acknowledge because warfare historically is one of the times that is the most ripe for authoritarian seizure and control. But because that vulnerability exists in those times is when I think we have to be extra vigilant of how that could potentially manifest.
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You know, we don't sacrifice our cause in defense of the cause, you know what I'm saying?
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Yeah. Yeah. It's just like in an emergency scenario, you know, if somebody is, you know, leading a surgery, for example, or leading a rescue operation, that doesn't mean that they're elevated above everybody else. It just means that they have the knowledge and the skills to accomplish that particular task.
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And the others of their own free will respect that knowledge enough to go along with what the person is recommending.
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Exactly. And I like the mention of discipline in particular, because that really is the distinction. Because people talk about, oh, you need to have military discipline. How are you supposed to have military discipline without blind obedience to authority?
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And sure, we're not going to have, we're never going to have discipline to the extent that soldiers are dehumanized and treated like cannon fodder, as you would find in a traditional authoritarian military. But the discipline is derived from solidarity.
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It's derived from the responsibility people have for each other, the care people have for each other within their formation and the responsibility they have for their own actions as being part of that formation and for how their actions will affect those around them.
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Yeah, I think there is, of course, the potential for... to potentially become... How do I want to put this? What I will say is, I think it's necessary, but even in engaging with...
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Those who have, you know, broken trust or who have seemingly split from the association or have jeopardized the safety or security of the association, that you find ways to deal with those situations on a case-by-case basis. You know, that you're responsive to the particular circumstances that cause that action or that particular outcome.
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Rather than, as you would find in modern militaries, where you have like a very clear, this action has this consequence, this action has this consequence, this action, like a lot more flexibility is required because we understand that, you know, we don't have this matrix of crime that authorities do. You know, we're dealing with harm, they're dealing with crime, right?
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And so in dealing with harm, we have to approach each of those situations in the context of their situations rather than in some sort of cold, like distant calculation.
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You know, and I think in approaching it in that way, people are more willing, I think, to fess up or to take accountability for their harm because they know that there's that relationship there that they're going to try to work through it. That while there may be many potential consequences to their actions, there's an openness to dialogue there rather than a rigidity of this is what you did.
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Although I feel like these digressions always get to something essential and brings out something extra to what I would have... you know, prepared in advance. So we had this split, right? We had the FAU and then you had the MLNT. And they did collaborate where there was common cause, but it wasn't a permanent collaboration. You know,
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And while this was taking place in the urban guerrilla warfare sphere, you had different things taking place in the labor movement. The FAU was dealing with the consequences of Big Tent organizing, as they found that the Uruguayan Communist Party, or PCU, had pretty successfully claimed significant influence in the CNT.
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So in response, according to Susenko, the FAU created a rank-and-file alliance called the Combative Tendency, which pushed for more militancy and less bureaucracy in the union movement. Through that alliance, the FAU was able to accomplish a lot more outreach and action. But in return, the president of Uruguay introduced emergency laws executed by the military to counter the unrest.
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The revolutionary left continued to fight against the military's involvement in civilian life and also formed a daily paper called Ipoca. But then the government was like, stop, don't do that, that's illegal. And when the government says stop, don't do that, that's illegal. That means they put boots on the ground and, you know, raided their offices.
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And so the people fell apart and the groups involved went underground. And like I said, the military raided their bases. But then when the FAU was like, let's get the band back together. Unfortunately, the other groups were too scared to resurface, understandably. And so because of that fear, the PCU kind of had a fall from Greece.
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You know, for a while, they were the big boys on campus in the CNT. But after the FAU kind of came to the forefront again, with all its bravery and stuff, they kind of ended up falling back. And you see, the PCU had chosen to appease the military because they believed that a leftist faction within the ranks of the army might support their bid for power.
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Kind of like what happened in the Russian Revolution.
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And so, you know, they really thought they were cooking something. But as the saying goes, the stove was not even on.
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Yeah, the military saw them as pretty much insignificant. So much so that while other leftist groups were facing severe oppression, the PCU was actually pretty much left alone. And so when the Union rank and file saw that and turned their backs on the PCU, they ended up turning their focus toward the combative tendency because at least they were doing radical and serious stuff.
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And so the unions were under attack from all sides, the police, the military, and even neo-fascist gangs. And the FAU-led combative tenancy was focused on defending these workers' movements from those threats. According to Zazenko, the FAU held a secret congress and formed their own armed wing, the OPR33, which, unlike other guerrilla groups in the region, wasn't a top-down organization.
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Instead, individual cells had the freedom to decide how they carried out missions and which actions they took part in. The FAU still set the overall strategy, but it wasn't about becoming some kind of vanguard. Some of their actions, by the way, according to Sharkey, included bank robberies and factory owner kidnappings.
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Yeah. Well, there were some old school Spanish anarchists within their ranks.
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That is a quintessential example of that. Yeah. I think. Yeah. So, you know, you do what you have to do pretty much.
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Exactly, exactly. It had a cause and a reasoning behind it. And the FAU was the same way. Their reasoning was just that if the capitalist class was going to use force to protect their interests, then the workers should be able to use force to defend theirs.
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And so they did what they had to do. Meanwhile, the PCU was stuck to their policy of appeasement, which actually had a detrimental effect in the broader movement as the military kept growing in strength. And so the very anti-communist military's involvement in breaking up all the work activities emboldened their role in politics.
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And then once they defeated the MLNT, with the FAU struggling to resist, isolated by the PCUs in action, the military took on the opportunity to coup the government, leading to the rise of Juan Maria Portaberry, the first president of the civic military dictatorship in 1973.
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In the aftermath, the FAU made the tough call to move their operations to Argentina, which hadn't yet fallen to military dictatorship. From there, they worked within the CNT to organize a massive 15-day general strike. It shut the country down for a time, but it wasn't enough.
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And the efforts to keep up the fight were constantly undermined by the PCU, which still insisted on negotiating instead of taking real action. Meanwhile, the people were suffering. According to Sharkey, between 1971 and 1976, there was a 35% fall in real wages, and by 1979, inflation was running at 80%, with wages limping behind at 45%.
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So until 1976, the FAU continued to work between Argentina and Uruguay. But after Argentina's coup, that was it. To quote Dzenko directly, During the U.S. 's Operation Condor, dictatorships across Latin America continued, coordinated to kidnap, torture, and murder leftists. Across the continent, between 60,000 and 80,000 leftists were killed and more than 400,000 were placed in political prisons.
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End quote. Jesus. And I think we need to sit with those numbers because it's very easy to hear numbers like that and just think, you know, that's just a statistic, pretty much. We hear big numbers, our mind kind of goes statistic. But to like think about the impact that would have for tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people to be just taken out, whether killed or imprisoned.
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Leaving like a gaping hole of knowledge, of experience, of education, of radicalism.
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A country may take decades to recover from something like that. It's a cultural death in a sense. You know, this is a political movement. But it's kind of similar to how during colonialism, elders would be wiped out. And with them, all of their knowledge, all of their oral histories, all of their languages, just wiped out in an instant. This is different, of course.
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This is a political ideology as opposed to an entire culture and ethnicity. But it's still just a massive loss of all that history, all that experience, all that radicalism and information just gone.
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Well, I would say it's more than a decapitation because it's not just like notable figures that were taken out or particularly influential thought leaders or anything. It's almost everybody.
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Anybody who had that fight in them or had that radical knowledge or consciousness. Yeah.
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Yeah, the history is basically erased, in a sense. All that's left is really what they might have written down.
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which is obviously only a small portion of what they might have had to share with the rest of the world.
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Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, when you look at this This didn't just happen in Uruguay, this happened all over the world. In some cases, this massive wipeout of the anarchist movement took place even earlier, you know, in the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s. But in all of these cases, that loss is something that we are still, in a sense, recovering from.
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We kind of had to slowly build back, but we still haven't ever reached, in many places, the height that anarchism was at. at certain points in its history, in certain parts of the world.
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Especially when the legacy is so much erased. You know, when you look at how histories are taught everywhere in the world, you're barely going to get a mention of anarchism, despite the massive role it played in shaping the 20th century, 19th and 20th centuries.
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I'm sure you've encountered this, where people just kind of assume, oh, well, the anarchists lost, so that means they're destined to lose.
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They lost that particular fight, that doesn't mean the war is necessarily lost. And additionally, states have lost too.
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States, state projects have lost, continue to lose. You know, the capitalist project, capitalist businesses, they lose, they fail. That doesn't mean that the project is destined to lose or destined to fail. It just means that particular iteration or that particular attempt was not able to succeed in all its ambitions.
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Yeah, that too. Because the standards of failure and success... often dictated by the standpoint of the status quo yes very much so yeah it's kind of like how the Haitian revolution is spoken of as the only successful slave revolt or one of the only successful slave revolts and the standard for success in that case is that they were able to establish an independent state
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Whereas other slave revolts in other parts of the world, including within the Caribbean, would have taken different paths. The Maroons, for example, their former revolt was a withdrawal from the system that surrounded them, creating a pocket of resistance, isolating themselves. Same thing in Brazil.
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We had the Quilombos, the settlements that extracted themselves from the surrounding oppressive structure and tried to survive to the extent that they could. Not all of them lasted. But nothing lasts forever, you know? Countries rise and fall.
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And so I think if we limit ourselves to just the example of Haiti, particularly in the context of success in a slave revolution, I think we miss out on a lot of those other examples and opportunities for inspiration and guidance.
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Yeah, just the psychological experience in itself, it cannot be under-anesthetized or underrated. Even if it's on that small scale of the individual, that's still valuable.
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Exactly, exactly. Because that is something I speak about so often. It's the need in the process of social revolution to develop people's powers, drives, and consciousness. You do that by giving people both, of course, theoretical education and sharing knowledge in that sense, but also through experience. Because, and I've used this phrase before, you can't put the gene back in the bottle.
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You can't go from experiencing freedom to a situation of unfreedom and then shrug your shoulders and think, oh, that's all there could ever be. After you've experienced an alternative to the status quo, you're not going to go back to thinking the status quo is all there is and all that could ever exist.
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So we're kind of left on a somber chapter in Uruguay's anarchist history. Because unfortunately, it was only after the fall of Uruguay's dictatorship in 1985 that anarchist militants were able to return to Uruguay and reestablish the FAU in a fractured political and social landscape with greatly reduced numbers.
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Some of the former anarchists involved in the FAU created the People's Victory Party, or PVP, in exile, which had attempted to reorganize resistance efforts, but also fell into some Leninist tendencies. But the main line-up for you continues to focus on grassroots organizing, worker struggles, and political education.
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It continues to be engaged in Latin American anarchist networks, particularly with Brazilian and Argentine groups, like the Ferraçao Anarquista Caucha, the Ferraçao Anarquista Cabocla, the Ferraçao Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro, and the Argentine organization AUCA.
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Despite its past radicalism, the FAU has shifted towards a broader approach, integrating mass movements while retaining its commitment to anti-authoritarian socialism. Since then and up to today, their approach has aligned with the practice of Especifismo, which they developed to rebuild their strength in Uruguayan political movements.
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That approach has since been influential across Latin America and beyond, including North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania. I've actually spoken about especificismo on this podcast before and on my channel, but to give a quick summary, especificismo is an organizational approach guided by three key concepts.
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The first is the need for a specifically anarchist organization built around a unity of ideas and praxis. The second is the use of the specifically anarchist organization to theorize and develop strategic, political, and organizing work. And the third is active involvement in and shaping of autonomous and popular social movements, which is described as the process of social insertion.
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Especifists reject the left unity idea of a synthesis organization of revolutionaries or even multiple currents of anarchists loosely united because they feel it boils down to a lowest common denominator politics. They feel that when this unity is preferred at any cost, it leaves little room for united action or developed political discussion.
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It can be described in a sense as an affinity group with the shared interest in the advancement of a very specific politic, but they aren't just internally focused. Unesco is focused on building popular power as a means of revolutionary transformation, rejecting both electoral and vanguardist Marxist approaches.
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So the Especifismo distinguishes between specifically anarchist political organizations or affinity groups and broader mass movements. And they advocate for anarchists creating the former and inserting themselves in the latter. building up anarchist presence and the presence of anarchist ideas in unions, in student groups, and in community struggles.
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So if you want a more in-depth exploration of Especifismo, I suggest reading the discussion between Felipe Correa and Juan Carlos Mecoso called The Strategy of Especifismo on the Anarchist Library.
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And they talk about how the fragmentation of the working class under neoliberalism has created some very distinct challenges that require fresh organizational strategies and less dogmatic rigidity to simplistic class analysis.
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But they also speak for the need to coordinate and discipline and strategically engage anarchist groups within social movements, retaining their independence but engaging in their struggle. And they also end up in that interview discussing the FAU's long-term strategy as a process of resistance, rupture, and reconstruction.
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Resistance meaning that they're strengthening grassroots organizations, direct action, and ideological development. Rupture meaning that they're breaking away from capitalist institutions through revolutionary action. And reconstruction meaning that they're establishing new social relations based on self-management and mutual aid.
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It's kind of similar to the way that I break down social revolution conceptually as an approach that incorporates both opposition and the proposal of alternatives. So I have been thinking about Especifismo lately. I made that video many years ago and my anarchist understanding has shifted a lot, especially recently.
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In going back and looking at how I would have analyzed things previously, I think there's some different directions that I might take certain things in. I think, for example, the idea of affinity groups engaging in social intuition is extremely valuable in shifting the conversation within these mass movements.
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But I also think that there's a risk in the ways in which a specifismo, if not properly understood or conceptualized, could end up opening ground for co-optation towards some rather un-anarchist outcomes.
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What I mean by that is, I think it's important, when discussing Especifismo, to be very careful against the interpretation of it as some kind of vanguardist strategy or way to dictate a vision of anarchy. I think that even if somebody's taken the Especifist approach in creating an affinity group organized around a very specific form of anarchism,
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That group should still be in conversation with different tendencies and engaging in an ongoing process of critique and convergence of ideas. I believe this was the sort of motivation between Malatesta's idea of synthesis and the synthesis federation in anarchist history. I'll still learn a bit about that.
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But anyway, I'd love to hear about, you know, what the FU and North Anarchists in Uruguay are up to here now. You know, they can feel free to reach out to me. I have a website now, andrewsage.org. And I wish them all power to all the people. That's it for me today. You can find me on YouTube and Patreon. And this has been It Could Happen Here. Peace.
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Yeah, I also think that this kind of diversity of thoughts and strategy is really, really beautiful. I'm glad to see it in the most unconventional and surprising of contexts. It's why I consider myself an anarchist without adjectives. Absolutely, yeah. I think we benefit greatly from conversation between these traditions and between these strategies.
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And so seeing that there were more than one form of anarchism in such a small context, it's really quite inspiring.
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By the way, for those listeners who may not be familiar with the anarchist egoist tradition, I know the word ego and egoism might... Conjure up some psychoanalytical Freudian... Yeah. Yeah. It might bring some sort of feelings about Catholic individualism or extreme selfishness and that kind of thing. Kind of like, screw everybody except me.
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But there's actually a much deeper philosophical bent to anarchist egoism that I think everybody should give a chance. I actually recently read what is considered the first manifesto of anarchism. And it was written by this French anarchist named Anselme Bellegarigue. And he was actually an individualist anarchist.
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And you actually, in reading that, end up seeing a lot of the influences that would later sort of develop further into anarchist individualism from the very beginning. You know, I highly recommend reading it. It's called Anarchy, a Journal of Order. It's available on the Anarchist Library. It's a surprisingly contemporary piece, in my opinion.
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It was translated by Sean Wilbur, who's another anarchist scholar who I'm really inspired by lately. And it really gets into some of the ideas that I think we've forgotten in terms of what it takes to achieve the complete liberation of all people.
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Yeah, Anarchy, a Journal of Order. He ended up not publishing more than two issues due to low readership. But that's what happens, I think, when you have many such cases. Many such cases, many such cases.
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Yeah, it happens when you're ahead of the times in a sense. And he actually ends up becoming at least partially relevant to the next episode I'm going to do on the Latin American anarchism series because he ends up making his way to Latin America at one point in his life. In fact, he dies in Latin America, but we'll get to that in time. Finally, we turn to Venezuela.
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By the late 19th century, refugees from the failed Paris Commune arrived in Caracas, bringing with them the radical spirit of the International Workingmen's Association. From a few of these immigrants, small anarchist cells emerged, but they were stifled by the brutal dictatorship of Juan Vincente Gomez from 1899 to 1935.
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Though few in number, the anarchist immigrant efforts to form mutual societies, organize strikes, and spread propaganda gained them a notoriety that put a massive bullseye on them for Gomez's persecution. And yet amidst the repression, a few sparks of anarchism did survive.
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In the cultural fabric, writers like Miguel Eduardo Parlo portrayed anarchists as spiritual revolutionaries, likening them to saints. Sounds familiar.
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Yes. If you know, you know, back in the days of St. Andrewism. There you go. But his novel, Todo en Pueblo, described anarchists as apostles of justice, which is a really fire title, I must say, as they carried the flame of liberty into the streets. But it wasn't all pros. The early 20th century also saw a spike in industrial strikes.
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In 1918, for example, a pivotal strike involving transit workers included at least one known Italian anarchist named Vincenzo Cusati. Although defeated, the strike left a mark in the country's consciousness. Inspired by such a strive for freedom, workers united through various mutual aid societies which they were disguised as religious guilds.
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the anarchist influence quietly spread among bakers, bricklayers, and oil workers. Truly, it was the oil boom of the 1920s that reshaped Venezuelan society and, of course, continues to affect it today. While anarchists and anarchists maintained underground networks in the grown oil sector, state and corporate power proved to be too much.
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By the mid-20th century, after the fall of Gomes' regime, the rise of political parties like Acción Democrática co-opted many of the workers who might have otherwise embraced anarchist syndicalism, and anarchist ideals became increasingly marginalized, eclipsed by party politics and state repression.
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Between 1936 and 1945, in fact, anarchist repression also gained a constitutional footing in the form of the Lara Law, which banned strikes, associations, meetings without permission from the state, political propaganda, and basically all the usual dictatorial stuff. After the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Franco, more Spanish anarchist immigrants came to Venezuela.
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But they didn't end up impacting Venezuela so much. As immigrants, they ended up creating a mostly self-contained scene, primarily through the founding of the Federación Obrera Regional Venezolana in 1958, which was affiliated with the International Workers Association. But, as I said, they didn't make too much of a splash in the broader Venezuelan population.
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They mostly affected other Spanish immigrants. So anarchism never developed into an explicitly mass movement in Venezuela, but elements of it did persist and the unyielding pursuit of freedom was still felt even in the harshest of conditions. So looking today at the countries that composed the former Gran Colombia, I would argue that the spark of anarchism still hasn't died.
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Ecuador uprisings continue to challenge extractive economies and demand autonomous control over indigenous territories. And some anarchist collectives are active in solidarity, providing logistical support during protests and pushing for horizontal forms of organizing in the broader social struggle.
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After the 2021 national strike in Colombia, some anarchist practices have begun to infuse movements against police brutality, privatization, and austerity measures. Mutual aid networks have also emerged inspired by anarchist practices to support the communities hit hardest by economic crises. In Panama, anarchism exists on the fringes
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but it has the potential to provide inspiration to those who are actively confronting neoliberal policies, advocating for workers' rights, and engaging in anti-corporate actions. Finally, in Venezuela, economic collapse and authoritarianism have created space for anarchist ideals to spread through grassroots initiatives.
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Mutual aid and self-organized community groups have stepped in where the state has failed. Across these countries, anarchist ideas still have potency. And really my hope is that these places continue to explore the creativity and solidarity that are necessary for liberation. That they continue to struggle and that they go further still. You know, viva la libertad. All power to all the people.
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Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage. I'm also Andrewism on YouTube. And I'm here once again with Garrison Davis.
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Happy to have you. And we're going to continue our journey through Latin American anarchisms and their histories. We've already discussed Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Cuba, the Mapuche struggle, Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela. And so there are just a few territories left that are considered Latin America.
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So just before we get to Mexico and Uruguay and possibly even Quebec, I want to round up all the anarchist histories in the smaller states.
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Yeah, Quebec, I mean, honestly, you could say the same for like Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique.
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Right, yeah, yeah. I actually wanted to include explorations of Haiti and Guadeloupe and Martinique in this episode, since it's, you know, fairly small anarchist movements there, but... I mean, I suppose I could just summarize it one time, which is that Martinique had a section of the Internationale at one point in 1895.
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There was also a branch of the Internationale in 1866 on the island of Guadeloupe, and it is very difficult to establish whether there were any anarchist groups in Haiti ever from my research. There was an appearance of socialism more broadly as part of the struggle against domination taking place in the country, but...
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The dictatorships of Haiti have made those kinds of movements very difficult to spring out and thrive.
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But today we're going to be focusing on the anarchist histories in the rest of the smaller states of Central America and the Caribbean. So we'll be covering the sparks of anarchism in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.
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And as with previous episodes, this is all possible thanks to Angel Capaletti's exhaustive work titled Anarchism in Latin America. But let me set the scene first and foremost across the lush rainforests and turquoise seas of Central America.
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Historically, there were several indigenous peoples that have called it home, and that home was violated in the early 16th century as Spanish conquistadors carved bloody paths through the region, replacing the once vibrant pre-colonial societies with the feudal-like arrangements of the encomienda system, which forced indigenous peoples into labor under Spanish landowners.
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The colonial era saw the rise of vast plantations for cash crops like cocoa, indigo, and later coffee, enriching a small elite while indigenous and Afro-descending populations endured brutal oppression over the centuries. Fast forward to the early 19th century and the wave of independence sweeping across Latin America reached Central America.
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In 1821, the region officially threw off Spanish rule, and in 1823, Central America gained its independence from the Mexican Empire. For a fleeting moment, from 1823 to 1839, Central America united as the Federal Republic of Central America, modeled after the U.S. Constitution and encompassing modern-day Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica.
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By 1838, the cracks in the Federation were becoming too large to ignore. I mean, for most of its existence, the capital of the country alternated between Guatemala City and San Salvador, so they couldn't even decide on that. Liberals and conservatives were also split on the economy, centralization versus decentralization, and the role of the Catholic Church.
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And Guatemala was kind of resented by the other states because it had such disproportionate influence. So political infighting and regional rivalries eventually caused the union to splinter. Each state went its own way. But the collapse of the Federation wasn't the end of the story, as seeds of resistance would sprout across the former territory of the Republic.
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And among those seeds were the anarchists. So let's start from Costa Rica and head north. In the early 1900s in Costa Rica, you had libertarian newspapers popping up all over the place, as usual.
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So you had names like El Aurora, Social, El Trabajo, and La Lucha, which would echo in the struggles of local workers and the cross-continental knowledge of international discourses. But even before these publications, would you believe there was enough anarchist danger to stir up the establishment?
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No, but to tell you how unsettled the establishment was. So, you know, we're recording this a couple weeks before Christmas, right?
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Okay, and I don't know if you've gone to church for Christmas before, if that's a thing that you've done.
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Okay, I have as well. And imagine 1892, you go, it's Christmas time, you go into church, you sit down to get your little, you know, you're supposed to keep the sermon short and sweet, let people get home to do what they have to do, right? Yeah. But in 1892, Bishop Thiel decided to use his Christmas sermon to warn against anarchists.
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Like, imagine just trying to go home and eat your Christmas lunch, and you have to listen to this guy preach against, like, these radical anarchists who are coming to, like, mess up the country.
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I mean, to be fair, the anarchists at the time were generally a threat to the clerical establishment.
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Yeah. I mean, gosh, that's a whole kind of wounds I could have gotten into right there.
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I mean, seriously, Christianity went from being a response to the Roman Empire to being the Roman Empire. And that is like one of the biggest downgrades of the millennia.
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For sure, for sure. I have some concerns about it and other strands of Christian anarchism. Same. As somebody who grew up Christian.
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But of course, this is not the place to digress about that topic, as we do have quite a few countries to cover. So the Costa Rican anarchists were not just being called out by... The bishops. Bishops, you know. They were also struggling for an eight-hour workday, such as with the Baker Strike in 1905. And they would also demonstrate against the assassination of anarchist educator Francisco Ferrer.
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They would also found the Centro de Estudios Sociales Criminal, which was a collective of intellectuals and workers who focused on studying and expanding upon anarchism. And in 1911, they would launch the journal Renovacion, which lasted an impressive 70 plus issues. They helped to organize Costa Rica's first May Day celebration in 1913.
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And even as late as the 1920s, groups explicitly formed for libertarian action. But unfortunately, the anarchist influence wouldn't be as impactful in the country heading into the mid-20th century, as the country faced two dictatorships. However, the defeat of the latter in 1949 actually ushered in the most peaceful and stable political situation in all of Latin America.
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I suppose that might be because the democratic government that followed didn't transgress US interests. They do have a US military base in the country, after all, but let me not speculate too much.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at this parochial, backwards regressive. You're telling me you don't want boots on the ground in your country?
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so moving on north to nicaragua the spark of labor organization began to flicker in the early 1900s but there's little evidence of any anarchist specific influence In 1918, the Federación Obrera Nicaragüenes, or the FON, emerged and pulled together various mutual societies from across the country, from shoemakers to bakers to dealers, from León to Managua.
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But this federation wasn't anarchist in character. Both conservative and liberal elites actually tried to use these workers' groups for their own ends. Within the FON, the Grupo Socialista ended up emerging as a rebel force to challenge these elites and their influence in the workers' movement. But even that rebel group was reformist in nature.
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Now, it is possible that libertarians from Spain and Mexico played roles in the stevedore strikes of 1919 in Corinto, which was Nicaragua's major port city, but I can't say for sure from my research. We do know that at least one influential person was perhaps inspired by anarchism, and that was Augusto Sandino, the leader of the Sandinista rebellion against the US occupation of Nicaragua.
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Sandino worked alongside anarchists during his time in exile in Mexico during its revolution, and the red and black of the Sandinistas actually came from that anarchist influence. By the 1930s, after the US withdrawal, the labor movement had to navigate the Somoza family dictatorship, which was marked by severe repression of anything that even smelled red.
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that even in the face of state violence, unions and workers groups continued to organize, laying the groundwork for future resistance, including the eventual Sandinista revolution that overthrew the Somozas in the late 70s. Some social progress was then possible in the country, but it was still marred by corruption and authoritarianism, made worse by the re-election of Daniel Ortega in 2006.
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He still holds the presidency in Nicaragua to this day, managing to stave off this swell of protests against him between 2018 and 2020, of which anarchists, however small a number, did indeed take part. If we turn to Honduras now, there's not too much to say about anarchists, again, but Honduras did have a vibrant labor movement.
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In 1890, La Democracia, one of the country's first mutual aid societies, emerged, with a cooperative spirit that laid the foundation for what was to come. By the early 20th century, the workers' movement in Honduras had begun to heat up even more, particularly among miners and banana plantation labourers, two groups that were central to the country's economy.
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In March 1909, miners struck against brutal conditions and poverty wages. The response? Garrison, maybe you can guess?
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Violent, brutal repression. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
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Oh, violence, murder, I assume. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. 400 strikers were arrested and imprisoned in the infamous Castillo de Amoa. I didn't see any evidence of mass deaths in this particular case.
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I don't know. Mass incarceration. Not really that much better. I mean, they literally got imprisoned in this castle, dungeon, jail. Not something I would want to be. Rats nibbling at your toes and stuff like that, you know?
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So following these early 20th century strikes, workers gradually began to build some momentum in their fight for rights, particularly during the 1954 general strike against the US banana companies. This strike led to significant gains, including the legal right to organize and the emergence of a more unified labor movement. Now, were anarchists involved in these movements? It's possible.
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as the movements do bear much of the language and hallmarks of the anarchist and socialist thought at the time. But to identify specific names is difficult, and there doesn't seem to be any evidence of specifically anarchist groups in the early labour history of the country, as in other parts of Central America, it appears that Marxists had a bit more influence in their struggles.
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In response to the workers gains, the US-backed military coups arose to counter that progress. The 1963 coup against President Ramon Vieda Morales ushered in decades of military rule, which stifled labor movements and peasant movements often violently. During the 1970s, the campesino or peasant land struggles intensified as the people demanded redistribution and reforms.
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They did get some reform under General Oswaldo López Arellano, but these reforms were limited and met with the usual repression. In transitioning to a civilian government in the 1980s, Honduras remained under heavy US influence, serving as a base for anti-communist activities in Central America.
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Then neoliberal policies in the 1990s eroded many of the hard-won social and labor rights, as privatization and austerity measures deepened the inequality in the country. The 2009 coup against President Manuel Zelaya marked another turning point in modern Honduran resistance. Zelaya's progressive policies included raising the minimum wage and considering agrarian reform.
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Imagine you're considered progressive even considering agrarian reform. But for that thought crime of considering agrarian reform, he was alienated by the business elite and the US-aligned military and thus couped. And this triggered, of course, a wave of militarization and repression, and protests were met with violence and human rights abuses, the usual.
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In the years following the coup, movements like La Resistencia unified a broad coalition of workers, indigenous groups, feminists, students, who were all demanding systemic change. But the issues persist. Honduras continues to face crises of poverty, violence, and migration. But grassroots organizing continues. The ground there is indeed futile for an anarchist resurgence.
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And then we come to El Salvador. Anarchists, both local and international, played a key role in shaping the early labour movement. Spanish, Mexican and Panamanian anarchist-syndicalists worked with them ideas of collective resistance and workers' autonomy.
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One of the earliest milestones in the country was the Unión Obrera Salvadorana, founded in 1922, which united workers under the principles of mutual aid and direct action. By 1924, the Federación Regional de Trabajadores de El Salvador, or FRTS, emerged and was initially steeped in anarchist syndicalist ideas before shifting towards Marxism in the late 1920s.
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In the 1930s, the Anarchist Centro Sindical Libertario was founded and operated in San Salvador. Unfortunately for pretty much everybody in El Salvador, 1932 happened. The devastating La Matanza of 1932, to be specific. This was a massacre that was orchestrated by the dictatorship of General... Oh, I shouldn't have told you. I should have asked you what you think La Matanza means.
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I don't know if you've brushed up on your Spanish.
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I'm sure you're envying my stumbling through all these Spanish names throughout this series.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel you. I mean, for me, I think one of the difficulties, I have been learning Spanish like all my life. The difficulty is when you're speaking at a momentum in one language, at least in my experience, it's really difficult to switch the patterns of pronunciation to the other language. You know, the way that Spanish like reads vowels is different from how English reads vowels.
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So it's hard to like... quickly switch in and switch out.
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I can imagine. But yeah, the La Matanza of 1932 was a massacre orchestrated by the dictatorship of General Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez that aimed to crush the present uprising that was sparked by systemic poverty and land dispossession.
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Tens of thousands were slaughtered, many of them indigenous people, and the anarchists and labor movements in the country suffered immense losses, as activists were either killed or forced underground. This marked the beginning of decades of military rule, designed to protect the interests of the land-owning oligarchy, the 14 families that practically own everything in El Salvador.
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But despite this repression, radical organizations have persisted, The mid to late 20th century saw the rise of armed revolutionary groups, culminating in the Salvadoran Civil War from 1980 to 1992. The war pitted the primarily Marxist-Leninist and Socialist factions against the US-backed Salvadoran military dictatorship.
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The Marxists transitioned into a political party after the 1992 Peace Accords, which ended the war but left many systemic inequalities unresolved. In the 21st century, labor struggles have continued amid neoliberal economic reforms and international financial pressures.
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While the left-wing FMLN won the presidency in 2009 and held power until 2019, its tenure was criticized for failing to sufficiently address the issues plaguing the country. Recent years under President Nayib Bukele have seen the construction of a proper mass carceral police state, while workers struggle against privatization and austerity measures.
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By the way, the rise of Achille is just really fascinating to me, particularly from a Trinidadian context, because we have a pretty severe murder rate situation going on. Our murder rate has been rising steadily in the past two decades. And there's just been, in general, a lot of crime issues lately.
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And the response I've seen a lot of Trinidadians have toward the rise of Achille in El Salvador is literally like, We should do that too. We need to do that too. Like we need to, you know, institute like a mascot for our state as well. And I feel like I'm fighting a wave. I'm like talking to a wall.
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It's really difficult for me, I think, to challenge that because I understand people's frustrations. But to me, my mind is just boggled at it. You know, like you really think we complain about corruption all the time, right? Like it's very openly nepotistic and corrupt in this place. People don't like either political party that is presented to us as the options.
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And yet people are so thinking about the crime situation that they're willing to put that much power in the hands of the government to make that judgment. That's the thing is we know that there are innocent people in peculiar prisons. You know, we know that journalists have been locked up for criticizing the government.
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We know that all people are locked up without charges, without rights, without anything. And what's crazy to me is that like, people are like cheering it on until it's them. Until you happen to be unlucky enough to have a tattoo.
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Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, it's fine as long as it's somebody else. But like, let's say you have a tattoo or, I mean, the thing is the police, I'm sure it's the case in El Salvador as well, because the police are themselves a gang pretty much anywhere in the world. But the police in Trinidad are literally connected in some cases with gangs.
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In fact, there's some gang members who end up like joining the police force later on in their lives. And so to just give that kind of power to them, you know, let's say you criticize an officer, you say something that they were like, and then before you know it, you're the one behind bars as well. I understand the frustration. I don't understand the response.
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And it remains to be seen how Bukele's policies continue to play out in the country. I feel like it's a disaster waiting to happen. In many ways, it is already a disaster. But, you know, people point to, oh, look how safe things have gotten now. But I don't know how long that will last.
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Especially when the families that are responsible for so much of the disparity in the country are still in their position of power. But I digress. The spirit of mutually direct action and anti-authoritarian resistance still has the potential to persist in the country of El Salvador. At last we've reached Guatemala.
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In 1926 the publication Orientación Sindical started circulating in Guatemala, calling for the kind of direct grassroots union action that went around or even opposed political parties as obstacles to liberation. Meanwhile the Marxists in the country had a different vision.
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They pushed for the formation of the Federación Regional Obrera del Guatemala and with that the launch of Vanguardia Proletaria, a communist-led paper that aimed to rally the working class behind Marxist ideas.
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At the same time, Spanish and Peruvian workers alongside Guatemalan students and workers came together to form the Comité Proacción Sindical, which was the space where anarchist syndicalism truly found its voice in Guatemala. But as you can probably guess, the powers that be weren't going to let this kind of radical action stand.
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In 1930, a military dictatorship swept into the country, ending the Comité, effectively silencing anarchist cynicalism in Guatemala, and setting the stage for years of political repression, as the state worked tirelessly to suppress any form of worker self-organization, often with the backing of the one and only... USA! USA! USA!
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The mid-20th century marked a period of extreme violence against workers' movements, peasant movements, and leftist movements, especially after the 1954 CIA-backed coup. Despite these setbacks, workers and political movements really never stopped fighting.
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In the 1960s and 70s, guerrilla movements gained momentum, inspired by Marxist and anti-imperialist ideologies, and although these movements were frequently crushed with state violence in the form of massacres and disappearances, they persisted until the end of the Civil War in 1996. Still, social inequality and economic exploitation persisted.
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Labor movements, especially in the sweatshop industry, have continued to fight for workers' rights. Guatemala today is still fighting to breathe free. Its people are still fighting against the continued dominance of neoliberal economic policies, fighting against corrupt political elites, and most importantly fighting for autonomy for its indigenous and working peoples.
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And now it's time to hit the islands. On our first stop is the Dominican Republic. Through the efforts of Spanish immigrant workers, the ideas of mutual aid and syndicalism found very fertile ground, particularly in the mid-1880s, where we see the emergence of the first mutualist associations, such as La Alianza Chipaña in 1884 and Sociedad Artesanal Hijos del Pueblo in 1890.
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The River Road workers' strike in 1896 struck in protest against the conditions while working on the Puerto Plata-Santiago Line, among the first direct actions in the American Republic outside of its historical maroonages and slave revolts. In 1897, the first labor union was formed. The Union de Panaderos de Santo Domingo. Not long after, strikes erupted across the country.
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Bakers, cobblers, bricklayers all marched in protest, often in the heart of Colon Park, fighting for better working conditions and respect from their employers. Fast forward a bit and in 1920, we saw the first Primer Congreso de Trabajadores Dominicanos convene in Santo Domingo, where the Confederación Dominicana del Trabajo was born. The demands were basic but crucial.
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Things like the 8-hour workday, the right to strike, a salary schedule, and profit sharing. But it wasn't just about improving their daily lives. They also sought to fight foreign intervention. Specifically, they called for the end to the North American occupation, which had had a heavy presence in the region for decades.
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The 1920s also saw the rise of another powerful union, the Federación Local de Trabajo de Santo Domingo, which was founded by 31 different unions. But despite the strength of these movements, the Dominican Republic remained under the heavy influence of foreign powers and corrupt local elites.
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In 1946, the Dominican Republic saw a major strike in the sugar plantations of La Romana and San Pedro de Macorís, and this time, the influence of Spanish anarchists who had fled the Spanish Civil War was undeniable. Today, the anarchist presence in the Dominican Republic is not pronounced, but the conditions are, as with the others, ripe for such a transformation.
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Finally let's jump across to Puerto Rico for our final historical review. Puerto Rico as we know was a Spanish colony until 1898 but after that it fell under the control of the United States. Anarchism in Puerto Rico didn't have quite the same impact as it did in nearby Cuba but that doesn't mean it wasn't there, pushing back against the powers that be.
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Anarchist militants, particularly from Spain, made their way to Puerto Rico in the 1880s, bringing with them the fire of direct action and the commitment to the idea that workers should control their own lives. In the liberal period between 1868 and 1873, the first artisan-based organizations started popping up. These were mutual aid societies and cooperatives.
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They weren't exactly radical in orientation, a far cry from the anarchist uprisings happening elsewhere in Latin America, but they were spaces where workers could find solidarity and support. In 1894, things began to change. A monetary crisis hit, followed by a devaluation that sent prices skyrocketing and the population started to push back.
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This triggered a wave of strikes and mass protests and this is where we start to see the direct influence of anarchists. We know for sure that Spanish anarchists who had settled in Puerto Rico were active in these early struggles, pushing for emancipation and denouncing exploitation.
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In 1898, when Puerto Rico was already under US control, anarchists and socialists came together to form the Federación Regional de los Trabajadores. A group clearly inspired by the Spanish Federación Regional Española. Their program was a simple yet radical one. Abolish the exploitation of workers and build a society without borders or masters.
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But as with all movements, there were contradictions and splits. In 1899, a major rift occurred within the federation when it became clear that some of its leaders were more willing than others to accept the support of political parties, something the anarchists traditionally rejected.
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This caused those that were true to syndicalist autonomy to form the Fédération Libre, a group that split from that original federation and stuck to the principles of the First International. Yet, just a few years later, 1901, this same group ended up affiliating with the conservative American Federation of Labor. Which is a very strange bedfellow considering their earlier anarchist commitments.
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But the anarchists didn't fade away just after these splits. They didn't achieve the dominant position in Puerto Rico's worker movement, but they kept pushing forward anyway. And one of the ways they did this was through the press, as they spread ideas, shared literature, and built networks. Boz Sumana, a publication based in Carguas, was one such example.
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The energy of anarchism in Puerto Rico was translated into action, especially in the labor front, where they were there and part of strikes and meetings and ongoing battles. So as we look to Puerto Rico today, whether with the fight for sovereignty, for labor rights, against colonialism, or whatever else, we can remember the potential of anarchism on the island.
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There were Puerto Ricans in history who understood anarchism. that freedom wasn't solely about political independence, but about the liberation of all people from all forms of exploitation. So let's take a step back and look at the broader picture of labour and anarchist struggle across the region.
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Though the anarchist movements were not as vibrant as elsewhere, but are indeed dormant or dead in many cases, we still see a very powerful thread of resistance and a very fertile ground for anarchist development, which our comrades in these places can hopefully flourish within. That's all from me today. You can find me on YouTube at Andrew Azam and Patreon at Seen True.
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This is Pick It Up In Here. All power to all people.
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Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I'm Andrew Sage. I run Andrew as I'm Ufa on YouTube. And I'm here with the voice of Garrison Davis. Hello. Hello, hello. And today we're going to continue our journey through Latin American anarchisms and their histories with a sort of a four for one special. Exciting, exciting. Very exciting.
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We talked about Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Cuba so far, as well as the Mapuche struggle in Chile and Argentina. And now is the time to explore what's going on at the top of the South American continent, the territory of the former Gran Colombia. And that is the territories of Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela.
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But if this is the first time you're hearing about Gran Colombia, let me give a quick and brief historical context rundown. Gran Colombia was a short-lived political entity that emerged in the early 19th century during Latin America's struggle for independence from Spanish colonial rule.
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It was formed in 1819 and it encompassed the territories, like I said, of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama, as well as some parts of northern Peru, western Guyana, and northwestern Brazil.
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The republic was envisioned by Simón Bolívar, who had dreamt of uniting the former Spanish colonies into a powerful federation that would be able to resist foreign intervention and secure their independence. The Congress of Angostura declared the creation of Gran Colombia with Bolivar as its first president.
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The republic was a centralized state with a strong executive branch, so unsurprisingly, tensions soon arose among the constituent regions due to their differences in political vision, economic interests, and regional identities. Centralized governance had alienated local elites and debates over federalism versus centralism deepened existing divisions. Plus Bolivar's increasingly autocratic rule.
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I mean, he literally tried to push for a lifetime presidency, obviously sparked internal opposition. So Gran Colombia was facing external threats from Spanish royalist forces and internal fractures.
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By 1830, Bolivar had to resign from the presidency, disillusioned by the failure of his vision, and in the same year, Gran Colombia dissolved into three separate nations, Venezuela, Ecuador, and the Republic of New Granada, which later on split into Colombia and Panama. Unlike the other countries of South America that we've covered, these countries had far less large-scale anarchist movements.
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But we'll still take a look at what little impact anarchists did make in the past two centuries in these places. This whole series, by the way, wouldn't be possible without the scholarship of Angel Capileti, whose research I drew upon heavily for this historical review. I suggest reading his book, Anarchism in Latin America, for further details. Let's first take a look at the history in Ecuador.
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At the turn of the 20th century, Ecuador was reeling from a liberal revolution that had just taken place in the country. The country was shifting as industrialization creeped in, the bourgeoisie were on the rise, and feudal landowners were losing their grip on power. A new secular cultural wave was also beginning to take shape as the clerical authorities began to lose their power.
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The workers naturally needed a voice in this process, and they found it first with the rise of the Partido Liberal Obrero, or the Liberal Workers' Party, in 1906. Around the same time, on New Year's Eve of 1905, the Confederación Obrera del Ecuador was founded in Guayaquil, a city that would become a hub for worker activity.
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Both organizations shared a vision rooted in social reform and worker empowerment. It was also around this time that the Cuban anarchist Miguel Albuquerque made a name for himself in Ecuador. Originally, he had come seeking assistance with Cuba's independence struggle, but eventually found himself playing a key role in Ecuador's labor movement.
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He established the Sociedad de Hijos del Trabajo, or the Society of the Sons of Labor, and other anarchist groups would also begin forming, contributing to the struggles taking place at the time. The first recorded strikes with anarchist influence took place in 1919, where workers in the graphic arts industry organized to demand better conditions.
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By 1922, Guayaquil was the epicenter of a massive general strike, shaped in part by the anarchist-Nicolists who were obviously right in the thick of it. The strike was driven by dissatisfaction among the workers, particularly among the city's urban laborers and dock workers, who were facing really poor wages, long hours, and deteriorating living conditions. Teal us all this time.
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The strike culminated in a violent crackdown by government forces, also a tale as old as time, with estimates suggesting that hundreds of workers were killed when the military suppressed the revolts. Most workers returned to their jobs after that, but the trolley workers continued their strike until the 21st of November, when most of their demands were met.
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For sure, because Cuba, as we know, gained independence much later than the rest of its Latin American neighbors. Places like Mexico and Central America and Gran Colombia and the rest of South America, they all gained their independence and Cuba was still under the Spanish thumb. And they remained under the Spanish thumb until they ended up having to struggle with the Americans as well.
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And eventually to gain their own independence. I mean, it's all one big pond, I like to say, the Caribbean Sea. So there would have been a lot of transfer and communication between these independent Latin American republics and Cuba, which was still at the time a colony.
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And so it's really interesting to see when, you know, these Cuban characters sort of show up in other parts and end up stirring up some trouble.
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Unfortunately, 1920s is also the time of a lot of decline for a lot of the anarchist movements because 1920s follows, you know, the rise of the USSR and a lot of people ended up abandoning anarchism and and following that sort of popularity at the time.
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Do we see a resurgence? We do see a resurgence in the right-wing populism, yes. We also see a resurgence... In the anarchist politics, remember the 30s was also the time of the Spanish Civil War. Sure.
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And so in that time, you had the anarchists picking up steam again, and you also had following that Civil War, a lot of the anarchists from Spain spreading out into a lot of the former colonies in Latin America.
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For sure, for sure. I think every story needs a good villain.
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The story of anarchism, I mean, the fascists tend to make really, really impactful antagonists, I think. Indeed. At the same time, we also had in Ecuador, as we had these strikes going on, we also had the anarchists doing, you know, that thing that anarchists like to do, which is a study group.
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Many such cases, many such cases. But I mean, it is an important aspect, the struggles, that sort of consciousness raising.
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So these anarchists in particular in Guayaquil, they founded the Centro de Estudios Sociales, which was a libertarian study group in Guayaquil. And then a decade later, 1920, Yankees also established Centro Gremial Sindicalista, or the Sindicalist Guild Center, which had a mission to, and I quote, end quote.
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As in the rest of the region, their publications played a key role in spreading the ideas. Again, early 20th century, late 19th century, the anarchists were making papers.
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I like to think that I also continue that tradition, and you and I as well, by creating this kind of audio and visual content.
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For sure. For sure. But they didn't have things like, like YouTube or the internet at the time. Instead they had at least in Ecuador, they had newspapers like El Proletario and El Cacahuero and Pandera Roja. which were carrying these anarchist-syndicalist ideas to the workers across Ecuador.
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They also had the first truly anarchist papers that hit the country were Rendención and Luz y Acción in 1922 and 1929, respectfully. But as we were anticipating, the 1930s brought some challenges. Marxist-Leninist thought began to dominate leftist circles and figures like José Carlos Marieta Gui and his general Amauta ended up wielding significant influence in the workers' struggles.
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And by the end of the decade, anarchist groups found themselves vastly overshadowed as Marxist-Leninist consolidated power through unified movements. political parties. But despite these shifts, anarchism in Ecuador was really never entirely extinguished. It actually continues to influence workers' organizations like the Federación de Guayas well into modern times.
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But now let's make our way north to Colombia as a similar story unfolds of anarchism taking root in the early 20th century. And this is actually a fun fact here because both Elise Recluse and Mikhail Bakunin visited Colombia. Recluse was there for research purposes and Bakunin wasn't an anarchist at the time.
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So they didn't directly contribute to the anarchist movement as far as we know in the country. By the 1910s, anarchist ideas were definitely spreading, finding a home among students, artists, writers, and workers. And this wasn't just idle philosophizing.
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They also got to work building worker societies and organizing mass actions, like the May 15th demonstration in 1916, which, of course, met with brutal police repression. From there, the movement gained momentum. In 1920, port workers in Cartagena went on strike, and by the following decade, anarchists were at the forefront of workers' militancy all across the Caribbean coast.
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which was more connected to global struggles in the rest of Colombia and was thus a hotbed of organizing unrest. If you know the geography of Colombia, you'd know that there's a lot of jungle and mountainous region in the middle of the country. It's at the coast where you tend to have more of the activity and connection with the neighboring countries in the Caribbean Sea.
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Fun fact, there's actually a lot of people in the English-speaking Caribbean aren't aware of the fact that there are people in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean who consider, you know, coastal Colombia and coastal Venezuela to be part of the Caribbean. But that's like the sort of niche discourse that you get on r slash ask Caribbean. Yeah.
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The few anarchists that were present in Colombia were part of nearly every major uprising, including the Barranquilla strike of 1910, the labor wave that swept Cartagena, Barranquilla, and Santa Maria in 1918, the first strike against the notoriously bloody United Fruit Company in 1918, the Girardot railroad strike and the artisans and labor strike in Bogota in 1919, the oil strikes in Barranca Bermeja during the 1920s, including one against the Tropical Oil Company in 1927,
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which cost 1,200 workers their jobs and painted a target on the backs of the organisers because how dare you mess with oil? And then finally, there was the famous Santa Maria banana strike of 1928, where workers demanded fair wages and better treatment, and the government responded, at the behest of the United Fruit Company, by claiming hundreds of lives.
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After the massacre, the anarchist movement in Colombia was heavily repressed, and because of how small it was, it didn't quite pick back up. As historian Max Netlau noted, publications like Organación in Santa Marta and Via Libre in Barranquilla disappeared by the late 1920s. This crackdown on anarchists, coupled with the rise and influence of Bolshevik-led unions, shifted the landscape.
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And by the 1930s, anarchist organizing was all but silenced in Colombia. But it's a part of Colombia that we're missing. You see, at one point, Panama was considered part of the country. So there must have been stuff happening on that little sliver of land, right? You'd be surprised. If we rewind to the mid-19th century, between 1850 and 1855, Panama saw the construction of a trans-ismos railroad.
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And this massive project was followed by two phases of canal construction. The first by the French between 1880 and 1895, and the second by the US from 1904 to 1914. These projects brought tens of thousands of workers from Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. Effectively turning Panama into a melting pot of laborers who brought their skills, their culture, and their ideas.
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Asian workers, for example, that is people from Barbados. If I recall correctly, there was a time in Barbados' history where there was some massive number. I'm not sure if it was like a full quarter of the country's income was just coming from remittances from people who had family members sending them money from the canal project back home.
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And it's not just the Caribbean that was impacted, obviously, as workers from Europe and Asia were also part of this project. And it's the workers from Europe and particularly Spain that brought many of the ideas of class consciousness and anarchist cynicalism that have been brewing in that region of the world.
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And such ideas were of course sorely needed in the horrific working conditions of death and disease that marked the Panama Canal construction project. Workers organized some successful strikes in both the French phase and the American phase of construction, both before and after Panama gained its independence from Colombia in 1903.
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But it was just before the transition to American control over canal construction that Panama officially banned anarchists from entering the country. For the anarchists that were left, well, when the Americans took over the canal, Governor of the Canal's own General George W. Davis actively suppressed the anarchist workers that remained.
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In 1907 however, despite that repression, 2,000 Spanish workers went on strike for better wages. In 1924, a prominently anarchist-syndicalist group founded the Sindicato General de Trabajadores, which was Panama's first central workers' union.
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It grew to thousands of members and brought together a mix of ideologies, anarchists and Marxists alike, even those who would later found the Communist Party and the Socialist Party of Panama in 1930. But on such a small sliver of land with so many people mixed in there, there was bound to be a vibrant mix of ideas. And not all of the anarchists in Panama were of the syndicalist flair.
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Believe it or not, they were actually workers within Panama who aligned themselves with Max Stirner's philosophy. They had egoists and anarchist egoism. Interesting. In Panama. Yeah, exactly. This blew my mind as well. And you don't expect to see that in such contexts.
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I'm not sure if they were reading Stirner. I'm assuming so, because otherwise, how would they have come to identify with his philosophy? But they did launch a paper called El Unico in 1911.
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Exactly, exactly. So I'm assuming some of the people either would have read Sterner abroad or they brought Sterner in. And they were obviously inspired by it. And they were skeptical of the sort of mass movement, syndicalism that was popular at the time. Sure. Many people are. They were questioning its effectiveness as a strategy for anarchy.
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And so they were focused primarily on organizing sort of smaller affinity groups.
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And one of those groups ended up launching that paper, El Unico, to spread the ideas. And obviously it called itself an individualist publication.
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You know what? That's just cool. You know, blood of Jesus, that works. It's fine. It's antiseptic, largely.
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This guy would be like an amazing character in like a Batman video game, I feel like. He feels like real final boss energy.
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Boom. Too soon, but boom. Yeah, I mean, I'm not making a joke. It clearly didn't do the trick. Yeah, seriously.
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I guess I was going to say, like, what does it take to have the confidence to just cut people with a fucking rusty knife? And I guess it is you just have to you have to break a few eggs to make a gomlet.
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Oh, my God. Really threatened the needle. Thanks, Doc. My favorite is... That reminds me a little bit of... I've known various people that have gotten out of Scientology, and the worst of them sometimes say shit that is basically akin to like, well, I don't agree with all the homophobia and all the cult stuff, but obviously Xenu is real and controls our lives through a series...
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Shit like that, where I'm like, you know, it's just about the practice of it, not the underlying logic of it.
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But either way, shit was... Yeah, he had to do some shit. He got up to some shit and did some shit at the age of seven.
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the fact that he's he's a pool hustler as a kid makes total sense so i think that's what's actually going on here is he's like yeah yeah he learns how to hustle at a pool hall well it's also like you can the range of predictable items of things that could happen in a pool hall is like yeah finite and like less than 30 i would say i feel like you could just shoot shoot a lot of shots of the dark and that shit's gonna come true eventually yeah pretty quickly
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The old dude, the old, old dude from the Bible, he probably got up to some shit. Nebuchadnezzar or whatever.
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It is so weird to think about the band of grifters welcoming in a new... I mean, this is in the retelling, welcoming in a new grifter. What the fuck was actually happening?
Behind the Bastards
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So it is like so juvenile to find confusing medium with medium. But I know it's funny.
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So he's shifting the blame to literal King Solomon, essentially.
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That's a that's a hell of a loophole. That's a genius.
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Well, especially the baby chopping thing, because that's he's got a baby chopping. He's got previous ammo on that.
Behind the Bastards
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You know what? There's a lot of bureaucracy. You can't just insert like which doctor, surgeon general. Yeah.
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You just have to. Yeah. You have to work within the available structures. Yeah. Until such time as you don't.
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like spiritual slavery system it's like i i mean i guess it makes it sound more plausible on some level like oh how could you possibly do this no we need you know the help of thousands to to cure your fucking whatever oh yeah no i got nurses yeah is it ever like oh i'm sorry no the guy who could help you he's out on vacation we just have like the dude who helps me cut people's eyes do you need an eye cut yeah
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Oh, that's the other side of it is if you were like if I were designing my own version of some cockamamie bullshit, I feel like it would be it would involve as little true body horror as possible. Like, no, no, people love that shit.
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Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't I don't have the willingness to put in the reps to really get good.
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Yeah. That's not happening yet. I'll see. We'll see where life takes me.
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Oh yeah. That's, I mean, I guess you need like desperation tourism sometimes, but Jesus Christ, that's. That is actually Jesus Christ's business model also, so you know what? Maybe it's just a good one.
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Yeah, yeah. Render into Caesar about 38% and you're fine.
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Yeah. This is like some midsummer shit. This is like insanity. Yeah.
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Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, I guess it's like if you're going to be a main grifter, at least bring up your little grifty town around you. Yeah.
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Yeah. Yeah. Make everyone invested in you. And yeah, one way or the other, you got leverage.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, don't snitch. This is the fucking godfather of the town. Don't snitch.
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The entities don't like weed. Yeah. That's... Can't be true, but fair enough. Entities.
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Yeah, I I can't decide. Are you I'm like debating whether to just shoot the moon and grow it to like donatable lengths.
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So... I mean, this has to also be, like, something... Like, the underlying, like... you know, faith in Christianity, like, you know, it's like, oh, you gotta, you know, can't question religion, can't question religion, takes you all the way to, well, this could be real. This clearly fake shit could be real. It's gotta be real. What else could it be?
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I mean, I think I think it's like critical to point out that like physicians are not fucking scientists like you can be a doctor. Ben Carson believes in fucking, you know, doesn't believe in evolution like doctors are just like high stakes technicians.
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Yeah. Shave my head. I don't know. It's it's unpleasant. It's it's at the very unpleasant point of the growth like it. Like, yeah, I hate it. Back of my neck. It's fucking disgusting.
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Yeah. I think, I think it's just like worth pointing out that the T E M in STEM is
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Yeah. And who have like who are highly rewarded for it. Yeah. Like, yeah, you watch like any Silicon Valley person make a pronunciation on anything outside of business. And it's like, oh, you are you are less educated than the average person. You are bad at reasoning. Yeah. Yeah.
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I mean, it could be like sort of an only fan situation. Yeah. The recording of that will be will be useful to somebody.
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Oh, magazine, everybody. The mention of the wine is particularly choice. Oh, it's got to be. Yeah. Yeah. Revolting.
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Well, it's like sort of like... It's like... It's like whatever the PR version of money laundering is. They clean it. They're the cleaners.
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Although, to be fair, actually, if she were to graduate to the level of American president, she would once again be in company where, probably relatively speaking, her hands are relatively clean.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. Both things are true. You can be the friendly face of a lot of horror and still be the best president.
Behind the Bastards
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Even before the podcast, that's the fucked up part.
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I mean, is it like because it's like so generally there's this like a vested interest in promoting like spirituality and Christianity on some level. Because it's like when you encounter these people, are you not at any point like, hey, this seems fucked up? It's so wild to me that they don't have that instinct.
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The hand waving of naked eye into evidence is fucking revolting.
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That's, yeah, that is exactly, that is what abusers say. That's fucking insane.
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Oh, have these guys ever been sued by the estates of these? This feels a little bit like Mormons baptizing people in... Like post-mortem?
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Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, hey, my grandpa, you know, admittedly, my my Nazi grandpa probably wouldn't have supported this, I guess, is not the best court case, but. You know.
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Oh, shit. You know, just go to the Yo is this racist podcast. I met Andrew T. Last name is spelled T.I. everywhere. Yeah, that's it.
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What's up? The J-O-G, ready to hear about the rest of this motherfucker.
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It is abuse. Yeah, that's well, that's fucking horrendous. It's almost worth buying so you can have it for whatever happens with the election just to have this fucking horrible thing.
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Reveal is like so... I like going subtle on the final landing. It's just like, yeah, we can do a normal last name.
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If I could just do a tiny poll and just point out that Sophie's idea of a sexy man is Popeye and we can just live in that for a second.
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You hit your world like a cruise missile at your wedding.
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Um, incredible. Incredible. I mean, the one thing watching the clip is that, um, um, what is, sorry, what is, what is the journalist? The quote unquote journalist name again?
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The one thing watching that is that Susan looks almost exactly as I thought she would.
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Exactly the type of white woman that would promote this shit. Yes.
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Yeah. It's and then also like this, this thing where she's like, he's not going to do a heart transplant. But yeah, he's like, you might have to go to your regular doctor for that is like, yeah, just like key, like sweeping shit under the rug. It's like, well, of course, you will need real medical care also.
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Yeah, it's even like the way that like they can claim they've addressed the infection risk by saying, oh, because they brought it up. It's fucking revolting. That's crazy.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like perfectly explicable and like lending essentially the name of your institution and by claiming to be baffled to give it like credence is like, God, truly pathetic. It's also like even accepting his words at face value until the end. It's like, okay, yes, the brain can do a lot.
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Yes, psychology is more powerful probably in terms of physiological stuff than, you know, we give it credit for. And then pivoting to I want to have a spiritual life is like just an abdication of curiosity. Yep. It's just like, what do you... Yeah. I mean, it is remarkable that some of these people don't feel pain, probably.
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It's documented in other media, you know, other types of formats of this kind of shit. And sure, worth exploring. But being like, yeah, I want to see... I want to learn more about these spirits is like...
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Yeah. That is... I guess it's sort of like a French version of sort of like an animist type religion, right? Yeah.
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Science doesn't work when you don't do it. That's a remarkable conclusion. Yeah. Thank you, doctor.
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Oh, but it's also just being like the arrogance of being able to say, I can't explain it. So it is there. I won't explain it. Yeah. Won't find out how to explain it. So it's therefore inexplicable.
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Well, it's also like the, you know, not acknowledging that spontaneous remission is a severe outlier event.
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And like, yeah, it's possible. But like putting your treatment faith in that is insane.
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I guess that's kind of the shit that happened with Catholicism in South America where it basically became saints became a pantheon. Yeah. Or the polytheism. It's like, yeah, it's fine. Just a slight demotion and everyone's the same.
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Yeah. Well, especially like all the other shit. It's like, who the fuck knows what's happening there? Yeah.
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Oh God. It's always like the most obvious shit. And yet there's still going to be years of like, of where they're like, Oh, I don't know. He just, you know, he was just interested in heart surgery. Like, yeah, it's, it's always so transparent when the shit finally, like when the mass starts to slip, I feel like. Yep. Yep. It is. But you know what?
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Oh yeah. I mean like that, the handler for this sort of situation is always like, it's so fucking sinister. It's so crazy to me that people get sucked into this shit. It just seems like on the face, like get the fuck out of there.
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And then this woman's like, but I spent fifty thousand dollars here, which is like, I mean, I guess to that end, that's not that different than any religion. But no. Yeah.
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Yeah, of course it will. And like and having someone confidently say this is helping with your grief.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. I mean, honestly, just like I could prescribe just don't be in Australia. Come on. Yeah. Get out of Australia is a general rule. Get out of Australia. We all know. We all know what you you people get up to.
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Yeah. And, and the uniform like starts to take away your identity and makes you more easy to manipulate and all that shit.
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I really like imagining like the fucking like entity sweatshop where the guy just has to like or the spirit just has to. Oh, yeah. Like just, you know, for 40 gross crystals or else they can't go home.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. I mean, that's like the homeopathy grift. You know, it's the it's that you can put magic in whatever. Yeah. And if you have a line on passion fruit flowers, which does sound good. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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Oh, shit. I feel like I can imagine it, but I can't think of one. But yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like laying on of hands type shit.
Behind the Bastards
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That's fucking awesome. I mean, I guess if you're going to pass the buck, why not? Jesus Christ.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. I mean, look, he had an answer and the right answer ready to go, I guess. Yeah, that is the right answer.
Behind the Bastards
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They'll take this cancer from your cold, dead hands. Yeah. Fucking, I don't know. I don't know. Who knows what's happening anymore?
Behind the Bastards
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I mean, it is it is like nice how the state of the art of like 16th century magic has kind of remained the same. If you can palm a chicken heart, you can get away with a lot.
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Yeah. Something, I guess, resembling justice. Yeah. If you like squint. Yeah. Oh, it's OK. So, Robert, as someone who spends a lot of time looking at men like this, is there ever a case where it's like it just feels like these men. Like the patterns of this shit is always the same. And I guess it's maybe self-selecting because it's the shit we hear about. Yep.
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But it always feels like it follows like such a similar blueprint. It's like, you know, like every cult feels the same.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah. Jesus Christ. This is fucking dark as shit, man.
Behind the Bastards
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God. Yeah. God, that's fucking horrible. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, another successful episode of Behind the Bastards. Yep, we really nailed it today. Just grim shit. How often does it end in anything resembling justice? Can't be that often. Yeah, not all that often. Most of them don't wind up in prison. I guess everyone dies, but still.
Behind the Bastards
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Someone run the stats. Run the stats on the bastards. Yeah.
Behind the Bastards
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Only one, only one. You can't do both. Yeah, no, absolutely. That's the key.
Behind the Bastards
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Yeah, God. I guess, I mean, look, this is probably the only podcast that I can comfortably say that, yo, is this racist? Where we take some of the worst, you know, just situations and shit in the news. People's, like, questions on racism. It's horrible often. Not horrible, horrible. But I can definitively say we're less depressing than this. Word. Check it out.
Behind the Bastards
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Damn. Have a good day, everyone. Thanks for having me. I can't say it was fun, but it was certainly something. Yep, it was certainly something.
Behind the Bastards
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So that's a cool wrinkle. That's fucking crazy. Oh, God. I mean, I guess it's like on some level, it's got to be a little bit similar to like, you know, an alchemy thing where it's like, you know, sometimes the problem is just a little bloodletting is needed or like, yeah, sure. It's building up and like that will work occasionally.